As always, thank you to MMO-Champion for listing the patch changes!
I never did talk about the last beta build (13221) so I’ll talk about those changes here as well.
13221:
* Holy Radiance’s effectiveness now diminish on targets farther than x yards away.
That’s cool. It was a little OP for someone 20 yards away to get the entire benefit of something that comes from us in a pulsing wave thing.
* Divine Light base healing has been increased by 30%. From 8538-9512 to 11100-12366
* Flash of Light base healing has been increased by 30%. From 5313-5961 to 6907-7750.
* Holy Light base healing has been increased by 30%. From 3202-3567 to 4162-4637.
* Holy Shock base healing has been increased by 30%. From 3033-3285 to 3943-4271.
Holy crapsicle. Buff time! Hooray! Maybe now I won’t feel like my heals are completely ineffective.
* Lay on Hands no longer restores mana.
That’s okay! No worries! The new Glyph of Divinity means that anytime you cast Lay on Hands, you gain 10% of your maximum mana. That’s on a 7m cooldown with the new Lay on Hands major glyph.
* Beacon of Light now lasts 5 min, up from 1 min.
Well, that’s handy. We can now remove the major glyph of Beacon of Light which reduced its mana cost to 0 and put in that snazzy new Lay on Hands glyph. :)
* Mastery: Illuminated Healing now absorbs 10% of the amount healed, up from 8%. Now lasts 8 sec, up from 6 sec. Each point of mastery increases the absorb amount by an additional 1.25%, up from 1%.
Effing. Awesome. 8 second shield that’s a minimum of 10% of your heal and mastery givs you even more absorption? This is amazing.
All around, 13221 was a huge buff to holy paladins.
13241:
* Holy Radiance 20 yards range added to the tooltip.
Good to know.
* Light of Dawn now uses Holy Power instead of Mana. Now heals up to 5 targets. No longer has a cooldown – Consumes all Holy Power to send a wave of healing energy before you, healing up to 5 of the most injured targets in your party or raid within a 30 yard frontal cone for 1008.96 to 1124.15 per charge of Holy Power.
Okay, this is NOT a nerf, I repeat, this is NOT a nerf! Walks was telling me about this earlier tonight (guild stuff has me buried, so I haven’t tested anything yet). Here’s what he has to say:
Walks: The new Light of Dawn is kind of amazing.
Kurn: The lack of cooldown is really that good, eh? Is it a smart heal? (That would be asking too much, I imagine.)
Walks: Yes to both. 3 stacks of HP will heal for about 8.5k non-crit. It is a smart heal, but the players must be in front of you.
Kurn: Wait, SERIOUSLY?! A directional, smart heal, that heals for 8.5k non-crit? SS or it didn’t happen!!!
Walks: I will later! <3 Raid time. Oh, the LoD glyph lets it hit a sixth target.
So here we have an ability with a variable “cooldown”, that is a smart heal! It’s our version of Wild Growth and Circle of Healing! Complete with the glyph that will add another target to the heal. This is, to be blunt, awesome. And is finally a 31-point talent worthy of its spot. IMHO.
* Blessed Life now cannot occur more than 8 seconds (up from 2 seconds).
PVP talent for sure.
* Protector of the Innocent now affects heals on any target except yourself.
Small nerf, but it makes sense. Why proc a heal on yourself after you’ve just healed yourself?
Overall, holy paladins are looking AWESOME.
But basically, you want to go out there and hit full raid groups of people with Light of Dawn while you still can. ;) My record is 26 people, not including myself.
Class homogenization is ruining the game! Keep your grubby plate-wearing hands off my circle of healing! AND IT’S RESPECTIVE GLYPH, HOW COULD YOU!
Seriously though, happy you’re getting some buff goodness.
Its interesting because my Pallies are positioning themselves in such a manner where they continually just blast the melee with Light of Dawn whenever its up. Where Circle of Healing, I can target a player and simply case it, a Paladin needs to make sure they’re in the right position AND facing the right direction. Reminds me of the first portion of Penance way back when when the Penance target had to be in front of us.
Wow! The new LoD sounds awesome. I was asking for another spell to use with HoPo and a smart heal. They changed it so we got both!
I raided this week and actually did ok with our spec and class. Granted, it wasn’t quite as comfortable, but that will come with more practice. I was 2nd on the meters only to an amazing resto druid. I can live with that. More importantly, my tank didn’t die and I felt like I was a contributing member of the heal team again.
That being said, these changes sound like they will help us with the fundamental issues I was having with the holy spec. I’m really looking forward to seeing this go live so I can start playing with it. :)
Thanks for the update and analysis as always, Kurn. I’m finally feeling good about being a holy pally again!
Screenshot or it didn’t happen.
This is at level 85 with 6062 Spellpower and 12.59% crit.
http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/ll18/walkermc/Screenshot2010-11-04at125102AM.png?t=1288851236 — The Mik’s Scrolling Battletext view. I’ve set up Forte to notify me who has the mastery proc. Of note: the beacon is still healed for half of the total amount that Light of Dawn hits for (minus any direct healing to the beacon target). Protector of the Innocent is also mirroring (divided in half) to the beacon.
http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/ll18/walkermc/Screenshot2010-11-04at122930AM.png?t=1288851237 — Combat log. This is at three Holy Power.
This is a much better implementation than Light of Dawn currently as it isn’t constrained by a long cooldown and fills the gap for party healing between itself and Holy Radiance. Two blanket heals were really just too much.
I’d imagine we’re still going to be using this spell to primarily heal the melee when the raid isn’t grouped up for a mechanic. Light of Dawn is an interesting tool to heal the tank in addition to being an aoe heal — ideally, 8k x 6 targets / 2 = a potential of 24,000 non crit healing to the tank. This is a little less than what Word of Glory will crit for (at three stacks), with the ability to heal (up to) six others in addition. Of course, smart heals are not always “smart” in that they can catch a pet, heal the beacon target, etc.
However, I am cautious about if this is just too good to last.
Blessed Life had to change. I’ve used it as part of a Holy-dps spec and I’ve essentially got Word of Glory available pretty much non-stop. I’m not much for PvP but I understand it makes Holy Paladins virtually indestructible.
Changes to the direct heals: 30% more, what’s not to like?
Light of Dawn: Good news, bad news. I’m glad it will work off of Holy Power, as it was supposed to originally. It’s good to have a choice and, as far as I could see, at 85 there would still only be one real choice for Holy Power: Word of Glory. This gives us a choice: group heal, or single target heal? I think it also pushes a little more for an Eternal Glory spec.
As for the target limit – sandblasting Infest off an entire raid was fun, but given the other changes it really had to happen. I’m not enamored of ‘smart’ heals but, given the changes to # of targets it makes sense, and it brings us more on par with other healers.
So for the Betadins out there: The changes to the single-target spells really seem to improve our tank healing by a wide margin, which I understand was shaky at 85. Do the change to LoD really give us a really viable role as a raid healer?
D’oh! Call me a fool, I forgot the Eternal Glory only applies to Word of Glory.
I think the PotI change was designed as a nerf to Tankadins as we were supposedly a bit too good as self healing currently.
Numinous – In all honesty, I don’t LIKE that we’re getting an AOE that is a gimmicky clone of CoH… but it’s nice that we’re being treated like one of the “real” healers.
Matticus – Part of that is that we don’t have all the talents available to us to give us excess range on judgements. Most paladins are around 20 yards out for judgement purposes, so it’s easy for them to just hit LoD on cooldown and hit all the melee. At 40 yard range (max heal and judgement range with appropriate talents) we won’t be able to reach most of melee with a 30y range on LoD. That’s good positioning for right now, though, and I highly approve!
I like the gimmick, but if they come out with another Yoggesque encounter where we can’t face various things, I’ll be bitching to be sure. ;)
Janyaa – I thought it was a nerf at first, but after checking with Walks, I couldn’t believe it. A SMART heal? Finally! At last! :)
Glad you’re starting to get more comfortable and you’re enjoying being a contributing member of the healing team again!
I can’t wait for all these changes to go live either. It’s very exciting! And I think I’ve finally turned the corner on being optimistic to actually looking forward to stuff. :)
Walks – what can I say but <3! Thanks so much for this and the initial clarification. I'm a little worried that they may nerf the healing of LoD, but I think the mechanic is by FAR the best we've seen in any iteration of LoD and I think it feels "right". Heh, I haven't actually cast it, but I can imagine casting it. ;)
Good call on the beacon heals, by the way!
jeffo – Even though EG only applies to WoG, this means that we can occasionally use that WoG where it’s needed, get the proc and then still have a LoD use. I can see that being really interesting to play with.
I hope I get a chance to play Infest healer before they change LoD on live! :)
thansal – Ahhhh, good call! Since many tankadins use WoG on themselves for Guarded By the Light, they’re double-dipping with Protector heals. Nice catch. :)