Not sure if anyone has posted it already, but Divine Sacrifice is still working as it was in 3.1 with regards to bubble. I got full 10sec duration multiple times tonight during our raids, 240k+ absorbed on XT during tantum for example. So yeah, it's still a very worthwhile talent to have.

I think from what I've been noticing, it's kinda buggy (just from observation, I'll try to find some meters from the raid last night). What I've been noticing is that if DSac all of a sudden absorbs a ton of damage (as in the case with Tantrums), then it will hop over the 150% threshold and continue for the full duration, almost like it couldn't react fast enough to clip it off at the 150% and just jumps over it. However, when the damage absorbed is not all at once (i.e. during a blizzard on Thorim), then it will fall off early at the 150% mark.

Minor pedant: 33% cheaper. Glyphed, you cast Beacon twice in three minutes instead of three times, which in terms of mana is the same as making every third Beacon free. It's a greater saving than GoDivinity gives as return unless you cast Beacon fewer than six times within your LoH CD.

If I am the only holy pal in the raid, should I coordinate other ret pals to keep up SS on all tanks?

Could definitely be worth it. Of course quite dependant on the fight, but if you can keep the FoL HoT up on them all I can't see any actual downside with it.

SS should still be used for its primary purpose -- mitigation / absorbtion. Put it on targets that will benefit from this the most (ie not an OT getting hit once every 20 seconds, for instance) by taking consistent damage. The strongest (cast by the pally with the highest SP) SS should be on the MT, then descending in order of necessity. The HoT is a nice side effect, and should be taken advantage of where possible, but shouldn't be the sole or even primary deciding factor in SS target selection.

Also it's worth keeping in mind that ret / prot paladins do need to interrupt their rotations to maintain perfect SS uptime, and that unless the SS is likely to provide its full benefit, it may not be worth casting at all.

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned before, but Soul Preserver might fix that little problem if it procs off Judgement of Light heal effects (as long as someone else isn't judging Light). Even if it doesn't proc off Judgement of Light, it will proc off heal over time effects which should work well with Sacred Shield/Flash of Light which will be running on the main tank (at least).

edit: this is assuming Soul Preserver still has a 2% proc chance with no internal cooldown.

Went and poked Ulduar tonight, minus Vezax and Yogg. I used TbtL on Steelbreaker, Algalon and Thorim and I was extremely happy with the healing FoL spam was outputting: 6k normal and 12k crits with the HoT ticking for 500-1000. Not having to hit Divine Plea is a big plus too.


For the other fights I went with Beacon and felt quite happy about being able to do some raid healing without worrying about the tank falling over dead, but I definitely feel that Holy Light spam is dead for at least a few months. Meaning that the Beacon spec has to use Flash which is subpar as a tank healing tool compared to what other healers can do. Works fine when tank damage isn't very high or when the tank damage comes in predictable burst, but when it's a fight that hurts tanks, I think Beacon Paladins are now on the same page as Holy Priests.

True words. Went in last night with a bad feeling, but I was still shocked by the graveness of the situation. Tried my usual healing style on XT (without expecting it to work, just for fun) and ran oom at about 70% - rest of the hardmodes made me abuse my fol-button again and go totally emo at the same time. Feels rather weird to lose your ability to spam skill #1, being thereby forced to spam ability #2, thereby nullifiying the new component of the second one. I think my fol-hot and my 2pT8-bonus were in a harsh battle about who made our druids laugh harder.

On XT you should be meleeing freely, I was able to maintain HL spam for whole fight, with only a FoL every 10sec to keep hot up. Blizzard specifically said they've tuned holy so that if you use everything available you'll be able to get great results compared to those who faceroll and I definitely saw it, for first time in months I was able to compete with Priests/Druids. (as 51/20/0)

I'm still waiting for the Seal of Wisdom nerf, personally. With all the regen they nerfed, leaving it the same feels like an oversight.

I think the main difference I have seen in 3.2 so far is that a lot of fights you didn't need to SoW + melee, you could Divine Plea at appropriate times and be fine. Now you really, really, really have to do it whenever possible (if you are still spamming Holy Light, at least).

I also really wish the FoL HoT was not named Flash of Light. Perhaps I can separate it in Recount somewhere, but I have yet to conclude how useful the HoT is.

I am not really understanding why so many people are going with 51/5/15 builds. To me, with the Illumination nerf, speccing 15-20 points into the ret tree gives you very very little value for those talent points. If you consider a one minute fight where you cast 20 FoL, 15 HL and 2 HS (which seems about typical for me with the changes), an extra 5% crit gives you less mana return than having a 51/17/3 spec gives you from being able to cast 1 SS instead of 2 in that one minute span. Even when you consider the 2 extra points in Benediction, the mana return works out to the same +/- 25 mana.

From a healing output perspective, in theory 5% crit=2.5% increased output. However, based on WoL parses, sacred shield accounts for 10-15% of my total healing output (pre-3.2 using a 51/2/18 spec). Getting 20% more SS aborption therefore should increase overall healing by 2-3%. Plus, alot of the output from crit isn't really output, because probably 50%+ of it will be overheal, whereas damage mitigation on a tank in Ulduar/ToC will almost always get fully utilized.

You also have to consider added utility. A 51/5/15 or 51/2/18 spec gives you no added utility from those points in the ret tree unless you are running 5/10 mans with no ret pally. In 25 mans, you have to assume a ret pally will be in the raid. Not having a ret pally results in the raid losing 3% DPS across the board (unless you have a hunter spec BM, which noone really raids as anymore). With a ret pally, you get no added benefit from heart of the crusader or improved might.

Compare that to a 51/17/3 or 51/20/0 spec, and while you have a lot of wasted talent points to get there, here are the extra things you bring to yourself/the raid

- 2 minute reduced cooldown on hand of protection; this can be very helpful on a lot of fights.
- You can spec improved righteous fury and heal with it on reducing your damage taken by 6% which helps a bit in your own survivability and reducing raid healing from aoe damage.
-Reduced stun duration can help a bit on some fights even if its a pvp talent you have to take to get down the tree further
-Divine Sacrifice if is still working as it was pre-3.2 is amazing. Even if it did get nerfed, it's still useful in 5/10 mans
-You can spec into improved devo aura to give 6% more healing raid wide if for some reason you have no trees in the raid (highly unlikely in a 25 man).

Another thing is, what do people think about speccing into Improved Judgements? With the judgement change and judgements proccing seals, wouldn't being able to judge every 8 seconds instead of 10 really help with mana regen? As is, Benediction kind of seems like a really weak talent for mana regen. If you have the 60 sec SS, and 90 sec beacons, it only really decreases mana usage by a very small amount unless you are using holy shock almost on cooldown. When I modeled it out, assuming 2 shocks/minute, each point in Benediction worked out to something like 5-6 mp5.

I recall Cathela asking about how to track BoL and SS, and she was given the spell ID's. I would assume the HoT has its own ID too, and it shouldn't be too hard to find someone who can track it down. Heck, a reference page/post to certain spell ID's and the addons to use them would be nice.

DoTimer will track the FoL HoT.

This build offers solutions (albeit weak ones) to our current mana issues, while 51/20/0 does not. When offered a choice between weak regen talents and no regen talents (but utility instead), many of us have chosen the weak regen talents.

My druids are rather amused at trying to keep me innervated throughout a boss fight (three innervates on Mim - how embarrassing) and I am in turn enjoying actually putting up higher numbers than them. If you are content with relying on FoL (and I'm not implying there is anything wrong with that), then specing for utility is fine.

However, you have to be casting more than 60% or so of your heals as HLs for the mana you get from 5% crit to actually exceed the mana you save from casting SS once every minute instead of 30 seconds. The illumination nerf was that severe.

I actually found trying to raid for the first time since the patch last night that I had 0 mana issues at all (this was during 3 hrs of attempts on Northrend beasts 25 man, finally downing him and doing a few Ulduar 25 bosses). In fact, I found I had less mana issues than I did spamming HL pre-3.2. What I did was keep SS and beacon on the tank I was healing, judge light, spam FoL on any raid members taking incidental AoE, while hitting the tank with FoL once every 12 seconds or so. If the tank dropped below ~80% HP, I would hit HL on any raid member (preferably one taking damage). Also, if AoE damage (like the fire ball thing) hit melee, I would hit melee with a couple HLs to generate glyph splash. I was probably casting a 50/50 HL/FoL ratio and had 0 mana problems whatsoever, and didn't even really need to use DP except between phases.

My healing output seems to have increased overall too, and was on par with holy priests and resto druids, who I was always below by 20%+ pre-3.2. I think having the beacon always hitting the tank with heals plus using the faster FoL more often is resulting in less of our heals being sniped by HoTs.

Blizzard really fails at giving us viable holy librams. The HL spell power librams are terrible still, even worse than they were in 3.1 since we will be using HL less. Libram of Renewal is still nice to have, because when you do need to do flat out HL spam for a phase it makes it easier on the mana pool. I really would like to see them make the PvP libram available for people like myself that hate PvP given the mechanic changes. It's pretty ridiculous that if I want a FoL power libram for a certain fight and don't do arena, I have to either farm Kara or pull that Nagrand quest reward libram out of my bank.

The new one from Valiance badges is OK, its 245 spellpower for 15 when you cast holy light.

So as long as you keep light's grace up (which you probably want to do anyway) its a perma 245 spellpower.

My guild sets up in 4 groups of 5-7 people.... 3 ranged groups and of course the melee group. The ranged groups are fairly tightly grouped up, to maximize the group healing. The paladins basically just heal the raid, mainly focusing on their own group, and of course keeping the beacon on the current main tank. Here's the WMO for our Algalon kill last night...

WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay

The other paladin, Astanni, mostly spammed HL and used DP on CD. I was a little more conservative (probably too conservative... I'm obviously still getting used to this new playstyle), and used FoL more, and mostly used DP during the Big Bangs. Overall looks like HL spam still wins out, if your gear can sustain it.

It is notable that we can now do this fight with more than one holy paladin now... before, we couldn't get the raid topped off fast enough between star deaths if we had too many dedicated tank healers, which we previously were.

Confirmed.

Your link didn't work for me. Here's the fix I used to filter others from my dotimer: DoTimer - Addons - Curse

Could I see the stats?

Since I have it handy since I was looking at it: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

I dunno, the counter is that to fully support Tbtl, you have to optimize purely for spellpower. This hamstrings yourself anytime you use a beacon spec by forcing you to flash predominantly. This keeps me on the fence at the moment.

That's when you start building a different set (as best we can) for our major healing styles. One of them is more regen oriented so we can sustain HL for a bit if needed, the other is purely throughput so that Flash can perform well for TbtL.