• frmorrison

In Beta at one point, Plea reduced healing by 100% for 15 seconds. Stopping healing (since HL is our healing spell) or stopping regen are bad options.

I would rather have my heals hit for 50% less than lose mana, since Plea is a lot of mana regen I would otherwise lose.


Also, the new effect doesn't mix all that well with Wings used, since you would do 50% healing x 20% more healing = 60% of your normal healing.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

• Mex

The seal buff is very nice. I never really found that I had too many problems working a GCD in every 1.5-2 mins or so, but for prot it definitely helps maintain a consistant 969 rotation, and it's ~400 mana less that ret has to spend every 2 mins. I'll probably try and find something else to replace my Glyph of the Wise though, since I'll never be resealing in combat.

I'm also really glad to see the DP nerf going live so soon (and it being undispellable is actually a very big buff for PvP), since it'll give me a chance to get used to it before Ulduar hits. I'm thinking I'll macro /cancelaura into my DI+DF+HL macro, so it'll use those abilities if they're up, cancel DP if it's up, and cast HL, without restricting my ability to spam HL with plea up if I feel I can live with the 50% debuff.

Regarding beacon use; if I use it, it'll be on the MT, allowing me to heal raid damage without letting the MT drop too low. I use it quite frequently in heroics (more often on trash than bosses generally), and in most fights in Naxx. For me it's mostly a way to be able to heal raid damage without ignoring the tank; there are very few instances where I'm simultaneously healing two tanks with it.

 

gallamann

Thought I should add some clarity, when I speak to GCD's its rarely a 25 man raid. 5 man groups and 10 man raids are where I can feel the GCD pinch. Look at Anub'rekan, do that with a couple PuG's who are complete fail at interupting and moving, all of a sudden you have 5 people with a nasty posion debuff, two that took a little flight (gee you didn't see the ground rumble?) and the tank taking damage from adds. All of a sudden, you are in GCD hell. Why I'd love to see Sacred Cleansing changed to clean 3 people.

 

fox

http://elitistjerks.com/1026081-post652.html

Here's a good starting point for a discussion on this very topic from some time ago. While the discussion is more about 25-man strategy there are further good posts on that page.

 

kaboom

This is what struck me as well, but i dont really find any other glyph that would have a benefit over this one. At least this one saves us a tiny bit of mana every 30 mins...

Let me know if you find another one that is better.

 

Bilbobubblin

I guess my question would be for those that spam Holy Light, is there a particular reason why you spam Holy Light? What I'm getting at here is, are your raid healers not doing a good enough job? Do your tanks need Holy Light spammed into them to survive? Or do you just want to look better on the healing meters?

Personally speaking, there isn't a raid encounter where I find a need to use Holy Light to the point of spam, even Sarth 3d. Yes, there will be stretches where you spam it, but certainly not the entire fight, and any time you can get away with Flash of Light it is advantageous for you to do so.

Point being, if your raid is struggling with raid healing, and you need to spam Holy Light to help with raid healing, that's an issue that should be addressed directly by replacing bad healers, not by tank healers doing their jobs for them. If your guild is having trouble keeping tanks alive, that is also a pretty big issue that should be addressed directly.

Yes, I've topped meters with Holy Light spam thanks to the Glyph. Yes, I've gotten away with it by having a huge amount of Int and using Divine Plea fairly religiously. But is it necessary? If it is, that's a problem. If it isn't necessary, and by all means it shouldn't be, then why are we spamming Holy Light? A mixture of Flash of Light and Holy Light, with Holy Shock where appropriate, is more than enough for us to keep the tanks alive. Isn't that our job? When did we find a need to start raid healing via Glyph of Holy Light, to the point where we even gem our gear for that focus?

 

Tzeni

Because we can.

And it provides the most overall healing. All else being equal, I will play and gear for a style that provides the most healing.

And because we can, when harder encounters are but into the game, it will be overpowered as we do much more healing than other healers. And so, as expected, our regen capabilities were nerfed (maybe more nerfs in the pipe?) and we won't be able to spam HL anymore. Neither will priests and druids, thanks to the spirit nerf. (Though disc priests still may be able to spam...)

 

Apollion

Because its not 'needed' to do easy content doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. I haven't done Sarth 3d so I can't tell from experience downing him, but judging by what the players who have are saying, holy light spam IS needed if you wanna effectively do that achievement. It's not a simple matter of "I don't like that healing style". If your holy paladin doesn't holy light spam during the hard parts of that fight, you aren't gonna get it unless the group is overgeared and carrying the pally (more true with the 10man when having one bad person is even harder). It stands to reason that Ulduar will have healing fights just as hard or harder (depending on achievements) that we're going to have to do the same with as well. You also have to realize even for regular content, there are a number of guilds that underheal pretty much every instance we go into. Saying HL isnt needed for naxx when you have 8 healers is a lot different compared to healing naxx with 5 healers.

 

CrazyScot

To answer the age old question, intellect provides us with the greatest returns of any stackable stat that we will want. With intellect we gain more throughput and "decent healer 101" tells us that to making the most use of our mana is the prime aim, i.e. finish the fight with 0 mana unless unable to.

Therefore, intellect stackers have 28k+ raid buffed mana, the only way to deplete this lake of mana is to spam Holy Light and by doing so you ensure that your tank will never die. The other by product of this is that you can on occassion cut tank healing down and increase the number of DPS you bring in for clearing farm content. If you can spam Holy Light for 5 minutes and not go oom or play more reserved and be even less oom at the end of a fight, you can be sure that you will find more spam Holy Light for the 5 minutes.

Now I know there may be a counter argument to say "But you can do it like xxx by gearing for xxx" in the same way quite a few have over the last 51 pages but consider that you don't even need to gem at all, turn up in full spirit cloth with another paladin geared the same and you could duo heal Naxx10, take 6 of you and you'd probably be able to clear Naxx25 with that healing power. Just because you can spam flash of light in current content does not mean that this will be a possibility in future.

CrazyScrub Gnome Warlock Ex-Main

Headhunters Terenas EU

 

Mox

The divine plea nerf will have very little affect on HL spam, the majority of people doing content where the 50% reduction even matters (Ulduar and beyond) are the exact same people who have high enough gear to "out-heal" the reduction. With current gear you'll still have 7-8k HL crits, with 50%+ crit rate its still easily possible to heal through all 'expected' damage. The only thing thats going to change is people wont carelessly spam it every cooldown, instead waiting awhile and sneaking it in here and there. Regardless HL spam will continue unless blizz further nerf with yet unannounced changes or buff FoL in some way making it more attractive.

 

Tzeni

I said specifically we were probably in for more regen nerfs. 5k non-crit holy lights every 1.4 seconds (in my gear, with 50% healing reduction) is still a decent enough amount of HPS that spamming through DP is still an option.

However, that's a lot of speculation on content that we haven't even come close to sniffing yet. In the end, when all is said and done with buffs/nerfs and such, I'm fairly sure that blizzard won't let paladins be HL spammers in Ulduar. That goes against what they specifically said they want to do with healing going forward.

 

• frmorrison

The issue with buffing Flash of Light more is PvP balance, since in Arena Flash and Shock are the main heals.

Anyway, all that mp5 gear you are sharding is looking better, and 50% on Plea doesn't matter in current content, I would still spam HL.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

• the KRIS

I thought about macroing a /cancelaura with HL, but in most fights it's not really going to matter. I'm already at ~50% overheal, so it's really only going to affect the glyph procs. I'll probably put the /cancelaura in a macro above Plea itself, so its key becomes like a toggle.

That said, I do think I'm going to stop using Plea on cooldown and probably start hanging out with the melee. Any mild AoE damage I take is just going to be more mana through SA. In the event I'm actually in danger of OOM, I can auto attack for seal procs for a few seconds while Plea is running.

Bottom line: In current content, it's not really going to make much of a difference. Until they completely remove SA we're still going to be infinitely sustainable.

 

Saladin

Well, we already have it confirmed that developers are looking to make Spiritual Attunement returns benefit protection alone, so it's probably best not to cultivate bad habits by relying on it for mana returns.

However, what has not been touched on by developers is the powerful benefit of Seal of Wisdom ticks on fights that afford them. As it stands, SoW melee hits are sort of the "pally 5SR"--that is, if you can find a break in the healing quota to melee for just a few seconds, you can expect huge mana returns on an Int-stacked mana pool.

To those of you who still think it's clumsy and dangerous to use this tactic, it's really not so bad as it seems. The two biggest concerns of naysayers are: 1) it's impractical on fights that require you to spam heals non-stop, and 2) it's impractical on fights with high mobility.

However, I've successfully juggled SoW mana ticks while healing both Patchwerk (heavy healing throughput) and Grobbulus (high mobility) to great effect in a 25-man raid with 5 healers and zero casualties. SoW melees are nearly as powerful a regen tool as Divine Plea where usable. And they're usable 90% of the time.

Definitely a strategy worth picking up and perfecting as part of your natural healing rotation, and not just a "worst case scenario" backup plan.

 

Roknroll

Ya, just a few swings can give you the same mana return as a divine plea. For an int-geared holy paladin, you'll be getting over 1,000 mana back per swing. On our Sarth 3D fight last night, my average tick was 980, and our other holy paladin's was 1136. And if the target is judges with wisdom, add another 87 mana per swing to that.

 

Endoscient

You will not be getting that much per swing, but per proc. It supposedly has a rate of 15ppm, haven't confirmed it but it is definitely a lot less then 100%. It can still be good on some fights, especially ones that have really frantic healing phases followed by a relatively calm one, Felmyst is the best example of this I can think of.

 

• Mex

Mmmm, I was just going to say that Felmyst was a fantastic fight for SoW. I spammed until oom in P1, then with SoW and SA from the aura, made my way back to full in P2.

I think it's a very viable strategy on a lot of fights, but it's probably not one I'd want to ever have to rely on. I've had some very close calls whilst melee'ing Sarth for instance (wasn't with drakes up, but we were doing heroic with 11), and Malygos. I also tried it on Faerlina's adds once, and copped a silence which nearly killed the tank! Mostly I end up doing it in heroics (eg H Azjol, after coming out of a particularly nasty burrow phase where the venomspitters were ignored, straight into a tank standing in pound, I'll often be very low on mana by the time the next burrow comes. I usually melee the little adds that land until the venomspitters come again).

In response to Kaboom -- I currently use Glyph of LoH (this one I won't ever change), Glyph of BoK (I used to spam it a fair bit in PvP as a dispell buffer for DP), and Glyph of the Wise. With GotW becoming a gain of ~200 mana every 30 minutes, instead of every 2, I'll most likely switch to sense undead (for the rare times when I decide to kill stuff). Honestly, all the other minor glyphs look very underwhelming for me. BoW or BoM maybe, but yeah, you could save yourself ~5-10g and just never fill that slot and honestly I don't think you'd ever notice the difference.

 

kaboom

Yeah, i´m running the same setup. And no matter how i twist or turn it, nothing seems to be better or worse.
And i usually bring kings to 10-mans as we dont always have ret/prot´s available i save a lot of mana on the BoK one.

The benefit of the BoW and BoM minor glyphs seem to carry on to the greater as well for some reason, or it´s a bug in my ui or if the greater are actually increased by 20 min as well. That could be a replacer if we get a ret/prot in our 10s that kan bless kings. That way i can take the imp wis and save a few g/mana over time.

Sense undead is ok in naxx, but i guess Uldaur wont have as much UD´s to kill.

 

Bilbobubblin

OK, I'll word it this way. Currently I have SP socketed in every single gem slot, and being a JC that includes 3x 32 SP gems. With all this, once my Illustration of the Dragon Soul is stacked (basically after the first ~15 seconds of the fight until the end) I have 2256 SP, not counting any raid buffs, flasks, or anything else. And this is without a few good pieces of gear (my weapon is only 408 SP, have had terrible luck with drops/being outbid, and at least six items are not best in slot). Point being, that's a pretty hefty amount of unbuffed SP, and once I finally get Turning Tide/some other upgrades, I should easily be over 2400 SP unbuffed.

Now, let's talk about Sarth 3d. Yes, there are definitely times when you will need to spam Holy Light. Not just once, there are a few occasions in the fight where it will be spammed. However, there are also many, many instances where you can get away with Flash of Light. Now, I use Holy Light roughly 3x more often than Flash of Light for 3d kills, so obviously Holy Light is still the favored spell. But I have seen so many WWS reports of Pallies not using Flash of Light at all. Not once. Some even never using Holy Shock. Is it realistic to believe that in a fight like that, there wouldn't even be a single time where Flash of Light would do the trick?

For 25m Sarth 3d I usually only have to Divine Plea once, for 10m Sarth 3d usually twice. It isn't *that* long of a fight, and a Runic Mana Potion returns a fair chunk of mana, and they *should* be used (see plenty of Holy Paladins bragging they never use them... I'd much rather use one over a Divine Plea any day). With no Int gems and not focusing on Int, using Divine Plea one or two times in the hardest encounter in the game currently, and not having mana issues, this is why I wonder why people are gemming for Int. If I'm not having mana issues with Sarth 3d, obviously I'm not having mana issues with any other encounter. So why would I gem for regen that I don't need?

Enough of this "just because current content is easy" argument. Most minmaxing is done through gems, which are very, very, very replaceable. If I have mana issues in Ulduar, yes, I will re-gem for Int. Regemming, even considering AH price for 3 Dragon's Eyes, would cost a maximum of a thousand gold - if you're really pushing your toon, that's nothing. And guess what, Ulduar isn't here, it probably won't be soon, so we should gear ourselves to best handle the current raiding content. If I'm not having mana issues even though I don't have a single Int gem, the logical conclusion is that raising my SP will increase my overall HPS. Last week I was 2nd overall for Sarth 3d, I regemmed to pure SP since then and ended up 1st overall this week. With no mana issues and an increase in performance (among pretty much same healers), why would I care about Int at all?

I'll put it this way - I get the math. I get how powerful Int *can* be. But, if you socket pure SP, your HPS will go up. Pure Int, your HPS will be less but you can heal over a longer period of time. The longest boss fight in current content is 10m Sarth 3d, which like I said I usually only have to Divine Plea twice during, and that's with a two healer setup and pure SP gemming.

So I must ask again, why are people gemming pure Int? Why are people using Holy Light 100% of the time, to the point of never casting even one Flash of Light (again, seen dozens of WWS reports without a single Flash of Light)? Why are Paladins gearing themselves for future content that probably won't be here for a good while? Why are Paladins gemming for the longevity that Int provides if such longevity is not needed?

So far I've gemmed originally for pure Int, then I tried a mix of Int and SP, then I tried a mix of Crit and SP, and finally I tried pure SP. I've probably spent around 2.5k gold in regemming in the last two weeks alone. And I can tell you this, until the *current* - not future - hardest raid content involves 10m+ long boss fights where I'm forced to use Divine Plea often, I'm not going to touch an Int gem with a ten foot pole. If and when I need to regem for Int, I will. What I'm questioning is why people are gemming for it now, when they clearly don't need to.

I'm not arguing with EJ's math. Obviously over a long and healing intensive (mostly Holy Light spam) Int would far outweigh SP. But the current hardest raid encounter is not that long and not that healing intensive. The math is right, it just doesn't make sense when applied to current content.

 

Electronicshark

Well, i did my numbers, and this are my thoughts, correct me pls

ATM divine plea is 50% less heal, so casting flash is not a way, and casting Holy Light is a big amount of mana. So, socketing int is a good way to have a good mana pool and have a nice mp5.

I have all gems, and ill gem tonight to fight malygos, so ill tell tomorrow what happened with my mana and my spell power. My nums said, in paper, that ill lose like 50sp, and 0.02 crit, but ill gain 3k mana and 12mp5. The crit lost is not a real amount, and the sp is not that hard, ill cast some more flash, so ill have more sp on time terms.

Furthermore, atm i have like 36% crit, so i think i have to grow it till 40%, i guess, isnt it? when i reach 40% ill regem and reenchant to get more spell power and haste. Is the bigest lost ive suffered equiping my toon for crit. I think that socketing int will give more mana return from illumination when proc, and having a good pool will give more mana from divine plea.

 

Silmemir

Well, just to be a little pedantic, socketing Int won't give you more mana from *each* illumination proc, but indirectly it will:
- give you a little more crit, which will raise the chance of an Illumination proc, which will give you more mana from Illumination overall
- allow you to cast more spells, which also means overall you will have more mana returned (of course).

Edit: on looking at your armory I feel like I should just point out that you aren't really benefitting much from having 2 prismatic gems in your Owl trinket, as the socket bonus is useless (2 mp5 of your total 90 - even less than me and I don't go looking for it). I just think you could find better uses for those dragon's eyes, like in gloves with their annoying blue socket.

 

CrazyScot

And the point everyone is making is that we are not discussing gearing for current content, we are discussing on what is expected from the next tiers of content. As mentioned, I could heal most 25 man content wearing spirit cloth and without a single gem (with 4 or 5 other stupidly geared healers), this doesn't make it a valid or indeed discussion worthy setup it justs points out how pointless the current content is.

Sarth 3 drakes has been pointed out to be "not quite so hard" and it certainly isn't intense in terms of length as we would expect from the promoted as harder Ulduar content. At this point then we have to speculate on the "best" overall gear setup in terms of throughput and burst, hence why the majority of people are saying "gear for haste, gem for int" As this gives the greatest yield in terms of healing. People need to start reading the last 20 pages of this thread and seeing that it's not simply an intellect circle jerk, there are valid reasons for why people are saying it and certainly a disclaimer in there that's been mentioned a few times (it's to do with later tiers of content for those who find it hard to read).

CrazyScrub Gnome Warlock Ex-Main

Headhunters Terenas EU

 

Irishaty

Just a note regarding the new Divine Plea. Before the patch I used it sort of mindlessly on the CD even though I never REALLY needed it, except on Patchwerk I guess. Last night I was in 25man Naxx with a half-guild/half-pug group and I didn't find I was missing it. The few times I did lose more than half my mana, when things went wrong in a fight and everyone needed heals (other healers dying, for example) I still got through the fights. I only used DP between fights, which is, I think, going to be the best time for holy pallys to use it now. Once I used it in-fight to see the effect, and I sure felt it. A HL that normally would have healed the MT fully only did--you guessed it--half as much, LOL. It wasn't nice to see. I have plenty of mana, 21k unbuffed or something like that, so I could use it in-fight if I wanted to work harder, but I'm lazy. I'll only be using it between fights in lieu of drinking, for those times when you don't want to stop and sit.

And just a note regarding the gemming discussion. Maybe because I'm nonconfrontational, or I just like Aristotle's golden mean, but I gem for a balance. I set myself some goals, like more than 20k mana, 2k spell power (still don't have that yet), a certain amount of crit and haste. As my gear changed, these numbers change of course and I adjust, but I still think that if you have 20-22k mana unbuffed, 30% or so holy crit unbuffed, a haste about 350, and about 2k spellpower, you'll be fine with current content. More than fine. We hear about future content, it's smart to think about what to do about it and gear up for it, but until we see it we won't know the right answers.

 

Tzeni

Let me first get the obvious counter argument out of the way, since it's been made before in this thread. Stacking int does not mean your HPS goes down. Another way to increase your HPS is to cast a Holy Light instead of Flash of Light, which you can do if you have more mana.

The question then really becomes: are you able to do more healing by using HL instead of FL, or are people using HL when they should be using FL, as most of the HL healing is waste?

I know this much for myself: the only time I use FL really is when the tank is taking almost no damage and I have nothing else to do, or I'm raid healing. We have an excellent priest, shaman, and druid that I trust with raid heals so I don't really try to maximize for raid healing. (I should mention at this point that we're a pretty small guild and we 20 man most content, so we run 4 healers most of the time, leaving me as mostly solo tank healer). On the other hand, if I'm tank healing using FL , then either the content is stupid easy or there's too many healers on the tank. So given these two situations, I take to using HL as my main spell, using Holy Shock+FL to sneak in some raid heals if I think I can. Since HL is my main spell, the best way for me to do more healing is to be able to cast more of them, not necessarily to heal more hit points when I do use it.

 

maxi

The reason i personally ain't gemming for sp is simply because i overheal so much.

In a game where my heal is pretty much always going to heal the target to full and then some, i don't want it to heal harder for even higher green numbers. Instead, i want my heals to land faster, and i want to be able to cast them without running oom longer. Hence haste / int gearing.

The only time in the game i felt the need more spellpower is when i found myself in a situation, where i ran oom too fast by spamming holy lights, but at the same time could not provide a safe level of health restoration to the tank when i switched to flashes. In short, when i was simply not geared for content.