A plea for Divine Plea
by Zach Yonzon 
Feb 8th 2009 at 8:00PM
Blizzard is going to swing the nerf bat and it's going to hit Divine Plea. With the intended changes to mana regeneration mechanics in Patch 3.1, where Spirit will be nerfed to curb mana replenishment in raid scenarios, Paladins stand to be unfazed. Spirit isn't a useful stat for Paladins, so Blizzard is looking into raising the healing penalty that comes with Divine Plea, a spell intended to help Protection and Retribution Paladins recover mana. Even with the 20% healing penalty, Divine Plea gives Paladins such phenomenal mana recovery that they don't think twice about using it. Used in conjunction with Avenging Wrath, the penalty isn't even an issue. See, that's a problem.Blizzard wants the decision to use Divine Plea to be a tough one for Holy Paladins, not a no-brainer. Needless to say, Retribution Paladins and their 5k mana pool use it every time it's up. But when a Holy Paladin with 20k mana can recover 25% of their mana every minute, it's kind of an obscenity. So Blizzard is going to nerf Divine Plea by raising the healing penalty to 50%. Some people think this won't be enough to stop Holy Paladins from using the spell every time it's up, though. Rohan over at Blessing of Kings thinks the spell should not have a healing penalty but be canceled when the Paladin casts a healing spell.
It's an interesting idea, but it also doesn't make too much sense. He says that while 50% healing penalty isn't going to stop players from using the spell, he's afraid Blizzard might over-nerf the spell into uselessness. But if Holy Paladins can't heal through the duration of Divine Plea, that's kind of nerfing it to a 100% healing penalty, isn't it? You can remove the buff yourself, anyway, so that'd work like the cancelation he talks about. So how do you fix Divine Plea so that it becomes a strategic choice rather than be a natural part of a Holy Paladin's rotation?
The way I see it, Blizzard should stop looking at healing penalties and instead look at casting time. Prior to 3.0, a Holy Paladin's biggest weakness was that her bread-and-butter heals had a cast time. This punished healers during mobile fights, especially in PvP. When talents like Infusion of Light and Judgements of the Pure paved the way for crazy 18k heal bombs in less than 1.5 seconds, everything changed.
What if Divine Plea read "You gain 25% of your total mana over 15 sec, but the amount healed by your spells is reduced by 20% and casting time is increased by 100%"? A casting speed penalty might make the decision more critical in an environment where landing a heal on time is sometimes more important than landing a big heal. At any rate, we'll have to wait and see how Blizzard tunes this without nerfing the spell to uselessness.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Peitry Feb 8th 2009 8:18PM
I think that Divine plea is a bit to good atm but if they nerf it to 50% and thats still not enoughn for them whats next 75%.Might as well make it nothing then. I think that making the cast time 100% os good cause we can still heal and get mana back but we would have to think about it causea 5 second Holy Light can wipe the group. You wpuld have to think more about when to use it and when to not. Makes perfect sence to me.
Kyoghin Feb 8th 2009 8:27PM
Cast time penalty? No thanks...I'd rather take the 50% debuff. There are times where you can use plea to its full duration like Malygos during vortex for instance.
nav Feb 9th 2009 8:01AM
No thanks?
You do realise this is a spell that needs nerfing therefore you're not *supposed* to like the change?
Manatank Feb 8th 2009 8:20PM
Holy paladins are ridiculously overpowered currently. I don't think this nerf will be enough.
Healtuff Feb 9th 2009 1:17AM
Yah, in fact. Considering that my HL spam is around 50% overheal anyways, this just removes all my overhealing and makes my WWS look better =D
Thanks blizz. No really, thank you.
Heilig Feb 8th 2009 8:25PM
How can no one see the obvious solution? Make it 25% of base mana instead of total mana. It will function identically for Ret and Prot, but Holy won't get a free 5K mana return every 60 seconds.
Duh.
Kyoghin Feb 8th 2009 8:27PM
The devs stated that they didn't want this to be another button for holy paladins to press and forget and that they want us to use it more strategic.
Zach Feb 8th 2009 8:29PM
That's a nerf to Ret and Prot, who have much smaller mana pools. The spell doesn't need to be nerfed for either spec, just Holy.
Calaana Feb 8th 2009 8:56PM
Zach - prot and ret's total mana pool is pretty much the same as base mana. Raid buffs don't really mean much; if you need a buff to be effective, then you need to figure out what your doing wrong.
Heilig Feb 9th 2009 3:16AM
This.
Mana Pool for ret and prot doesn't change with gear. I have the exact same ticks from Divine Plea as ret and prot, but the tick is 3 times as big in holy gear.
There are only two ways to modify this spell, since it only has two effects.
Effect 1: Mana Regen
Effect 2: Healing penalty
If the ability is too powerful, you can either nerf the mana regen or increase the healing penalty. Holy pallies will still use it at every cooldown unless they are in a world of hurt if the healing penalty is increased, so the only way to make it a decision is to nerf the mana regen. Make the holy pally say "Wow, is it really worth a healing penalty to get back 1500 Mana?" Even then it won't work in PvE unless the incoming damage is just brutal since the pally isn't the only healer. He can just say "I'm popping plea, back me up" and the other healers push a little harder. The only way to accomplish what this spell was INTENDED to be (which is a bloodrage effect for prot and ret) is to make a mandatory holy talent nerf the ability to the ground. If you take Beacon of Light, Divine Plea has a 75% penalty. Holy Pallies will still take it, but they will actually be drainable in PvP, which is where the real problem lies.
The final option is to add a 3rd effect to the spell that is meaningless to ret and prot and doesn't effect healing throughput. Have it reduce your crit chance to zero for the duration or something, so IoL can't proc. Someone creative could come up with something here, but as it stands, unfortunately, you can't make this spell a decision without making it worthless.
Deadly. Off. Topic. Feb 9th 2009 1:45PM
The reason for this spell was to help ret and more importantly prot. You try tanking as an off tank and having to use this skill when you go OOM. It only gives you enough mana to quickly put a seal of wisdom out and to judge that seal - and that's how to make a little mana back as you're trying to off tanks.
BUT having tanked as an off tank where there's more than too many tanks in that raid, this is NOT enough. Divine Plea only provides around 700-1k of mana back.
flint Feb 8th 2009 8:28PM
I got an idea:
Cut the mana regen in half to 12%, and make it twice as effective if Righteous Fury is up (that's the spell that increases threat, right?) Hopefully, a holy paladin will choose not to have Righteous Fury up while using Divine Plea, because the extreme threat would theoretically (I dont know much about Paladins and their threat) not be worth the high mana regen.
Vicerious Feb 8th 2009 9:10PM
That would completely bone ret pallies, though, especially since ret tends to ride much higher up on the threat meters than holy.
In fact, paladin healing spells have built-in threat reduction. So in the case of your suggestion, popping RF and then DP, then canceling RF, would still be worth the mana (but maybe not the GCD).
Cheledril Feb 8th 2009 9:15PM
Yeah except ret pallies will never get the 25% when in instances cause they aren't supposed to have Righteous Fury up. I do like they idea of nerfing the total regen and giving ret pallies a 100% increase from Divine Plea when let's say Replenishment is up. Prot Pallies are already getting buffed with talents to have a 100% chance to renew Divine Plea. (Whatever that means) But with what seems to be such a huge Prot buff I personally won't QQ if Divine Plea gets nerfed. The only bad thing I think will happen is Holy Pallies using more MP5 rather than Spell Power, Crit, and Haste. All it means is Holy Pallies will be shooting off 17k heals in 1.6 seconds. Boo hoo, deal with it. This will be nowhere near the Great Hunter Nerf of '09.
Konchu Feb 9th 2009 2:20PM
This would not work cause PVP is really were the issue is. And threat means zero in PVP. Infact I rather like my healers to have mana and it really is not near as broken in PVE.
I think the slight nerf they are doing is adiquate cause they have to treat this gentle, the spell needs to remain useful just not broken.
PeeWee Feb 8th 2009 8:30PM
Make DP a deep retribution talent, problem solved.
Holy paladins won't have access to it.
Geoff Feb 8th 2009 9:08PM
not a bad idea but as a prot pally I want the damn thing too. At least for soloing
mitch Feb 8th 2009 9:28PM
Nice work. Guess I'll just go back to flash spamming.
PeeWee Feb 8th 2009 11:44PM
Geoff: True, perhaps a separate talent with the same function (or heaven forbid, the actual same talent! ^^) in the prot tree as well. I have very little experience with the receiving end of the BoS, but doesn't that keep your mana pool up at least decently?
mitch: Exactly, that is what holy paladins do best, that has been proven since 1.0, and no matter what Blizz have come up with in these four years have changed that. It'd take a fundamental change in the spells design to make a difference, and that'd make the paladin into nothing but a copy of the other healing classes.
Priests go Bada-BOOM with huge heals and group shinies.
Shamans pop the Jesus-beams.
Druids spread the love with all them HOT's.
Paladins spam flashes.
Nothing is new.
Taladan Feb 9th 2009 3:06AM
No.
The problem here is that Holy Paladins don't have a mass heal like every other healing class. Yes, we are good at healing one target, but when things go a little bit wrong, we need to spam heal on every single target. If the hit is hard (like Archavon), we can't just spam Flash of Light and hope for the best; some people will require Holy Light and, contrary to Flash, Holy Light *is* incredible mana hungry.
We need Divine Plea for emergency situations to avoid a wipe. Removing it completely would take Holy Paladins into nothingness.