A Quick Look at Cataclysm Build 12942

Given the maintenance happening now on the beta realms and information from MMO-Champion, it appears that a new build (12942) is being released.

With it, according to MMO-Champion, there are some changes that will affect Holy Paladins.

* Holy Shock base healing has been reduced by 30%.

Reducing the potency of what has become our go-to heal (strange DK tanks who heal themselves for 17k aside) is a real head-scratcher. I can’t wait to check out the numbers. My Holy Shock in an instance (with various buffs like kings, spellpower, etc) seems to hit for about 8.5k and crit for about 12.5k.

* Beacon of Light now has a 60 yards radius, up from 40 yards. Now affects all heals instead of just Holy Light and Holy Shock.

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. Even Light of Dawn was working with Beacon of Light in the last build.

[22:48:24.267] Madrana Light of Dawn Bear +0 (O: 5994)
[22:48:24.267] Madrana Light of Dawn Gullo +4038
[22:48:24.267] Madrana Light of Dawn Wastecoat +0 (O: 3904)
[22:48:25.090] Madrana Beacon of Light Shiramune +2140
[22:48:25.091] Madrana Beacon of Light Shiramune +2019
[22:48:25.091] Madrana Beacon of Light Shiramune +1952

* Tower of Radiance no longer affects Holy Shock.

Well, that’s annoying. I guess they don’t want us to be able to gain Holy Power by 2 charges when we heal the beacon target with Holy Shock. That’s not game-breaking, but it’s discouraging, particularly when paired with the nerfing of Holy Shock’s healing.

The only other change that really affects PVE healing is this:

* Eternal Glory  now has a 15/30% chance to proc, down from 20/40%.

Still no better use for those two talent points, if you ask me. Eternal Glory is amazing when it procs.

Edited to add:

Totally forgot to talk about this, sorry:

Seal of Insight now restores 4% of the paladin’s base mana instead of his/her maximum mana.

There goes our mana regen and basically any reason to stand in melee at all ever. Which is okay by me, since I didn’t make a ton of use of this, but this is definitely going to hurt.

Kurn’s Conclusion

Nerfbat to the shin. At least it wasn’t to the face. I’ll report back after my raid tonight and such after I’ve had a chance to see what the nerfage looks like in terms of real numbers.

Oh, also, Holy T11 set bonuses:

  • Item – Paladin T11 Holy 2P Bonus – Increases the critical strike chance of your Holy Light spell by 5%. / Instant
  • Item – Paladin T11 Holy 4P Bonus – Whenever your Holy Radiance spell is active, you gain 1620 Spirit. / Instant

The 2pc is kind of meh. The 4pc is perhaps a bit interesting. That is a whackload of Spirit, which, if you’ll remember, is a regen stat for us. Could it be to help us offset the cost of Holy Radiance? For a minute there I thought it was to help us benefit better from Innervate, but it’s been a while since Innervate was based on spirit!

More later!

7 Replies to “A Quick Look at Cataclysm Build 12942”

  1. Not Holy Shock! Please not holy shock! I have always wanted that spell to be viable. I hope it isn’t hurt too badly.

    There is a strange icon on wowhead called spell_paladin_divinecircle. It could just refer to holy radiance though… but maybe it’s a new spell?

  2. Wasselin – I honestly don’t think you need to worry about it not being viable. Everything points to it being a spell you basically use on cooldown — the cheap mana cost, the fact that it generates our holy power…

    They’re just trying to make life difficult for us. :P

  3. Viable isn’t really the right word. I want to want to cast holy shock. I loved that in beta so far was a really, really good spell. I don’t want it to be a holy light that has an instant cast time, that’s just not cool.

  4. Wasselin – You will be casting Holy Shock a lot. I suspect it’ll still be slightly stronger than Holy Light. Details later. :)

  5. That’s not a Nerf Bat, that’s an Epic Two-Handed War Maul of Nerfing with a +100 Nastiness enchant.

    So, lemme get this straight… they’ve nerfed Divine Plea so that we can use it half as much and it gives us 60% less mana.

    They may be taking away Illumination… so goodbye mana from crits.

    They’ve now nerfed Seal of Wisdom to give tiny little mana bits back, instead of the giant, meaty mana steaks that we’re used to.

    How am I supposed to spam Holy Light for an hour now? Does this mean that I need to put my mana bar back on my Unit Frames? Do I need to go and buy something to drink to get mana back? Where do you even buy that? I think the last thing I drank was some Ice Cold Milk back in Elwynn Forest… and that was only because I saw some Mages doing it and I wanted to be cool!

    Actually, that last paragraph was a lot of sarcasm… but damn, that’s some heavy Nerf artillery they’re aiming at us. :(

  6. Fannon – I’m holding off on calling it all kinds of things because I healed just fine in Grim Batol the other day. I think it’s a result of:

    a) The DK tank being broken and super-self-healing
    b) Illumination not being removed from those who had specced for it yet
    c) I basically just had a very good group who CCed and didn’t stand in fire (bad stuff) too much.

    Once I hit 85 and once I’ve had a chance to mess around more, we’ll see how bad it is. And I’ll be vocal about it, if it’s bad. No worries.

  7. I’m also fairly certain that getting a druid to pass out their innervate to anyone but themselves is going to be a futile effort ;)

    As I understand it, Restos are currently no better off than Paladins. Moonking are mana starved, and Feral’s innervate isn’t even worth the mana it costs them to shift.

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