So just a slight change in the Holy tree that I can see. They tossed out Improved Lay on Hands. To which I say, “You bastards.”
However. The talent replacing Improved Lay on Hands allows us to play with other builds.
Last Word (2/2) is now sitting in the second tier of Holy.
Here’s the question I have: how often are we actually going to use Word of Glory?
Word of Glory, if you don’t recall, is an instant, mana-free heal that will utilize the new secondary resource system of Holy Power. Presumably, it increases in potency depending on if we have 1, 2 or 3 charges of Holy Power.
How do we gain Holy Power? Crusader Strike (which is now baseline) will give you a charge. Holy Shock will also give you a charge. And so will healing your beaconed target, if you have any points in Tower of Radiance (33%/66%/100% chance to grant you a charge of Holy Power). Question: Will healing your beacon with Holy Shock grant you two charges?
So it looks to me like we’ll have ample methods of gaining Holy Power. I don’t imagine we’ll be using Word of Glory more than every 10 seconds or so, depending on how gaining Holy Power goes.
The question that comes to mind now is, do we even want Last Word?
Here’s a build with no Last Word:
It picks up all the PVE talents in Holy, maxes them all out. That means .3 seconds off Holy Light and Divine Light (Clarity of Purpose) and the full three points in Tower of Radiance.
It picks up all the healing talents in the Retribution tree on the first two tiers that we’d want: Rule of Law (15% extra crit to Holy Shock and Word of Glory), Crusade (30% extra healing to Holy Shock), Conviction (3% extra healing after critting, stacks 3 times) and maxes all of them out, too.
Honestly, this is a really pretty-looking tree. No half-filled talents (which is awkward due to the 2 and 3 point talents versus 5 point talents, but still requiring five talents to advance to the next tier) and, do my eyes deceive me? No useless talents…
But if Last Word is actually useful in PVE, maybe we want to go back to something like this:
This steals a point from Clarity of Purpose and a point from Tower of Radiance and puts those points into Last Word. It leaves the healing talents in Retribution intact. Conviction is just too good.
But if we’re talenting into something that buffs Word of Glory (Last Word), does it make sense to gimp our Holy Power generation? Maybe not.
32/0/9 (Last Word, Tower of Radiance)
This will only lower your Holy Light and Divine Light cast times by .1 seconds instead of .2 or .3. I’m a huge fan of haste and anything that makes you cast anything faster, so this hurts to even consider, but I can only imagine that you’ll want to maximize your Holy Power Generation.
So, my dear readers, here’s my question to you if you’re in beta:
With Tower of Radiance (3/3), do you gain 2 charges of Holy Power if you use Holy Shock to heal your beacon target?
I think that if you do, you’ll want to maintain 3/3 Tower of Radiance and if not, you can probably drop to 2/3 Tower and get 2/3 Clarity of Purpose.
Anyone have an answer for us?
Or a beta invite for moi? ;)
ETA: I am now in Beta. Holy Power seems to be generated from:
– Crusader Strike
– Holy Shock
– Healing your beacon target with 3/3 Tower of Radiance (100% chance)
And yes, Holy Shocking your beacon target DOES grant you two charges of Holy Power.
I was wondering about that myself. On the other hand, haste might not be the great stat for us that it is now. It really depends on the pace of the encounters.
The way I see it, there are 2 possible scenarios, both equally likely due to the fact that we still know so little about how healing is going to be in Cataclysm.
1) You don’t have to keep casting to keep tanks alive. In this case, you won’t need bucketloads of haste. I’m not saying that having loads of haste is bad, far from it. But those 0.1-0.3 seconds might not matter as much as it does now. Just wondering – how much cast time is reduced with 30% haste? Holy Shock gives us a 30% spell haste bonus to Holy Light, so this might be crucial in determining how good or mediocre Clarity of Purpose really is (at this point, of course).
2) You have to keep casting to keep the tanks alive for a very long time. Think back to vanilla WoW. Long, epic encounters where healers can run out of mana, simply because they have to heal for such a long period of time. Cast time and haste would matter, even though the tanks should be capable of not dying without heals for a couple of seconds. You would be playing catch-up all the time, which isn’t exactly good, but possible.
My personal best guess would be the latter situation. This would allow for a healing model that Blizzard seems to aim for while still fitting in with the encounters as they were designed for previous expansions (read – not making them impossible to do at the appropriate level).
I just checked something. I might be wrong here, but maybe some more experienced theorycrafters can help out and correct me where necessary.
We’re supposed to use Holy Shock often, that’s obvious. We’re probably going to want that anyway. Now, we have a LOT of increased critical strike chance for Holy Shock and other healing spells, so Infusion of Light is probably going to proc a lot. Which means, a 1.5 second cast time reduction on Holy Light (our primary healing spell, even in Cataclysm). The base cast time of Holy Light is 3 seconds. With the IoL proc and without any haste, this would mean a cast time of 1.5 second for Holy Light.
Then there’s Clarity of Purpose. Depending on how much talent points you spend in that, you could be having as much as 0.3 second cast time reduction on Holy Light. Which would mean, without haste, a cast time of 1.2 second for Holy Light. Pretty nice, huh?
Last but not least: Speed of Light. A whopping 30% spell haste after every cast of Holy Shock. Not just the critical hits. Now, I’m not sure by how much this would further reduce the cast time of Holy Light, but.. yikes! That’s one bloody fast Holy Light, without any haste from gear accounted for!
The only thing we’ll have to worry about when casting Holy Shock (almost) on cooldown, is mana. Holy Shock costs 2% more of base mana than Holy Light. But, a critical Holy Shock costs less mana than a non-crit Holy Light. According to some source (can’t remember where I found it) Holy Shock is going to heal for almost as much as Holy Light. I can’t help but wonder what all this would do for us in Cataclysm.
For mana regeneration, crit is probably coming back as an important stat, with Illumination now working on all our spells. A 30% mana cost reduction is still a lot, even if it’s not 60% or 100% anymore. More crit means a LOT more in our case, it seems. I’m wondering if crit is going to become more important than haste. It could very well be, as throughput is going to become more important as well, and free throughput (not to mention 30% less mana usage) will be very welcome in Cataclysm.
Uhmm, sorry for the long-ass comment. I probably should’ve just made my own blog post for this.
Other than Sacred Shield, holy pallies don’t really have a Pain Suppression of their own, do they? There’s Hand of Sacrifice, which effectively means they take 30% less damage, and there’s Raid Wall* but in my experience, healers never really use those. I used HoSac in a recent H. Gundrak, and when I explained why I was suddenly taking damage on Moorabi, the rest of the party was thunderstruck. They had never heard of it before, and the healer WAS a pally. Of course, LFD isn’t the prime example of people who are willing to use their cooldowns intelligently…
I expect that Last Word will come in handy in a number of fights, though it probably won’t be /necessary/. Exceptionally useful to have, if you’re one of those players who will actually use it.**
Holy Shock coming back makes me smile. I’m not sure why.
* Can you stack Raid Wall and HoSac? For example, if a boss swing hits for 20k (after mitigation), with Raid Wall up, it would be down to 16k, with 30% of that going to you, meaning he would only take 11,200. If you have HoSac up as well, would the 30% be taken off the original damage (meaning the damage dealt to him would be down to a pitiful 6,400) or would it be applied after the Raid Wall, bringing it down to 7,840? Less practical application, more curiosity.
** I’ve heard paladins refuse to use Lay On Hands unless it’s an emergency. Which would make more sense if the tank didn’t just die after spending Ardent Defender, Divine Protection, and all of his mana on Holy Lights.
I want to be specced to have the Last Word. Just so I can say that.
Also, I am excited about this Cone Heal business! I hope we get to keep that.
@xmolder
In my experience, Hand of Sacrifice (the 30% or talented to 40%), Divine Guardian/Sacrifice, Pain Suppression, Shield Wall, and Divine Protection do not stack. I’d assume that Icebound Fort and Barkskin also do not stack with it. My timers in Forte will be cancelled if a stronger cooldown is applied and google (mainly pvp threads from Arena Junkies and the WoW forums) is telling me the same thing. Maybe this needs some testing in game.
Hand of Sacrifice is overlooked by many but very situational due to the fact that you can be in for a load of hurt—although it will auto cancel if you reach under 20% health, it will kill you if you take a chunk of damage in one hit.
I know that many guilds used Hand of Sacrifice + bubble as a cooldown to eat the Plasma Blast in Phase 1 Mimiron back in Ulduar. Used without bubble, say in H Saurfang or H Festergut, the ‘sacrifice’ talent gets tricky. I’ll pop Divine Protection + Hand of Sac on Inhale 3 (H Fester) if Pain Suppression is down (bubble clears your inoculations), but that’s living dangerously. Popping it on the first pull of Marrowgar to eat some of the initial tank’s damage? Fine. Your raid team just needs to understand the mechanics of the cooldown.
tldr: Hand of Sacrifice can be talented to be just as powerful as Pain Suppression, but is dangerous. Many paladins do not use it because they do not remember they have it.
@ Kaboomski
I’m curious about doing more math on the subject, but 30% haste* (@l80) is equal to 984 haste rating**. The formula for figuring out how haste effects your casting time (from the base time + talented reductions) is:
% Spell Haste at level 80 = (Haste Rating / 32.79)
New Casting Time = Base Casting Time / (1 + (% Spell Haste / 100))**
Napkin time!
So, let’s assume that you have no haste stacked except for the Speed of Light Proc.
Holy Light + Clarity of Purpose + Infusion (Proc) + Speed of Light (Proc) = 1.2 seconds
% Spell Haste at level 80 = (984 / 32.79) = 30.01
New Time = 1.2 / (1 + (30.01 / 100))***
New Time = .92300
Adjust as needed based upon your haste. I did not include Seals of the Pure since this assumes you have no haste and the talent scales with your current haste rating.
* Which is, curiously, 10% more than Icy Veins/Beserking and 5% more than Bloodlust and Borrowed Time (which was removed from the disc tree) currently.
** Via Wowwikki and Zalambar
*** I was an art major. My math may totally be wrong. Be warned.
@xmolder: I’ve wondered about that myself, but some friendly Holy pally blogger informed me that they, in fact, do NOT stack. Unfortunately. And, “Raid Wall” isn’t going to be around for Holy paladins in Cataclysm.
I can only speak for myself, but I would say that I tend to just forget that I have HoSac. I use it when I remember I have it and the situation calls for it. Healing random heroics really helps to train that reflex, btw. Loads of damage flying around where it shouldn’t be.
Personally, I think we’ll want to use Word of Glory pretty often to save mana (as it costs none) provided it heals for a decent amount (which I am expecting). I can’t wait to try out Light of Dawn, btw. The animation is awesome, I have high expectations of it. It wouldn’t have a 10 second cooldown if it wasn’t powerful, right?
@Walks: Haha, you read my mind there. I just said in the above comment that I tend to forget to use it, but use it when I remember I have it.
And would you believe I even forgot about JotP? Another 9% haste to keep in mind. Damnit! This keeps getting better and better.. If we trust your math, I think Holy Shock is going to be an awesome boost for providing quick Holy Light casts. I mean, what if we *did* take haste from gear into the equation? Could it result in 0.5 second HL casts? Gimme!
@ Kamboomerific
Well, all logic says that we’ll need more haste rating to gain 1% haste at 85, but I do not want to figure out that hypothetical math. Here’s some math on if all of my haste was taken into account + a judgement:
994 Haste Rating from Gear
984 Haste Rating from Speed of Light (30% Haste)
295 Haste Rating from Seals of the Pure (9% Haste)
—————————–
2273 Haste Rating
% Spell Haste at level 80 = (2273 / 32.79) = 69.32% Haste
New Time = 1.2 / 1.6932 = .7087 seconds
(Haste Rating Percentage calculator found here, which was mislinked above.)
Right now we have no idea what haste looks like on gear. Kurn had mentioned that we were loosing 30% haste from all gear anyway, but who knows how much haste we’ll have at the new level cap.
That animation I linked before may be place-holder. It is currently the animation for the sonic horn weapon on the bikes in Ulduar. Still, I loved that animation then and would be happy if it stuck around. :D (Total Biscuit’s Tauren Paladin videos currently show Word having the same animation as Flash and Holy Light do now. Who wants to bet that Divine Light will have the same sparkle effect as the rest of our heals?)
Oh God, I wake up and there’s math in my comments…
Kaboomski – I’m thinking that it’s going to be the former rather than the latter, actually. Health pools are going to be stupidly huge and with the changes to parry (only 50% mitigation, no longer avoidance!) and block (30% mitigation?), it seems like the bosses won’t need to hit as often, but will cause more damage. However, with a bigger health pool, we shouldn’t have to chain cast the way we do now. I hope it’s something between your two scenarios, really. I miss healing as a reaction rather than preventatively.
If it’s the second scenario, that’s where haste will come in and Speed of Light is going to be huge.
As to the cast time on Holy Light, my holy lights ARE 1.2 seconds with raid buffs, gear, Light’s Grace and JotP up, haha. But you bring up a good point — Holy Light is moving from 2.5 seconds base cast time to 3 seconds.
I’m doubtful that Holy Shock will heal for the same as Holy Light:
Cataclysm tooltip for Holy Shock: Blasts the target with Holy energy, causing 1399 to 1515 Holy damage to an enemy, or 3938 to 4266 healing to an ally, and grants a charge of Holy Power.
Cataclysm tooltip for Holy Light (@85): Heals a friendly target for 3881 to 4323.
The base numbers are similar, but if the spell coefficients don’t change substantially:
Holy Light currently takes 166% of your spellpower as its spell power coefficient.
Holy Shock currently takes 80.57% of your spellpower as its spell power coefficient.
Just with that, Holy Light wins.
HOWEVER, in the talents, we have:
Healing Light – 30% more healing to Holy Shock
Crusade – 30% more healing to Holy Shock
I still have to put my money on Holy Light hitting for more, though. Extending the cast time, even with the cast time reductions, would only make sense if they’re upping the coefficient (~200% instead of 166%, the way Healing Touch and Greater Heal have, properly talented, or 181%, the way Healing Wave has when properly talented).
xmolder – HoSac/Divine Sacrifice which, no, do not stack. We are pretty much the “heal through it” gods.
Enlynn – Hahaha, tempting, I know! :) And Light of Dawn does look pretty awesome from beta videos that I’ve seen!
Walks – okay, first of all, thank you for doing this “math” thing. Second of all, I love that you were an art major and that’s your disclaimer. ;)
For Mimiron’s Plasma Blast, I used to use HoSac and wouldn’t even bubble. I’d beacon the tank and heal myself and that worked just fine and dandy, leaving my bubble free in case I lagged out or something on … whatever the circular attack was that would RUIN people.
I admit I’m awful at remembering HoSac. I’ll DS/DS instead, most of the time.
Kaboomski – The one thing we need to remember about this supposedly super-fast casts is that there’s nothing telling us that the hard-cap on the 1s GCD is going to change. Granted, the heal landing faster than one second would be great, but we’d still be like “dammit, I hate you, GCD!!!”
My thinking is probably that they’re going to nerf all this haste stuff OR we’re going to have to have these fast casts available to us. Thinking on it, if we’ve got TALENTS for .1/.2/.3 seconds off Holy Light (and Divine Light, remember), then HOLY CRAP, we might actually really need those points.
Man, I’m all over the place here.
Walks – heh, the spam catcher snagged your second comment, sorry!
The amount of haste to equal 1% haste more than doubled from 70 (15.77) to 80 (32.79).
I think we can safely assume we’ll require at least 50 haste rating to hit 1% haste at 85.
What’ll be interesting is to see how much haste, if any, is included on gear.
Okayyyyyyy.
http://cata.wowhead.com/items?filter=na=stormforged;minle=285
619 haste from the Blacksmithing stuff, ranging from 80-82 + the shield.
I think we’ll have a lot of haste in general, which may mean the haste rating to percent will probably get bumped up more than I’m thinking.
Well, I couldn’t find the source earlier, but I did see a blue post somewhere stating that Holy Shock will probably heal for as much as Holy Light. It might be that I’m mistaken and it’s actually a Holy Shock *crit* compared to a regular Holy Light, which would make sense.
Also, Blizzard has already stated that caps of any kind will be much harder, if not impossible, to hit. Plus, they will NOT lower the GCD. I’m thinking that, indeed, you will need a LOT more haste to get 1%. The talents we have in beta now do help a bunch though! What I meant in my comment before was that, even *without* gear and buffs, you would have 1.2 second Holy Light casts. Because it will be hard to hit the GCD cap with haste from gear, I’m thinking Holy Light’s cast time could dive under the GCD. I can’t imagine a 1.2 second GCD without haste from gear, or raid buffs. Mind you, 1.2 second isn’t taking the 30% spell haste from Speed of Light into account.
That said (phew!), haste will probably still be awesome for us, at least to lower the GCD. But if we’re not casting all the time, then haste matters less, right? That’s why I think that we’re probably still going to have to ABC, but fights will take longer. The larger health pools could function as a buffer for those moments where you need to “do stuff to regain mana”.