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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe Light and How to Swing It: Holy paladins are all about throughput
by Chase Christian 
Oct 31st 2010 at 2:00PM
Blizzard has tried to give holy paladins so many interesting tools. We saw our first absorption effect in our level 80 ability, Sacred Shield. Its potency was limited due to the proc mechanics involved, and once it was limited to a single target, it became just another buff we kept active. The dev team tried giving us not one but two different HoTs. The first was via the old Glyph of Flash of Light, which took our weakest heal and cut its up-front healing in half in exchange for a weak HoT. It simply didn't make sense.
The second HoT we received came from the interaction between Infusion of Light and Sacred Shield, which would put a HoT on our SS target when we used FoL on him. While more powerful than the last iteration, it was still far too weak to make any difference, and its limitation of a single target really made it untenable. Our ability to prevent damage via absorption effects or proactively heal damage via HoTs was basically nil, and holy paladins relied on massive throughput to solve every healing dilemma. It looks like that model hasn't changed today.
Throughput is our niche
Looking at the latest Cataclysm beta patch notes, you'll notice a trend in the holy paladin section. While yes, Exorcism did get buffed so hard that I am moving my shockadin article up to next week, the healing buffs are the real meat of the patch. We got to see the base healing of our direct heals all buffed by a full 30 percent, which is nothing to sneeze at. Many paladins have been commenting that they feel much stronger after the buffs, which made their way to our live build as well. Survivability is no longer a guessing game, and we're back to keeping the tanks up through anything.
If every healing class has the same basic heals, why did we need ours buffed by such a large amount? Restoration shaman can cast Chain Heal as often as they like, healing multiple targets every time. Restoration druids can toss HoTs across a raid to counter a pulsing aura. Discipline priests are capable of dispensing bubbles to everyone in preparation for a large attack. Holy paladins have exactly two AoE heals, both of which are throughput-based and have lengthy cooldowns attached to them.
We've got one of the best bags of tricks in the entire game. Our triple-hybrid status has gifted us with a ton of utility abilities and tools to get us out of almost any situation. Our issues stem from our inability to handle healing multiple targets for any serious period of time. Light of Dawn and Holy Radiance both alleviate our ability to recover from massive, raid-wide damage, but we need our bread-and-butter heals to carry us through the rest of the encounter. Every other healer has its own toolbox of custom spells like Regrowth or Chain Heal to lean on, while we focus on simply spamming one of our big three to get the job done. Thus, the throughput of our base heals needs to be massive, and that's exactly what Blizzard is ensuring via these buffs.
One nerf, one buff
For all of you recommending the Glyph of Divinity as the best holy paladin glyph, I'd like to point you to the new change to Lay on Hands. Its mana-granting ability has been removed, and now it's simply a huge heal with a serious cooldown. It's not going to be our mana battery anymore, and we're going to have to get used to not having it available for that purpose. However, to help our mana issues a bit, Beacon of Light's duration has been extended to a full 5 minutes. So I guess the old Beacon of Light glyph can go out the window as well. The new Beacon glyph makes the spell completely free, while the new Glyph of Divinity adds back some of the mana-restoring effects to LoH.
Illuminated Healing gets triple-buffed
While World of Logs is still having some troubles parsing the absorbs that come via our new mastery bonus, Illuminated Healing, Blizzard has decided to buff our mastery bonus quite a bit. While every holy paladin will enjoy the 2 percent boost to the base mastery bonus (it's now 10 percent), those with mastery on their gear via reforging will enjoy the scaling buff which increases the amount absorbed per point of mastery. Both of these changes will help the mastery bonus to be effective as soon as we obtain it and to continue to scale well as we get more and more mastery on our gear.
The most important mastery change is actually the fact that the duration has been bumped up from 6 seconds to 8 seconds, which is significant. For our mastery bonus to be effective, our targets need to actually get hit again after we've healed them. The longer that the shield lasts, the higher chance we have that our targets will be struck again, therefore utilizing our mastery absorption bubbles. This is a massive improvement over the old 6-second model, and I think that even bumping this up to 10 seconds wouldn't be too overpowered either. As the defining characteristic of the holy paladin spec, it needs to be valuable in every situation.
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 2 of 2)
toddless Nov 1st 2010 4:40AM
Currently, the fights in the beta testing are pretty raid wide damage based for healing. I would imagine, eventually, there will be fights that are tuned more towards the powerful single/ small group healing that holy priests will be able to take full advantage of. The only thing the nerf to holy radience did was make sure that holy pallies couldn't heal through raid wide damage effectively while you were supposed to be spread out. If you don't have to spread out - it will still be top dollar in the healing market (every just stacks up more).
The single target healing buffs I think are more tuned towards helping the holy pally feel more useful while their cooldowns on holy radiance and light of dawn are on timer. Sure, the healing is quite ridiculous currently for holy pallies on beta, however, that is only because the fights make it so. If say - that boss that knocks everyone down to 10% was slightly nerfed in that he only demolished you to 80% - druids and shammys may make a come back...suddenly the holy pally would be pushing the over-healing meters once more.
Boobah Oct 31st 2010 5:44PM
"While every holy paladin will enjoy the 2 percent boost to the base mastery bonus (it's now 10 percent), those with mastery on their gear via reforging will enjoy the scaling buff which increases the amount absorbed per point of mastery."
Aargh! There's no such thing as a 'base mastery bonus.' There IS a base amount of mastery, but the effect of those base eight points is exactly the same as every point you gain afterwards from your gear, for every spec in the game.
Any time you check your mastery on your character sheet, it will announce what your current amount of mastery does (annoyingly rounded, despite the fact that, from what I can tell, the actual mechanics don't round it out), and then tell you how much you get per point of mastery (in the annoying 'each additional point of mastery' way.)
thebitterfig Oct 31st 2010 7:49PM
Methinks thou dost protest too much.
When it comes to describing the effects of mastery, a baseline and additional point method of terminology is functionally identical to a per-point with eight free points method. It doesn't seem like anything to really get worked up about, and both descriptions have advantages. The base-bonus side makes a lot of sense when just looking at baseline mechanics, how different masteries work and such, and the per-point is a lot more informative when looking at comparative stat weights.
toddless Nov 1st 2010 4:43AM
Your comment doesn't make any sense.
While the base is what it is - it is also directly related to how much of an absorption is placed on your target - which is much more "enjoyable" for a holy pally as well as duration since that means your new bubble will heal for more and have the potential to heal in the first place.
king heart Oct 31st 2010 8:34PM
shockadin??? more like Excordin...okay we need to work on the coolness factor.
Dhoum Oct 31st 2010 10:25PM
So, when are those of us who aren't healers going to get some coverage? I tried the link at the top of the page labeled "protection", and got back a page that told me to try another search. I'm reduced to reading the warrior column just to glean a little tank-related info. Seriously, guys, why does Holy get all the love? Are Prots and Rets not paladins, too?
Osc Oct 31st 2010 11:16PM
When you stop commenting on posts by the Holy pally/rogue columnist.
Where exactly are the latest patch notes I can only find tanking changes on MMO.
Elovan Nov 1st 2010 1:52AM
Wednesday is and has been the Ret and Prot Paladin day. It's just that sometimes depending on what information is out there Gregg will write about Paladins in general instead of focusing on Prot or Ret. It's just the way the writers decide to write, and you'll have to live with it, and hopefully people will stop saying this on every Sunday Holy Paladin column
toddless Nov 1st 2010 4:48AM
@Osc
Go back a couple pages on MMO's site and you'll find the changes currently being implemented on the Beta realms. If you are looking for a complete set of current changes to classes and mechanics, I would recommend just visiting the class pages, as they are updated with each build.
jbodar Nov 1st 2010 7:00AM
Seriously, read the Wednesday version, not the Sunday one. True, its focus gets split between Prot, Ret and General stuff, but it's there. It just seems skewed to Holy because Sunday is dedicated to just that.
http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/10/13/the-light-and-how-to-swing-it-ret-rotation-and-cooldowns-in-4-0/
http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/10/20/the-light-and-how-to-swing-it-protection-and-retribution-builds/
Or just hit up: http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/forum/index.php
Michael Nov 1st 2010 10:36AM
I have to ask one thing, I noticed that Holy Radiance has a 1 minute cooldown in your link, but in videos I have watched of the beta, it is a 30 second cooldown, and the range of the heal is not 10 yards, but in fact is for the whole raid basically, so are these going to change because 10 yards just seems a waste of a heal if it is a raid where primarily spreading out and being 10 yards away from one another is key.
MichaelBerean Nov 1st 2010 11:53AM
I love the new Lay on Hands. Frankly, I have felt forced to save LoH for a mana cooldown or ignored it in favor of more Holy Light since T6. Now it is clearly a useful burst healing cooldown with the synergistic effect of boosting your mana just as you are burning through it.
I am a bit concerned about the Mastery changes mentioned in this article though. None of them address the problem that keeps me from ever relying on a mastery bubble. As far as I can tell, weaker Illuminated Healing shields overwrite stronger ones. Has anyone seen an official post on whether this is intended?
Continuous Nov 1st 2010 6:56PM
I understand where you are coming from but remember, come Cata rolling HoTs on an entire raid wont be viable because of the increased mana cost of most spells. To figure out the value of mastery a lot of guess work is involved. First, you must know how much of the absorb from the paladin mastery is actually used on a consistent basis. And then second, you need to figure out the probability of it happening.
For druids it is the same idea - how many people are hotted at any time needs to be factored in as well as how much healing the net worth of the mastery based on what heal you use most often. (it increases healing by more if HT is your main spell then if Nourish is.)
So imo, mastery cant really be calculated correctly unless you KNOW FOR A FACT what you will use and how often and how often the other target will get hit and for how hard etc...
As for your last sentiment about LoH and I just have to disagree... if you have any druid friends you will know that mana is never an issue for a healer as most druids would rather innervate a healer than a dps. Add replenishment, mana tide totem, Hymn of Hope etc... going oom is hard. And did I mention the fan favorite and now (mostly) deceased Divine Plea? Granted, I have limited experience in ICC H - I have primarily been in normal ICC but mana was never an issue.
Michael Nov 2nd 2010 11:43AM
I know you say that AOE raid healing isn't very good because it is such a mana intensive thing, but maybe you should look up the videos of the raids in the Beta. Most of the fights involve lots of AoE damage to the raid, which happens about once every 30 seconds, which the spell is a 30 second cool down in the Beta so it works perfectly, the holy paladins only really heal the tanks so that they aren't wasting mana, they have an amazing amount of mana regain, and basically they just pop their 2 AoE heals at times when raid damage is intensive, for example Chimearon, is gonna be one hell of an AOE fight, so basically you need to pop them in order to survive, and that is why I'm concerned about the 10 yard range, in Beta it is hitting everyone within I think 40 yards, so there should be a much farther range in my opinion, unless you have to glyph it which seems rediculous to me.
Look up the fights, you will see a Lot of AoE damage, specifically look up the Paragon fights in the beta, it's almost always from the Holy paladin perspective and look at when he pops the Cds and his mana, he almost always over 1/2 mana.
Ezgî Nov 15th 2010 12:05PM
But how do you do the Dive Heal? :S