The Light and How to Swing It: Holy paladins and holy power
by Chase Christian 
May 29th 2011 at 8:00PM
When discussing the major changes that paladins saw in Cataclysm, holy power is always at the top of the list. While hunters received their pseudo-energy resource called focus and death knights had their rune system revamped, holy power was easily the most interesting mechanic that was introduced. There's no way to play a holy paladin efficiently without completely adopting holy power. The two holy power releases are both free and flexible. They only cost holy power to use, and they give us a strong instant heal and the only instant AoE heal in our toolbox.
We receive a relatively fixed amount of holy power every minute, with the biggest contributor being Holy Shock. We can only use Holy Shock about 10 times a minute, although a few of our talents help augment that number. The key concept is that holy power is a fixed resource, which means that deciding between Light of Dawn and Word of Glory becomes an important choice.
The balance between WoG and LoD
On a typical encounter, Word of Glory and Light of Dawn add up to about 15% of my total healing. The extra instant healing output is nice, but the real savings comes from not having to spend any mana on those heals. Light of Dawn has traditionally been very powerful in 25-man raids, where chances are that there are multiple wounded people in range. Word of Glory sees more use in 10-man raids, where AoE healing is not usually that big of a concern. Light of Dawn does a significant amount more healing than Word of Glory when you factor in its interaction with Beacon of Light, but Word of Glory can be used reliably when running.
While Word of Glory is good for single-target healing, Light of Dawn can actually be the preferred choice. I ran the numbers myself when first experimenting with Light of Dawn, and Kurn, a fellow holy paladin, has written up detailed calculations. By design, Light of Dawn replays 50% of its healing to our Beacon of Light target. A well-placed Light of Dawn can heal your raid for nearly 50k life and then replay a 25k heal to the Beacon target. Word of Glory, on the other hand, heals for closer to 20k to a single target, with 10k replayed through the Beacon. Clearly, Light of Dawn is the superior heal today -- but what about after patch 4.2?
WoG gets its own niche
In patch 4.2, Word of Glory is seeing a 30% buff via the holy tree's passive bonus, Walk in the Light. Word of Glory still can't compete with Light of Dawn when it comes to total healing done, but now only when the original LoD targets are wounded. LoD will transfer 25k health to the Beacon target as long as you hit all six targets (assuming you're using Glyph of LoD), but it won't heal anyone who's not injured. WoG will be healing for over 25k health to a single target, plus the extra heal from Protector of the Innocent and the 12.5k health that will be sent through the Beacon. If you only have one or two wounded targets, WoG can now surpass Light of Dawn's potency.
Light of Dawn has a long history of being both too powerful and too weak, and it has even received a few redesigns during its lifetime. The spell has had cooldowns, consumed mana, and actually caused the Holy Light/Beacon of Light nerf back in Cataclysm's early days. I like Blizzard's approach to fixing it this time, buffing the alternative ability instead of just nerfing LoD to make it worse. We now have a choice: heal the raid, or heal the tanks. The distinction between WoG and LoD has been expanded and now makes us choose what to do with our holy power.
Scoring extra holy power
I browsed the World of Logs parse from a raid a few nights ago and added up all of my holy power gains. It was an 8-boss raid, with Halfus being the only heroic we attempted. Throughout the raid, I gained 250 holy power points from Holy Shock, making it our biggest holy power source by far. Tower of Radiance, which gives us holy power when healing our Beacon target with Divine Light, came in second with 40 points. Tower of Radiance used to see a lot of use, as holy paladins would spam Holy Light on their Beacon target and then blast the raid with Light of Dawn. Now, I see most holy paladins using ToR in their single-target healing rotation, casting two Divine Lights, a Holy Shock, and then a Word of Glory.
Blessed Life, one of my favorite optional talents, gave me 35 holy power points throughout the raid. Blessed Life is interesting because it's very valuable on some encounters and worthless on others. I still think it's worth carrying around in your build, anyway. Free holy power means free healing done, and that's worth putting talent points into. Eternal Glory only yielded 22 holy power points for me, but I also only have one point in the talent, anyway. Eternal Glory has an internal CD attached to it, and so many holy paladins only toss one point in here and use the other one elsewhere.
The only other holy power source I see used is the Pursuit of Justice talent, which can be very valuable for holy paladins in PVP but not so effective in raids. Because we have a limited amount of holy power per encounter, we have to spend it right. After patch 4.2, both Word of Glory and Light of Dawn have pretty clear boundaries for usage. Maximizing your holy power release usage is incredibly effective, as it boosts your healing done while reducing your mana spent. In particular, the two-heal method abuses Word of Glory and Protector of the Innocent to help you save your mana for when you really, really need it.
The Light and How to Swing It: Holy helps holy paladins become the powerful healers we're destined to be. Learn the ropes in Cataclysm 101 for holy paladins, study the new balance between intellect and spirit and learn how to level your new Sunwalker. 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)
Daeolt May 29th 2011 8:12PM
How useful do you find WoG in Heroics? I recently dusted off my pally (85 with RP gear) and decided to try Holy. I managed to get it to 347 ilvl but still find WoG healing groups for little, and currently only use it to top of people who are just under full health.
Does it get more useful in raids?
Daeolt May 29th 2011 8:17PM
LoD, not WoG
cyanea85 May 29th 2011 8:29PM
It has its uses. It really depends on the fight and the makeup of your group. If you're running with a heavy melee group, it's generally a godsend. It's the most situational heal we have, so don't fret if you don't feel like you're using it "enough".
Meighan May 29th 2011 8:34PM
My experience is that in most heroics, people are simply too spread out for LoD to be effective. If, in some bizarre circumstance, you have 3 melee dps, you'll be getting most of the benefit of it, but otherwise, it is just almost never worthwhile.
Anony Moss May 29th 2011 8:36PM
LoD in 5-man and even 10-man settings is 'ok' at best. I believe it has to hit at least 2 non-beacon target players in order to generate a comparable amount of healing to WoG. The biggest issue is that in 5-mans that people rarely, if ever, are grouped all together. In 10-mans the same issue exists.
There will be times when it's worthwhile, but they are very selective.
Also keep in mind that talent/glyph choices will affect the exact numbers. WoG'ing a low hp (
Anony Moss May 29th 2011 8:23PM
Any holy pals spending time on the PTR that can give a good idea of how our healing is after all these changes? Blizzard seems to want to tell us how "too efficient" we are, but at the same time the numbers generated on raids, right now, don't seem to give me that inclination. From my experience we're not the best healing spec/class right now: sometimes we can do well, but frequently other classes can do just as well or better.
It seems to me that the changes will drive us down to the bottom of the healing totem pole, however to the point it has me questioning the continued play of my holy paly in 4.2. I'm not one to say "I'll never play him again," but if the spec is going to spend month(s) as the runt of the healers, I'd rather play a class/spec that can better contribute to raids.
cyanea85 May 29th 2011 8:34PM
I'm going to admit that I've heard over and over about these nerfs we're getting, but I'm confused as to what everyone means. I'm looking at the current 4.2 notes on the official site, and I'm seeing a host of nerfs and buffs. The mana increase on all of our spells is disheartening, but I imagine that's going to be offset by the general increase in stats from t12 gear, the Holy Light/Beacon change has me excited because it'll give me more of a chance to help out with raid healing, and the Infusion of Light change is nice (though I see myself rarely using Flash even with that). Plus, Walk in the Light is a straight buff.
So admittedly, I'm really confused about all the doom and gloom I've been reading about everywhere.
Anony Moss May 29th 2011 8:43PM
@cyanea85
The mana cost increases are very very significant. The new gear will not compensate for that, and even after fully gearing up in new gear we will be unable to use DL, much less FoL, nearly as often as we can now. Keep in mind too that we won't just have all the new gear day 1. Even if it did compensate for the increased costs, it will still mean that we're taking a significant beating to our healing going into new raid progression which is when we need every bit of healing we can muster. By the time we have all the new gear (and people are at their best at avoiding avoidable damage) we may be in a more ok place, but the current changes leave any kind of progression oriented holy pal at an extreme disadvantage.
gfitzgeraldmd May 29th 2011 8:26PM
How about Crusader Strike to generate Holy Power. I used to stand in the back with the casters when raiding in WotLK. Now I stand with the melee DPS and/or Tank and use my Crusader Strike when I can to build up Holy Power.
Anyone else doing this?
cyanea85 May 29th 2011 8:35PM
I do. It's GREAT when damage is light to build up for when you need a big heal.
JKWood May 29th 2011 10:09PM
It's also expensive, negating the benefits of using Holy Power to not have to use mana. Do it if you like, but know that Holy Shock is always going to be a better choice.
Elhannan May 29th 2011 10:25PM
Holy Shock and Crusader Strike don't share a cooldown, using both can amp up your holy power production rate noticeably, and you can gain mana from melee strikes with Seal of Insight. I do this whenever the tactic is sensible - which is not always, but it is definitely a viable method.
Quasi May 31st 2011 12:07AM
I use this in certain situations where instant heals are far more important to me then avoiding some damage, like for instance the Last fight in ZG, standing in the bubble at all times, I pretty much just use melee attacks, holy shock, crusader strike and word of glory until phase 2, and I normally start phase 2 at full mana with a full hp party. Makes the ghosts and chains phase that much more livable.
Anony Moss May 29th 2011 8:38PM
(sorry, previous entry was truncated)
LoD in 5-man and even 10-man settings is 'ok' at best. I believe it has to hit at least 2 non-beacon target players in order to generate a comparable amount of healing to WoG. The biggest issue is that in 5-mans that people rarely, if ever, are grouped all together. In 10-mans the same issue exists.
There will be times when it's worthwhile, but they are very selective.
Also keep in mind that talent/glyph choices will affect the exact numbers. WoG'ing a low hp, less than 35% iirc, target, particularly with the new 200% crits, will be of significant value if specced for it.
It's also been mentioned before, but WoG'ing with 1 point of Holy Power can be a useful technique to exploit free healing from PotI. This works well for giving additional free healing to the beacon target and if you use your hand of sac effectively.
Overall, particularly with 4.2, I'd say outside of 25-mans that it is certainly not worth glyphing for LoD and will rarely be worth using it outside of "stack up for ae healing" scenarios. In 25-mans, the numbers will need to be re-crunched for the viability of WoG talents and LoD.
Lastly, keep in mind in raids that different encounters will prompt different usage and that can greatly affect the value of LoD v WoG. In Atremedes where little bits of damage are going out to everyone frequently, LoD is great. In Chimaeron, LoD is only useful during Feuds. In the same way, LoD can be great during the 1st encounter in Heroic Shadowfang for immediately putting everyone at >1 hp and all that healing helps give the tank (beacon target) enough hp to survive the first round of attacks. In the two new heroic 5-mans however, the areas are large and people generally spread out too much to make any effective use of LoD.
Diatenium May 29th 2011 10:03PM
The only problem is that holy paladins don't actually have any choice for major glyphs in PvE, divine plea and divinity are mandatory.
The third one may "appear" free, but in reality it rarely ever is, nine times our of ten you want divine protection, 40% magic damage reduction on a 40 second cooldown is too powerful an ability to disregard when magic damage is so prevalent.
Anony Moss May 29th 2011 10:31PM
I'd argue that there are 4 viable glyphs: Div Pro, Div Plea, Divinity, and LoD. It varies on a fight-by-fight basis which is most valuable. If you're in
Diatenium May 29th 2011 10:52PM
There's also cleansing, which is useful in dungeons where cleansing is actually fairly prevalent.
Lay on hands--the one that cuts 3 minuets off the cooldown, is actually fairly useful, I exploited that glyph to use lay on hands twice during reg cho'gall, when that fight was actually a challenge.
There's also Long word--PFFTAHAHA, sorry couldn't say that with a straight face.
Here's the thing, though, in hardcore raiding, you can't afford to not have divine plea and divinity, they bring too much needed mana to the table, divinity's a bit more ambiguous but it makes a major cooldown also a instant mana return and there's very little reason not to have it, the only time you might not use it is for easy farm content--in which case why even worry about glyphs?
KKnighties May 29th 2011 9:22PM
Is it just me but raising spell mana but "that is ok because of your new gear" is not a problem for people quickly replacing heroic T11 with T12 and hT12. But someone just starting 85 or raid healing with lower gear will notice it.
I used to enjoy my holy pally; it's sad what they have done to them.
Chase Christian May 29th 2011 9:24PM
You hit the nail on the head... what's the point of new gear if we just get nerfed before we get it? We will never increase in strength.
Diatenium May 29th 2011 10:12PM
The buffs to holy light in its interaction with Beacon of light as well as the buff to WoG do counter the mana cost increases by a fair bit, overall the increase to mana cost will likely be less noticeable then most people think it will.
I've done a tiny bit of raiding on the PTR, no major noticeable difference for me.