I'm looking for some information on speccing. Now that the bug with imp BoW stacking w/ mana spring totem is fixed, I'm trying to decide if I should take my points out of that. I have never been a fan of speccing into something that only benefits me some of the time. Most of the time when I'm raiding, I'm raiding with a shaman anyway so imp BoW is going to waste and is only a "some of the time" benefit. I'd like to have a spec that is as most well rounded as possible to benefit me everywhere. I hate wasting talents on things that just make things easier when there may be a better talent to benefit me everywhere. Any suggestions?

Edit: On a more thorough look at the talent tree, there doesn't seem to be any other alternative that's not equally situational. Any thoughts on which would be the maximum benefit for us- a "some of the time" imp BoW, Blessed Hands (more for the increase in effectiveness than the mana reduction), Aura Mastery and 1 other point somewhere? The rest are pvp talents and have already proven not necessary.

I personally wouldn't want to rely on shaman totems vs a thirty minute buff and there's really nothing stellar in the holy tree you could take in its place anyway.

I'm thinking about one point in aura mastery and one point in blessed hands. It seems like the utility of BoW is supbar to Kings anyway? For myself, I'm gaining 10% of my int with Kings as well as the rest of my stats which seems better than the MP5 benefit Wisdom provides. In terms of utility to my raid, shouldn't they be able to function to their best ability without my buff anyway? If we have a shaman they get the MP5 buff anyway, and if we don't are they relying on MP5 enough for it to matter?

I guess if you run 5/10 mans as the single Pally, then imp BoW isn't that good. However, BoW is better because of the long duration + you don't have to be 40 yards from the totem.

Also, the Shaman can heal or dps more if they don't have to worry about the water totem.

I only have a shaman up to level 60-something so I can't say for sure, but wouldn't they have totem upkeep worked into their rotation anyway? I've come to realize that the decision isn't to be made for or against BoW based solely upon a shaman's presence or not anymore. I think it's more of a question of comprehensive benefit at this point. Is kings better? Is giving our DPS imp BoW going to make or break the game? Shouldn't their mana pools be significant enough to have kings be more beneficial as well?

Actually the real reason BoW > Mana Spring is because it frees shaman up to drop Healing Stream, which when glyphed and talented provides a significant amount of "free" healing.

The blessing heirarchy continues to be Kings > Might/Wisdom > Sanctuary. However, remember that Improved Wisdom is a talent choice that benefits your raid 100% of the time presuming you're allowed to cast it (which by all logic you should so long as there's one other paladin in the raid). Aura Mastery and Blessed Hands, however, only provide their respective benefits every 2 minutes, and neither is especially game-breaking. In fact, if you're talking about such small-scale group action as to be the only paladin present, Aura Mastery loses a lot of its appeal, as it really shines in 25-mans where 25 raiders can benefit from doubled resistance as opposed to only 10.

At the end of the day, it's still a personal preference decision that you have to make based on the groups you regularly run with and what you're expected to cover.

Just a little heads up, the Aegis 2piece set bonus is currently bugged and the Holy Mending effect you get when you crit a holy shock costs 834,67mana extra (19%base).

So be carefull at Vezax etc.

Wow, if we didn't need another reason not to equip T8!

Spending 1758 mana when criting with a Shock is not nice. Holy Mending - Spell - World of Warcraft is the spell for those interested.

Any PvP talent builds out there? Been messing with a few but can't decide.

Yep i posted the comment but didnt want to spam it around before i was 100% sure, quite uncool for such a weak effect.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I have Beacon there so you can Beacon yourself and use Hand of Sac and DiSac without killing yourself. Also note I changed to put the "best" glyphs in there.

Anyone have a BiS Holy gear for 3.1? I really dont like the plate from Ulduar and the t8 (2) and (4) bonus are not that great. Should I start looking for Mail Healing gear?

Since T8 bonuses are lackluster, 4 pieces of our current BiS list would be T7. The best single piece to use as an off-set is the [Breastplate of the Devoted]. Then fill the rest with Ulduar sp plate and sp/haste/crit necks/rings. The best shield is [Wisdom's Hold], while the second best is [Voice of Reason].

Since getting 30 fragments takes a while and you may not be the lucky healer, for your MH you have the two 226 Naxx weapons or mace from Razor 25 and as an upgrade to that, you have the one from hard-mode Hodir 25:
Constellus
54 Stam/54 Int
Blue Socket w/5 sp bonus
587 sp
29 crit
19 mp5

Well, yes, but if you take imp BoW then in 10 mans it's only benefitting 10 people instead of 25 in 25 mans too. This logic isn't really that relevant; in both cases you'll be benefitting your entire raid, or at least those in a position to benefit.

The other thing with Aura Mastery is that you won't always be using it to mitigate raid-wide damage. Sure, maybe vs Heat Wave on Mimiron or Flame Jets on Ignis, but there's also Frozen Blows, Razorscale's breath, Napalm Shell, etc which are all single target abilities, and all potentially with the ability to very quickly kill their target. Going from 130->260 resistance vs these abilities will knock a guaranteed 10% off the max hit, which can be very beneficial. Sure, the CD means that there's no way you can use AM vs every ability, but it can still be useful in certain situations, such as late in the fight after several healers have died, or as part of a CD rotation.

In any event, both talents are situational in their overall effect, will vary greatly depending on circumstance, and can't be boiled down to how many people they affect.

Anyone noticing that Beacon stacks on the same target now? Didn't see mention of this before. Fairly interesting change. I was noticing the odd behavior in tonights raid, but chalked it up to a mod display error. Interestingly enough it wasn't. Did I miss a patch notice? Didn't see anyone else bring this change up.

Minor correction but Frozen Blows has a raid wide aoe component of 2000 dps.

I don't think Napalm Shell can be partially resisted. No idea about fully. I think, though, that all the single target abilities are easy to heal through making it not worth it. Well, yeah, the breath if you're very late in the fight, maybe. The AoE component of Frozen Blows makes it hard (You cannot raid heal, even with beacon on the tank, because somebody sniping your heal could very well kill your tank). Other than that, AM would be wasted on those.

So far AM is looking to be a quite nice reactive spell to migitate raid dmg, its just hard to really track what its actually doing. So far though i believe it proved it's worth, seeing 8 people not getting flame jets and the looking at how much u can resist Frozen Blows i'd say its a point well spend, and if anything, something fun to use.


Napalm shell can indeed be resisted partially btw. WWS

Has anyone done the math on [Spark of Hope] yet? Our Druid just got his so I am hoping to pick the next one up if it is worth it. I know it was previously mentioned that Rawr was listing it as best in slot, but it hasn't been discussed since.

I am not the best with math but my guess would be:

(5 seconds / Average Holy Light cast time) x 42 = Average mp5 from [Spark of Hope]

I am probably doing something wrong by not also factoring in illumination, etc. Please correct me if I am wrong. Thanks.

Illumination returns mana from base cost, thus the interaction would be the same as with holy light libram, a net gain.

Kallista from PlusHeal.com did some nice compaired math on it, link.

Link is broken...

And yeh I was wondering the same thing...

I've passed on this the the priests in our 10man, but would really like to know how it stacks up, as I'll have one once we get it to drop again.