Busy, busy!

Kurn / / healing, icecrown citadel, patch 4.0.1, raiding

What with all this patch nonsense and various RL issues, which include me staying at my parents’ house to dogsit and such, I have had remarkably little time to play or respond to comments or anything like that. By “remarkably little time to play”, I mean that I’ve run three heroics on the hunter and one on the paladin.

However, I’d like to ask you all, those of you who have raided since the patch:

How is raiding? Many of the blogs I’ve read indicated that people wiped repeatedly to heroic Lord Marrowgar. I’m curious to know how people feel, how strategies have or haven’t changed. How’s raid healing on heroic BQL or Sindragosa? How’s tank healing on Blood Prince Council or Festergut?

Cataclysm Beta Build 13183

Kurn / / beta, cataclysm, paladins

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.

Initial 4.0.1 Thoughts

Kurn / / healing, paladins, patch 4.0.1, ramblings

I followed my own advice from my 4.0.1 post. Specced for 3/3 Divinity and 2/3 Crusade after 31 into Holy. Glyphs of Word of Glory, Seal of Insight and Holy Shock for primes, with Divinity, Beacon and Divine Plea for majors and Seal of Insight, Kings and Lay on Hands for minors.

I healed a heroic Nexus without Grid and without getting Clique configured right and felt fine. No mana issues at all.

The major issue was that the tank couldn’t hold aggro from the ret pally, from a DK or even from me, on occasion.

I also had zero confidence in my ability to heal someone quickly from low health. Cases in point, the ret pally and the DK and myself. :P

The 20yd range on judgements really wasn’t too bad, although I did have to shuffle forward here and there.

Overall, it was quick and relatively painless. No mana issues whatsoever. I did keep half-expecting Eternal Glory to proc and kept wanting to hit Holy Radiance, but apart from that, it was okay.

And yet, I’m thoroughly depressed about it. I just don’t feel like “myself”. Blah.

New beta build thoughts sometime tomorrow. I like what they’re doing with Holy Radiance.

How was your first day with 4.0.1?

The End of the World as We Know It

Kurn / / achievements, apotheosis, healing, icecrown citadel, patch 4.0.1, patches, raiding, ramblings

Extended maintenance is well underway on US servers and patch 4.0.1 will be implemented on live servers by the time they come back up.

While alternately exciting and depressing, depending on with whom you’re speaking, the one thing the everyone can agree on is that the pre-Cataclysm patch can be described as game-changing.

I both love and hate expansions. I love them because of the new challenges to face and I hate them because I go from knowing basically everything pertinent about my classes to knowing zip. Nada. Zilch. Niente. Rien. Nothin’.

Or, at least, very little. I feel fairly prepared with regards to my paladin, although I’m still feeling “not ready” to let go of my big Holy Lights or my 100% beacons or my 25% mana/1m Divine Plea… But I’m unprepared for all my other classes.

That, however, is a whole other post.

Expansions also mean changes in terms of guilds. Changing toons, specs, even changing guilds. Rosters go through insane amounts of changes between expansions.

Last night, I may have had my last raid with the guild I’ve been in since June. We’ve had a hell of a few months, let me tell you. I joined when they were 7/12 HM in ICC25 and now we’re 11/12 ICC25 HM.

This last reset, Thursday, we finally got heroic Sindragosa. It was the messiest kill ever that involved a bubble taunt by the sole remaining tank and only four people were alive at the end. She had enraged. And yet, she died. Finally. That got most of the raiders their heroic Frostwing Halls achievement, towards their Glory of the Icecrown Raider (25) achievement, which is excellent. That’s been their goal for several months and so most of them are one step closer to that drake. Most were just missing Been Waiting a Long Time for This, All You Can Eat and Neck Deep in Vile.

The guild may or may not continue raiding into 4.0.1. I’m personally of the mind that we will not be able to do half the stuff we do now if all healers are as screwed changed as I think we are. Combine that with parry’s nerf (50% mitigation instead of 100% avoidance), (apparently, I still don’t know how to keep up to date on that “tanking thing”…) changes to block (30% mitigation)… I don’t think that getting rid of Chill of the Throne is really going to do enough to compensate. Anyways, it’s possible that I’m wrong and things are not completely borked and we’ll be able to continue raiding. So things are kind of uncertain.

Man, I hate uncertainty…

Anyways, I walked in to the raid last night knowing we had Putricide, LK and Halion up. I walked in there knowing that this could be my last raid with this guild. I have had a LOT of fun with these people. And before 4.0.1 hits, we got to 11/12 ICC 25 HM. It’s not my first time doing these things, but let me tell you something — when we killed Putricide on heroic 25-man for the second time for this guild, it felt fantastic. It was a beautiful kill. 24 people alive (the 25th had the plague and sacrificed himself for us) and some flawless transitions.

It also ensured five more people in the raid got their heroic Plagueworks achievement, including our primary raid leader, who has always been kind and has always listened to my suggestions, even if my suggestions weren’t always implemented. I was so psyched to get this for her that I even did a silly little fist pump when Putricide died tonight and those five people spammed us with their achievements. Even though that was… probably my 7th heroic Putricide kill, it was definitely in my personal top 3 kills. The top was my own first kill, the second was this guild’s first kill and tonight’s kill is just behind those two.

So faced with an ICC instance where we had killed Saurfang, BQL, Putricide and Sindragosa, all on heroic… we had to look at heroic Lich King.

When one of the officers started detailing the strat for P1 and dealing with Shadow Traps, I paused for a moment.

“The person marked will run out and drop it outside of the raid.”

I blinked.

I have spent, oh, about 30ish attempts on heroic Lich King. That’s not a lot of time or energy. It also happened back in May.

But that still didn’t sound right to me. And then I remembered how my last guild did it, how we split up into one melee group and two ranged. Like this (click for a larger version):

So I let the RL and the GM know that I was pretty sure the strat we were about to try wasn’t going to work and why, but told them I wasn’t 100% sure.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, Shadow Trap gets cast and most of the raid goes flying. Hilarious! I wish I’d frapsed it! We lasted 43 seconds. That is less time than the opening speech portion takes. I laughed.

We tried one more attempt on heroic, just for fun, which went a little bit better, before switching it to regular and trying Been Waiting a Long Time For This.

I warned the healers that it was mana-intensive. I even called for an Innervate, which I nearly didn’t get because our bear druid was busy tea-bagging someone who had died. :P (The same thing actually happened to me in my last guild.)

Also a messy kill, but a kill and achievement nonetheless.

On to Ruby Sanctum!

We cleared through fairly easily. And no. The boots did not drop. Which means that Walks and I are stuck with our 245 or 258 Boots of the Courageous or stuck crafting the plate 264 healing boots. Ah, well. Would have been nice to have an upgrade instead of downgrading or staying at the same item level. Killed that dragon 11ish times and still, no 271 plate boots.

Overall, though, a productive night. Got lots of people at least one achievement, got a few people two. Played with heroic Lich King. Cleared Ruby Sanctum.

And through it all, I knew it was a good chance this was the last time I’d ever raid with these people. I knew that soon, it’ll be time for me to lead, to raid with the newly-reformed Apotheosis of Eldre’Thalas.

I’m not going to lie — I’ve enjoyed being a member. No leadership responsibilities, no healing assignments. (Okay, so I took over organizing judgements, but when no one’s judging light and you have five pallies in the raid, someone has to!) (Okay, I also organize who beacons who and who shields who with Walks, but that’s just common courtesy so we don’t always overwrite each other, although Walks consistently does overwrite my damn shield on Sindragosa. ;D)

But I’ve also had to rein in my leadership skills a few times and my poor raid leaders and GM have probably heard enough from me to last them forever! ;) It’s a difficult thing to do, keeping your mouth shut and giving another strategy a chance when you’ve seen another one work flawlessly.

Like I said, though, I’m awfully glad that I got to finish out Wrath with such a great group of people. I’m moving my paladin back to Eldre’Thalas as soon as the guild’s leadership calls it an expansion, basically. That could be as soon as this week or next week or the week before Cataclysm launches.

I may have raided for the last time with these people and honestly, while I won’t miss a couple of them, I’ve had a great time. I feel like I accomplished something by helping them get to 11/12 and a stone’s throw from their drakes. So if this is where we part ways and this is where Madrana goes home… I’m satisfied. Last night was a great way to end raiding, if that is, indeed, the end. Some hilarity on LK, some success with HPP and Been Waiting and a Halion one-shot.

And now, it’s the end of the world as we know it and, though I’ll roll with the punches, I don’t quite feel altogether fine.

Strange mix of new and old

Kurn / / apotheosis, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

Apologies for not being around much this weekend. Apart from anything else, it’s Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada, so there’s been that to deal with.

I took some Apotheosis guildies to ICC10 on Friday to work on the Lich King. We had fun, but we had some issues with various mechanics, including Valks and Defiles, the few times we dealt with them.

Stupidly, I scheduled a continuation for Sunday night, unaware, at the time, that my parents were inviting guests (ie: people who weren’t family members) to Thanksgiving dinner, which extended dinner from an average 2.5 hour affair to one that lasted 4.5 hours. So my brother and I were very, very, very late for our raid. We scrounged some people up, we waited around for a bit, but, in the end, we got 8 attempts in on him and got him to 59%.

True, we didn’t actually kill a Val’kyr, but we came close! And we did learn to dodge defiles and the tanks SEEMED to be doing well with taunting for Soul Reaper. We even went into transition without a Shambling a few times and had this one BEAUTIFUL attempt where we had nothing but one Raging Spirit half-dead when we ran back in for P2. Gorgeous!

What I learned about organizing and leading this fight:

– Drudge Ghouls help out immensely with the Necrotic Plague bounces and stacks and can help get that high enough to 2-shot a Shambling Horror.

– You can lose a Raging Spirit if you leave them on the collapsing part of the ledge, which can make your life a TON easier. ;)

– Warlocks can actually be out of range of their teleporters. Or, you know, their teleporters can be covered by Defile. I guess the solution here is to stand at range, on top of your teleporter and then you won’t be OOR?

– That bloody enrage on the Shamblings sucks, but I don’t think we lost my brother to a single one. He was stunning them whenever he could, so that was pretty sweet.

– Why the Valks ALWAYS seemed to choose our freaking disc priest to carry away, I do not know. Hilarious, though.

– It feels good to say “Let’s get Football back up, please” again. Battle-rezzing our resident fury warrior was kind of a staple of our BC raids, while we would leave the resident enhancement shaman dead on the floor. ;D

– I’m still super rusty at this thing called “raid leading”. Totally forgot to actually assign healing until after the first wipe, I think it was. I’m looking forward to Cata raiding where I’ll do healing and a brief (stop laughing, it’s possible!) overview and other role leads will deal with other crap!

– Leading a raid that is comprised primarily of friends can still be considered “work”, but it’s fun work.

– Going through the logs of a raid that is comprised primarily of friends, most of whom you know for a fact are great players, can still result in /facepalms. ;)

I need to do a variety of things, including respond to comments here, making sure I have the glyphs I want for tomorrow, given the great chance that 4.0.1 drops, and then maybe I can actually play the game a bit today.

PTR Build 13156 – Quick thoughts.

Kurn / / beta, cataclysm, healing, paladins, ptr, ramblings

According to MMO-Champion, holy paladins are getting buffed.

  • Divine Light base healing increased by 10%
  • Flash of Light base healing increased by 10%
  • Holy Light base healing increased by 10%
  • Holy Shock base healing increased by 10%
  • Walk in the Light (Passive) now increases healing by 15%, up from 10%.

So, 10% more base healing to all three of our casted spells, plus Holy Shock (our most-used spell) AND 5% more healing to everything we cast.

There’s nothing wrong with any of this. In fact, for months, I’ve been saying that the Walk in the Light passive we get that increases our healing vs. a prot or ret in healing gear, has been pretty lame at 10%. 15%… well, it’s an improvement, to be sure, and when added to the extra healing we’re now getting on FoL, HL, DL and HS, it’s going to feel like a bit more.

I’m definitely happy about these changes, although since they’re happening on the PTR, I won’t be able to play with them until they make it over to beta. (The beta client is supposedly acting as a PTR client, but mine isn’t working and I’m not installing 13+ more gigs of WoW on my computer.) I imagine this will make us more willing to use some of these casted spells instead of relying on Holy Shock and Word of Glory so very much.

I still think there’s something just very wrong with holy paladin healing right now in the beta. Is it just the change to a three-heal system? I don’t think so. Is it just the overall weakness of our healing, which these changes are trying to alleviate? I don’t think so.

I think there’s something very “wrong” with relying so extensively on Holy Shock and its clone, Word of Glory.

I feel like they’ve taken the paladin and not only turned it upside down, like all other healers (poor freaking druids) but also inside out. FoL is expensive, contrary to what it’s always been. HL is cheap, contrary to what it’s always been. Paladins are suddenly going to be a very mobile healer, contrary to what we’ve always been. We’ve lost some raid utility (JoL, JoW) and we’ve always BEEN the “utility” class for the Alliance.

I’m almost certainly going to play a holy paladin in Cataclysm. Apart from anything else, I KNOW the class and I KNOW the changes.

But it feels to me like we’ve been changed beyond recognition. Paladins in Cataclysm barely resemble paladins when I first started playing, and even those paladins are somewhat removed from how they were at launch.

Anyways. I’m rambling and I should get to sleep. It’s been a long day and tomorrow promises to be even longer.

Weekend Update

Kurn / / achievements, apotheosis, beta, cataclysm, gear, healing, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

(Sadly, I am not as cool as Tina Fey.)

– I’m one Manalicious quest away from Chef.

– On Saturday, I actually HAD the Blacktip Shark IN MY BAGS and used Aspect of the Cheetah to run to the NPC and while clicking on him, heard the sound when he got the Master Angler of Azeroth achievement precisely two seconds before I would have. SAD PANDA.

– ICC10 on Friday went okay, cleared Lower Spire, did Blood Wing (one-shotted Council with me on orbs, if you can imagine!) and went through some hiccups on BQL, but got her down. Tried Dreamwalker, but it didn’t go very well because we were 9 manning it and I was on my shammy for that part.

– I had an absolutely lovely Vent conversation with a blogger I’ve only known about for a couple of months, Oestrus, from The Stories of O. Previously a RL friend of Codi’s, they reconnected with each other in the WoW blogosphere. How awesome is that? It’s pretty awesome. Even more awesome? Oestrus has stuck her priest in Apotheosis to get a feel for us to see if we’re where she wants to be for Cataclysm. She came to ICC10 Part 2 on Sunday night, too.

– Seriously, I HAD THE BLACKTIP SHARK. <flails>

– Beta guilds were wiped, so if you were in my beta version of Apotheosis on Lost Isles, you may want to hit me up on Twitter at some point to get a re-invite.

– ICC10 Part 2. Went better than expected. O joined us on her priest and we promptly wiped on Plague trash. /facepalm. Nice first impression. ;) I think we made up for it, though, when we one-shot Rot, Fester and the good Professor. Dreamwalker was cake and, for the first time ever, I did that fight without healing in the portals. I kited zombies! It was kind of awesome, although I have never wanted to be able to cleanse my own magical debuffs more than right then. Stupid frostbolt volleys. Anyways, then it was on to Sindragosa. Despite some lapses in attention and despite some miscommunication, the Apotheosis INFAMOUS LAST ATTEMPT rule kicked in and we got her down for the first time. (Well, first time on these toons for many of us, anyways.)

– O will fit in beautifully if she decides to stick with us. She’s already on the “I tease Kurn, therefore I am” bandwagon. Things like “Eh on Hands” instead of “Lay on Hands” and “Hey, I need my I’m on a Boot achievement!”… Naturally, the guildies cracked up. :P

– After the raid, Football and X and I went to MC. Football’s after Sulfuron Ingots and the Eye of Sulfuras for Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros. I was hoping I’d get my Eye of Divinity for my priest off Domo, and X was along on his warlock until we got to Domo, at which point he got his 72 hunter, in case the Ancient Petrified Leaf dropped. The Eye of Divinity dropped and, after a couple of embarassing wipes on Ragnaros, off I went to the Eastern Plaguelands!

– And finally, as you were perhaps able to tell from the video above, I’ve managed to find a decent video setting for videos! This has some huge implications, particularly when I get a decent rig either later this month or in November.

ICC 25 heroic Putricide and Sindragosa tonight. Fingers crossed for the swift deaths of these two pains in my ass, if only for the hopes of my current guild’s Glory of the Icecrown Raider (25) drakes.

Live Realms Updates

Kurn / / apotheosis, general, guild, icecrown citadel, patches, raiding, ramblings

Just a few thoughts flitting about my brain.

1) I got the ZG achievement today with my brother. The funny thing is that we’d both cleared ZG, many moons ago, back probably during the summer of 2006. I’d even cleared it on my hunter, the toon I’d gone with today. Hell, back in the day, I was one of the kiters of the windserpents you kill to poison you, which poisons Hakkar, blah, blah, etc.

Today, my brother and I went in and killed all the aspects plus Gahz’ranka and Mandokir (no Jin’do, though), then did Hakkar. Remarkably easy, sad to say.

I got the Heart of Hakkar and turned it in — had I done this pre-BC, when I was actively running ZG with Fated Heroes, I would have had the achievement on Kurn already. Anyways, it was nice to go in and kill Hakkar again. I can’t remember the last time I did it.

All that rep plus 18 Zandalar Honor Tokens (from bijou and coin turn-ins) and I am 2130 rep from exalted with the Zandalar tribe. I’ve been running ZG for a couple of weeks, farming the Tome of Polymorph Turtle and for mounts and such, but mostly because Kurn deserves to be exalted. Zul’Gurub was my first raid instance (outside of raid groups for dungeons, back in the day) and it was such an amazing sense of accomplishment to have seen my guild progress from taking 3 hours to kill Venoxis to 20-minute Venoxis runs, from wiping on Jek’lik to clearing the instance, including Jin’do.

I’m going to have a proper post about this, soon, but Zul’Gurub deserves better treatment. Zul’Gurub is the reason I started playing this game (that’s a long story, but I’ll explain it in my other post) and it’s being removed for Cataclysm.

ZG is my favourite raid instance, bar none, and is filled with memories of each and every pull and each and every boss. I can take you there and show you where this one warlock always seemed to fall off the bridge on his way to Venoxis. I can take you there and show you how half the raid always seemed to hug the bat riders. I can show you the first bugged fish we ever saw, who actually followed people up on to land and evade bugged while killing us.

So Kurn’s going to finish repping up with those Zandalarian trolls. And I’m glad I finally got the official achievement for an instance I’ve spent so much time in.

2) Somehow, I keep getting roped into doing ICC10 with my brother on the weekends. This whole “DPS” thing is so very strange. I find myself clicking raid frames to try to cleanse people. Actually having to pay attention to what’s happening on the game field, you know, like adds and stuff? Boss health? hahaha, so very, very foreign.

I’ve gotten darn good at dropping snake traps on Putricide, though, and using Disengage in a variety of situations. Juggling disco balls on BPC, well, I’m getting there. ;)

3) New raid lockout system. I like it. I hate 10s and the only reason I’m doing 10s with my brother is because hey, it’s my brother. So I won’t be bitching and moaning about it. We are stuck with the new system in old content for like, a maximum of two months. I understand it means some 10s or 25s are adversely affected and that’s too bad. But I love the new system’s idea. I wouldn’t have implemented it now, were I in charge, but I think it’s fine. <shrug>

4) In terms of live raiding, we nearly 24-manned heroic Putricide until, at 17%, our third tank got DCed. The wheels kind of fell off the bus after that, even after he reconnected a few minutes later. I know I spent most of the rest of the raid laughing my ass off, which is entirely the fault of my GM and my RL. Hope to get heroic Putricide down on Monday and then work on Sindragosa, really. That would be sweet.

Speaking of my current guild, my GM and RL want me to go to the guild meetup in Vegas next year, which would mean my saying to Apotheosis: “Sorry guys, can’t raid for the next few days, I’m going to VEGAS with my OTHER guild!” This still amuses me greatly, but it’s not why they were cracking me up. Seriously, I’m going to miss casting Hammer of Justice on my GM while one of us is MCed on Lady Deathwhisper. I’m going to miss my RL calling the triangle “panties”. I’m going to miss the vast majority of the raiders in this guild, particularly this one gnome mage, who is definitely my second-favourite active mage and in my top five of all-time mages. (Majik, Tandrace, Dar, then probably this mage and then Kylon, I think.)

5) Apotheosis will be opening recruitment soooooon. We’ve already snagged a few people with whom I was at least vaguely acquainted, but keep your eyes peeled for an announcement at our website:

http://www.apotheosis-now.com/

Okay, time to grab a drink and go lead ICC10.

What Holy Paladins Need to Know for 4.0.1

Kurn / / beta, cataclysm, guide, paladins, patches, ptr

*** All content copyright © Kurn’s Corner, 2010. Reproduction of this guide in full or in part without express permission from the author (“Kurn”), represents copyright infringment and violation of copyright law. Please, if you like this guide, link to it, do not copy it. ***

*Small updates on Monday, October 18th, 2010 – Spell coefficients, a note about Enlightened Judgements vs. Paragon of Virtue*

*Update on Monday, November 22, 2010 – Glyph section somewhat out of date, links to 4.0.3a post.*

With 4.0.1 here as of Tuesday, October 12th, there are several things every single holy paladin absolutely needs to know. I’m going to try to break this down into TALENTS/SPELLS,  GEAR/STATS and GLYPHS. With regards to gemming, both Runed Cardinal Rubies and Brilliant King’s Ambers turn into Brilliant Cardinal Rubies, giving us 20 intellect. We can no longer gem for spellpower. I’m not changing out my gems quite yet, but as we gain levels, we might want to re-examine our gemming.

TALENTS/SPELLS

1) We cannot spec 31/5/5 at launch, because we only get 36 talents at 80. We are not going to be balanced for content at 80 with only 36 talents to spend. Assuming the talent trees stay the same, we have to drop 31 points into holy and then have a tough choice to make. Where do we put the remaining five talents?

Our only real choices:

0-3/3 Divinity: 0%/2%/4%/6% extra healing done to and by us. This is the same talent as the one that exists on live today, only it’s three talent points instead of five.

0-2/2 Eternal Glory: 0%/15%/30% chance for our Word of Glory not to consume Holy Power. This is an amazing talent that allows us to throw out more mana-free heals.

0-3/3 Crusade: 0%/10%/20%/30% extra healing (and damage) on Holy Shock (and lots of damage stuff by 30%). I kid you not, Holy Shock is an amazing spell in Cataclysm. 30% extra healing to it is not insignificant.

0-2/2 Improved Judgement: 0/10/20 extra yards on the range of Judgement. Combined with the extra 5/10 yards on Enlightened Judgements in the holy tree, we are looking at regaining our 40 yard range by dropping two points here.

My recommendations:

3/3 Divinity: 6% flat increase on healing. Do it.

0/2 Eternal Glory: Mana matters, but is not as huge an issue at 80 as it is at 85. The mana costs at 80 are not huge.

From a very early beta build:

Flash of Light: 1658
Holy Light: 263
Divine Light: 1842

Holy Light did get bumped to 9% of base mana sometime after I got these values, which is about 396 mana at level 80. I’m not sure if these values are even still remotely accurate. However, I know that mana wasn’t a huge problem until I hit 82-83. Bear in mind that a lot of things have changed since I was level 80 in beta and I might change my mind on this, but based on the trees right now and my beta experience so far, Eternal Glory doesn’t need our extremely precious two points. If mana is terrible, this should get consideration, but the level 80 values weren’t too bad.

2/3 Crusade: No, really, my hand to God, Holy Shock is used constantly. Holy Shock reduces cast time on FoL, HL and DL and is not an insignificant heal itself. We want Holy Shock to hit as hard as possible. Which means…

0/2 Improved Judgement: I hate that I’m not picking this up, but we’re out of freaking points and we have the base distance of 10 yards on the judgements and an extra 10 yards over in holy. Plus, there’s no more Judgement of Light or Judgement of Wisdom. Judgement is seriously JUST damage and to proc Judgements of the Pure. Judging is now a selfish thing that you do once a minute, so it’s not worth it, with so few points available to us, to drop even a single point here.

So, as of right now, my recommended spec for 4.0.1 is:

31/3/2

Bear in mind that 2/2 Enlightened Judgements can be swapped to 1/2 and you can grab 2/2 Paragon of Virtue, although I think the range is a better choice for us right now in Wrath content.

2) The Holy Power Resource. I nearly forgot to mention this, actually. Holy Power is a secondary resource, meaning it’s used alongside mana, not instead of it.

As you can see, you can have 0, 1, 2 or 3 charges of Holy Power.

For the moment, the only thing that a holy paladin can really use Holy Power for is to heal with our new heal, Word of Glory. Word of Glory with 1 charge of Holy Power heals for less than 2 charges, which heals for less than 3 charges. Word of Glory is an instant-cast heal that is basically a clone of Holy Shock, only there’s no cooldown and it doesn’t use mana. It’s solely dependent on Holy Power.

How do you generate Holy Power?

a) Crusader Strike, which is now baseline for all paladins. (This will be, admittedly, not something we probably use to generate Holy Power all that often.)

b) Using Holy Shock, which is now a passive just for picking holy as your spec. Every time you use Holy Shock, you get a charge of Holy Power.

c) Directly healing your Beacon with Flash of Light, Holy Light or Divine Light. Doing so generates one charge of Holy Power, if you’re specced for 3/3 Tower of Radiance. And you should be.

3) There is no more Flash of Light spec/style, no more Holy Light spec/style. These distinctions are gone. You cannot spam Flash of Light. It is expensive in the new Cataclysmic world. You cannot spam Divine Light, our new big heal, which is sort of equivalent to Wrath’s Holy Light. It’s also expensive. Holy Light is dirt cheap, but heals for itty bitty chunks. We need to adjust to our new heals – the potency of Holy Shock, the weakness of Holy Light, the cost of Flash of Light and the additions of Divine Light, Word of Glory and Light of Dawn. Holy Radiance only comes into play at 83, so we can ignore that for the moment. (But it’s a lot of fun.)

4) Mana matters. We have lost Illumination. Seal of Wisdom is gone, replaced with Seal of Insight, which works a bit like Seals of Light and Wisdom combined, but procs from Seal of Insight only grant us 4% of *base* mana, not *maximum* mana the way Seal of Wisdom did. Further, Divine Plea is nerfed: 10% of mana over 15 seconds, two minute cooldown, reduces healing done by 50% while active. This can be glyphed to 15% of mana back, but that’s still a huge change. We cannot rely on it the way we have throughout this entire expansion. Nor can we rely on Innervates — your druid companions will almost certainly be using this on themselves. Innervate will also only work off the casting druid’s maximum mana, so feral Innervates will be useless. Even Replenishment has been changed. Instead of 1% of maximum mana per 5 seconds, it’s 1% of maximum mana per 10 seconds. What’s that? Mana Tide Totem will still be awesome? HAH. It will now increase party members’ Spirit by 200% for 12 seconds, on a 3-minute cooldown.

I say again, mana matters.

5) Beacon of Light only heals for 50% of what you heal others for. That’s right, the OP awesomeness of our beacon is gone. Combined with the Tower of Radiance talent, it’s clear that we are no longer going to want to set a beacon on someone and just ignore that target except for refreshing beacon, as we currently do.

6) Sacred Shield is gone and its effect has been rolled into our mastery. Mastery is a new stat that all 30 specs can make use of and each spec has its own. Ours is called Illuminated Healing and it means that when we cast a heal on someone, we create a shield the size of 8% of the heal on them, which lasts for six seconds or until it’s been consumed by damage. The 8% scales up with more mastery, which is increased by getting gear with mastery rating on it. Word has it that these shields our heals create are supposed to “roll” or at least not have a smaller shield replace a bigger shield.

7) Blessings have changed. For starters, Blessing of Wisdom is gone. You can find its mana regen properties in Blessing of Might, along with the attack power bonus. Blessing of Kings now only adds 5% to various stats and adds some token resistence to magic schools. Kings does NOT stack with Mark of the Wild. They are identical. Further, these are all 60-minutes and raid-wide and require no reagents.

8) Divine Intervention is gone. Farewell, old friend.

9) Resistance auras have been merged together. So have resistance totems.

10) In case you missed it above, Judgement NO LONGER applies the Judgement of Light OR the Judgement of Wisdom debuff to mobs. Goodbye, passive healing and goodbye passive mana regen.

11) Lay on Hands cooldown reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes.

12) Our spell coefficients have changed. Thanks to Ophelie from The Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon for doing all the scary math for us. Here are the new spell coefficients.

GEAR/STATS

1) In order to benefit from our armor specialization, you need to wear all plate. Wearing all plate grants us an extra 5% intellect. This is godly, since our spellpower is based on our intellect. Do it.

I’m currently wearing two mail pieces: Heroic Unclean Surgical Gloves and Earthsoul Boots. I plan to swap to Gauntlets of Overexposure from the Emblem of Frost vendor, which are identical to Fallen Lord’s Handguards from regular Lady Deathwhisper on 25m.

Ideally, Halion will drop his boots, Foreshadow Steps, (although Walks and I both know these are clearly a myth and do not actually exist). If they don’t drop for me by the time 4.0.1 drops, I will probably switch to my old 258 boots, Boots of the Courageous from Icehowl in TOGC 25, since I didn’t get the Protectors of Life crafted. The Earthsouls were better. Anyways, obviously not everyone is killing Halion with regularity, not everyone is killing Deathwhisper on 25 every week, so your options may be a bit more limited.

I would be inclined to say switch to plate however you can, but keep in mind things like haste (see point #2) as you do so.

2) The amount of haste we want is going to rise. Bear in mind that Judgements of the Pure is dropping from 15% haste to 9% haste and the 3% haste from Swift Retribution/Improved Moonkin is GONE. That means the soft cap for haste that you want to aim for just jumped up from 676 to something like 1017 haste or thereabouts for a 1s GCD, given JotP + 5% spell haste (from a variety of sources — moonkin aura, shadowform’s aura and a shaman’s Wrath of Air). *** This number changes to 894 haste in 4.0.3a ***

That’s a large number, I know. Do not panic.

Why did we want to hit a 1s GCD in Wrath of the Lich King? We had a lot of spells that we needed to cast that were instant. Things like Beacon of Light, Sacred Shield, judging regularly, using Divine Shield and Divine Sacrifice… these are all on the GCD and with 1s GCDs, we’re able to hit these and get back to healing that much faster.

With the removal of Sacred Shield, the movement of Divine Guardian way out of our reach, the fact that we only need to judge once a minute, can we afford GCDs that are longer than 1s? Maybe. Though we’re losing Sacred Shield and judging 2-3 times a minute, we are gaining Holy Shock as a useful spell, which, thanks to Speed of Light, also gives us 30% haste to our next Flash of Light, Holy Light or Divine Light.

This haste can offset the longer cast times of Holy Light (3 seconds base, 2.5 seconds with 3/3 Clarity of Purpose, no more Light’s Grace!) and Divine Light, but it means using Holy Shock pretty much on cooldown.

We also gain Word of Glory, which is essentially a clone of Holy Shock, only it’s dependent on Holy Power instead of mana. Just like Holy Shock, Word of Glory is also instant. We also have Light of Dawn as our 31-point talent, which is an instant, conal heal that doesn’t heal for a ton, but can hit a lot of people at once. So, we lose:

– Sacred Shield (1/minute)
– Frequent judgements (2-3/minute)
– Divine Sacrifice/Guardian (1-2/fight)

Our commonly-used instants are now:

– Beacon of Light (refreshing every 60-90 seconds, depending on glyph)
– Holy Shock (6s cooldown, glyph no longer lowers cooldown, more if Daybreak procs)
– Judgement (1/minute)
– Word of Glory (when 3 Holy Power is accumulated)
– Light of Dawn (situational, but up to every 30 seconds)

So is it important to maintain as close to a 1s GCD as possible? Yes, I would say so. However, the other major benefit to haste rating is the lowering of cast times on various heals and that’s where Holy Shock and Speed of Light come in very handy. That’s why you shouldn’t panic. A 1.2s GCD isn’t as optimal as a 1s GCD, obviously, but don’t panic because your casted heals after a Holy Shock are still going to be pretty snazzy.

Some early beta build numbers are below. Bear in mind that in order to proc Speed of Light, you have to cast Holy Shock before the casted spell.

With 1026 haste only:

Flash of Light: 1.14s cast
Holy Light & Divine Light: 1.68s cast

With 1026 haste and JotP:

Flash of Light: 1.05s
Holy Light & Divine Light: 1.54

With 1026 haste and Speed of Light (3/3):

Flash of Light: 0.879s
Holy Light & Divine Light: 1.29

With 1026 haste and JotP AND Speed of Light:

Flash of Light: 0.806s
Holy Light & Divine Light: 1.18s

A Speed of Light-hasted Holy Light casting in 1.18s is even a bit faster than I currently get on live.

I’m going to do my best to maintain my current haste rating of 1036, which I add to with 40 haste food. However, as previously noted, I need to replace my boots and my gloves with plate equivalents. IF I get the boots from Halion, I’ll be at 1016 haste. If I don’t, I’ll be at 1006, since I’ll drop to my TOGC 25 boots. (I ALWAYS keep everything I wore in the previous tier, just in case I need a resist set or something.)

3) Librams are now stat-sticks. That’s right, we get our very own ranged weapon slot for our relics (and many will no longer be class-specific in Cataclysm!) and they add to our stats. What this means is that, almost certainly, the higher the ilvl libram or relic you have, the better stats are on it. Pallies with the Libram of Renewal will want to get Libram of Veracity which turns into this lovely thing or, if you can spare the Emblems of Frost, the Libram of Blinding Light. (I know. I kind of died inside.) But it turns into this:

GLYPHS

*** This section is outdated for 4.0.3a, please see the 4.0.3a post for updates on some Glyphs and some Glyph choices ***

Glyphs are changing. They’re not going to be consumed any longer, but rather learned. We also have a new kind of glyph: Prime glyphs, in addition to Major and Minor.

Keeva at Tree Bark Jacket says that we’ll get 1 Prime/Major/Minor at 25, 50 and 75, so we’ll have all 9 slots at 80.

What this means for holy paladins is that we want to get all of our glyphs and we want them ASAP.

First off, what glyphs do we want?

Prime Glyphs, by the way, are supposed to be the no-brainers of the glyph world and they exist in order to let us be more choosy in terms of major glyphs, while minors are supposed to be more cosmetic.

PRIME

1) Glyph of Divine Favor. Divine Favor has changed, as you can see by the talent in the talent tree. This glyph extends the duration of Divine Favor by 10 seconds. This is lovely.

2) Glyph of Holy Shock. No longer does this reduce the cooldown of Holy Shock by 1 second. This now increases its crit by 5%.

3) Glyph of Seal of Insight. This works just like the current Glyph of Seal of Light. While you have Seal of Insight active, all your healing is increased by 5%.

4) Glyph of Word of Glory. Increases the healing done by Word of Glory by 10%. Get this.

I would start out with Holy Shock, Seal of Insight and Word of Glory and eventually get enough crit to drop Holy Shock and pick up Divine Favor.

MAJOR

1) Glyph of Beacon of Light. Unchanged from live, it makes your Beacon last 90 seconds instead of 60 seconds. Yoink!

2) Glyph of Cleansing. Reduces the cost of your Cleanse by 20%. Not something I would personally invest in.

3) Glyph of Divine Plea. This used to be for prot pallies, but this is ours, now. This allows you to get an extra 5% mana back when you use Divine Plea, so you’re getting 15% mana back every two minutes instead of 10% mana back.

4) Glyph of Divinity. Same as on live, will grant you mana back and grants double the mana it normally does to its target. Actually has a spot in my glyph book, now.

5) Glyph of Light of Dawn. Reduces the cooldown of Light of Dawn by 10 sec and the amount healed by 20%. I wouldn’t touch this. LoD already heals for such a small amount (3k or so per target) that we do not need LESS healing done more often. I don’t think, anyways. This is a situational glyph, but I’ve been glyphed for it more often than not. This is golden on Infest on the Lich King, although this spell and its glyph are both changing in 4.0.3a.

6) Glyph of the Long Word. Your Word of Glory heals for 50% less up front, but provides an 50% additional healing over 6 seconds.

So what I would take here is Glyph of Beacon of Light, Glyph of Divine Plea and Glyph of Divinity. I’m not a fan of Glyph of the Long Word.

MINOR

1) Glyph of Lay on Hands. Reduces the cooldown of Lay on Hands by 2m. Since Lay on Hands is a 10m cooldown now, this brings it to 8m. Lovely.

2) Glyph of Insight. Reduces the mana cost of Seal of Insight by 50%. Doesn’t sound like much, but at 85, that’s like, 1500 mana savings or something, since the seal costs over 3000 mana.

3) Glyph of Blessing of Kings. Reduces the mana cost of Blessing of Kings by 50%.

4) Glyph of Blessing of Might. Reduces the mana cost of Blessing of Might by 50%.

Obviously, Glyph of Lay on Hands, particularly since I recommend Glyph of Divinity. The other two are up to you, but those are the only minors a holy would find at all useful.

Also, El (of El’s Extreme Anglin’) says that there are several glyphs that will be turned into new ones.

Here’s the conversion chart.

Among them, some that affect holy paladins:

Flash of Light -> Word of Glory
Holy Light -> Divine Favor
Seal of Light -> Seal of Insight
Seal of Wisdom -> Light of Dawn (so many people will have this — make sure to replace it!)

Okay, I think that sums it up. It’s a long post, I know, but I will definitely update this post going forward, since there will undoubtedly be changes to the beta and PTR before 4.0.1 launches and probably some 4.0.1 changes that will, uh, surprise us…

And for those of you who like to tank in your spare time (or tank most of the time and heal in your spare time), here’s the Righteous Defense guide to Everything you need to know about Prot and 4.0.1 at 80.

Please bear in mind that this guide is somewhat out of date as of the launch of 4.0.3a. Please see that post for updates.

*** All content copyright © Kurn’s Corner, 2010. Reproduction of this guide in full or in part without express permission from the author (“Kurn”), represents copyright infringment and violation of copyright law. Please, if you like this guide, link to it, do not copy it. ***

Cataclysm Beta Build 13066

Kurn / / beta, cataclysm, paladins

A new beta build, 13066, was released on the weekend. Here are the changes from the MMO-Champion post that I believe affect holy paladins.

Holy

* Spiritual Focus no longer gives you hit based on your Spirit. Renamed to Paragon of Virtue – Reduces the cooldown of your Divine Protection by 10/20 sec and the cooldown of your Avenging Wrath by 30/60 sec.
* Enlightened Judgements now also grants hit rating equal to 50/100% of any Spirit gained from items or effects.

Okay, so hit is now dumped into Enlightened Judgements. We now have our range and our hit and we get some passive healing every time we judge. Okay.

Paragon of Virtue is interesting. Avenging Wrath is only 3 minutes anyways, so being able to pop it every 2 or 2.5 minutes is… interesting. Also interesting — actually, you know, I’d go so far as to say nifty — is that it changes Divine Protection’s cooldown, which is currently one minute. 20% less damage for 10 seconds every minute is hot. 20% less damage for 10 seconds every 40-50 seconds is downright nifty. Especially considering the prot changes.

Protection

* Divine Shield’s Forbearance effect no longer affects Divine Protection.
* Hand of Protection’s Forbearance effect no longer affects Divine Protection.

So we can now pop Divine Protection without getting Forbearance on us, which means we can still bubble if something’s coming to get us. And I just tried it out — Avenging Wrath does not prevent you from bubbling and does not give you Forbearance. I was able to pop wings and bubble immediately thereafter.

How, then, does this change what I found to be the ideal build?

Not too darn much, actually.

31/5/5

It’s pretty much the same as the last build. I’m in favour of 2/2 Enlightened Judgements. Not only does it give us our extra 5/10 yards back, but it now also adds hit rating from our spirit AND gives us passive healing.

If I could find a way to do it, I would sneak a point to grab 2/2 Paragon of Virtue. But I don’t see where to steal the point.

But wait, there’s more!

MMO-Champion is reporting that build 13082 is coming out to the PTRs and that there’s a change in the ret tree.

Rule of Law no longer increases the critical effect chance of Holy Shock, affects Hammer of the Righteous instead.

Now, this was to be expected, really, if you’ve been reading blue posts.

Ghostcrawler said on the 25th:

We’re going to try to get the 10 points Holy spends in other trees to be a little less cookie-cutterish. Options include making Divinity or Rule of Law not healing related.

And there we have it. Rule of Law is not healing related except for the extra crit to Word of Glory. But as it is, Divinity is worth more than Rule of Law as it stands (extra crit to Holy Shock and Word of Glory) but now, that option has effectively been removed from us, at least in 13086.

My question here is, how on earth does removing Rule of Law from our equation make things less cookie-cutter? We had some great discussion about where to put points and if Divinity is worth it or not and so if we chose not to pick up Divinity, we could grab Rule of Law. Now without Rule of Law, it’s literally a no-brainer.

You go for 6% extra healing done to and by you. You go for 30% chance for your WoG not to consume holy power. You go for 20 extra yards on judgements. You go for 30% extra healing done by Holy Shock.

What are your other options? Filling out Protector of the Innocent (which is horribly bugged at the moment, healing the target of your heal and mirroring that fully via beacon)? What about Denounce? Oh, wait, I know! Let’s get Arbiter of the Light. :P

If they keep the change to Rule of Law AND change Divinity to not be healing-related, I’d fill out Paragon and get two points in Pursuit of Justice or Guardian’s Favor:

32/2/7 or 32/2/7

Honestly, I don’t know how removing our healing options gets rid of the cookie-cutter. Anyone out there able to explain it to me?

In other beta news, I healed a regular Lost City today. It was fine. A quest was bugged in that we didn’t get credit for it, but I really do like this whole notion of questgivers right inside the instance entrance, much like Utgarde Pinnacle.

That’s about all for now. More at some point later. I’m feeling pretty bewildered by all this at the moment.