You could use the same argument going from 100 to 200 haste rating and 1200 to 1300 haste rating; I don't understand how you determined once past the GCD cap that haste becomes a less desirable stat than crit for Holy Light.

After hitting the 676 haste rating with Judgments of the Pure, Wrath of Air, and improved Moonkin/Ret aura we sit at the 1s GCD which can't be any less (hence the "cap") so haste will not benefit instant abilities. The benefit of haste after 676 is heavily dependant on how often the player is casting Holy Light.

Say a player maintains a glyphed Beacon of Light, Judgments of the Pure, a talented Sacred Shield, and Divine Pleas on cooldown they'd theoretically use 3.75 GCDs every 60s, if the player casts Holy Lights throughout the other 56s of every minute they'd still gain of the benefit that haste gave them before the GCD cap 93% of the time. Not to mention sometimes we move out of range or lack Wrath of Air, a haste aura, or forget to judge and the haste past 676 will benefit our instants.

It is rare that we'll be judging on cooldown during phases where we really need to heal instead. Two or three times a minute is most likely. Judging always costs a 1.5 second GCD, whereas one more HL could be 1.3 cast time with 1 second GCD. 1.25 seconds on an HL is more reasonable, as it "only" requires 100% effective haste instead of the 108ish that 1.2 requires, meaning going from 1.3 to 1.25 would be a little over 252 more haste instead of 550 to 600.


I'd also like to use this post to discuss upcoming 3.3 changes.. Notes for 3.3

# 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.
# 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 damage transferred to the paladin is now reduced by 50% before being applied to the paladin. Finally, 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.


The bug fix was going to happen eventually, and admittedly DiSac was already quite powerful without taking DG too. Come 3.3 it looks like DG will be required to give DiSac any raid utility, and as such Ret probably won't take either talent at all and instead go for AM. Holy won't have their points messed up, but the utility of DiSac is definitely nerfed. For Prot it's really the same as it's always been: Not useful while tanking, but possibly worthwhile when not being pummeled.

Heh, the new raid wall for 3.3 just means you want to put the Holy/Prot Pallies in group 6 and 7 so the effect lasts longer.

It's party only though now, right? So putting them in group 6 or 7 would just mean it would only affect the paladin, right?

I really don't like the idea of it only affecting your party. This takes away a lot of its utility.

It could still prove to be a useful ability in 10 mans. 25 mans would be much more situational. While it may only cover half of the 10 man raid, at 23k buffed health you're still getting a 92,000 effective damage absorption *before* considering the 20% damage reduction on the raid, if I've done my math correctly:

- 23,000 Paladin health
- 9,200 absorbed per party member
- 46,000 absorbed for a party of five
- 92,000 effective damage absorption after taking into account the 50% damage reduction on incoming damage.

I'm not sure whether the 20% damage reduction means 115k effective potential or 110.4k. That's assuming the 30% party effect will stack with the 20% raid reduction in your own party.

Still, it should prove useful, especially as a single or double tank cooldown, right? (Even in 25 mans)

92,000 damage absorbed from your party means they would have to take 306,667 damage (including the 20% reduction already on them and any other abilities they have up) over 10 seconds without the cooldown, or 30.6k incoming DPS.

And this time it won't be shaky.

Edit: math fixed.

Are we 100% sure that this change will also cap the damage transferred to 40% of the paladin's health per party member even while divine shield is up? Or, will the transfer be treated as it is currently where bubble being up means no damage is transferred so a divine shield+divine sacrifice will keep the 20% raid absorption up for the entire DS duration?

Interestingly, it looks like the new 4pc bonus might have an effect on the viability of haste past 676 after all (although not necessarily a huge one).

Item - Paladin T10 Holy 2P Bonus - The cooldown on your Divine Favor talent is reduced by 60 sec.
Item - Paladin T10 Holy 4P Bonus - Your Holy Shock spell causes the next Holy Light you cast within 10 sec to have 0.3 sec reduced cast time.

Despite not being as large a reduction in cast time as the old IoL, the lack of requirement on it critting I'd say makes it better. With a 1 minute DF, a guaranteed crit holy shock into a 1 second, +20% crit holy light seems like a very powerful burst healing tool.

I'm not sure how much faith these bonuses warrant, as many for the other classes contain the standard "Increases X by 0%" type placeholder text. Still, it's an interesting indication of the direction in which holy paladin healing seems to be heading.

Just writing this out so I can tease apart the full effect.

The final effect if implemented as written is Paladin casts Divine Guardian.

1. Divine Guardian effect :-Everybody in the raid takes 10/20% less damage including the Paladin (damage transferred is not damage taken so is not reduced via this)
2. Divine Sacrifice effect :- Every one in the same party as the Paladin transfers 40% of damage taken to the Paladin. So this effect depends on whether the DG effect happens before the transfer or after. This will continue until the (40 x number of party members)% of Paladins health is transferred. The Paladin takes only half of the damage transferred.

So as written the transfer will stop at this percentage no matter whether the Paladin used Divine Shield or not. But this is assuming it is counting the amount of damage transferred at the source, not what happens to the Paladin.

So given these you can have the Paladin in a party by themselves and have a 10/20% raid wall for the full 10 secs, if they are using Divine Shield.

or if not using DI then it will last as long as it takes to transfer damage equal to 40% of their health (assuming that damage the Paladin takes is also transferred to themselves).
Note that this means that an option is that a Prot Paladin can use it themselves if they are in a group alone (unlikely to be done due to the buffs that a MT gets from other party members, but an option due to the paladin only taking half the damage transferred)
It does mean that DS can be used anytime that DS has more than 2 mins cooldown. Because the Paladin will always be taking less damage than if they did not use it. and it will be backup once more when DS is back up for the full 10 sec raid-wall.
If it does not transfer damage to themselves then it should be used on cool-down because it will last the full 10 secs because no damage is being transferred.

Other choices are Paladin in a party with others.
The issue now is that the raid-wall will probably not last the full 10 secs depending on how much damage the rest of the party is are taking, but there will be extra benefit to the damage the party is taking, up to 60% raw damage reduction. paladin death is risked if done without DS.

It would be possible to switch Paladins into the MT group that have DS up to help on severe spike damage. e.g. 60k fusion punch would become 24k with 36k transferred which would use up 72% of the possible transfer amount for a paladin with 25k health pool.

Using DS for Divine Shield and Divine Sacrifice in the same post is confusing. Also I was under the impression that it was a 30% transfer since the part about "Divine Guardian: This talent no longer increases the amount of damage transferred to the paladin from Divine Sacrifice." seems pretty clear.

As you pointed out, a major part of this cooldown will now revolve around the paladin and if they transfer damage taken to themselves. If this is true, being in a group vs solo group would depend on the AoE. If damage to the paladin is counted in the transfer limit, then changing the paladin's group size does not alter the duration of DGuardian's effect unless the paladin is taking the AoE and for some reason his party isn't. Assuming DShield does not give full effect, this makes it more beneficial to be in a full group just so you can 'take the hits' form your party members too, so long as you manage the damage transfered another way if you plan on using it on CD. Even then in a full group of 5, the paladin will only take a maximum 100% of his health in damage from DSac in this case (plus the damage from the AoE).

If the paladin is not considered to transfer the damage to himself, then the trade off is 20% raidwall (full duration), or 20% raidwall + 30% group based DR (duration depending on damage profile). 50%(56?) DR on the tank groups sounds like it would be very interesting for certain fights. Say 3 tanks, 2 holy paladins. 1-3 targets taking damage in a tank fight means that your DSac will absorb more on fewer targets.

One last thought on another topic, the T9 bonus. It could put some weight behind the [Glyph of Holy Shock].

That's presuming the 50% reduction is applied before counting damage towards the absorption. I got the impression that it was meant to be applied after the absorption. This would mean that in a five-man group you could never take more than 100% of your health in damage - and more importantly, if you're in a group of less than five you cannot be killed by DiSac alone.

If this is the case, then it raises the interesting possibility of putting a Retribution Paladin and the tanks into a three- or four-man group. In full ilvl245 Retribution gear I have around 30k health fully buffed with Shout, so for me DiSac would be an effective 36-48k damage shield on the tanks that I could use on CD so long as I wasn't taking damage. To get the free slots, you would place one or two Holy Paladins with Divine Guardian into groups on their own to provide 20% raid damage reduction that they could use on CD regardless of circumstances - assuming you can't transfer damage to yourself.

I think this is what Blizzard are trying to achieve. DiSac has a 2 minute CD, but it may as well have a five minute CD because it's suicide to use it without an immunity effect. By reducing it to party wide functionality and making it survivable, it creates uses for the ability beyond being an add-on for your bubble.

I highly doubt blizzard have this intention at all. Its obvious the reason they tagged on the "damage transfered is reduced by 50%" at the end is so that you can use DiSac while in a party of 5 and only take a maximum 100% hp which would only require 1 PW:S ('throw a shield on me now') or a HS after first few ticks to survive without bubbling. The changes overall are a buff simply from being able to use DiSac twice as much as now.