First to understand the holy paladin, we have to wrap our mind around the fact that Paladins have been completely remade each expansion. Cataclysm is no different. As always, you must understand the most important thing to know about Paladins in the next expansion is that you know nothing.
Minor glyphs are exactly the same
Forget everything you know about pali healers.
According to The Dev Team, the new healing model for Cataclysm will not be built around overhealing and spamming to fill health bars. Rather, the new healing model involves "Triage healing". As such, we are not to hold still and mindlessly spam an 'auto-attack' heal as we were able to in Wrath of the Lich king, with spamming Holy Light on a non-beaconed tank until our eyes bled.
Rather than maintaining full green bars, we will be performing Triage. A shortened definition of Triage is: prioritizing patients based on the severity of their condition, rationing treatment efficiently while resources are insufficient for all to be treated immediately. In our case, resources will be our mana pools and ability to heal. Priorities must be made. Stupid dps will be killed off by impatient healers.
Part of the challenge in healing is letting go of old ways and fully adapting to new ones.
From now on, we must think on our feet, react to procs and be ready to take on whatever comes at us. We will have to proritize, act, react. We will be mobile healers. In fact as one Beta tester pointed out, with the new Speed of Light, the ability to spec into Pursuit of Justice and our new healing 'rotation' being built around AoE and insta-casts, we are arguably one of the most mobile healing classes to be released in Cataclysm.
Hailing back to the original purpose of this blog, I am using the rest of this blog as somewhere to save my thoughts and notations about holy paladins.
This is a semi-organized ramble of notes and information I've collected from across the worldofwarcraft.com forums, beta forums (and yes, I have read each and every post on the beta forums), elitistjerks.com, mmo-champion.com and wow.com. I apologize for not having sources directly linked, as again, this is more for personal information and understanding than for general education.
The information that follows is not the end-all-be-all of Holy Paladins, but is a valuable collection of some of the most pertinent information and conclusions which have been drawn by some of the brightest holy paladin minds in Beta and 4.0.1.
THERE IS NO SPOON
New Spells (not all are included)
· Divine Favor (reworked): Increase your spell haste by 20% and spell crit by 20% for 20sec 3m c/d
· Divine Light (DL): Large heal for friendly target. 30% base mana, 40y range, 3s cast
· Seal of Insight: combo of Seal of Light/Wisdom
· Mastery: Illuminated Healing: places absorb shield on target for 8% of amt healed, lasts 6 sec. Each point of mastery = 1% more absorbed.
· Word of Glory: 40y range, instant. Consumes all HoPo to heal 1553-1729 per HoPo
· (Cata) Guardian of Ancient Kings (For Holy):
o Summons a Guardian of Ancient Kings to Protect you. While active, your next 5 heals will cause the Guardian to heal the same target for the amount healed by your heal, and friendly targets within 10 yards of the target for 10% of the amount healed."
o AKA Your very own Healing Mirror Images
· (cata) HRad (HRad): Heals all friendlies within 10y for 683.58 every sec. Lasts 10 sec. 40% of base mana, Instant cast, 1 min cooldown
· (cata) Inquisition: Consumes all HPower to increase HDmg by 30%. Lasts 4 sec per Hpower point. Instant.
On Talents (Not all are included)
· Further discussion on how to spec is lower in the blog
· Speed of Light: holy Shock grants 30% spell haste for your next FoL, HL, DL. HR gives you 60% movement speed for 4 sec. Lowers c/d of HR at all times.
· Tower of Radiance (Tower): Healing the target of Beacon has a 33/66/100% to generate 1 HPP
· Healing Light: Increases the amt healed by your WoG & dmg/heal of Shock by 10/20/30%.
· Daybreak: Flash of Light, Holy Light, Divine Light now have a 20% chance to make your next Holy Shock not trigger a cooldown if used within 12 sec.
o Watch for procs, double-shock = 2 free HoPo!
On Holy Power (HoPo) And Holy Power Points (HPP)
· Gained through Shock, Crusader Strike and directly healing the target of your beacon*
o *must be spec’ed into Tower of Radiance
o Crusader Strike = 10% of Base Mana. NOT worth it for 1 HPP. Not even glyphed.
· Stacks to 3
· Consumption spells:
o Word of Glory: consumes all HoPo to heal for 1741-1906 per HPP
§ AKA free/instant Holy Light
§ Great for mana regen/heavy heal portions!
On Blessings:
Wisdom/Might are combined
Kings stands alone
Sanct is removed
On Auras:
Resistances have been combined into 1 +130 to all resistance aura
Devo, Concentration, Ret and Crusader are still all stand-alone
On Seal of Light/Seal of Wisdom:
These are now combined into the all-encompassing and highly nerfed Seal of Insight
Seal of Insight returns appx 150-180 mana on melee auto-attacks. Sometimes.
On Judgements:
· All judgements have been consolidated into one spell: “Judgments”
· Judgement: Unleashes the energy of a seal to do extra holy damage to a target
· Judgment has little purpose beyond maintain Judgments of the Pure
On Mana Regeneration
· Illumination Gone
· Divine Plea – under half the mana, double the cooldown. Yields 20% of what it did.
· Seal of Insight – only 170 mana per tick
· Answer: Get your mana from Spirit
On Mastery:
Whenever you land a direct heal you create a bubble (strength relative to your mastery)
Landing another on that same person will either:
· If a larger shield it will replace the 1st shield with a bigger one
· If a smaller shield it will refresh the 1st one
o If you cast 2 of the same heal in a row, i.e. 2 HL, your 2nd heal might heal for less, refreshing the shield
· It’s possible the 2 HL could land between damage/ticks, so shields can be wasted
o Even more of an issue as tanks gain more crit
o Refreshed/replaced shields leaves the first one as ‘unused’
Meaning:
· Haste/mastery conflict if you’re healing faster than damage as it wastes shields
· Crit/mastery conflict as crit leaves bigger shields
o If you crit your first you will refresh it w/the 2nd, not allow it to be used
· Now transfers only 50% of your heals to your Beacon
· No longer a way to heal a tank without paying attention
· Ways to consider Beacon:
o Think of it as a support tool to help the person healing the other tank
o Think of it as a HoT. It won’t do everything to the beacon’ed tank, but it will help
o Tower of Radiance grants 1 HPP per direct heal of your Beacon, which makes it not as much of a sacrifice to have to heal your Beacon
o Word of Glory is an excellent opening move when directly focusing your heals to your Beacon if you have 3/3 HPP
Using WoG/Tower on your Beacon is pointless
· Efficiency will plummet if you’re not generating HoPo when healing Beacon
· Tower doesn't proc from Holy Shock or WoG, don’t heal your beacon with these. It’s a waste
· If healing 2: heal the Beacon with casted heals, others with Shock/WoG
o Gives you the 50% transfer of Shock/WoG,
o not a ‘sacrifice’ to heal beacon and stack HoPo
Keeping a tank alive through Beacon alone baffles me. Ask yourself:
· Can the tank survive on ½ olf your throughput?
· Do the dps really need double the heals?
· Can you sustain the mana to keep them all alive w/o healing the tank directly?
On Gearing
· Intellect is your mana pool and your spell power
· Mana regen will come largely from Spirit
· Crit and Haste will be about comparable, but neither as valuable as Spirit and Intellect.
“Haste is effected by the c/d on Shock. With about 10% do HS-HL-HL-WoG in 6 seconds (Pre-Infusion of Light). With ~11% you’ll be able to get an extra tick of Holy Radiance too. After 10-11% Haste isn’t important unless you can get enough to cast an extra Holy Light.”
“The big problem with haste will be that it will not scale as well as one might expect due to the fixed 6s HS cooldown. Having more than about 15% item haste doesn't seem very valuable.”
“Crit is still the same as it has always been, RNG except now it has no regen value for us.
(I say reforge to spirit because I can only guess INT will always be present on gear)”
One person’s break-down of stats:
· Intellect *the* stat for us. Gives passive mana regen from spirit and increases mana from replen/DP. Reliable way to increase HPS and spell power.
· Spirit: Main source of mana regen. The more you have, the less it hurts to heal
o You need to be able to spam HL/HS/WoG w/o losing mana.
o Appx 2500 raid-buffed is ‘good’.
o *Nammy’s thought: I think this is a Cata number. Get what buffs you can and go practice your heals for a few minutes (3-5), see how you do.
· Mastery: Will be encounter-dependent based on how fast damage is being taken. See a discussion below the break-down.
o The shield doesn’t roll, meaning multiple direct heals on 1 target can lead to the shield doing nothing.
o The shield not rolling makes mastery in direct conflict with haste/crit.
· Haste: Appx the same as LK with few minor changes: Reaching soft cap is harder to do
o Scales very very well with Holy Radiance and Conviction
o More haste doesn’t’ mean an increase in mana spent over X amount of time if you use Tower of Radiance
§ Casting more HL = more Daybreak procs = stronger/faster heals = more free WoG
§ Even without Tower, haste gives more Daybreak procs, which is a very very very good thing
· Crit: Still the odd one out.
· No longer affects our mana pool.
· If mastery shield starts to roll, crit will be our WORST stat. If it stays the same it should be as worthless as mastery.
So to me, Int = Spi > Haste, and the rest don't matter
· Various takes on gear order:
o Int = Spirit > Haste = Mastery = Crit
o Int > Spirit > Haste (10-11%) > Mastery =/= Crit
*The following contains some of the most useful notes from The Light and How to Swing It, wow.com’s weekly Holy Pali blog. For more information on each note section I have left the source URL. Italic comments were inserted by me ;)
Heroics from a Holy Paladin’s Perspective
Holy Shock is your main heal
Watching for constant procs instead of spamming
Leaning on Holy Shock
· Shock as often as possible and rely on Daybreak
o It’s strong and cheap, use on cooldown to conserve mana
· Speed of Light gives a haste buff when you Shock a target to ensure Spell synergy
· Infusion of Light still causes Shock to reduce cast time of HL by 1.5sec
· Shock leads to Holy Power, which leads to the instant/free heal Word of Glory
A tale of two heals (more aptly titled “Redefining your Heals”)
You need to forget everything you know about a heal. Each has a new role in your life.
You need to forget everything you know about a heal. Each has a new role in your life.
Holy Light redefined:
· Considered your ‘auto-attack’ heal (spammable)
· fits into Wrath’s Flash of Light role nicely
o Think of Auto-attacking. Not the best plan, but it does do something.
· Not fast enough to keep the whole raid or the tank up, do not spam
· Base healing has been increased since this was written
·
Flash redefined:
· Doesn’t really fit its role yet
· We trade mana for speed/potency
· It’s fast but just not powerful enough for use
· Faster to cast 5 FoL than to cast 5 HL, but it’s better to use a LoD or HR
· Base healing has been increased since this was written
Divine Light:
· Best matches with today’s HL – aka the ‘big bomb’ for tank healing
· Mana cost/speed don’t let us spam, but it’s the ‘big bomb’ for tanks
· Use in situations when you need higher HPS than HL but can’t afford to use FoL to cover the gap
· Base healing has been increased since this was written
Our new toolbox is exciting
· LoD can be fun, when it works
o You have to target a cone right on the move
o Poor positioning of cone or Ranged dps = dead ranged
o Ranged must understand: when we say stack up we mean it.
§ All healers now have a ‘stack up and heal’ spell, this should be common
· LoD/HR:
o LoD is most effective when targets are at a distance
o Holy Radiance are best when they are near by
· HR is most effective when targets are near us
o Best way: Use HR on melee then LoD on ranged
· Protector of the Innocent keeps us alive as a mini-self Beacon
SINCE all of the above comments:
* DL base healing increased by 10%
* Flash of Light base healing increased by 10%
* Holy Light base healing increased by 10%
* Holy Shock base healing increased by 10%
* Walk in the Light (Passive) now increases healing by 15%, up from 10%.
* Flash of Light base healing increased by 10%
* Holy Light base healing increased by 10%
* Holy Shock base healing increased by 10%
* Walk in the Light (Passive) now increases healing by 15%, up from 10%.
Posted 10/6
Live 10/12/10
Hot Talents and Glyphs for Holy Paladins
· Left-overs give playstyle based wiggle-room:
· Blessed Life is pvp-only
· Prot:
o Divinity = Boost to throughput
o Eternal Glory: fun to play with
o tier 2 of prot is weak for healers.
· Ret
o Ret: Crusade gives huge boost to Shock
o Ret: Speed increase is nice for mobility, especially with Speed of Light
Prime glyphs
· Glyph of Holy Shock -- YES
· Word of Glory
· Seal of Insight
o Divine Favor is just too weak to be valuable
· Optional: Exorcism for dps fights
Major glyphs looking all too familiar
· Beacon of Light: YES
· Divine Plea: boosts man of DP by 50%. Yes!!!
· Choice:
o Divinity vs Light of Dawn = Divinity.
§ Divinity gives a lot of mana, Light of Dawn is a double edged-sword.
§ LoD reduces c/d by 10 seconds, but also the amount healed
§ LoD will be better as spell power raises
§ Could be for those who like AoE.
Minor glyphs are exactly the same
· Lay on Hands
· Seal of Insight
· Blessing of Kings/Might
o Suggestion: learn both, switch out based on what your assignment is for the raid.
**this ends my notes from WoW.com.
Quotes from Forums:
…had to drink every 2-4 pulls, but mana is supposed to run out. Reasonably good group that knew the mechanics and used CC, here’s what made the difference (from prev runs):
- A - Chaining cooldowns on bosses to make HL viable for longer
- B - Making better use of the HS > HL combo for the haste, even when daybreak is active
- C - Giving priority to HS & WoG when the tank was above 50% health to conserve mana
- D - Not healing people till they were at least 10k health down
- E - Reforging everything I could into spirit
D & E made the biggest difference.
- A - Chaining cooldowns on bosses to make HL viable for longer
- B - Making better use of the HS > HL combo for the haste, even when daybreak is active
- C - Giving priority to HS & WoG when the tank was above 50% health to conserve mana
- D - Not healing people till they were at least 10k health down
- E - Reforging everything I could into spirit
D & E made the biggest difference.
Get in the mindset: don’t ‘keep everyone topped’, just keep them alive
When I hear stuff like "paladins have conflicting aoe heals" it seems so small minded.
They are different and complementary. If they were identical, why have both?
Will they work for every situation? Nope. Does having 2 different tools allow you to apply healing in more diverse situations? Yes.
Will they work for every situation? Nope. Does having 2 different tools allow you to apply healing in more diverse situations? Yes.
When do I use What? (Directly from a fourm)
Healing has become a proc-based rotation with cd’s and ability durations. It is a priority system like a dps has, plus we have to decide who to heal:
· Burst elemental damage -> Aura Mastery
· Long term heavy damage -> Wings or Divine Favor
· Heavy AoE Healing required -> Holy Radiance and Light of Dawn
· 3 HP -> WoG
· HS off cooldown ->HS
· HS off cooldown in <0.5 second ->wait then HS
· Someone needs heal badly -> Cast HL or DL
· Beacon Fading Soon -> Beacon
· JotP Fading Soon -> Judge
· Light AoE healing required -> Light of Dawn
· Someone needs heals -> HL
