pursuit of justice is a great talent for us. we're not the best mobile healers, so less time moving is a huge help. and we're such powerful healers when not moving that a few % crit or % healing isn't going to matter. So i consider 12 points in Ret mandatory to get pursuit of justice. That leave 8 points, but 3 of those automatically go to the crit talent. So now you have 5 points to do either:
5% healing and 0% crit
0% healing and 5% crit
some combination of the two, depending on playstyle

Just to further support PoJ as a solid option, consider that they're nerfing Unholy Aura. So if you want the movement speed enchant you're missing out on icewalker (10crit is okay, 10 hit is nice with Judgements). But the better arguement for PoJ comes from looking at the boss abilities that we know so far from Ulduar. It looks like some fights will have a decent movement component, and unless you're willing to use both talent specs for different healing specs (probably a good idea for the initial Ulduar push) then PoJ may end up being a well-rounded build.

For those of you saying that Paladins should always top healing charts, I went and got some top Naxx25 clears from different guilds to compare: Wow Web Stats

I see a pretty even mix of druids, priests, paladins, and shamans. Only the very top guild (Fusion) shows a paladin healer as the top healer among the top 10 guilds. (sort by Bosses only, to eliminate trash cheesing)

In my own guild, where we 4 healer all the content we're currently doing, our Druid healer tops the charts on most bosses (except for stuff like Patchwerk) and then it's pretty even between the holy priest and me.

I suppose my point isn't that we're underpowered, but I fail to see the evidence that we're currently doing a ton more healing than other classes.

I have a question about my gear. About a week i got from Malygos [Elevated Lair Pauldrons], so i replaced my T7.5 because those shoulders are better. Now; i got [Tunic of the Artifact Guardian], and i dont know if i should replace it with my T7.5 Chest, or put my T7.5 Shoulders instead so i dont lose set bonus.
I want to know whats better, using my T7.5 shoulders and [Tunic of the Artifact Guardian], or [Elevated Lair Pauldrons] with my T7.5 chest.
Thanks in advance.

Use the Tunic with the t7.5 shoulders.

The 7.5 shoulders are itemized quite well with haste and crit instead of wasting itemization points on mp5. However the chest has a lot of haste and mp5 but no crit. So the tunic's crit would be better.

As far as the Lay on Hands no cool down.
I believe they will just change the 4 piece Tier 3 bonus to a 4 min cool down reduction which is 20% reduction on the total time, which is the same ratio as the bonus originally was when the LoH cd was 1hour.
This would make the shortest cd achievable 7mins. Which means that it could be used twice in a long fight which sounds reasonable to me.

Thanks for the link, it was very interesting to compare some healing numbers.

I've seen 2 diferent kind of reports there. Palas that use a lot of flash, and others that hardly press it once (and ofc those who use JOL and the ones who dont)


My healing technique does acomodate a lot of flash heals especialy on trash, but when i do that i have the definate feeling that my HPS is too low compared to the other classes that are grouping with me. I "could" push up and start holy light but honestly it would just overheal most of the time as the tanks at current content dont get a lot of damage (except on a few specific encounters).


I know there's not a "definite" bible to go on the exact right strategy, but i was wondering if most holy light spammers arent just looking at the charts instead of looking at the "right spell at the right time".


Cheers

Well, not necessarily (I mean, Holy Light "spammers" aren't necessarily topping the charts). In our last Naxx25 clear (granted, we brought way more healers than we needed to) one of our other holy pallies, who uses a lot more Flash of Light than I do, topped the overall healing charts:

Naxx 25 clear.

The paladin topping the overall healing charts had the following breakdown in spells used:
FoL; 42%, HL: 26%, GoHL:12%, Beacon:10%, Holy Shock: 9%

I use a lot more holy lights (although I don't spam them) and I was number 3 on the overall healing chart:
HL: 47%, GoHL: 21%, FoL: 19%, Beacon: 7%, Holy Shock: 6%

The fights where I did top the healing charts were Gluth and Gothic (I was on undead side) and I was #2 on Sapphiron, after our ret pally, since Judgement of Light heals for a lot on that fight. And I topped the heals on trash mobs, but I'm not sure what that says!

I did miss one entire fight though, since one of our DKs went the wrong way on the first charge on Thaddius, and managed to kill me.

Curiously, I had more overheal on my FoLs than on my HLs!

tbh - I don't see the point in wasting points on PoJ - all other classes seem to be able to deal with it fine and with the changes to holy shock and instant FoLs and even SSs there is not much wasted time while running. Splicing those two points onto crit seems ALOT more favorable - healing wise and mana wise.

If a hunter has to stop DPSing for 10 seconds to reposition himself, the tank is not going to die.

A tank doesn't have to stop tanking a mob in order to move because all tanking abilities are instant.

If a healing class with hots has to stop healing for 10 seconds to reposition himself, the tank is not going to die.

If a healing class with no hots has to stop healing for 10 seconds to reposition himelf, the tank could die very easily.


Of those four, see if you can pick out which one holy paladins are.


If you need convincing on PoJ, you don't have to look any further than Heigan. Sure, other classes can get by without the speed bonus, and so could you. The difference is PoJ-less paladins don't have the time to stop and toss out a flash on every splash in addition to the holy shock once every two splashes.

As it stands, PoJ is by no means mandatory, but it's solidly above most other choices we have.

Just out of curiosity... how do PoJ and the speed/boots enchants interconnected?

Just because you don't need the extra speed to avoid something like a lava wave doesn't mean it isn't immensely useful for allowing you to reposition faster so that you may resume casting sooner.

If you are only referring to current content (as referenced above), then raw healing/crit = even more overhealing. I find PoJ useful in fights with a large area, i.e. Sapphiron raid healing. If a healer goes down on the far side of the group, I can get in position faster to take over. I fail to see an advantage to not taking PoJ in this content. While not mandatory, PoJ does provide a benefit where overhealing does not. It may be fair to say it is a convenience, but to use your summary:

PoJ convenience > Raw overhealing/ crit overhealing in current content.

Spamming either fol or HL exclusively is a bad idea, but my view is that the role of the holy paladin is to provide sustained high hps on the tank(s) to avoid wipes from tank deaths. I'm sure many people will disagree but I think fol spam won't accomplish that goal when you no longer outgear the content. As the difficulty of encounters increase I think people will start to see that fol won't cut it except for topping people off.

As a guideline to PoJ's value in most fights, It'll take someone with Tuskarr's Vitality 1.64s to cover the distance a PoJ-specced paladin covers in 1.54s (calculated around "how long do you have to run for to get 0.1s benefit"). 1.54s gets you quite a long way, more than enough for a void zone type issue, enough to cover most out of range moments. It's also long enough to be the difference between the heal landing before or after the would-be fatal damage hit the tank is about to take.

There scenario where PoJ comes out most favourably is when you've got uncontrollable slow kitable adds. What immediately springs to mind is the 2nd boss in ye olde mechanar. Those fire elemental adds moved at 80% normal speed, a PoJ equipped paladin would need 20% less time to get far enough to safely cast than one with Tuskarr's Vitality. Throw something like that into Uldar, and there's no argument about those 2 points for that encounter.

Ultimately though, for current content, you can absolutely argue it either way. It's definitely not wrong to say PoJ isn't worth speccing, that heal landing 0.1s earlier after a move might save someone, but you can say the same about 2% crit or 2% more healing. If you ask me, it's down to preference and neither can be called the "wrong" option.

The boot enchants are 8% (the same as 1/2 points in PoJ) and do not stack.

I wouldn't sacrifice crit for PoJ, and I haven't. Crit is a simultaneous throughput/efficiency stat, which is why it's so highly valued.

However, there is no need to sacrifice any crit for PoJ now or after the patch. Here are the following non-crit alternatives you can put on the chopping block for PoJ:

-Divinity: AKA, a glyph.
-Improved Concentration Aura: This talent continues to be of meager, almost unnotieable benefit in most PVE scenarios.
-Blessed Hands: An intriguing one and top contender for me, but still too situational to make it a must-have. Largely dependent on the boss encounter though. If you're fighting any boss fight that requires you to move more than once every ~1.5 minutes, PoJ should give better returns. If the movement spurts take longer than ~1.5 minutes, you'll see more benefit from Blessed Hands' extra sacs and salves.

^Those are the sorts of talents that are prime to sacrifice for Pursuit of Justice, since PoJ is a constant payoff as compared to the situationality of the other talents.

Crit talents are similar in that the more crit you have, the better--yes, there may be diminishing returns on crit, but you'll reach those a lot later than you will on stats such as raw +healing.

As it stands, a paladin can expect to cast 3 instant heals (2 Shocks, 1 FoL from a 50% critrate on Shock) every 12 seconds, or 3 every 10 seconds if Shock is talented. Even the second-most hot starved healing class, restoration shamans, have earth shield, riptide, and RNG earthlivings they can rely on on the run. The paladin is still the least mobile healing class in the game. That's why anything that grants additional mobility to a paladin will be more valuable than it will be to other healing classes.

Furthermore, Icewalker is one of the few decent enchant options we have for closing the annoying hit cap on our judgements. Alternatively, you could pick up Tuskar's Vitality and thus have to make up the hit in other slots where more healer-oriented enchants could be placed. If you did decide to go that rought, though, Accuracy on your weapon would most likely be the best place to cover the loss of Icewalker.

One thing I am curious about since the current PTRs don't have divinity available--will the 5% healing to and from you stack? I.e., +10% healing when you heal yourself. Logically, they should stack, but I doubt that will fly in the long run since it's very likely to ruffle some PVP feathers.

When I read the talent description, it seems the 5% healing to you only counts when it comes from others (like SA). However, the talent is still not on PTR so I cannot test.

Or they might be trying to implement this "selfless buffer" attitude to our healing. Since it's currently better for a paladin to delay self-healing in case they might benefit from SA, maybe this stacking 10% to healing is supposed to favour self healing by alleviating it's cost?

I definitely like that perspective. On the other hand, if they somehow implement a magical mechanic that removes any benefit holy paladins would get from SA anyway, wouldn't that in and of itself be incentive to heal ourselves? Instinctual healing priority is usually Tank > Healer > DPS (modified by assignments, of course), but SA is the only reason we tend to flip that around.

Although even then, I'm not to sure about exactly how much we shake up the priority system. What strikes me as curious is that the SA planned change was first announced as a way to make it a "prot only" skill--then they assured ret paladins that they wouldn't be affected by it, and it was mostly targeted as a holy nerf. But honestly, holy has the hardest time out of all the three specs getting benefit from SA in the first place.

Protection (through bosses) and Retribution (through SoB) deal with roughly steady incoming streams of damage that are expected to be healed through. In order to gain anything from SA, we Holy Paladins have to actively try to take some environmental damage and rely on other healers healing us. Usually they won't, since healers tend to assume that other healers can take care of themselves. Even if you do inform your raid of the benefit from getting SA heals instead of healing yourself, you have to constantly try to measure how much damage is too much damage to take.

An obvious example would be asking yourself "I have 66% health left--should I stand in the fire and risk dropping to 33% or play it safe?" But it goes beyond just asking yourself how much damage you can survive through as holy. You also have to ask yourself how much damage your fellow healers can heal without being burdened with your mana regen. After all, if the purpose of SA returns as holy is to fuel your mana to put out more healing, you have to constantly weigh the extra healing from your SA-granted mana against the extra healing of your healing mates funneling the healing they're using on you into the DPS or tanks.

These are all really complicated on-the-fly decisions that holy paladins have to use when playing with SA. It's honestly a lot of work for a variable amount of benefit. I'm not sure where Blizzard gets the impression that holy paladins are fountains of endless mana because we all stand in the fire.

In any case, I tend to shy away from the technique myself since I'm always wary of Murphy's Law. As long as they nerf our endless mana syndrome through SA and not DP/Illumination, I'll be happy.

The answer to that question is always no, risking dying and soaking up other healer mana is never worth the amount you gain. SA is free mana on encounters where you can't avoid taking damage, but you should always make every effort possible to take as little damage as possible.

Going to have to disagree here. Currently, there is no fight that makes you take enough damage that can put you to that point. In saph, I'll beacon myself and eat blizzards, for instance. It's not bad enough, and healers normally get to it. We have a shaman raid healing, it may cost her a little mana, but no difference since she'd be throwing chainheals either way. We always rotate assignments on our druid, so if I get hit with heals, better for me.

The only place I could not see purposely taking damage is S3D. Everything else is simple enough to take a hit for your mana pool.