[Holy] Please review this post for the forums

I am planning on posting this on the WoW forums and wanted some review before sending it. Thanks in advance.

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Tier-12 Holy Paladin Itemization

TL:DR Up-Front Summary.

1. Mastery is significantly behind Spirit, Haste and Critical Strike as a desirable secondary stat for Holy Paladins. It is a bad enough stat that most top Holy Paladins avoid it altogether on their gear.

2. There are currently zero Intellect-based Neck/Cloak/Weapon choices in Tier-12 that pair Spirit with something other than Mastery. All non-Spirit Intellect-based choice in Neck/Cloak/Weapon have Hit on them. There are two 365/378 Ring choices with Spirit/Crit on them but none with Spirit/Haste or Haste/Crit.

3. This results in very substandard gearing choices for Holy Paladins for Tier-12 in the Neck/Cloak/Weapon and, to a lesser extent, Ring slots.

In light of the above summary, I am asking Blizzard to do one of two things:

A. Redesign Holy Paladin Mastery to be something that we desire to have on our gear; just like the other four healing specs.

B. Include Spirit/Haste –OR-- Spirit/Crit –OR-- Haste/Crit item choices in Tier-12 Neck/Cloak/Weapon slots.
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Mastery and the Holy Paladin:

Mastery has been an issue with Holy Paladins since its inception. The first version, increased Critical Strike heals, was plagued with the issue that it was very RNG dependant. You had to stack Critical Strike in order to increase the chance that Mastery would do you any good. Luckily, Blizzard agreed with that viewpoint and we got a redesigned Mastery that brought back the old Sacred Shield concept (called Illuminated Healing) of letting the Holy Paladin have a mitigation bubble effect while healing. However, this Mastery is also RNG dependant and often does not implement its full effect.

As currently implemented, Illuminated Healing creates a damage mitigation bubble of 12% of the amount healed plus 1.5% additional for each point of Mastery (179.28 Mastery rating per point) for 15 seconds.

So, a current Holy Paladin with no Mastery rating casts a critical strike Divine Light for 40,000 points healing will place a 4,800 point damage absorbing shield on that target that lasts for 15 seconds. Sounds good, huh?

Reality is that Mastery is not very good for a Holy Paladin for a couple of reasons:

1. The bubbles do not stack. In the above example, a Holy Paladin places a 4,800 point shield on a raid member. That raid member takes an environmental AoE attack that hits for 4,700 damage and is completely absorbed. The Holy Paladin again heals the raid member . Their new 4,800 point shield DOES NOT TAKE EFFECT because the old shield with 100 points of absorbing capacity is still on the target. The new shield is wasted. Depending on timing, this wasting of a shield happens a lot.

2. The rating conversion values do not value Mastery. To increase their Haste by 1%, the Holy Paladin need 128 Haste rating. To increase their Critical Strike chance by 1%, the Holy Paladin need 179 Critical Strike rating. But 179 Mastery rating grants the Holy Paladin an additional 1.5% value to my shield.

So, again from the above example, 179 points of Haste grants the Holy Paladin: 1.39% faster Haste –OR-- 1.00% increase Critical Strike (which could result in thousands of extra healing) but only an additional 600 points of damage absorption on a 40k heal. So the Illuminated Healing shield goes from being 4,800 points in strength to 5,400 points in strength.

Drawn out further, 1,790 rating points grants a Holy Paladin (before any Diminishing Returns): 13.90% increased Haste –OR-- 10.00% increased Critical Strike but only an additional 6,000 points of damage absorption on the above example. 1,800 points of rating is quite a bit to stack in 359 item level gear or below but yet it’s effect is less than any single heal a Holy Paladin might cast and is on par with the healing done by our 2 point talent Protector of the Innocent.

3. Implementation. Let’s contrast the Holy Paladin Mastery with that of the Holy Priest. A Holy Priest’s Mastery is called Echoes of Light and it adds a Heal over Time to any direct heal cast by the Holy Priest that is equal to 10% of the heal amount plus 1.25% per point of Mastery over 6 seconds.

So, the base amount of Echo of Light is less than Illuminated Healing (10% vs 12%), the increased amount per point of Mastery is less (1.25% vs 1.50%) and the time span in which it is effective is less (6 sec vs 15 sec).

So, based on that, the Illuminated Healing mastery is much superior than Echo of Light, right? Well, not so fast. The difference is that Echo of Light is ALWAYS ON. As long as a toon is not at full health, this Mastery will always implement its full effect. Priest cast a 40k heal with only base Mastery, the target gets healed for an additional 4k over 6 seconds. No questions asked. This is the same with Resto Druid and Resto Shaman mastery. As long as the target is not at full health, their Mastery will run for 100% of its effect.

The Holy Paladin mastery is only effective IF the target gets damaged again within 15 seconds. While this will happen on a tank, this might often not happen on anyone else. Also, as stated above, there is also a chance that a new bubble will not be implemented anyway if there is any remaining amount left (even 1 point of absorption) left on an older bubble.

4. Design. Discipline Priests are the kings (and queens) of damage mitigation. While they also heal, they absorb more damage than any other healing class by design. Their Mastery reflects this as it increases the potency of their shields. Holy Priests, Resto Druids and Resto Shaman are pure healers. Their Mastery increases their healing throughput.

Holy Paladins, however, are apparently the schizophrenics. We have zero damage reduction or absorption abilities….except for our Mastery. So, instead of a throughput increase like the Holy Priests, Druids or Shaman, we are a hybrid who heals people and then, very weakly, absorbs some small amount of damage. Why? Because at one point in our lives we had a talent called Sacred Shield? I don’t see the justification.

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So, Mastery is not a strong stat for Holy Paladins and thus they are much more desirous to have Spirit, Haste and Critical Strike on their gear as secondary stats.

For Tier-12 Intellect Plate, Blizzard appears to agree with us. For Tier-12, not a single piece has Mastery on it!

Head = Spirit / Haste
Shoulders = Spirit / Critical Strike
Chest = Spirit / Critical Strike
Gloves = Haste / Critical Strike (crafted off-Tier gloves have the prized Spirit / Haste combo)
Legs = Spirit / Haste

For off-Tier Intellect Plate, only 3 of 11 intellect plate pieces have Mastery on them. So, at the very “worse,” a Tier-12 Holy Paladin could only have Mastery in 3 out of 8 plate slots (head, shoulders, wrists).

However, for the non-Plate gear slots, itemization for Holy Paladins gets MUCH worse….and that is the point of this whole post.
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Tier-12 Necks: There are zero Intellect necks that do not have either Mastery or Hit on them. The itemization for necks goes: (365) Haste/Mastery, (378) Spirit/Mastery, Spirit/Mastery, Haste/Mastery, Critical Strike/Hit. I know Mastery is a great secondary stat for every healer except Holy Paladins and they will be THRILLED with the Spirit/Mastery combinations. Holy Paladins are not thrilled.

Tier-12 Cloaks: Again, there are zero Intellect Cloaks that do not have either Mastery or Hit on them. The itemization for cloaks goes: (365) Haste/Mastery, (378) Spirit/Mastery, Critical Strike/Mastery, Haste/Hit. I know Mastery is a great secondary stat for every healer except Holy Paladins and they will be THRILLED with the Spirit/Mastery combination. Holy Paladins are not thrilled.

Tier-12 Weapons: Blizzard, you are too cruel. Here is the itemization for Intellect weapons in Tier-12 usable by Holy Paladins: (365) Spirit/Mastery, (384) Spirit/Haste. WAIT! A Spirit weapon with Haste?!? Outstanding! Oh wait, item level 384?!? That means it drops from Rags and that 90% of WoW Holy Paladins will probably never see it since the ability to clear end bosses of raiding instances for many guilds is limited.

So, in Tier-11 the only non-Mastery level 359 weapons for Holy Paladins were available from instance end bosses: Cho’gall or Nef. In Tier-12, the only 378 or better weapon available for Holy Paladins is available from the instance end boss, Rags.

I cannot even begin to tell you how disappointed I was for Tier-11 that they provided a BOE Staff that was BiS for all the other healing specs but yet placed the only non-Mastery weapons available for Holy Paladins on the instance end bosses. Just cruel, Blizzard.

[EDIT: Just this morning, Blizzard has apparently added an item level 378 Intellect based AXE! Holy Paladins and Resto/Elemental Shaman everywhere are rejoicing! Of course, they itemized it with Spirit/Mastery even though there are Staves and Daggers available for the Shaman elsewhere. RAGE!!!!!!]

Tier-12 Rings: Finally, a non-Plate intellect piece of gear that pairs Spirit with something other than Mastery. The itemization for rings goes: (365) Spirit/Crit, Haste/Hit, Crit/Mastery, (378) Spirt/Mastery, Spirit/Crit, Mastery/Hit. So, a Holy Paladin who is lucky can get a ring combination with (365) Spirit/Crit and (378) Spirit/Crit and avoid the dreaded Mastery rating. However, why are there zero Intellect rings with Haste on them for healers? The only ring with Haste has Hit on it.
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TL:DR

Blizzard appears to agree that Mastery is a sub-standard secondary stat for Holy Paladins and stripped it completely off their Tier-12 gear and limited it greatly on their Tier-12 non-Tier Intellect plate choices.

However, they then almost completely failed to give neck/cloak/ring/weapon choices that did not include either Mastery or Hit.

So, my request to Blizzard is:

1. Fix Holy Paladin Mastery so that it is a desirable secondary stat on par with Haste and Critical Strike.

2. Give Tier-12 itemization choices in the neck/cloak/ring/weapon slots that does not include either Mastery or Hit.

Thanks in advance for any constructive comments.

Cheers,

Overall, I think its probably a pretty fair post.

The difference is that Echo of Light is ALWAYS ON. As long as a toon is not at full health, this Mastery will always implement its full effect. Priest cast a 40k heal with only base Mastery, the target gets healed for an additional 4k over 6 seconds. No questions asked. This is the same with Resto Druid and Resto Shaman mastery. As long as the target is not at full health, their Mastery will run for 100% of its effect.

I am not that familiar with the details of non-pally healers. If a priest heals a target a second time within 6 secs, do they get a second HoT or what happens? I say this as you specifically mentioned the Holy Pally shield thing.

Also on the Holy Pally shield, a possible mitigation of lost bubble would be to replace an existing bubble anytime a new heal would put up a bigger bubble/shield. Making shields additive is simply not an option as personally I like to build HoPo prior to pull by dropping DL on my beacon, and Holy Shock on whomever. If these shields were additive then I could potentially build a 100k bubble on a tank prior to pull. Simple replacement can be an issue, because then if I drop a 40k DL and follow with a 8k non crit holy shock, the DL bubble is wasted.

Holy Paladins, however, are apparently the schizophrenics. We have zero damage reduction or absorption abilities….except for our Mastery

I understand the general sentiment, but we do have Hand of Sacrifice, although with Divine Bubble being only 8 secs, this is more risky than it once was. I have died on H-Chimaeron10 because I did a bubble-sac on the tank and died at the end of fued when bubble was gone, but sac was still up.

Aura Mastery can also be a great damage reduction ability when timed right.

Hrobertgar wrote:I am not that familiar with the details of non-pally healers. If a priest heals a target a second time within 6 secs, do they get a second HoT or what happens? I say this as you specifically mentioned the Holy Pally shield thing.

Echo Rolls so they never get lost healing.

Also isn't a smaller bubble from Illuminated Healing replaced by a larger one but a larger one is never replaced by a smaller one? That's how it seems to work when I mess around with Holy.

a couple log snipets.

3 refreshes of the Mastery bubble without any fading each increasing in value.

Code: Select all

[01:24:42.439] Grubba gains Illuminated Healing from Khayden (Remaining: 1110)
[01:24:43.644] Grubba's Illuminated Healing is refreshed by Khayden (Remaining: 1563)
[01:24:46.907] Grubba's Illuminated Healing is refreshed by Khayden (Remaining: 3761)

Here's the entire log.

Code: Select all

***[01:24:42.032] Khayden Holy Shock Grubba +7676
[01:24:42.032] Grubba gains 25 energy from Grubba's Relentless Strikes
[01:24:42.035] Grubba gains Echo of Light from Oblate
[01:24:42.094] Grubba's River of Death is refreshed by Grubba
***[01:24:42.439] Grubba gains Illuminated Healing from Khayden (Remaining: 1110)
[01:24:42.441] Grubba's River of Death is refreshed by Grubba
[01:24:42.837] Khayden casts Word of Glory on Grubba
***[01:24:42.996] Khayden Word of Glory Grubba +10807
[01:24:43.095] Oblate Echo of Light Grubba +50
[01:24:43.244] Grubba's Moderate Insight is refreshed by Grubba
[01:24:43.244] Grubba's River of Death is refreshed by Grubba
[01:24:43.411] Oblate Flash Heal Grubba +*24771*
[01:24:43.642] Oblate Renew Grubba +3205
***[01:24:43.644] Grubba's Illuminated Healing is refreshed by Khayden (Remaining: 1563)
[01:24:43.644] Grubba's River of Death is refreshed by Grubba
[01:24:44.043] Oblate Echo of Light Grubba +49
[01:24:44.044] Grubba's Echo of Light is refreshed by Oblate
[01:24:44.044] Grubba's Renew is refreshed by Oblate
[01:24:44.044] Grubba gains Inspiration from Oblate
[01:24:44.454] Grubba's River of Death is refreshed by Grubba
[01:24:44.454] Grubba's Moderate Insight is refreshed by Grubba
[01:24:45.170] Oblate Echo of Light Grubba +781
[01:24:45.249] Grubba's River of Death is refreshed by Grubba
[01:24:45.296] Grubba gains 15 energy from Grubba's Combat Potency
[01:24:45.638] Grubba's Slice and Dice is refreshed by Grubba
[01:24:45.715] Grubba's River of Death is refreshed by Grubba
[01:24:46.040] Oblate Echo of Light Grubba +780
[01:24:46.103] Kunillia's Elemental Oath fades from Grubba
[01:24:46.103] Grubba gains Rampage from Draigen
***[01:24:46.161] Khayden Divine Light Grubba +21275 (O: 4721)
[01:24:46.161] Oblate Renew Grubba +0 (O: 3205)
[01:24:46.821] Oblate Binding Heal Grubba +0 (O: 12908)
***[01:24:46.907] Grubba's Illuminated Healing is refreshed by Khayden (Remaining: 3761)


Hrobertgar wrote:I understand the general sentiment, but we do have Hand of Sacrifice

Aura Mastery can also be a great damage reduction ability when timed right.

Two very strong ones that are silly to overlook.

This is the same with Resto Druid and Resto Shaman mastery. As long as the target is not at full health, their Mastery will run for 100% of its effect.

This is false. The lower the target is the more effect from the mastery those classes will have. I think targets need to be sub 30% health for them to have mastery operate at 100% effectiveness.

Flex wrote: Also isn't a smaller bubble from Illuminated Healing replaced by a larger one but a larger one is never replaced by a smaller one? That's how it seems to work when I mess around with Holy.

I don't believe this is true. If that were the case, then the Holy Paladin Mastery would be MUCH better than it is. I dont' think there is any overwriting of the Illuminated Healing bubble.

Flex wrote:

Hrobertgar wrote:I understand the general sentiment, but we do have Hand of Sacrifice

Aura Mastery can also be a great damage reduction ability when timed right.

Two very strong ones that are silly to overlook.

Two points:

1. Hand of Sacrifice is NOT a damage absorber or reducer. It is a damage transfer. The same amount of damage goes out; it is just split between the Hand target and the Paladin with most of the transfer being healed by Protector of the Innocent.

2. Aura Mastery is not a damager absorber or reducer. It can be a DPS increaser (Ret aura). It can be a silence breaker (Concentration aura). It MIGHT be a damage reducer (Devotion aura or Resistance aura).

Perhaps I am nit-picking; I will grant you that, besides Mastery, Holy Paladins can reduce damage via Aura Mastery with Devotion or Resistance aura up. I will so modify my main post.

Flex wrote:

This is the same with Resto Druid and Resto Shaman mastery. As long as the target is not at full health, their Mastery will run for 100% of its effect.

This is false. The lower the target is the more effect from the mastery those classes will have. I think targets need to be sub 30% health for them to have mastery operate at 100% effectiveness.

Perhaps it is semantics; but I think my statement is true from the viewpoint that I wrote it. A Shaman or Druid will ALWAYS have their Mastery active on a heal. If the target is at 99% health, the Mastery is still active, just tiny. If the target is at 85% health, then the Mastery is still active, just a little bit bigger. If the target is at 25% health, then the Mastery is active and at 100% strength.

However, a Holy Paladin's Mastery is 100% useless if:

- The target does not take damage in the next 15 seconds; or
- The target already has an Illuminated Healing bubble on him of any strength.

Cheers,

Check my logs I edited in to my first post, They clearly show overwriting weaker shields with bigger shields.

Two points:

1. Hand of Sacrifice is NOT a damage absorber or reducer. It is a damage transfer. The same amount of damage goes out; it is just split between the Hand target and the Paladin with most of the transfer being healed by Protector of the Innocent.

Use on the tank during Flame Orders. Profit.

2. Aura Mastery is not a damager absorber or reducer. It can be a DPS increaser (Ret aura). It can be a silence breaker (Concentration aura). It MIGHT be a damage reducer (Devotion aura or Resistance aura).

We cycle DP and AM on Atremedes after breaking his ability during the ground phase. Lessens the damage of his followup unavoidable AoE.

Remember too, that ALL of the damage transfered from Hand of Sac is magical, regardless of the original source type, and therefore is mitigated by Divine Protection (including glyphed DP). Many holy pallies use a glyphed DP in conjunction with Hand of Sac for this reason. Our holy pallies use this combo to enable the use of Hand of Sac in cases where otherwise it would seem counter-intuative, such as during Electricutes on H Nef or Shadow Orders on H Cho'Gall.

warden wrote:Remember too, that ALL of the damage transfered from Hand of Sac is magical, regardless of the original source type, and therefore is mitigated by Divine Protection (including glyphed DP).

You're awesome.

Flex wrote:

warden wrote:Remember too, that ALL of the damage transfered from Hand of Sac is magical, regardless of the original source type, and therefore is mitigated by Divine Protection (including glyphed DP).

You're awesome.

Hey, it was a big discovery for me I wrecked myself running out to Sac our add tank one night during an electricute and bubble wasn't quite off CD yet... and then one of our holy pallies enlightened me to this little piece of information

Don't get me wrong, I love Echoes of Light in the right circumstances it's fantastic, but it's also heaps fucking good at overhealing. I'm not saying HPal mastery isn't shit, because it fair is, but Symbiosis/Harmony, Deep Healing and Shield Discipline don't have the same latent overhealing weakness (i.e. my mastery isn't immediate in effect) in that other healers have the ability to nullify your own personal mastery so I'm not sure comparing them is the best point of attack.

Excellent point, Lev.

Since it appears that my understanding of the other healer Masteries are weaker than I thought, I will take out that comparison.

Thanks all for the comments. I hopefully will get this on the boards today so that it can be ignored!

Cheers,

I think this wasn't mentioned. From a post still on the MMO-Champion front page.

Holy

Illuminated Healing (Mastery) has been adjusted slightly so that if a paladin refreshes an existing copy of his or her own Illuminated Healing on a target, the new absorption amount will be added into the old absorption amount and the duration will be reset. The total absorption created can never exceed 1/3 of the casting paladin's health.

Also yes, mastery was changed in 4.1 so that a weaker shield will not overwrite a stronger one. A stealthy buff, and not a very big one, but still. Most people noticed a relatively big jump in the total absorb amounts after this. Roughly doubled my absorbs, mastery has been somewhere around 10% of all my healing after this, obviously less on some fights and more on others.

It does seem like a big flavor difference that it prevents damage (which may never happen), though.

It does seem like a big flavor difference that it prevents damage (which may never happen), though.

The priest bubble also prevents damage, but it doesn't require a massive investment of itemization points to produce a decent shield.

The extension of pally bubble from 8 secs to 15 secs (also 4.1) helped a little, and the stacking bubble (4.2) will help a little more, but i'll have to experience it before I feel too excited about it. I mean the tanks are generally taking consistent damage so its rare that I would get to stack more than a couple spells worth, other than on the initial pull with a pre-pull bubble.

Interestingly, part of me thinks that if the bubble were more meaningfull it might affect spell choice. Certainly it could minimize requirement for FoL if you knew what to expect and could prepare for it. Whether or not it would be enough to make HL attractive is another question.

I am also curious to see how other spells like Holy Radiance perform with a stacking bubble and the shorter CD. IFF HR provides a stacking bubble, AND it still lasts 15 secs, then potentially a pally could hit HR (10 sec duration) wait the remaining 10 CD and hit it again, all the while building a raid bubble on EVERYONE for a pending event. That would be something.

Hrobertgar wrote:I am also curious to see how other spells like Holy Radiance perform with a stacking bubble and the shorter CD. IFF HR provides a stacking bubble, AND it still lasts 15 secs, then potentially a pally could hit HR (10 sec duration) wait the remaining 10 CD and hit it again, all the while building a raid bubble on EVERYONE for a pending event. That would be something.

Right now on 4.2 ptr, I don't think the following heals trigger our Mastery:

Beacon of Light (funneled heal; if you heal the Beacon you will get a shield from the direct heal)
Protector of the Innocent
Guardian of Ancient Kings
Holy Radiance

So, shields on everyone is not happening right now.

Cheers,

Yea, in my raid last night I specifically looked for bubbles off HR and did not see it; ah well. Its just that I always notice it in those special cases where I use flashlight, so was figuring HR would as well. Usually if I'm going for HR I am too busy healing to check for who is getting bubbles from direct heals vs who is in range of HR to be certain of the source.

I guess I could finish farming Uld25 for the Legendary and get mass bubbles that way, just for kicks.

Hi, first of all, i'm a healadin (8/13 HM)
I've just seen the Ghostcrawler's topics about the reasons they do some changes on healadin. Bliz is going totally crazy with us.

I remember before cataclysm, long and long discussions about what role can fullfill each healer class. Bliz said they didnt want paladin to be tankheal and drood to be raidheal. They wanted everybody to be able to do anything.
8 month later there is still nothing done about this

I think they are tweaking paladin for R25 content without thinking about R10.
They reduce HR cooldown : nice, but do they see this spell is obsolete on many fights for R10 because its hard to have enought target to make it effective ?
Quite same for LoD : they buff WoG, enought to make some people in R25 to use it. But do they think about R10 ? LoD will be less effective than WoG in 99% of time after this change. So they just cut off the use of this spell.

The changes about our mana are bad. Yeah paladin are spamming DL in heroic encounter, but it's not because they have too much mana.It's because there are spikky dammage and we have no tools to heal this in a other way.There is no more "triage" like they spoke about before cataclysm.

So i'm really disappointed with all the changes, maybe some people are happy but i really dont want to be a spamming HLbot again. But as our raidheal are broken for R10 (especially with the crit buff wich makes Hots awesome)...

The massive mana nerf coming has me very worried about heroics after the patch. I mean 30% base mana to 35% thats like 18%, which is on top of the 10% from patch 4.0.3

I remember my first heroic dungeon that first weekend when we were all ~329 gear I got into H-DM and we were on the boat at the werewolf boss. I had 68k mana and I would go oom everytime that he was out and had to spam DivPlea and melee adds for mana in the in-between phases. How a starting pally would hope to cope with a 18% nerf on top of a 10% nerf is beyond me. I mean yes, they can go get gear from AH for better gear level, but I have doubts whether a 329 pally could confidently heal a 329 group thru reg heroics after this nerf.

For H-10 T11 raiding, I am very worried as the fights tend to be fairly mana intensive as is, and some of them have mechanics that limit melee for SoI. Causing me to go oom 18% faster and not giving me an extra pot or 1min divPlea to make up for it is cruel. And if blizz does not like DL spam, then what do they expect when many things hit like trucks. I mean HL is not going to keep a tank up facing even 1 H-Halfus drake.

Well, i was looking on EJ and it's the same type of comments. They all posts that paladin is still balanced in mana for a 10M raid, and the nerf is because in 25 you see a lot of video with paladin spamming without any problem (even Chogath HM etc..)

I agree, Ezelyn. As a strict 10M raider, I specced out of Light of Dawn about 6 weeks ago and have not missed it in the least. There is ALWAYS a single person target to throw my WoG on to do good effect when at 3x Holy Power....the WoG buff (along with the associated WoG-related talents where LoD has not "extra" effect) is just going to more seal the deal that WoG is a much better use of my Holy Power than LoD is.

And Holy Radiance is outstanding on some encounters and pure drek on others. Magmaw? Sure, we use a stack the raid in melee range strat and it is great for Lava Spew. ODS? Flame guy is up, good healing there. Chim and Feud. Atra is a stack up strat for us. Mal and the red phase flame jet. BH....Cho'gall and Shadow Orders...V&T upon Blackout cleansing...Conclave and on the nature platform when adds are up...

However, I find I don't use it much on Halfus or TAC. Just not enough raiders group up to make those fights worth it. Perhaps Heoic mode is different.

There are times and places where Holy Radiance is a very useful tool in just about every fight in Tier-11. I was a VERY sad panda when it was first introduced and I learned it was player-based and not "throwable" like Circle of Healing or Wild Growth or Healing Rain.

However, Blizzard appeared to be pretty careful and make sure Tier-11 encounters were designed to ensure that it was pretty useful. I hope Tier-12 does the same.
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For Hrobertgar. I agree that the mana nerf has me concerned. While right now in regular modes I can, if the raid plays well, end most fights with lots and lots of mana left over, it has more to do that I have trained myself to Holy Shock on CD, Judge on CD, use Arcane Torrent and my Core of Ripeness on CD and cast Holy Light as much as possible now that we overgear the content just a bit. The nerf will probably not effect me greatly since I am a regular mode raider (we are just not consistant or good enough to challenge many hard modes) but I agree than new 85s with new 85s in Heroic could be brutal.
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As for me, I, overall, like the changes 4.2 is bringing quite a bit.

- Sure, I have argued long and hard about Mastery and its lack of viability with Healadins...and then Blizzard changed how our Mastery will work. I still don't love it but my campaign against it has ended. I will still reforge all my Mastery and Crit towards Spirit or Haste...but I will no longer look at Mastery as being completely useless to me.

- The 100% Beacon Holy Light heal is brilliant. If the damage intake on the tank can support it, it allows me to continue to dump HS and WoG where needed, heal raid with Holy Light and then bomb the tank with Divine Light as needed. It will feel a whole lot more like a triage model assuming that Blizzard does not have to go back to the "tanks die in 2 GCD" mode like ICC was.

- 200% Critical Heals. No down side there. Will make me want Crit gear that much more.

- 30% buff to Word of Glory healing. Yes, please. More of the same, Sir.

- Tier-12 Itemization. The bonuses are desirable and none of the gear has Mastery on it. What is not to love about that?

- A FRICKING INTELLECT AXE! ME WANT! I don't care that it has Mastery on it. I want to smash faces with axes!

Overall, I am looking forward to Tier-12. I am a bit sad that there is only one instance...I liked the freedom to chose between working in BoT or BWD or TotFW with BH thrown in as an appetizer. Going back to the same instance every week for the next 5 monthes is going to get a little old but perhaps if my Pally gets geared quick enough I can get my Priest in there on our regular raids.

Anyway, I am looking foward to most of the Pally changes in 4.2.

Cheers,

Early in Cata's release they buffed pretty much every healing class' mana regen abilities, the big one for Paladins was the mana return on Judging Insight.

All of these current changes to mana cost are to fix that since healers with gear start to ignore aspects Blizzard doesn't want ignored.

Flex wrote:Early in Cata's release they buffed pretty much every healing class' mana regen abilities, the big one for Paladins was the mana return on Judging Insight.

All of these current changes to mana cost are to fix that since healers with gear start to ignore aspects Blizzard doesn't want ignored.

this decision doesnt affect all classes in the same way.
They are nerfing mana regen from drood chaman etc...
but on paladin, it's not their regen, it's their mana cost.
I think it's a bad solution.

they should nerf our mana regen like the others (and maybe give us less GCD spend on judgement..)

i can see the patch like this :
- if you are paladin, and you play in fights like Magmaw, Maloriak etc... (with free regen phase) you will still have no mana problem unlike all the other classes
but in the other case, if there are fights you cant push any safe DivinePlea : you will have awesome problem where others don't

We definitively regen too much when we are not casting divine light... when i see on maloriak my manabar before a green phase i can easily be at 90 if we are coming from a blue phase, and at 40 if there was a red juste before that. My mana gestion is not about the whole mana i use in a fight, but only in the last minute...
i don't like disparity like that. If there is a burst heal during 1min00 i can't heal as much as a drood, but if it's 30sec burst - 15sec safe - 30sec burst we are so overpowered...

this unbalance will be increased after 4.2

Paladin mana is a joke. If you don't think you can use all your tools (I'm lookin at you, Plea) you're just not trying hard enough. I honestly don't know what to say to you.

Levantine wrote:Paladin mana is a joke. If you don't think you can use all your tools (I'm lookin at you, Plea) you're just not trying hard enough. I honestly don't know what to say to you.

You really should try R10 on PTR and compare paladin to other classes after 4.2 nerf on DL (only 17% increased ).
but maybe it wasn't clear that i was talking on the 4.2 mana nerf paladin compared to drood/priest

in fact, even in 4.1 paladin's regen mana is quite equal to drood, one example nefarian HM :
4 divine plea
Seal of Insight 99306 mana
Divine Plea 87787 mana
Arcane Torrent 28880 mana
Glyph of Divinity 23537 mana
Restore Mana 9316 mana

Drood, same combatlog
Revitalize 91196 mana
Innervate 81666 mana
Replenishment 61507 mana
Restore Mana 14436 mana

Ezelyn wrote:

Levantine wrote:Paladin mana is a joke. If you don't think you can use all your tools (I'm lookin at you, Plea) you're just not trying hard enough. I honestly don't know what to say to you.

You really should try R10 on PTR and compare paladin to other classes after 4.2 nerf on DL (only 17% increased ).
but maybe it wasn't clear that i was talking on the 4.2 mana nerf paladin compared to drood/priest

in fact, even in 4.1 paladin's regen mana is quite equal to drood, one example nefarian HM :
4 divine plea
Seal of Insight 99306 mana
Divine Plea 87787 mana
Arcane Torrent 28880 mana
Glyph of Divinity 23537 mana
Restore Mana 9316 mana

Drood, same combatlog
Revitalize 91196 mana
Innervate 81666 mana
Replenishment 61507 mana
Restore Mana 14436 mana

Was this 25 or 10 man? Where is the Replenishment for the Pally? Are you saying that the Pally never got a Replenishment tick?

Cheers,

IIRC Innervate will take a hit in 4.2.?