I can’t comment on other classes, but it does seem like us pallies are handling ourselves pretty well in heroics. On the flipside, we seem to be struggling a bit more than holy priests, shamans (and possible druids, but my guild doesn’t have one right now) in 25 man raids because of the insane amount of random damage. Which is how it should be- every class should have it’s strength and weaknesses

I think I love you.

“so the more stuff I have to keep track of, the happier I am.”

No, wait… you’re crazy.

I think our raiding problems are due to gear- once our tanks get more armor and avoidance they’ll be taking less damage, but yeah, for the time being I really don’t understand why everyone keeps saying “Damage isn’t like Wrath! The tanks won’t die if you stop spam healing them!” Um, maybe in 5 mans, but our raid tanks are going real squish, real fast.

I hope they fiddle around with holy power some more to make it fit better into our healing. I love the concept. I’m that crazy person who reads battle text, combat log and deadly boss mods timers as I’m healing, so the more stuff I have to keep track of, the happier I am. I want to keep track more of holy power.

Boy, doesn’t that sound familiar. I’m glad they got rid of the notion that the tank won’t die within 2 GCDs without heals.

I agree with you, though, the nerfs didn’t really affect my healing all that much (other than I had to stop myself casting Holy Light a few times when it wasn’t strictly necessary). Truthfully, the nerfs to HL and LoD simply serve to marginalize the usefulness of the entire Holy Power concept as the central focus of Paladin heals. It’s there, and I *suppose* it’s better than a random proc and I’ll take the free heals, but it’s not something I actively try to build anymore.

And thank you for the link, Ophelie! It’s much appreciated!

Problem is, they need to compensate. Some of our spells now seem nearly useless, as pointed out already in this post and comments.

1) I wonder exactly how much it would hurt new 85s. When I hit 85, I had very little spirit on my gear so the scaling didn’t do much for me. Granted, people leveling holy paladins from scratch won’t have ICC gear to fall back on like this wave of level 85 paladins did.

2) I do have all the talents for Holy Shock and it doesn’t hit quite as hard as my Holy Light. According to Tuesday’s raid logs, my Holy Shocks were healing for ~7000 while Holy Lights were healing for ~9000. I didn’t do math with them though, so it might be possible that they scale differently and HS might be stronger than HL at a different amount of spell power. (I also took these numbers from the log browser, not the “auto average” WoL does that only counts effective healing.) I don’t think HS should be slower, only more effective and expensive.

3) Judgement costs 5% of base mana and returns 15%, ,so it’s still a 10% return. But you’re right that once we’re in better gear and have way more mana, the mana return from judgement will be insignificant.

4) I did mean for Holy Light to keep generating Holy Power. You’re right about Divine Light becoming way more mana per health effective if the cost of Holy Light goes up. Maybe it’s because I haven’t separated myself from Wrath yet, but I’d still rather use Holy Light to top people off with minimum overheal than risk them falling too low. I know everyone keeps saying that damage in Cataclysm doesn’t work the same way, but that’s not my experience. When my tank goes under 40% health, if I don’t time a Divine Light or Lay on Hands right, they will die. But maybe it’s just me.

5) It is the fix that makes the most sense and is what a lot of paladins (notably bloggers and EJ posters) are saying. I’m not sure why Blizzard didn’t go down that route.

6) I haven’t gotten logs since the hotfix, so I can’t comment on how badly the LoD nerfs look in practice. In theory, nerfing my 8k hits by 40%, I get 5.8k hits, totalling 29k healing, causing a transfer of 14.9k, which is comparable to Word of Glory. I’m not counting crits since they’re unpredictable and I consider the worst case scenario (also to consider crits, I’d need a few hours to really scan logs to figure out how often each spell really crits.) Agreed about WoG being a glorified mana conservation tactic, although, while it does heal for more than a Holy Light, it’s still too weak to feel like it’s worth really working for. All I really love about it is that it’s instant.

I’m right there with you, wishing there was more incentive to think about choosing between WoG and LoD. Even with the nerf, the amount of healing on the tank is only slightly less with LoD, so I have a feeling that while healing in raid or in a 5 man with everyone standing in front of me, I’d still side with using LoD too. It’s AoE healing is weak, but it’s better than nothing. The only time WoG is way superior is when you need to single target heal a non-beaconned player.

1) Our spirit scales up way too fast. Stacking spirit so far trivializes a lot of the mana mechanics, except when shit hits the fan (thought it helps a lot there too). I’m scared nerfing this will unduly hurt newly geared 85s, but I think it may be a step in the right direction, as the more gear we get, the crazier regen will be.

2) Holy Shock, if talented correctly, costs less than Holy Light, is instant, gives a Holy Power point, and hits harder than Holy Light. We use it on cooldown at this point, replacing Holy Light. I’m not sure raising the effectiveness is the right thing to do here, especially since they already nerfed our Holy Power generation by not allowing Holy Light to do it. Without casting Divine Light or Flash of Light, it takes 18 seconds to get 3 Holy Power (12 if you’re just starting off the pull). Making that slower isn’t going to do us any favors, they’re already gutting the Holy Power mechanic as it is.

3) Keep in mind Judging costs about 1200 mana if I recall correctly (posting from work, don’t have WoW available to check), so you’re “only” getting 2500 mana back after cost, and keep in mind that won’t scale at all because it’s base mana. It may be OP now, but I’ll guarentee that it’ll be underpowered in 3 tiers. Still, it probably could do with a little toning down, or make it scale with maximum mana again, but something silly tiny like 2.5% maximum mana (if Judgement costs 1.5% of an 80k mana pool, each Judgement would net us 800 mana right now, and would scale, at the risk of making Intellect more important than Spirit).

4) If you’re going to increase the cost of Holy Light, you’ll have to do the same with Divine Light. As it is, Divine Light is nearly as efficient as Holy Light from a Mana per Health ratio, and takes 2 fewer casts to get there. We’re already in danger of never casting Holy Light at all, bumping the cost would make us never use it period. Even if it did generate Holy Power, if the efficiency was less I’d just let people sit at 60% health instead of sitting at 80% and cast Divine Light exclusively.

5) This is my preferred fix, personally. Un-nerf that 40% less Light of Dawn, and make it not heal the Beacon. It’s honestly that that terrible to heal a party for 10k each with it (plus positional requirements). What made it OP was healing the tank for 36k with it.

6) Word of Glory so far has been a glorified mana conservation tactic. It hits for about 20k crits in my gear, so it’s about the same as a Flash of Light, but instant and cheaper. I still prefer using Light of Dawn when I can over Word of Glory because of the potential healing spread, and that I can hit the tank for nearly 20k with a well placed Light of Dawn even after the 40% nerf, which plays back into #5.

I agree that the nerfs so far haven’t actually affected me much now that my spirit is through the roof. All they’ve done is gutted our fun mechanic and pushed us into stacking more spirit because it’s far too awesome.

I think there needs to be more distinction between single target and multi-target healing for us, since Light of Dawn and Beacon are muddying that pretty significantly. If I have to start choosing between a 10k heal on the party and a 25k heal on the tank, then I have a reason to think about Word of Glory vs. Light of Dawn. Right now? Light of Dawn almost every time, because I get both group and tank healing.