Hoo boy, this build, which changes up ret a bunch, throws a kink into my pretty little holy spec! Who would have thought it?
Talents/Spells:
– Conviction is gone, so no more bonus 3/6/9% damage/healing when you get a crit
– Improved Judgements is now in Tier 1 of ret and THAT is the one that gives you 15/30 extra yards on your judgement range
– Eternal Glory gives you a 20%/40% chance to not consume Holy Power when you use Word of Glory
– Enlightened Judgements heals YOU for some miniscule amount (1k/2k) whenever you judge
– Clarity of Purpose is now .5 seconds of Holy Light and Divine Light cast times (well, .2, .4 and then .5 instead of .1/.2/.3)
– Light of Dawn now gains extra healing by consuming Holy Power, although it’s still usable without any HP stacks
– Blessed Life might now be worth something since it gives you a 50%/100% chance to generate holy power when you’re attacked (2s internal cooldown)
– Divine Favor, as I mentioned, gives you 20% extra spell haste/spell crit for 20 seconds on a 3m cooldown. I’m okay with this.
– Divine Light is a 3 second cast instead of 2.5 seconds. Holy Light remains at 3 seconds.
– Healing Hands got a bump. Instead of about 750 or so on someone, my Healing Hands is healing others for 1054 a tick and healing me for 1117 a tick.
What this means is that we don’t want Enlightened Judgements anymore, we MIGHT want Blessed Life and forget about speccing into prot for support, basically ever, because ret is just way, way, way too good right now for us.
There’s no updated talent calculator right now, but basically, my current spec on beta is exactly as it was last build, with a couple of exceptions:
1) I dropped Enlightened Judgements.
2) I dropped in one point in Last Word in order to get 30 points in Holy, so I could get Light of Dawn. (Last Word: Gives your Word of Glory a 30% increased critical chance when used on targets with 35% or less health.)
3) I picked up 2/2 Improved Judgements in ret (for my 30y range on judgements)
4) I kept Crusade (3/3) to get to ret’s second tier and to give my Holy Shock 30% extra healing
5) I picked up 2/2 Eternal Glory so that I would have that 40% chance to not consume my Holy Power when using Word of Glory
6) I grabbed 1/3 Rule of Law to up my crit chance of Holy Shock and Word of Glory by 5%. I should be able to fill this out at the level cap.
In retrospect, I probably should have grabbed Blessed Life 1/2 at least. Not that it’s terribly difficult to generate Holy Power, but now that Light of Dawn consumes it, that’s a bit of a difference. Also, I want to see if it’s AOE as well or if it’s actually someone coming up to you and smacking you that will proc Blessed Life.
Plate Specialization
So I trained Plate Spec. I am now wearing Silver Spur Boots (1791 armor, 196 stamina, 131 intellect, 94 spirit, 77 haste) instead of Earthsoul Boots and my 264 Emblem of Frost gloves instead of my heroic Unclean Surgical Gloves. Instead of 43.5k mana (with kings) I now have 44.9k or something close to that due to the plate specialization. Strangely, I don’t lose too much in terms of anything else (haste percentage, etc), so hey, why not.
Mastery
I wish the shield would last a little longer, but most of them are small enough that they’ll be gone in a hit anyways. But it’s neat, because you can see EXACTLY how big your shield is by hovering over the buff. Also, with only 41 extra mastery (from my cloak), my shields are 11.9% of the heal cast instead of 8%. (I expect this to drop as I gain levels from 83 to 85, when they open up the level cap again.) The shields are overwritten each time you cast a new one, by the way, even if the new one is less powerful, I think. They do not stack.
Instances
You now need to find the instance entrances in order to do them. Blackrock Caverns is easy and, for me, The Stonecore was easy since it’s right there in Deepholm, which I’ve already been to, but Madrana hasn’t touched Vashj’ir, so I think I’ll leave Throne of the Tides alone for the time being until they let me level beyond 83.
Guild Stuff
Internal Guild Errors if I try screwing with the ranks. Strange GMOTD spam continues. My guild should definitely be Level 2 by now, but we’re stuck at Level 1, and that’s if it even recognizes that we’re Level 1.
Bug Report is Bugged
The Bug Report tool now pops up when you hit the newly-returned button on the minimap, but you can’t really do anything with it.
Training
I was able to train from my class trainer on my shaman (shammy trainers now in the Dwarven District in Stormwind!) without dropping a profession, YAY!
Other notes
Nourish still isn’t refreshing Lifebloom as per Empowered Touch, Shammies now have a water totem that acts like Concentration Aura. And taking the Stormwind portal from Deepholm will cause you to fall through the world beneath Stormwind Lake. FYI.
“The shields are overwritten each time you cast a new one, by the way, even if the new one is less powerful, I think. They do not stack.”
That’s currently the case in beta, but Ghostcrawler has stated that the mastery is supposed to create a rolling shield (i.e. it stacks without creating a second buff or resetting the duration of the initial shield). The current non-rolling implementation is a bug.
Source: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=26435296369&pageNo=3&sid=1#52
Gryphonheart – Okay, now I’m confused. This whole shield thing is complicated enough for someone who only previously had to deal with Sacred Shield. ;) I read what GC said, but how does the shield roll without creating a second buff or resetting a duration?
Is this acccurate, then?
Assume my mastery is giving me 10% of heals as a shield (because that’s easier math):
0 seconds – I heal you for 10,000. You get a 1000 shield.
1 second – I heal you for an additional 5000. You get another 500 added to your 1000 shield.
This is the end of combat, you have not been hit at all.
6 seconds – Your 1000 shield fades. Your shield buff now reads 500 instead of 1500.
7 seconds – Your shield fades completely.
I guess I’ll have to wait to see how it works on beta, but I don’t understand how it won’t mess with the duration.
That’s exactly correct. =) Another way to think about it is that each shield is applied as a separate buff, but the game automatically consolidates the multiple buffs to use a single icon and tooltip.
Also, I believe the absorb with the shortest remaining duration will also be the first to be used in the event that the target does take damage, but I’m not 100% certain on that.
Gryphonheart – Crap. I sense a lot of math in my future. :(
Thanks for letting me know! :)
Kurn, this is how Divine Aegis and Valn’yr currently work if you want a reference. They both have a maximum cap (10,000 I believe), but the bubble effect with continue to roll until popped, maxed out, or it expires. I’ll be really surprised if our mastery does not end up mirroring these mechanics.
The most important question: what does our Divine Aegis look like? Is it simply Sacred Shield all over again? I would not be surprised if they found a way to make it have the Flash of Light animation. I’m going to miss Sacred Shield a lot. I liked the mechanic, but I enjoy babysitting timers.
Passing thoughts on other things:
1) Eternal Glory is fairly intriguing, but RNG is bad (even at 40%). Still, awesome to have a way to get a free Word of Glory every so often. I hear the PvPers complaining already.
2) The community seems to be frowning on the Light of Dawn change, and I agree. Holy Power driven + a long cooldown + dependent upon positioning? There’s always going to be one hunter or Warlock standing apart from the group who will never get this heal. It’ll be interesting to see the numbers at a full charge.
3) I like the forum suggestions of making Divine Favor castable on others like Power Infusion, although the talent is like the lovechild of PI and Tidal Force. MUCH much better than the old design, although I’ll still miss Divine Illumination.
4) Testing will have to be done to see if Blessed Life procs off AOE mechanics. I am happy that this talent is getting revamped. The old model, and its sister PVP talent Sacred Cleansing, were too random.
5) I’m sad that we won’t have the hand glowiness of Conviction anymore. I have a certain vanity about spell effects.
6) Part of me balks at having to spend talent points just to get the range increase (whereas Enlightened Judgements also added hit rating), but this means interesting things for prot and ret.
Walks – ooh, thanks for the link! I remember reading about that when Val’anyr first came out (and I had some shot in hell at getting it), but it’s great to have a refresher.
Our shield is called Illuminated Healing. There is no graphic whatsoever as of yet. :(
1) I fully expect Eternal Glory to get nerfed exactly because of PVP. Figure 25%ish.
2) I’m not sure how I feel about the LOD/HP change. I think we need another way to earn HP, not spend it. But I’m not sure Blessed Life is the answer.
3) Eff that, Divine Favor is MINE! ;D And I’ll miss Divine Illumination, too. A lot. I have guilt dating back to SSC for not using it often enough.
4) It does NOT proc off lava in Burning Steps, I know that much. ;) But I think (could be wrong) that it procs off AOE spells (so not environmental effects). I’d need to double check in an instance. I didn’t mind old Sacred Cleansing. I’m pissed that I have to put in a point just to get my Cleanse back to par.
5) I won’t miss the effects (FPS issues, of course), but I’ll miss the 9% extra healing.
6) The hit from Spirit conversion is now part of the holy passives. Spiritual Focus: Reduces the pushback suffered from casting Flash of Light, Holy Light and Divine Light by 70%. In addition, grants you hit rating equal to 100% of any Spirit gained from items or effects.
3) Divine Favor was always a very bland ability that could be simply macroed. I am Concerned that they keep axing paladin abilities in general—we no longer get Shield of Righteousness (talented I believe?) or Sacred Shield. What will the paladin leveling experience be like?
Holy Paladins get six abilities via talents:
1) Aura Mastery (Utility)
2) Holy Shock (Healing)
3) Divine Favor (Throughput)
4) Divine Illumination (Throughput)
5) Beacon of Light (Healing / Role Defining)
6) Divine Sacrifice (Healing / Mitigation)
We get several interesting procs:
1) Infusion of Light (Throughput)
2) Light’s Grace (Throughput)
3) Judgements of the Pure (Throughput)
4) Sacred Cleansing (Mitigation)
5) Blessed Life (Survival)
Come Cataclysm:
Our talented abilities:
1) Holy Shock (Healing)
2) Beacon of Light (Healing)
3) Divine Favor (Throughput)
3) Aura Mastery (Utility)
4) Light of Dawn (Healing)
Procs:
1) Infusion of Light (Throughput)
2) Speed of Light (Throughput / Utility)
3) Enlightened Judgement (Healing)
4) Denounce (Damage)
I… need to make a spreadsheet and think more about this. Too many thoughts. But is what we are gaining worth the loss of our utility box?
6) See, I’m just balking at the idea of spending point just to get range on our Judgement. It does not increase healing and feels like filler, in some ways. Similarly, I am also upset by the blandness of spending one point for a magic cleanse—they’ve essentially knocked away something interesting that our dull Cleanse could do (with the talent) into something boring.
Similarly, Shamans no longer get the ability to remove one curse, poison, and disease all at once. They get the same boring mechanic. Does Abolish Poison (Druid), Abolish Disease (Priest), and Dispel (Priest) still remove multiple debuffs/buffs?
Walks – More later, but Abolish Disease is gone from priests. Dispel Magic still does 2 def or 2 off magics. Druids now have Remove Corruption, removing 1 curse, 1 poison and 1 magic. Shammies wil have Cleanse Spirit, but it will only remove 1 curse and 1 magic, but they still have Purge (removes 2 magic effects offensively).