Trial of the Idiotic Crusader

There are three things anyone who’s read this blog for any length of time knows about me:

1) I hate 10-man raids.

2) I’m a pretty decent holy paladin who is very familiar with the changes to the class, given time on beta and such.

3) I’m pretty damn well-geared. (Bear in mind that chardev isn’t all the way up to date, but at least the gear I’m wearing there is what I’m wearing on live.)

Tonight, a certain priest was asking in guild if anyone was up for TOGC10. I didn’t say anything. I purposely didn’t say anything. Until like, the third time she asked and I was like, well, crap.

So I sighed and let her know that if she desperately needed me, I’d heal. But I had a few things to do first — update a website, take a phone call… it would be 15 minutes at least, probably closer to 20. Ended up being about 30, but anyways.

It was mostly a guild group. 2 tanks (both paladins), two healers (me and O), then a hunter, an ele shammy, a warlock and an enhancement shaman all from our guild, with a ret paladin and a DPS warrior as pugs, rounding out the group.

I don’t know what anyone else was assuming about it, but I assumed the following:

People aren’t going to know what to do and this is going to be painful.

By and large, I was right. I wasn’t horribly frustrated by that. I expected it. I did not expect 7 wipes on heroic beasts. Nor did I expect a Jaraxxus one-shot.

This isn’t a blog post about how my guildies and I (well, mostly my guildies) got Tribute to Skill or got the TOGC 10 achievement. (I’d never done it all the way before.) It’s not even a blog post about how I still hate the warlock and felhound on Faction Champs or the pain that Light Vortex can bring. Nor is it about how we didn’t even actually get a burrow on our first Anub attempt.

It’s about my experience healing.

Fuck that place.

It dawned on me, perhaps on our fourth wipe on heroic beasts, that we are at that stupid time of the expansion where:

a) we are not tuned in our abilities,

b) the environment has not changed so that our abilities have even a SEMBLANCE of being tuned.

You can get away with this in ICC with 30% more health, more damage, more healing and more absorption.

It is very much a different story when attempting to do content that is a little more challenging than your average dungeon without a buff.

O and I are good healers and both very experienced in TOGC. We’re both 4/5 TOGC 25 (stupid Anub…) and, between us, we have 33 kills of heroic beasts on 25-man. Granted, she had those kills on her druid instead of her priest, but hey. Experience, you know? It matters.

So while I anticipated some problems, I was, in no way, prepared for the amount of problems we had.

First of all, I kept losing my tank on Northrend Beasts.

I didn’t know why. I STILL don’t know why, except for two attempts.

Seriously, I’m looking at the logs right now.

Barring attempts where I got Paralytic Toxin on the worms… and barring the attempt where someone got trampled and so Icehowl enraged (and no tranq shot was cast!)…

So attempt 1: Paralytic Toxin, which means running, which means not casting.

Attempt 2, Trample/enrage.

Attempt 3, not sure why, but my tank (as opposed to my brother, who was also tanking) ended up with both Molten Spew AND Acid Spit. Ow.

Attempt 4, ah yes, there I was standing around, casting, minding my own goddamn business and someone runs past me with a Snobold on their head. No, they didn’t run past me. They ran right next to me. So that the Snobold was actually IN RANGE of me.

[22:04:52.365] Madrana begins to cast Divine Light
[22:04:52.365] Snobold Vassal casts Batter on Madrana
[22:04:52.365] Snobold Vassal’s Batter interrupts Madrana’s Divine Light
[22:04:52.469] Snobold Vassal Batter Madrana 992 (O: -1)
[22:04:52.771] Madrana Retribution Aura Snobold Vassal 284 (O: -1)
[22:04:53.971] Gormok the Impaler Impale PallyTank 7046 (O: -1)
[22:04:54.377] Gormok the Impaler hits PallyTank 7474 (O: 7941)
[22:04:54.785] PallyTank dies

Dead tank.

Attempt 5, Paralytic Toxin.

Attempt 6, I tried to squeeze a heal out to a DPS who had stood in the fire just a touch too long and then got caught with the long cast time on Divine Light. Even with over 1000 haste, it’s just SUCH a long cast. My instincts definitely betrayed me here. Divine Light may be the spell the most similar to the old Holy Light and it may even have the same Clique bind as my old faithful HL… but the cast time ALONE needs to set it far, far apart from Holy Light. 2.5 second talented base cast time. That’s crap is what it is. In this world of content where your tank can and WILL die within 1-2 GCDs, that’s a death sentence.

Attempt 7, at least it wasn’t my tank who died. O got a Head Crack from a Snobold and couldn’t adequately cast, so Fog went down.

It’s not all bad RNG, but it looks like a lot of it was. If only I hadn’t been silenced. If only O hadn’t been silenced. If only Icehowl hadn’t trampled someone. If only…

We one-shotted Jaraxxus, though, mostly because hi, it’s a healing fight and O and I could probably both heal our way through that fight in our sleep, having a combined 29 kills on 25-man heroic Jaraxxus.

We wiped twice on Faction Champs before O had to go (she hadn’t anticipated taking so long with the issues we’d had on the beasts) and we pulled in my favourite BC-era priest, E.

Faction Champs down on the first try. At least this fight hasn’t changed much. I still hate Unstable Affliction.

Also, the Horde (or, I guess, Alliance, if you’re Horde) druid is still in perma-tree form. FYI.

On to Twin Valks!

This was the suck. Mostly because it felt like I couldn’t do anything EXCEPT spam Divine Light in order to keep up the tank. We’d gone with a one tank setup wherein the DPS all get dark aura and burn the crap out of the white Valk, leaving the tank to just use passive AOE and such to hold aggro on the black Valk. It was fine… unless I wanted to judge or something. So I judged on the pull on the third attempt and spammed Divine Light, so that it was more than half my healing done and I had pathetic use of the other spells in my arsenal.

Now, while this is somewhat an unorthodox method of doing it (I would have been much more comfortable with Fog and the pally tank on one mob each) it’s still ridiculous that due to the insanely high cast time (at least, relatively speaking), I can’t even afford to judge once a minute on that fight and have to use my other instants very sparingly.

Holy paladins are very broken here and I would submit that Holy Light should have a medium cast time. When they talked about a three-heal system, here’s what I thought:

FoL: Short cast, very expensive, average throughput

HL: Medium cast, medium cost, average throughput

DL: Long cast, expensive cost (not very, but higher than medium), huge throughput

Instead, we have:

FoL: Short cast, very expensive, average throughput

HL: Long cast, very cheap cost, less than average throughput

DL: Long cast, expensive cost, huge throughput

There HAS to be a step between FoL and HL/DL. That’s what we’re really missing. A two-second (talented) cast time on a casted spell. Like the old HL with Light’s Grace up.

Anyways. Anub’arak went smoothly, surprisingly, despite poor positioning. We had one wipe but we learned that, with hero, we could push him into P2 without a burrow.

Naturally, we pulled him a second time without first checking to make sure hero was up. Whoops.

We kited him around in the burrow phase without issue and then burned him down. Props to E for being a kick-ass healer, as per usual.

So that was most of my evening. I hate that instance. I never, ever, EVER want to do it again, not on normal 10 or 25 and certainly not on heroic 10 or 25. It’s just not meant to work with our current abilities and talents.

After getting down to a 1.3s Holy Light, having Sacred Shield and things like Divine Sacrifice/Divine Guardian and running TOC/TOGC with those tools and that speedy cast, I could do anything. Running it tonight (well, technically last night) was a painful reminder that I am gimped far beyond what I recognize and that I am nowhere near as good a healer as I was three weeks ago.

What sucks is that it’s not that I’m not a good healer. It’s that my mechanics make me a worse healer than I was. I could reliably do my job, three weeks ago. This raid picked away at some of my confidence.

See, I KNEW that I could do what was required of me in there. Or I thought I could. Now, I’m not so sure. And I’m not so sure it’s even that I’m not making the right decisions, because I think I AM making the right decisions, just about all of the time.

The mechanics, especially when matched against that particular instance on that particular difficulty, are just flat-out going to lose against TOGC10. Did we get the achievement and finish the instance? Yes. But would it have gone about 10 times more smoothly back in the world of 3.3.x? Hell yes. I wouldn’t have had any problems. None. I know my capabilities.

And what I saw in TOGC10 really hit me hard.

We have an ICC 25 coming up on Tuesday and perhaps one on Thursday. Guild runs, predominently. I was feeling pretty good about maybe flipping the switch to heroic Marrowgar and maybe BQL and maybe even Dreamwalker.

After the TOGC run? Not so much.

I’ll post more pally stuff soon, btw. I’ve been lax, I know. Guild stuff is always beckoning!

(By the way, still recruiting for Cataclysm!)

Cataclysm Beta Build 13202 & Live Hotfix

Let’s chat a bit about the reported changes affecting holy paladins from Cataclysm Beta Build 13202. Thanks to MMO-Champion, as always, for detailing the changes so quickly.

Holy

* Seal of Insight – Unleashing this Seal’s energy now also restores 15% of the Paladin’s base mana.
* Mastery: Illuminated Healing now only affects your direct healing spells, instead of all healing spells.

Both a buff and a nerf, really.

The Seal of Insight buff is pretty huge. Every time we judge, we will regain 15% of base mana which, at 85, is in the realm of 3500 mana back. That’s instead of a CHANCE of 4% base mana (936ish mana) back when we judge. However, I believe we still maintain the chance to regain 4% of base mana back with this active, but we are guaranteed to get 15% of base mana back when we judge.

This means judgements — and not missing them — just became way more important. Judgement is an 8-second cooldown. Ideally, we are busy doing other things and are busy enough (though not overwhelmed) to not cast this on cooldown, but rather 2-3 times a minute, the way we did in most of Wrath. Remember that this seems like a lot of mana back right now, but with something like Flash of Light costing over 6000 mana at 85, this isn’t a ton of mana. It has the potential to be a lot of mana regen, however, when used wisely.

As to the mastery nerf, this is likely a direct result of the beta-realm raids where holy paladins apparently were using the hell out of Holy Radiance. It only makes sense. We’re not “the shielding spec”. We’re direct healers, primarily. There’s no way they want us to put tiny shields on 25 people with one GCD from Holy Radiance or Light of Dawn when it would take a disc priest a lot more time to do similar absorption (barring Power Word: Barrier).

I’m okay with these changes.

Let’s talk about the live server hotfix for paladins.

Source, Ghostcrawler, via MMO-Champion’s Blue Tracker:

Holy Paladin Hotfix
Yes, we buffed the 5 paladin direct heals (FoL, HL, DL, HS, WoG). This is a change for both level 80 and 85. We are going to tone down Holy Radiance as I described in the other thread. It can be powerful without being 75% of paladin healing.

I know it’s customary for players to classify everything as either overpowered or garbage, but we believe there are actual numbers in between say 1 and 100, so give the changes a chance before you dismiss them.

It is possible we will nerf Word of Glory for Prot and Ret at 85 to compensate for this buff since they probably don’t need stronger Words.

This went live late on Monday/early on Tuesday and pre-empted my rant about what a horrible time I had on Monday’s unofficial ICC 25 raid.

Just as an example, we had a resto druid, a resto shammy and Walks and myself go into portals on regular Dreamwalker, collecting orbs. We were also doing portal jockey. We wiped a few times. Obviously, the holy paladin method has changed here — Glyph of Holy Light is dead, so there’s no reason to beacon the dragon and heal a target near the dragon (be it yourself, a Tenacity pet for bigger splashes, etc). You just heal the dragon directly. (Oddly, Flash of Light worked better than Divine Light spam here, but that was pre-hotfix.)

I had 34 stacks of Emerald Vigor, more than anyone else. I came in fourth out of the four of us in the portals. And that includes a 600k+ crit Lay on Hands. Pathetic. Walks was just above me and then MILES ahead of us was the resto shammy and the resto druid at the top. Now I know that we’ve been supremely overpowered on this fight, but good Lord, that was embarassing. The entire night was an exercise in frustration. I couldn’t do what I was previously able to do, but not only the whole “handling two tanks alone” thing. I mean that I was unable to do my job with even half the effectiveness as before.

However, after the hotfix, I now feel better. NOW I feel as though I’m adjusting to the class changes. NOW I feel as though I’m fighting myself and my old habits to learn new tricks and tips, like #1 over at this bubblespec post, instead of fighting the new mechanics.

Is it a buff? Yes. Is it too much of a buff? Maybe. But it allows me to worry less about whether or not I CAN keep a target up, which lets me acclimate to the new ways of keeping my target up. Right now, that’s the priority for us — learn how to heal with expensive short heals and long heals, but a mana free heal and oh wow, need to generate holy power and all that jazz, too!

I feel that, since the hotfix, I’m playing smarter on the paladin. True, I haven’t raided on her, but I have recovered confidence in my spells and abilities just by virtue of playing with the heals alone and in heroic dungeons.

Is this the answer for all that ails holy paladins? No. But it’s about as good as it’s going to get at 80 before Cataclysm, probably. They’ve fixed us so that we can continue in our niche for the rest of 4.0.1 and still acclimate to working outside our niche with new mechanics.

Does this still terrify me for 85? Yes. But I do feel more hopeful and I think that while we’ll have to share single-target healing with others (and others will have to share some of the raid healing responsibilities with us!) it no longer feels as though an extra shadow priest can make up for our healing.

I do not think that paladins have gotten even remotely enough cool stuff. Still no Evangelism, Archangel, Atonement, Chakra, Holy Word: Chastise. We get Holy Radiance (at 83) and Light of Dawn and Word of Glory and then they screwed with each of our pre-patch heals, but nothing full of synergy, nothing really cool, although I definitely do like Holy Radiance. It has an unfortunately huge mana cost and 30 second cooldown, if you’re specced “properly”, so we can’t just slam on that button every time it’s up. I imagine it’s for those moments in Cataclysm that can be best related to XT-002. Quake? Holy Radiance. In other words, occasional heavy raid damage, but not an “on cooldown” ability, due to the prohibitive mana cost.

Still, there’s time yet and there will be patches in the future that will change talents and abilities. I hope to see more from Blizzard in terms of holy paladin attention, at least, if not new and exciting spells. This hotfix is a great step for us maintaining our raid spots and not screwing our raids over, at least until Cataclysm’s launch.

A Requiem for Zul'Gurub

On October 9th, 2005, I started my subscription to World of Warcraft. That’s when I created Kurnmogh, my night elf hunter.

What many people don’t know is why I started playing. I was never a fan of the Warcraft real-time strategy games. I’d played some Diablo and Diablo II, but never really spent a lot of time with either of those games. I was not one of those target people who already knew about Arthas and Jaina and Illidan and Tyrande and Malfurion. Everything was completely new to me.

So why did I start?

Zul’Gurub is why I started playing this game nearly five years ago.

Actually, it was the “Corrupted Blood” incident that happened in September of 2005 that got me started playing.

You see, I read this article about it and, being someone who’s always liked the fantasy genre along with being a sociology student, I thought this was absolutely fascinating. People deliberately diseasing each other? Killing each other? Even though the behaviour was all within a game setting, I was completely fascinated at the idea of people deliberately infecting others with this plague-like thing. (As an aside, I was THRILLED at the launch of 3.0 because of the zombie plague. It was the ZG plague all over again, but deliberately built into the game and I got to experience it firsthand! My inner sociology nerd had a blast.)

So I first started playing this game due to Zul’Gurub and a buggy game mechanic.

It was only on April 1st, 2006, that I first set foot in Zul’Gurub. Imagine my panic when I read the following words:

Your callous disregard for the sovereign might of the Gurubashi Empire has been noted. The inhabitants of Zul’Gurub has been alerted to your presence.

I could regale you readers with tales of defeat and victory against all the beasts in Zul’Gurub. I could tell you how Axe Throwers were chain-sheeped to deal with them at the time or how falling off the bridges were actual issues. I could tell you how, once, some of us ran the hell out of ZG from Jek’lik’s area when we called a wipe. Turns out that she resets, but bat riders don’t.

But I won’t.

Quite simply, what I want to tell you is that Zul’Gurub was my first real raid instance. My little guild actually cleared the instance fully, including Jin’do. We totally took the Jin’do kill in stride, too. Only a handful of guilds on the server had killed him and here were the lowly Fated Heroes, completely clearing ZG.

It took us a long time to get to that point. We went from three-hour nights on Venoxis (April 1, 2006) to 20-minute “Venoxis runs” on the reset we didn’t plan to fully use. (“Venoxis runs” were led by Majik, primarily so he could get his hands on the Fang of Venoxis so he could replace his Hypnotic Blade while still using his snazzy Tome of the Ice Lord.)

We went from 8/20 people being guildies to doing all-guild runs, with people on standby.

We were once robbed of our first-ever Jek’lik kill by virtue of PTR lag. Back in the days before battlegroups, Eldre’Thalas was on the same server as the PTR realms and this meant that, occasionally, while the PTRs were up, we would experience intense lag spikes. One such lag spike happened on our best-ever Jek’lik attempt, causing her not only to heal without being interrupted, but also causing her to then go forth and kill 80% of the raid. (Similarly, years later, we discovered that Vashj also does not lag.)

We killed Mar’li for the first time while I was on vacation in Italy. I had brought my laptop and nothing was going to stop me from raiding with my crew when we were making progress through ZG. (The raid lasted from about 2am Italy time until about 5am. And then I went and did touristy things after 3 hours of sleep. But Mar’li had died, so it was TOTALLY worth it!)

Arlokk never dropped Will of Arlokk for my brother, Fog, but did give it up to Crypt, our priest officer and healing lead. She also dropped Arlokk’s Hoodoo Stick, snagged by Egop, one of our healing paladins (and later, I snagged this on Madrana). It’s great because it looks like we can dual wield. :D

Thekal’s timing was initially tricky, but we mastered burning the three of them down together, thanks to awesome interrupts by people like Kut (who usually ended up dead on the floor somewhere, but that’s his gift to us!) or Football (who is, and let’s face it, awesomesauce). With the heals not a worry, it was like burning down Core Hound packs in MC, at which we were becoming quite adept.

Mandokir was my favourite fight for a while, if only because we once saw him gain so many levels from all the deaths of the players that not only did Mandokir start yelling “DING!” whenever one of us died, but at one point, Jin’do yelled out “Grats!”.

Obviously, he’d gained too many levels for us to finish him off and we called for a wipe, amid a collection of giggles and laughter.

Gahz’ranka, also known as the fish boss, was entirely dependent on Toga, the only one crazy enough at the time to have levelled fishing. He was also a night elf hunter so one night he and I went to scout out Pagle’s Pointe with some creative feigning and shadowmelding. We even crept up to Jin’do’s area using these methods and took great pleasure in sneaking around Zul’Gurub. We saw a couple of Tome of Polymorph: Turtles. I remember some drama around that — mains vs. alts and the like — but all that really matters is that Majik got his and has shunned every other form of Polymorph since. In fact, I would imagine that he will instruct all mages to acquire this tome so that they will all turtle things in Cataclysm, rather than “sheep” things.

When we finally faced Hakkar, I was more excited about it just because he was considered the “end boss” of Zul’Gurub and my little guild was on the brink of killing him. It only dawned on me later that the Corrupted Blood we all had to acquire in order to kill Hakkar was the same thing that had made me decide to pick up the game. When we got him down, I felt accomplished and felt a bit of a thrill, knowing that I had experienced the mechanic that had brought me to the game in the first place.

Zul’Gurub was the site of many, many, MANY wipes and quite a few victories. It was the place with the bugged out fish. It was a place with two mounts that we never, ever saw. It was even the spot where my brother, who had left the guild shortly after I joined, came back to us and the place where he showed off his new tree form as Fated Heroes’ very first Tree of Life.

When I learned that Zul’Gurub was being removed for Cataclysm, I went back there on my hunter. I got exalted with the Zandalar, from about midway through revered. I fished up a new Tome of Polymorph: Turtle. I farmed Mandokir and Thekal for mounts a few times (still no luck!), finally tamed a tiger cub like I’d been meaning to do for years and then, together, four years after we had first done it by each other’s side, my brother and I killed Hakkar and got the achievement for Zul’Gurub.

Being exalted and having the achievement for ZG doesn’t make it any less sad that this raid instance is being removed. It doesn’t even really make me feel all that much better about it. What it did do, however, was let me say goodbye to an instance that, even all these years later, is still as familiar to me as Stratholme is, or Dire Maul, or Blackrock Depths.

Without ZG, I might never have picked up this game and met some truly amazing people. I certainly wouldn’t have had all the experiences I’ve had over the last five years if not for that instance and its buggy Corrupted Blood. So here’s to you, Zul’Gurub, and your inhabitants. I will miss callously disregarding your sovereign might.

Weekend Update

(without Kevin Nealon, Norm MacDonald, Tina Fey, Jimmy Fallon, Amy Poehler or Seth Meyers or anyone else who ever hosted SNL’S Weekend Update)

The update is this: I have done nothing on my paladin this weekend. I have been being a GM over on Eldre’Thalas. Trying to organize the ranks all pretty-like, trying to make sure all the toons are at appropriate ranks… It doesn’t help that apparently each character’s authenticator timer only starts when they log in for the first time since 4.0.1, since I wanted to get my guild bank officer (my brother — since I can track him down and beat him if he screws us over) to the proper rank, but his bank toon hadn’t logged in until Friday or so. So I have yet to implement the authenticator requirement for any ranks, which is annoying.

I helped a guildie get Incendius and the BRD key last night before finally doing the Moira Bronzebeard quest/Emperor run in BRD last night with Football. I did it for the achievement (hi, I killed the Emperor at level 58, thanks) and the quests and for nostalgia. I really do love Blackrock Depths. I just know it so damn well. Football and I also did a step in his Tier 0.5 questline, although it appears he’d already done that one before. I loved and hated that questline, culminating in the death of Lord Whatshisnuts (Valthalak).

Today, I did Sunken Temple and got lost. I didn’t remember I had to kill the six guys up top before killing dragons and then undeads and THEN the Shade of Eranikus. Go me. Eventually I got it done, though.

Let’s see, what else? Oh yeah. I’m pleased to announce the return of the Q&A posts, effective this coming Tuesday. You would not BELIEVE the amount of search engine hits I got after 4.0.1 launched…

And in the interest of pimping out some blogs:

Daritos’ Food for Thought – a long-time member of Apotheosis (and Fated Heroes before that!), Dar will be a first-time officer for Cataclysm and will be playing her resto shaman for us.

The Stories of O – Oestrus has been hanging out with the Apotheosis folks for a few weeks now on her holy priest. I was introduced to her blog via Codi’s and it’s been nice getting to know her, whether she decides to stick with us for Cataclysm or not. She’s also just started co-writing over at Divine Aegis again, so be sure to give that blog a peek for various healy-priest needs.

Things I still need to do:

– finish up responding to comments

– get my screenshot project finished

– finish a lawn dart video for my current guild

– write that requiem for Zul’Gurub

– clarify my feelings about hunters and hunter pets

All righty. Off to go do stuff “in real life” for the evening. :)

Cataclysm Beta Build 13189

Well, MMO-Champion is reporting that the previous beta build, 13183, will not make it to beta servers and has been replaced with 13189, which has a couple of things that affect us holy paladins.

Holy

  • Speed of Light has been revamped to only affect Holy Radiance – Speed of Light – Grants 1/2/3% spell haste and reduces the cooldown of Holy Radiance by 30 sec. Casting Holy Radiance increases your movement speed by 20/40/60% for 4 sec. /
  • Clarity of Purpose now reduces cast time by 0.3 sec at Rank 2, down from 0.35 sec.

I don’t really know what to make of the Speed of Light changes. It feels as though Blizzard just removed almost all the synergy in our tree.

Speed of Light (3/3)  currently gives you 30% spell haste to Flash of Light, Holy Light and Divine Light after using Holy Shock along with the speed boost and lower Holy Radiance cooldown.

While an extra 3% spell haste overall is arguably better than 30% haste to three spells after use of a fourth spell (Holy Shock), it now feels as though we no longer have any spells that work really well together. Or almost none. Assuming the Infusion of Light proc from a crit Holy Shock still reduces the cast times of Holy Light and Divine Light by 1.5 seconds, that’s still one bit of synergy between the spells.

But what else is there? Nothing, really.

Discipline Priests get Evangelism and Archangel and Atonement. If I could freaking Exorcism to heal, I would think seriously about Denounce. That would be some synergy. Holy Shock, Denounce proc, Exorcism on the mob, healing a nearby party or raid member for the amount of the Exorcism. Note that this isn’t actually something I want, but it would be some synergy between our spells.

Similarly, look at the holy priests and Chakra. That talent is the definition of synergy, where one talent (Chakra) gets popped and depending on what state you enter, the spells specific to that state are improved.

What do we get? Infusion of Light (which is a crit proc) increases the cast time of two spells by 1.5 seconds.

There’s also Daybreak, I suppose, since it procs off the casts of FoL, HL and DL and leads back to HS. But that doesn’t compare at all to the priest talents.

Anyways. I seem to have gone and rambled. That’s a shocker, eh? ;)

The Clarity of Purpose change is definitely there for rets or prots and is probably there to nerf PVP paladins of other specs to prevent them from healing. Holy will always take all three points, but .35 seconds isn’t substantially different from .5 seconds, so whoever was taking 2/3 Clarity of Purpose was benefitting from saving a point. By changing it to .3 seconds, that adds a total of .2 seconds to the cast times of HL and DL, so 2.7 at base. More time casting means that’s more time in which you can be silenced, which leads to being counterspelled or silenced or otherwise locked out of your entire spell kit for the next 6 seconds or whatever. Which feels like an eternity.

Then I have to comment on this:

Retribution

  • Zealotry now requires 3 Holy Power to use, but does not consume Holy Power.

So immediately after gaining 3 Holy Power, a ret can then beat your face in with a 3HP Templar’s Verdict, then Crusader Strike and get another 3HP and then Templar’s Verdict you in the face again! For ret pallies, this is awesome.

I mention it because I want to be able to say “this is awesome” about some of our changes or some of our spells.

I’m disappointed with the overall lack of synergy in our tree, the lack of awesomeness about our 31pt talent and I keep waiting for it to get better. This build (assuming it brings with it the previous changes) will be okay, but it’s not The Build Where Everything Is Fixed. And I’m starting to be concerned that things just will not be fixed, not for some time. I’d love to be wrong, but I kind of don’t think I am.

  • Speed of Light has been revamped to only affect Holy Radiance – Speed of Light – Grants 1/2/3% spell haste and reduces the cooldown of Holy Radiance by 30 sec. Casting Holy Radiance increases your movement speed by 20/40/60% for 4 sec. /
  • Clarity of Purpose now reduces cast time by 0.3 sec at Rank 2, down from 0.35 sec.

Cataclysm Beta Build 13183

Yet another beta build’s changes, according to MMO-Champion. Here are my thoughts on the changes that affect holy paladins.

Holy

  • Holy Radiance now heals all friendly targets within 20 yards, up from 10 yards.
  • Exorcism now scales from 22,5% of AP or Spell Power, up from 15%.
  • Lay on Hands: Forbearance effect no longer includes Divine Protection or self-targeted Lay on Hands.
  • Paragon of Virtue now also reduces the cooldown of Hand of Sacrifice by 15/30 sec.
  • Infusion of Light now reduces the cast time of your next Divine Light in addition to Holy Light.

I’m really pleased with the change to Holy Radiance. This changes it from being something you hit and run into range with to hitting it and healing from where you’re standing — or with just a bit of movement. I like it.

No comment on Exorcism, although I left that change in for those of you who want Denounce.

I’m THRILLED that Lay on Hands no longer causes Forbearance. It seems as though any time Blizzard wants to tune paladins, they just slap Forbearance on some spell. See: Wrath, Avenging. ;)

Paragon of Virtue is a good talent. I’m a fan of it. And now I might be even more inclined to put two points into it. Shortened cooldowns on Divine Protection, Avenging Wrath AND Hand of Sacrifice? Very snazzy.

Holy Shock crits reducing the cast time of Divine Light as WELL as Holy Light? I fully expect this to get nerfed, because that is one fast cast and one hell of a big heal, compared to Holy Light. But as long as it’s around, I’ll be quite happy.

Retribution

  • Crusade has an additional effect – In addition, for 15 sec after you kill an enemy that yields experience or honor, your next Holy Light heals for an additional 100/200/300%.

And another reason to pick up Crusade, although this is more PVP/levelling oriented. 300% on a Holy Light is, in pretty good holy gear at 80, about 21k? I also expect to see this nerfed. I also would expect you have to get the killing blow.

I still recommend Crusade for the 30% bonus to Holy Shock, of course.