So... Patch 3.2...

Yeah... I haven't been posting much, as I've had a lot of other things wrapping up my time, and there hasn't been much to talk about.

Then there was the most recent Seal of Vengeance change.

The good news! I have something to post about!
The bad news: I'm afraid my goggles are no longer quite so rose tinted.

I'm not going to talk explicitly about the seal change, however. More overall how things are beginning to look.

Early into the changes, Ghostcrawler made a post asking for new ideas to change the Retribution combat system. I was thrilled when I read his post, and immediately began posting up a frenzy of ideas and threads trying to rally support of new ideas of my own and other posters. I even came up with my own crazy combat system, complete with a revamp of several skills.

The changes?

Crusader Strike is now on a 6-->4 second cooldown, costs 8-->5% base mana, and deals 100-->75% weapon damage.

Seal of Vengeance now hits really hard. With the most recent changes, though, it takes 15+ seconds before Seal of Vengeance does anything beyond apply a DoT though.
Seal of Command hits slightly less hard, but on every attack, and has a shiny new glyph that gives us more mana.

...

I'm really, really, really dissapointed. The only thing keeping me holding onto my Paladin at this point is the Paladin Q&A:

Q. Do we have plans to introduce a stand-alone interrupt ability for paladins?

A: We would like to add this kind of utility to paladins. First we have to get the burst damage under control so that Ret paladins are not winning PvP encounters by blowing players up. When we accomplish that, we’ll look at finally giving them more tools.

Paladins have had their burst gutted, and this time it was hit so hard even the PvE Retribution Paladins are curled up in the fetal position crying for a medic. Now let's just hope that the surgery is finished before the morphine wears off and we sit up to find our intestines in our lap.

I know, this post is a lot more QQ than feedback, and for that I'm sorry. But, for the sake of keeping my blog at a higher level than your average pointless rambling, I'll post an idea that I caught in a post that went largely unnoticed.

Perhaps Blizzard is onto something with the only-on-auto-attack application of Seal of Vengeance. Perhaps by changing our seals from straight damage to utility, they could begin to rework our combat system, ramping up the skill cap and bringing some interactivity to it. Something beyond "Press button, damage happens." (Which is now "Press buttons slightly faster, slightly less damage happens... but slightly more often.")

TL;DR: I'm dissapointed, but still have hope (Whether I'm optimistic or stupid is up to the individual reader).

Suggestion: Using seals to enhance to our combat mechanics, rather than our combat being centered around seals.

Response to "Q&A Series: Paladin"

About an hour ago (starting this post), Bornakk posted a list of questions and answers in the Paladin forums. After reading it, I think I'd like to take the time to give some commentary and talk on some concerns that have been alleviated, and created, by various answers. I will not be responding to every piece of the post, however, as not everything requires a response, and I don't want to waste time with a dozen responses that are all a variation of "cool".

Q. Do we feel Flash of Light and the changes in store for it will allow for additional diversification for the existing healing spells available? Aside from Healing Light, Flash of Light, and Holy Shock, are there any plans to provide paladins with other interesting healing spells later down the road?

A. Later down the road most likely, but it won’t be for 3.2 and it won’t be with something that looks like Prayer of Healing or Wild Growth. We do think paladins will have more of a use for Flash of Light now with the extra benefit to Sacred Shield. The changes to Beacon of Light in 3.2 should make paladins an exceptional dual target healer.

Hallelujah. Currently, Paladins are the artillery of healers, and I absolutely love it -- but having a variety of 'cannons' for differing situations is something that Holy Paladins are still in need of. While Beacon of Light has definitely made a huge impact on our raid healing capabilities, as will this Flash of Light change, I'm hopeful that whatever Blizzard has in mind will further expand our healing potential without drawing too much focus off of the power of our nuke healing capabilities. (Seriously, 20k Holy Light bombs every ~1.2-1.4 seconds is awesome.)

Community Team: Now that we’re on the topic of paladin buffs and spells, dps and versatility has been a topic of concern for many players with respect to both PvE and PvP.

A lot of my posts lately have been in regards to Retribution, and so yes -- this portion will end up being where I spend the majority of my time responding. Retribution has been going through the most changes as of late, and thus, is getting the larger portion of my attention.

Q. All classes vary in dps from one encounter to another; however, some paladins may feel their dps can be less competitive at times in comparison to other classes, more so in straight stationary single-target dps encounters. How do we feel paladins are doing in terms of dps across the board?

A. Retribution dps is too low in PvE in 3.1. We are buffing it in 3.2 through the new way Seal of Vengeance / Corruption will work. This Seal is designed to really deliver damage once the paladin gets five stacks up, which will make it the Seal of choice for boss fights. Seal of Command will be used in PvP or PvE for short fights. We expect overall for Corruption / Vengeance to be the “go-to” Seal much of the time, perhaps even in PvP, provided you can keep the buff up.

The current problem is that, as it stands, Command will never be useful. It now functions exactly like Seal of Righteousness, but has a catch; it does less damage. In PvE, Seal of Vengeance is far more powerful in all situations, and for trash, Righteousness will do. (Trash is not worth a talent point.)

In PvP scenarios, the only thing making Command worthwhile is it's glyph, which increases the mana return from Judgements of the Wise by 8% of our base mana for a total of 33%. However, this mana is largely unneccessary in a 3v3 environment. The only time that Retribution is strapped for mana is when we are forced into a heavy support role, such as when playing double DPS in 2v2.

When paired with a healer, the vast majority of the Retribution Paladin's time is going to be spent playing aggressively in a DPS role, where our mana will be plenty high enough for the few situations where we may be required to help support the healer. Thus, the extra mana from Seal of Command is largely uneccessary. And again, in situations where Seal of Vengeance might be detrimental (Breaking CC), Seal of Righteousness can be used.


Q. Exorcism will be usable in both PvE and PvP once more which is great; aside from allowing this ability to be used against other players, what were the reasons to go down this route in redesigning this attack?

A. Exorcism never did a ton of damage to players, but it was an instant attack which meant paladins could use it while closing with an enemy. It was essentially just free damage and never a decision of any kind. The new approach to the spell prevents it from being used while closing, and also makes Retribution paladins have to pay a little more attention to their combat rotation -- you want to use Exorcism when Art of War procs, and generally not at other times.

We understand this is a small adjustment to Protection paladins, which is why we improved Hand of Reckoning. The 3.2 patch will be pretty good for paladin tanks overall so hopefully they will forgive us.

Yes, as a Protection Paladin, I wholeheartedly forgive you. Yes, I lost Exorcism, but more often than not it was only used as a follow-up to Hand of Reckoning anyway. Ardent Defender and the Glyph of Righteous Defense more than makes up for this loss, I assure you.

Community Team: Specifically with the various spells and abilities that paladins have in a PvP encounter, there have been questions concerning regarding survivability and utility, let’s get into some of these.

Being that I've already read this, I know that this is where the cheering comes. However, it is soon followed by one of the loudest facepalms I've ever had. I try extremely hard at times not to jump to conclusions with certain decisions, but still...

Q. Will it be possible to prevent Avenging Wrath from being dispelled as well? This ability is the means to allow for on-demand maximum dps output for a brief period of time and only affects the paladin.

A. It’s possible but not probable. Really this is symptomatic of a larger problem, which is that the dispel game has become too important in PvP. If the other team has a dispeller, then abilities like Avenging Wrath get totally shut down. If the other team lacks a dispeller, then they may be in trouble. This leads to junk buffs and inconsistencies on which abilities can be dispelled or not. We are going to redo the entire system, though not for 3.2. One direction to take dispelling is to give magic dispel to all the healers (since 90% of player spells are magical), but to prevent offensive dispelling of any kind, or at least prevent dispels for “your-class-is-supposed-to-have-this buff” like Arcane Int or Fort.

I cannot tell all of you how excited this makes me. Too much power currently lays in the hands of offensive dispels, as it can completely shut down a Paladin at times. From our defensive utility in the form of Hand and shield spells, and offensive utility in the form of Avenging Wrath. This makes us quite dangerous against teams without offensive dispels, and about as threatening as a drunk with a baseball bat to teams with them. (Somewhat scary, but handled easily enough if you're moderately experienced in hand to hand combat of any form.)

Q. Do we have plans to introduce a stand-alone interrupt ability for paladins?

A: We would like to add this kind of utility to paladins. First we have to get the burst damage under control so that Ret paladins are not winning PvP encounters by blowing players up. When we accomplish that, we’ll look at finally giving them more
tools.

Then, please, I beg of you, give us a combat system that takes the RNG out of our burst, gives us more easily balanced DPS, and raises the skill cap. I understand that there's literally thousands of different aspects of the game that you're trying to fine tune still, but in order for Retribution to finally be balancable (is that word?), it needs an actual system to work with.

Q. With the slew of options to either "jump into" or "jump out of" PvP encounters for either offensive or defensive purposes many classes receive, do we have any plans to incorporate special abilities for paladins to either help them escape tough situations or quickly get into pvp battle (i.e. Deathgrip, Typhoon, Summoning Circle, Disengage, etc.)? It seems paladins are the only class without a short cool-down ability on the same scale.

A. Players are pretty good at detecting problems, but for solutions they tend to just look around at what other classes have that is working for them. Homogenization is something we fight as much as we can, which is the reason not every class has Death Grip and not every class has Charge. Judgment of Justice is intended to be the gap-closer for paladins. If it becomes a huge liability, we’ll evaluate, but at the moment paladins are doing extremely well in PvP without it.

And now, we reach the point where my face collides with my hand with such force as to send ripples throughout the planet.

Judgement of Justice is not a gap closer. It is, if anything, closer to a (mediocre) snare in it's function. It prevents the target from escaping. In order to apply Judgement of Justice, the Paladin has to have already closed the gap (10 - 30 yard range). Then, even as a snare, it fails to prevent our targets from escaping if we ourselves are snared. 100% > 34.5%(Crippling Poison: 70%) - 57.5%(Hamstring: 50%)

And yes, we have Hand of Freedom, but this falls under the dispel problem, where an offensive dispeller can completely neuter Retribution's gap closing ability. No, we should not have 100% uptime on our target. But we should not be kited to death, either.

Community Team: We’re on our last set of questions here, so let’s switch it up a tad and talk a bit about Librams and aesthetics.

Q. Do we have plans to incorporate Librams as a more prominent aspect of the paladin class? Also, can we expect to see Librams as a physical aesthetic item on the paladin? Much like the quiver is for the hunter (except only the hunter can see their own quiver mounted on their back).

A. This is something players suggest a lot, and honestly something we’d like to do. It’s a pretty iconic image from Warcraft, especially Warcraft III, to have the paladin toting around their libram. Someone at BlizzCon last year asked if they could beat on people with it. This is a big task to put on the art team though so we would want to make sure we do it right. The same answer would apply to shaman totems and hunter quivers. On the other hand, it took a long time to finally update the druid cat and bear art so don’t look for this in 3.2.

At least this can end on a cheery note.

BE WARNED, HEATHENS! FOR THOU SHALT FACE MINE MIGHTY LIBRAM OF FACE BASHING! THY GODS HAVE DECLARED IT SO, AND THUS, IT SHALL BE SO. TREMBLE, FOR MINE BOOK COMES FOR YOU!

Retribution: Time to talk utility!

So, I just remembered another dream I had last night... and, it inspired me to make this post. So, here we go!

So, there's been a lot of focus on Retribution lately, and our performance in PvE and PvP. Now, in Retribution: A New Combat System, I discussed the possibilities for giving Retribution control over their burst, damage, and mana--so this post I'm going to be discussing utility.

Here's the catch: I'm not going to ask for, or make any reference to Paladins having, a snare, Mortal Strike, an interrupt, or even a distance closer. I'm going to focus entirely upon new and creative ways to implement further defensive utility into the Paladin. This will open up the doors for many new teams and create opportunities for classes and specs that would otherwise avoid the arena, as being a glass cannon often leads to the enemy exploiting the 'glass' before you can fire the cannon.

So let's give glass cannons a way to survive, give the Retribution Paladin additional utility for a raised skill cap, and introduce something new to the arena rather than homogenizing the Paladin for the sake of balance.

Something that Paladins could use is another ability to use as a 'peel', which is done by pulling an enemy off of an arena partner. This can be done with Hammer of Justice or Repentance -- but the cooldowns on these two abilities are extremely restrictive, as they are currently used as a peel, an interrupt, a distance closer, CC chains, an opener for burst, etc. Having two long cooldown spells being responsible for so many different uses means that they are never available often enough. But, enough of that ranting -- back to ideas for a peel.

Think Death Grip, but reversed.

The Paladin reaches out with holy, grabbing his ally and pulling them to safety, removing all movement impairing effects.

Just think of the options it opens--I'm getting giddy just thinking about it. ~♥

It could be used to save the idiot standing in the fire in PvE, it could be used to pull a partner up in Blades Edge, or out of LoS of a CC/Burst/Etc by pulling them behind a pillar... it'd be an amazing spell. If it proves to be too much, it could share a cooldown with Hand of Freedom, forcing better decision making rather than just mashing the button whenever an arena partner runs into trouble.

Anyway, another possible idea -- what if the Paladin could instantly transfer all current debuffs on his targetted ally to him/herself? It could be a one shot deal, or could have a continued effect of transferring the debuffs for X seconds. It could be used as a peel, a guard agains burst (removing all diseases/DoT's/etc before the big finale lands), etc. It would have to be used carefully though, because if used carelessly -- the enemy team will just switch targets and blow up the Retadin.
"Oh? You stole my diseases huh?"
"SCOURGESTRIKESCOURGESTRIKESCOURGESTRIKE!!!11!1"
"loluded?"

Sadly, those are the only two ideas I could come up with off the top of my head. But, I ask you my wonderful readers, what are some ideas you can come up with?

Challenge yourself, though. Try to follow the following criteria:
Defensive utility -- no mortal strikes, interrupts, incapacitates, snares, etc.
Unique -- Try to think of spells or abilities that other classes or specs don't have yet. It can mirror an offensive ability, though, I.E. my 'reverse death grip' idea.
Make sure it's balanced. Ask yourself, "If this was given to another class, would I consider it fair?"

So, that said, what are your thoughts? Do you believe that Retribution Paladins could be successful, and possibly bring success to our squishy caster friends, by bringing so much powerful defensive utility to the table?

So, I'm Rolling a Mage...

Okay, so I was rolling a mage anyway, but I had a dream last night that I solo'd a 5v5 team. Was a Disc Priest, Rogue, Death Knight, Retadin, and a Warrior.

The Priest was afk, though.

Blew up the Rogue, then the Retadin, and played pillar hump with the Warrior and the Death Knight until my cooldowns came up and I did it again.

Then I killed the Priest.

;D

Retribution's Combat System

You can find the condensed version on the Damage Dealer forums under the thread titled, "[RETRIBUTION] 3.2, The Skill Cap, and YOU!"

Everybody wants their class to do well in Player versus Player scenarios. It's a lot of fun, and a great way to compete -- the best can even find it a good way to make money on the side as well. But when we look at different classes, we find many perform far better than others, even when the low representation classes have 'overpowered' moves.

Why is this?

Well, let's look at some of the successful classes, and try to find that which makes them a successful class in PvP.

Rogue: This is one of the all time favorite classes for many players for PvP purposes. This class has been successful from the early days of World of Warcraft, so what better class to discuss for success than the Rogue?

One of the things that made the early Rogue successful in PvP was the ability to always catch their victim off guard. The first strike is extremely important in a fight, and when it's a surprise, it will often times leave your opponent reeling for a second or two before being able to react. By taking control of the fight out of the gate, the Rogue was able to hunt down and destroy a target before the opponent had enough time to realize what was happening and fight back. Rogues were THE damage class too, with the ability to do absurd levels of damage, and there was no such thing as "PvP Gear". All gear was PvE oriented with an emphasis on damage, so killing a target within a few seconds wasn't astonishingly rare. This made the Rogue even more dangerous.

Fast forward two expansions and six arena seasons, and the Rogue is still doing phenomenally well. What has allowed the Rogue to keep through the massive paradigm shifts that have occured and the alterations to the game that followed?

A massive toolbox that allows for a wide variety of actions that can be taken for any given situation. Because of this, the Rogue is an incredibly adaptable class.

The class has many defensive cooldowns available which allow them to escape and re-open, unloading heavy damage while throwing off their opponents flow at the same time. The Rogue also has powerful offensive cooldowns, which allow them to capitalize on these disruptions that they create, allowing them to move in for a kill.

What makes the Rogue so versatile is that many of their cooldowns are both offensive and defensive. Vanish can be used to escape from a dangerous situation, or re-open on a target for a second time in the middle of an attack sequence unloading a powerful and sudden burst. Kidney shot can be used to open a target up for burst from the Rogue and/or his partner(s), or to stop an enemy's flow of combat and interrupt a burst attempt. Blind can be used offensively on a healer to CC during an assault on their partner, or defensively to, again, interrupt an attempted kill on the Rogue or his teammate. This means that when a Rogue sets a goal in combat, that Rogue has multiple methods of accomplishing that goal.

This large toolbox also allows the Rogue to synergize well with most classes and specs, allowing for a wide variety of options in team composition, which means even if one partner is turned on their head -- the Rogue still has a couple dozen other options.

All of this summed up means that no matter what a Rogue wants to do, there is always an option available to that Rogue. This makes the Rogue an extremely dangerous enemy, and a powerful ally, who's lethality lies within his or her flexibility in and out of combat.


Now, when we look at other successful classes, we will see varying levels of flexibility within the class and the compositions they run in. Sometimes the class may not rely on the flexibility of themselves, and instead on the flexibility of their partners, while using their highly focused strengths to supplement the flexibility of their partner, both covering each other's weaknesses. Now, let's focus on some classes that -- while potentially dangerous, are only dangerous to a limited extent, which limits their ability to compete in the higher levels of competition.

One of these classes is currently the Warlock. As Affliction, the Warlock has high damage output -- but it's a slow burn for a kill, and while the Warlock is tough to kill -- simply eliminating the Warlock's pet will eliminate their 'Cleanse/Purge', a substantial portion of their damage, their silence, and increase damage taken by the Warlock by 20%. This is HUGE, especially considering the average life span of an Affliction Warlock's pet is three to four global cooldowns--and that's being generous.

Outside of their pet, an Affliction Warlock can teleport... to a location known by the enemy... once every thirty seconds.

Warlocks also have CC in the form of fear, but... Warriors can break fear every thirty seconds, Rogues can become immune every 60 seconds with Cloak of Shadows, Death-Knights can become immune every 45 seconds with Anti-Magic Shell or with Lichborne every 3 minutes, Feral Druids can break fear and go immune every three minutes, Beast Mastery Hunters can become immune every two minutes, Shaman have Tremor Totem, everybody has a trinket and two have cleanse.

Long story short, the Warlock has very a very limited toolbox, and those few tools in their arsenal are heavily countered by a multitude of classes. Add in other factors such as being able to cleanse crucial DoT's or Line-of-Sight the Warlock's casts on top of the Warlock being very vulnerable to gibbing, and it makes being successful with a Warlock extraordinarily difficult.

DISCLAIMER: The following will probably sound like QQ to some, but is purposefully pessimistic to further emphasise the points being made.
Now, when we look at the Retribution Paladin, what do we see? Which area does 'The Ret' fall under? The Retribution toolbox consists of RNG reliant burst damage, an extraordinarily limited set of tools for control, moderate healing power, and a relatively small number of cooldowns -- all but one geared towards the defensive nature of the Paladin. Note, however, that every cooldown can be cleansed.

Effects in parenthesis show the changes made by talents.

• Hand of Protection: Makes a target immune to physical damage for 10 seconds. 5(3) minute cooldown. Causes forbearance for two mintutes. CANNOT BE CAST ON SELF WITH FORBEARANCE ACTIVE.
  
• Hand of Sacrifice: Transfers 30% of the target's damage to the Paladin for 10 seconds. 2 minute cooldown.
• Hand of Freedom: Makes the target immune to movement impairing effects for 6(10) seconds. (Breaks stuns on the target upon being cast, but does not make the target immune to stuns.) 25 second cooldown.
• Avenging Wrath: Increases damage and healing done by 20% (and causes damage done to bypass 50% of all damage reduction). 3(2) minute cooldown. Cannot be used within thirty seconds of Divine Protection or Divine Shield, or within thirty seconds of being affected with Hand of Protection.
  
• (Talent)Divine Sacrifice: Transfers 30(40)% of all damage done to any of the Paladin's party or raid members to the Paladin for 10 seconds. 2 minute cooldown.
• Divine Protection: Reduces all damage taken by the Paladin by 50%. Causes forbearance for two minutes. CANNOT BE CAST WITH FORBEARANCE ACTIVE.
  
• Divine Shield: Makes the Paladin immune to all harmful spells and effects for 12 seconds. 5 minute cooldown. Causes forbearance for two minutes. CANNOT BE CAST WITH FORBEARANCE ACTIVE.
  
• Hammer of Justice: Stuns the target for six seconds. 60(40) second cooldown.
• (Talent)Repentance: Incapacitates the target for 6 seconds. 60 second cooldown.

That's it. Outside of those cooldowns, Paladins have heals (~2k Flash of Light, ~6.5k Holy Light) and Sacred Shield, which absorbs ~1000 damage per six seconds on average. (NOTE: THESE NUMBERS ARE AVERAGE ESTIMATIONS AND ARE AFFECTED BY GEAR.)

So, in essence: A paladin can force a fight reset every 5 minutes, has RNG burst which forces us to either kill a target instantaneously or not at all (which is not fun for either party), 7 cooldowns (four of which are tied together), and two which are used as our interrupt/stun/snare/distance closer/CC and are both on a sixty second timer; one on a 40s timer with talents. We can heal, but must use our heals carefully, as careless use of our mana will turn us into an auto-attack bot.

So, how can we fix this? Our damage is limited by our cooldown based attacks, as our attacks share the same resource as our heals--so limiting it via mana would be extraordinarily difficult to do. Having an infinite resource system makes our healing potential far too devastating, and short of introducing a second resource system to the Paladin which would be complicated and difficult to rebalance, there's no way to change this.

So, what can we change? The size of the toolbox. But how do we do this without becoming overpowered? Force these cooldowns to interact with each other so that decisions have to be made between them. Example: The Rogue's combat system uses a combo point and finisher system, meaning the Rogue can either unload a high burst attack, stun the target, reduce the targets armor, or haste the Rogue's attacks for heavier pressure on a target. This system also forces a build-up period where the target can prepare to some degree for what could be coming at them, and forces the Rogue to react to those decisions with their choice in finisher.

Example: Rogue uses Cheapshot on Paladin, Paladin casts Hand of Freedom and breaks the stun, Rogue uses Kidney Shot.

Can also play out as...

Rogue uses Cheapshot on Paladin, Paladin sits through Cheap Shot, Rogue uses Eviscerate for a powerful burst because the Rogue knows the Paladin has Hand of Freedom ready for Kidney Shot.

Another scenario: Rogue uses Cheap Shot on Mage and stuns the Mage for four seconds. Mage Blinks out of the stun at second 0.8.

Can also play out as...

Rogue uses Garotte on Mage. Mage is silenced for three seconds.

Now the Mage is forced to either use his/her 5(4) minute cooldown Ice Block to escape the silence, or suffer three seconds of unhindered damage by the Rogue.

This game of back and forth is what increases the skill cap of a class. It forces each class to make a decision, forcing their opponent to make a decision, which again forces the class to make a decision. Better players will make the right decisions, and make them faster, while poorly played characters will fail to react properly and die. Retribution Paladins currently do not have a variety of ways to react, and in most cases only have one or two possible ways to react when a situation comes around that the Paladin has a tool for. This means that the only decision to be made is often "Do this, or don't do it." which means that even bad players can excel as a Paladin, and exceptional players don't shine out above their badly played breathren.

The combat system needs to be continued to be reworked. Outside of Avenging Wrath every two minutes, Retribution Paladins still rely upon the RNG for crits in order to unleash their 'burst', and still have no way to control their opponents. While the Paladin does remove some of the control of the fight out of the opponents hands, the Paladin still needs ways to have a bigger hand in how their opponents act. This will force the Paladin to make decisions that can corner their opponent, rather than simply fighting off the enemy's control over the fight until the Mace Stun Gods smile upon the Paladin and his or her opponent instantly drop under the weight of three to four back-to-back crits.

Example of controlled burst(Off the top of my head, don't shoot me if I'm off, these are examples): Three stacks of Arcane Blast--> Missile Barrage + Arcane Missiles --> PoM Frostfire Bolt

Cold Blood+5pt. Eviscerate

Frost Nova-->Frostbolt+Ice Lance+Ice Lance+Water Bolt

Frost Fever+Blood Plague+Ebon Plague+Two Death Runes --> Scourge Strike+Scourge Strike+Scourge Strike

Hamstring-->Mortal Strike-->Sweeping Strikes-->Bladestorm

These are just examples of what Blizzard could do with Paladins, allowing our burst to be more controlled (Frost Mage, Arcane Mage, Unholy Death Knight, etc) or giving our burst more lethality by making it harder to avoid (Arms Warrior). This would force a set up period, allowing the enemy to prepare, while also putting a higher skill requirement into the Paladin to be able to set up this burst, and making it more lethal when used by skilled players, as they will be better able to pull it off.

So, I again call for the community to come up with ideas to balance Retribution.

What are some forms of offensive utility that Retribution Paladins would like?
Which utility would the community would be comfortable with us having?
How would either side want to see these implemented?

And remember, with any suggestions you make, the simpler and better balanced it is the more likely it is that both sides of the community will agree and the more likely we will all be to see Blizzed take notice and possibly implement some of the ideas. "Keep it simple, stupid!"


And for shits and giggles, here's some of my own thoughts revolving solely around how to fix our burst to require set-up, but also making the damage more lethal in the process.

Vindicator's Strike:
8% Base Mana
4s Cooldown
Melee Range
Requires Melee Weapon
Deals 20% weapon damage, decreasing the enemies attack power by 574 for 15 seconds.

Want to get something fancy for having to push another button Retadins?

Improved Vindicator's Strike:
Increases the damage dealt by 10/20%, and slows the target's movement speed by 20/40%.

New strike causes us to use mana for the debuff, but gives us a snare.

Maybe a change to Crusader Strike, too? I've grown rather fond of Arcane Blast to be honest, maybe Arcane Mages wouldn't mind me borrowing the idea?

Crusader Strike
5% Base Mana
Instant Cast
Cooldown removed.
5 yard range
Requires Melee Weapon
An instant strike that causes 75% weapon damage. Each time you use Crusader Strike, the damage of Crusader Strike and Judgement is increased by 20%, and the mana cost of Crusader Strike is increased by 150%. Effect stacks up to 3 times and lasts 10 sec or until Judgement is cast.

Swift Retribution: Your auras also increase casting, ranged and melee attack speeds by 1/2/3%. In addition, whenever you cast Judgement, you have a 33/66/100% chance for your next Divine Storm to increase holy damage dealt by seals and Exorcism to the target by 25% for 4 seconds.

Now, everything intermingles.

Minute:Second:Millisecond
00:00:00 -- Judgement
00:01:50 -- Vindicator's Strike
00:03:00 -- Divine Storm
00:04:50 -- Crusader Strike (+25% seal damage)
00:06:00 -- Crusader Strike (+20% damage) (+25% seal damage)
00:07:50 -- Crusader Strike (+40% damage)
00:09:00 -- Crusader Strike (+60% damage)
00:010:50 -- Judgement (+60% damage)
00:13:00 -- Divine Storm
00:14:50 -- Exorcism (+25% damage)

Retribution and PvP

If the flavor of this particular addition to my blog seems slightly off, it's because it was written originally in the Damage Dealer forums, and I'm way too damn lazy to rewrite it just to repost it.


Right now, Retribution is mocked for being "Faceroll". We have buttons that do damage, or make people stop moving for a while so that we can do more damage.

That's more or less Retribution's offensive capabilities in a nutshell.

As for our Defensive utilities, we are quite blessed with plenty of defensive utility. The problem is, this defensive utility is [i]really[/i] only beneficial for double DPS in 2's, and cleave 2's.

Double DPS is kind of a joke, and cleave teams get roflstomped by well played RMP. Sure, Cleave does well against lesser skilled players, but it's really kind of lame that as a Ret, I'm only geared towards beating up the cripple kids, so to speak.


Now, I know that Retribution is having it's combat system reworked so that it won't be so much "Faceroll-->Damage-->Hope RNG Happens". The only problem is, that's all I know.

Our best method for catching up to a kiting player is Hand of Freedom, which has been nerfed fairly heavily. When given to a character balanced around [i]not[/i] having Hand of Freedom, it's really devastating. The added mobility on a Death Knight, Warrior, Rogue, etc is terrifying. But, for Retribution, it's really all we have.

The way that Retribution is currently forced to operate is to keep our self, and our partner(s), alive long enough to get onto a target together for a few seconds. In those few seconds, we unload our burst, pray for the Mace Stun Gods to smile upon us, and if they don't, jump back to staying alive long enough for another chance at RNG.

If we don't get our crit string, we won't kill anything that has even a moderately intelligent healer. As I explain to my friends -- if I get onto my target, I have one chance to kill them, and that chance is heavily influenced by RNG. Two things have to happen: Crits have to happen, and heals cannot happen. I have no MS, so the heals will land at full strength. Therefor, my target must die instantly, or not at all. That's not fun for me, and it's not fun for my targets.

Now, a couple things have happened that make this less likely to occur. Hand of Freedom being nerfed means that I have less uptime on my target, and therefor fewer attacks landing, lessening the chance of RNG kills.

Eye for an Eye means being nerfed isn't quite so large, so much as just being demoralizing. However, the less damage my opponent is taking from attacking me, the more I have to do to him to make up for it -- which means relying on an additional crit to land to finish them off.

The Hammer of Justice nerf is a nerf to our ability to kill a fellow Paladin or a Mage, being that we can no longer lock these classes out of Holy/Arcane by waiting for a Holy Light or Polymorph to Hammer, and a nerf to killing healers in general.

Vindication's nerf means having to do even more damage to our target if they are topped off between attacks -- as there's a larger pool to absorb the damage we're throwing out.

I'm just fearful for the Retribution tree in PvP. In PvE we're okay, albeit being fairly low on the meters. Though, this is largely in part to our damage being burst oriented -- higher damage in PvE means better burst in PvP, making us far more faceroll. Hopefully, the combat mechanics changing will fix this.

Only being able to kill an enemy via obscene burst leading to obscene burst is akin to a comment made earlier by Ghostcrawler -- "While a 10% chance to deal 2000 damage and a 1% chance to deal 20,000 damage are both balanced, the 1% chance to deal 20,000 damage isn't very fun for either party." Though, not quite verbatim as I can't remember it word for word, that was the general message.

The only problem is that our burst will now happen less often, and to a less lethal degree, but it's still all we have. With the combat change, our burst will be forced into requiring a set-up so that it can be prevented -- a good change. My worry is that because we have so much defensive utility, that we will not be receiving offensive utility. Not only would there be so much "OMGWTF GC, UR GIVEENG RETZ MS?" or "WTF RET HAZ INTUREPT?!??!!1/?" that the forums would explode, but I worry that the developers are pushing us towards an "Offensive Support" role. It's just that our support is on fairly heavy cooldowns, and still can be fairly easily shut down. Heals can be interrupted and cut down by MS, hands can be purged or blasted through via magic, and we have no real CC available to us short of a Repentance --> Hammer of Justice chain every two minutes. (Trinket can negate the CC chain every two minutes.)

[i]Bloody character limit...[/i]

[u][b]TL;DR[/b][/u]
So, I guess to summarize, I know that Retribution does okay -- but it will never perform at higher levels of PvP unless the skill cap is raised via offensive utility (Low cooldown snares/roots for peeling, or an interrupt on a decent cooldown, etc) and a larger array of cooldowns (Preferably a few oriented to offensive uses). After our DPS is flattened out, of course. Having three eviscerates on 6 - 10 second cooldowns just can't be balanced for PvE and PvP at the same time.
[b][u]END TL;DR[/b][/u]

Oh, and if I missed something, point it out. This was kind of just written on the fly.

By the way, the above reasons might also be why Casters generally aren't performing well. Casters have fewer cooldowns in comparison to Retribution, and all of their "6 - 10 second eviscerates" have cast times that can be shut down. Their cooldowns are generally offensive, though, so not only are they squishy, but they're unable to retreat effectively from situations where their squishyness(Yes, squishyness. Screw you, spell check.) can be exploited. Glass cannons in PvP will always just get trained to death. )= (See; Warlocks, Arcane Mages, Elemental Shaman, Balance Druids, etc).

Below is just a few questions that I've posted in the Damage Dealer forums, and under the Paladin Q&A thread.

[b][u]Questions:[/b][/u]

Are you able to discuss any of the specifics of the current ideas that Blizzard is beginning to zero in on for Retribution's new combat mechanics? If so, what are some ideas being discussed? (AMGWTFBBQANDMASHEDPOTATOES YOU PROMISED GC!!11!one!11!eleventyone!1)

If Blizzard can discuss these ideas, would y'all up in the big room like feedback on the ideas? If the ideas cannot be discussed yet, is Blizzard still looking for prospective ideas from the community?

What is the general feel that Blizzard would like to see in Retribution, outside of our support role? High damage/Support has worked moderately well, but at higher levels of skill Retribution caps out too quickly in a high intensity-group PvP environment (Arenas) as our toolbox is uncomfortably small at times. Do the developers feel this is being addressed with the upcoming changes?

With the removal of our immediate burst, will Retribution be seeing the addition of any form of offensive utility in order to remove the requirement that our kills to be instantaneous in order for them to happen?

[i]PvE-Related[/i]Will Retribution be able to see a DPS boost in PvE with the changing of our damage from bursts with downtime to a steady stream of damage with occasional burst?

[i]Back to PvP...[/i] Will the 'occasional burst' be able to be called upon on demand with the change to our mechanics? If so, will it be done in the style of a set-up for the finale (Combo Points-->Eviscerate, Diseases/Runic Power -->Scourge/Frost Strike Spam, Frost Nova --> Frostbolt+Ice Lance+Ice Lance) , or additional cooldowns (Bladestorm, Summon Gargoyle, Avenging Wrath, Arcane Power)?

3.1 Paladins

Where to begin... in the current state of things, Paladins are rather well off. Being able to perform in the role we specialize for as well as the other hybrids (anything that isn't a Mage, Rogue, Hunter, or Warlock) has really boosted the number of Retribution, Protection, and Holy (again) Paladins that we see in raids. We bring very powerful blessings and auras to the raid, and are very capable healers, tanks, and DPS.

First, I'll start with Holy and PvP.

In PvP, Holy is absolutely dominating the arena scene. With resillience back in the game, the other healers are starting to catch up, but they're still nowhere near the 35+% numbers that Holy Paladins have. However, as cool as it is that Holy Paladins are so incredibly powerful, such incredibly high numbers simply have to be brought down. If any other spec was as high in representation as the 37/0/34 spec, we'd be up in arms alongside the other classes.

"But Druids domina--"

Stop right there. "They got away with it, why shouldn't we?" is the argument of a four year old. I do not want to play in arenas as an overpowered juggernaut that plows through the ratings effortlessly. I want to play to challenge myself, to become better, to win because I was a better player. Not because my class or spec carried me. Yes, Blizzard screwed up before. But asking them to screw up the game's delicate balance on purpose is absurd.

So, that said, the Holy nerfs are justified, as infuriating as being nerfed is. With the nerf and movement of Infusion of Light deeper into the Holy tree, and the change to Sacred Shield that only allows it to be placed upon one party or raid member at a time, the 37/0/34 build is going to find itself crippled come 3.1. The build took talents from Holy and Retribution to optimize both our offensive and defensive utility from both trees. Between Sacred Shield on the party, Holy Shock crits, instant cast Flash of Lights and near instant Holy Lights, being all but immune to stuns and snares (and for 12 seconds, everything), being incapable of running out of mana... 37/0/34 is an incredibly powerful spec.

The nerf will not kill the spec, but by nerfing Sacred Shield and moving Infusion of Light out of the hybrid build's reach -- it forces a sacrifice in healing, and brings up the need for increased defensive utility (and smarter playing) through Sacred Shield. Thus, 51/20/0 may become more popular once again, and the overall number of Holy Paladins will drop.

As far as PvE goes, though, Paladins will be no less powerful a healer. The change to how Infusion of Light interacts with Holy Light will hurt our ability to react to sudden spikes of damage on our own, but that's only a problem if you're solo healing. Which, unless you're running Naxx10 or Sarth10 0D, you aren't.

Retribution PvP is beginning to see a spike in numbers, as our damage has gone up considerably with higher Judgement damage and Divine Storm being introduced, survivability increased with Divine Purpose and Art of War, and our sustainability has increased dramatically with Divine Plea and Judgements of the Wise. While still struggling with the anti-melee Frost Mage and anti-magic Affliction Warlock without the use of our bubble and/or wings, every other class/spec is still capable of being dropped by us, provided we play perfectly. If the Affliction Warlock or Frost Mage slips up, though, capitalizing on their mistakes can usually lead to a quick win.

Oh, but Death Knights are still a MASSIVE pain in the ass to go toe to toe with. A well played Shadowfrost Knight might as well just tell you to bend over.



Mana is a non-issue in the arenas with a healer behind us, but double DPS comps see us struggling a little more. With the removal of Spiritual Attunement, and the (*crosses his fingers*) buffing of Judgements of the Wise that's coming with 3.1, double DPS Retribution will see a nice buff.

Not to mention... drumroll please...

They've finally decided to fix Sacred Shield's scaling with Sheath of Light! That's right. Our Sacred Shield just doubled in effectiveness. ~♥



As far as PvE, goes, however... while Exorcism is now available on all targets (another PvP buff), will be hitting 20% harder with it's glyph, and 15% harder through talents alongside Crusader Strike, those buffs don't make up for the nerfs that we took elsewhere. Fanaticism is down from 25% to 18% increased chance to crit, Righteous Vengeance is down from 40% to 30% damage, Righteous Vengeance ticks no longer benefits from percentage based damage increases (which is fair, though, as it was double dipping), and Crusade will only provide a 3% increase in damage instead of 6% in Ulduar, as 'Giants' are not included in the talent's secondary benefit.

Also, while the JotW buff has been mentioned, it is not yet implemented. So, as of the time of posting this, Retribution can sustain its DPS for no longer than 3 minutes in the very best case scenario, and the DPS sustained is the lowest of all other classes. Expect buffs.

Current Suggestions to increase DPS:

1. Your Crusader Strikes have an X% chance to cast a free Exorcism/Hammer of Wrath on your target.

2. Your Crusader Strikes critical hits make your next Exorcism/Hammer of Wrath consume no mana and critically hit if cast within X sec.

3. Your Crusader Strikes debuff the target with _______, increasing Holy damage taken by X%.

4. New Skill: __________
Instantly strike your target, dealing XX% weapon damage +YYY. Z% base mana cost, no cooldown. (This attack cannot proc seals.)

5. Allow Crusader Strike critical hits to trigger Righteous Vengeance.

6. Reduce Divine Storm's cooldown to nine seconds. This will GREATLY increase DPS by cleaning up CD's conflicting, and increase the DPS contribution of Divine Storm.

Also, something needs to be done to differentiate Seal of Blood/Martyr and Seal of Command as PvP and PvE seals.

My thoughts:
Keep the damage of Martyr/Blood high.
Lower Seal of Command's damage, make it proc on every attack.
Provide Secondary utility to Seal of Command
-Heal on Hits/Crits
-Snare on Hits/Crits
-Spellbreaker/Snare effect on Judgement of Command
-Mana Drain on Judgement of Command hits/crits


There's not too much else to chat about here, as we're in fairly good condition for the time being as far as Protection goes. Holy's still going to perform well in S6 I predict, as will Retribution, but unlike PvE Holy, PvE Ret is definitely in need of some loving.

Koraq's Guide to the Paladin: Holy

This is Part One of my three guides, and will be primarily covering the Holy tree, and giving advice on preparing for and executing Paladin healing. It is still a work in progress, but I’m posting what I have completed, and will continue adding the additional sections as I go along.

I am currently seeking feedback on the present information, and hoping to find out from the community if there is information that is not already set to be added that would be appreciated in the guide. I'm also hoping that the search feature is useful, and if not, would it be helpful to make the information it targets more specific?

For additional Information:
http://elitistjerks.com/f76/t35975-holy_paladin_guide_wotlk/

Table of Contents
Tip for using this guide: By hitting Ctrl+F, you can open a “Search” box. By typing anything from the brackets, you will be sent directly to the relevant information. Including the brackets is recommended.


1. Introduction…[INTRO]

2. Purpose of the Guide…[POTG]
A. Updating old information
B. Destroying old myths
C. Giving beginners a basic understanding
D. Giving advanced players a more in-depth look into the class
E. Giving experienced players a reference guide

3. Know Your Role…[SPEC00]

A. Holy…[SPEC10]
I. Specializing your Tree…[SPEC11]
a. PvE…
b. PvP…
II. Importance of Stats…[SPEC12]
a. Choosing Your Glyphs…[SPEC13]
b. Choosing your Libram...[SPEC14]
c. Gemming…[SPEC15]
d. Consumables...[SPEC16]
e. Gear Listing...[SPEC17]
III. Tricks of the Trade…[SPEC18]
a. Spells and What They Do
b. Flash of Light vs. Holy Light and Intellect vs. Critical Rating
c. Proper use of Beacon of Light
d. Dealing with Movement and AoE Damage


4. Spell Coefficients…[COEFF]
5. Rating Conversions at 80…[RATING]
6. Sources of Information…[BIBLIO]
7. Frequently Asked Questions…[FAQ]
8. Update Log…


[INTRO]Introduction

With the release of Blizzard’s most recent expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, the entire Paladin class went through a complete and total overhaul. Many of even our core mechanics were changed with patch 3.0, and since then, we have gone through dozens of further tweaks and alterations. In an attempt to assist the Paladin community, I have put together this guide, explaining the ins and outs of the Paladin and all of the changes the class has gone through.

[PUTG]Purpose of the Guide

Due to the class going through the overhaul, a lot of information has become outdated, giving birth to new myths and keeping old ones alive in the confusion. This guide has been written for the purpose of dispelling those myths and bringing together all of the new information, updating it as changes to the game outpace the information written in the guide.

Within the text below I will give insight to players new to the Paladin class, teaching the core mechanics of the class in general such as the use of our basic spells, I will give advice for leveling and basic gearing, I will give ways to improve their skills through progressively learning to keybind and make use of macros, and provide a dynamic FAQ section that will be used to answer the more common questions as they appear on the forums.

I hope to give the more advanced players information on how to hone and sharpen their skills, giving them information to assist on the road of raiding and competitive PvP. I will break down the three talent trees for the multitudes of possible specs available, discuss the proper use of our more situational spells, macros, and talents, discuss gear and gemming and the importance of various stats in a more in-depth manner, and give tips and suggestions to further prepare them for any variety of situations that they might encounter.

For the more experienced players, my hope is two-fold; to give the experienced player a reference guide, and to gain their assistance in collecting information written upon their blogs(with links to the blog), websites(with links to the site), and forum posts(giving credit to the quoted) created by these players.

[SPEC00] Know Your Role

Currently, there are a variety of widely accepted builds that have been created for each role, and every role has a variety of specs tailored to even more specific jobs within that role. Each of the specs has its strengths and weaknesses to it. In each of the “Specializing Your Tree for…” sections, I shall show the talent build via a link and follow up with an explanation of the overall purpose of the specific changes to the build that differentiate it from the others. Currently, there are still plans to do an in-depth analysis of every talent point placed in every build. I also opted out of formalizing and PvP builds as of yet, because to do so I would need to explain the benefits and usefulness of every talent. So when I do get around to explaining the talents, it will be done in unison with the PvP sections.

To further the three roles that I will be delving into, Paladins are a hybrid class, meaning that our specialization trees allow us to tailor our spec to one of three possible roles; Healer, Tank, or Damage Dealer.
-The Holy tree contains the largest number of talents that are most desirable to healing; thus, the healing tree.
-Protection, as the name implies, is the tree that contains the largest number of talents that are desirable to Tanking; thus, the tanking tree.
-Finally, last but not least, the Retribution tree, which contains the largest number of talents tailored towards damage dealing (DPS’ing); thus, the DPS tree.

[SPEC10]Holy


[SPEC11]Specializing Your Tree for…

...Player versus Environment.

Breakdown of, and advice on, talents:
http://ferarro.blogspot.com/2008/11/holy-holy-batman.html

51/0/18 (+2)
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sxA0gMzhVuMxRtZVcbx0h

This is currently the most popular spec. It captures all of the key talents of Holy, maximizing healing power and efficiency, and dives into Retribution for an additional 8% increase to spell crit. The spec also has two ‘bonus’ points left over, which allows for a little more flexibility, but the points are often put into Pursuit of Justice to help with movement heavy fights. There are no real weaknesses to this build, outside of not having access to Divine Guardian.

51/5/15
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sxA0gMzhVuMxRtaZVcbx

This build is a variation of the 51/0/18 build, dropping three points out of Sanctified Seals and combining them with the two ‘bonus’ points to Blessing of Kings and 4/4 Improved Blessing of Kings. This build is more suited for the situations when there aren’t any Retribution Paladins in the group/raid to give out Blessing of Kings. The strength is improved utility through Blessing of Kings, the weakness is losing 3% critical and the flexibility that the extra two points granted, as well as not having access to Divine Guardian.

51/17/0 (+3)
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sxA0gMzhVuMxRta0VVb

This build is used for fights where particularly hard hitting attacks are present, where if left unmitigated except through regular means, the damage caused will wipe the raid (See: Sartharion with 3-Drakes). These are usually bleeding-edge content fights, where tanks are still somewhat tender in the face of new, harder hitting bosses, or fights where heavy hitting attacks are used in combination with reduced health pools or coordinated with periods of time where a tank will go without heals for a few seconds. The build comes with the strength of having a tide-turning button in their arsenal, but it comes at the cost of 10% mana reduction on Holy Shock, Improved Blessing of Might, and 8% less spell crit as well as access to Pursuit of Justice. The build does, however, have three ‘bonus’ points that can be used for a little extra customization.


...Player Versus Player

N/A


[SPEC12]The Importance of Stats

Gearing will always be an incredibly crucial part of getting a job done, and this is extraordinarily true for healers. For this section, I’ll give a quick and simple explanation of what stats to shoot for, why you’re going after them, and throw in a section on how to get started on building a healing set.

Something that a lot of people do when inquiring about gear, is ask about which stats are the most importance. The typical response is a variety of flowcharts based upon the answering party’s preference. The problem is that while simple and accurate to an extent, the A > B > C > X > Y flowchart doesn’t explain why those stats are important, which can lead to problems when one wishes to tailor their gear to their specific needs.

For a mathematical explanation on how useful MP/5, Critical Rating, and Intellect are in terms of mana regeneration, go to the Spell Formulas [MATH01] section.

Intellect: This stat is one of the most important stats a Holy Paladin can get. Intellect increases the size of the mana pool (1 int = 15 mana before talents), increases spell power (5 int = 1 SP), and increases spell crit (166.6667 int = 1% spell crit). It’s importance lays not in the SP or crit, though—those are too marginal to be the real benefit, but they are a nice bonus. The huge benefit in Intellect is its scaling with Divine Plea, the spell that regenerates 25% of our mana back every 60 seconds. This allows us to make heavy use of Holy Light for extended periods of time, increasing our HPS dramatically. It also makes it possible to spam Flash of Light near infinitely.
It is also important to note that the MP/5 of Intellect increases further with the precense of each Restoration Shaman in the same group as the Holy Paladin, an additional 24% of the mana pool will be replenished with every use of Mana Tide Totem (5m CD).

Spell Power: This stat is responsible for increasing the power of our heals. Coefficients and the formulas for running calculations can be found under the Spell Coefficients [COEFF] section of the guide.

Spell Critical: This stat increases the likelihood that our spell casts will crit, increasing both our HPS (albeit unreliably) and our mana efficiency with 5/5 Illumination. Increased critical rating also substantially increases our burst healing by increasing the chance of Holy Shock critting, allowing for either an instant cast Flash of Light, or a ~1 second Holy Light, both of which can also crit.

Haste Rating: Haste rating increases the speed at which our spells are cast, allowing for more spells to be cast in an allotted amount of time. This increases our HPS, while reducing the chance that the target of our heals will take a fatal burst of damage in between heals. However, casting faster increases the speed at which our mana is consumed, and thus mana regeneration and management becomes more important with higher levels of haste. It should also be noted, that Light’s Grace is taken into effect before haste, meaning that Holy Light is calculated as having a base cast time of 2.0 seconds.

Mana per Five: Stacking up Mana Per Five, or MP/5 for short, does exactly what it sounds like it does; every five seconds, you regenerate a set amount of mana.


[SPEC13]Choosing Your Glyphs

Currently, there are six beneficial Major Glyphs and four beneficial Minor Glyphs that are available to Holy Paladins to improve their healing.

Major Glyph...

...of Seal of Light: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41110
This glyph increases all healing done by the Paladin by 5% while Seal of Light is active. This glyph is rather useful for increasing the power behind the Paladin's smaller heals, such as Flash of Light and the splash effect of Glyph of Holy Light. The risk is that the glyph could also simply increase overhealing done, and so it loses much of its effectiveness with a heavy Holy Light spamming Paladin in fights that don't have copious amount of AoE damage.
Pros: Increases the power of all heals done, lowering the chances of damage surpassing healing done.
Cons: Much of the power of the glyph can be lost to overhealing.

...of Seal of Wisdom: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41109
This glyph decreases the mana cost of all spells cast by the Paladin by 5% while Seal of Wisdom is active. This glyph is incredibly useful for increasing the mana efficiency of Holy Light spam, which allows for incredibly high HPS when the Paladin obtains the level of gear required to sustain heavy Holy Light use. The risk is that if the Paladin's mana pool is capable of sustaining Holy Light spam without the glyph, then the saved mana was essentially wasted.
Pros: Allows for increased longetivity, increased usefulness in longer fights.
Cons: Wasted in non mana intensive fights.

...of Flash of Light: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41105
This glyph increases the critical chance of Flash of Light by 5%. Very straightforward, increases the HPS and mana efficiency of Flash of Light.
Pros: Increases the power and usefulness of Flash of Light.
Cons: The glyph sees very little use when heavy Holy Light spam is used in place of Flash of Light spam.

...of Divinity: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41108
This glyph will allow your Lay on Hands spell to restore mana to you equal to the amount restored to the target. This is an incredibly powerful, and incredibly situational, glyph. In an emergency, this can allow Lay on Hands to be an emergency 'mana pot' by 'doubling' the mana returned to the Paladin when the spell is cast on his or her self.
Pros: Allows for a zero-drawback mana replenishment emergency button.
Cons: Because of the lengthy cooldown on Lay on Hands, this glyph is incredibly situational.

...of Holy Light: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41106
This glyph causes Holy Light to heal up to five party or raid members within eight yards of the target of the spell to be healed for 10% of Holy Light's healing. This is the one glyph that absolutely every Holy Paladin must have. This effectively turns Holy Light into a moderately powerful AoE heal, allowing for Paladins to better handle AoE damage.
Pros: Gives Paladins a method of handling raid splash damage.
Cons: This glyph is borderline mandatory.

Minor Glyph...

...of Lay on Hands: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=43367
This increases the mana return of Lay on Hands by 20%, which can put even more power behind the Major Glyph of Divinity if used in conjunction with it.

...of the Wise: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=43369
This decreases the cost of casting Seal of Light, which can be useful when used in conjunction with Major Glyph of Seal of Wisdom. It can also be used to cast Seal of Wisdom somewhat sooner if the Paladin runs oom, allowing them to melee for mana slightly sooner. This will become much less useful with the changes that are increasing seal duration to 30 minutes.

...of Blessing of Wisdom: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=43366
This allows for casting Greater Blessing of Might for the Retribution and/or Protection Paladins while still keeping a 30 minute duration Blessing of Wisdom on the caster.

...of Blessing of Kings: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=43365
This allows for less mana expenditure on those who die early in a fight, and are brought back up needing to be re-blessed with Blessing of Kings.


[SPEC14]Choosing your Libram

Currently, there are up to five beneficial Librams available to Holy Paladins, but that number drops to three if the PvP librams are considered as a 'single libram'.

Libram of Renewal: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40705
Reduces the mana cost of Holy Light by 113.
This libram is favored amongst Holy Light spamming Paladins, as it lowers the cost of Holy Light by ~8.8%. This further increases longetivity, allowing for the Paladin to continue Holy Light spam through even mana intesive fights. The libram loses it's effectiveness in heavy Flash of Light spam, however.

Deadly Gladiator's Libram of Justice: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=42614
Increases the spell power of Flash of Light by 267.
Hateful Gladiator's Libram of Justice: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=42613
Increases the spell power of Flash of Light by 236/
Savage Gladiator's Libram of Justice: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=42612
Increases the spell power of Flash of Light by 204.

The Savage/Hateful/Deadly Libram of Justice from PvP increase the healing of Flash of Light by 204/236/267, respectively, but these numbers increase with talents and auras (1.12 and 1.06 multipliers). This is useful for incresaing the power of Flash of Light spam, but loses much of its luster in heavy Holy Light spam, and is also susceptible to simply push up overheal numbers.

Libram of Tolerance: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40268
Increase the spell power of Holy Light by 141.
This Libram can increase the power of Holy Light by ~234 before talents and auras (1.12 and 1.06 multipliers), and so can be useful for pushing up the power of Holy Light. being that Holy Light is already such a hard hitting spell, however, there is a risk that most of this will be lost to overheal.


[SPEC15]Gemming

Meta Gems

Only meta gems that assist with mana regeneration will be shown, and they will be compared to Insightful Earthsiege Diamond. Non mana regenerating meta gems will not be included in the guide at this time.


Insightful Earthsiege: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41401
+21 Intellect and Chance to restore mana on spellcast. (5% chance to restore 600 mana).
Requires at least one red gem, one yellow gem, one blue gem.

21 Intellect = 12.9045 MP/5
600 Mana on Proc / 45s ICD = 13.333~ mana per second.
13.333~ * 5 = 66.666~ MP/5
12.9 + 66.67 MP/5 = ~79.57 MP/5


Ember Skyflare Diamond: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41333
+25 Spellpower and 2% Intellect
Requires at least three red gems.

1 Intellect = 0.6145 MP/5
129.5 Intellect = ~79.57 MP/5
104 * 1.25 = 130 Intellect
104 / 2 = X / 100
10,400 = 2X
x = 5200

5200 Intellect required before talents/buffs to match mana returns of Insightful Earthsiege Diamond.


Beaming Earthsiege Diamond: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41389
+21 Critical Rating + 2% Mana
Requires at least two red gems, one yellow gem.

(Assuming Holy Light, 2.0 Speed Cast Time)
1 Critical Rating = 0.415625 MP/5
21 Critical Rating = 8.728125 ( ~8.73) MP/5
8.73 MP/5 = ~11% of 79.57

We’ll be exceedingly generous, and assume 20%.

1 Mana = 0.0325 MP/5
2448.3 Mana = 79.57
2448.3 / 2 = X / 100
X = 122,415
122,415 * 0.8 = 97,932

97,932 Mana required (Or ~6528.8 Intellect After Talents/Buffs) to match Insightful Earthsiege Diamond.


Revitalizing Skyflare Diamond
+8 MP/5 and +3% Critical Healing Effects
Requires at least two red gems.

8 MP/5 will never match the ~79.57 MP/5 of Insightful Earthsiege Diamond.


Non Meta Gems

Information based upon stacking ten gems of one type. For individual gems, simply divide the results by ten.

60 mp5 vs 160 crit vs 160 int

60 MP/5
-----------
...60 MP/5
-----------


160 Critical Rating
-----------
3.48% Crit

Holy Light = 1274 Mana
1274 * .6 = 764.4 Mana Returned on Crit
(Assuming 2.5 second casting speed)
764.4 * (1/250) = 3.0576 Mana Per Second from 1% Crit
3.0576 * 5 = 15.288 mp/5
19.11 * 3.48 = 53.20224

160 Critical Rating == ~53.2 MP/5
-----------


160 Intellect
-----------
160 Intellect
0.96% Chance to Crit
2400 Mana

2400 Mana * .25 = 600 Mana returned per DP cast
600 / 60 = 10.0 mana per second
10.0 * 5 = 50.0 MP/5

2400 Mana * 0.0025 = 6.0 Mana returned per second from Replenishment
6.0 * 5 = 30.0 MP/5 from Replenishment

Holy Light = 1274 Mana
1274 * .6 = 764.4 Mana Returned on Crit
(Assuming 2.5 second casting speed)
764.4 * (1/250) = 3.0576 Mana Per Second from 1% Crit
3.0576 * 5 = 15.288
15.288 * 0.96 = ~14.67648 MP/5

50.0 + 30.0 + 14.67648 = 94.67648 MP/5


184 Intellect with 5/5 Divine Intellect
~1.1% Chance to Crit
2760 Mana

2760 Mana * .25 = 690 Mana returned per DP cast
690 / 60 = 11.5 mana per second
11.5 * 5 = 57.5 MP/5

2760 Mana * 0.0025 = 6.9 Mana returned per second from Replenishment
6.9 * 5 = 34.5 MP/5 from Replenishment

Holy Light = 1274 Mana
1274 * .6 = 764.4 Mana Returned on Crit
(Assuming 2.5 second casting speed)
764.4 * (1/250) = 3.0576 Mana Per Second from 1% Crit
3.0576 * 5 = 15.288
15.288 * 1.1 = ~16.8168 MP/5

57.5 + 34.5 + 16.8168 = 108.8168 MP/5

200 Intellect with 5/5 Divine Intellect and 4/4 Improved Blessing of Kings
~1.2% Chance to Crit
3000 Mana

3000 Mana * .25 = 750 Mana returned per DP cast
690 / 60 = 12.5 mana per second
11.5 * 5 = 62.5 MP/5

3000 Mana * 0.0025 = 7.5 Mana returned per second from Replenishment
7.5 * 5 = 37.5 MP/5 from Replenishment

Holy Light = 1274 Mana
1274 * .6 = 764.4 Mana Returned on Crit
(Assuming 2.5 second casting speed)
764.4 * (1/250) = 3.0576 Mana Per Second from 1% Crit
3.0576 * 5 = 15.288
15.288 * 1.2 = ~18.3456 MP/5

62.5 + 37.5 + 18.3456 = 118.3456 MP/5
-----------


[SPEC16]Consumables

Flasks and Elixirs

Flask of Distilled Wisdom: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=13511
Increases Intellect by 65 for two hours. Counts as both a Battle and Guardian elixir. This effect persists through death.
(After talents and Kings: 81.25 Intellect - 49.928125 MP/5, 16.25 spell power, ~0.489 critical rating.)

Flask of the Frost Wyrm: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40082
Increases spell power by 125 for two hours. Counts as both a Battle and Guardian elixir. This effect persists through death.
Prefererred for Flash of Light spamming.
(Increases Flash of Light by (125 * 1.00) * 1.12 * 1.06 = 148.4
Increases Holy Light by (125 * 1.66) * 1.12 * 1.06 = 246.344)

Flask of Pure Mojo: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40404
Increases mana regeneration by 38 mana per 5 seconds for two hours. Counts as both a Battle and Guardian elixir. This effect persists through death.

Battle

Guru's Elixir: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40076
Increases all stats by 20.
(After talents and Kings: 25 Intellect - 15.3625 MP/5, 5 spell power, ~0.15 critical rating.)

Spellpower Elixir: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40070
Increases spell power by 58.
(Increases Flash of Light by (58 * 1.00) * 1.12 * 1.06 = 68.8576
Increases Holy Light by (58 * 1.66) * 1.12 * 1.06 = 114.303616)

Guardian

Elixir of Mighty Thoughts: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=44332
Increases Intellect by 45.
(After talents and Kings: 56.25 Intellect - 34.565625 MP/5, 11.25 spell power, ~0.34 critical rating.)

Elixir of Mighty Mageblood: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40109
Increases mana per five by 24.


[SPEC18]Tricks of the Trade

How To: Leveling as Holy
http://ferarro.blogspot.com/2009/01/how-to-holy.html

How To: Healing Five Man Instances:
http://ferarro.blogspot.com/2009/02/how-to-healing-5-mans.html

How To: Healing Raids
http://ferarro.blogspot.com/2009/02/how-to-heal-raids.html


Spells and What They Do

Bacon of Light: Goes well with an omlet, sausage, biscuits and gravy. Oh, and a nice tall chilled glass of ice cold milk. Mmm...

Beacon of Light: Beacon is typically used in one of three ways; on the main tank to allow the Paladin to raid heal, on the Paladin to allow him/herself the freedom to stand in any non-lethal damage, limiting the need for movement, and for dual healing, and putting the Beacon on a secondary target, while healing the primary target, whom is typically taking consistent, heavy damage, allowing the Paladin to keep both targets alive easily.

Cleanse: Very basic spell, used for removing poisons, diseases, and magic debuffs. This can be vital in fights such as Heigan the Unclean, whom puts a devestating damage-over-time disease on raid members, while also reducing their maximum health by 50%.

Divine Favor: This used to be saved solely for a huge Holy Light macro, being a 'Lay on Hands' of sorts on a two minute cooldown. Now, it has the same purpose, but with more flexibility. It can be used in conjunction with Holy Light for a guarenteed heavy hit, or it can be used for guarenteed Holy Shock critical, which procs Infusion of Light, allowing for an incredibly fast cast on Holy Light, or an instant cast Flash of Light. This allows you to drop a single heavy blast on one target, split it up amongst two targets, or get in an emergency heal without having to stop to cast.

Divine Illumination: This can save thousands of mana whenever it's used, shaving off hundreds per cast. To get the most out of this, try to save it for those times when chaincasting Holy Light is absolutely necessary, rather than chaincasting Holy Light *because* you just burned Divine Illumination, which is wasteful of your mana and defeats the purpose of the spell.

Divine Intervention: Looky here, a warning label... "Warning: Do not use on the Main Tank."

Divine Plea: With the recent blow to the family jewels this took from the nerf bat, using it on every cooldown has gone from 'recomended' to 'stupid'. It's best to save this for lulls in combat, when reducing the power of your heals, or not healing at all, won't lead to otherwise avoidable deaths.

Divine Shield: The ultimate in "Ohshi-" buttons. This grants you full Immunity to damage, interupts, silences, everything in the book for a full 12 seconds. If enough talent points are put into Protection that it becomes possible to pick up Divine Guardian, which reduces all damage taken by allies by 30% during the duration of Divine Shield, this can be an incredibly powerful, tide turning move.

Flash of Light: The ammunition to our machine gun, this allows for a powerful spray of fast cast healing. Whenever Sacred Shield procs its barrier, it increases the chance of Flash of Light critically healing by 50% -- with avoidance streaks, this can cause long periods of Flash of Light being given an 80 - 90% chance to heal critically, turning it into an explosive tipped ammunition shell that lands every 1.5 seconds, or as fast as every one second with ~700 haste.

Hand of Freedom: This can be a very useful tool, giving the tank (or oneself) the ability to remain immune to snares and roots, so as not to fall victim to an onslaught of ranged attacks while standing helplessly at the attackers mercy. If points are put into Divine Purpose, then this spell also gives the ability to break an enemies stun on you, or your partner, at will. Notice: This does NOT break disorients or incapacitations, such as Dragon's Breath or Maim.

Hand of Protection: While useless when used against a caster, casting this on Priest about to get smeared across the floor by one of Kel'Thuzad's bugs can lead to much singing of praises, especially in an Undying/Immortal run.

Hand of Sacrifice: This is a miniature "Shield Wall" that can be placed on an ally who is taking heavy amounts of damage, reducing it by 30%. Keep in mind that all damage mitigated by this spell is transferred to the Paladin who cast it, so using it in combination with Divine Shield is usually a good course of action to take, so as not to kill oneself in an attempt to save another.

Hand of Salvation: This allows for the saving of an aggro machine once every two minutes. High DPS classes without adequate threat dumps can creep up quickly on the threat meter; when this happens, drop Hand of Salvation on said ally and it will reduce their overall threat by 20%.

Holy Light: The bread and butter spell of the Holy Paladin healer, this is the newest addition to the Spamalot Enterprise line; a powerful, AoE heal with a moderate mana cost that allows the spell to be chain cast from start to finish. The HPS of this spell is nothing short of incredible, and with high levels of spell power and haste, allows the Paladin to heal throgh absolutely any level of non one-shot caliber damage.

Holy Shock: With the release of Wrath of the Lich King, Holy Shock gained a substantial amount of kick, and with the introduction of Infusion of Light, gave it the power to become a devestatingly effective one-two punch. With the ability to force it to crit through Divine Favor, it can even fight dirty as an underhanded headbutt! Metaphors aside, Holy Shock is now a very dangerous tool in the Holy Paladin arsenal, giving the ability to cast on the move or land a series of high powered heals.

Judgement: This is used approximately once a minute for the purpose of activating Judgements of the Pure, which grants a 15% haste buff. It is usually best to use Judgement of Wisdom, increasing the raids mana per five, as Judgement of Light is only useful in low, repetetive AoE damage fights, and then is more beneficial if used by a Retribution or Protection Paladin (in that order), as their judgement will heal for more per proc.

Lay on Hands: Lay on Hands has two uses: It can be used as a 16-20 minute cooldown Divine Favor+Holy Light --> Holy Shock, healing for a similar amount with no cast time and costing only a single GCD, or it can be used on oneself in combination with the Glyph of Lay on hands and Glyph of Divinity to replenish just under 5k mana, allowing for several more minutes of healing, netting hundreds of thousands of additional healing.

Sacred Shield: This is a thirty second long buff that procs a shield whenever the target takes damage, limited by a six second internal cooldown. It absorbs a base amount of 500 damage, scaling with 75% of spell power except for that which is granted through Sheath of Light. (Originally a bug, but now believed to be an intended effect). While the proc'd shield is active, Flash of Light is given a 50% increased chance to crit. Overall, this shield both lowers damage taken, and increases the HPS of Flash of Light.

Seal of Light: See Major Glyph of Seal of Light.

Seal of Wisdom: See Major Glyph of Seal of Wisdom.


Flash of Light vs. Holy Light and Intellect vs. Critical Rating

During the Burning Crusade, Holy Paladins often relied heavily on spamming Flash of Light, or lowered ranks of Holy Light, for fast and mana efficient heals. With decent levels of gear, the Paladin's mana pool was limitless with this healing style. Each of the other healers had a specific role in healing; Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending, and Chain Heal allowed for a 'scatter bomb' style of healing; raining down layers of heals between blasts of AoE raid damage. Lifebloom, Renew, and various other Heal over Time spells were used as 'covering fire', keeping the tank alive during periods of AoE silence or sleep effects when they would otherwise be exposed.

Keeping with the current theme of metaphors, the Paladin was the machine gun of heals; loaded with infinite 'ammunition' that allowed for the constant casting of Flash of Light which was often used as a method of keeping a tank alive through long, mana intensive encounters. With no real method of handling raid damage, it was typically the job of the Holydins in the raid to keep the tank alive with a continuous stream of fast, moderately powerful and extraordinarily mana efficient heals. Our HPS to HPM ratio was untouched, and that's where our strength was.

However, recent changes to mana regeneration, the addition of new spells, and the destruction of downranking has completely altered the board for healers. With the changes came a paradigm shift, and Paladins have started to change from machine guns to an AC-130 Gunship. While we still have our smaller caliber guns, the option is now open to use to fire out a barrage of Holy Light bombs, and many Holy Paladins have come to embrace this brand new toy.

Now, to explain what these changes were... First was the death of downranking. By eliminating the option to downrank heals, Paladins were effectively left with only two non-cooldown healing spells, Flash of Light and Holy Light. This meant that we could spam our mana efficient heal once again for moderate levels of healing, or drop Holy Light on our targets for incredibly large bursts of healing. Uncomfortable with the idea of running out of mana, many Paladins found themselves stuck with only one real option: spamming Flash of Light.

However, with high levels of crit from Retribution talents and access to crit-heavy gear, Illumination immediately provided a solid source of 'passive' mana regeneration. The new active regeneration available, however, which comes in the form of Replenishment from other classes and Divine Plea, allowed for Paladins to actively regenerate mana. By stacking Intellect, Paladins are able to push their benefits from these two active forms of regeneration to extraordinary levels. This resulted in Paladins finding themselves with a large surplus of mana.

With such a surplus of mana, using Holy Light more often didn't seem so taxing on the mana pool. This, with the introduction of Major Glyph of Holy Light allowing for dealing with most AoE splash damage, began to make Holy Light increasingly more popular. This, coupled with keeping Beacon of Light on the tank, allowed for the Paladin to drop Holy Light on a heavily wounded party or raid member, heal up the surrounding members, while still keeping the tank alive with all of the healing being transfered.

And so, the general population has begun to agree that stacking Intellect for maximized mana regeneration and spamming Holy Light is the most effective method of healing. Still, however, there are the options of sacrificing mana regeneration for healing output by stacking Critical Rating rather than Intellect, or eliminating the mana regeneration of gemming and stacking pure spell power, and both options are entirely viable.

Disclaimer: The following section states the opinions of the author, and as such, is heavily biased.

The best option, however, is still stacking Intellect.

Scenario: There is a hard hitting boss, with a talented group of decently geared players running with the Holy Paladin. The Paladin spams Holy Light throughout the fight, and the boss dies with the Paladin at 30% mana and Divine Plea coming off of its cooldown.

With this situation, the argument for stacking spell power or critical rating is fueled. Intellect's mana regeneration would have been 'wasted' in this scenario, as the Paladin's mana pool outlasted the duration of the fight as is. Only, what if a DPS or two had died? The fight could have drawn out longer than the Paladin's mana pool could last, so while the heals hit harder while he or she spams them, the heals will run out sooner than with stacking intellect.

"But what if your heals just don't hit hard enough? Then spell power or crit are better."

The problem with this argument is that, with a spell power level of ~2000, Holy Light will be hitting for approximately 10,000. This is an incredibly high level of HPS, and skyrockets with the haste and crit rating found on gear. Outside of an enraged raid boss, there is no level damage that cannot be healed through by a Paladin with Holy Light spam, especially with most of this healing landing in the 'overheal' range.

Summary: Currently, for Paladins, the best bet would not be to make Holy Light spam hit harder, but to make it last longer.


[FAQ]Frequently Asked Questions

"What is the purpose of stacking intellect if you don't run out of mana as it is? Isn't all of that additional MP/5 you're getting more or less useless, meaning that more SP or crit would be better?"

http://elitistjerks.com/1096602-post1284.html

---

Q u o t e:

To answer the age old question, intellect provides us with the greatest returns of any stackable stat that we will want. With intellect we gain more throughput and "decent healer 101" tells us that to making the most use of our mana is the prime aim, i.e. finish the fight with 0 mana unless unable to.

Therefore, intellect stackers have 28k+ raid buffed mana, the only way to deplete this lake of mana is to spam Holy Light and by doing so you ensure that your tank will never die. The other by product of this is that you can on occassion cut tank healing down and increase the number of DPS you bring in for clearing farm content. If you can spam Holy Light for 5 minutes and not go oom or play more reserved and be even less oom at the end of a fight, you can be sure that you will find more spam Holy Light for the 5 minutes.

Now I know there may be a counter argument to say "But you can do it like xxx by gearing for xxx" in the same way quite a few have over the last 51 pages but consider that you don't even need to gem at all, turn up in full spirit cloth with another paladin geared the same and you could duo heal Naxx10, take 6 of you and you'd probably be able to clear Naxx25 with that healing power. Just because you can spam flash of light in current content does not mean that this will be a possibility in future.

---

[COEFF]Spell Coefficients

Assuming 3/3 Healing Light and Improved (Devotion/Tree Form) Aura

Example: Spell Name: ( [Minimum Base Heal + Maximum Base Heal / 2 {=Average Heal} + [ {Your} Spellpower * {Coefficient of Spell} ) * {Healing Light multiplier} * {Aura Multiplier} = {Average Heal of the Spell}

Holy Shock: ( [2401+2599] / 2 + [Spell Power * 0.81] ) * 1.12 * 1.06
Flash of Light: ( [785 + 879] / 2 + [Spellpower * 1.00]) * 1.12 * 1.06
Holy Light: ( [4888 + 5444] / 2 + [Spellpower * 1.66] ) * 1.12 * 1.06


[RATING]Rating Conversions at 80


[BIBLIO]Sources of Information
www.wowwiki.com
www.wowhead.com
http://elitistjerks.com/f76/t35975-holy_paladin_guide_wotlk/
www.Ferarro.blogspot.com


[UPDATE]Update Log

02/06/2009:
Guide Posted

02/09/2009:
Updated Section: Table of Contents
Updated Section: Gear - Glyphs
Updated Section: Gear - Librams
Removed Section: Gearing
Updated Section: Merged "Gearing" into "Importance of Stats"
Added Section: Consumables
Added Section: Gear Listing (To be completed at a later date...)
Added Section: Tricks of the Trade - a. Spells and What They Do (To be completed at a later date...)
Added Section: Tricks of the Trade - b. Holy Light vs. Flash of Light (To be completed at a later date...)
Added Section: Tricks of the Trade - c. Proper use of Beacon of Light (To be completed at a later date...)
Added Section: Tricks of the Trade - d. Dealing with Movement and AoE Damage (To be completed at a later date...)
Removed Section: Spell Formulas

02/10/2009
Updated Section: "b. Holy Light vs. Flash of Light" renamed "b. Flash of Light vs. Holy Light and Intellect vs. Critical Rating"
Updated Section: Tricks of the Trade - b. Flash of Light vs. Holy Light and Intellect vs. Critical Rating

2/18/09
Updated Section: Tricks of the Trade - a. Spells and What They Do

Napkin Math on Retribution's Mana...

Paladin BASE Mana: 4394
Human Base Intellect: 98
Arcane Intellect: 60
Improved Mark of the Wild: 52
Total: 210
210 * 1.10 = 231 Intellect
231 * 15 = 3465 Mana

4394 + 3465 = 7859 Raid Buffed Mana

Divine Plea:
7859 * .25 = 1964.75 or 1965 Mana per 60 Seconds
1965 / 60 = 32.75 Mana Per Second

Judgements of the Wise:
4394 * .15 = 659.1or ~659 Mana per 8 seconds
659 / 8 = 82.375 Mana Per Second

Replenishment:
7859 * .0025 = 2.1475 Mana Per Second

Judgement:
1500** / 60 = 25 Mana Per Second

**Estimated

Total: 142.215 Mana Returned Per Second Regenerated



Crusader Strike:
4394 * .08 = 351.52 *.8 = 281.216 or ~281 Mana
281 / 6 = 46.8 Mana Per Second

Divine Storm:
4394 * .12 = 527.28 or ~527 mana
527 / 10 = 52.7 Mana Per Second

Judgement:
4394 * .05 = 219.7 * .9 = 197.73 or ~198 Mana
198 / 8 = 24.75 Mana Per Second

Consecration:
4394 * .26 = 1142.44 * .9 = 1028.196 or ~1028 mana
1028 / 10 = 102.8 Mana per Second

Exorcism:
4394 * .1 = 439.4 * .9 = 395.46 or ~395 Mana
395 / 15 = 26.3 Mana Per Second

Total: 253.35 Mana Per Second Used

Assuming 10% less mana used from clipped CD's...

253.35 * .9 = 228.015

142.215 - 228.015 =85.8 Mana Lost Per Second

7859 / 85.8 = 91 seconds until OOM
DPS Sacrificed: 0

7859 + 1950(Lay on Hands) = 9809
9809 / 85.8 = 114 seconds until OOM
DPS Sacrificed: 0

7859 + 4300(Runic Mana Potion) = 11889
11889 / 85.8 = 138 seconds until OOM
DPS Sacrificed: Insane Strength Potion

7859 + 1950(Lay on Hands) + 4300(Runic Mana Potion) = 14109
14109 / 85.8 = 168 seconds until OOM
DPS Sacrificed: Insane Strength Potion

7859 + 7800(Lay on Hands with Glyph of Divinity) = 15659
15659 / 85.8 = 182 seconds until OOM
DPS Sacrificed: Glyph slot for Judgement/Exorcism/Consecration

7859 + 4300(Runic Mana Potion) + 7800(Lay on Hands with Glyph of Divinity) = 19959
19959 / 85.8 = 232 seconds until OOM
DPS Sacrificed: Insane Strength Potion, Glyph slot for Judgement/Exorcism/Consecration

Koraqslight on Artpad!

I found a thread on the Paladin boards that sent me to Artpad, so I decided to try my hand at drawing Koraq. I think it turned out pretty damn well!

http://artpad.art.com/gallery/?kgeujp1ee5ho

Looking at 3.1...

So, I thought I might go ahead and try to touch on the 3.1 changes that are coming our way. Admittedly, nothing really stands out as being severe -- buffs or nerfs. So far, the changes are kind of... well, boring.


Paladins


• Auras will now persist through death and affect a 40 yard radius..

Buff: Nice lil' extra range on it, and one less button to push after being plowed through by a group of Horde in the BG's, or after a BRez because "Koraqslight fails at Lava Waves." heheh.


• Blessing of Kings is now trainable at level 20. Removed from talent trees.

Buff: Five extra talent points for all three of my specs. W00!


• Hand of Sacrifice: The damage transferred by this ability is now capped by the Paladin’s health.

Nerf: Damage cap on HoSac could be a lil' brutal. Still a useful tool, but we'll have to see how this turns out.


• Forbearance reduced to 2 min duration.

Buff: No complains here about shorter forbearance.


• Sacred Shield: This effect cannot be cast on more than one friendly target at a time.

Nerf: Again, nothing major as far as nerfs go. It'll hurt in PvP to only have one bubble at a time when running as Holy, but there's still plenty of tools in our arsenal to heal through the damage.


• Talents

- Holy

• Aura Mastery: Now makes anyone affected by Concentration Aura to be immune to Interrupt and Silence mechanics and increases the effectiveness of all other auras by 100%. Lasts 10 sec. 2 min cooldown.


Buff: Okay, this I'll admit is pretty cool. Still not something I'll dance for joy and sing praises about, but it's definitely going to be one hell of an "Ohshi--" button. This is going to make life a living hell for burst teams.


• Blessed Hands: No longer reduces cooldowns of Hand spells. Instead, it improves the effectiveness of Hand of Salvation by 50/100% and Hand of Sacrifice by an additional 5/10%.

Buff: The increased effectiveness on the spells will definitely be rather useful. Also, I wonder if this affects the Hand of Salvation glyph...?


• Enlightened Judgements: No longer increases the range of Judgement of Justice. Moved to Tier 10.

Nerf: Though, the poor Druids kind of needed this one. Maybe it'll help them out a lil' without having to destroy JoJ to do so.


• Improved Concentration Aura: The resistance to silence and interrupt granted by this talent now becomes active when any Aura is used, not just Concentration Aura.

Buff: I love the new changes to the improved auras. Cut down the damage of the Frost Mage, while also cutting back the usefulness of counterspell? Yes please.


• Infusion of Light: Now increases the critical chance of your next Holy Light by 10/20% instead of reducing cast time. Moved to Tier 10.

Nerf: This is definitely going to impact our ability to handle large bursts of damage, but we have plenty of other ways to handle it without requiring the assistance of an RNG Holy Light.


• Judgements of the Pure moved to Tier 9.
• Sacred Cleansing moved to Tier 8.

No real change big changes to be had here. Moved each of 'em up a tier, let's Holy grab them while still digging deep into Retribution's tree I s'pose.

- Protection

• Improved Devotion Aura: The additional healing granted by this talent now becomes active when any Aura is used, not just Devotion Aura.

Buff: Extra healing with all auras, W00!


• Divine Guardian re-designed: Now increases the effectiveness of Divine Sacrifice by an additional 5/10% and increases the duration of Sacred Shield by 50/100% and the amount absorbed by 10/20%.

Buff: This let's Protection use the old Divine Guardian with Shield Wall (or no bubble at all if your healers love you enough!). This is actually a bit of a buff for Retribution, too. Allows mana conservation through fewer SS casts, and when cast it absorbs more. Gogogo!


• Divine Protection: Cooldown reduced to 3 min.

Buff: The less time my Shield Wall is on cooldown, the happier I am.


• New Talent: Divine Sacrifice: Divine Sacrifice: Causes all party/raid members affected by one of the paladin’s auras to transfer 30% of all damage taken to the paladin (maximum of 150% of the paladin’s max health). Lasts 10 sec. 2 min
cooldown.

Buff: Gives us options, which are good. We can choose to use it in unison with Divine Shield, or not to, depending on the situation. I like options. Especially when we get options, AND buffs.


• New Talent: Divinity: Tier 1 protection talent, increases healing done by and to you by 1/2/3/4/5%.



Buff: Does it really need to be said how incredibly sexy this talent is for all three roles? PvE and PvP -- this talent is an absolute must have.


• Guarded by the Light: Now makes Divine Plea 50/100% less likely to be dispelled.

Nerf: Um... wat?


• Sacred Duty rank 1 now increases Stamina by 4%.

Fix: 3/6% was buffed to 4/8%, but it was left as 3/8%. Woops.

- Retribution

• Benediction now affects Hand of Reckoning.

Buff: Kinda? Ah well. Less mana spent on one spell means more left over for another.


• Fanaticism reduced to 3 ranks for 6/12/18% bonus and 10/20/30% threat reduction.

Nerf: From a 30% increase in crit to an 18% increase cap. No change for PvP Ret, but a fairly heavy nerf for PvE Ret.


• Repentance no longer resets the Paladin's melee swing timer.

Buff: Yay for locking down a healer without losing DPS!


• Righteous Vengeance reduced to 3 ranks for 10/20/30%. The damage done by this talent no longer receives modifications from effects that increase or decrease damage
done by a percentage.

Nerf: From 40% to 30% cap, and also no longer double dips in the glorious awesomeness that is Avenging Wrath. Somewhat of a buff (maybe) to PvP Ret, but a swift kick in the face to PvE Ret.


• Sanctified Retribution: The bonus to damage done granted by this talent now becomes active when any Aura is used, not just Retribution Aura.

Buff: Again with the increasing of my damage with the reduction of theirs and all that sexytime type stuff.


• Sanctified Seals: Renamed Sanctity of Battle. Now also increases damage done by Exorcism and Crusader Strike by 5/10/15%.

Buff: MOAR DAMAGE. Hopfully there's still more to come, as I don't see this overcoming the nerfs to our damage elsewhere and bringing us up to the same level as the other DPS classes.

• Paladin
• Glyph of Beacon of Light: Increases the duration of Beacon of Light by 30 sec.

This is kind of 'meh'. Just makes it conflict with my renewing of Judgements of the Pure.


• Glyph of Divine Plea: While Divine Plea is active, you take 3% reduced damage from all sources.

If they change Guarded by the Light back to refreshing Divine Plea, this will be amazing for tanks.


• Glyph of Divine Storm: Your Divine Storm now heals for an additional 15% of the damage it
causes.

This will be glorious for the defensive PvP Ret.


• Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous: Your Hammer of the Righteous hits 1 additional target.

I don't see this getting used too much. Our AoE threat is absurd as it is, and unless something changes -- this would be a wasted glyph spot in my humble opinion.


• Glyph of Salvation: When you cast Hand of Salvation on yourself, it also reduces damage taken by 20%.

Mini Shield Wall gogogo! Maybe not for tanking, but definitely sexytime good for PvP.


• Glyph of Holy Light: Can no longer crit and has had its range updated.

Damn it.


• Glyph of Holy Shock: Reduces the cooldown of Holy Shock by 1 sec.

Bounce bounce bounce Heal! Bounce bounce bounce Heal!

Ba da ba ba ba, I'm lovin' it.


• Glyph of Shield of Righteousness: Reduces the mana cost of Shield of Righteousness by 80%.

This is actually a rather useful little glyph. Good for PvP Prot, and offtanking without running OOM. Although, if the DP refresh comes back, that will be a non-issue.