Wow, folks, it’s been a long, long time since I last had enough search terms to pull off one of these posts!
Looking over the last month, I have, oh, 2,927 search terms that brought people to my site. Hi, 4.0.1, thanks for the bump in traffic! ;)
1) Let’s consolidate all the “holy pally 4.0.1” stuff, shall we?
Go read my What Holy Paladins Need to Know for 4.0.1 post.
2) madranah + server
Interesting. Someone from one of my old guilds is looking for me? Sorry, people, I’m kind of doing this “GM of a guild for Cataclysm” thing, so I’m not going to join your reformed guild, even if one of my RL friends is in it. ;)
3) base mana paladin 85 kurn
I believe that would be 24,732 mana.
4) divine favor 4.0.1
Divine Favor has definitely changed. Once upon a time, hitting it gave us a guaranteed crit on Holy Light, Flash of Light and Holy Shock. Now, it’s a buff that lasts 20 or 30 seconds (depending on whether or not you’re glyphed for it) and increases your spell haste AND your spell crit chance by 20%. Not only that, but because Divine Illumination is gone (15 second buff that used to halve the cost of all spells for the duration), our 2pc T10 bonus has changed. Whenever Divine Favor is active, your healing spells are 35% stronger. So not only do you have 20-30 seconds of increased haste and crit chance (both of which strongly increase your throughput) but if you pop it while wearing two pieces of Tier 10 gear, you’ll have a bonus 35% healing going on as well.
While I still like to use this to offset Divine Plea, this is a fantastic utility spell for us. Either you use it to cover Divine Plea usage or you pop it when your targets are about to eat dirt. Or as often as possible on Dreamwalker. ;) Beautiful!
5) do improved judgements and enlightened judgements stack
Yes, Improved Judgement and Enlightened Judgements stack and so, with the base Judgement range of 10yd, you can get a maximum of 40yds as the range on your Judgement spell.
You should not concern yourself with Improved Judgement yet, though. Enlightened Judgements is handy for the hit and a bit of extra range, but we have very few points to place at 80, so don’t waste two of them on Improved Judgement until you’re at 84, looking for a talent to spend a point on. I recommend 3 in Divinity and 2 in Crusade, then I’d fill out Crusade (3/3) and Eternal Glory (2/2) at 82 and 83, then Improved Judgement at 84 and 85.
6) does sacred shield use gcd
It certainly used to. That said, it’s gone. They got rid of it in 4.0.1. Rest in peace, Sacred Shield. You will be missed.
7) divine intervention gone in patch 4.0?
Also gone, yes. Don’t ask me why. Shaman still have Reincarnation (30m cooldown), druids still have Rebirth (although one druid popping it will put everyone’s on the 30m cooldown!) and warlocks still have Soulstones on a 15m cooldown. And yet, paladins lose their wipe-prevention ability entirely. Way to go, Blizzard.
8) lifeblood 4.0.1
It’s godly. I wish I still had Herbalism on my paladin. Lifeblood now grants 240 haste rating at 450 Herbalism, as well as producing a small heal. Sick! :)
9) addon for speed of light procs paladin holy
You don’t need an addon for this. At 3/3 Speed of Light, every time you cast Holy Shock, you get 4 seconds of 30% spell haste on Flash of Light, Holy Light and Divine Light. You also don’t need an addon for this because it will be changing to a flat spell-haste percentage (1% per talent point). So, for the time being, count to four after using Holy Shock. There’s your addon. ;)
10) 4.0.1 judgement 4% mana
I believe it was Walks who pointed this out to me, but right now, Judgements will not proc Seal of Insight. I tested this out myself today and got absolutely 0 procs while judging. That’s okay, though. Soon enough, we’ll be getting 15% of base mana back when judging with Seal of Insight up. Mana is, by and large, not a problem for us right now anyways.
And a bonus one!
11) holy paladin eternal glory vs paragon of virtue
Because mana isn’t a huge problem right now, I would advise against Eternal Glory for the moment. You basically have to take at least one point in Paragon of Virtue when building a PVE holy spec, so PoV wins over EG at this point in time. When we hit 85, especially considering that PoV will also reduce the cooldown of Hand of Sacrifice, I’ll seriously consider 1/2 Enlightened Judgements and 2/2 PoV when building my holy tree.
And just to pimp out a rockin’ resource, don’t forget to take a look at Oestrus’ Guide to the Chakra Sutra! Oestrus will be healing in Apotheosis in Cataclysm, on her little d0rf priest. :)
Finally, Apotheosis is recruiting for Cataclysm! Sadly, we are not in need of any holy paladins at this time. However, if you want a great raid group who DOES need a holy paladin, definitely check out Choice of Skywall, the guild I spent the last four months in. I can’t say enough good stuff about these people!
Good Lord, there’s more product placement here than in an episode of “American Idol.” – lol
Though I always appreciate the link love, boss!
:)
Oestrus – Linky love is awesomesauce. Just like that guide of yours. :)
A quick note on the t10 2 Piece change: it is bugged, the bonus still only lasts as long as Divine Illumination used to (15 seconds). It would be awesome if they fixed this bug to work with the glyph, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
I also wouldn’t suggest ever skipping 2/2 for Paragon of Virtue. Using your wings proactively (meaning before you pop Divine Plea) will honestly save you mana in the long run (in Cataclysm) — working double duty in an effect to offset Divine Plea oftentimes just means that you spent more mana catching up than you got back. (Parenthetically speaking.)
Divine Plea is a trap, kids. Don’t trust that crab on the corner saying it is an interesting choice! Don’t take his candy!
The new Lifeblood isn’t entirely foolproof. It shares a cooldown with some (most? all?) activated trinkets.
I didn’t spot Lifeblood had changed in patch 4.0.1 though I did wonder why my lvl65 hunter’s Bladefist’s Breadth kept putting Lifeblood on cooldown. I figured it was some random bug. If Lifeblood is now a +haste activation I can see why. Still annoying though.
How exactly did DI *prevent* a wipe? Do you mean the runback from the graveyard?
Also, I too loved the change to Lifeblood :)
Walks – Thanks for the updates from the front! I haven’t spent a lot of time on Beta lately due to all the live happenings, so I really appreciate all your testing. :)
Divine Plea is a trap, kids. Don’t trust that crab on the corner saying it is an interesting choice! Don’t take his candy!
Okay, that just made me *laugh*. :)
Solanti – Interesting! Thanks for the heads up. I suppose it might be best used by healers, who don’t generally have on-use offensive trinkets? This bears investigation. :)
wyzim – I used the typical term that I’ve been using for the last 5 years in the game when referring to soulstones and DIs, although I agree the term isn’t exactly precise. Divine Intervention was primarily used as a method to help save time with runbacks, similar to soulstoning a healer or reincarnating, if the situation didn’t call for their uses during the fight. I typically would be soulstoned on the Lady Vashj fight, for example, and on a called wipe, we’d all run to the west side of her cavern and die there for easy rezzing. I’d pop, rez two people, who would then rez the rest of the healers/rezzers, who would then rez the rest of the raid.
Technically, though, Divine Intervention kept someone alive, so it’s not a complete wipe, right? ;D
Also, I can think of at LEAST one fight where casting a Divine Intervention during the fight actively prevented a wipe.
Back on Leotheras the Blind in SSC, I was the warlock tank healer. If the warlock had too many stacks of Chaos Blast on her and we were approaching 15% (where we have both demon and human forms active), I’d often cast Divine Intervention on her to wipe her stacks in a usually futile effort to keep her alive through the last phase. That said, it was usually enough to get him down to that last percent or two before burning him down, even without a demon form tank.
Perhaps “wipe recovery” is a better term than “wipe prevention”, but old habits tend to die hard. :)
1/2 Enlightened Judgements and 2/2 PoV atm since with the amount of spirit I got I am almost hit capped with 1 point, and I am totally fine with missing 5y range on judge