Holy crap, holy paladin tier bonuses that DON’T SUCK?!
- 2 piece bonus – While your Divine Illumination talent is active, your healing spells are increased by 35%.
Oh my God. That is… fucking amazing. I’ve always viewed set bonuses that include talents as being something to encourage the class/spec to actually use that ability. I OFTEN forget to use Divine Illumination. Like, frequently. In reality, I should be using it on cooldown. Now this 2-piece T10 bonus is going to not only force me to remember to use Divine Illumination more often, BUT will greatly offset the fact that healing is halved when Divine Plea is up. This is a brilliant move. To date, we’ve had to use Avenging Wrath (which interferes with bubbling) to help mitigate that loss, or pop +spellpower trinkets and basically pray that we don’t have to cancel DP.
Especially considering the bonus WAS reducing Divine Favor’s CD by 60 seconds, this is a major improvement. I approve.
In fact, I consider this bonus to be just as strong as the 4-piece T9 bonus, albeit in a different way. T9’s 4-piece will encourage people to use Flash of Light and Sacred Shield more to get that FoL hot ticking away at double its regular strength. I mean, I can’t wait to get my 4-piece bonus, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be working hard to get the T10 2-piece ASAP, so I have a choice in fights. Do I aim for more healing via SS/FoL or do I aim for less panic about the tank dying? It’ll depend on the fight.
- 4 piece bonus – Your Holy Shock spell causes the next Holy Light you cast within 10 sec to have 0.3 sec reduced cast time.
More encouragement to use Holy Shock? Another oh-shit use for it? Hm. My Holy Lights, raid buffed, are already coming in at about 1.2 seconds. I have 673 haste and then usually swift retribution aura and wrath of air and, of course, judgements of the pure. This bonus is probably not as amazing as the 2pc, but nothing to sneeze at, either. It’s not like you don’t WANT your tier, and this bonus will serve as halfway decent incentive to upgrade from T9’s 2-piece bonus, which is utter crap, unless you’re the only paladin in a 10-man raiding guild.
I’m really happy with the bonuses, for once. Can’t wait to see what the models will look like, although I’m going to predict something purple. I could really go for yellow, but I’m guessing pink/purple instead. After all, I got my wish for good set bonuses. Can’t have everything! ;)
In other news, about to go do Ulduar 10 with my hunter!!! I can’t remember the last time I was *excited* to do Ulduar…