A new beta build, 13066, was released on the weekend. Here are the changes from the MMO-Champion post that I believe affect holy paladins.
Holy
* Spiritual Focus no longer gives you hit based on your Spirit. Renamed to Paragon of Virtue – Reduces the cooldown of your Divine Protection by 10/20 sec and the cooldown of your Avenging Wrath by 30/60 sec.
* Enlightened Judgements now also grants hit rating equal to 50/100% of any Spirit gained from items or effects.
Okay, so hit is now dumped into Enlightened Judgements. We now have our range and our hit and we get some passive healing every time we judge. Okay.
Paragon of Virtue is interesting. Avenging Wrath is only 3 minutes anyways, so being able to pop it every 2 or 2.5 minutes is… interesting. Also interesting — actually, you know, I’d go so far as to say nifty — is that it changes Divine Protection’s cooldown, which is currently one minute. 20% less damage for 10 seconds every minute is hot. 20% less damage for 10 seconds every 40-50 seconds is downright nifty. Especially considering the prot changes.
Protection
* Divine Shield’s Forbearance effect no longer affects Divine Protection.
* Hand of Protection’s Forbearance effect no longer affects Divine Protection.
So we can now pop Divine Protection without getting Forbearance on us, which means we can still bubble if something’s coming to get us. And I just tried it out — Avenging Wrath does not prevent you from bubbling and does not give you Forbearance. I was able to pop wings and bubble immediately thereafter.
How, then, does this change what I found to be the ideal build?
Not too darn much, actually.
It’s pretty much the same as the last build. I’m in favour of 2/2 Enlightened Judgements. Not only does it give us our extra 5/10 yards back, but it now also adds hit rating from our spirit AND gives us passive healing.
If I could find a way to do it, I would sneak a point to grab 2/2 Paragon of Virtue. But I don’t see where to steal the point.
But wait, there’s more!
MMO-Champion is reporting that build 13082 is coming out to the PTRs and that there’s a change in the ret tree.
Rule of Law no longer increases the critical effect chance of Holy Shock, affects Hammer of the Righteous instead.
Now, this was to be expected, really, if you’ve been reading blue posts.
Ghostcrawler said on the 25th:
We’re going to try to get the 10 points Holy spends in other trees to be a little less cookie-cutterish. Options include making Divinity or Rule of Law not healing related.
And there we have it. Rule of Law is not healing related except for the extra crit to Word of Glory. But as it is, Divinity is worth more than Rule of Law as it stands (extra crit to Holy Shock and Word of Glory) but now, that option has effectively been removed from us, at least in 13086.
My question here is, how on earth does removing Rule of Law from our equation make things less cookie-cutter? We had some great discussion about where to put points and if Divinity is worth it or not and so if we chose not to pick up Divinity, we could grab Rule of Law. Now without Rule of Law, it’s literally a no-brainer.
You go for 6% extra healing done to and by you. You go for 30% chance for your WoG not to consume holy power. You go for 20 extra yards on judgements. You go for 30% extra healing done by Holy Shock.
What are your other options? Filling out Protector of the Innocent (which is horribly bugged at the moment, healing the target of your heal and mirroring that fully via beacon)? What about Denounce? Oh, wait, I know! Let’s get Arbiter of the Light. :P
If they keep the change to Rule of Law AND change Divinity to not be healing-related, I’d fill out Paragon and get two points in Pursuit of Justice or Guardian’s Favor:
Honestly, I don’t know how removing our healing options gets rid of the cookie-cutter. Anyone out there able to explain it to me?
In other beta news, I healed a regular Lost City today. It was fine. A quest was bugged in that we didn’t get credit for it, but I really do like this whole notion of questgivers right inside the instance entrance, much like Utgarde Pinnacle.
That’s about all for now. More at some point later. I’m feeling pretty bewildered by all this at the moment.
Just FYI: Paragon of Virtue isn’t working on the Beta at the moment. Sticking points in the talent does not effect the cooldown of Avenging Wrath or Divine Protection.
The Protector of the Innocent bug is hilarious, but it shows how we’re still kind of lacking in the numbers department. The healing boost really helps.
Honestly? The tree is still very sad and, despite the best efforts of people on the forums, Blizzard seems to have a certain “this is what a paladin healer is” mindset that they’re sticking to.
Hey, maybe they can take some of those healing bonuses (like 30% extra healing to Holy Shock) and put it into Arbiter of the Light!
It’s late and I’m tired, I’ve drafted two or three comments on cookie cutter specs and none of them make sense. Maybe in the morning.
I am not sure if they will ever succeed in making non cookie cutter specs anyway. Someone somewhere will put the work in and figure out what’s best with what gear and for what encounter.
Kurn have you played around with the new grid-like party frames much at all? I was wondering if you can change their layout from stacking vertically to stacking horizontally?
Walks – Gotta love buggy talents, eh?
It’s sad to say, but it’s true — in my Lost City run, PotI was my second heal:
613961 20.2%
This IS a very sad state of the tree, in my opinion. I feel like I should want to put more than 31 points into Holy and that I should want to put more than 5 points into my first tier.
jeffo – hahaha, nice. :) I look forward to reading what you have to say about cookie cutters.
Sagan – I completely agree that, eventually, a cookie-cutter spec will be found and used. But it shouldn’t be (IMHO) completely obvious right off the bat. We have some choices today, although I naturally prefer a prot support tree. It wasn’t blatantly obvious that a 52/17/0 tree with 2 floater points was The Way To Go back when WotLK launched. I’m pretty sure I was specced 51/5/15 at launch, picking up kings in prot and down through conviction in ret.
Eventually, someone will figure out “the best” spec. But I hate that it’s so completely obvious right now, because it eliminates most any choice.
As to the frames, if someone can tell me how to make them horizontal, I will give you 500g. ;D It’s hard to mess with them because, unlike Grid, you can’t make them show up when you’re not grouped. I’ve played a little — they actually show me health values now. But everything else about them drives me nuts. Health goes from full on the right to empty on the left (I prefer full at the top and empty at the bottom), the frames are vertical as opposed to horizontal and they show too many icons, but not enough information all at the same time.
WTB working Grid for PTRs!
To be honest…all these changes to holy make me befuddled. I love my Paladin, but not sure if healing on it will be fun still. (I know my priest for sure if getting to 85 1st, but not sure if the paladin will make the jump to 85 asap as well.)
Blizzard doesnt want cookie cutter spec, but i got a feeling it is going to happen anyways, or something very close to it with very little variation.
Well the upside is that I’m pretty sure they’re not done. I was hoping to see PTR go live this week or next.. but I’m thinking it’ll actually launch in October after the end of the current arena season.
Anyway, I still hate PotI. I know a lot of people are saying they love it, even in its bugged form, but why do people like it? It seems like a lazy work around to increasing Conviction procs. What I gather, is most people really like it because of the healing it provides coming in as their second heal on a run. Is that all that it takes to be “good”? I don’t know, I just don’t like it because its not a choice, the heal. It’s just free healing. I can understand people liking it because it makes healing instances easier (which is what people want to run on beta, etc.) but I’d rather see us get fixed in other ways other than a bandaid solution. What if it turns out that paladins end up first on the healing meters in raids, and 50% overheal due to that one talent? I just see more BoL-hate-type arguments.
I would disagree with there being an “ultimate” cookie-cutter build in Wrath (and definitely at the launch of Wrath). Now, 51+x/20-x/0 x=[0,3] is pretty much the progression raiding build, but at launch Divine Guardian didn’t exist. Not to mention divine purpose was reachable by holy specs leading to the 31/0/30 pvp build. Looking at some paladins from other guilds and different progression stages, even the 51+x talents chosen in holy are different.
I’m enjoying a lot of the perspectives being tossed up on the healing forums about talents, but frankly I’m surprised a lot of people just dismiss one talent at being better than another just from reading it. I agree it’s hard to pass up on 6% flat out healing effectiveness, but to me RoL provided a playstyle change and wasn’t a straight up loser. Crit heals provide a lot more in Cataclysm than in Wrath so to see people just ignore it out right upsets me. Then again, blizzard doesn’t want players to have to go to third party sites to find the “ultimate” healing spec. So, in that respect I understand their decision to not have two talents fighting over points for increased healing effectiveness.
I honestly do believe there is room for choice in our build (currently there are some choices in max PotI, EJ, PoV, Denounce?) but not many. I will admit to being more and more saddened by the direction our trees are going, but considering with each disappointment it is clear blizz is sticking to their goal, that does bring me up a bit. I find solace in the fact that blizz is doing their best to give us what they told us they were going to do. I would be more upset if I didn’t like the trees, and blizz were going against their stated goals.
At the end of the day, as long as we can heal and it’s fun to heal, I’ll be happy. Here’s a question.. should our holy tree have more interaction with our actual heals, or is there enough and our utility or active abilities are lacking? What do people find.. lacking or sad about our trees with respect to healing?
Succinct is something I have always had a trouble with. Damn you Fallout and your verbose setting!!!!! (I take that back, I love you Fallout).
slice – Exactly. Befuddled is a great word for it. Healing, it seems, is going to be a frustrating experience in Cataclysm, but I imagine it’ll be ultimately rewarding, if we succeed. Hopefully.
There’s always a cookie cutter spec that shows up eventually. You can’t escape it. Someone does the math and shares their results. I don’t know how you can stop that.
Rahmiel – My guess for the PTR release is the week of or the week after the current arena season ends, personally.
PotI is ridiculous. I still hate it, myself. Sure, in its bugged form, it’s useful. But why not just bake that into our heals? Obviously, it’s not intended to work the way it currently does, so we can’t really tell what the final result will be.
You nailed what I think about it, though:
I just don’t like it because its not a choice, the heal. It’s just free healing.
That.
When I heal someone, I want to make the conscious choice to do something that will heal someone. Whether it’s cast a direct heal on someone, judge light (on live), hit Light of Dawn, run into a group of people with Holy Radiance up… That’s what I want. I don’t like PotI or the healing part of Enlightened Judgements because I’m not making a choice to heal. For EJ, I’m judging to get JotP up and that’s about it. For PotI, I don’t even have to do anything.
Hm. Perhaps I wasn’t clear when talking about cookie cutters…
In Wrath, at the start, there was no definitive “best spec”, but over nearly two years, we have evolved to the 51/17 with 3 floaters, absolutely, and yes, Divine Guardian’s introduction and the nerf to Illumination played heavily into that. But these days, most progression HL-style holy paladins should be at least 51 holy (52 w/ Aura Mastery) and 17 into prot (through DivGuardian) with 2 points elsewhere (mine are in Imp Conc Aura, but Benediction or Blessed Hands are very viable). There are a variety of specs that are usable, but if your pally has 3/3 Blessed Life instead of, say, Light’s Grace, that’s pretty poor speccing. ;)
However, in Cataclysm, if these talents go live, I cannot see viable alternatives to the 31/5/5 that I’ve selected — potentially only messing with Paragon and EJ, really, to get 31 in holy.
You say that Blizz is doing their best to give us what they told us they were going to do. What is that, exactly? Move us to a three-heal system, check. But we can’t use the heals frequently. We’re stuck with HS and WoG and more HS, with Holy Light as filler and very sparse usage of FoL and Divine Light, and very occasional Holy Radiance and Light of Dawn. IMHO.
I think our active abilities are lacking. PotI is just flat-out ridiculous and is a PVP talent at best and yet we’re forced to take 2/3 PotI or 2/2 Arbiter of the Light. Ridiculous.
I find it sad that I don’t want to take every single point in holy. I think I should want to. I understand that there have to be choices for prot and ret in our first two tiers as well, but it’s not hard to link those damage talents to healing talents or Holy Power talents. Holy Power benefits us all for different reasons. Why not have talents in the first two tiers of holy that are attractive to all three specs? What’s wrong with extra crit on Holy Light through Arbiter of the Light? (Or was it Blazing Light?) Why not make Blazing Light interesting to holy pallies by adding in bonus healing to Holy Shock, which is restricted to Holy anyways? There are a lot of talents that I feel I’m actively avoiding or unhappy about taking, like Arbiter, PotI, Blazing Light, Denounce, that should have some healing components to them, not damage components or passive self-healing (in the case of PotI).
That’s what I find lacking and sad, to be honest. You look at any of the other healer trees and it’s like “this is a good talent… ooh, can I afford to get rid of it for this one in this other tree?”
Whereas for us, I find that I struggle to drop 31 points into holy just so I can get OUT of there and grab Eternal Glory, Divinity, Improved Judgement and Crusade. I don’t even really LIKE Crusade, but that’s a 30% buff to Holy Shock’s healing, so we kind of don’t have a choice there.
As to being succinct, clearly I feel that’s a dirty word, so be as long-winded as you like ;)
Kurn! Did you see the gear updates listed? I haven’t seen the formula for Spirit regen for Cataclysm (I’m running off the assumption that it’s the same as it is now, just that paladins and shaman get to use it the same way priests and druids do), but the PvP sets seem crazy good. It really does appear to be a return to the days of “welfare epics” in TBC. Part of me is very grumbly about that, part of me likes that PvP gear will be so awesome again. The set bonuses are what really do it for me. Insanely good, when compared to all other pre-raid gear.
I’m really not happy about the shear amount of crit I’m seeing on healadin gear so far, especially with the lack of haste. Has it somehow gained in throughput from how it is now? I can’t help but feel very unhappy with them really cramming crit on all our gear -after- being rid of what was tempting about it…
@Kurn
You bring up a lot of good points in your post. What would be the issue if EG were moved to tier 1 holy? I mean.. it’d be helpful and fitting to be in holy. Does prot need it that badly to level? Maybe. I’m thinking there’s a lot that can be done to improve our “choices” and excite us to move down the holy tree to spend points better.
If blazing light moved to tier 1, I’d grab it as part of my 5 points. It’s 2 points, which rounds out JotP nicely, and gets me to tier 2. The next 5 points are pretty obvious at that point. Tier 3, some people have been saying they do not appreciate infusion of light, and perhaps that needs some reworking. Especially if DL and FoL are eating up IoL procs. Perhaps IoL could offer some crit as well on the haste HL? Or passive crit to HS? Or.. something? 50% mana reduction on HL as well? Sure.. HL is our cheap heal as well, but every drop counts, right? Anyway, should IoL stay as is, or not.. that’s up for debate (as well as its linkage to SoL). I personally do not have that big an issue with it, so to me.. everything’s pretty good in holy past that right up to LoD as far as finding talents to spend points in.
I would be careful in looking at other healer’s talent trees. Our classes are supposed to be different, and do work differently even with the 3 basic heal system. It’s okay to look for inspiration, but I find more often than not that when people look at other class’ trees, they rehash a lot of the mechanics. And that’s just no fun. Let’s look at how our class plays and how our talents mesh together and find what’s lacking. I just don’t want to end up like DKs, where they have the resources of a warrior and rogue, spell dmg like a mage, plate of a warrior, self healing of a paladin, twitch play of instants like a rogue.. I don’t want to be the healing mirror of that. (but again, that’s just me so ignore that if you do want to be like that)
What I meant by Blizz sticking strong to their goals, was one of GC’s original comments regarding healers and talent trees. I can go digging for it if you’d like to see it. I distinctly remember GC talking about being able to spend 20-something odd talent points in your healing tree on your primary role (healing) and having the rest as utility/quality of life talents. And I pretty much do see that. Agreed, the ret and prot trees hosted some +healing abilities in the past and we all found those interesting to invest in. However that did seem at odds with their stated design. Also, it ignited some debate and discussion as to whether RoL or Divinity were better. Exactly the kind of thing they’ve said they do not want to happen. They want speccing to be obvious so someone looking at your spec doesn’t suddenly say “OMG, you picked up RoL instead of Divinity” and kick you, or call you a newb, scrub, etc and force new players to find a third party website in order to find the “ultimate” spec. They want all the primary role talents to be picked, and the rest playstyle type.
To that effect, I think they are accomplishing their goal. RoL has lost its appeal for me. Further, I think Divinity should go because it’s suddenly mandatory and sitting in the protection tree. (I’m thinking healing done to you will stay, but healing done by you will go). Now, if there are no +healing talents left in prot or ret, then there will be more choices in holy, such as “Do I max out denounce and pick up blazing light? or do I go for PoJ, SotP and imp HoJ? Enlightened Judgements?” The discussion then becomes.. are our holy talents that improve our primary role good enough? Perhaps those need some extra polish, or a secondary effect. Perhaps our base spells will see a larger base healing than other classes? Or more efficiency to make up for how we’re looking?
Also up for discussion/debate is.. is this design any good? Should we only have 25 or so healing talents?
I am in agreement with you on lower tier holy not having more +heal in it though. It seems as though lower tier holy has a lot of straight up ret stuff in it. I’d grab BL as holy if I had the points to spend, but currently I do not. Ret however, they can. AotL? Ret wants, as well as JotP. So.. what *does* holy want? PotI? Oh yay, free healing that’s not a choice and will inevitably be nerfed or tuned down. How fun is that? As gear improves, how exactly will PotI help us out? It won’t, it’ll just make encounters hit that much harder, or do that much more passive damage to counter our t1 talent. Talk about f’in garbage.
So.. if lower tier holy has more benefit for the other specs, why doesn’t lower tier ret/prot have like.. LoD buffs? Maybe ret reduces the cooldown, while prot gives us an armor buff when cast? That’d be interesting. Sure, prot and ret won’t take them.. but we don’t take AotL!! Plus, it gives us something to look forward to after we pick up LoD. Essentially, t1 ret and prot could be talents 32-40 in holy. At least, that’s how I feel t1 holy is (for prot and ret trees).
I do know one thing though. Holy has always always ALWAYS been *the* paladin spec. It has never been “non-viable” (is that even a word?) If it’s undertuned or holy paladins are getting passed over for other healers, we’ll see buffs, and quickly. Possibly BoL back to 100% xfer, lololololololol (kidding). I do not see blizz giving up on us, or life as a long painful under appreciated class in the xpac. I wish we could see behind the curtain on what they’re working on, or the balance of numbers they want us to be at. Clearly, they don’t want any heal being 40% or more of our healing done. They want a nice distribution. If FoL and DL are not being used, they’ll nerf abilities/spells all over the place until we do. I don’t think there’s any way they want WotLK HL paladins to work in Cata (and this goes for any class as we saw with an efficient heal nerf across the board). If BoL+HL spam on tanks with HS and WoG on OT/raid/party members is the only healing they do, and FoL, DL, LoD, and HR sit on the sidelines.. I’m sure more nerfs will come in. It’s a fine line they’re walking, and I wouldn’t like to do it.. but.. damn, now i’m rambling. Point is.. we’ll be viable as healers and wanted as healers.
Tier one holy could improve, or we should see some nice high level holy stuff in ret/prot, imo. I don’t know if holy needs more interaction with itself though. We have some good HS => SoL, HP and HS crits = IoL, conviction, HP; HL, FoL, DL on BoL => HP generation.. perhaps we could use one more interaction talent, something that links FoL and DL, or HL crits => FoL and DL mana reduction?
I feel like we’re close to holy being set, but that’s only because I’m thinking mechanically and ability wise, we have enough. I don’t think we need more buttons to push. Then comes the numbers pass. If we’re found to be lacking then, then I really don’t know what. They must have knobs they can adjust or add passive % crit or % heal to talents that *are* mandatory. But all in all.. I am happy with how it’s looking. Whether or not holy is effective, that’s something that cannot be determined from descriptions.
I, for one, just feel like our play-style has not gained any complexity with all of these superfluous dps or passive healing talents. It’s seemingly like no one is quite sure what makes a Holy Paladin a Holy Paladin aside from beacon—in attempts to patch our abilities up to be on par with other classes, we’re starting to look a lot like priests in plate. Long cooldowns and ms-effects feel like a way of restraining our healing abilities for no apparent reason. QQ.
I feel another long Beta forums post coming on. We have no synergies with our non healing abilities (ala smite/atonement/heal/weakened soul archangel or unleash elements/focused insight/tidal waves). WTB more complexity and less “you’re automatically healed! Go team Paladin!”
But, you know. There are a lot of frustrations about life and this game right now and I’m letting them get to me by cycling my hyper focus onto making paladins better. ._.
Hi Kurn – just to let you know it seems one can chnage the orientation of the Healing frames as detailed in this Wow Insider post: http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/10/01/raid-rx-the-evolving-healing-ui/
“Actually, if you look at the shot above this one where it shows the frames, you can control how to stack the frames using the lower gray bar. You can have them stack five across or five vertically (or a combination of the two). There’s an option for using class colors as the colors of health bars. “