Episode 10 of the Kurncast

Welcome to episode 10 of the Kurncast!

This week:

Realm Maintenance (by Rho) hit 100 episodes!
– I got my “legendary” cloak!
– I went along with Dayani, Magdalena, Crazzarc and Tikari to the new UBRS in the Warlords of Draenor Beta.
Rob Pardo leaves Blizzard — related to the recent outcry and discussion about minority representation?
– Huge grats to Apotheosis of Eldre’Thalas for downing Heroic Garrosh 25 on July 6!

Finally, if you’re in need of webhosting, please do consider Bluehost! If you use this affiliate link, you’d also be helping to support me in various WoW-related efforts. I’d really appreciate it, thank you. :)

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MoP Beta Access

It seems another bunch of beta invites went out today. I logged in to my Battle.net account and was rewarded with beta access of my very own.

I’ve already copied my hunter and paladin from Eldre’Thalas to Lost Isles (US).

If you have questions about stuff for hunters or (specifically holy) paladins at this point in the Mists beta, please let me know and I’ll do my best to answer them. I will be taking a TON of screenshots, too, and babbling about general game stuff, I’m sure.

Just don’t expect me to roll a panda or a monk. :P

Mists of Pandaria Beta Stuff

I’m not in the beta yet, but beta invites have definitely gone out and the various WoW sites, like MMO-Champion, are going nuts with info.

So I went digging through the Curse/MMO database site at wowdb.com and dug up some interesting paladin-related stuff. Bear in mind this is JUST data-mined stuff. This is stuff that may not be implemented, etc.

Battle Healer: This appears to be a glyph. And it appears to encourage paladins to stand in melee range with Seal of Insight up. Interesting. Is this Blizzard saying “hey, holy paladins! YES, you! YOU have been designed to heal in melee range. For real. Here’s the proof.”? Or is it allowing our prot and ret cousins to help out? Or something in between?

Beacon of Light: This also appears to be a glyph. No GCD on Beacon? Well, now. This speaks to lots of beacon swapping? Perhaps?

Blinding Light: A new ability at 87. Meh?

Boundless Conviction: A new passive at 85. Whee? I mean, I can see the benefit here, but I’m afraid they are going to throw this out because we will be totally imbalanced. :P

Cleanse: Looks normal, right? WRONG. Hello, 8 second cooldown!

Cleansing: Appears to be a glyph. Interesting.

Divine Plea: Appears to be a glyph that will reduce the healing penalty AND the mana return on Divine Plea? Would love to see what the actual numbers end up being.

Divine Protection: Looks as though the current glyphed Divine Protection is going to become the standard…

Divine Protection: And it looks as though the glyphed version of Divine Protection returns the physical damage portion. This makes a lot of sense, actually, because I almost never remove my Divine Protection glyph.

Divinity: Interesting! Looks like the standard glyph BUT, instead of just returning mana when you cast Lay on Hands, this glyph will increase the cooldown as well.

Double Jeopardy: Looks to be a ret glyph.

Frugal Blessings: Finally, those two minors are combined into one.

Holy Shock: Oh boy. A glyph that will, single-handedly, convince people out there that being a “shockadin” is finally viable. Or something.

Illumination: This *appears* to be a glyph that returns to us our dearly departed Illumination, albeit in a different form. 1% mana return on every critical Holy Shock, but 10% less mana through Meditation. Interesting. The return of crit stacking?

Improved Judgement: This appears to be a passive. And I’m so confused. There are SO MANY ways to get mana back…

Supplication: Some kind of ability. This would ostensibly replace part of the Crusade talent in the ret tree.

The Mounted King: Apparently a glyph. I do not see the use. At all.

Turn Evil: Looks like they’re changing this ability of ours to double the fear duration. Perhaps the Sha are “evil”? Hm.

And that’s about all I’ve found with tooltips thus far. More soon, I would imagine. :)

Cataclysm Beta Builds 13221 & 13241

As always, thank you to MMO-Champion for listing the patch changes!

I never did talk about the last beta build (13221) so I’ll talk about those changes here as well.

13221:

* Holy Radiance’s effectiveness now diminish on targets farther than x yards away.

That’s cool. It was a little OP for someone 20 yards away to get the entire benefit of something that comes from us in a pulsing wave thing.

* Divine Light base healing has been increased by 30%. From 8538-9512 to 11100-12366

* Flash of Light base healing has been increased by 30%. From 5313-5961 to 6907-7750.

* Holy Light base healing has been increased by 30%. From 3202-3567 to 4162-4637.

* Holy Shock base healing has been increased by 30%. From 3033-3285 to 3943-4271.

Holy crapsicle. Buff time! Hooray! Maybe now I won’t feel like my heals are completely ineffective.

* Lay on Hands no longer restores mana.

That’s okay! No worries! The new Glyph of Divinity means that anytime you cast Lay on Hands, you gain 10% of your maximum mana. That’s on a 7m cooldown with the new Lay on Hands major glyph.

* Beacon of Light now lasts 5 min, up from 1 min.

Well, that’s handy. We can now remove the major glyph of Beacon of Light which reduced its mana cost to 0 and put in that snazzy new Lay on Hands glyph. :)

* Mastery: Illuminated Healing now absorbs 10% of the amount healed, up from 8%. Now lasts 8 sec, up from 6 sec. Each point of mastery increases the absorb amount by an additional 1.25%, up from 1%.

Effing. Awesome. 8 second shield that’s a minimum of 10% of your heal and mastery givs you even more absorption? This is amazing.

All around, 13221 was a huge buff to holy paladins.

13241:

* Holy Radiance  20 yards range added to the tooltip.

Good to know.

* Light of Dawn now uses Holy Power instead of Mana. Now heals up to 5 targets. No longer has a cooldown – Consumes all Holy Power to send a wave of healing energy before you, healing up to 5 of the most injured targets in your party or raid within a 30 yard frontal cone for 1008.96 to 1124.15 per charge of Holy Power.

Okay, this is NOT a nerf, I repeat, this is NOT a nerf! Walks was telling me about this earlier tonight (guild stuff has me buried, so I haven’t tested anything yet). Here’s what he has to say:

Walks: The new Light of Dawn is kind of amazing.

Kurn: The lack of cooldown is really that good, eh? Is it a smart heal? (That would be asking too much, I imagine.)

Walks: Yes to both. 3 stacks of HP will heal for about 8.5k non-crit. It is a smart heal, but the players must be in front of you.

Kurn: Wait, SERIOUSLY?! A directional, smart heal, that heals for 8.5k non-crit? SS or it didn’t happen!!!

Walks: I will later! <3 Raid time. Oh, the LoD glyph lets it hit a sixth target.

So here we have an ability with a variable “cooldown”, that is a smart heal! It’s our version of Wild Growth and Circle of Healing! Complete with the glyph that will add another target to the heal. This is, to be blunt, awesome. And is finally a 31-point talent worthy of its spot. IMHO.

* Blessed Life now cannot occur more than 8 seconds (up from 2 seconds).

PVP talent for sure.

* Protector of the Innocent now affects heals on any target except yourself.

Small nerf, but it makes sense. Why proc a heal on yourself after you’ve just healed yourself?

Overall, holy paladins are looking AWESOME.

But basically, you want to go out there and hit full raid groups of people with Light of Dawn while you still can. ;) My record is 26 people, not including myself.

Cataclysm Beta Build 13189

Well, MMO-Champion is reporting that the previous beta build, 13183, will not make it to beta servers and has been replaced with 13189, which has a couple of things that affect us holy paladins.

Holy

  • Speed of Light has been revamped to only affect Holy Radiance – Speed of Light – Grants 1/2/3% spell haste and reduces the cooldown of Holy Radiance by 30 sec. Casting Holy Radiance increases your movement speed by 20/40/60% for 4 sec. /
  • Clarity of Purpose now reduces cast time by 0.3 sec at Rank 2, down from 0.35 sec.

I don’t really know what to make of the Speed of Light changes. It feels as though Blizzard just removed almost all the synergy in our tree.

Speed of Light (3/3)  currently gives you 30% spell haste to Flash of Light, Holy Light and Divine Light after using Holy Shock along with the speed boost and lower Holy Radiance cooldown.

While an extra 3% spell haste overall is arguably better than 30% haste to three spells after use of a fourth spell (Holy Shock), it now feels as though we no longer have any spells that work really well together. Or almost none. Assuming the Infusion of Light proc from a crit Holy Shock still reduces the cast times of Holy Light and Divine Light by 1.5 seconds, that’s still one bit of synergy between the spells.

But what else is there? Nothing, really.

Discipline Priests get Evangelism and Archangel and Atonement. If I could freaking Exorcism to heal, I would think seriously about Denounce. That would be some synergy. Holy Shock, Denounce proc, Exorcism on the mob, healing a nearby party or raid member for the amount of the Exorcism. Note that this isn’t actually something I want, but it would be some synergy between our spells.

Similarly, look at the holy priests and Chakra. That talent is the definition of synergy, where one talent (Chakra) gets popped and depending on what state you enter, the spells specific to that state are improved.

What do we get? Infusion of Light (which is a crit proc) increases the cast time of two spells by 1.5 seconds.

There’s also Daybreak, I suppose, since it procs off the casts of FoL, HL and DL and leads back to HS. But that doesn’t compare at all to the priest talents.

Anyways. I seem to have gone and rambled. That’s a shocker, eh? ;)

The Clarity of Purpose change is definitely there for rets or prots and is probably there to nerf PVP paladins of other specs to prevent them from healing. Holy will always take all three points, but .35 seconds isn’t substantially different from .5 seconds, so whoever was taking 2/3 Clarity of Purpose was benefitting from saving a point. By changing it to .3 seconds, that adds a total of .2 seconds to the cast times of HL and DL, so 2.7 at base. More time casting means that’s more time in which you can be silenced, which leads to being counterspelled or silenced or otherwise locked out of your entire spell kit for the next 6 seconds or whatever. Which feels like an eternity.

Then I have to comment on this:

Retribution

  • Zealotry now requires 3 Holy Power to use, but does not consume Holy Power.

So immediately after gaining 3 Holy Power, a ret can then beat your face in with a 3HP Templar’s Verdict, then Crusader Strike and get another 3HP and then Templar’s Verdict you in the face again! For ret pallies, this is awesome.

I mention it because I want to be able to say “this is awesome” about some of our changes or some of our spells.

I’m disappointed with the overall lack of synergy in our tree, the lack of awesomeness about our 31pt talent and I keep waiting for it to get better. This build (assuming it brings with it the previous changes) will be okay, but it’s not The Build Where Everything Is Fixed. And I’m starting to be concerned that things just will not be fixed, not for some time. I’d love to be wrong, but I kind of don’t think I am.

  • Speed of Light has been revamped to only affect Holy Radiance – Speed of Light – Grants 1/2/3% spell haste and reduces the cooldown of Holy Radiance by 30 sec. Casting Holy Radiance increases your movement speed by 20/40/60% for 4 sec. /
  • Clarity of Purpose now reduces cast time by 0.3 sec at Rank 2, down from 0.35 sec.

Cataclysm Beta Build 13183

Yet another beta build’s changes, according to MMO-Champion. Here are my thoughts on the changes that affect holy paladins.

Holy

  • Holy Radiance now heals all friendly targets within 20 yards, up from 10 yards.
  • Exorcism now scales from 22,5% of AP or Spell Power, up from 15%.
  • Lay on Hands: Forbearance effect no longer includes Divine Protection or self-targeted Lay on Hands.
  • Paragon of Virtue now also reduces the cooldown of Hand of Sacrifice by 15/30 sec.
  • Infusion of Light now reduces the cast time of your next Divine Light in addition to Holy Light.

I’m really pleased with the change to Holy Radiance. This changes it from being something you hit and run into range with to hitting it and healing from where you’re standing — or with just a bit of movement. I like it.

No comment on Exorcism, although I left that change in for those of you who want Denounce.

I’m THRILLED that Lay on Hands no longer causes Forbearance. It seems as though any time Blizzard wants to tune paladins, they just slap Forbearance on some spell. See: Wrath, Avenging. ;)

Paragon of Virtue is a good talent. I’m a fan of it. And now I might be even more inclined to put two points into it. Shortened cooldowns on Divine Protection, Avenging Wrath AND Hand of Sacrifice? Very snazzy.

Holy Shock crits reducing the cast time of Divine Light as WELL as Holy Light? I fully expect this to get nerfed, because that is one fast cast and one hell of a big heal, compared to Holy Light. But as long as it’s around, I’ll be quite happy.

Retribution

  • Crusade has an additional effect – In addition, for 15 sec after you kill an enemy that yields experience or honor, your next Holy Light heals for an additional 100/200/300%.

And another reason to pick up Crusade, although this is more PVP/levelling oriented. 300% on a Holy Light is, in pretty good holy gear at 80, about 21k? I also expect to see this nerfed. I also would expect you have to get the killing blow.

I still recommend Crusade for the 30% bonus to Holy Shock, of course.

PTR Build 13156 – Quick thoughts.

According to MMO-Champion, holy paladins are getting buffed.

  • Divine Light 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%.

So, 10% more base healing to all three of our casted spells, plus Holy Shock (our most-used spell) AND 5% more healing to everything we cast.

There’s nothing wrong with any of this. In fact, for months, I’ve been saying that the Walk in the Light passive we get that increases our healing vs. a prot or ret in healing gear, has been pretty lame at 10%. 15%… well, it’s an improvement, to be sure, and when added to the extra healing we’re now getting on FoL, HL, DL and HS, it’s going to feel like a bit more.

I’m definitely happy about these changes, although since they’re happening on the PTR, I won’t be able to play with them until they make it over to beta. (The beta client is supposedly acting as a PTR client, but mine isn’t working and I’m not installing 13+ more gigs of WoW on my computer.) I imagine this will make us more willing to use some of these casted spells instead of relying on Holy Shock and Word of Glory so very much.

I still think there’s something just very wrong with holy paladin healing right now in the beta. Is it just the change to a three-heal system? I don’t think so. Is it just the overall weakness of our healing, which these changes are trying to alleviate? I don’t think so.

I think there’s something very “wrong” with relying so extensively on Holy Shock and its clone, Word of Glory.

I feel like they’ve taken the paladin and not only turned it upside down, like all other healers (poor freaking druids) but also inside out. FoL is expensive, contrary to what it’s always been. HL is cheap, contrary to what it’s always been. Paladins are suddenly going to be a very mobile healer, contrary to what we’ve always been. We’ve lost some raid utility (JoL, JoW) and we’ve always BEEN the “utility” class for the Alliance.

I’m almost certainly going to play a holy paladin in Cataclysm. Apart from anything else, I KNOW the class and I KNOW the changes.

But it feels to me like we’ve been changed beyond recognition. Paladins in Cataclysm barely resemble paladins when I first started playing, and even those paladins are somewhat removed from how they were at launch.

Anyways. I’m rambling and I should get to sleep. It’s been a long day and tomorrow promises to be even longer.

Weekend Update

(Sadly, I am not as cool as Tina Fey.)

– I’m one Manalicious quest away from Chef.

– On Saturday, I actually HAD the Blacktip Shark IN MY BAGS and used Aspect of the Cheetah to run to the NPC and while clicking on him, heard the sound when he got the Master Angler of Azeroth achievement precisely two seconds before I would have. SAD PANDA.

– ICC10 on Friday went okay, cleared Lower Spire, did Blood Wing (one-shotted Council with me on orbs, if you can imagine!) and went through some hiccups on BQL, but got her down. Tried Dreamwalker, but it didn’t go very well because we were 9 manning it and I was on my shammy for that part.

– I had an absolutely lovely Vent conversation with a blogger I’ve only known about for a couple of months, Oestrus, from The Stories of O. Previously a RL friend of Codi’s, they reconnected with each other in the WoW blogosphere. How awesome is that? It’s pretty awesome. Even more awesome? Oestrus has stuck her priest in Apotheosis to get a feel for us to see if we’re where she wants to be for Cataclysm. She came to ICC10 Part 2 on Sunday night, too.

– Seriously, I HAD THE BLACKTIP SHARK. <flails>

– Beta guilds were wiped, so if you were in my beta version of Apotheosis on Lost Isles, you may want to hit me up on Twitter at some point to get a re-invite.

– ICC10 Part 2. Went better than expected. O joined us on her priest and we promptly wiped on Plague trash. /facepalm. Nice first impression. ;) I think we made up for it, though, when we one-shot Rot, Fester and the good Professor. Dreamwalker was cake and, for the first time ever, I did that fight without healing in the portals. I kited zombies! It was kind of awesome, although I have never wanted to be able to cleanse my own magical debuffs more than right then. Stupid frostbolt volleys. Anyways, then it was on to Sindragosa. Despite some lapses in attention and despite some miscommunication, the Apotheosis INFAMOUS LAST ATTEMPT rule kicked in and we got her down for the first time. (Well, first time on these toons for many of us, anyways.)

– O will fit in beautifully if she decides to stick with us. She’s already on the “I tease Kurn, therefore I am” bandwagon. Things like “Eh on Hands” instead of “Lay on Hands” and “Hey, I need my I’m on a Boot achievement!”… Naturally, the guildies cracked up. :P

– After the raid, Football and X and I went to MC. Football’s after Sulfuron Ingots and the Eye of Sulfuras for Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros. I was hoping I’d get my Eye of Divinity for my priest off Domo, and X was along on his warlock until we got to Domo, at which point he got his 72 hunter, in case the Ancient Petrified Leaf dropped. The Eye of Divinity dropped and, after a couple of embarassing wipes on Ragnaros, off I went to the Eastern Plaguelands!

– And finally, as you were perhaps able to tell from the video above, I’ve managed to find a decent video setting for videos! This has some huge implications, particularly when I get a decent rig either later this month or in November.

ICC 25 heroic Putricide and Sindragosa tonight. Fingers crossed for the swift deaths of these two pains in my ass, if only for the hopes of my current guild’s Glory of the Icecrown Raider (25) drakes.

What Holy Paladins Need to Know for 4.0.1

*** All content copyright © Kurn’s Corner, 2010. Reproduction of this guide in full or in part without express permission from the author (“Kurn”), represents copyright infringment and violation of copyright law. Please, if you like this guide, link to it, do not copy it. ***

*Small updates on Monday, October 18th, 2010 – Spell coefficients, a note about Enlightened Judgements vs. Paragon of Virtue*

*Update on Monday, November 22, 2010 – Glyph section somewhat out of date, links to 4.0.3a post.*

With 4.0.1 here as of Tuesday, October 12th, there are several things every single holy paladin absolutely needs to know. I’m going to try to break this down into TALENTS/SPELLSGEAR/STATS and GLYPHS. With regards to gemming, both Runed Cardinal Rubies and Brilliant King’s Ambers turn into Brilliant Cardinal Rubies, giving us 20 intellect. We can no longer gem for spellpower. I’m not changing out my gems quite yet, but as we gain levels, we might want to re-examine our gemming.

TALENTS/SPELLS

1) We cannot spec 31/5/5 at launch, because we only get 36 talents at 80. We are not going to be balanced for content at 80 with only 36 talents to spend. Assuming the talent trees stay the same, we have to drop 31 points into holy and then have a tough choice to make. Where do we put the remaining five talents?

Our only real choices:

0-3/3 Divinity: 0%/2%/4%/6% extra healing done to and by us. This is the same talent as the one that exists on live today, only it’s three talent points instead of five.

0-2/2 Eternal Glory: 0%/15%/30% chance for our Word of Glory not to consume Holy Power. This is an amazing talent that allows us to throw out more mana-free heals.

0-3/3 Crusade: 0%/10%/20%/30% extra healing (and damage) on Holy Shock (and lots of damage stuff by 30%). I kid you not, Holy Shock is an amazing spell in Cataclysm. 30% extra healing to it is not insignificant.

0-2/2 Improved Judgement: 0/10/20 extra yards on the range of Judgement. Combined with the extra 5/10 yards on Enlightened Judgements in the holy tree, we are looking at regaining our 40 yard range by dropping two points here.

My recommendations:

3/3 Divinity: 6% flat increase on healing. Do it.

0/2 Eternal Glory: Mana matters, but is not as huge an issue at 80 as it is at 85. The mana costs at 80 are not huge.

From a very early beta build:

Flash of Light: 1658
Holy Light: 263
Divine Light: 1842

Holy Light did get bumped to 9% of base mana sometime after I got these values, which is about 396 mana at level 80. I’m not sure if these values are even still remotely accurate. However, I know that mana wasn’t a huge problem until I hit 82-83. Bear in mind that a lot of things have changed since I was level 80 in beta and I might change my mind on this, but based on the trees right now and my beta experience so far, Eternal Glory doesn’t need our extremely precious two points. If mana is terrible, this should get consideration, but the level 80 values weren’t too bad.

2/3 Crusade: No, really, my hand to God, Holy Shock is used constantly. Holy Shock reduces cast time on FoL, HL and DL and is not an insignificant heal itself. We want Holy Shock to hit as hard as possible. Which means…

0/2 Improved Judgement: I hate that I’m not picking this up, but we’re out of freaking points and we have the base distance of 10 yards on the judgements and an extra 10 yards over in holy. Plus, there’s no more Judgement of Light or Judgement of Wisdom. Judgement is seriously JUST damage and to proc Judgements of the Pure. Judging is now a selfish thing that you do once a minute, so it’s not worth it, with so few points available to us, to drop even a single point here.

So, as of right now, my recommended spec for 4.0.1 is:

31/3/2

Bear in mind that 2/2 Enlightened Judgements can be swapped to 1/2 and you can grab 2/2 Paragon of Virtue, although I think the range is a better choice for us right now in Wrath content.

2) The Holy Power Resource.
I nearly forgot to mention this, actually. Holy Power is a secondary resource, meaning it’s used alongside mana, not instead of it.

As you can see, you can have 0, 1, 2 or 3 charges of Holy Power.

For the moment, the only thing that a holy paladin can really use Holy Power for is to heal with our new heal, Word of Glory. Word of Glory with 1 charge of Holy Power heals for less than 2 charges, which heals for less than 3 charges. Word of Glory is an instant-cast heal that is basically a clone of Holy Shock, only there’s no cooldown and it doesn’t use mana. It’s solely dependent on Holy Power.

How do you generate Holy Power?

a) Crusader Strike, which is now baseline for all paladins. (This will be, admittedly, not something we probably use to generate Holy Power all that often.)

b) Using Holy Shock, which is now a passive just for picking holy as your spec. Every time you use Holy Shock, you get a charge of Holy Power.

c) Directly healing your Beacon with Flash of Light, Holy Light or Divine Light. Doing so generates one charge of Holy Power, if you’re specced for 3/3 Tower of Radiance. And you should be.

3) There is no more Flash of Light spec/style, no more Holy Light spec/style. These distinctions are gone. You cannot spam Flash of Light. It is expensive in the new Cataclysmic world. You cannot spam Divine Light, our new big heal, which is sort of equivalent to Wrath’s Holy Light. It’s also expensive. Holy Light is dirt cheap, but heals for itty bitty chunks. We need to adjust to our new heals – the potency of Holy Shock, the weakness of Holy Light, the cost of Flash of Light and the additions of Divine Light, Word of Glory and Light of Dawn. Holy Radiance only comes into play at 83, so we can ignore that for the moment. (But it’s a lot of fun.)

4) Mana matters. We have lost Illumination. Seal of Wisdom is gone, replaced with Seal of Insight, which works a bit like Seals of Light and Wisdom combined, but procs from Seal of Insight only grant us 4% of *base* mana, not *maximum* mana the way Seal of Wisdom did. Further, Divine Plea is nerfed: 10% of mana over 15 seconds, two minute cooldown, reduces healing done by 50% while active. This can be glyphed to 15% of mana back, but that’s still a huge change. We cannot rely on it the way we have throughout this entire expansion. Nor can we rely on Innervates — your druid companions will almost certainly be using this on themselves. Innervate will also only work off the casting druid’s maximum mana, so feral Innervates will be useless. Even Replenishment has been changed. Instead of 1% of maximum mana per 5 seconds, it’s 1% of maximum mana per 10 seconds. What’s that? Mana Tide Totem will still be awesome? HAH. It will now increase party members’ Spirit by 200% for 12 seconds, on a 3-minute cooldown.

I say again, mana matters.

5) Beacon of Light only heals for 50% of what you heal others for. That’s right, the OP awesomeness of our beacon is gone. Combined with the Tower of Radiance talent, it’s clear that we are no longer going to want to set a beacon on someone and just ignore that target except for refreshing beacon, as we currently do.

6) Sacred Shield is gone and its effect has been rolled into our mastery. Mastery is a new stat that all 30 specs can make use of and each spec has its own. Ours is called Illuminated Healing and it means that when we cast a heal on someone, we create a shield the size of 8% of the heal on them, which lasts for six seconds or until it’s been consumed by damage. The 8% scales up with more mastery, which is increased by getting gear with mastery rating on it. Word has it that these shields our heals create are supposed to “roll” or at least not have a smaller shield replace a bigger shield.

7) Blessings have changed. For starters, Blessing of Wisdom is gone. You can find its mana regen properties in Blessing of Might, along with the attack power bonus. Blessing of Kings now only adds 5% to various stats and adds some token resistence to magic schools. Kings does NOT stack with Mark of the Wild. They are identical. Further, these are all 60-minutes and raid-wide and require no reagents.

8) Divine Intervention is gone. Farewell, old friend.

9) Resistance auras have been merged together. So have resistance totems.

10) In case you missed it above, Judgement NO LONGER applies the Judgement of Light OR the Judgement of Wisdom debuff to mobs. Goodbye, passive healing and goodbye passive mana regen.

11) Lay on Hands cooldown reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes.

12) Our spell coefficients have changed. Thanks to Ophelie from The Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon for doing all the scary math for us. Here are the new spell coefficients.

GEAR/STATS

1) In order to benefit from our armor specialization, you need to wear all plate. Wearing all plate grants us an extra 5% intellect. This is godly, since our spellpower is based on our intellect. Do it.

I’m currently wearing two mail pieces: Heroic Unclean Surgical Gloves and Earthsoul Boots. I plan to swap to Gauntlets of Overexposure from the Emblem of Frost vendor, which are identical to Fallen Lord’s Handguards from regular Lady Deathwhisper on 25m.

Ideally, Halion will drop his boots, Foreshadow Steps, (although Walks and I both know these are clearly a myth and do not actually exist). If they don’t drop for me by the time 4.0.1 drops, I will probably switch to my old 258 boots, Boots of the Courageous from Icehowl in TOGC 25, since I didn’t get the Protectors of Life crafted. The Earthsouls were better. Anyways, obviously not everyone is killing Halion with regularity, not everyone is killing Deathwhisper on 25 every week, so your options may be a bit more limited.

I would be inclined to say switch to plate however you can, but keep in mind things like haste (see point #2) as you do so.

2) The amount of haste we want is going to rise. Bear in mind that Judgements of the Pure is dropping from 15% haste to 9% haste and the 3% haste from Swift Retribution/Improved Moonkin is GONE. That means the soft cap for haste that you want to aim for just jumped up from 676 to something like 1017 haste or thereabouts for a 1s GCD, given JotP + 5% spell haste (from a variety of sources — moonkin aura, shadowform’s aura and a shaman’s Wrath of Air). *** This number changes to 894 haste in 4.0.3a ***

That’s a large number, I know. Do not panic.

Why did we want to hit a 1s GCD in Wrath of the Lich King? We had a lot of spells that we needed to cast that were instant. Things like Beacon of Light, Sacred Shield, judging regularly, using Divine Shield and Divine Sacrifice… these are all on the GCD and with 1s GCDs, we’re able to hit these and get back to healing that much faster.

With the removal of Sacred Shield, the movement of Divine Guardian way out of our reach, the fact that we only need to judge once a minute, can we afford GCDs that are longer than 1s? Maybe. Though we’re losing Sacred Shield and judging 2-3 times a minute, we are gaining Holy Shock as a useful spell, which, thanks to Speed of Light, also gives us 30% haste to our next Flash of Light, Holy Light or Divine Light.

This haste can offset the longer cast times of Holy Light (3 seconds base, 2.5 seconds with 3/3 Clarity of Purpose, no more Light’s Grace!) and Divine Light, but it means using Holy Shock pretty much on cooldown.

We also gain Word of Glory, which is essentially a clone of Holy Shock, only it’s dependent on Holy Power instead of mana. Just like Holy Shock, Word of Glory is also instant. We also have Light of Dawn as our 31-point talent, which is an instant, conal heal that doesn’t heal for a ton, but can hit a lot of people at once. So, we lose:

– Sacred Shield (1/minute)
– Frequent judgements (2-3/minute)
– Divine Sacrifice/Guardian (1-2/fight)

Our commonly-used instants are now:

– Beacon of Light (refreshing every 60-90 seconds, depending on glyph)
– Holy Shock (6s cooldown, glyph no longer lowers cooldown, more if Daybreak procs)
– Judgement (1/minute)
– Word of Glory (when 3 Holy Power is accumulated)
– Light of Dawn (situational, but up to every 30 seconds)

So is it important to maintain as close to a 1s GCD as possible? Yes, I would say so. However, the other major benefit to haste rating is the lowering of cast times on various heals and that’s where Holy Shock and Speed of Light come in very handy. That’s why you shouldn’t panic. A 1.2s GCD isn’t as optimal as a 1s GCD, obviously, but don’t panic because your casted heals after a Holy Shock are still going to be pretty snazzy.

Some early beta build numbers are below. Bear in mind that in order to proc Speed of Light, you have to cast Holy Shock before the casted spell.

With 1026 haste only:

Flash of Light: 1.14s cast
Holy Light & Divine Light: 1.68s cast

With 1026 haste and JotP:

Flash of Light: 1.05s
Holy Light & Divine Light: 1.54

With 1026 haste and Speed of Light (3/3):

Flash of Light: 0.879s
Holy Light & Divine Light: 1.29

With 1026 haste and JotP AND Speed of Light:

Flash of Light: 0.806s
Holy Light & Divine Light: 1.18s

A Speed of Light-hasted Holy Light casting in 1.18s is even a bit faster than I currently get on live.

I’m going to do my best to maintain my current haste rating of 1036, which I add to with 40 haste food. However, as previously noted, I need to replace my boots and my gloves with plate equivalents. IF I get the boots from Halion, I’ll be at 1016 haste. If I don’t, I’ll be at 1006, since I’ll drop to my TOGC 25 boots. (I ALWAYS keep everything I wore in the previous tier, just in case I need a resist set or something.)

3) Librams are now stat-sticks. That’s right, we get our very own ranged weapon slot for our relics (and many will no longer be class-specific in Cataclysm!) and they add to our stats. What this means is that, almost certainly, the higher the ilvl libram or relic you have, the better stats are on it. Pallies with the Libram of Renewal will want to get Libram of Veracity which turns into this lovely thing or, if you can spare the Emblems of Frost, the Libram of Blinding Light. (I know. I kind of died inside.) But it turns into this:

GLYPHS

*** This section is outdated for 4.0.3a, please see the 4.0.3a post for updates on some Glyphs and some Glyph choices ***

Glyphs are changing. They’re not going to be consumed any longer, but rather learned. We also have a new kind of glyph: Prime glyphs, in addition to Major and Minor.

Keeva at Tree Bark Jacket says that we’ll get 1 Prime/Major/Minor at 25, 50 and 75, so we’ll have all 9 slots at 80.

What this means for holy paladins is that we want to get all of our glyphs and we want them ASAP.

First off, what glyphs do we want?

Prime Glyphs, by the way, are supposed to be the no-brainers of the glyph world and they exist in order to let us be more choosy in terms of major glyphs, while minors are supposed to be more cosmetic.

PRIME

1) Glyph of Divine Favor. Divine Favor has changed, as you can see by the talent in the talent tree. This glyph extends the duration of Divine Favor by 10 seconds. This is lovely.

2) Glyph of Holy Shock. No longer does this reduce the cooldown of Holy Shock by 1 second. This now increases its crit by 5%.

3) Glyph of Seal of Insight. This works just like the current Glyph of Seal of Light. While you have Seal of Insight active, all your healing is increased by 5%.

4) Glyph of Word of Glory. Increases the healing done by Word of Glory by 10%. Get this.

I would start out with Holy Shock, Seal of Insight and Word of Glory and eventually get enough crit to drop Holy Shock and pick up Divine Favor.

MAJOR

1) Glyph of Beacon of Light. Unchanged from live, it makes your Beacon last 90 seconds instead of 60 seconds. Yoink!

2) Glyph of Cleansing. Reduces the cost of your Cleanse by 20%. Not something I would personally invest in.

3) Glyph of Divine Plea. This used to be for prot pallies, but this is ours, now. This allows you to get an extra 5% mana back when you use Divine Plea, so you’re getting 15% mana back every two minutes instead of 10% mana back.

4) Glyph of Divinity. Same as on live, will grant you mana back and grants double the mana it normally does to its target. Actually has a spot in my glyph book, now.

5) Glyph of Light of Dawn. Reduces the cooldown of Light of Dawn by 10 sec and the amount healed by 20%. I wouldn’t touch this. LoD already heals for such a small amount (3k or so per target) that we do not need LESS healing done more often. I don’t think, anyways. This is a situational glyph, but I’ve been glyphed for it more often than not. This is golden on Infest on the Lich King, although this spell and its glyph are both changing in 4.0.3a.

6) Glyph of the Long Word. Your Word of Glory heals for 50% less up front, but provides an 50% additional healing over 6 seconds.

So what I would take here is Glyph of Beacon of Light, Glyph of Divine Plea and Glyph of Divinity. I’m not a fan of Glyph of the Long Word.

MINOR

1) Glyph of Lay on Hands. Reduces the cooldown of Lay on Hands by 2m. Since Lay on Hands is a 10m cooldown now, this brings it to 8m. Lovely.

2) Glyph of Insight. Reduces the mana cost of Seal of Insight by 50%. Doesn’t sound like much, but at 85, that’s like, 1500 mana savings or something, since the seal costs over 3000 mana.

3) Glyph of Blessing of Kings. Reduces the mana cost of Blessing of Kings by 50%.

4) Glyph of Blessing of Might. Reduces the mana cost of Blessing of Might by 50%.

Obviously, Glyph of Lay on Hands, particularly since I recommend Glyph of Divinity. The other two are up to you, but those are the only minors a holy would find at all useful.

Also, El (of El’s Extreme Anglin’) says that there are several glyphs that will be turned into new ones.

Here’s the conversion chart.

Among them, some that affect holy paladins:

Flash of Light -> Word of Glory
Holy Light -> Divine Favor
Seal of Light -> Seal of Insight
Seal of Wisdom -> Light of Dawn (so many people will have this — make sure to replace it!)


Okay, I think that sums it up. It’s a long post, I know, but I will definitely update this post going forward, since there will undoubtedly be changes to the beta and PTR before 4.0.1 launches and probably some 4.0.1 changes that will, uh, surprise us…

And for those of you who like to tank in your spare time (or tank most of the time and heal in your spare time), here’s the Righteous Defense guide to Everything you need to know about Prot and 4.0.1 at 80.

Please bear in mind that this guide is somewhat out of date as of the launch of 4.0.3a. Please see that post for updates.

*** All content copyright © Kurn’s Corner, 2010. Reproduction of this guide in full or in part without express permission from the author (“Kurn”), represents copyright infringment and violation of copyright law. Please, if you like this guide, link to it, do not copy it. ***