Posts with tag speed-of-light

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Every Sunday, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email me with any questions you want answered, like why paladins are so awesome.

I have a feeling that the developers have a hard time balancing healers for PVP combat. How should healers be killed in PVP? Should we run out of mana eventually, or is a bursty switch the only answer? Can the focused efforts of a single DPSer be enough to topple us, or should it take two players to finish us off? Trying to balance all of these elements for four different classes with five different healing trees is a challenge by any measure. Every organized PVP encounter revolves around the healers involved, especially in the golden bracket of 3v3.

Prior to patch 4.2, teams loved seeing a holy paladin across the arena from them, as holy paladins weren't exactly amazing at 3v3 matches in the first few months of Cataclysm. We have a few key weaknesses, notably our lack of any long-term crowd control like Hex and our lone school of magic, holy, which leaves us defenseless when interrupted. We weren't completely ineffective in arenas before patch 4.2, but we also weren't breaking any records or winning any #1 Healer trophies.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Every Sunday, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email me with any questions you want answered, and catch me weekly on the Matticast!

Patch 4.2 is hot on the heels of patch 4.1 -- it's already on the PTR. We can look forward to the upcoming Firelands quest hub and raid coming out soon. As with any patch, there are plenty of class changes and balance adjustments. If there's one thing that I've learned over the years, it's that no news is good news when it comes to holy paladins and patch notes.

Unfortunately, there is news.

Rebuke, Divine Protection, and Divine Shield all scored new icons in the patch, which you can check out in this article's title image. Divine Protection also received a new spell effect, which is also featured above (I call it the Divine Beach Ball). Our Speed of Light talent was also modified to reduce Holy Radiance's cooldown by an extra 10 seconds (giving it an effective cooldown of 20 seconds), and the speed boost was tied to Divine Protection. Neither of these changes is actually live on the PTR, so you'll have to hold your breath for now. Also, holy paladins are slated to receive the biggest nerf any spec in this expansion.