The Light and How to Swing It: Remembering our first year of holy power
by Chase Christian 
Jan 1st 2012 at 8:00PM
As I looked forward to this year last December, I wasn't sure holy paladins were going to survive 2011 in one piece. We were just learning to adapt to the three-heal model and figuring out how to manage our holy power properly, and I had serious doubts about our AoE healing and mastery bonus. Luckily, I was wrong, and we have thrived in Cataclysm. We started by focusing on our specialty, powerful tank healing, and then expanded to take over the raid healing role as the year progressed.
While holy power and the new healing model were the big topics of early 2011, AoE healing has clearly been the topic that defined this era in holy paladin history. Holy Radiance's first beta version, Healing Hands, was loudly trumpeted when the Cataclysm NDA was lifted. Light of Dawn's struggle to find a place in our arsenal has caused more lines of paladin patch notes than any other ability. Learning to AoE heal has been our biggest challenge this year but also our greatest success.
Shockadins never quite worked out
While I was initially excited about the idea of giving holy paladins some more offensive capabilities in 2011, the shockadin build never really worked out. I am ecstatic to have Exorcism available as a spammable nuke, and I still use my shockadin build for doing dailies and some PvP. While resto shaman can regenerate mana via Telluric Currents and Atonement allows disc priests to use Smite to heal with, holy paladins are still primarily defensive healers by nature.
Illuminated Healing finally usable
After patch after patch of buffs to our mastery bonus, Illuminated Healing, it's finally strong enough to stand on its own. The developers tried increasing the scaling of mastery rating on our gear, but the stat simply wasn't effective. Next, Blizzard increased the buff's duration, which made it more flexible but none more potent. Finally, after holy paladins spent half of 2011 dropping mastery harder than Skrillex drops the bass, patch 4.2 brought the one change we'd been asking for the whole time: stacking bubbles.
Now that Illuminated Healing scales well off of mastery rating, lasts long enough to be fully utilized, and stacks with successive heals, it's actually not bad at all. In addition to all of that goodness, our new Holy Radiance also takes advantage of Illuminated Healing for the initial heal, further increasing mastery rating's value.
With the redistribution of haste breakpoints for Holy Radiance, the introduction of double-sized crits for all healers, and mastery's new potency, I have talked with many holy paladins trying out new stat builds. The ability for holy paladins to experiment and use different builds and stat mixes speaks to the completeness of the class.
Wrestling for position
When we first started healing in 2011, Light of Dawn was our primary heal. We could simply generate holy power points via Tower of Radiance and Holy Light, and then we'd spray the raid with our holy flashlight. Blizzard quickly nerfed Tower of Radiance's interaction with Holy Light to fix the issue, but it started the cycle of holy paladins trying to figure out which holy power release to abuse.
After buffing and nerfing Light of Dawn and Word of Glory in different ways several times, we've finally reached equilibrium at the end of 2011. Light of Dawn's new glyph model allows the spell to stay competitive in all group sizes, and Word of Glory's amazing single-target potency has us choosing between the two regularly. Giving holy paladins more choices when it comes to spell selection is a good thing, and that's the biggest step we've taken forward this year. Instead of having one spell to solve all of our problems, we've got a unique ability for most jobs.
Holy paladins now have a fairly mature toolbox for handling AoE healing. While we spent much of 2011 simply popping Holy Radiance when it was convenient and then healing as usual, patch 4.3 brought us the AoE heal that we deserved. Holy Radiance's new design forces holy paladins to choose between single-target and AoE healing, and creates an AoE healing rotation/synergy with Light of Dawn. Our new AoE strategy is surprisingly robust for only being around for a few months, but I think that we'll see this design stick throughout 2012.
First, Tower of Radiance allows us to make some interesting decisions regarding Holy Radiance, Holy Shock, and Light of Dawn, which deepens the level of control we have. Because we're faced with these new choices, playing a holy paladin is more engaging than it's been in a long time. Secondly, because Holy Radiance is no longer as dependent on haste as it once was, we're able to branch out and to try different stat combinations.
The gutting of Beacon of Light
In order to weaken our tank healing capabilities without affecting our ability to heal the raid, Beacon of Light saw some heavy nerfs in early 2011. Instead of transferring 100% of our healing done, it only replayed 50% of our heals. The devs needed to take away our godlike tank healing in order to make room for us to also be potent raid healers, and that's a sacrifice worth making.
While Beacon was retuned again to allow us to use Holy Light to heal the raid while also healing our Beacon target for the full heal, the end result is that we're much more balanced than we've ever been. We can't ever heal two targets at once at our maximum throughput, but the devs also stopped designing encounters that involved two tanks being crushed at the same time. In trade for this loss, we're now capable of healing raids effectively. I think it was well worth it.
The Light and How to Swing It: Holy helps holy paladins become the powerful healers we're destined to be. Find out just how masterful mastery healing can be, gear up with the latest gear, and learn how to PvP as a holy paladin.
Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Brock Jan 1st 2012 9:29PM
Sadly, holy power killed the paladin for me. I had three 80 paladins and shelved them all. I just don't like combo point classes. :/
Armill3 Jan 1st 2012 10:14PM
That's too bad. It actually is surprisingly interesting when it comes to healing and mana management. Definitely better than the holy light spam of yore.
I'll agree that it sucks for ret, still - ret fun peaked in 3.3, with the 2 pc T10 bonus - but the mechanic otherwise isn't all bad.
Erebos Jan 1st 2012 11:46PM
I agree with Armill. In Wrath, when I started, my main was my resto druid, and then I leveled a holy priest who I really liked. I'd considered trying a resto shaman, but I never wanted anything to do with a holy paladin until Cata, because I knew there was nothing to them but spamming one heal on the tank. Now my paladin is my "main alt" after my priest main, because of the changes that have been made, including holy power. Disappointing that the same changes that brought me to the class partially pushed Brock away, but I guess that's how it goes, isn't it?
thontor Jan 1st 2012 11:48PM
I've never enjoyed my paladin more than i have these days. I love holy power for all specs. I especially love how it makes healing much more interesting than spamming one button all day. I also love that it makes retribution a million times better than just hitting whatever comes off cooldown next.
Brock Jan 2nd 2012 12:33AM
I will say that holy became more enjoyable with cataclysm, I don't necessarily think it is because of holy power. It might have been made just as enjoyable without it. Prot and Ret, the two pally specs I loved, just didn't feel right with holy combo points. I like the smashing cool down model that ret used to have. Hunters still have that same system, I like them for that. Ah well. One day I will be drawn back to the light ;)
Thundrcrackr Jan 2nd 2012 11:09AM
I agree Brock. Blizz took what was my favorite class and made it feel clunky to me. He feels like my rogue now, which i never liked as much. Not a fan of combo classes. I wish they had just left well enough alone. :-/
Amaxe Jan 3rd 2012 11:46AM
I have to say that the Holy Bar made my Retadin go from being my favorite character to my least favorite.
Frank-potato Jan 10th 2012 9:06PM
@ Brock,
Sadly for you...you just don't know how much you're missing!
My paladin has been my main (and a healer for that matter) since patch 2.4, and i got to say i haven't been more happy with my class than now. I am really excited to see how this further develops with the big talent changes in MoP.
cursedmonk87 Jan 2nd 2012 12:28AM
I don't think holy power has been optimal for Ret. As far as damage goes we had one real HP builder, one finisher, two damage buffs, and a heal. Compare that to Rogues who have burns, bleeds, stuns, and debuffs; with plenty of ways to generate CP. Then the RNG madness of Divine Purpose was just well, RNG.
However, 4.3 has been my first patch healing in a raid and I'm having a blast. Holy Radiance is fantastic, and even though we still have a smaller toolbox than other healers, I've been holding my own comfortably. I still wish we were more specified as a melee healing class, but I end up standing with melee on a few bosses anyway.
Whig Jan 2nd 2012 3:17AM
I really like Ret in 4.3, especially with the 2pc set bonus. Having Judgement produce HP really helps with the clunkyness of the rotation, and damage is competative. Im glad this seems to be the way they will go in MoP.
Diatenium Jan 2nd 2012 4:47AM
The addition of holy power, among other things, really added the depth I wanted for the class since Wrath. I started healing during ICC and I couldn't stand it back then because it was so boring, but once cataclysm hit I immediately fell in love with healing. What was once a "Spam button A or spam button B" play-style was now a dance between an intricate web of spell interaction, it felt fluid and utterly beautiful to me.
The changes to exorcism via denounce, while not necessarily revitalizing the notion of a shockadin from a DPS-role perspective, still has a very viable place in soloing and pvp. This, along with rebuke, were much-needed additions to a holy paladin's arsenal. Before these changes you could not play offensively in arenas and while every other class was CCing/spell stealing/mana burning you, you yourself could only just hide from it and occasionally stun.
Illuminated healing has certainly gone a long way from its initial incarnation and while I do contend it still has some problems, I can at least take heart in the fact that they aren't as glaring as they used to be.
The changes to light of dawn were appreciated. While I do feel that it still has some rather bothersome limitations that make it dependant on the fight's mechanics, I think the same can be said for things like Chain Heal, though while the glyph does appear useful I don't really find any need for it, even in 10-mans.
While I'm happy for the changes to holy radiance, I can't help but feel that this is more of a band-aid fix. Holy radiance is extremely powerful, but only when everyone's grouped up, thankfully there's a lot of that in DS but that dependency on raid layout makes me uncomfortable, maybe this is less likely a problem on 25-mans, I don't know.
Though, what really bothers me is that the ability screws up our healing trifecta a bit. It doesn't proc Daybreak and it always generates holy power, causing an imbalance that forces too much value on its corner--explaining it simply, it causes the spell to become too "Spammy". It isn't every fight where this is a viable approach, so it doesn't really bother me for now, thankfully.
For Mop, I'd like it that holy radiance only gives you holy power when you cast it on your beacon target or yourself. That would make vastly more cerebral than just "don't cast it on the same person twice in a row", and the incentive to place it on yourself encourages players to think about their positioning, reinforcing LoD's intent for the same.
Fletcher Jan 2nd 2012 5:32AM
Ret is a *lot* better with two-piece T13; it completely removes the old clunky feeling we've had throughout Cata.
Champayne Jan 2nd 2012 9:37AM
I find it strange that the holy pally faithful are so enthusiastic about the changes to our spec. My holy paladin has been my main since early Wrath and its the only character I've ever raided with. But as Cataclysm progressed, my interest in it declined. AOE healing isn't fun for me, I rolled a holy paladin because I loved the idea of being able to drop massive heal bombs on people. Being homogenised and watered down like this has ruined it completely for me. I decided to watch the fall of Deathwing on YouTube and turns out it wasn't as epic as the fall of the Lich King anyway.
So looking back, holy power was the beginning of the end of an era for me. I'm hoping my various alts will help me to hold out till MoP, but sadly I think I will have long quit WoW by the time it finally drops. I guess all good things have to come to an end.
rodmin Jan 2nd 2012 12:38PM
Alrighty, my feedback.
Holy Power was interesting to me, as i already had a max level rogue at the time, so using combo points to heal instead of killing with them was a nice change.
Holy Radiance was quite the use and forget ability, but i sometimes saved it when i needed a speed boost. this ofc caused conflicts when raid healing and movement bursts were needed on different times (*looking at Valiona with angry eyes*).
Flash of Light...no matter how i look at it, it almost brought no use to my style. My style of healing consisted in keeping the raid 100% through Holy Light and adjust to Divine Light or Word of Glory when needed. The only time when i used it was as an instant while moving (Alysrazor's tornado, for example), and when i already used Holy Shock and word of Glory and the target still needed healing. Even with Chase's discussion about it a pair of weeks ago it still didn't get attractive. I believe my style is one in which flash of light, my number 7 on the keyboard, was rarely used.
rodmin Jan 2nd 2012 12:44PM
Now the good parts.
One of the things i ussually failed in my healing was the martyr position: while healing everyone else, i ussualy forgot about myself. Talents in the tree helped me on that, and the more frequent need of Hand of Sacrifice halped me get a better view on my health as well. The one charge WoG trick helped even further on that ;-)
The new Guardian spell was quite the nice addition for extra healing power, and the combination of our Divine Glory and HR gives quite a boost in AoE (and with the new set's 2 piece bonus it gets even better).
And our defensive CDs, divine protection, and Aura Mastery, were quite the help in many situations, including "healing under fire".
dj.clayden Jan 2nd 2012 2:59PM
Anyone been having problems convincing their healing leads that it's just a waste having the paladin tank heal when the raid is stacked up?
I really can't seem to convince them that someone else should be tank healing since we have the most potent raid healing, while others are as good/better than us at tank healing.
Oh and the Skrillex line was good ^^