Just to be clear, I haven’t screwed around at all on the PTRs. I’ve really kept all my activity to the beta realms and even that activity has dwindled since I hit 85. However, MMO-Champion is reporting a new PTR build that significantly affects the paladin talent trees, particularly the holy tree.
Holy changes:
* Enlightened Judgements now also Increases the range of your Judgement by 5/10 yards.
* Divinity is gone, moved to Protection
* Protector of the Innocent is now a Tier 1 Holy Talent and has been revamped – Casting a targeted heal on any target, including yourself, also heals you for 1240.83 to 1427.62. (Multi ranks, but currently all with the same value)
Well, at first, I thought we were going to get 40-yard judgements again. Wrong. The ret talent has been changed to 10/20 yards from 15/30. So this is a big change and we basically need to grab Enlightened Judgements now, just to maintain a 30y range. I don’t care about the self-healing component at all. Like Walks was saying to me tonight, they seem to be in love with the idea of us passively healing ourselves. Screw that, I just want my range back.
Divinity being gone from the holy tree is, in my opinion, a bad move. With the change to Arbiter of the Light several builds ago, removing the critical chance for Holy Light, we now only really actively want Judgements of the Pure on our first tier. We don’t want to play with Arbiter of the Light. That left us with Divinity. Except now Divinity is gone, swapped with Protector of the Innocent, which has been changed.
Again with the passive healing. What is this, some sort of perma-mini-beacon on us? I don’t want this. Give me back the ability to increase healing done to and by me, which is infinitely more useful than this, which is PVP-only at best and completely useless except in the most dire circumstances at worst.
Prot changes (that affect us):
* Divinity is now a Tier 1 Protection talent.
* Protector of the Innocent is gone, moved to Holy.
So if we want Divinity, we now need to spec 3 points into prot, along with the 2 we already put there for Eternal Glory. But that leaves us unable to access Rule of Law!
Okay, don’t get me wrong. I was very happy to see that we can maintain our judgement range, which adds to the 20 yards from the talents in ret. They nerfed ret’s range and gave us the chance to pick up those 10 yards. But now we’re all kinds of screwed up in terms of trees.
Here’s the build I came up with for PVE healing:
Let’s walk through it.
Holy
Tier 1
0/2 Arbiter of the Light. We gain nothing from improved crit on our judgements and we have no way of accessing Templar’s Verdict.
2/3 Protector of the Innocent. Well, it doesn’t add to our overall healing, but it will heal us a wee bit and is, therefore, slightly more useful than Arbiter of the Light. I’ve decided to take the minimum points possible here to go up to the next tier, which is 2 points.
3/3 Judgements of the Pure. Even if it’s 9% rather than the 15% on live, haste is haste is haste.
Tier 2
3/3 Clarity of Purpose. Reduced cast time is reduced cast time. Snag this.
2/2 Last Word. It was a talent that was lacking, but in recent builds there’s really been nothing else to get us down to the next tier. This is fine, particularly since people will be staying at low health longer in Cataclysm. But I wish we didn’t need it to get to the next tier.
0/2 Blazing Light. Damage by Holy Shock and Exorcism. Pass.
Tier 3
0/2 Denounce. With the change to Enlightened Judgements, we REALLY have no room for this in a PVE healing spec. The only way I would consider dropping points in here is if it gave us mana back.
1/1 Divine Favor. Spell haste and spell crit by 20% for 20 seconds every three minutes? Yes, please.
2/2 Infusion of Light. Still a great talent even if it doesn’t cause instant Flashes of Light anymore. It still reduces the cast time on Holy Light. Really, using Holy Lights after IoL procs is the best use of Holy Light, from what I can tell. I’d take this even if it wasn’t linked to Speed of Light.
2/2 Daybreak. I would be tempted to drop this, although it’s a very nice little talent. I would have considered dropping it for other talents elsewhere, except that we still need two points to get to Tier 4 and to have our 31 points in holy. It’s not a bad talent, but it’s another talent that I feel I am cornered into taking in order to get to the next tier. I feel that way about three talents so far, because they are simply better for PVE healing than the alternatives. That’s kind of tragic. But yes, take Daybreak.
Tier 4
All of it!
2/2 Enlightened Judgements. Pretty sure the tooltip on the talent calculator is wrong. This is almost certainly 5/10 yards, not 50/100 yards, which brings us to 30 yards with the 2 points in Improved Judgement in ret. Oh, and also, it’s more passive healing! I’m tired of seeing passive healing *to myself* in my tree.
1/1 Beacon of Light. Do it. Everyone likes bacon.
3/3 Speed of Light. Fantastic spell for haste to FoL, HL and DL, plus the shortened Holy Radiance cooldown (30s from 60) and the speed boost during the first four seconds of Holy Radiance. These are the best three points you’ll spend in all of Holy.
1/1 Sacred Cleansing. Magic debuffs suck. Pick this up.
Tier 5
3/3 Conviction. 9% extra healing, even if it’s based on procs and not 100% uptime, is still 9% extra healing.
1/1 Aura Mastery. This has saved my ass a ton this expansion. It is unchanged. Pick it up.
1/2 Spiritual Focus. In order to maintain only 31 points in Holy (the minimum before we can spec into other trees), I went with 1/2 Spiritual Focus, meaning half of my spirit is converted into hit rating. Let’s face it. We’re holy. We’re not expected to hit all that frequently. Judgements are basically all we want to hit, if we’re indeed “supposed” to be standing at range. (And believe me, I am a staunch supporter of standing way the hell in the back.) So we can skimp here, but I do like this talent very much.
Tier 6
3/3 Tower of Radiance. Anything that adds to Holy Power is good.
0/2 Blessed Life. Except this. We’re not supposed to be hit in PVE content, so if we’re being hit, chances are, things are going downhill anyways. This talent had about five seconds worth of being a PVE talent in beta, but it’s still firmly in the realm of PVP.
Tier 7
1/1 Light of Dawn. The no-brainer. We’re all supposed to love and hug our 31-point talents.
Protection
Tier 1
3/3 Divinity. We almost have to take this. It’s 6% extra healing and really still belongs in Holy. If we could swap this out with Arbiter of the Light, I’d drop Spiritual Focus altogether to pick up all three of these points and spec out of Protector of the Innocent.
0/3 Seals of the Pure. There’s no reason to take this, no healing is involved.
2/2 Eternal Glory. Yaaaaaay for Holy Power! Snag it.
Nothing else affects healing in the prot tree.
Retribution
Tier 1
0/2 Eye for an Eye. Worthless for a holy paladin.
3/3 Crusade. 30% extra healing to Holy Shock is certainly worth 3 talent points. It’s one of our most-used spells and we should be using it on cooldown. (I know, that still just feels very strange to say.)
2/2 Improved Judgement. Previous builds had this at 15/30 yards, but this has been tuned down to 10/20 yards. This makes snagging Enlightened Judgements in Holy even more important.
And… we’re out of points.
Losing out on the chance to get Guardian’s Favor and Rule of Law in Tier 2 of Retribution, not to mention Pursuit of Justice, kind of sucks. But Eternal Glory is just SO GOOD that we need to take it. And Divinity boosts my healing by 6%, which is extremely hard to say no to.
Other builds I would consider:
“Utility” Build: 31/3/7: Divinity and Guardian’s Favor, no Eternal Glory.
“Weak” Build: 31/2/8: No Divinity, but Eternal Glory and Rule of Law. I say “weak” because although you gain extra crit from Rule of Law, which is extremely awesome, you lose the 6% extra healing done from Divinity.
Honestly, you can swap points between Enlightened Judgements and Spiritual Focus too, but there’s nothing else you want or, more importantly, need to take in the holy tree for PVE healing.
That’s a pretty sad state of the holy tree. To not actively want more than one talent in your first tier? I really do need to get my feedback posts up on the beta forums. This is worse than the over-bloated Holy Priest tree back in BC, only it’s the opposite. Instead of having a hundred talents you WANT, I have trouble finding places to spend all 31 I absolutely must drop into holy.
I’m trying to keep in mind that the way things *read* and the way things *play* are often very different, but still as I read these changes I can only think ‘WTF?’ I’m hoping that there is some secret build they’ve got hidden away somewhere that they are planning on using (one that’s actually really good!) and that they are making these changes in order to test something very specific, but they have no real intentions of letting them go through.
Hey, a guy can dream, can’t he?
Been reading your blog for a while – nice job girl :D But yes, about holy paladins on beta – this is just so sad. I am also one beta with my pala, was healing some places etc – but what a pain in the as*! Our tree looks bugged, polluted with trash talents so we could dps (!) etc. Same as jeffo, i hope this won’t go live :/
Yea I’m not entirely sure where I stand on these changes either. In the last build, when they moved EG to T1 of prot, I was sad because it forced me to take it, thus feeling forced to make some use of WoG, and thus feeling forced to pick up GtbL. But now that we can take Divinity in T1, I can skip EG altogether. But then sneaky Blizz changes GtbL to also proc Holy Shield when you use WoG.
Personally I still feel prot’s use of WoG is too situational, and hard to make use of. The only valid use for WoG is for the over-shield, but you’ve gotta make sure you pop it when you’re full health, which means saving your HP charges, instead of dumping them into Shield or Inquisition.
It appears that Blizzard wants all healers to be extremely weak. I can think of no other reason for making sure it is impossible to get a full on healing tree build in Holy. That is the reason for putting healing needed by holy in the other trees. Also I think self healing means another way to gimp healers to death.
If it goes live this way and you see self healing in some Raids out heal every single healers output then Blizzards says you can be proud you did a good job. This will mean congratulations you are equal to no talent self heals. Then GC comes out and says if you can out heal the self heals you are great, see how fun it is. (Evil smile here)
@Richard
I don’t have an objection to having to go out of my tree to grab good talents. I think it makes for interesting choices in deciding if you want this or that, as long as they’re both good. If you look at pretty much all the trees of every class you’ll see this (shaman Improved Shields in the elemental tree, for example).
What I do object to is having a talent like Arbiter of the Light in the holy tree. It does absolutely nothing for us. At least I could make the claim that something like Denounce could be useful if leveling as holy, or for pvp, but Arbiter of the Light has *zero* value. It should either be moved into ret or given some benefit to Holy. I haven’t scoured every single talent in every single tree of every single class, but I haven’t yet encountered any low talent as badly out of place as Arbiter.
Regarding Spiritual Focus: They did finally fix this as of this morning on the PTR, so it does now provide melee hit correctly. I’m not sure how hit requirements will change moving up in levels, but with 2/2 at level 80 I have about 2x the hit I need for melee, so it definitely looks like a good move is to drop a point out of there and toss it someplace else.
I’m surprised you would consider ditching eternal glory. I mean sometimes it procs 4 to 5 times in a row! If I could somehow avoid judgements of the pure I would. There is just too many talent points tied up to get a 9% haste buff. It’s really pretty silly.
I love that you get up in the middle of the night to write these really great, informative, rant-y posts, Kurn. Either that or you just don’t sleep at night – lol
Still, I’m a fan!
I was actually one of the few non-paladins who always found the int stacking, one button spamming style boring and was excited to hear about the widening of the paladin toolbox and what could be done with it. I may make a premade on the Beta and putz around with it for a bit.
What realm did you say you were on, in the Beta? I may have to stop by and we can do pally things together.
:)
Lots of people have been complaining about choices in holy specs. As someone mentioned before me here, the way things read and the way they play out can be different.
Personally, I’m going to try a different build than what kurn’s walked through.
http://wowtal.com/#k=w7D1R2KL.a21.paladin
I’m not set on it, but I would really really like to play with this. The only upside to PotI going tier 1 holy, is that I don’t have to drop 3/3 into it, I just grab 2/3. Much like kurn, I don’t like the self healing on what I do. It’s just free healing, and that’s just outright absurd. I’m not happy with the current implementation of BoL either, as it’s 50% free healing as well. It’s the BoL today, just scaled back in the xfer.
Anyway, imp judg in the ret tree reads as “increases your range by 10/20 yd” so.. considering judgement is a 10 yd range attack anyway.. that’s a 30 yd judgement range with just that talent from the ret tree. That’s far enough for me. I also would like to see how RoL plays out instead of a flat out passive 6%. I have a feeling crit will be making a significant comeback this xpac, and it’s a true shame we do not have mechanics or abilities to aid us in wanting it more other than 150% crit heals.
I’m pretty sure blizz is not done though. But it would seem, just with the swapping of PotI and Divinity, that there are at least 2 more builds/specs that people are willing to play with. Which is really what people were complaining about. I’m still confused as to why eternal glory is located in the prot tree. The only purpose it serves sitting there, is to get holy to spec into prot. However divinity is there now so perhaps we will see another move of EG, or a revamp, or a removal (although with the constant tuning of it I would suspect it will remain. However it’s only ever been tuned down so who knows). Perhaps it should be revamped into something like.. your holy shock and holy light have a chance to grant you full holy power. Keep the percentage at 30 for now. Basically the opposite of how they treated daybreak. Although they like the daybreak change so it’s doubtful they’ll change EG.
Anyway, I’m not counting out RoL as so many others are. Numbers are not even finalized, so I don’t know how much of a gain it would be. It wouldn’t be a straight up 6% healing increase. WoG and HS would have a 15% increased crit chance, so … that also means, out of 100 casts, you’d see 15 more crits which would either stack, or renew conviction. So we could see more healing with RoL than Divinity. Just tossing that out there. Still.. would need finalized numbers and some lengthy parses.
Kurn,
Thank you very very much for all the blogging you do. I’ve loved every one of your beta posts, but this week I went through and re-read many of your heroic boss guides. I appreciate all the time you put into your blog!
And yes, everyone likes bacon :D
Imp Judgments wasn’t nerfed they just rewrote it, it says increases range of judgment BY 10/20 which puts it at 20/30 add enlightened judgments in and its another 5/10 so we can get out old 40yd judgment back. I however don’t like how many talents we have to put into judgment; the 3 for judgment of the pure I don’t mind, but when you have to add another 5 talent points to be able to hit at ranged (including 1 pt in spiritual focus in this one) it seems a bit much. Also I don’t like losing Rule of Law, from what I understand crit rating at 85 is rather terrible atm so an increase of 15 seemed huge. Overall not to happy about changes.
I’m leaning toward taking Rule of Law over Divinity; from what I’ve read Infusion procs seem to be essential to get getting any sort of HPS out of HL.
Thanks for taking the time to write up these accounts of the Beta!
@jeffo
Thanks. Like some have mentioned in forums the self healing is getting out of control and bothers me immensely. Just for the heck of it I looked at how many points I could put into Warrior self heals as a Fury. I was amazed I had a higher percent on self heals then would make any sense of. To solo with those self heals is fine, but in a raid this would lower your DPS but who cares you could drop a healer if you maximize self heals in the whole raid. This is epspecially true when you see WoL that shows second highest heals in 5 mans is self healing. And a raid would have self heals beat some healers.
As for the points in Holy I hope they are not calling this a done deal.
jeffo – hahaha, I love the idea of a secret build! I’ll share that dream with you, if you don’t mind! :)
Hanny – Thank you! I’m always glad to hear that people have been reading for a little while. :) “Polluted with trash talents so we could dps (!)”. That’s beautiful. I love that phrasing because it fits so very, very well.
They’ve shifted talents around during virtually every build, so I can only hope they shift again, for the better!
Dayden – I suspect that the Divinity vs. EG question for prots is one of those “interesting decisions” they want you to make. I don’t think they’ve really succeeded, because you mention WoG’s use is very situational, so maybe Divinity is just better for the flat increase in healing received and done, which also amps up your over-shield (nice phrase, btw)?
At least WoG will proc Holy Shield for you, so you have a valid use for it, even if you’re not at full health, I guess?
Richard – I can’t imagine that Blizzard wants us all to be very weak, but I understand why you feel that way. It DOES feel that way. It just doesn’t make sense, though.
I think the reason they tempt us with talents in the other trees is because, with only 10 points to play with that even COULD possibly go in other trees, they want to make us think carefully about which tree, or trees, get how many points. Their viewpoint of “interesting decisions” doesn’t mesh with mine. I miss my huge talent trees!
jeffo – COMPLETELY agree, re: Arbiter of the Light. Swap that and Divinity and I suddenly feel less like I’m wasting points in my own damn tree.
As to Spiritual Focus, remember that the spell hit cap on a boss 3 levels higher than you is 18% and the melee hit cap is 8%. They also expect us to cast Exorcism. While Judgements work on the melee hit table, Exorcism is definitely on the spell table. I’d be interested to know if you have enough hit rating with 2/2 SF to hit the spell cap. That said, since I will not be taking Denounce barring some kind of miracle, I’ll probably keep the 1/2 SF, which hopefully will be enough to keep me hitting the boss fairly regularly.
Wasselin – I only mention a build without Eternal Glory for the sake of being a bit more complete. I wouldn’t ever be without it. It’s too awesome. But Divinity is amazing, too. I’m sure we’ll see people with and without Divinity and with and without Eternal Glory.
Oestrus – I have a special alarm that alerts me when the word “build” is used on an MMO-Champion tweet or news post and it wakes me up from clear across my apartment. Then I go running, bleary-eyed, to my computer and try desperately to write something coherent! ;)
Actually, no, I’m just pretty darn nocturnal. :)
I’m on Lost Isles, the PVE one, on Alliance. Poke me via email when you’re online and I’ll invite you and all that jazz. :)
Rahmiel – Interesting build… no Spiritual Focus or Enlightened Judgements or Divinity and you snagged 2/3 PotI (well, who wouldn’t?) and 1 Blazing Light. And there’s Rule of Law. God, I want that so badly. :P
I definitely am not a fan of the passive self-healing and agree that it’s absurd. I’m OKAY with Beacon, but I don’t know what I’d do to fix it. I agree that it’s not “right”, whether or not that’s because it’s too powerful or not powerful enough.
You know, they had changed Judgement to be “melee range” at some point, so that’s a good point. Yay 40 yards!
Crit will definitely be making a comeback for holy paladins, I think. Why? Well, not just for Conviction, but to just get more healing done, more crits on Holy Shock for hasted Holy Lights… Overhealing is rare, from what I can tell thus far.
I’m pretty sure they’re also not done, but I feel this build is a significant step backwards. Eternal Glory is something that I think they want every spec to look at and for it to be accessible to every spec. I’m glad it’s in T1 of prot, because we can still reach it.
I really like EG as it is, although I liked it better when it was 20/40 instead of 15/30. I think they should do something to make critical… somethings… give us extra holy power or something, although HP seems easy enough to come by.
You’re right that numbers aren’t final, but as we get more gear, presumably RoL will be less interesting because we’ll have more crit and won’t need to rely so much on RoL. Perhaps we’ll start out speccing ret for it and then, as we gain more gear, we can start putting points in Divinity? Could be interesting.
And yes, parses would be amazing. :)
Enlynn – aw, shucks. :) Glad you’re enjoying it! I really do try to write for myself, but when I can satisfy that need and help out others, that’s kind of what makes things worth it. :)
Cyranor – Yeah, I noted above that at some point, Judgement was “melee range”, but this is definitely a good point. I hate the idea of being stuck in melee range. I also dislike having so many points dealing with judgement — 3 from JotP, 2 in Enlightened, 2 in Improved and maybe 1-2 in Spiritual Focus? Yikes.
Crit rating will improve with gear, but in the early days, not having RoL will have more of an impact than in the second or third raiding tier, to be sure.
Richard – The self-healing thing is killing me. My DK tank in Grim Batol a couple of weeks ago was healing himself regularly for 18k. I dislike that. A lot. I’m a healer. Let me do the healing.
@KURN
I think that the reason for the self healing is if we as healers can make up for stupid DPS or Tank or our own mistakes then somehow Blizzard feels it might change the vision of what they intend. Therefore SELF HEALING is to make sure that healers do not make up for mistakes as it only doesn a little healing all the time but not enough to make up for mistakes. The results are that healers feel next to useless when added up Self Healing is so high as to do as much as healer did, so your skill is less valued.
GC thinks it is fun to be efficent and I do not, if I was making a spread sheet of my healing all the time that might be a goal, but only GC would call it FUN?
I remember a while ago that Blizzard said that players would be more responsible for avoiding damage, and not having tunnel vision and having healers make up for any damage they may take (standing in the fire). Perhaps their intention is for there to be more raid-wide damage in Cataclysm, with DPS avoiding it and healers healing themselves through it. They aren’t putting these talents in just for fun – they’re not that stupid.
That was fast… 13066 as of 9/25: “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.”
So a little welcome consolidation, which is exactly the first thing I was hoping for after reading the last build, and a new utility talent that appears to give not a heck of a lot to PvE Holy. This frees up 1 point from your build, giving the PvE cookie-cutter… 1 free point?
I try to heal from melee as often as possible because the mana returns are awesome, but being able to heal at 40 yards is very important on some fights and judging at 40 yards is nearly as important as casting a heal.
Well, the new build (13066) is exciting and kinda disappointing. I was hoping to pick up the exorcism talents just to boost or make dps more viable. However to me, Paragon of Virtue is a must have. 60 sec off AW?! That’s huge! Also divine protection cd decreased. I think that’s a must have, at least for me. So sad to see denounce points moved (but maybe I can keep them )
The enlightened judgements talent is now a lot more attractive. Still won’t take it though unless hit does turn out to be a must have. I may drop just one point in it. Who knows.
I’m more frightened by GC’s comment that they want the 10 points outside of the holy tree (or possible 10 points) to be less cookie cutterish and they’re looking at divinity and rule of law. Man, if those get moved deep into prot or ret or they see a similar treatment as arbiter of the light did.. that will make me a sad puppy (and I’m really beginning to think that’ll happen).
Divinity is a pretty big deal, for sure, but it isn’t too far beyond the old style “+heal” talents culled. The trend of the beta tells me Divinity will be removed or changed significantly. I’d rather see that happen because it makes tuning our output easier.
I think that Paragon of Virtue may end up being something pretty darn important, actually. In a world where mana is so tight any damage reduction is good, and where our heals are so small and health pools so big, being able to call on a 20% damage reduction for 10 seconds every 40 seconds, and being able to boost heals by 20% for 20 seconds every 2 minutes is a good thing. I think it’s a definite step in the right direction. Now, about Arbiter…
I have to agree with above posters. Divinity does nothing special — add the bonus passively or as part of Conviction and it’s just as nice. The + healing to self is alright for tanks, but the double dipping for us is taken care of by the silly passive healing of Protecter.
Not that I really care about passive healing. Passive health regeneration is boring. Give me something with a choice involved.
Paragon of Virtue seems interesting. Using Avenging Wrath has gotten more interesting than just “oh, I need something to counter my Plea.”
@Walks
As well as counter plea, AW can now be used without “Can I risk popping AW right now? Or will I pull aggro and have no way to defend myself due to that invisible lockout?” From what I hear, wings+bubble is still possible on beta. I just hate it when more throughput is required, and you get 2 or 3 loose adds aggro, and end up dying. Ruins my day.
From GC’s comments, I would not only expect divinity to change or be removed from the trees entirely, but I’m expecting Rule of Law to undergo the same treatment. I’m also saddened that looking at the trees the way they currently are (13066) I do indeed lose my denounce. It would help me out if blazing light and arbiter of the light swapped positions in the holy tree. I’d most likely drop 2/2 into BL if it were in t1. Looking at it from a ret perspective, they could still grab both (although those ret’s that want arbiter but not blazing light would be upset.. are there many of those?).
That could be a way to improve our spec, offer more choice. If BL entered t1. Also looking at the trees.. blizz could move Paragon of Virtue to t1 prot, and eliminate Sanctified Wrath from Ret. That actually frees up a few talent points and lets me pick up 2 of either guardian’s favor, selfless healer, acts of sacrifice. There actually are some pretty good choices to improve our specs just by moving talents around.
I’m just very worried that all the nice talents in the ret tree and prot that boost our healing via HS and WoG will be removed for talents like guardian’s favor. Perhaps we’ll see acts of sacrifice moved lower in the tree. Can’t wait for the PTR to go live, and future builds.
Hey there, Kurn!
I got my holy priest to 82 and I keep trying to faction change her over (since I’m a BE now) and I keep getting a mail icon saying that I have mail and I don’t. It won’t let me change over b/c of this. I opened a ticket with a GM to remedy this, so I can change over and play with ya – no word on how long it will take.
But I don’t see you on the Beta when I am! Fix that! I’m dying to play with ya! :)
@Rahmiel
Yes, you can do Wrath while Bubbled. Divine Protection also does not cause Forbearance anymore.
I don’t really see the likelihood of them moving Paragon of Virtue of Protection since, as it stands, each spec now has a talent that reduces the cooldown of avenging wrath by a minute while providing another amount of “flavor.” Paragon reduces the cooldown of Divine Protection (Holy Barkskin, batman), Shield of the Templar reduces the cooldown of Avenging Wrath and Guardian, and Sanctified Wrath allows Hammer of Wrath to be used with Wings. While it would be possible to roll these effects into other talents, I’m more concerned that this talent that was meant to be “optional” is now mandatory.
Why don’t they just decrease the cooldown across the board and call it a day? Plus the fact that lowering the cooldown on Divine Protection by twenty seconds is kind of lame as I’m more likely to use the gcd to heal than pop barkskin.
Personally, I’d like for them to combine Blazing Light and Aribiter and give us a new talent altogether. Ret most likely doesn’t have enough points left over after investing in Prot and t1 Holy to grab anything in our t2. Furthermore, we have too many talents that exist solely to make leveling easier without any benefit to our overall healing. I can’t use my holy leveling spec and feel like I’m enabled to heal in a dungeon. Have a successful Denounce buff our next Holy Shock. Have Exorcisms return mana. Make it compelling to use while healing.
@Walks
You know, I forgot that prot had a cd reduction on AW. Seriously, why is it 3 min? I mean, I like the cd reduction because it’s more throughput but yeah, you’re right. If all 3 trees have access to their own version and each one is a drastic improvement.. why have 3 versions? It actually makes more sense to eliminate all 3 and move them to tier 1 of another tree (let’s say ret as it makes more sense). I’m not saying this will happen, but it’s something I’d like to see to free up some talent points that I don’t want to invest into PotI.
Last time I made a ret spec, I was able to pick up blazing light, however I adore your idea, because as a holy paladin I’d be able to pick it up instead of 2/3 PotI. Just for purposes of the holy discussion in moving talent points around…
http://wowtal.com/#k=7BvSv-Ab.a2y.paladin
That would be my ret spec. Acts of sacrifice is something I’d like, but not necessary. 1/2 EG is optional, maybe 1/2 SotP and 2/2 EG instead. It’s up in the air. But to me, that’s the optimal dps build (grabs all the dps talents I want/need) and gives some optional choices (acts of sacrifice, EG, SotP, guardian’s favor). The build is actually pretty entertaining. Hell, ret paladins could even pick up 3/3 divinity for those times when you stack up for AoE and hit holy radiance just for the healing boost. Options.
Anyway.. back to my point to link that.. I can pick up BL. But I like your idea of combining BL+AotL for my holy spec. I think it would be not such a great deal, because then I get to pick up more “flavor” talents from the ret or prot tree.. but that’s not necessarily a terrible thing.
I’m eager to see the next build and the changes they propose. One thing I think we agree on.. there should be some consolidation, and at the very least, some revamping/positioning of talents for holy’s spec.
Atm, with this current build, I feel more constrained to a particular build. If they remove the +crit on HS and WoG in rule of law, and remove divinity, replacing them with optional talents on the scale of “acts of sacrifice” then hopefully they fold that healing loss into the base of our spells. Even though the loss to conviction procs from RoL would suck. I ramble too much.
@Rahmiel
Indeed. I was fine with the passive healing of Enlightened Judgements, but want to invest no points in it if I’m being passively healed through Protector of the Innocent all the time anyway. It is boring. I don’t mind loosing the hit, and the range really isn’t a big issue if I need to be grouped up on the melee for Holy Radiance anyway.
I don’t see how they be able to create a talent for Avenging Wrath’s cooldown for Tier 1 because Paladins do not receive the ability until level 70. It would be a messy talent that would need to include a lot of other reasons to take it. Just change the base cooldown and call it a day. There are other ways to make those talents interesting—add a mini Divine Sacrifice effect to Holy’s Divine Protection, make it extend the Guardian’s effect by 10 heals, or take away the health cost of Hand of Salvation and match its potency up to Pain Suppression’s 40%.