Upcoming 3.3 changes:

# Divine Intervention: This ability now also removes Exhaustion or Sated from a target if the recipient is out of combat when the effect ends. In addition, the cooldown on this ability has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.
# Flash of Light: This spell no longer causes a heal-over-time effect unless the player has the Infusion of Light talent.
# Lay on Hands: This ability will place Forbearance on the paladin if used on his or herself. It will not place Forbearance on others.

# Talents

* Holy
o Aura Mastery: This effect of this talent has been reduced in duration to 6 seconds.
o Infusion of Light: This talent now causes the paladin’s Flash of Light spells to heal the target for 50/100% of the Flash of Light healing amount over 12 seconds.

* Protection
o Divine Guardian: This talent no longer increases the amount of damage transferred to the paladin from Divine Sacrifice. Instead it causes all raid and party members to take 10/20% reduced damage while Divine Sacrifice is active. In addition, the duration has been changed to 6 seconds, however the effect does not terminate when Divine Sacrifice is removed before its full duration.
o Divine Sacrifice: Redesigned. The effect of Divine Sacrifice is now party-only and the maximum damage which can be transferred is now limited to 40% of the paladin’s health multiplied by the number of party members. In addition, the bug which allowed Divine Sacrifice to sometimes persist despite reaching its maximum damage has been fixed. Divine Sacrifice will now cancel as soon as its maximum damage value is exceeded in all cases. Finally, Damage which reduces the paladin’s health below 20% now cancels the effect early.


For a detailed guide to Holy Paladins (updated for 3.3 by frmorrison), check out this thread: Holy Paladin Compendium for 3.3

If you're going to add a list of the regen changes, you should have added what exactly happened to Illumination too.. Just for completeness' sake.

Thanks, and fixed.

On the topic of the set bonuses, it appears that the 2pc bonus is incredibly uninteresting. Also, the 4pc bonus is weaker than both of our previous 4pc bonuses, especially in light of the Illumination nerf. I don't see myself moving to either of these set bonuses unless the itemization is perfect.

The relic looks to provide 200+ spellpower with (hopefully) reasonable uptime, but I believe the value of the HL libram is still to high to warrant switching to the T9 libram. Our HPS has always been excellent and is being buffed considerably, whereas our mana situation looks to be the only touchy area. I see this new Libram getting sharded quite a bit.

Odd combinations on the T9 bonuses. Adding 2(.01?) seconds on your judgements seems like a very minor bonus compared to say.... 4pc T8. And a very generic +5% crit for HL in the same patch where they are obviously trying to tune down our HL casting, seems somewhat perplexing.

I believe it's 10 seconds to the duration of Judgement, though keeping a Judgement up has never been an issue for me. Even then, it doesn't provide any actual buff to the Judgement itself. Looking at the Prot Paladin bonus of -2 seconds off of Righteous Defense's CD, I guess we should be happy with something. I haven't been GCD locked like that for quite some time. The 5% crit bonus is even weaker than the -5% cost bonus from T7, and so it seems that our 4pc bonuses have been declining in quality. I am interested to see if our gear will be completely itemized with MP5/Haste as we've been seeing on much of our Ulduar plate.

# Item - Paladin T9 Holy 2P Bonus (Judgement) - Increases the duration of your Judgements by 10.01 sec.

That is there so whatever judgement is cast, its bonus lasts 50% longer (increasing Judgement duration used to be a deep Holy talent). While it doesn't help direct healing, it adds utility.

While 5% crit is a strange bonus with crit nerfed, Pallies will still cast Holy Light and use the ilevel 200 badge HL cost libram (unless they are trying sheathadin spec, then use the PvP libram).

Yea both bonuses are usable, but it just seems they are just weak in general. However, I guess we would need to see the general usefulness of other classes' sets to see if they are just being downranked in overall strength.

Source: MMO-Champion - World of Warcraft Guides and Raid Strategies

Paladin
* Paladin T9 Holy 2P Bonus (Judgement) (Class: Paladin) -- Increases the duration of your Judgements by 101 sec.
* Paladin T9 Holy 4P Bonus (Holy Light) (Class: Paladin) -- Increases the critical strike chance of your Holy Light spell by 5%.

* Paladin T9 Holy Relic (Judgement) (Class: Paladin) -- Each time you use a Judgement, you have a chance to gain 234 spell power for 20 sec.


I'm assuming they have a typo on the judgements and it is meant to be 10 seconds. Of course, even if it was actually upped by 101 seconds it wouldn't really be useful except in PvP where doing JoJ can really screw with people.

2pc, not really useful to us unless we really need to have that extra 10 seconds for people to get more mana or health.

4pc... What the heck? Is this "compensation" or something for the Illumination nerf? It is comparable to our talent that adds 6% crit chance to HL and HS, but it's really underwhelming given our previous 4pc bonuses.

Relic: Kinda counter-intuitive with our bonus.. If the judgement lasts longer, we have less reason to use it. But if the relic proc is from the judgement, we have more reason to use it. In short, screw that, I'm sticking with my [Libram of Renewal] because I'd prefer to keep as much mana as I can while still healing whoever I need to.


Edit: Looking at the overall bonuses.. I'd say half are good, and half are crappy. DK DPS for instance will LOVE the strength and chance to crit on two of the diseases.. Warlocks on the other hand probably aren't going to notice the pet crits much, and the periodic bonus damage looks like it needs to be reworded or something.

Rets still should have Divinity (at least I plan to), so that extra 5% can add up, so they would judge it (unless another Paladin had Divinity as well), and 100% uptime is nice. JoW doesn't need 100% uptime, 50% is fine.

I would likely still spec 51/0/20 in 3.3, since the crit and 10% cheaper instants is nicer to me than 5% healing, raid-wall, and better SS.

This is exactly what I thought when I read this- since the developers have been quoted as saying that they want to get us away from spamming HL and more into using SS+FoL, this seems like a very counter-intuitive set bonus. I was expecting to see something more focused around the SS or FoL mechanics.

There's been a lot of talk about these being "placeholder" bonuses, let's hope there's more in store as the PTR unfolds. The bonuses for several other classes are "buggy", as well.

Quite weird new 2p bonus and very unwelcome RNG relic, not very interested in either.

2p - Generally i judge more then i should mostly everytime when i move, problem is however we have 2 very active ret paladins and we raid with 2/3 holy aswell. This bonus will completly goto waste in my raids sadly. (and i'm quite sure in many others too)

4p - Solid bonus i guess, in the same patch we are pushed away from HL spam, we get something that compliments it. Weird but not complaining.

Libram - I always found RNG to be extremly counter productive as healer and if anything frustrating, stuff likes to proc on phase changes, 10 seconds before pulls or just when you are running away from a fire. Personally i will never use this other then ilevel boost. Also as Jack said, it contradicts the 2p bonus.

All in all we should be in pretty good shape, not like now but it's looking up to be quite fun, cant wait to see the exact mechanics behind the FoL HoT and beacon. Hoping the bonusses are either wrong or changed though.

I am curious if the FoL HoT is stackable- either with multiple casts made by the same paladin, or if 2 paladins cast it on the same tank if they will stack with each other. We run with 2 or even sometimes 3 holy paladins in a 25 man raid, so if they do stack at least with each other's, that would be good to know.

Although I am still not that excited about the fact that the HoT is over 12 seconds, it just seems like the HoT ticks would be pretty negligible on a tank, in much the same way that a mp5 gem is negligible to our mana pool.

Afaik it would be a single FoL hot per paladin per target. Stacking the hot would be awesome, or even rolling but GC recently posted it won't do either.

"It stacks with other paladins. You can’t built a stack with it. You will reset the HoT if you keep spamming it. The goal is to get paladins to use both HL and FoL. FoL currently isn’t getting enough use, so we added this extra bonus for it to work with SS." - Link to post

Guess the idea behind it is kinda to keep the FoL hot running while healing the raid and not completely neglect healing the tank, the effectiveness remains to be seen and will deped mostly on the encounter. Or simply alternate between spamming HL in some situations.

GC already said the HoT caused by Flash with the SS buff would not stack with the HoT or with other Flash HoTs. However that could change in a future PTR, Sheath's HoT stacks for each time to procs and every Paladin gets their own Sheath HoT.

At least Beacon will stack.

e: fb

DS is still quite bugged. Some of the time it will only go up to 150% of my health, and other times it will tick for the full 10 seconds. I have come across many others who are seeing the same thing.

Added the new T9 sets, looks like it's SP and Crit on all gear, with 3 pieces of MP5 gear and 2 pieces of Haste gear. Also interesting to note the new Red Sockets and the SP bonus on all sockets.

Not sure if any one has noticed, but the 258 items actually say they are Heroic items, where as the 232 and 245 items don't.

Could it actually be
232 = 10m Regular
245 = 25m Regular
258 = 10/25m Heroic

Could well be place holder so could change.

The new Libram doesn't have 100% proc chance, but it's still very high (seems to be over 50% at the very least, no scientific dataz to prove this though). The buff can refresh itself, though I haven't tested with 8 seconds Judgements to see if it refreshes there too.

I do think that the Libram is fairly worthless compared to -114 mana cost on Holy Light: the only two builds that would want the spell power over the huge decrease in mana cost of HL are Sheath and TbtL specs but neither of those builds have 40 yards Judgements.


Beacon of Light double dips with healing modifiers: healing Warlocks with Demon Armor and Cats with Nurturing Instinct proved this.

The new Flash of Light hot is reported in the combat log as "Zaroua's Sacred Shield heals target for X amount". The HoT buff is refreshed on a new FoL cast and it will not tick if FoL is cast before 3 seconds have ticked down: FoL spam means no HoT ticks. For the math impaired, my 7500 FoL crits were netting me 1800 ticks.


The way the new sets are itemized leaves a lot to be desired. With crit being greatly devalued, it's a real wonder why 4 of the 5 pieces have crit on them. However, as bad as the itemization is, the set is still ridiculously high ilvl and will most likely end up being an upgrade unless people decide to keep 4pcT8 (something I'm personally considering). Keep in mind that our T8.5 is ilvl 226 and that the 25 man set is ilvl245 - a whooping 19 levels difference.

As an example: going from T8.5 gloves to the ilvl245 gloves gives 14Stam/13Int/19SP/10Haste/5-6MP5 and a Yellow socket with 5SP bonus vs Red socket with 4 haste bonus.



As far as actual specs go, I did go for a TbtL build and I must say that the build has some serious potential to be overpowered on progression. You gain: the new broken-beyond-belief Ardent Defender which, in worst case scenario acts as a free Guardian Spirit a few times per encounter, 14% Stamina bonus, Spiritual Attunement (read: infinite mana, meaning SP/Crit/Haste gear would be best for this spec), 4 minute cooldown Divine Protection/Divine Shield which translates in more safe use of Divine Sacrifice and being able to put up Blessing of Sanctuary assuming a raid with 3 Paladins. Compared to Holy which gets 15% haste, 40 yards Judgements, Holy Shock, a far more potent Holy Light and Beacon of Light.

Now I don't expect Ardent Defender to go live as is, but if Blizzard is actually dumb enough to go through with it, then TbtL may very well be competitive. A constant stream of 9k+ Flash of Light crits, infinite mana and obnoxious survivability are very, very attractive for hard modes.

So the new set is out, aaand it's our worst itemized set yet. I would wear the gloves. That's about it.

Some decent other loot though.

Head: http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...e/at_32_35.jpg
Bracers: http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...2_10026_16.jpg
Chest: http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...32_10026_5.jpg

Throw in the [Pauldrons of the Combatant] from Ulduar and the only tier slot missing is pants.

Blizzard clearly stated that they don't want us pallies spamming holy light.

So what I don't understand is:
1. The FoL Hot from Sacred Shield will not tick with FoL being spammed.
2. Our T9 4 Piece bonus.

As fast as I am concerned, not much has changed. We will have to time our divine pleas better, melee the boss whenever we can.

Yes but that 1k tick is a free (as in zero mana) heal that if you do SS+FoL+HL+HL+HL will tick 0.5 sec after your HL lands for each of those 3 HL. A free 3k heal there plus the 4th 1k tick will pop during the reapplication of SS.

In situations where HL lands just mliseconds after the tank dies you will wish that 1k tick was there (unless there is more then 999hp in overkill)

Also with the JoL buff (napkin math has this procing for ~200% vs current) you will get even more free healing. Need to test more to find any changes in proc rate.