Thanks to Boubouille at MMO-Champion, we have a list of forthcoming changes to holy paladins for the 4.2 patch.
Holy
- Beacon of Light now heals for 100% of the amount when Holy Light is used.
- Holy Shock now costs 7% of base mana, down from 9%.
- Infusion of Light now also affects Flash of Light.
Well, now. Isn’t that interesting?
Let’s look at them one-by-one.
The Beacon of Light Change
My preferred method of healing is to beacon the tank I am healing for Tower of Radiance procs when I inevitably use Divine Light or, occasionally, Flash of Light, to heal my target. During “down times”, I can easily toss Holy Shocks or Holy Lights on the raid and I do that frequently on normal-mode fights and even on heroic Chimaeron (since I’m not tank-healing that fight and my beacon is on the “DPS” tank).
The change to Beacon means that we can put our Beacon on a tank and not look at them too often, particularly if we’re healing other targets (including another tank, perhaps) a lot with Holy Light. This still isn’t enough for us to solo-heal two targets, the way we did in Wrath of the Lich King (heroic Saurfang was a great spot for this) but it’s a welcome change. During periods of low tank damage, I can spread the love around the raid with Holy Light and know that my tank is still getting 100% of those heals.
My Holy Light hits for a modest 11k or thereabouts, critting for close to 16k. But in 4.2, with 100% crits, that Holy Light that will transfer from a raid member to my tank will hit for ~22k if it crits.
Suddenly, the Beacon of Light change looks a LOT better and so does healing “off-target”, so to speak.
Holy Shock
I mentioned this in an earlier post, but I guess it got posted because the change has actually made it into the PTR build. While Holy Light, Divine Light and Flash of Light will all get bumped in cost, Holy Shock will drop in cost, if only slightly. And it means that, with our 2pc T12 bonus procced, Holy Shock will only cost us 1% of base mana (234 mana), which isn’t too bad.
Infusion of Light
Man, I remember when this made Holy Light instant-cast in the Wrath beta… Anyways, this is most likely a PVP-related change. That said, this could be clutch for getting your target an extra 20k or so, on a non-crit. And, again, with 100% healing crits in 4.2, that’s potentially an instant 40k when Infusion of Light procs.
Tweeting about this the other night was amusing.
I said:
WHOAH. HOLD THE PHONE. “Infusion of Light now also affects Flash of Light.” Instant FoLs again????
Chase Christian, of WoW Insider, responded:
@kurnmogh Instantly drains your manas!
Although I laughed at that, he’s not wrong. In 4.2, assuming the mana cost remains 31% of base mana for Flash of Light, that’s 7261 mana for each cast of that spell. I mean, sometimes you might need to haul it out, especially if it’s instant, but Flash of Light is REALLY still just an emergency heal.
Other Stuff
That post at MMO-Champion also links some new data-mined items, including intellect plate items. The off-set helm is very similar to the tier helm, but instead of haste, has mastery. Definitely worth checking out to see what we can expect to drop in Firelands.
I think the Holy Light change will be very nice in combination with the Crit changes and gear upgrades. Extra haste on t12 gear should make it not take forever. Who knows, maybe we’ll see a return to the old school Flash-spam paladins except now they’ll be Crit & Haste stacking while chaining Holy Light.
I know we get ‘free’ output with holy power, but I’m still jealous of stuff like Omen of Clarity and Surge of Light. My favorite anecdote from the 4.0 healing changes was a poster at PlusHeal.com who mentioned he OOM’d himself spamming Flash of Light on Valithria. With 25 stacks of Emerald Vigor. Supposedly there’s a bug on the PTR, too, which doesn’t clear the Infusion buff when you Flash – giving you 15 seconds worth of instants.
Yeah, I guess I had no other use for that mana. :P
Hey Kurn, I love your blog and your insights, which is why I’m coming to you for this. Can you at some point put up some thoughts on the new Holy Paladin gear in the Zul instances? I keep trying to google for it, but no sites or pally bloggers have done a proper review of the gear besides including it in lists without any comparison.
I know you’re busy, but I wouldn’t trust anyone else but you to properly help us get our heads round the 4.1 gear and if we should bother with it – it all seems to be horribly itemised with crit and mastery anyway, and I’m tempted to stick with my 4.0.6 pre-raid BiSes (which I of course got from your list).
Thanks and keep up the good work!
Joe Ego – I agree, I think the extra boost to crit heals will be lovely when it comes to using Holy Light and now especially so with Beacon. I’m not sure how it’ll change my own healing methods or preferences, but I guess we’ll have to see. All it really reaffirms for me is that mastery is still bad and crit is definitely better than mastery.
The trouble with Holy Power is that we can get it in a variety of ways and OoC and SoL are much more random, really. HP is easy to get and opens up access to LoD, which we can’t cast otherwise. So our resource HAS to be more reliable than OoC and SoL. But I am moderately envious of those classes anyways.
Sunstriders – I’ll definitely integrate ZG/ZA stuff in an upcoming post!
Thanks for your comment. :)