The Light and How to Swing It: New paladin heals in Cataclysm
by Chase Christian 
Sep 26th 2010 at 2:00PM
Every Sunday, Chase Christian of The Light and How to Swing It invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. This week, we examine the cool new heals that paladins can look forward to.
If you've been playing a holy paladin for any period of time, you're familiar with the feeling of spamming one button. I pushed Cleanse so often in Molten Core that my mouse nearly broke, and the number 2 key on my keyboard has never forgiven me for the rough treatment it received in The Burning Crusade. Our ability selection has been a bit more flexible on Wrath, largely due to our potent mana pool, allowing us to cast any heal we want to. Holy Shock has found its way into our arsenal on a regular basis, and Flash of Light gets a fair amount of usage as a backup spell when Holy Light isn't necessary.
While Cataclysm is introducing us to an entirely revamped healing model and our new core heal, Divine Light, the spells look nearly the same as they do today. Our hands do the glowy-light thing, and then someone gets some sparkles raining down over their head. Meanwhile, restoration druids are covering the ground with more flowers than Cenarius' gardener, and resto shamans are literally making rain to water them. Luckily for us, Blizzard saved a few tricks for holy paladins, and our new abilities actually have some amazing animations and useful functions.
Guardian of Ancient Kings feels strangely familiar
Before I was able to test Holy Radiance and Light of Dawn, I was concerned about the state of our AoE healing capabilities. Blizzard removed the Glyph of Holy Light, which was basically our only source of multi-target healing. While the two aforementioned heals are very powerful, they're just not the same as our splash-healing standby. Luckily for us, the holy version of Guardian of Ancient Kings brings that splash healing back. Not only that, but GK doubles our single-target healing output, making it the perfect ability to offset our Divine Plea usage.
If you've ever played Diablo, you're familiar with Tyrael. You may have even seen the mini-Tyrael pet that was awarded to the lucky WoW players who attended Blizzard's Worldwide Invitational in Paris in 2008. The Guardian of Ancient Kings has a model that shares many features with Tyrael, including wings and angelic look. In terms of animations, it's one of the most detailed and complex spell abilities so far, and rightly so. Holy paladins have been lacking in the flair department for some time, and the GK is just what we needed to make healing look cool.
Light of Dawn makes mages cry
I am certain that after seeing the new animation for Light of Dawn and its conical goodness, Christian Belt wept. Cone of Cold has wished for such an amazing animation for years, although Light of Dawn isn't quite perfect. On the beta, when casting it from my female tauren paladin, it casts at a funny angle. The healing itself is a perfect front-facing cone, but the animation is a bit skewed. Hopefully this is fixed by Cataclysm's release, as otherwise, my plans of race-changing to a tauren will be shattered.
I found Light of Dawn to be fairly powerful, and considering that it also now heals us as well, it's an easy option to get some healing done on the run. Due to the lack of other potent glyph options, I'm also looking at the Glyph of Light of Dawn to lower its cooldown, although it lowers its effectiveness. One of the major changes in Cataclysm healing is that AoE heals can't do all of the healing by themselves anymore. However, Light of Dawn can help us avoid the dreaded situation in which we have multiple wounded targets and simply not enough GCDs to save them all. I'm thinking of all the Decimate-style attacks we've seen over the years, in which we've traditionally been pretty useless. Actually, all of our new heals are AoE-focused, including the next heal up for discussion.
Holy Radiance is the ultimate melee heal
While priests and druids get to suffer target caps on their most potent AoE heals, paladins get to enjoy the luxury of healing the entire melee pile at once. There's only one catch: We actually have to be in the melee pile ourselves. Holy Radiance (formerly known as Healing Hands) has what we call a point-blank area of effect, or PBAoE, which means its healing area is centered on the caster. The range is pretty significant, much better than something like Festergut's Gas Spores or the distance required to pass the Unbound Plague back and forth. You'll be able to cover all of the melee if you're swinging at the boss with our recently nerfed Seal of Insight.
Holy Radiance is important because it really provides us with our only method of continuous healing. We can cast Holy Radiance, use the speed boost from Speed of Light to get into melee range, and then keep healing the melee while we are healing the tanks and other players. Holy Radiance also heals us like Light of Dawn does, so we're safe from damage and we can focus on other things. While I wish it were available a bit more often, I'm hoping that the "constant aura damage" fights in Cataclysm are few and far between. A cool variation on Holy Radiance would be allowing it to stay up longer if we were hitting our target with melee swings, buffing the idea of a front-line healer.
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)
Ramco Sep 26th 2010 2:08PM
I think you misread the Glyph of Light of Dawn tooltip (or I misread it ;)), it reduces the cooldown, but also reduces the healing done.
Troglodyte Sep 26th 2010 2:18PM
No, he saw the tooltip- he's saying that the cooldown's worth it. 10 seconds is 1/3rd of the cooldown, 20% reduction on the heal itself means you get 1.2 times the effect from it assuming you hit it on cooldown, even with the heal reduction.
Chase Christian Sep 26th 2010 2:19PM
I have NO idea how I missed that in the tooltip... that makes the glyph a lot more lackluster now. :(
ToyChristopher Sep 26th 2010 2:13PM
This articles isn't great. Glyph of Light of Dawn reduces the amount it heals for. Cone of cold has suffered with the same animation problems since it came out so I'm not keeping my fingers cross for the light of dawn animation to be fixed. I find the Light of Dawn animation to be pretty dull.
Animation aside, I also find Light of Dawn to be pretty poor at healing multiple targets.
Using your guardian to offset divine plea is kind of clever I guess, although personally I find I save more mana just using holy light instead of needed to switch to divine lights with my guardian out.
Chase Christian Sep 26th 2010 2:22PM
Light of Dawn is really dependent on positioning, and proper positioning is really dependent on skill. I think that utilizing Light of Dawn to its full effect is going to take some thought, which is something I can embrace.
evan.c.gazdecki Sep 26th 2010 5:30PM
I don't know if those are your videos, but could you perhaps load up ones that actually show healing numbers for Holy Radiance? as well as a better view of Light of Dawn?
ToyChristopher Sep 26th 2010 2:27PM
Proper positioning takes time and is often also dependent on your group. There is no time to waste when the group needs aoe heals and it is often a waste of time to run to the position to make best use of Light of Dawn, only to have your group members then move to a different position.
In raids, it might be different if we can hit more targets with Light of Dawn, but for most 5 mans I've found it much better to simply rely on single target heals and pray for Daybreak or Eternal Glory to proc to heal the group. Especially because even if Light of Dawn does hit, it really doesn't do that much healing anyway.
Ragen Sep 26th 2010 2:50PM
Hey Toy, have you played other healing classes, such as a priest or a resto druid?
The heal relatively is on par with Circle of Healing and Wild Growth. The only differences is that Light of Dawn doesn't have a cap, and the other two spells are smart heals.
As for proper positioning, Blizzard is making it somewhat mandatory for all healers, due to the new GAoE (Ground) heals like Power Word: Barrier and Healing Rain. Much like we have to relearn how to use multiple spells again and triage; we will have to learn the proper positioning for our spells and use them accordingly with our group.
As for five mans, I've been watching the heroic versions of the new instances, and I have to say that ignoring an instant cast AoE heal in favor of procs may not be the best option. Especially now that it's not dependent on Holy Power anymore.
Troglodyte Sep 26th 2010 2:53PM
Light of Dawn doesn't heal for a lot- but it's an instant cast, frontal-cone AOE heal. It's something that you can hit the button and it happens. It requires skill similar to the use of Shockwave, the warrior tank frontal-cone-AOE stun. You never will get a perfect use of it- but the question is, can you get it so that it's better than what else you can use? In a 5 man, for instance, you don't need to hit all 4 other people with it- if you can get the tank and maybe one of the DPS in the hit box, if there's AOE going out, that should be enough to keep them alive- all you've committed to it is a GCD.
It can also be used while moving- moving to a place where you can hit them with another one later- or moving out of a fire, or moving to avoid lasers.
Theoretically, if you have AOE damage going out, let's say you need to heal all 5 group members, you need to move, and can only reach 2 people with Light of Dawn- I think it'd be worth it to use it anyway; you heal 2 people plus yourself, three in all, then holy shock-word of glory to keep them from dying...
And while doing this, you can have moved across the room, and still have kept people from dying. Admittedly it wouldn't be optimal, but it's more mobility than paladins have had before... and I think that's the big niche that Light of Dawn helps fill- mobility and mobility AOE healing.
Troglodyte Sep 26th 2010 2:21PM
Personally, it seems like paladins are shaping up to be the 'rogue' or 'death knight' of healers- a lot of cooldowns, and the big skill will be in sorting them so that you use them at the right time.
prenden2 Sep 26th 2010 2:32PM
Man, that'd be a massive paradigm-shift, but I could get behind it.
kabshiel Sep 26th 2010 2:25PM
Holy pally healing actually looks fun for once.
Pinto Sep 27th 2010 2:21AM
It actually really, really is. Daybreak procs are great, and if you get Daybreak along with a few Eternal Glory procs you feel like you've entered God-mode. It's really exciting.
One thing I keep seeing is that everyone is saying to stand in melee and heal them with HR, use LoD to heal the ranged. I've been doing just the opposite, and it's actually working out pretty well. LoD has a longer range than you might expect, and since the melee is usually grouped up you can almost guarantee hitting them all. Meanwhile, as most healers know, ranged dps pay no concern to their position to others except on specific fights where they have to (like Deathbringer or Fester). Not saying that's there fault specifically, the melee sure wouldn't group up if it weren't necessary for them I'm sure. But ranged tend to wander around, unconcerned whether they're close to the group or not. This means they are rarely ever lined up in a way that makes them easy to hit with LoD, so it's usually easy to just cover them with HR.
Shrikesnest Sep 26th 2010 2:45PM
I've been maining a priest since I started playing, but these new holy paladin spells really have me intrigued. I think I know what I'm going to roll to start cata up...
Cheeselandman Sep 26th 2010 2:58PM
Playing both a mage and a warrior, I can tell you cone based damage is a pain in the...arse to deal with. Shockwave never seems to hit people 15 yards away, and cone of cold *always* goes off at a weird angle. LotD is a good ability, and I wish you luck using it, but they are hard for blizzard to manage.
ToyChristopher Sep 26th 2010 3:13PM
Ragen, in practice I have found it be the best option to rely on single target heals. If people are lined up already it's great to use but this is rarely the case unless I have an all melee group, and even then it would be better to be in position to use Holy Radiance.
Proper positioning is mandatory for holy paladins but unlike most of the other aoe heals our position include our position as well as our partymates. Circle of Healing for instance only requires your group members be standing relatively close to one another. You can use it without having to move yourself and with a reasonable assurance of who it is going to hit.
Troglodyte, if I use holy shock instead of light of dawn I'm building up holy power to use word of glory. If I use any of my other heals I'm getting a chance to proc daybreak to build holy power and healing through beacon of light at the same time.
Ragen Sep 26th 2010 5:43PM
I can understand that. It's also what I do when my other heals are down. You have to remember though that for one GCD, you can heal multiple people on the move with absolutely no cap. You also get the juiciness that is a instant self heal as well as anyone within your range. Combined with Holy Radiance you'll be able to do some really nice AoE healing.
Also the thing with CoH is that there is a cap on it. It can never heal more than 6 people glyphed. It's the trade off for being a smart heal. However, want to know the only way to guarantee CoH hits the people who need it? Put yourself into position and use it. A good holy priest knows this and will use it to their advantage to heal as many people as needed.
Being that the rest of the healers will be teaching our teammates the proper usage of our new spells (Meaning "If you see PW:B\Efflorescence\Healing Rain try not to move out of it if necessary.) I'm sure you can convince DPS to stack up in range a bit.
I do see and understand your strategy in building up Holy Power for WoG. What I'm saying is that it will be important to keep LoD in mind for times where it will be WAY better than trying to proc multiple Holy shocks/WoG and wasting multiple GCD's when you can do it so much more easier.
ToyChristopher Sep 26th 2010 5:53PM
The no cap is not a benefit when you consider the long cooldown. The only time the "no-cap" would be so great is if you were able to hit the entire raid in a 25man at one time. That's not likely to happen. CoH has a 10 second cooldown and hits 6 targets. If you do the math, even for being a smart heal, it's hitting the same amount of targets in a span of 20 seconds in all but that 25 man scenario, which isn't likely to happen. You do not need to move to use CoH at all, so I'm not sure what you are talking about.
I don't need to remember anything about this spell, I'm telling you that I've used the spell and there is no juicy goodness to be had. It heals for too little for too much trouble. The difference between LoD and Healing Rain and the like is they can target where those will land- they don't require the healer themselves to waste time moving.
I'm sure I could convince dps to stack up too, but fight mechanics often convince them otherwise. I'm constantly looking for situations to use LoD, I'm supposed to be testing it. Even when those situations arise by happenstance though the spell doesn't deliver.
Chase Christian Sep 26th 2010 5:57PM
I think the core difference here is that we've been testing heroics on the beta, not raids. I know that on a fight like Festergut, there are at least 10-15 targets I could hit with my LoD at once, and from nearly anywhere in the room.
ToyChristopher Sep 26th 2010 6:05PM
That's the problem with the no-cap limit on LoD-- it has to be balanced around what it can do in a 25man.