Category: paladins

Late Night Math: Pets, Beacon and Heroic Yor'sahj

Kurn / / dragon soul, healing, hunters, paladins, raiding, T13

Apotheosis (A-25m-2/8HM, seeking casters and a resto shaman! </shamelessplug>) got Heroic Hagara down as a server-first and our next target is Heroic Yor’sahj the Unsleeping.

Assuming holy paladins are in the mix, a popular healing strategy is to beacon the tanks and heal the pets in the raid, because heals from Beacon of Light do not stack Deep Corruption and pets don’t receive stacks of Deep Corruption.

The question came up, the other day, about whether or not a hunter should use a Tenacity pet, who has the Blood of the Rhino talent. Would the lower DPS be worth 40% extra healing to a pet and then, ostensibly, 20% extra healing to the tank through Beacon of Light?

This was a popular strategy back on Valithria Dreamwalker. You would park a turtle or some other Tenacity pet with the same +healing talent basically on top of Dreamwalker or right next to her and you’d heal the pet for extra healing done. Unfortunately, this stopped being viable eventually when they fixed Blood of the Rhino to only affect the pet and no copied heals from that (ie: Beacon of Light).

But that was back in 3.3. Did 4.3 mean this was somehow working again?

I bothered Daey to get on his holy paladin, Saerani, while I was on Kurn and we experimented with him beaconing me and healing my pet. The first pet he healed was my cat, Whisper, who has no +healing talents at all, being a Ferocity pet.

So you can see here that Daey hits Whisper for 55355 (crit). This bounces to me for 27677, which is just half of that heal. (Yeah, I miss 100% Beacon transfers, too!) The same with the 27672 hit, that gets me for half — 13836. That is totally expected. This is the control for the experiment. Now let’s look at Daey healing my bear, Fozzie.

First, note that the non-crit heal hits for 40,102. Based on the heals Whisper got, it’s clear that Fozzie has the Blood of the Rhino talent if it hit him for a 40k non-crit.

But then you see that the heal to me was only 14322.

MATH TIME.

14322 x2 = 28644 x 1.4 = 40,101.6 = 40,102.

So the original heal size, without the Blood of the Rhino bonus was 28644. With the 40% extra healing, we get 40,101.6 (rounded up to 40,102). If this +healing did transfer through Beacon of Light, we wouldn’t see me being healed for half of the original heal’s size. We would see it be half of the final heal’s size. The final heal was 40,102, so we would be looking for 20,051 as the heal that I got. But alas, I was only healed for 14,322.

Let’s see how this holds up with the next heal.

Fozzie is healed for 71865. I get healed for 25666.

25666 x2 = 51,332 x 1.4 = 71,864.8 = 71,865

Yup, same deal.

So it’s quite clear — Blood of the Rhino does not transfer any extra +healing from the pet to the Beacon of Light target. As such, on the Heroic Yor’sahj the Unsleeping encounter, I do encourage you to beacon the tanks and heal the pets, but don’t gimp your hunters’ DPS by forcing them to bring a Tenacity pet to the raid. Their regular pet will do exactly the same thing a Tenacity pet will.

4.3 and Holy Paladins

Kurn / / 4.3, healing, paladins, T13

There are quite a few changes for holy paladins as of patch 4.3. Some are nerfs, some are buffs, but either way, part of how we heal is going to change significantly.

According to MMO-Champion, patch 4.3 is dropping this week, as in tomorrow, November 29th, 2011.

Here are all the paladin changes that holy pallies will care about.

HOLY RADIANCE

  • Holy Radiance now has a 3.0-second cast time, no cooldown, and requires a player target. That target is imbued with Holy Radiance, which heals them and all group members within 10 yards instantly, and continues to heal them by a smaller amount every 1 second for 3 seconds.
  • Illuminated Healing (mastery) now also applies to Holy Radiance.

This means that Holy Radiance is now a spell with a target and a cast time, like just about every other spell we have. The healing from Holy Radiance will no longer emanate from us, but rather from the people we heal with the spell. Time to find a keybind or mousebind for Holy Radiance! (I’m still trying to figure that one out!) And our mastery will now also apply to targets healed with Holy Radiance.

As a result, several spells now include or exclude Holy Radiance in their effects:

So instead of a 3s base, it’s 2.5s base, just like Divine Light and Holy Light.

  • Infusion of Light now applies its cast time reduction from Holy Shock critical effects to Holy Radiance, in addition to its current effects.

Sweet, Infusion of Light procs will give us a super-fast cast of Holy Radiance.

  • Speed of Light no longer triggers from Holy Radiance and no longer lowers the Holy Radiance cooldown. Speed of Light now only triggers from Divine Protection.

This only makes sense. Holy Radiance no longer HAS a cooldown, so nothing should lower its non-existant cooldown. And we can’t constantly be casting Holy Radiance in order to get a speed buff. That would be silly. Unfortunately, this is technically a nerf, because now we only have one speed boost.

  • Paragon of Virtue now lowers the cooldown of Divine Protection by 15/30 seconds, up from 10/20 seconds.

But they buffed that, so we can now use Divine Protection every 30 seconds, which is pretty sweet.

  • Tower of Radiance, in addition to its current effects, now also causes Holy Radiance to always generate 1 charge of Holy Power at all times.

So this is a neat change that actually sort of gives us an “AOE rotation”. Cast three Holy Radiance on any target or targets (not just your beacon target!) and you’ll have three Holy Power. Cast Light of Dawn. Rinse and repeat. While no one is going to confuse us for resto druids or holy priests in 4.3, this does make us a little more viable as raid healers.

LIGHT OF DAWN

Yay for a buff! This means that everyone’s Light of Dawn will automatically try to hit 6 people. And if you’re in a 10-man raid group, there’s a change for you, too:

  • Glyph of Light of Dawn now lowers the number of targets to 4, instead of increasing targets to 6, but increases healing by 25%.

So that’s a nice little boost, too, and will be less wasteful. Light of Dawn may actually be worthwhile in 10-mans!

BEACON TRANSFERS

  • Beacon of Light is triggered by Word of Glory, Holy Shock, Flash of Light, Divine Light and Light of Dawn at 50% transference and Holy Light at 100% transference. It does not transfer Holy Radiance, Protector of the Innocent or other sources of healing.

That’s right, you can drop to 2/3 of Protector of the Innocent if you, like me, hate the talent, but felt badly about not sending the maximum amount of tiny heals to your Beacon target. Note that you should still have 1/2 Enlightened Judgements to ensure you hit the 8% melee hit cap to make sure your judgements are always hitting (to maintain Judgements of the Pure), but the small bits of healing from that also will not transfer, so if you were at 2/2 Enlightened Judgements for that reason, you can drop a point there quite safely.

Yes, this is technically a nerf, but I know that I’m actually not going to cringe when I go looking through a parse now, trying to line up all the itty, bitty Beacon of Light heals with whatever the holy paladin in question was doing at the time.

SEALS AND JUDGING

  • Seal of Insight, when Judged, no longer returns 15% base mana to the paladin. Judging Seal of Insight still causes damage, and melee attacks will still restore 4% of base mana.
  • In addition to providing haste, the effect from Judgements of the Pure now increases mana regeneration from Spirit by 10/20/30% for 60 seconds.

These two changes, quite simply, mean that we are no longer judging once every 8 seconds in order to regain 15% of our base mana. We will only need to judge once per minute to keep Judgements of the Pure active, not only for the increased haste, but for increased mana regeneration. Spirit is our friend!

And, well, that’s about it, to be honest. So really, just a change to Holy Radiance and talents that were affecting the old version/should affect the new version. A change to Light of Dawn and its glyph. A change to Seal of Insight and Judgements of the Pure. And a change to what heals transfer through Beacon.

SO WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO DIFFERENTLY?

Make sure you remember to bind the new Holy Radiance to something. You might want to add the Holy Radiance effect to your raid frames (tip: it’s called Holy Radiance!) so you can see how much of the raid is being affected by it. If you’re in a 10m group, you probably want to glyph Light of Dawn. And remember, no need to judge every 8 seconds. And you only have one sprint! But it’s usable every 30 seconds.

Don’t forget to check out my T13 (normal) loot list, too!

Good luck to you, whether you’re heading right for Dragon Soul or into one of the new dungeons!

Kurn's 4.3 Holy Paladin Gear List

Kurn / / 4.3, gear, paladins, raiding, T13

(Edited on December 15th, 2011 — hotfixes aplenty affecting the 4pc bonus, Heart of the Unliving and Timepiece of the Bronze Flight!)

Well, ladies and gentlemen, patch 4.3 is expected to drop in about a week (estimated November 29th), so it’s time for another one of those silly gear posts. Bear in mind that this is my opinion only and I will be prioritizing secondary stats in the following manner (keeping in mind that Intellect is always our primary stat):

Spirit > Haste > Crit > Mastery

Why am I prioritizing as I am? Due to incoming changes to Judgements of the Pure, our regen will be much more reliant on spirit, so I’ll look to have spirit on each piece possible. Haste, while it will drop slightly in priority due to the changes to Holy Radiance, will still be useful in getting more casts out. Crit will still be somewhat lacklustre. Mastery will get a bump up because it will now apply to targets on whom you cast Holy Radiance (and presumably those healed by the AOE effect), but my personal playstyle is not that of a raid healer, so I’m going to continue to focus on Spirit/Haste-heavy gear.

Note that I will focus primarily on the 397 ilvl gear from normal Dragon Soul, but in many cases, the 384 (Looking For Raid) version will work just as well.

As to the 2pc and 4pc set bonuses for Tier 13… Well, I’ll have a bunch of different potential gearsets in this post, I guess. I like the 2pc (although I feel it’s a little underpowered) and while I like the 4pc, I’m not sure how much use I’m personally going to get from it.

For reference:

2pc Tier 13 set bonus: After using Divine Favor, the mana cost of your healing spells is reduced by 25% for 15 sec.
4pc Tier 13 set bonus: Increases the healing done by your Holy Radiance spell by 20%. 5%. (This was hotfixed!)

It’s also important to note that ALL TIER will be dropping from raids, including lower ilvl (384) versions of the tier from the Looking for Raid difficulty, so no tier will be available with Valor Points. As well, Alizabal, the new Baradin Hold boss, seems to be dropping tier gloves and tier legs as both previous Baradin Hold bosses have done.

Tier 13/ilvl 397

HEAD

Two real options here, the tier helm and the vendor helm. That’s right, helms will be available for Valor Points at the vendor.

Glowing Wings of Hope: 2200 Valor Points from the VP vendor. This will take a bit longer than you would expect to earn. While the weekly cap is being raised to 1000 Valor Points, you’ll only earn 100 VP per raid boss kill (regardless of 10 or 25-man format). There are probably better pieces to pick up from the VP vendor first, so you might be waiting even longer than just collecting the 2200 VP (which is a minimum of two weeks and a bit). That said, the secondaries on this (spirit and crit) aren’t bad.

Headguard of Radiant Glory: This is the tier helm and the token for it drops off the sixth boss in the Dragon Soul raid, Warmaster Blackhorn. Why yes, that IS 280 mastery on it. My vote is for the non-tier helm! But let’s see what we can cobble together, shall we?

NECK

Again, two options here, one from the raid instance and one from the vendors.

Threadlinked Chain: 1250 Valor Points on this baby, which is still at least a week and a bit before you can afford this. Again, I’m not sure if this should be our priority for Valor Points, but we’ll see where we stand after going through all the loot. Plus, it’s got spirit, which is great, but it has crit, so it’s not what I would consider the best combination of stats.

Petrified Fungal Heart: Beautiful! Spirit and geez, would you look at that haste? Insane. The best news here is that this drops from the first boss in Dragon Soul, Morchok. This is definitely Kurn’s Choice ™, due to ease of acquisition and the pretty, pretty stats.

SHOULDERS

Uh. Absolutely no choices here. Go tier or go home.

Mantle of Radiant Glory: The good news? These are fantastic shoulders. 2 red sockets, 20 intellect socket bonus, lots of haste. Even better, the token for these aren’t off the second to last boss, like they were in Firelands or on an end-boss, like they were on Cho’gall in Bastion of Twilight. They’re off the fourth boss, Hagara the Stormbinder.

CLOAK

Again, no choices here as there is not one single cloak that drops in Dragon Soul.

Woundlicker Cover: Well, at least it’s a great cloak. Red socket, intellect bonus, spirit and haste, all for the bargain-basement price of 1250 Valor Points! This is looking as though it might be our number one VP purchase.

CHEST

Back to options! It’s nice to have a choice in gear.

Shining Carapace of Glory: All red sockets, all of the time, it appears. I’m not complaining. This chestpiece is available from the Valor Point vendor for 2200 VP and is possibly more easily available than the tier chest. Still, the crit makes me more inclined to put something else (like the cloak!) ahead of this on my potential shopping list.

Breastplate of Radiant Glory: YES PLEASE. Seriously, we have been blessed with some amazing chestpieces this expansion, but this is SERIOUSLY an amazing one. 3 sockets (including a yellow, so we can slot in a Reckless gem in there for one of our two yellow meta gem requirements) and plenty of haste. Even if you don’t like haste much as a secondary, the third socket makes this the winner, hands down. This drops off Ultraxion, the fifth boss in Dragon Soul.

WRISTS

I feel as though I’ve stumbled into an alternate universe because we have not one, not two, but three choices this tier. Is this really the same game that gave us just one 359 option for bracers?

Flashing Bracers of Warmth: Selling for a mere 1250 Valor Points at the vendor, these bracers are the easiest of the three to acquire. They also lack a socket and have mastery on them as a secondary. Still, not a terrible choice if your only other options are 378 bracers or if you’re doing that whole “mastery-stacking” thing.

Heartblood Wristplates: Pardon me as I attempt not to drool. Red socket, spirit, haste? Awesome. They drop off the third boss in Dragon Soul, Yor’sahj the Unsleeping, so they may not be terribly difficult to acquire.

Soul Redeemer Bracers: … okay, I’m drooling. These are crafted. The recipe for them is likely to be a drop from Dragon Soul. The materials for these actually aren’t too bad: 4 Truegold, 30 Volatile Life, 2 newly-unbound Chaos Orbs and, okay, well, the 4 Essences of Destruction will be the sticking point. These will likely be dropping in Dragon Soul the same way Living Embers did. Bear in mind that there are no heroic versions of this, so for the next ilvl tier, the drops from Yor’sahj will be better. But these are still amazing until you clear Dragon Soul and move into heroic modes.

HANDS

Two choices here with the gloves, one from the vendors, the other our tier.

Gleaming Grips of Mending: 1650 Valor Points for these. There’s a red socket, which is nice, but there’s that pesky mastery stat again. Still, if you don’t get lucky with your tier token, these are perfectly viable and adequate.

Gloves of Radiant Glory: The token for these drops off Warlord Zon’ozz, the second boss in Dragon Soul. A blue socket and crit as a secondary. Meh.

Honestly, this choice really depends on how much you hate mastery and how often Conqueror tokens drop off Yor’sahj. Either are fine, but the tier will obviously help with 2/4pc bonuses.

However, if you get through the Spine of Deathwing encounter, you get a shot at ilvl 403 loot and the only piece of ilvl 403 armor we might be interested in here are the gloves.

Gauntlets of the Golden Thorn: Very pretty. Two sockets, which is more than the other options, and plenty of spirit and haste. These get my vote.

WAIST

Again, I feel as though I’m in an alternate dimension. Coming out of a tier with just one belt option, in Tier 13, we’ll have… three?

Blinding Girdle of Truth: 1650 Valor Points will get you this belt from the VP vendor. Two sockets are always tempting, but then there’s all that mastery. Not a bad choice, but with two other choices, this is not my top option.

Dragonfracture Belt: Wow, this is an amazing belt. This belt is like the devs are saying “Hey, holy paladins? Yeah, we’re sorry about that one crappy belt option in T12. Enjoy!!” It drops off Ultraxion, the fifth boss in Dragon Soul. This is definitely my first pick.

Girdle of Soulful Mending: Now this is a curious item. It doesn’t seem to drop off any boss, nor is there a recipe for it. It’s also Bind on Equip. Could this be a trash drop in Dragon Soul? Assuming it’s actually in the game, I think we have to assume it is. As such, this is your easiest way to upgrade to a 397 belt, although it likely won’t be cheap. And while it has 20 intellect more (at base) than the other two belts, it only has one socket. Even without epic gems (which are being introduced in 4.3, but are supposed to be quite rare), this is still going to be a loss of intellect compared to the other two options.

Honestly, if you can’t get Ultraxion down with regularity or if you can’t cough up the VP for the belt, the BOE will do in a pinch, but the only thing it has going for it is that it’s relatively easy to get (trash runs, at the Auction House, etc).

LEGS

Just two options here. One is our tier legs and the other is another crafted item.

Greaves of Radiant Glory: Our tier legs, whose token drops from Yor’sahj the Unsleeping, the third boss in Dragon Soul. 3 sockets are great, but that mastery. Why mastery? Alas. T11 pants were crap, T13 pants aren’t great, IMHO.

Pyrium Legplates of Purified Evil: The only other choice apart from tier are these crafted legs. While they are awesome, there will almost certainly not be a heroic version of these, which makes me a sad moose. (#sadmoose!) These call for 8 Truegold, 40 Volatile Life, 4 newly-unbound Chaos Orbs and 8 Essences of Destruction.

FEET

Some interesting options here.

Pillarfoot Greaves: Dropping from Morchok, the first boss of Dragon Soul, are these boots. Two sockets, plenty of spirit… and crit isn’t terrible. These are likely going to be fairly easy to pick up.

Silver Sabatons of Fury: These are AWESOME. And they’re available from the vendors for 1650 Valot Points. BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! Valor Point boots are Bind on Equip again, like they were for Tier 11!

Best thing to do here is farm up the VP on another character in the first week and a bit and buy them for your main raiding character. Or, save up ~15k or thereabouts and buy your boots off the Auction House in Week 2 of 4.3. The important thing here is that you not spend your main raiding character’s VP on these boots, as awesome as they are. You have other things to save for.

WEAPONS/SHIELDS

A couple of options here, though none as awesome as the Eye of Purification (as in, they’re all boring maces).

Vagaries of Time: Dropping off Morchok, the first boss of Dragon Soul, this is a snazzy mace. Good itemization, though no spirit means that those nasty shadow priests, moonkins and elemental shaman will also be after it. Definitely worth picking up.

That is, until…

Maw of the Dragonlord: Definitely a healing mace, based on the Equip. I wonder if it looks like Light of Dawn… Anyhow, Vixsin of Life in Group 5 recently tweeted: “Healers, start cozying up to your loot council, because Maw of the Dragonlord is doing 10-20% of my healing on PTR.” Of course, this drops at the end of the Madness of Deathwing encounter, so only if you’re clearing Dragon Soul can you expect to see this.

As to shields… well, there’s one healing shield, but there’s also an off-hand that might be worth checking out.

Timepiece of the Bronze Flight: The only healing shield you’ll find. It’s fine and all, but there’s no socket. It drops off Warmaster Blackthorn, the sixth boss of Dragon Soul. This has been hotfixed to add a red socket with a 10 int socket bonus. This is almost certainly what we’d like to pick up.

Ledger of Revolting Rituals: Now this is where it gets got a bit interesting. Dropping off Ultraxion, the 5th boss in Dragon Soul, this off-hand has a socket. Dropping an ordinary Brilliant Inferno Ruby (+40 intellect) into it will give it 20 more intellect than the shield (the version without the socket) and if it’s an epic brilliant cut, that’ll be 30 more intellect than the shield. Is 30 intellect better than 15 haste and 8 spirit? Hell yes.

The thing is, holy paladins and resto shaman and elemental shaman are the only ones who would want that shield, versus any priest, moonkin, resto druid, ele/resto shaman or holy paladin who is using a 1H/OH-or-shield combination. If you’ve got very little competition, go for the Ledger. If you have competition, go with the shield, at least until the off-hand is being disenchanted and such.

Right, so in LFR (and bear in mind that this list is for NORMAL raiding, not LFR!), the shield has been “tagged” for paladins and shaman while the ledger has been “tagged” for priests, druids, etc. That means that a paladin cannot “need” on the Ledger. But it’s okay, because the shield was hotfixed to add a red socket along with a 10 int bonus, so the shield comes out ahead of the Ledger any way you look at it now.

RINGS

Signet of Suturing: This is a ring that drops off of multiple bosses with a shared loot table, much like our awesome spellpower axe, the Eye of Purification, did in Firelands. It is awesome. End of story.

Band of Reconstruction: 1250 Valor Points for a decent ring. It’s got spirit, but also has mastery. The yellow socket and its weak bonus isn’t great either. Not a priority for our shopping list.

Ring of the Riven: No spirit on this, but some haste and mastery, which is a combination we don’t see a lot. It drops off Hagara the Stormbinder, the fourth boss in Dragon Soul.

I’ll probably aim for Signet of Suturing and then whichever I can reasonably get first, the Band or the Ring. Bear in mind that casters will want the Ring of the Riven as well, though.

TRINKETS

Reflection of the Light: The healer Valor Point trinket, available for 1650 VP. Spirit is good. The on-use is good for bursty moments, but remember that it’s not like the Fiery Quintessence, which gave us Intellect. This is pure spellpower.

Bottled Wishes: The “caster” Valor Point trinket, this can be yours for 1650 VP. Again, this may not be as useful given the changes to Holy Radiance and such, but if your heals are feeling sluggish, this might be useful. Also, the on-use spellpower effect can be helpful for some burst throughput.

— Thanks to Oestrus for pointing out that I’d missed the VP trinkets entirely. Whoopsiedoodle. And speaking of the VP trinkets, since neither one of them has intellect, I would recommend picking only one of them and keeping another, intellect-heavy trinket on you. I would probably aim for the Seal of the Seven Signs (see below) and Reflection of the Light, to be honest, but I reserve the right to change my mind.

Seal of the Seven Signs: Preeeetty. Shiiiiny. While it sucks that the haste boost is a proc and not an on-use like the Shard of Woe, this is still pretty decent, if only because of the huge amount of intellect. Plus, that’s a LOT of haste when it does proc. It probably has a 45s internal cooldown or something, so that can still be 4-6 procs (and thus, 80-120s) of hasted goodness during a ~5 minute fight. It drops from Warlord Zon’ozz, the second boss in Dragon Soul.

Windward Heart: Another item on that shared loot table, like the Signet of Suturing, this is interesting because, according to the comments on Wowhead, it’s got a ~25s internal cooldown.

Heart of Unliving: Another ilvl 403 item, this is from the Spine of Deathwing, the 7th fight in the Dragon Soul. On the one hand, this adds 880 spirit to you, which is monstrous, especially given the Judgements of the Pure changes. On the other, there’s absolutely no stats on this. It really depends how you’re doing with mana, to be honest. This was hotfixed to add 323 intellect to it, so while that’s a lot less than any other similar ilvl trinket, you still gte that monstrously insane amount of spirit. It would allow you to drop spirit on some other gear, like the Ring of the Riven, so that’s something to keep in mind.

RELICS

Well, technically, we have two choices, both available from the vendors for 700 Valor Points.

Lightning Spirit in a Bottle: The “healer” relic, this has spirit… and mastery.

Mindbender Lens: The “caster” relic, this has haste and crit, but no spirit.

Which you choose is really up to you and your playstyle and what other gear you have and how your mana regen is doing. Since neither are perfectly itemized, this may drop down the priority list when looking at Valor Point purchases.

VALOR POINT PRIORITY LIST

All right, here’s what I think your priority should be when spending your Valor Points. I am not including Silver Sabatons of Fury. These should be your FIRST Valor Point purchase, but use an alt or gold to get these!

1) Woundlicker Cover – 1250 VP for this awesome cloak.
2) Glowing Wings of Hope – 2200 VP for this helm. Given that the tier helm drops off the 6th boss and is “meh”, pick this helm up when you can.
3) Reflection of the Light OR Bottled Wishes – 1650 for either trinket. Again, just pick one of them and go intellect-heavy for the other, I’d say.
4) Your relic – 700 VP for either the “healer” or “caster” relic.
5) Gleaming Grips of Mending – 1650 VP for your gloves, IF you can’t get your tier gloves from Warlord Zon’ozz. Will be replaced by the gloves from the Spine of Deathwing, though.
6) Blinding Girdle of Truth – 1650 VP for your belt, IF you can’t get the one from Ultraxion, the fifth boss in Dragon Soul.
7) Shining Carapace of Glory – 2200 VP for a chest, IF and ONLY if you cannot, for the life of you, get your tier chest. Because as soon as you do get your tier chest, vendor this sucker.
8) Flashing Bracers of Warmth – 1250 VP for these bracers, IF you can’t get the crafted ones or the ones from Yor’sahj, the third boss in Dragon Soul.

Honestly, you shouldn’t really need to buy 5-8. You should be able to pick up the raid drops, even if it’s just the LFR versions (which are ilvl 384 instead of 397). If you manage to cap your Valor Points at 1000 per week and just buy the first four items (and use an alt or gold to get your boots), you’ll be mostly done with Valor Point collection after five weeks (and an additional 800 VP), barring terrible drops or terrible luck.

2PC, 4PC OR WHAT?

Well, here’s what I’m aiming for:

VP helm
Tier shoulders (obviously)
Tier chest (fantastic)
Gauntlets of the Golden Thorn (Spine of Deathwing drop)
Crafted legs

I will likely pick up, as I am able, the tier legs and tier gloves so that I can play with the 4pc bonus. But I don’t tend to raid heal, so the boost to Holy Radiance will likely be lost on me. (Plus, a 5% bonus to HR is a lot more underwhelming than the original 20% HR bonus. Really, the only time I’d be likely to use 4pc is on Ultraxion, but that’s because I mostly tank heal and occasionally raid heal on that one fight.)

If you go with the 4pc, I would recommend the helm and the legs and still go with the Gauntlets of the Golden Thorn because they are the prettiest pretty off-set things you’ll find this tier, so if you have to pick one item to be an off-set piece, it should be the gloves (particularly as there will be a heroic version of the gloves, but no heroic version of the crafted legs!).

OVERVIEW BY BOSS

And here’s what you might like to see drop from the various bosses.

Morchok: Vagaries of Time (mace), Petrified Fungal Heart (neck)

Warlord Zon’ozz: Seal of the Seven Signs (trinket), potentially tier glove token for Gloves of Radiant Glory

Yor’sahj the Unsleeping: Heartblood Wristplates (bracers), potentially tier leg token for Greaves of Radiant Glory

Hagara the Stormbinder: Ring of the Riven (ring), definitely tier shoulder token for Mantle of Radiant Glory

Ultraxion: Dragonfracture Belt (belt), definitely tier chest token for Breastplate of Radiant Glory (chest), potentially Ledger of Revolting Rituals (off-hand — not a shield!)

Warmaster Blackthorn: Potentially Timepiece of the Bronze Flight (shield)

Spine of Deathwing: Definitely Gauntlets of the Golden Thorn (hands), potentially Heart of Unliving (trinket)

Madness of Deathwing: Definitely Maw of the Dragonlord (mace)

Shared Loot Table: Signet of Suturing (ring), Windward Heart (trinket)

THAT’S ALL, FOLKS!

And that’s all I’ve got for you, folks. I do hope this is somewhat helpful for you as you enter Dragon Soul and start seeing all that lovely loot drop!

Holy Paladins in Mists of Pandaria (BlizzCon Day 1)

Kurn / / mists of pandaria, paladins, ramblings

I am, sadly, not in Anaheim, but I did purchase the virtual ticket, so I’m going to attempt to separate my own feelings about the various announcements separate from paladin information, so there may be a few posts this weekend. Also, paladin information is kind of scarce at the moment. All we have is some info about the talent trees and such.

Please bear in mind that this is all based on the WoW Preview and Class Talent System panels and anything can (and may!) change.

So, first up, they’ve changed up talents and such. Gone are the days of a huge talent tree. At level 90, we will have 6 tiers, with 3 choices on each tier. You get to pick one from each tier and that’s it. You get these choices at level 15, 30, 45, 60, 75 and 90.

That said, you still get your “iconic” abilities at level 10. You will, however, now get more iconic abilities as you level.

So you’ll have:

Core Class Abilities – things that are available to everyone in the class
Spec Abilities – things that are available to everyone in that spec of that class
Talents – the 6 talents you choose at various levels.

They showed a slide of some of the Holy Paladin spec abilities. These are things you get for going Holy at level 10 when you choose to specialize. Bear in mind that these may not be exactly the same as they currently are!

Level 10: Holy Shock and Walk in the Light. This looks to be the same passive we currently have.
Level 20: Holy Wrath. Yes, that’s right, this is now specific to holy paladins, as far as we know.
Level 30: Judgements of the Pure. I expect this will work similarly to how JotP will work in 4.3.
Level 32: Holy Light. Yup, this is specific to holy paladins. It was mentioned that all paladins will have Flash of Light but Holy Light and Divine Light will be specific to holy paladins.
Level 34: Sacred Cleansing. Well, at least we don’t have to put a talent point here, eh? ;)
Level 38: Holy Radiance. Well, that’s accessible a lot sooner, geez!
Level 40: Beacon of Light. Available around the same point as it is now.
Level 46: Divine Plea. Interesting place for it.
Level 50: Infusion of Light.

That’s all they gave us for holy and it’s all based on a screenshot, so I’m sure no one should count on that info to remain all that accurate. :)

Now, as to the paladin talents. Remember, these are available to all paladins! And we can only choose one of each tier. Thanks much to Walks for sending me his written-out versions of the talent choices. :)

Level 15

This is the Movement tier. Your choices are:

Speed of Light (instant, 1m cooldown)
Increases your movement speed by 60% for 6 seconds. During this time, you radiate healing to nearby allies.

Well. Interesting. This is obviously taken from our current Holy Radiance sprint move, although it lasts two seconds more than our current Holy Radiance sprint and I’m sure the healing done isn’t terribly strong.

Long Arm of the Law (8s cooldown)
A successful Judgment increases your movement speed by 45% for 4 seconds.

So this is a sprint that can happen every 8 seconds, but it lasts 2 seconds less than Speed of Light and is 15% less fast. Still, it’s not a button you hit that you wouldn’t normally hit at some point, so it’s kind of passive. Interesting.

Pursuit of Justice
You gain 10% movement speed for each current charge of Holy Power.

So that’s a maximum of 30% speed, but it could be, well, forever. Interesting.

As a holy paladin participating in PVE content, based on this information, I would likely select Speed of Light.

Level 30

This is the Crowd Control tier.

Fist of Justice (Instant, 30s cooldown)
Stuns the target for 6 seconds.

This replaces Hammer of Justice, but you’ll note that the CD is 30s, not the 60s that HoJ is.

Repentance (1.5s cast, no cooldown)
Puts the enemy target in a state of meditation, incapacitating them for up to 1 minute. Any damage from sources other than Censure will awaken the target. Usable against Demons, Dragonkin, Giants, Humanoids, and Undead.

Seal of Justice
Fills the Paladin with Holy Light, causing direct attacks to reduce the target’s movement speed by 50% for 5 sec and deal 87 additional Holy damage.

So that’s clearly the PVP way to go. ;) Actually, the Fist of Justice might be, too. Repentance for me!

Level 45

This can be considered the damage reduction tier. Sort of.

Blessed Life (8s internal cooldown)
You have a 100% change to gain a charge of Holy Power whenever you take direct damage or are stunned, feared, or immobilized. This effect cannot occur more than once every 8 seconds.

They did say that, absolutely, this is direct-damage. Standing in AOE will not proc this.

Sacred Shield (60s internal cooldown)
When reduced below 30% health, you gain the Sacred Shield effect. Sacred Shield absorbs damage and increases healing received by 20%. Lasts 15 seconds. This effect cannot occur more than once every 60 seconds.

Sadly, this is not the Sacred Shield of WotLK, but rather the one from the ret tree.

Ardent Defender (Instant, 3m cooldown)
Reduces damage taken by 20% for 10 seconds. While Ardent Defender if active, the next attack that will kill you will instead cause you to be healed for 15% of your maximum health.

Yup, Ardent Defender is planned to be available to all paladins.

I would probably grab Sacred Shield, since, as a healer, it’s rare that something will choose to beat on me specifically, so Blessed Life is a bit less useful. Ardent Defender is also more useful for someone expecting to take damage, so Sacred Shield seems to be the choice.

Level 60

This is clearly the healing tier. Finally, something that might be useful for us in terms of healing!

Selfless Healer (8s internal cooldown)
Your successful Judgments reduce the mana cost of your next Flash of Light by 50% and improve its effectiveness by 50% when used to heal others. Stacks up to 2 times.

Interesting. Over the course of 16 seconds, you can get a free Flash of Light. If Judgements of the Pure continues into 5.0 the way that it’s going to work in 4.3, this will probably not be the optimal choice for a PVE-based holy paladin, just because we’re not going to judge that much.

Eternal Glory (assumed 15s internal cooldown, based on this spell)
Your Word of Glory and Light of Dawn have a 30% change to not consume Holy Power.

Interesting change! Light of Dawn is now part of Eternal Glory. Really, that should have happened this expansion.

Holy Shield (requires at least 1 Holy Power)
Shields a friendly target, absorbing more damage per each charge of Holy Power consumed for 10 seconds.

Well, now. That’s certainly interesting… We get to shield people? Tempting, tempting!

As it stands, Selfless Healer is pretty lame for holy paladins in PVE. But Eternal Glory, particularly with its addition of Light of Dawn from its current incarnation, is tempting. It’s clearly the throughput choice. But Holy Shield is very interesting and possibly compelling, too. It would really depend, of course, on how much damage is actually absorbed. I would tentatively say that one should take Eternal Glory as a raid healer and Holy Shield as a tank healer.

Level 75

The utility tier!

Veneration
Your Consecration causes the Veneration effect on party or raid members within its area.

Veneration — you are immune to movement impairing effects for 6 seconds.

We’re never going to get “if you stand in my consecration, it will heal you”, will we? Anyhow. Definitely a PVP-related talent, at least according to how PVE stuff plays out at the moment.

Acts of Sacrifice
Reduces the cooldown by 20% and the mana cost by 20% of your Hand of Freedom, Hand of Protection, and Hand of Sacrifice.

In addition, your Cleanse will removed one movement impairing effect if cast upon yourself.

I almost wrote this off entirely, because who cares about the Cleanse and movement impairing effects? Then I re-read it. Reduces the cooldown by 20% of your HoFreedom, BOP and HoSac. Right now, HoFreedom is 25 seconds, so that would reduce it to 20 seconds. BOP is five minutes, so that would drop to four minutes and, properly specced, our HoSac is 90 seconds, but the base for all paladins is two minutes, so assuming a 2m CD here, it goes from 120 seconds to 96 seconds. Snazzy.

Clemency (5 minute cooldown)
When activated, immediately finishes the cooldown on your Hand of Freedom, Hand of Protection, and Hand of Sacrifice.

Even snazzier!

While Acts of Sacrifice is passive, Clemency is like a Marksmanship Hunter’s Readiness talent. Although it has a long cooldown itself, how awesome would it be to have BOP and HoSac up again at the touch of a button? Man, I wish we had this already. I can think of times (*cough*heroicshannox*cough*) where this would be useful in current content.

Level 90

This is, as Ghostcrawler said, all about burst and cooldowns. (Or, as Walks put it, Holy Power, Batman!)

Holy Avenger (Effective 5 minute cooldown)
Summoning your Guardian of Ancient Kings also imbues you with the power of a Holy Avenger [for 10 seconds].

Holy Avenger — none of your abilities consume Holy Power and cast as if 3 Holy Power were consumed. Lasts 10 seconds.

Interesting. A ten-second window where no Holy Power is used and those abilities are cast as if 3 charges of HP were used. On a five minute cooldown, using the current cooldown for Guardian of Ancient Kings. Not really a fan from a healer perspective, to be honest.

Sanctified Wrath (Effective 2 minute cooldown)
You gain more frequent access to one of your abilities during Avenging Wrath [for 20 seconds].

Holy — Holy Shock has no cooldown
Protection — Judgement has no cooldown
Retribution — You can use Hammer of Wrath

When I first read this, I missed the bit about Avenging Wrath being active. Whoops. ;) Still, every ~2 minutes, a 20-second window where Holy Shock has no cooldown and, as a result, we basically have limitless Holy Power? Yup, I’ll take that.

Divine Purpose (15% chance, assumed internal cooldown)
Abilities that cost Holy Power have a 15% chance to cause the Divine Purpose effect.

Divine Purpose — Your next Holy Power ability will consume no Holy Power and act as if 3 Holy Power were consumed.

This is probably the “safe” bet. A lot of the talents GC talked about in all the trees offered one passive version of something and one active version of something. This is clearly the passive version of Sanctified Wrath. Rather than have it all in a couple of 20s chunks, you get a bunch of extra healing over the course of your fight.

Tough choice between Sanctified Wrath and Divine Purpose. I think it would depend heavily on the encounters and would also depend on if the CD for Avenging Wrath changes. If it’s any longer than 2 minutes, maybe Divine Purpose is the way to go.

Check out this post at MMO-Champion to see all the talent choices for all the classes!

Stay tuned for more BlizzCon-related posts!

A Gear Post

Kurn / / gear, guide, paladins, patch 4.2, T12

I haven’t really spoken a lot about holy paladin gear of late. I think, actually, that the last post I wrote about it had to do with me stacking mastery to see how it would work out.

The Great Mastery Stacking Experiment lasted approximately two and a half weeks.

The whole reason I stacked mastery was because, due to various upgrades I had gotten, there was no way I could continue to stack intellect gems and still hit my ~1860 haste breakpoint to give me that 14th tick of Holy Radiance, given Judgements of the Pure being active, 3/3 Speed of Light (for 3% extra haste) and the 5% haste buff that can be gotten through a moonkin’s aura, a shadow priest’s aura or a shaman’s Wrath of Air totem.

Plus, there was a lot of chatter going on about mastery at the time.

So I reforged, regemmed and re-enchanted all of my gear to mastery. My gems were Artful Ember Topaz (20 int/20 mastery) and the only spot I didn’t have mastery were my boots, because I didn’t want to waste guild bank funds for Lavawalker for a mere 35 mastery rating.

It worked okay. I saw a distinct difference in terms of what I was capable of doing and I saw differences in tank squishiness. I do spend a LOT of my time just healing my tank(s), so why not, right?

However, as soon as I was able to hit my breakpoint again, thanks to more upgrades, I swapped everything back to full intellect gems, reforging to spirit and haste once again.

I did this for two major reasons:

1) I didn’t like the slow casts. While my (much beefier) mastery bubbles were doing okay at preventing tank deaths .5 seconds before my cast would finish, it felt as though I was casting through molasses. It was intolerable for me and it wasn’t something I ever got used to doing in the ~2.5 weeks I was stacking mastery.

2) The knowledge that I wasn’t able to help out with raid healing as much (and I don’t do a whole lot of it as it was or even is) was disheartening. I just didn’t like being pigeon-holed into a tank healing only role, which is hilarious, because THAT’S WHAT I DO.

But go figure, I suddenly felt as though stacking mastery was gimping me beyond what I was comfortable with and I didn’t feel a huge help from the mastery. It helped now and again, sure, but I didn’t feel as though what I was getting from mastery was at all worth all the intellect, spirit, haste and versatility that I was giving up.

So I went back to spirit and haste.

I got my T12 4pc a few weeks ago. It wasn’t my preferred four pieces, mind you.

In my T12 gear post, I had seen a problem. If one goes for the 4pc bonus, which piece should be the offset piece?

I had concluded that the gloves should be the offset piece, electing to pick up the Grips of the Raging Giant from Lord Rhyolith, primarily because the tier 12 Immolation Gloves have no spirit. Since our only 378 ilvl belt option, the Belt of the Seven Seals, also has no spirit, I decided to go with the Rhyolith gloves and aim for the helm, shoulders, chest and legs for my 4pc.

Picking the gloves as my offset meant not using the Clutch of the Firemother, which, I’m sure you’ll agree, is a very pretty piece of equipment, which is sad, but I was determined to have spirit on my gloves and I had plenty of haste to maintain my Holy Radiance breakpoint.

This was all done before I actually set foot into Firelands, mind you.

I ended up getting my T12 Immolation Headguard and then realized that if I bought the gloves, I would have my 4pc. So that’s what I did.

Behold, Divine Flame, our 4pc set bonus!

Too bad it sucks.

Looking over recent logs, over all boss attempts the other night, it did 1.2% of my total healing and overhealed 74% of the time. The most healing it’s ever really done for me was something like 3.3% and that must have been the stars aligning or something, because it’s usually around 1-2% of my total healing.

You can hear my initial reactions to the 4pc (and how underwhelming it is) on Episode 33 of Blessing of Frost.

Still, I figured, it’s free healing. That can’t be bad, right?

Well, when the heroic version of Clutch of the Firemother dropped on Tuesday night, I told Walks it was his if he wanted it, because it had never dropped on normal for him. He was reluctant and we both ended up selecting “Minor Upgrade” for it, which is an option you can choose within our guild that means that “I want this, but let anyone else who hit main spec for it get it before me”.

And I won it, with Walks insisting he wouldn’t use it until he got heroic shoulders off of Majordomo Staghelm — whom we haven’t even pulled on heroic yet.

So with the chest upgrade, I now have a choice: Break 4pc by keeping my Rhyolith gloves or keep 4pc by going back to my T12 gloves?

I’m going to break the bonus.

Let’s be clear: T11 tier was pretty terrible for us, but at least some of the T12 pieces are great. The helm and the legs, in particular, are fantastic from a holy paladin perspective. Your shoulder choices are tier (with crit as a secondary) or the ones from Beth’tilac (with mastery as a secondary), so I’ll go with the tier shoulders any day (slightly preferring crit to mastery). But the tier chest falls flat compared to Clutch of the Firemother if you’re not aiming for the 4pc.

If our 4pc were absolutely fantastic, I would have stuck to my gloves being my offset piece, but it’s really not that awesome. I do have all five tier pieces now, however, so I can swap things around a bit if I like, but really — Divine Flame recently did 27,000 healing total on a 6-minute heroic Shannox fight where I did 1.8 million healing.

I should probably go back to that gear post and plaster all over it that 4pc isn’t worth it, and maybe I’ll get around to that when time permits, but for right now, get your two-piece however you can (because that IS pretty awesome) and aim for your legs and your helm to be the two pieces you really hold on to.

Comfortable with my Class

Kurn / / apotheosis, firelands, guild, healing, paladins, raiding, ramblings, T12

On Tuesday night, Apotheosis got Heroic Beth’tilac 25 down.

Dar, one of our resto shaman, had posted to say she wasn’t going to be there, which left me with a difficult decision: who was going to heal Dar’s people in the northwest? For 28 attempts, Dar had dutifully healed that particular corner.

In order for it to go as smoothly as possible, I wanted to make as few major changes as I could.

What did that mean? That meant that I was going to take her spot.

I got to heal our moonkin, Hitoku and, lucky me, Majik, my caster officer and my co-host over at Blessing of Frost.

(The “lucky me” was sarcasm. If you couldn’t tell. ;))

So, for 28 attempts prior to Tuesday, I was essentially healing the ground tank, keeping an eye on Dar and other healers, taunting spinners down and generally watching everything, as a raid leader is prone to doing. I had never assigned myself to a cave and, to be honest, I would be happy if I never had to do so again… But I digress.

It took us 10 pulls to kill Beth’tilac Tuesday, bringing us to 3/7 25-man heroics. For each of those 10 pulls, I was healing my cave group, although my cave group migrated from northwest to southeast at one point. Jasyla said she liked that little northwest corner better and I could totally see why. The southeast corner is cramped and crowded!

Anyhow, during the first attempt, I lost Majik. Then, several other people died. So it wasn’t totally my bad, but I vowed to do better.

In the span of 10 pulls, ladies and gentlemen, I became a cave-healer pro. I kicked some ass. Not only did I keep my targets alive, but on try 10, our kill, approximately 97% of the Engorged Broodlings that spawned wanted to blow me up. I am not joking. Better still, I have it all frapsed and it’s embedded below. (Bear in mind that in P2, my computer suddenly decided to violently revolt and I experienced some tremendous lag and loss of framerate. It’s not the best video ever, but it is our first kill.)

 

Kurn, you may be wondering, what on earth does any of this have to do with being comfortable with your class?

Good question!

On the kill attempt, I was constantly the target of the broodlings, as I mentioned. Walks was healing up in the northeast and one thing he had been saying earlier in the night was that if a broodling was heading for someone at southeast, there was no way he could stop them, since they’re up on some damn ledge. So he took to calling out “ledge”.

Of course, on the kill attempt, his broodlings came at me frequently. So I was always calling out “got it”, while running to the ledge where the spiders come down from, while ALSO trying to heal Majik and Hitoku and, you know, trying not to kill myself while doing so.

I think it was only after the whole raid was over for the night that I realized that there was no way in hell I would have been able to manage all that crap (seriously, FOURTEEN broodlings hit me!) AND keep Maj and Hitoku alive if I weren’t extremely comfortable with how my class works.

It’s almost instinctual after a certain point. Granted, my instincts aren’t always spot-on or great or whatever, as you can tell since I do let Judgements of the Pure drop off and don’t use my Guardian and the like on the kill (which I’ll blame on the fact that my computer was about to throw up on me) but they really served me well over the whole raid night. At various points during the entire night, I popped cooldowns appropriately, even using Lay on Hands on Hitoku at one point. I figured out where my Beacon of Light was best put to use (sadly, on Majik) and basically, that was all the real thinking I had to do about how to heal my group.

Venom Rain? Aura Mastery. I’m low on health? Pop my bubble to buy myself some extra time to heal up my group members before turning to myself. Need to regen mana? Use my shiny Fiery Quintessence and pop Divine Plea. See 3 bright orange beams on me from Engorged Broodlings? Don’t panic, use instant heals like Holy Shock and Word of Glory until I’m in position to interrupt one and can start casting again.

Paladins have changed substantially since the original World of Warcraft game came out. Holy paladins have changed and evolved right along with the other specs. While we still need to stand still and cast to be most effective, Holy Radiance (well, the current iteration, not the 4.3 version!), Holy Shock, Word of Glory and a Flash of Light with Infusion of Light proc are all things we can do on the run. Even a 1-2 point Word of Glory can be useful (you can see in the video I made some use of that) if you’re on the move and someone needs a heal ASAP.

Giving Divine Protection a shorter cooldown for Holy (due to Paragon of Virtue) is great and it came in handy all through the night when magical damage (which includes nature damage, which is what those nasty little Engorged Broodlings emit) was troubling me. No problem — Shift-A (my keybind for Divine Protection) to the rescue!

During the night, apart from maybe the first pull or two, despite having absolutely no experience healing where I was healing and healing the people I was healing, I felt calm and in control of myself.  I really do attribute my ability to adapt to cave healing to knowing what all my buttons do. The only thing I didn’t use duing the night was Hand of Freedom and I could have used it when I was stuck in the Volatile Poison on the ground at one point on our kill.

I encourage everyone to take a second look at all your abilities. Not just the ones in the holy tree, look at prot and ret as well. Read through your spellbook and be sure you understand what your abilities do. Armed with that knowledge, you can walk into a fight and adapt much more quickly than you would otherwise. Don’t forget about your Hand spells, your procs, your set-it-and-forget-its (like Holy Radiance and Guardian of Ancient Kings).

Paladins are very strong healers and not restricted to tank healing. Not only that, but we have a ton of utility, so don’t forget to use those utility spells! Once you know exactly what you’re capable of doing, you’ll react with your instincts, leaving your brain to sit there and worry about where you should be standing, rather than what spell to use.

(And you can always read through my second revamped Holy How-To Guide to help you out!)

Substantial Holy Paladin Changes in 4.3 (PTR)

Kurn / / 4.3, healing, paladins

MMO-Champion’s datamining has revealed a number of forthcoming changes to holy paladins on the public test realm for 4.3.

Let’s just jump right into the raw changes and then I’ll talk about what they potentially mean.

  • Divine Plea: You gain 12% of your total mana over 9 sec, but the amount healed by your healing spells is reduced by 50% and grants a charge of Holy Power. . 50%.
  • Holy Radiance: 40 yd range | 3 sec cast 1 min cooldown | Instant | Imbues a friendly target with radiant energy, healing that target and Heals all party or raid members friendly targets within 10 20 yards for 50 up to 61 and another 683 every 1 sec for 3 sec sec, with effectiveness diminishing on targets farther than 8 yards away and grants a charge of Holy Power. . for each additional player target beyond 6. Lasts 10 sec.
  • Infusion of Light: Your Holy Shock critical hits reduce the cast time of your next Flash of Light, Holy Light, Divine Light or Holy Radiance Divine Light by 0.75 sec.
  • Infusion of Light: Your Holy Shock critical hits reduce the cast time of your next Flashof Light, Holy Light, Divine Light or Holy Radiance Divine Light by 1.5 sec.
  • Judgements of the Pure: Your Judgement increases your casting and melee haste and mana regeneration from Spirit while in combat. haste.
  • Judgements of the Pure: Your Judgement increases your casting and melee haste and mana regeneration from Spirit while in combat. haste.
  • Judgements of the Pure: Your Judgement increases your casting and melee haste and mana regeneration from Spirit while in combat. haste.
  • Seal of Insight: Unleashing this Seal’s energy will deal [1 + 25% of SPH + 16% of AP] Holy damage to an enemy. enemy and restore 15% of the Paladin’s base mana.
  • Clarity of Purpose: Reduces the casting time of your Holy Light, Divine Light and Holy Radiance Divine Light spells by 0.15 sec.
  • Clarity of Purpose: Reduces the casting time of your Holy Light, Divine Light and Holy Radiance Divine Light spells by 0.3 sec.
  • Clarity of Purpose: Reduces the casting time of your Holy Light, Divine Light and Holy Radiance Divine Light spells by 0.5 sec.
  • Infusion of Light: Increases the critical effect chance of your Holy Shock by 5%. In addition, your Holy Shock critical effects reduce the cast time of your next Flash of Light, Holy Light, Divine Light or Holy Radiance Divine Light by 0.75 sec.
  • Infusion of Light: Increases the critical effect chance of your Holy Shock by 10%. In addition, your Holy Shock critical effects reduce the cast time of your next Flash of Light, Holy Light, Divine Light or Holy Radiance Divine Light by 1.5 sec.
  • Judgements of the Pure: Your Judgement increases your casting and melee haste by 3% for 1 min and your mana regeneration from Spirit while in combat by 10%. min.
  • Judgements of the Pure: Your Judgement increases your casting and melee haste by 6% for 1 min and your mana regeneration from Spirit while in combat by 20%. min.
  • Judgements of the Pure: Your Judgement increases your casting and melee haste by 9% for 1 min and your mana regeneration from Spirit while in combat by 30%. min.
  • Light of Dawn: Consumes all Holy Power to send a wave of healing energy before you, healing up to 6 5 of the most injured targets in your party or raid within a 30 yard frontal cone for 605 to 674 per charge of Holy Power.
  • Paragon of Virtue: Reduces the cooldown of Divine Protection by 30 20 sec, Hand of Sacrifice by 30 sec and Avenging Wrath by 60 sec.
  • Paragon of Virtue: Reduces the cooldown of Divine Protection by 15 10 sec, Hand of Sacrifice by 15 sec and Avenging Wrath by 30 sec.
  • Speed of Light: Grants 1% spell haste. haste and reduces the cooldown of Holy Radiance by 13 sec. In addition, Casting Holy Radiance or Divine Protection increases your movement speed by 20% for 4 sec.
  • Speed of Light: Grants 2% spell haste. haste and reduces the cooldown of Holy Radiance by 26 sec. In addition, Casting Holy Radiance or Divine Protection increases your movement speed by 40% for 4 sec.
  • Speed of Light: Grants 3% spell haste. haste and reduces the cooldown of Holy Radiance by 40 sec. In addition, Casting Holy Radiance or Divine Protection increases your movement speed by 60% for 4 sec.
  • Tower of Radiance: Healing the target of your Beacon of Light with Flash of Light or Divine Light has a 33% chance to generate a charge of Holy Power. In addition, casting Holy Radiance will always generate one charge of Holy Power.
  • Tower of Radiance: Healing the target of your Beacon of Light with Flash of Light or Divine Light has a 66% chance to generate a charge of Holy Power. In addition, casting Holy Radiance will always generate one charge of Holy Power.
  • Tower of Radiance: Healing the target of your Beacon of Light with Flash of Light or Divine Light has a 100% chance to generate a charge of Holy Power. In addition, casting Holy Radiance will always generate one charge of Holy Power.

Whew. Okay, let’s take these one at a time. Bear in mind that Ghostcrawler has also posted some thoughts about various changes. Plus, the first set of patch notes is up.

– Divine Plea: Same as always, but now also grants you one charge of Holy Power. Great, excellent. Anything that adds Holy Power is pretty good.

– Holy Radiance: 40 yd range | 3 sec cast | Imbues a friendly target with radiant energy, healing that target and all party or raid members within 10 yards for 50 to 61 and another 683 every 1 sec for 3 sec and grants a charge of Holy Power. This is different. We will now have a cast time for Holy Radiance and it will be a targettable spell. You will drop the Holy Radiance effect on top of someone and THEY will heal themselves and all party/raid members within 10 yards, etc, etc. Note that this is a much smaller radius than we’re used to (10 vs. 20 yards) and it’s been confirmed that there is no cooldown. There is still the cast time, however, and I would presume that the mana cost has not decreased. As well, note that it only heals for a total of 3 seconds. So it looks as though you get an initial heal on the target/allies within 10 yards and then 3 ticks (without haste included) of the new Holy Radiance spell. Oh and look, a charge of Holy Power.

Finally, Ghostcrawler has let us know that Holy Radiance will now benefit from Illuminated Healing, our much-maligned mastery. I guess we’ll see how that goes. Certainly it’s a buff to our mastery if another of our spells is going to benefit from it, but I don’t see the overall healing done by Holy Radiance, even in its new form, to be anywhere close to the mitigation from, say, Divine Aegis from a discipline priest’s Prayer of Healing.

– Clarity of Purpose and Infusion of Light: Both of these talents remain the same except they affect the cast time of Holy Radiance now, as well as Flash of Light, Holy Light and Divine Light.

– Seal of Insight: The key point here is that judging with Seal of Insight up no longer grants you 15% of your base mana! Goodbye, judging on cooldown.

– Judgements of the Pure: You’re now going to get more mana regeneration from keeping Judgements of the Pure up. At 3/3 JotP, you’re getting 30% extra regen from Spirit while in combat. This will keep us judging once a minute and makes up for the fact that we will no longer gain mana from judging. Ghostcrawler said we’d want to judge every 30 seconds, though the JotP duration has not (yet) changed. I guess we’ll want to watch for that to potentially drop to a 30s duration. At any rate, we were always getting a set rate of 3513 mana back per judgement (not including the cost of judging) and nothing we ever did could change that. This change tells us that more mana regen is available by stacking spirit. Interesting…

– Light of Dawn: As Ghostcrawler said, this is moving to a baseline of 6 targets, up from 5. The associated Glyph of Light of Dawn will be changed to lower the number of targets but increase the output. The glyph changes this to 4 targets with a 25% boost in throughput.

– Paragon of Virtue: Just a slight change to 15s and 30s off of Divine Protection’s cooldown as opposed to 10s and 20s.

– Speed of Light: Still grants us 1/2/3% of spell haste, but casting Holy Radiance will NO LONGER give us a speed boost. Well, now the Paragon of Virtue change makes sense. Ghostcrawler says it’s a nerf compared to 4.2 (and it is, since we now only have one sprint) but, to be fair, if there’s no cooldown on Holy Radiance, it would hardly make sense to constantly have a 60% speed boost.

– Tower of Radiance: I would say that they are attempting to pigeon-hole us into taking Tower of Radiance. I actually like the talent, but I know there are several builds out there that don’t drop 3 points here. Now, though, it’s worth taking even if you never directly heal your beacon, because it ensures (at least one point, anyhow) that you will always gain one charge of Holy Power anytime you cast Holy Radiance.

So. What do you fine folks think of the changes?

Cataclysm Holy How-To #2: Spells and Abilities

Kurn / / guide, healing, holy how-to (cata), paladins, Uncategorized

*** All content copyright © Kurn’s Corner, 2011. Reproduction of this guide in full or in part without express permission from the author (“Kurn”), represents copyright infringement and violation of copyright law. Please, if you like this guide, link to it, do not copy it. ***

(Don’t forget to read my Cataclysm Holy How-To #1: Specs and Glyphs before reading this one!)

Once again, welcome to an updated article in my Holy How-To series! Today, we’ll be focusing on the spells and abilities holy paladins have at level 85 and we’ll talk a bit about how best to use each of these spells and abilities in a PVE setting. Please bear in mind that this was written during the time that 4.2.2 was on live realms and, as such, may become outdated with future patches.

Continue reading “Cataclysm Holy How-To #2: Spells and Abilities”

Cataclysm Holy How-To #1: Specs & Glyphs

Kurn / / guide, healing, holy how-to (cata), paladins

It’s been almost a full year since I last wrote in my Holy How-To series. A lot has happened to the paladin class and, specifically, the holy spec since then. I decided that I’d go back to basics and re-write a bunch of my old Holy How-To guides from the Wrath era and update them with relevant Cataclysm information. Not all the guides will be re-written and those that will be are going to be written from the ground up. So here’s the first of my re-written guides: Specs & Glyphs. Bear in mind that the guide consists primarily of my own beliefs and opinions and is limited to PVE content at level 85 only.

Continue reading “Cataclysm Holy How-To #1: Specs & Glyphs”

Healing Alysrazor as a Holy Paladin

Kurn / / firelands, guide, healing, paladins, raiding, T12

This isn’t exactly meant as a guide. It’s more along the lines of my personal experience,  so there will be lots of “this is what I do”s and “this is what I think works best here”s. I’m also going to assume you know most of the mechanics of the fight, at least from the ground perspective. That said, I think there’s some decent information I can share with you guys. :)

Alysrazor is one of the more difficult encounters in Firelands. In order to move past Baleroc to Majordomo Staghelm and Ragnaros, Alysrazor must be defeated. (You can, however, do the Alysrazor fight before or after Baleroc, that doesn’t matter.)

The first thing to know is that her name is not “Alice-razor”. It’s “Alysra-zor”. If you do the Molten Front dailies and quests, you’ll see that she was originally named Alysra and, upon being reborn as a firehawk, added the “zor” to her name. (Sorry. That’s totally my pet peeve.)

The second thing to know is that with the help of at least one Molten Feather, you can cast while moving! One feather increases your movement speed by 30% and gives you the casting-while-moving ability. Two feathers increases your movement speed by 60%. Three feathers (avoid this!) will allow you to fly.

If you aren’t asked to grab a feather as a holy paladin during the first molting of Alysrazor (which happens right after the pull), talk to your raid leader about how this will really, really, REALLY help minimize tank deaths. By the end of the second molting phase, everyone should have at least one feather, including tanks, which is hugely helpful for them to move their hatchlings around. However, no one should grab a feather until everyone on the pre-assigned air team gets ALL THREE of theirs to go flying around.

All right, that’s the really important stuff. Now, as to your assignment: as a holy paladin, you will almost certainly be asked to heal a tank. If this is the case, I strongly recommend beaconing your own tank for two reasons:

1) Positioning on the fight is extremely dynamic and the fighting area is quite wide. There are some combinations of placements that will result in the two tanks being more than 60 yards apart from each other.

2) Tower of Radiance Holy Power gains are pretty much wonderful on this encounter and I’ll get to why in a little bit.

Okay, so you should now be armed with the following knowledge:

– pick up a feather as soon as you can without screwing over the air team
– beacon your own tank due to positioning and range issues and holy power gains from Tower of Radiance
– it’s “Alysra-zor”, not “Alice-razor”. Seriously.

Healing the Fight

Right off the bat (assuming it’s not the first pull of the evening), you’ll be blasted backwards. This is a great time to have three Holy Power already charged. I like to hit Divine Favor and Holy Radiance, followed by a Light of Dawn here. There’s a significant amount of raid damage that you can actually help to heal up since your tank won’t be taking any interesting damage for the next little bit.

Move to one side or the other as Alysrazor flies down the middle of the area, because she has a nasty cleave. Run out and around her to pick up your feather.

During this time, your DPS should be collecting feathers to fly up or should be killing (and interrupting) Flame Talon Initiates. Cleanse Fieroblast‘s dot off anyone it hits while you wait for your tank’s Voracious Hatchling to, well, hatch.

Once the hatchlings hatch and are properly Imprinted on their tanks, this is where you start actually getting to do stuff.

For the most part, hatchling damage isn’t too bad on an adequately geared tank. The problems only show up during three situations:

a) When your tank runs out of your range (this happens a lot unless you’re actively watching them — ask for a mark to be placed on the heads of your tanks and keep an eye on them!)
b) When their hatchling throws a Tantrum.
c) When their hatchling applies Gushing Wound to the tank.

Situation A is easily remedied: watch your tank. Know that your tank has to feed their hatchling with Plump Lava Worms that are spawning in various spots in the fighting area. Anticipate where your tank might be going or have him or her communicate that to you. At the same time, you should be able to cast while running, so you should be able to adequately dodge the Brushfires from the Flame Talon Initiates and the Lava Spew from the Plump Lava Worms.

Situation B is also easily remedied: cooldowns! It’s probably best if your tank blows their cooldowns first and then you can pop Hand of Sacrifice when they run out of cooldowns. They can handle four tantrums per ground phase, since feeding a worm to the hatchlings will remove a tantrum, so work out CDs with your tank and/or healing team. Do not be afraid to blow Lay on Hands!

Situation C is probably the trickiest to deal with. Gushing Wound is applied to people standing in front of the hatchling (this should ideally just be the tank) and then bleeds continuously until the tank hits 50% health. The trouble is that they’re still taking melee attacks and can still stand in any of the various fire hazards in the fighting area at the same time.

This is NOT the time for damage-reduction cooldowns. You want to get the tank to drop Gushing Wound as quickly as possible and then need a quick burst of healing to pop him or her back up to a reasonable level of health.

Ideally, this is how it should go, although bear in mind that conditions are rarely ideal:

– Stop healing the tank immediately when Gushing Wound is applied
– Make sure you have 3 Holy Power saved up (by Holy Shocking others if you need to)
– As soon as Gushing Wound falls off, ideally, a disc priest will shield the tank to prevent much more damage for a couple of seconds
– You can then blast the tank with a 3HP Word of Glory. If Eternal Glory (if you have it) procs, hit the tank with WoG again, otherwise, cast a Divine Light (which may or may not have an Infusion of Light haste proc behind it from your slightly-earlier Holy Shocking to make sure you’re up to 3HP.)

The main thing to remember about Gushing Wound is that if you time a casted spell on the tank badly, you can’t interrupt it by moving! You’ll have to hit Escape to stop the cast.

If you get Gushing Wound coupled with a tantrum, don’t hesitate to blow Lay on Hands as soon as Gushing Wound drops off!

And if your tank just decides to stroll happily through fire while they have Gushing Wound or a tantrum on their hatchling, well, there’s pretty much nothing you can do apart from mock them for standing in fire.

And that is the first phase.

The next portion of the fight is all about you and living through fiery tornadoes. The hatchlings should be down by this point, so there should not be any healing for you to worry about.

Here’s a handy-dandy video I made with footage from a learning attempt on Alysrazor with my guild, Apotheosis and it’ll show you exactly how to deal with tornadoes.

Once that’s done, Alysrazor will crash to the ground and start rebuilding her Molten Power.

From 0-50 Molten Power, just make sure everyone’s topped off (especially your tanks who have a job at this point) and make sure to attack Alysrazor directly, since every attack done to her at this point gives you back 10% of your maximum mana!

From 50-100 Molten Power, she’ll pop up off the ground and should be tanked facing AWAY from the raid. This is where you probably have a job. She’ll be blasting the raid with fire damage from Blazing Buffet and so healer/raid cooldowns should be used at this time. I typically go with Aura Mastery, Aura Mastery, Power Word: Barrier, Spirit Link Totem and finish up with a Tranquility. So you’ll likely want to pop Aura Mastery at some point in here as well, depending on what your healing lead/raid leader has asked.

During this time, your tanks are taking damage from Alysrazor herself, so what I do here is I pop my Aura Mastery first, then I use Divine Favor again and Holy Radiance again, all of which is really done to help heal up the raid or help out with mitigation on the raid before focusing on whichever tank has aggro on Alysrazor first. In my raid group, the tanks swap after a few seconds (~10 or so) and so I watch for that and heal the other tank.

When she’s at 100 Molten Power, she throws everyone back, causing 50,000 fire damage and then takes to the air again, leaving behind a pile of feathers, so the air team can get back up there quickly.

After that, it’s essentially the same thing all over again, where you wait for hatchlings to spawn and then heal your tank smartly to make sure Gushing Wound falls off.

Tips:

– Glyphed Divine Protection is great if you’re chasing your tank. It’ll reduce any fire damage you take if you run through some while chasing the tank by 40% AND give you a 4s sprint, courtesy of 3/3 Speed of Light.
– You can bubble through any part of the tornado phase you’re not comfortable with, although I don’t think it’ll be up for the second if you use it on the first. (You should not need to bubble, in all reality.)
– Speaking of tornadoes… don’t worry about healing people through it. Chances are, if the hatchlings aren’t dead by now, it’ll be a wipe. An exception to this is if your tank’s hatchling is nearly dead. You might want to bubble here, cast Hand of Sacrifice and heal your tank through tornado damage so that the hatchling dies.
– You can pop Aura Mastery right as the pull happens to lessen raid damage then, too. It’ll be up for the clump phase once she’s grounded and gaining Molten Power.
– You might want to look into the Glyph of Lay on Hands since this is a long encounter. Chances are, if you use LoH within the first couple of minutes of the fight, you could probably use it again before the fight ends.
– As long as you can hold out until Alysrazor falls to the ground, you can abuse your mana pool, since you’ll be able to get back to full mana pretty easily once she’s burnt out. That might mean using some Flashes of Light here or there and that’ll generally be okay. I’m fine on mana both in a haste/spirit gear set and a mastery-heavy gear set.

Personal Comments

What I like about this fight is that it’s not a brute-healing fight. Tank healers on Alysrazor have to use some finesse! Gushing Wound makes what would ordinarily be a fairly boring encounter (in terms of tank healing) into a much more interesting one. I absolutely love that I get to be that “clutch heal” that gets the tank back up to 80%+ health as soon as Gushing Wound falls off. If I have an Infusion of Light proc while the tank has Gushing Wound, I’ll almost certainly hold on to it and endeavour to get that .8s or whatever Divine Light on to the tank the instant the bleed falls off. It makes me happy. :)

What also makes me happy is that I don’t suck at tornadoes. For once, there is a fire mechanic in this blasted game that I don’t actively suck at! In fact, I am really AWESOME at tornadoes! This also makes me happy.

What makes me less happy is air team members falling out of the sky to their deaths or tanks standing in fire damage, but it’s worth some of the frustration when these things happen because I know that by good play on my part, I am noticeably making the fight easier on other healers and keeping tanks alive.

Well, that’s about it from me on this fight. Hope this was helpful and I wish you all the best of luck in downing Alysrazor!