There are a few points that people miss.

1) It was already shown that illumination nerf is not that huge as people thought at the beginning. You loose around 20% of HL spam time approximately. I wouldn't say that HL become a lot worse just because general efficiency is 20% lower (that was rather a fix, since in Naxx with libram and T7 set bonus HL HPM was about the same as FoL).

2) FoL was buffed only assuming that you heal targets with shield. If you spam shielded target then FoL was effectively buffed by 8%. There was no buff to FoL for non shielded targets.

3) HL scales better than FoL with SP, thus making FoL less and less attractive.

Some people seem to be a little confused here.

FoL and HL are not 'specs'. They are not 'playstyles'. They are spells. Baseline spells available to every paladin beyond level 20. Choosing to use one in no way precludes the use of the other. This entire discussion has been blown way out of proportion, to the point that people seem to now be assuming that if you cast FoL it locks out your HL spell for the rest of the fight and vice versa.

I can understand that identifying two different playstyles by their predominant spell seems logical, but extrapolating that to the exclusion of all other spells is ridiculous. Let's remember what the real differences here are -- SP / mixed gemming / trinkets vs pure-int stacking, a different libram, 4T9 and glyphs of SoL + FoL vs SoW + HL. That's it. Nobody is skipping Light's Grace and Sanctified Light in their builds. Nobody is removing FoL from their bars. It's straight up throughput vs mana pool.

I honestly can't believe that this needs to be stressed, but any paladin who deliberately limits themselves to a single spell, regardless of spec / gems / glyphs / raid comp / whatever, is an idiot. Claims that 'FoL builds' don't have enough throughput are ridiculous. FoL as a spell might not, but HL with stacked SP delivers higher HPS than HL with stacked int. I don't know if this is a symptom of the fact that paladins have in practicality been forced to limit themselves to a single spell since Sunwell or what, but this prevalent attitude of playstyles being defined by the repeated pressing of a single button to the exclusion of everything else doesn't fit within the realm of intelligent healer behaviour.

Now, it's obvious that not everyone here is limiting themselves in such a way, but there definitely seems to be a selection of posters who have it in their minds that SP stacked, GoSoL paladins do nothing but mash FoL all day. Such paladins may exist, but they don't warrant anything beyond a contemptuous disinterest. Discussion regarding stacking throughput versus effective mana is productive and interesting, so please don't muddy it by assuming that focusing on throughput necessitates the inability to identify when to switch to HL, or that int stacking precludes the ability to take advantage of great scaling on FoL once per 12 seconds.

For what it's worth, I tend to agree with the people espousing 'HL' (read: int stacking + GoSoW) as the superior option, mostly because I prefer the flexibility and capacity for relatively high, sustained throughput. Such a healing style has always been superior in my opinion because it isn't as reliant upon the levels of precision required by the harder hitting but less sustainable alternative. There's a greater margin for error, which in the context of difficult (ie not-yet-beaten) content is always going to be valuable. If people are willing to pay closer attention in exchange for a higher degree of control, then that's their perogative, it only really becomes non-viable if they refuse to deviate from spamming a single spell, which is a ridiculous premise to begin with.

While I do agree with most of what you said, I would like to point out two things. First of all, it isn't throughput, it's throughput on demand vs sustained throughput. You may or may not be trading throughput over the course of the fight if you're going for intellect, but you're certainly trading on demand throughput.

Another thing I would like to note is that in today's content where tanks can die in two GCDs, it's hard to adjust to HL 'when needed', if you are predominantly casting FoL. Furthermore, instant on-demand throughput requires Light's Grace, which might put a dent in your mana pool, if you're stacking spell power, so that may not always be an option.
So, my doubts about this style of play stem, mostly, from my (maybe wrong?) idea that tanks cannot be kept up during normal damage with just FoL. Yes, you are not the only healer, but you're providing a good chunk of tank healing. The counter-argument is that FoL provides a more smooth healing (heals landing every 1s not every 1.3s) and that your other healers will pick up the lost HPS.

I'll admit, I haven't experienced the fight for very long in phase 3, nor do I have first hand or otherwise (so I can't really gouge the HPS of a SP stacking, FoL spamming paladin), but I would say that FoL is a better choice for healing a block tank because, if he's not hit capped (and even then, since he cannot always block the whole hit), the hits from the adds come very fast, so it's important for your heals to land as fast as possible, reducing the window in which the tank gets gibbed by the next hit. Conversely, on slow hitting bosses, HL is a better choice because you can squeeze in a HL in between two hits. This is, by the by, ignoring the question of whether the HPS is sufficient to keep up the MT.

Using 1 unhitable tank as OT in Anub P3 leads to very fast hitting mobs (4 auras stacked). In this situation HL will be better due to higher overall HPS. For both spells there can be many ~3k hits landing on tank within a single spell cast time. FoL-geared/glyphed paladin siting on soft haste cap would be very good for PC healing.

Despite my utter contempt for FoL builds, it did occur to me that Blizz flipped the old t6 set bonuses so that the 5% to FoL is now the 2pc bonus, and t6 is the only post-vanilla set with a full 8 pieces to choose from. This would mean you could grab the t9 4pc and the t6 2pc simultaneously (belt and boots seem best itemized from t6, as well as being able to add a socket to the belt).

However, the wording of the bonus is weird [Lightbringer Belt], leading me to believe that it's not a straight up 5% increase, but rather a 5% increase in the spellpower modifier, which I imagine will be less. I'm not THAT interested in it, so I'm not going to do the math, but I'm always intrigued by attempts to utilize old set bonuses.

My apologies if this has been mentioned before.

Edit: I lied about the math. After checking wowwiki, apparently post-WoTLK FoL receives a 101.02% coefficient (it helps to stay current with these things, I suppose). I would assume this would make the set bonus worth (.05 * 1.0102) = 5.051% extra pop on FoL.

You should use the wrists instead of one of those two, since they have less itemisation value. Even so, the increase isn't 5%, you didn't account for the base heal of the spell. That being said, it's a bad idea. My from spellpower alone gives me 109 spell power, so a gain of 59 spell power, which is almost 2% of my raid buffed spell power. Granted, that belt has 6 stats on it, but even so, you won't be able to make up for the lost item levels (100+).

DiSac now has the extra text: Damage which reduces the Paladin below 20% health will break the effect (the 50% less damage is not in the text).


I'll admit I have died a few times from Sac on Faction Champs (the warrior removed bubble), so that is nice not to kill yourself as much.

20% seems about right actually, otherwise we risk getting killed during some encounters. 2500 health compared to 5000 is a big deal.

I know this is about 3.2 but no 3.3 thread has been started so I thought I'd post here.

I'm on the PTR and having significant mana issues in 5 man heroics.

Granted, my group had no replenishment and I'm not in my current gear (here's my current gear: clicky clicky) but I still don't think I should be running out of mana after a few trash pulls.

Did they nerf us again? I'm only seeing the slight change to Divine Sacrifice/Guardian in the patch notes.

Also note; I didn't post my gear to say "here's my gear, help me not suck!" Genuinely posting to see if maybe there's something I'm missing in the patch notes or something that has been changed in mechanics.

Something else to note; I'm Holy Light heavy, but since I have my 4pc I'm using flash of light for the boosted HoT (1.5k to 2.0k tics? Love it.)... annnnd I'm currently working with 54/17/0. I'm wondering if 3.3 is going to mean speccing back into ret for the mana return via crits DESPITE the stupid illumination nerf.

Holy has the same 3 healing spells it has had for the last few years, so no need to make a new thread (unless someone wants to make a new OP and update it as people give feedback).

Use Flash of Light more and Divine Plea more. I have seen a video of the new 5 mans and there is a lot of party-wide damage, but Flash is usually good enough to keep people up in a Heroic, but there are times you need Holy Light/Shock. 5-mans were balanced to not need Replenishment.

In using Flash of Light a lot more I'm losing one or two people in the process because of stacking debuffs in the Pit of Saron and heavy AoE damage that's taking party members down to around 20% +/- of their total health. I'm using Divine Plea probably on every CD when we have no down time and am even getting white swings in on mobs/bosses.

I'm hoping that it's just the difference between my gear from a month ago compared to now. The 4 piece bonus definitely makes a noticeable difference and I have recently acquired some heroic Ulduar and ToC gear.

I was thinking maybe the lack of FoL punch could be attributed to a lack of spell power or maybe even a lack of haste? Although, probably the former because my haste is at around 630 right now (bringing me to near GCD in raid).