Also, decursive has never worked for me for dispelling mind control in phase one Yogg. However, targeting players on Grid then casting cleanse always works.

Targeting players on Grid and pressing cleanse button works for me. However I can confirm that people who have specs with some resistance sometimes require a few cleanses to succeed.

Create this macro and name it "cleanse". Open Clique, choose "Run Custom Macro", bind your desired mouse click and write "cleanse" in the field "Macro Index". So the defined click calls the macro.

(I don't understand why this works in the Yogg-Saron fight, as it shouldn't be possible to cleanse an enemy target, but it works. Maybe Blizz made this work only to make Paladins be a useful class in this fight.)

I think the issue comes from the old ZA speedruns, where an MCd DPS could easily 1shot someone and you had only 2 classes capable of getting rid of the MC.

Near the end, we sometimes had runs with a single shaman and no priest, which made it very roulette. (but by then, it didn't matter much anymore of course.)

Well, Ensidia just downed Algalon 25-man, which pretty much makes Mackzter (their only Holy Pally on the kill pull) the go-to guy to look at, drool over and dissect into oblivion.

For starters, here's his armory: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...don&n=Mackzter

The EU Armory's currently not working for me, though I did see that he's a 51/20/0 spec with (I'm guessing) 4/4 T8. I know that T7 vs T8 has been bandied about a fair bit (especially considering the grievous mana demands of hardmodes). Personally, I've been sticking with the 51/0/20 and 4/4 T7 because of the crazy mana return – can anyone with Mackzter's set-up really say that it's a noticeable boost in healing capability?

Yes, the boost in single-target healing is noticeable. I'm running 51/20/0 with 4/4T8, and my Sacred Shield really evens out the damage a given tank may take. On fights with high tank damage, myself and a disc priest will keep Sacred Shield and Power Word:Shield on a tank, which allows us to greatly reduce the amount of any incoming hit. With the ability to Divine Shield + Divine Sacrifice and absorb tens or hundreds of thousands of damage, I am able to make up for my AoE healing shortfalls. I've actually started using FoL spam on the main tank, with Sacred Shield up and a reasonable amount of SP, your HPS can be pretty decent. 6k crit Flashes at just over a second's time, with a 90% crit chance, while costing next-to-no-mana to maintain.

It's definitely a very different healing style than I used with 51/0/20 and 4/4 T7, as about 90% of my casts were Holy Light with that build. Now that I've moved to 51/20/0 and 4/4 T8, my casts are closer to 50/50 Holy Lights to Flash of Light. I will admit that I have not attempted any non-vehicle hard modes, so my mana pool hasn't been tested as thoroughly as it could be.

I actually collected two pieces of T8 and didn't plan to switch right away, but I got a lucky drop from Archavon and switched at 3pc T8 and used 3pc T8 and 2pc T7. I purposely broke my 4pc T7 bonus to test how it would affect my mana situation. Once I felt comfortable without the 4pc T7 bonus, I was confident in rolling on my 4th piece of T8 gear. It's a noticeable drop in sustainability for HL spam, which is why I doubt I'll be taking my T7 gear out of my bags any time soon. I still swap it on for fights like OS+3, where I'll be dropping a ton of HLs in a row.

Blizzard specifically coded Dominate Mind to be able to be cleansed by Paladins (even though it is a buff on an enemy). No other enemy spell can be cleansed by Paladins.

I use very similar spec since i got 4 pcs of T8. Before, i was raiding with retr crit spec. Sacred Shield with this spec and set bonus is insane. And the fact you can use FoLs to heal MT in many cases. I still keep my T7 in bank, but i don't see a point to use it. I need to watch my mana little more carefully, but my healing output is higher.

So, my progression was like:

4T7 + crit spec (i also experimented a little with guardian)
2T7 & 2T8 + crit spec
4T8 + guardian spec

It was pretty interesting to me that he is actually using 2PT7 and 2PT8.

I just picked up my 4pT8 last night, and plan on going the DiSac build. We have a ret paladin who picks up 3/3 in improved devotion aura (no prot paladin in raid), so I'll be going 51/17/3. I've been healing the past 3 weeks without my 4-piece T7 bonus and mana has never been an issue. In fact, I rarely have to mana pot or LoH for mana. I am a little bit worried about how it's going to be without all the crit from the ret tree, which is why I'm still taking 3 points in ret for reduced mana on instant casts. I'll post some comparative data from my World of Logs (they seem to do a decent job at estimating shields) after I get a big sample of bosses on Tuesday.

As for the paladin from Ensidia, look at the massive mana regen he's getting from trinkets and he's still got a very healthy mana/intellect pool.

You don't have a Tree? Resto druids give the same healing bonus.


I am interested to see what GC's Holy changes he hinted at yesterday will be in the future.

Resistance on the Animus' aura is based on the base damage of the aura which is around 700 I believe. So all you're really doing is giving your raid is resisting 100 instead of 50 damage per tick.



You also pick Improved Devotion Aura for the armor boost, the extra 6% healing is just icing on the cake if the raid is spread far apart or if the tree manages to die.

It should work as expected actually, the resist numbers mentioned in the combat log just interact in a very confusing manner with damage increasing buffs/debuffs. So the initial damage is 750, and let's say you cause your raid to resist 10%, this shows a 75 resisted message. The damage multiplication is actually applied after the damage from resistance is removed however.

In other words, let's say you have 20 stacks of Profound Darkness, so 200% extra damage taken. That would mean 2250 damage without resistance, when you resist 10% the combat log message says you resist 75, however you actually end up taking 2025 damage, or 10% less than what the damage would've been without resistance.

Perhaps this has been discussed already, but I don't think it has. How are you all tracking your Sacred Shield and Beacon of Light? I was using a combination of the standard buff bar and the button highlighting of Dominos but i want to get more precise than that.

I found Paladin Beacon of Light, Sacred Shield Tracker today and it looks simple and clean, but I am at work so I haven't had a chance to try it out yet.

Anyone used it or use something else that they like? Should this be posted under simple questions with simple answers?

I just use DoTimer, works nicely.

I track beacon by placing an icon on the bottom left corner of grid unit frames. I put the buff "lights beacon" on the bottom right to show which players are affected by it. Grid then lets you chose "only show my buffs", so I know which beacon belongs to me.

As for tracking the time left on it? I use customized elk buff bars for target/focus to keep track of a tank mid raid (rarely does it matter though since I can see when a buff falls off in Grid).

A great way to track Beacon and other procs is to use something like Miks Scrolling Battle Text. I don't like all the spam that comes with the text, so I actually turn that all off. What it does do, though, is let you put a sound (their built in options or your own custom sound) along with the events you set up. I set up several triggers for all of my cooldown abilities I need to watch. When something like Beacon falls off, I get a distinctive sound played and it also displays a large text warning.

What this does is allow you to occasionally glance at your buff duration to keep a general idea of how long it has, but for the most part you get trained to the sounds you set up for each spell. Eventually, it's all memory and as soon as you hear a certain sound you know what either proc'd or fell off.

You can't use this with sacred shield, though, because the 30 sec long parent buff has the same name as the 6 sec long shield proc. So you'll get the sound/warning every time the 'proc' shield falls off as well as when the 30 sec 'parent' buff falls off.

I use all of their default sounds, and have different ones set up for:

- beacon of light aura removed
- infusion of light proc
- holy shock cooldown complete
- greatness card proc
- low mana
- judgements of the pure removed

I used to also have one for when Seal of Wisdom fell off, but now that's not needed with the 30 min buff duration.

I also use other methods in conjunction with that. I have class timers that track my personal buffs (judgements of the pure, light's grace, seal of wisdom) so i can quickly glance at them. I have my 'set focus' hot keyed so I tend to always have my SS and Beacon target as my focus. I have my personal buff shown large on them with a countdown. On fights with constant tank switches I usually focus the boss, but since I'll recast SS and/or Beacon on tank switches I don't have to worry about durations. One nice thing as of late is that I switched to 51/17/3 after picking up 4pT8. I just reapply Beacon and SS at the same time, since they are on the same cooldown which makes tracking SS a lot easier.

Sorry if this was already mentioned (or obvious), but if it was then I must have missed it. I just picked up my 4pT8 and notice now that SS can now reapply itself when your target has the shield, takes a hit, and it's outside of the 4 second cooldown. That's a little confusing, but browsing my log I noticed that:

- tank gets hit, sacred shield procs the 6-second damage shield
- tank takes damage 5 seconds later, shield is till up and it absorbs ~3k damage
- the 4-sec cooldown already expired, so a new shield is immediately applied
- tank gets hit 2 seconds later, the shield is up, and they absorb ~3k damage

Without 4-piece, the shield stays up for 6 seconds and has an internal cooldown of 6 seconds. That meant that in order to get the shield, the tank would always have to take an un-shielded hit to reapply the shield for the next one. With 4-piece, the 6-second shield paired with a 4-second internal cooldown means that there's a 2-second window (33% of the shield duration) where the tank can take a hit and immediately reapply his shield. In that case, the current shield gets absorbed and a new shield gets immediately applied. Getting hit during the first 4 seconds of the shield, however, still requires him to take an unshielded hit to reapply the damage shield.

Here's a short clip from my combat log. Lag probably accounts for some of the shields looking like they absorbed just after the 6 second expiration was up. Our tank went about 30 seconds where he kept the shield up 100%, mitigating just over 3k damage on every hit.

If you use Deadly Boss Mods (I am sure BigWigs has something similar) you can macro a timer for Sacred Shield & Beacon of Light. This is especially handy if you use Mouse Over macros for your spells anyways. For example, for my Sacred Shield macro, I simply appended the following line:

/dbm timer 30 Sacred Shield

That's it. Automatically shows a timer and pops up the count-down meter when it is about to expire. You can save yourself a little bit of memory that an Add On might take up. Of course, you may want to have better error detection (i.e. interrupt/silence/OOM) so if you find yourself hung-up on that, a custom Add On might be a solid alternative. I am sure there is a better condition check for the spell to activate the timer, but I haven't really bothered to check as it hasn't seriously impaired me.

Though I usually remember who I cast my Beacon and SS on, I like Faya's Grid suggestion for tracking who I originally cast it on.

I really don't use any mods for tracking bacon, ss, and jotp. What I usually do is just cast bacon, ss, and judge one after another, and then when my jotp goes down, repeat. It works for me.

This does require 2/2 Divine Guardian, though.

For beacon timing i use GridStatusHots with GridIndicatorSidetext, showing the time left with changing colors at configurable times (for ex. green when applied, yellow at 10 secs, red at 5).
Doesn't work that well with SS as GridStatushots gets confused between the actual shield buff and the spell effect, as both have the same name.

I also track both with the ForteXcorcist Spell Timer module, which works better with SS.