My guild’s pally tank is away, so I don’t know what it’s like to heal one in 4.0.1. I feel for you guys

I wouldn’t regem right away, int is still by far our best stat (mana, spell power and crit). And thankfully they made the new glyph system much more convenient.

Yeah, I wonder how the paladins who don’t read up on the news are doing. The change was massive, getting the most out of our procs is really challenging and even at our best, we’re currently pretty weak healers. I get sad when I hear stories of LFD pugs immediately booting a pally healer lately, but at the same time, I kind of understand.

As far as tanking, I’m liking it. For single target situations, the imbalance of super-buffed DPS vs tanks that need to build Vengeance makes the first 9 seconds of a boss a bit of a waiting game. Vengeance could scale a little faster, but when it is maxed and Shield of the Righteous crits with 3 HoPo, no more worrying about aggro. I had a 65k crit on Festergut when I had 9 stacks of Gastric Bloat on me. I felt like a Ret Pally on steroids. As for AoE tanking, the loss of Consecrate spams doesn’t seem to make any difference. With Hammer of the Righteous splash damage hitting unlimited number of mobs and being spammed every 3 seconds, aggro is fairly easy. On 10m LK the other night, I don’t think I hit Consecrate once, and we never had a runaway ghoul.

But like you pointed out, there are still some more critical talents on the way to 85 that might change the feel. Inquisition will provide a different HoPo-consuming spell for AoE tanking. And Guardian of the Ancient Kings will give a much welcomed damage reduction cooldown spell (I’m looking at you Soul Reaper).

Ok, I give. There is one small complaint about tanking in 4.0.1. I’m squishy. I’m not talking about the loss of 2 damage reduction cooldowns (Div Guard & glyphed Hand of Salv). I’m talking about armor nerfing. We 2-tank the BPC, where I double-team Taldaram and Valanar. I pulled them to start the encounter and they proceeded to mush me into the ground in less time than the healers could react. It was the fastest wipe we’ve ever had on a boss encounter. We all laughed, but it was a wake-up call. I’m 2.6% shy of pushing hit completely off the table (WTB more Mastery), so I doubt that it was unlucky RNG. I guess we’re just not tuned for ICC bosses anymore.

So where do I sit? Definitely liking the changes. I am sure the devs will figure out how to fix my threat so the DPS aren’t waiting on Sunders, er, I mean Vengeance. And I am sure they will figure out how to de-squishify me. Yes, I just created that word. Until then, I’m having fun being a different Pally tank. But I like change. It made the game fun again for me.

I’m main spec holy and plan on being that way for quite some time, if not permanently. I still bubble when needed, but I still observe the rule that disc priests get first dibs on bubbling and they get touchy, otherwise.

So hey, I let them have it!

I know I have to pull it together and re-gem and re-glyph. But I’m tired of having to relearn everything every few years for the same game. And I even had half-a-clue it was coming. I can’t imagine how jarring this is for WoW players who don’t read blogs or mmo-champion.

Oh, and my Light of Dawn looks crooked. It looks like I fizzled. Feh. Bah.

Holy Shock esp. with Daybreak procs combined to Word of Glory are very nice tools for emergency raid healing. Very nice during Marrowgar whirl, or when dpsers are going crazy during trash pulls and aggro jumps everywhere.
Light of Dwan is, for me, cute but near from useless. If hp pools go up that much during cataclysm, it will become ridiculous and I’ll drop it from the tree for sure.

As for now we have so much mana that Divine Light can be used on the tank without much concern. I’m not sure it’ll stay true at level 85, and I don’t think we can keep a tank up without it.
I’m still wondering if we’ll be tank healers during Cata.
What could become the trend is for most healers to have “something” on the tank and participate to keeping him up together (Beacon + Shield + Lifebloom …).

From what I’m hearing from other healers, the patch wasn’t major for other classes. Some new stuff, but nothing drastic. And disc priest PW:S is so incredibly overpowered right now, make sure you enjoy it a bit before it gets nerfed!

I did not get to participate in the “night of” celebrations for 4.0, though I heard for most people it was somewhat of a shit show or radically different than what they are used to. It took about 12 hours for the patch to fully download and for me to be able to play. I haven’t touched my druid since the patch hit, but I have been on my priest and healed a few Heroics with friends. I was quite pleased with the Justice Point costs of T10 and some part of me is strangely excited at the notion of farming up that full set for myself, in the near future. I would just have to find a balance between doing that and still hitting 85 on the Beta and testing all of that out.

Overall, I found the patch to be… limiting, because I can still fall back on my holy priest ways of Renew/CoH spam and I’m not really learning how to be a Cata style holy priest just yet. I have all the mana in the world and it’s still old hat to me. Take away that, jack up my mana costs and force me to rely on Chakra + Heal and we’ll talk – lol

From what I understand, healing will be a bit different at 85. I’m very anti-Cata spoilers, though, so I couldn’t say HOW different.

How are you liking the new tanking so far?