Holy Paladins in 4.2 - What You Need to Know

The release of Patch 4.2 brings with it the first major new content of Cataclysm: A new raiding tier taking place in a gigantic zone, a new quest hub and dailies with excellent gear rewards, a Legendary Staff for the Mages and Warlocks to fight to the death over, and a new, epic questline advancing the story of Thrall and the Earthen Ring. Not to mention getting a chance to kill Ragnaros once and for all and an opportunity to finally shove all that goddamn dirt that we gathered right in Fandral Staghelm's snarly face. Good times.

But with this patch, as always, come a lot of changes, balances and tweaks to the classes. Holy Paladin's are getting off pretty easy this time around; avoiding drastic changes but getting some quality of life changes, a couple of buffs and of course, getting the mana cost of our direct heals nerfed yet again.

I have put together a list of all the changes in this patch that are relevant to Paladins of the Holy persuasion, along with my comments. Full Patch Notes are here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/2993743

GENERAL HEALING CHANGES

• All healing critical strikes now heal for 2 times a normal heal (+100%), up from 1.5 times a normal heal (+50%).

A straightforward buff to all healers throughput, and an attempt to make Critical Strike rating a desirable secondary stat for healing. I'm still not completely sold on the viability of Crit as a stat for Holy Paladin healing, but I'm not going to say no to any extra 50% buff that Blizzard is willing to give me. Since Blizzard is doing everything they can do to force us away from Divine Light and to the smaller, more efficient Holy Light, this is a very welcome increase to our healing that will help make up for the fact that we'll be less able to spam our biggest heal.

I am, however, looking forward to seeing those big, juicy Divine Light crits.


FROM THE "HOLY CRAP IT'S ABOUT TIME" FILE

• All class abilities which place a buff on friendly targets no longer generate any threat. This goes for raid-wide buffs like Mark of the Wild and Power Word: Fortitude, as well as triggered effects such as Blessed Resilience or Fingers of Frost, and single-target buffs like Dark Intent and Hysteria. The exception is buffs which directly cause healing or damage, such as Thorns or Renew. Abilities such as these still generate normal threat.

This is a really small change, but it's one of those blindingly obvious, "why wasn't it like this in the first place" changes. It happened rarely, but every now and then I would refresh Beacon of Light or a Blessing just as the boss is being pulled and get aggro. I'm not really sure why a boss would think that Beacon of Light is a threat and want to rearrange my face, but it's been known to occur. This is just a quality of life change, really, but it will make your tank's life just that much easier and may prevent you from getting your head pounded into the ground on occasion.

CHANGES TO HOLY PALADINS

• Divine Light mana cost has been increased to 35% of base mana, up from 30%.
• Flash of Light mana cost has been increased to 31% of base mana, up from 27%.
• Holy Light mana cost has been increased to 12% of base mana, up from 10%.

Okay, ouch, this hurts. In a recent article on the official WoW blog, Ghostcrawler said "We concluded PvE Holy paladins were ending fights with too much mana relative to other healers, so we raised the mana cost of their single-target heals" and this change steps in to correct this. 

If I was to look at our mana situation objectively and not as a completely partisan class zealot, I would tend to agree and I think that these changes are reasonable. Looking at other healers, Paladin's have it enormously easier when it comes to mana. Often during raids I'll hear a healer call out for an Innervate or a Hymn of Hope while I'm sitting pretty with 80% mana having done about the same amount of healing. So while the zealot in me is storming through the house knocking holes in the drywall, I can appreciate that this is designed to bring Paladins to the same level as the rest of the healers and I think I'm okay with that.

 The Divine Light increase stings though... a 17% increase is a big jump.

Delicious, but
unhelpful
while healing.

• Holy Shock mana cost has been decreased to 7% of base mana, down from 8%. 

A small buff to make up for the last one. I don't think that making Holy Shock cheaper is going to have any effect on my Mana as the cost now is unnoticeable and I'm already casting it on cooldown as much as I can anyway. So, thank you, Blizzard, for doing the equivalent of tossing a Gummi Bear to a starving man.

Still, a Buff is a Buff.

• Beacon of Light can no longer be dispelled. In addition, it now transfers 100% of the heal from Holy Light, but still 50% of the heal from other spells.

Beacon of Light can no longer be dispelled, which I assume is going to be great for PVP. I've never run into this as a problem, so I will refrain from commenting further.

However, the transfer of 100% of Holy Light to the Beacon target is a fabulous change that I am very happy to see. 

I'm not sure how everyone else does it, but when I'm healing and responsible to keep a tank up, I still rely on my Beacon of Light to do a lot of the heavy lifting for me. At 50% transfer, Holy Light was next to useless when trying to keep a tank up through the Beacon, forcing a lot of Divine Light casts on Raid members that, strictly speaking, could likely have been kept up with a Holy Light. With Blizzard doing whatever they can to get us away from spam casting Divine Light, this will allow us to cast our ultra-efficient Holy Light more often and have it be effective in more situations.

• Illuminated Healing (Mastery) has been adjusted slightly so that if a paladin refreshes an existing copy of his or her own Illuminated Healing on a target, the new absorption amount will be added into the old absorption amount and the duration will be reset. The total absorption created can never exceed 1/3 of the casting paladin's health.

I posted in depth about this change in my previous article: Illuminated Healing in 4.2: New! Improved! 100% More Shiny!.

I think that the buff to our Mastery coupled with the improvement to Critical Heals and the change to Holy Light will go a long way to make a Crit and Mastery gearing strategy viable for Tank healing in Raids, and I'm very intrigued to check the numbers out. I think some more research is needed on this one before it can be fully understood. As of now, however, I am going to stick with my previous Haste-heavy build.

• Infusion of Light can now lower the cast time of Flash of Light by 0.75/1.5 seconds, in addition to Holy Light and Divine Light. In addition, the old Denounce spell overlay effect has been transferred to Infusion of Light since Denounce is no longer a proc.

Nobody uses Flash of Light. It doesn't heal enough to compete with Divine Light, it's too expensive to compete with Holy Light and isn't fast enough to make it worth casting over either of them. 

If only it was instant I might actually use it.

What's that? Infusion of Light now reduces the cast time by 1.5 seconds? Ahh. I see. Right. Carry on then.

• Speed of Light now increases movement speed when Holy Radiance or Divine Protection are cast. In addition, this talent now reduces the cooldown of Holy Radiance by 13/26/40 seconds, up from 10/20/30.

This buff is nice, but not, I think, in the way Blizzard intended. I think that they view this as allowing us to use Holy Radiance more often, and therefore being more effective at AOE healing, which is true. However, I have rarely found that Holy Radiance is on cooldown when I need it, and I'm not sure how it being available 10 seconds earlier will change things dramatically. But it may allow us to move a Talent Point from this and put it elsewhere and still have virtually the same cooldown as before.

Actually, the thing that I am excited about with this change is having the Speed of Light movement increase be activated by both Holy Radiance and Divine Protection. It makes a lot of sense, actually, because when I need to quickly move out the fire Divine Protection's damage reduction is also likely to come in handy, not to mention save me the mana cost of Holy Radiance (which ain't cheap).

• Walk in the Light now improves Word of Glory healing by 30%, in addition to its current effects.

Sweet Merciful Neptulon! An actual, no-bullshit BUFF! In Ghostcrawler's words: "We buffed Word of Glory for three reasons: We felt Holy Power was mattering less to Holy paladins than it did at Cataclysm launch. We wanted to provide more uninterruptible healing in PvP. We knew Light of Dawn was trumping Word of Glory in almost all cases in 25-player raids". Excellent.

As a 10-man raider, I use Word of Glory a lot, and this buff makes it's use in 10-mans a complete no-brainer, as well as making it a viable option in 25-man content. Consider this slavering class zealot pleased. I almost regret the car bomb I put under Ghostcrawler's minivan for the mana nerfs. Almost.

BUFF TO PURE AWESOME

• Players are once again free to dance in combat (without causing graphic errors). Other animations, such as attacks, will take precedence over dancing. The dance animation will be suppressed until the higher priority animation is complete. Fun has been unnerfed.

Can there be anything better than dancing while healing a boss encounter? I don't think so. Trash mobs will flee from the shear magnitude of my dance machismo, and Bosses will cower from my epic arabesques and drop their epic loot as I do a plate armour version of The Hustle. So You Think You Can Dance will have nothing compared to my Holy Warrior hoe-downs.


HOLY PALADIN GEAR LIST FOR 4.2

I will defer to the experts on this one: Kurn put together a great list of Holy Paladin Firelands gear. She and I generally agree on gearing and stat weights (by that, of course, I mean that I read her stuff and say, "Yeah, that makes a lot more sense than what I was thinking"), and I'll probably be using her guide myself, so I see no point in duplicating it here. Go visit her!

   

Illuminated Healing in 4.2: New! Improved! 100% More Shiny!

I'm forever blowing bubbles,
Pretty bubbles in the air,
They fly so high,
Nearly reach the sky,
Then like my dreams
They fade and die. - lyrics by James Kendis, James Brockman and Nat Vincent[1]

Ahh, Holy Paladin Mastery. You are so young and yet have lived a very checkered and unappreciated life. Greeted with an overwhelming wave of indifference when you were born which turned into outright hostility as you grew up into an awkward adolescent that no one knew what to do with. It became so bad that people could barely look you in the eye any longer and simply reforged as much of you away as they could, pretending that you didn't exist. It's not really fair, is it? We all had such high hopes for you.

Patch 4.2 represents a coming of age of sorts for Illuminated Healing. The awkward teenage years of short, non-stacking, pimple-like bubbles are gone. In it's place is a more mature and grown-up Mastery ready to take on the real world and make a difference.

Alright, I think I've taken that metaphor as far as I can go. Consider yourself spared the Clearasil jokes.

MASTERY PRE-4.2

As a stat for Holy Paladins, Mastery in 4.1 is generally considered beyond worthless. It is the automatic choice for reforging. Our mastery ability, Illuminated Healing, puts a shield on the target of a Paladin's single-target healing spells for 12% of the healed amount, modified by mastery. Sounds great, in theory. Who wouldn't want an across-the-board 12% increase in their healing effectiveness due to the mitigation of incoming damage? Discipline Priests have made a living with doing just that through two expansions now.

The Evolution of Illuminated Healing

The problem is that it just doesn't play out that way in reality. The shields are too small to be meaningful. They don't last long enough to reliably be counted on to absorb damage. And they don't stack - meaning a heal cast on a target with a shield on it will overwrite it with a new shield based on the new healing spell. These three things combined means that most of the Shields simply go to waste and the ones that are used are small enough to be insignificant.

Throughout Cataclysm, Blizzard has been steadily tweaking Illuminated Healing with a series of small buffs. It's very apparent that they are being cautious with our mastery in an attempt to ensure that it doesn't become overpowered. Each patch has come with tiny little buffs and balances to answer the ability's critics in the hopes of finally making Mastery a desirable stat for a Healadin. 

MASTERY: NEW, IMPROVED AND READY FOR PRIME TIME

Patch 4.2 finally answers the final critique of Illuminated Healing with the addition of stacking shields up to 33% of the Paladin's health. Here is the patch note detailing this:

Illuminated Healing (Mastery) has been adjusted slightly so that if a paladin refreshes an existing copy of his or her own Illuminated Healing on a target, the new absorption amount will be added into the old absorption amount and the duration will be reset. The total absorption created can never exceed 1/3 of the casting paladin's health.

The reactions to this change have ranged all over the place. Kurn, Rohan and Adgamorix all posted widely varying opinions on the subject, as have many others.

I look at this change, and the changes that have preceded it and am satisfied. I think that Blizzard has finally got Illuminated Healing to a good place and it will finally start working as it was initially intended to: To have each direct heal that a Paladin cast give it's target a shield to reliably be counted on to mitigate a portion of future incoming damage. And now that subsequent casts will increase the amount absorbed and refresh the duration, it's much less likely a shield will go to waste.

Will we be able to pump up the shield to maximum quickly and efficiently before the pull? No, but that's alright because that's not the way it's intended to work. Are we going to be able to quickly shield a raid using Holy Radiance? No, but that's alright because that's not how it's intended to work. Will we be able to shield both the target we're healing and the tank we have Beacon of Light on in a single cast? No, but that's okay too.

All of those things would be extremely nice, but likely would be unbalanced. As it is, Blizzard can't help but nerf all of our single target heals every single patch, so let's not give them any more incentive because of an overpowered Mastery.

I feel that the intent of our mastery is to provide a buffer: The more we heal a target, the smoother and easier to manage future damage becomes, and I think that this buff goes a long way to making this concept finally work.

IS MASTERY DESIRABLE?

The big question this change brings up is: Should a Holy Paladin gear for Mastery?

I still believe the answer is no: Haste is still a better throughput stat for Holy Paladins. I am still a big fan of a Haste-heavy build if for no other reason than to increase the responsiveness of my healing. To me, it feels better to be casting quickly and more often. Mastery is still valuable with this gearing strategy since quick heals will allow a Paladin to stack shielding quicker.

However, the changes to Illuminated Healing coupled with Critical Strikes now healing for 200% certainly do make an argument that a Critical Strike and Mastery gearing strategy could prove to finally be viable come 4.2. Slow, frequently critical heals that leave a shield twice the size of a normal heal could prove to be equally effective as faster heals that crit less - and may be easier on the mana pool, something that may prove important as we move into the Firelands to play with Ragnaros and his diabolical minions. I am no theorycrafter, so I will let others do the math on this one, but I'm curious to try it out and see how it works.

That being said, I think that Mastery is still not as important as either Haste or Crit, regardless of which gearing strategy you decide to go with. My order of preference for secondary stats is as follows:

SPIRIT > HASTE = CRIT > MASTERY

In this scenario, Haste and Crit are equal, but separate. Choose one at the expense of the other. Either way, Mastery is still not something that a Paladin should go out of their way to get, but having it on otherwise well-itemized gear is no longer quite such a detriment.

In this sense, Mastery is still a bit of a troubled child. No longer is it completely worthless, and Illuminated Healing is now quite good, but that extra little bit of shielding that the Mastery stat provides pales in comparison to what Haste and Critical Strike provides. I guess it's not out of the Clearasil years quite yet.

But honestly, short of scrapping and redesigning the Holy Paladin Mastery ability completely with something better, I'm not sure what Blizzard can do to make a Holy Paladin want to go out of their way to gear for it.
 
  

Divine Plea Buffed From the Brink of Irrelevancy? (PTR)

Patch 4.0.6 is heading to the Play Test Realm according to MMO-Champion.  This is not a content patch, so no new raids or anything, but is a bug fix and update patch. 

For Holy Paladins, there is not much in the way of changes coming.  As with Ghostcrawler’s post last week, it looks like Holy Paladins are in a good spot right now. 

One small but significant change is coming down the pipeline, however: Divine Plea is getting buffed.

Divine Plea now lasts for 9 seconds, down from 15. It grants 4% mana per tick, instead of 2%, for a total of 12% mana, up from 10%.

In addition: Glyph of Divine Plea now adds 6% mana, for a total of 18% over 9 seconds.  Up from 5%.

This is a nice, small buff to a good ability that will make it substantially more useful. Couple this with the new glyph and we have a real winner here.

The biggest problem with Divine Plea the way it is now is the 50% healing reduction while it is active. This buff gives us more mana returned in a shorter period of time, thereby reducing the impact of this limitation. The extra 8% 3% mana is just Awesomesauce flavoured icing on the cake.

In this healing environment there is seldom a time when 9 seconds of reduced healing will spell the death of a tank. And within the space of that time, there are many other things that a Paladin can do that aren’t heals and won’t be affected by the debuff. For instance, depending on Haste you would have 6 or 7 global cooldowns during that time so you could cast:

Judgement, (1.5s GCD)
Holy Shock, (1.5s GCD
drink Mana Potion, (1.5s GCD)
Cleanse, (1.5s GCD)
Hand of Salvation, (1.5s GCD)
Judgement, (1.5s GCD)
Holy Shock, (1.5s GCD) and then resume healing normally.

In this particular example, the Holy Shocks are used less for the amount of healing they would do, but rather to build Holy Power for an immediate Light of Dawn or Word of Glory when Divine Plea is finished. Of course, there are any number of different utility spells you can throw into that 9 seconds: Hand of Freedom, Hand of Protection, more Cleanses, Aura Mastery, etc. Even spamming Holy Light with its extremely low mana cost would be an option.

All in all, I’m very pleased with this tweak. I think it will go a long way to making it worth hitting the Divine Plea button again. I hope that it survives the PTR.

On the nerf side, our Blessings are getting a bit of a mana cost increase:

The mana costs of Blessing of Might and Blessing of Kings have been increased by approximately 217%, making them roughly equal to the cost of Mark of the Wild.

Since Blessings are normally cast outside of combat, this is mearly a “Meh”. I don’t suspect that this will change anybody's playstyle, except I may be slightly more reluctant to rebuff in the middle of combat for a Battle Rez.

Full Patch Notes from MMO-Champion are here.