The Light and How to Swing It: Holy paladin changes in beta build 12984
by Chase Christian 
Sep 19th 2010 at 11:00AM
Recently, I read a great thread on the official healing forums. Ghostcrawler, the lead systems designer for WoW, posted several times with interesting information and a few explanations regarding the new healing model in Cataclysm. I've talked about the idea of triage healing before, but there were a few specific points that Ghostcrawler made that really resonated with me.
One of the commenters referred to the idea of "auto attack" heals, relating spells like our cheap Holy Light to the automatic attacks of the physical classes. It's a very succinct way to think about it, since we're used to raiding in environments where we never stop casting. It's true, most paladins on the beta have just been spamming Holy Light. I'm guilty of it as well. It almost feels like the old Flash of Light days back in TBC, where FoL was the only spell we used because we'd never run out of mana. Blizzard saw this as a problem, and so the latest Cataclysm beta build contains a major nerf to Holy Light. Ghostcrawler's statement that healers shouldn't be spamming one heal seems almost prescient now.
The future of Holy Light
The most major change for holy paladins is the nerf to Holy Light. It saw a 25 percent cut in its base healing, similar to what Holy Shock saw recently. In addition to that, its mana cost was increased by 50 percent. We'll have to see exactly how spammable the ability is at level 85, since our exact mana regeneration values are still up in the air.
Restoration druids have been spamming Rejuvenation for quite some time in Wrath, but it's still relatively new to them. Holy paladins have been spamming Flash of Light or Holy Light for years, and we're going to have to let that go. I'm going to miss the idea of "auto attack" healing, but there's simply no place for it in Blizzard's healing model in Cataclysm.
While the exact numbers are still waiting to be tuned, I am a bit concerned at how effective triage will be. If we have long enough to view a player's life, figure out how much damage they're likely to take and then choose the appropriate spell, healing won't be as fast-paced as it is today, at least initially. On a fight like heroic Marrowgar, I don't have time to figure out how near wounded players are to Marrowgar. I have to assume they're going to get hit hard, and I have to use my quick, powerful heals to make sure they stay alive. If healers start taking chances and using weaker heals just to save mana, we're going to end up with a lot of dead tanks until we're able to predict incoming damage accurately on the new encounters.
Light of Dawn no longer uses holy power
Light of Dawn, our 31-point holy talent, loses its ability to consume holy power charges for extra healing but is compensated with an extra 10 percent healing to help negate that change. This means that holy's only real holy power release will be Word of Glory, though we could theoretically use Inquisition to boost our damage output if there was something that really needed to die. With Exorcism's new lack of a cooldown and Crusader Strike in our base toolbox, we'll have several damage options as well.
Spiritual Focus grants hit from spirit
Holy regained up an old talent to replace Improved Concentration Aura, which disappeared, since all talents that buff buffs are going away. Spiritual Focus will grant us hit rating based on our current spirit, which should give us plenty of hit chance. It's important that our Judgement ability lands when we need it to, and the extra hit ensures that Blizzard will never have to itemize spellpower plate with hit rating on it. There's no competition for spellpower plate already, and adding more varieties of it to the loot tables would only be an insult to injury. The best part is that the old base of Spiritual Focus, the pushback reduction, has been built into the holy specialization for free.
Daybreak's new design is amazing
There's something fundamentally painful about abilities that reset the cooldowns on other abilities at random. Talents like Restless Blades slowly reduce your cooldowns without actually resetting them, but that idea only really works with longer cooldowns. For a spell like Holy Shock, with its meager 6-second cooldown, you need a different mechanic to allow it to be used more often.
Enter the new Daybreak, which gives our heals a chance to proc Daybreak, which makes your next Holy Shock not activate the cooldown. This is similar to survival hunters' old Lock and Load, or the Hand of Light mastery bonus that retribution paladins will be enjoying. We're able to get use out of the proc even without casting Holy Shock immediately, and we could potentially keep a Daybreak proc active for when we know we'll be moving to grant us two Holy Shocks.
The Light and How to Swing It (Holy Edition) helps holy paladins become the powerful healers we're destined to be. Learn the ropes in Holy 101. We can help you keep a tank alive, heal a raid when necessary and beat the global cooldown. Tanking is a job, DPS is a craft -- but healing is truly an art.Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Hanak Sep 19th 2010 11:10AM
I thought that there would be an incentive to saving up three charges of HoPo. Here it seems to be a linear increase in output, so we might as well throw those Words of Glory out as often as we can to even ppls health out. Especially if we're not meant to be casting all the time and thus have spare GCDs.
Stilhelm Sep 19th 2010 12:05PM
From what I can tell, healers *are* meant to be casting all the time. You'll generally be casting a slow, weak heal to dribble players' heath back toward full, or you'll be casting an emergency heal when the slow efficient heal won't do.
However, holy pallies don't appear to be in a terrible place with Holy Light. Talented to 2.5 sec cast, 9% haste after a judgment from talents. Those two alone would put you at around 2.2 sec cast with no haste on your gear. Figure at least 10% haste on your starter gear and you should be under 2 sec cast time. Holy Shock grants +30% haste on your next flash, holy or divine light. Holy Shock crits (can talent for an additional 15% crit) can take another 1.5 sec off Holy Light, making it nearly instant.
There is a lot of haste synergy in the holy pally tree. I don't have a holy pally, but that's one of the things I love about the resto shaman is the effects (esp haste) you can get on some spells by casting other spells.
ToyChristopher Sep 19th 2010 1:00PM
There are still some scenarios where you would want to save some holy power to use word of glory. If you know you will be incapacitated, or that the tank is going to get hit for a big hit you might want to save it, especially if you have last word. It can save you from having to cast an expensive flash of light or divine light.
morbiczer Sep 19th 2010 12:00PM
I have two questions to those who are in the beta:
1. Are Holy paladins still tank healers by default?
2. Are Holy paladins still the best tank healers?
ToyChristopher Sep 19th 2010 12:57PM
Raids aren't started yet but I predict:
1. Yes, we are still the tank healers by default. We have the worst raid healing tools.
2. Maybe, but if so not by a large margin. Tower of Radiance with liberal use of word of glory will probably mean we are the most efficient tank healer. Our shield, Illuminated Healing, will help even out tank damage. However, we don't have the damage reduction talents of a priest or a shaman, the stronger mitigation of a disc priest, or the heal over time (lifebloom) of a druid.
Only time will tell of course.
Kyshari Sep 19th 2010 12:37PM
I still don't understand the mentality behind a slow weak heal. It seems completely counter intuitive to me. With an attempt to make healing more interesting and fun how is making you have to sit through a painfully long cast time that has a minuscule output just to keep a bit more mana interesting at all. As a tank I'm kind of afraid of the new healing model because it seems like I'm going to be dying a lot while healers are panicking about their little blue bar. This sounds like the opposite of fun. This sounds infuriating, clunky, and for the healers either completely boring to panic inducing with very little middle ground.
Obviously I've not been in the beta so it may very well play out different than it sounds, it just has me worried for the stability of my raids right now.
Shrike Sep 19th 2010 1:07PM
Kyshari, the three-heal model works like this for single targets:
1. Cheap, but weak and/or slow heal.
2. Fast, but expensive heal.
3. Big, but slow and expensive heal.
You cast 1 to keep bars up, because you can cast a whole lot more of those than the other two. When someone's redlining, you cast 2. If someone not in immediate danger but needs a lot of healing, you cast 3.
Each class has additional things they can do related to healing that none of the other classes can.
ToyChristopher Sep 19th 2010 1:11PM
Really healers don't have to think about their little blue bar unless they choose the wrong heal consistently (like using flash heal when just a normal heal would be better) or their party is doing something wrong.
I think some tanks will like these changes because your contribution to the party is more important. Some won't because their healer won't be able to heal them through turning their back to mobs, not using any mitigation cooldowns, or just straight up standing in fire.
Neal S Sep 20th 2010 8:33AM
I've been healing 5-mans on the PTR for about a week now, and I must say it's a total pain in the *!@. Tanks still pull large groups, DPS refuses to CC, my mana bar is mostly empty, and because of all this the only dungeon I've seen the end of is Occulus. I really don't see where the "fun" is going to come in for healers.
Dan828 Sep 20th 2010 11:48AM
I've been healing since I leveled my first toon to 70 3 years ago. I've tried just about every healing class in the meantime, and though I've played most every class now, I always come back to healing at some point. But, the more I read of these changes they are making to healing, it makes me think that they are emphasizing the things that I like like least as a healer to be the basis of the new healing model.
I'll try it, but I don't know that I'll continue as a healer in this expansion.
u9k13 Sep 19th 2010 12:50PM
Stilhelm:
"From what I can tell, healers *are* meant to be casting all the time. You'll generally be casting a slow, weak heal to dribble players' heath back toward full, or you'll be casting an emergency heal when the slow efficient heal won't do. "
I dont know about anyone else, but sittign doing sod all watching a cast bar for ages, followed by a crappy heal is my idea of fun.
lets next make mages have a slow cast, really bad dmg spell, and see if they like it.
Change I'm ok with, but this all seems to be for the bad. I loved the fast paced, do I more or heal, will the tank die before my heal goes off kind of healing. I know some people found it 'stressful' but at least it was interesting. Not a borign dps or tanking rotation, something a but more reactive, but cata (and no I'm not on beta) looks boring and frustrating for healers, hope I'm reading the signs wrong and getting the wrong impression.
ToyChristopher Sep 19th 2010 1:08PM
There are still moments like that in cataclysm healing. Just not quite so many.
I think you are reading the signs wrong-- beta isn't over yet. The model of healing they are trying to aim for has potential. There are times when it works and you do feel like you are intelligently healing up the party.
thebitterfig Sep 19th 2010 1:17PM
Actually, if that spell was Arcane and lead to an increase in mana, they'd probably love it. It'd be a sort of "damage tap" spell they could use to actively get back their mana outside of Evocation, so they could use the mana more effectively later due to their Mastery.
Al Sep 19th 2010 3:48PM
They meant it's fun for the DPS. If it's not about DPS, they don't care. Replenishment gave us too much mana regen in Wrath, but DPS don't have fun watching their regen so everything else that helped healers regen got ganked.
Path of the Titans? Not DPS.
Dance Studios? Not DPS.
Worgen mounts? Not DPS.
Silvermoon flying? Not DPS.
Tree Form? Not DPS.
Overcloaks? Not DPS.
Draenei Lore? Not DPS.
A Dead Poets Society sequel? Technically DPS, but Blizzard gave up on that too.
u9k13 Sep 20th 2010 7:25AM
Exactly, they said dps should nto have to worry about mana as thats not fun, but aparantly healers find it thrilling.
And you only dont have to worry about mana if you are overhealing content. I have always had to watch my mana, if not then you can generally lose a healer for more dps.
Watching 25healthbars and working our rate of change on the fly, moving round fire, keeping an eye on boss abilities, using cooldowns effectively. All thats interesting. Adding in watchign a little blue bar all the time as opposed to keeping a general eye on it is not fun.
Sinthar Sep 20th 2010 11:13AM
1) Please dont pick on mages - we already have a 6 sec cast spell - although it does do damage.
2) Sarcasm doesnt translate well in words
3) I must ask about the 5 sec rule - would it be more efficiant to quick heal and then do nothing for mana regen (im guessing not - but it something not covered)
@ AI
So dps dont want mana regen - what about arc mastery? Ohhh look a mage having to watch his mana regen. And I note NONE - repeat NONE of the examples you list have ANYTHING to do with mana regen, nor are associated with ANY ROLE (apart from Tree form - and my heart goe out to those resto druids).
Jez Sep 19th 2010 12:51PM
Are you sure Daybreak doesn't trigger the HS cooldown, or the general Global Cooldown? As in you get 1.5sec off your next cast?
Just checking.. perhaps I read it wrong.. two holy shocks would be ace.
ToyChristopher Sep 19th 2010 1:05PM
Nope it's definitely two holy shock in a row if you trigger Daybreak.
cbehring35 Sep 19th 2010 1:27PM
I have only played around alittle on the ptr, and I did find myself casting mostly holy lights, in in the spitit of the new model I would try to use my other spells as best I could. It felt like I was ment to use holy shock every time it was up, holy light, then word of glory when it had a stack of 3 of holy power. Divine light here and again when the tanks would get hit really hard, and a daybreak when i could. I pretty much stayed away from Flash of Light due to its high mana cost. I think that nerfing Holy light will push people to use word of glory more. Tower of radiance will be used alot more. for faster holy power build ups. So it seems the days of beacon a tank and forget about them are over. I'm just not turned on by the fact now i have to beacon a tank for mostly the reason that its for building up holy power. It just screams holy pallys are really only tank healers. Which I thought that Blizzard wanted to get away from that module of set healing roles. and even it out more.
davehoehn970 Sep 20th 2010 1:42PM
What I don't get right now is that if Beacon *isn't* going to be used to spread heals around the group/raid anymore (i.e. Beacon the tank and forget), why even have it? If the main use is going to end up being Holy Power generation, making you heal the Beaconed target to get more Holy Power, thereby *not* spreading around the heals, then kill it, and bake Holy Power generation into something else. There's got to be a better way to stack up Holy Power and still be able to heal more than one target, especially given that one of the major focuses of the expansion for us was to break us from being only tank healers.