Holy Paladin Reforging

Don’t we all love questions with no clear answers?

I’ve had a few people ask about reforging. Each time, I make my way to Elitist Jerks.

At first, the answer I got from there was “Definitely Haste. All Haste all the time OMG yes.“

Then I went back and got the answer “Haste is nice, but Crit packs a better punch.“

When I looked closely, I also saw “How about Mastery? Can we give Mastery a try?“

Then I spoke with paladins who don’t frequent the various resources and received an overwhelming: “Moar Spirit plz!“

For the time being, reforging isn’t a black and white issue. And I hope it stays that way- I love paladin healing right now: it feels as if each successful paladin has their own style and adapts in their own way to different content. Which is how healing should be. I don’t know about the rest of you, but the constant adjustments to fit each unique situation is the whole reason I fell in love with healing in the first place.

Love story aside, I’m going to take a look at the different reforging options. If you want a “do this” answer, scroll down a bit and you’ll find some reforging suggestions to fit your paladining lifestyle. And if you read all the way to the end, I’ll let you in on my personal strategy.

I’m going to inspire myself from the debate in the Holy Paladin thread on Elitist Jerks as well as use my own experiences to weigh the pros and cons. Two Three weeks into the expansion, I’ve done countless heroics, with pugs of all skill (and common sense) levels as well as guild groups, I’ve killed Conclave of Wind on 10 man, 25 man kills are Halfus (X2) and Argaloth (I’ve done quite a bit of log parsing from other guilds for Halfus too, to see how other healing teams are handling the fight), with a some wiping experience on a few other 25 man bosses. The only area I haven’t investigated much is the world of PvP, so you die hard PvPers are unfortunately on your own for this.

An “In-Practice” Take at the Holy Paladin Nerfs

By now, pretty much every holy paladin blogger has posted their thoughts, comments, disdain and disgust about Tuesday’s holy paladin changes. In case you’ve been missing out, here’s what happened:

- Holy Light doesn’t pump up your holy power bar anymore when you cast it on your beaconned target.
- Light of Dawn, an already weak spell with the exception of how it transferred nicely through beacon, had it’s healing reduced by 40% so the beacon transfers don’t give healing envy to Word of Glory.

The rationale is that paladins have too much mana and are relying too much on the “pump up Holy Power via Holy Light and use Light of Dawn transfers to bomb the tank” strategy.

On the mana part, if you’re rubbing your eyes, I don’t blame you. When I started running heroics a few days ago, the idea of “too much mana” would be have had me laughing until my sides hurt. But, now that I’m decked in heroics gear and running with other heroically geared players, I kind of have to agree. Holy Light, with it’s low mana cost and long cast, becomes basically free with enough passive mana regen.

As for the “Light of Dawn abuse“, well, it was nice while it lasted. According to Tuesday’s raid logs, with a mix of 333-349 ilvl gear and 25 man raid buffs, my Light of Dawn was hitting individual targets for ~ 8k, occasionally critting for ~ 15k. Which looks great, but considering that everyone had over 100k hp and were taking insane damage left and right, LoD was actually crap for raid healing. Where it shone was through beacon. Say my LoD hit 5 targets for 8k for a total of 40k. Half of that (so 20k) was transferred to the tank, which is more than my ~15k World of Glory could heal them for.

How the changes affected my heroics healing

In all honesty, they didn’t. I kept the same “Holy Shock on cooldown, then Holy Light unless massive damage” strategy I used before. I couldn’t use Word of Glory as often, but, meh, other than making me crave haste (the instant cast component of WoG is nice), it didn’t matter. With heroics gear, Holy Light is basically free and Word of Glory is a weak spell. When my group didn’t screw up, I still ended fights at nearly full mana. I even started using Holy Radiance on cooldown.

How the changes might affect 25 man raiding

I raided Sunday and Monday, but I won’t get to test the changes until Thursday night. It’s difficult for me to predict how it’ll affect raiding. At our last attempts, our offtanks were too undergeared and our raid team too undisciplined (we have a lot of new guildies who are on their first raids with us and aren’t used to our ways) for me to get a clear idea of Cataclysm 25 man raid healing. Our attempts on Halfus Wyrmbreaker were under 2 minutes long and my tank was getting smacked with 40k-60k hits every 2 seconds.

To (attempt to) keep up with that kind of damage, I was using Holy Shock on cooldown and otherwise spamming Divine Light. Light of Dawn was a good option when I had at least 4 people in front of me (which didn’t happen often) so I might notice a loss there. Holy Light wasn’t in the equation at all when it came to healing in raids.

A Return to Wrath Healing?

We have too much mana… To which Blizzard responded by attacking the very mechanics they wanted our class to use. With our glorious passive mana regen untouched and with Word of Glory and Light of Dawn being so weak, I can see us going back to single or double spell spamming pretty quickly.

Aunna at Bandage Spec made some excellent suggestions that could solve our problem of being overpowered without ruining our new and improved playstyle. I have some suggestions of my own:

1- Nerf our specialization – 50% of mana regen from spirit is too much? Bring it down to 40%, or 35%.
2- Raise the mana cost and effectiveness of Holy Shock – Right now Holy Shock doesn’t do much beside give us holy power. It helps a little bit with raid healing, but that’s about it. Make it more expensive and more useful and it’ll put a dent in our mana bar.
3- Reduce the mana back from judging Seal of Insight or increase the cooldown on Judgement – Seriously, 3500 mana every time I use an 8 second cooldown spell? For real? No wonder my mana bar is full!
4- Increase the mana cost of Holy Light – It’s too cheap? Make it less cheap.
5- Buff Light of Dawn, but don’t let it transfer through beacon - Light of Dawn is a really week spell without the beacon component. With the amount of health people have, you couldn’t even notice the 8k heal. (Fannon as well as a few others have mentioned this too)
6- Make it harder to stack holy power, but buff Word of Glory – I don’t care how free and instant Word of Glory is, it’s not powerful enough to be worth working for. If it healed, for like, say 30k, I might be tempted to put some effort into getting 3 stacks of holy power.

So final words, if you’ve been worrying about the nerfs, you can relax. They haven’t affected us a whole lot. But! I can see the nerf bat heading our way again shortly, so gear up and farm heroics while we still have it sort of easy.

Let’s Talk About Spirit

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about spirit lately. Which took me by surprise at first (while I love getting pally questions, I don’t get them often!), but it makes sense: we’ve gone a long, long time without having to worry about Mana Regen. Suddenly we’re bombarded with the notion that our infinite mana pools are a thing of the past and that spirit, spirit the stat we snubbed throughout our whole healing careers, is finally useful to us.

It’s ok, learning something new can be a good thing. Hey, I learned something new! I learned that intellect directly affects our MP5 or mana regen. Apparently it’s done that all along but because mana regen has always been something that took care of itself, I never paid attention. And no one ever thought to pull me aside one day and tell me “hey, you don’t care about this now, but one day you’ll be happy to know that intellect increases mana regen“. Anyway, as I was double checking my facts for this post by playing dress up with my paladin, I realized that “AAAMG MY SPIRITLESS BRACERS ARE UPPING MY MP5″.

No, I’m not embarrassed. I’m not embarrassed because, according to the replies I got when I asked on Twitter, many of you didn’t know either.

So what about ‘em Spirit.

Do I need to start stacking Spirit?

I can sense the panic radiating from that question. Cataclysm drops in 2 weeks. Most of us aren’t raiding anymore, those of who are raiding, aren’t raiding too seriously. So close your eyes and take a deep breath. You don’t have to spend tons of gold regemming gear you’re going to vendor in two weeks after you respec to retribution to zerg your way to 85.

Besides, even if you’re still raiding, if you’re managing your spells right, you shouldn’t be having trouble with mana. Remember, Holy Light and Holy Shock are cheap spells, Divine Light and Flash of Light are expensive spells.

From my experimenting last night in ICC, I could get away with a lot of Divine Light and Flash of Light casting on every fight but Lich King (where I did run out of mana very fast, but in my defense, I think we lost Replenishment when our ret pallies left). I have 334 Spirit.

If you are struggling with mana due to gear level or a stubborn need to spam Divine Light, then feel free to add some Spirit gems or do some reforging, but don’t panic. Don’t panic.

What about Spirit and Cataclysm? What about that?

I’m unfortunately not the right person to ask about Cataclysm gossip. I like to discover things on my own and because I wasn’t in the beta, I shy away from the spoilers.

That said, rumor has it that our mana won’t be flowing as freely as it did during Wrath, but with intelligent spell choosing, it shouldn’t be a disaster. The Thinkers over at Elitist Jerks seem to be suggesting that our custom of gemming for intellect will survive the expansion, or at least, the beginning of it.

How does Intellect help me get mana back?

Intellect helps with mana in a few ways:
- It increases your mana pool
- It helps you get more mana back from Divine Plea
- It helps you get more mana back from Replenishment (Replenishment is a raid buff that certain classes/specs can trigger passively- Ret pallies, Resto Druids, Frost Mages and Destro Locks are the ones I’m aware of.)
- If you’re a Blood Elf, it boosts the mana you get back from Arcane Torrent

It also works with Spirit to increase the mana that regens happily on its own while you’re not worrying about it.

How does Spirit work?

You’ve stacked all the Intellect in the world, you’re cautious about your spell casting and you’re still running low on mana. Maybe you need more Spirit.

Spirit and Intellect work together to boost your mana regen. When you open your character panel, you’ve got three types of mana regen.

Let’s be creative and start from the bottom:

a) Combat Mana is the speed you’re regaining mana whenever you’re in combat, including when you’re casting.
b) Mana Regen is the speed you get your mana back while you’re out of combat
c)The MP5 when you mouse over the your Spirit tab is how much faster you’ll regain mana 5 seconds after you’ve stopped casting. It adds on to your Combat Mana while you’re in combat and it adds your Mana Regen while you’re not in combat.

The formula by which Spirit and Intellect affect these numbers is complicated and I’m not sure if the exact formula has been figured out for Cataclysm so lets just settle with both numbers increase mana regen and Spirit increases it more than Intellect.

For the visuals, I made a graph! (Don’t be scared, I’ll explained it below.)

Ignore the equations. This graph shows the story of me playing dress up with my pally.

The bottom (blue) line shows my mana regen (the MP5 from the Spirit tab) with different amounts of Intellect while my Spirit was at the human pally base of 108 (EDIT: the graph says 106, it’s just a transcription error and doesn’t affect the results at all). The next (pink) line up is the same thing, but with 215 Spirit. Next (green) line is with 384 Spirit and the top (purple) line is with 431 Spirit.

If graphs aren’t your thing and you’re still lost, the bottom line is this:

The more Spirit you have, the more bang for your buck you get from Intellect. If you need more regen, you don’t have to swap all your Intellect for Spirit. Just adding 100 or so Spirit (probably a bit more at level 85) can make a huge difference in how much Intellect is contributing to your Regen. And the more Intellect you have, the less Spirit you have to add to see that difference.

And that’s my lecture about Spirit. May your Cataclysm experience be rich in lavish mana pools.

Note: Big thanks to Lodur and Naithin for their help in sorting out the Intellect and MP5 mystery.

Shared Topic: Fringe Benefits of Bringing Classes to Raid

Or, in the perspective I’m going to take, how to make them want you (and your paladin) badly.

Here’s a Shared Topic that’s pretty timely for our class. It was suggested by death knight veteran Shop of Runeforge Gossip and you can see what bloggers from other classes had to say by checking out the grand collection of links thread at Blog Azeroth. Since this post isn’t being written at the last minute (yay!) you can even write about it yourself and post a link to it in that thread.

And while you’re in the Shared Topics forums, please do me a favor and suggest a Topic. PLEEEEEASE!

Right, so I still don’t have a computer. Which means no WoW for screenshots or facts checking. Also means no photo editing, so you’ll be stuck with recycled pictures. I’m sorry. I’ll try to compensate with more dirty jokes.

Meters are Backstabbing Jerks

The day after 4.0.1 dropped, a pally friend whispered me: “We’re still bad at raid healing, and now we’re bad at tank healing too. Anything we can do, every other class can do better. There’s just no point in bringing us to raids anymore.“

Even after the hotfix, it’s no secret paladins are looking terrible on the meters. This may or may not have improved since my forced vacation from WoW. In a guild with a strong, knowledgeable healing team this doesn’t matter (I’ve yet to receive a single negative comment from my guildies) but out in wild wild PuGs with under geared tanks and incompetent co-healers, our weaker output on paper (or is it on screen?) makes us the innocent target of much abuse.

Death to the Mediocre Paladin

It used to sadden me (ok, that’s an understatement, it sent me into a blind rage) when people would complain about paladin healing being too easy before 4.0.1.

What is more accurate is that pre-4.0.1, paladin healing was easy to be mediocre at. Any moron could spam holy light and keep a tank up while looking great on the meters. The good holy paladin, however, saved many teammates with the clever use of their Hands and Holy Shock. Prevented wipes with their cooldowns. Could compensate for dead or incapacitated co-healers by creatively adjusting Beacon and Sacred Shield targets. Being good, now, that took perfect reflexes, excellent judgment and a deep understanding of fight mechanics.

I’ve raided with many, many holy paladins in my time. I can count the good ones on the fingers of a single hand.

Ok, so enough about the past, you say. What about now? How do I make them love me now? And, well, more or less the same as before. Except now mediocrity isn’t enough.

How to Really Shine as a Healadin in 4.0.1

1) Expect the worst. Remember that girl at Blizzcon who said dps shouldn’t be taking damage? She wasn’t a healer. Unless you’re raiding with Ensidia or some other high end guild (and you’re probably not if you’re reading this blog), people are going to be stupid and terribad in every possible way. And you’re going to shut up and appreciate the challenge. After sweating buckets healing a tank standing in the fire (or healing a 5 man tanked by a mage), you’re going turn around and say “thank you, may I have another“. Always come prepared for the worst case scenario. It’s the rationale behind stacking mana you won’t use up, behind keeping a cooldown handy, behind watching everyone’s health bar, not only your assignments’. Your job comes first, but preventing a wipe is a close second and is everyone’s responsibility.

2) Gauge each player. The tank in blues will risk being two shotted and will struggle with aggro. The overgeared hunter will pull aggro all over the place. The priest with ungemmed gear will be dead weight. When you regularly run with the same group, notice patterns in their behaviour. The DK tank who often runs out of line of sight. The bear who forgets to use his cooldowns. The priest who gets tunnel vision. The rogue that always runs to the wrong side. Knowing each player’s individual flaws lets you act preemptively, whether it be positioning yourself strategically, hovering your finger over a cooldown at the right moment or being ready to yell “PERSON A! OTHER SIDE!”

3) Use Your Hands You’ve got four of them! Hand of Protection (which you can read about in depth if you click the link) will keep those clothies up all night. Or at least during trash and adds heavy fights. Hand of Salvation, or should I say Handjob of Salv, will earn you the undying love of at least one dps. (I’ve always wanted a macro that whispers my HoSalv target with “Handjob of Salv on you…enjoy the afterglow!“) Hand of Freedom will shut up many whiny tanks who complain they can’t move. Hand of Sacrifice, though inconveniently needing to be paired with Divine Protection or Divine Shield (depending on circumstances), is still a powerful single target damage reduction tool. You won’t use it often, but when everyone else’s cooldowns are used up and all hope is lost, you’ll learn to love it.

4) Use the right Aura. A common oversight that needed to be mentioned. Your raid will remind you if you forget to remove Crusader Aura, but no one will tell you if you leave Retribution Aura up. Resistance Aura for magic damage fights (you can use it for pretty much all of ICC) and Devotion Aura for physical damage fights. Since you’re now the only person with Aura Mastery, you’ll want to keep up the Aura most useful to the current fight.

5) Blizzard gave you cooldowns for a reason. I love cooldowns. I love cooldowns a lot. I keep pictures of cooldowns in my locker. I cried when they took Divine Sacrifice from me. It leaves us with Aura Mastery as our only real mass raid mitigation ability. If you’re expecting a period of major damage (or of mass stupidity), save it. Otherwise give everyone a break and use it on cooldown. Single target-wise, you’ve got your Hands and also your Lay on Hands. With the new short cooldown, you can use it about once a fight now. It’s perfect for those EEKINEEDASPELLBUTNOTIME moments. Save a tank, lay your hands on them.

6) Bubble for the cure Simultaneous need to move and cast Divine Light? Bubble, cast, move. Don’t abuse Divine Shield, but in a pinch, you’ve got an extra 8 seconds of reaction time.

7) Dispell, dispell, dispell What more do I have to say? If you can dispell it, do so. Unless it’s the abom on Putricide. Don’t dispell that unless a wipe is called.

8.) Remember it’s a healing TEAM. If you know you won’t be able to keep the tank up, get a druid to spare some HoTs. If another healer falters, spare an instant cast on their target while they recover. Notice damage patterns. Share your observations. In a PuG, your efforts won’t always be welcome, but more often than not, they will be.

Finally, remember that timing is everything. What holy paladins are currently missing in mitigation and raw output, we make up for in precision. With short but powerful abilities like Hand of Protection or Divine Shield, with several instant spells that can prevent a two-shot and with a mastery that allows a small buffer to cover casting periods, your timing can make or break your gameplay and be the difference between a kill and a run back.

Get the right spells out and the right times, and you’re a machine. You can’t fix meter-obsessed idiots, but you can prevent a wipe.

A Theorycrafting Stumble

EDIT: And the mystery is solved! Huge thanks to Suicidal Zebra for pointing out where I went wrong and how to fix it. I’m going to leave this post here though, as it’s a good lesson for other number newbies like me who’re trying to figure how this mathematical magic happens.

You number people will love this one.

I promised I’d do some research to find the new spell coefficients for holy paladins. Since the tooltips weren’t updated with the paladin hotfix, I was left with the immense pleasure of doing it all by hand. So that’s what I did. I stood in Darnassus, hit a dummy to stay in combat and recorded my overheal as I showered myself with heals.

I tested all of our spells, approximately 50 hits per spell and was feeling rather smug about myself. Then I got the idea to retest the spells with a different spell power.

Surprise, surprise, they didn’t match up.

The equation: Heal output = Base heal + SP*Coefficient

I used the base values from Wowhead, which, for Holy Light are 2871 to 3197, averaging at 3034.

I made a special blank talent tree to avoid the annoying Conviction talent. I left my retribution glyphs in, but I checked several times to make sure none of them affected healing. Finally, I removed my Ashen Band of Endless Wisdom to avoid the spell power proc. None of the rest of my gear had any procs that affected spell power or healing.

My results with 3427 spell power were the following:

I used the crits as a second sample to compare values. Dividing the crit values by 1.5 produces 6014-6343-6742.

Both samples produced the same coefficients: 0.92 for the minimum value, 0.97 for the average value and 1.0 for the maximum value. While the coefficients don’t exactly line up, I took into consideration that the max and min values are extremes and concluded that 0.97 was my Holy Light coefficient.

Just to be safe, though, I retested it a few days later after removing some clothes. At 1968 spell power, I received the following values:

Dividing the crit by 1.5 produced 5533-5797-6040.

I plugged in my coefficient equation and obtained: 1.35 as minimum, 1.4 as the average and 1.44 as the maximum.

Again the crits and hits produced identical coefficients.

Which leaves me with the following theories:

1) I screwed up somewhere (that’s where you guys come in handy!)

2) There’s diminishing returns to our spell power, at least for Holy Light.

3) The spell power coefficient is now exponential.

4) We received a hotfix between my high spell power and low spell power testing.

I checked #4 by testing Holy Light at full spell power again, this time on the same day as my low spell power test. At 3622 spell power, I received the following:

The crit values, divided by 1.5 are 6111-6358-6579.

The coefficients for this sample are: 0.89 minimum, 0.91 average and 0.93 maximum.

Again, the coefficients for the crits and the hits are almost identical.

These results seem to suggest diminishing returns with spell power, at least for Holy Light: the more spell power we stack, the lower the coefficient.

Thoughts?

Numbers for 4.0.1

EDIT: As of Oct 19, there were changes made to our spells so the coefficient values might not be correct anymore. The tooltips are no longer accurate, so it’s back to the old fashion method. I’m leaving for Blizzcon Wednesday night, so I don’t know when I’ll be able to update this. I’ll try for tomorrow, but chances are it’ll be next week.

I jotted down my numbers for 4.0.1 and thought that others might want them as a reference. Feel free to double check my math.

Stat Conversions
46 mastery rating = 1 point of mastery
1 int = 0.0075% Crit, 1 SP

Spell Coefficients
WoW automatically calculates the range of each spell and displays it in the tooltips now (screenshots after the cut), so I calculated the coefficients by comparing the in-game numbers to the values on Wowhead.
Coefficients work like this: Base heal value + (Spell power*coefficient) = Heal output

Holy Light = 0.33
Divine Light = 1.04
Flash of Light = 0.77
Holy Shock = 0.69
Word of Glory = 0.22 (calculated for 1 point of holy power, assuming coefficient is independent of holy power points)

Things About Healing the Lich King fight as a Paladin that the Lich King Doesn’t Want You to Know

I got a request to write about healing the Lich King fight (as opposed to healing the Lich King- that doesn’t happen, you don’t get to heal the Lich King). I’m a bit of at a loss for words. I don’t have an epic story to tell, my tears of frustration are too fresh to have gained that (melo)dramatic tint of QQ. I don’t have a specific mechanic in mind to focus on. Heck, while I’ve seen the first two phases way more often that I care to admit, phase 3 is a bit of a blurr in my mind. Once you get there, Arthas gets really squishy, really fast, so my memories of that phase are mainly fumbling around for my boss fight notes while pretending to know what I’m doing.

So I reach out to my final (and usually also first) resort: cheap pop psychology/health with a “they’re against us” feel. Things about healing the Lich King fight that the Lich King doesn’t want you to know.

1- You’ll have your hands full with the tanks

I hate infests, I really do. Not because they chew up your team if your discipline priests and raid healers are otherwise occupied with whatever else they may be doing, but because there’s all that deep, glorious damage going on and there’s nothing I can do about it. If I take my attention away from the tanks, the tanks go splat. Chances are you’ll face the same. Despite what Arthas wants you to do, you have to trust your raid healers and keep your attention on the tanks.

2- You can dispel diseases in Phase 1

It’s tough, but you can do it. On both 10 and 25 man, we typically have a disc priest cover dispels, but I’ve done it on occasion. Make sure you have Necrotic Plague showing on your raid frames. Call out whoever gets the Plague so they can move towards the Shambling Horrors pronto. (Assuming here you have all the range stacked together on Phase 1.) Dispel sooner than later. A death due to Plague will likely be a wipe, an extra jump of the Plague is salvageable.

3- During the parts with two tanks, direct heal the Lich King tank, beacon the other tank

More often than not, you’ll have more people hanging around the Lich King, cheerfully in range of your Glyph of Holy Light splash. This is especially true of phase 1. After that, it’s just more convenient and I’m all about convenience. On 25 man, during the single tank parts, I’ll move beacon to myself since constantly swapping beacon around is hassle on top of being a waste of mana and global cooldowns. On 10 man, we don’t tank swap so I keep Arthas’ tank beaconed.

4- Following Arthas’ cooldown timers helps you move to the right spot, at the right time

Your boss fight addon of choice keeps track of Val’kyrs, Defiles and Soul Reaper. I’ve had guildies complain that their timers are off, but I haven’t had any problems. I use Deadly Boss Mods. Have a Holy Light timed to hit right after a Soul Reaper. Right after a Defile, move back to your Val’Kyr position. Right after the Val’Kyr(s) chooses its/their target, position yourself in a way to move fast if you get targeted for Defile, but within Hammer of Justice path of the Val’Kyr(s).

You’ve probably discovered by now that moving too much isn’t very compatible with tank healing, especially on this fight, so you’ll want to limit movement as much as possible by anticipating the upcoming optimal location and timing your moving with Soul Reaper.

5- Raging Spirits don’t have to eat your face

If a Raging Spirit (during the transition phases) spawns near you, you can, you know, move. It can take the tanks a second or two to pick up the Spirits and it takes far less than a second for the Spirits to turn you into pulp. The solution is to be far enough from a newly born Raging Spirit to be able to kite it if you happen to grab healing aggro.

Also, I probably shouldn’t have to say this, but please, oh, please don’t stand in front of Raging Spirits. Also make the sure the tanks aren’t silenced by Soul Shriek. Soul Shriek is a magic debuff and should be showing up on your frames. If doesn’t, then fix your frames. Dispelling Soul Shriek is a priority. You can split dispel jobs between other healers by each claiming a tank, but still, make sure neither tank is ever silenced.

6- Aura Mastery, Hand of Sacrifice, Divine Sacrifice: You have them, you can use them.

Aura Mastery + Devotion Aura can be helpful for phase 1, especially if the Shambling Horrors are getting pissy and the tranquility shot is slow on coming. (Lots of physical damage.)
Aura Mastery + Shadow Resistance can be helpful for Infests and Soul Reaper.
Aura Mastery + Frost Resistance can save slackers making their way to the edge too slowly during transition phases.

Hand of Sacrifice is a saver during Soul Reaper or if you have to run at an unfortunate time (say you’ve got defile and all the other healers are getting carried away by Valks…)
Divine Sacrifice really shines at the beginning of the second transition phase, when you’ll undoubtly have some slackers and space cadets making their way to the edge of the platform waay too late.

7- If you make it to the end of the second transition phase, rejoice.

Or not. I have no tricks for phase 3. My memory’s hazy but I know I really like ending up inside Frostmourne. Makes me feel like a real paladin. Use healing boost cooldowns to up healing without wasting as much mana. On the outside, my guild tanks Arthas along the edge of the ring and we drop our Defiles in the middle. Anticipating the next optimal position works even better in phase 3. Um, and run from Vile Spirits if they chase you. Spirits exploding on your face is unpleasant. Someone once told me that bubbling and running through the Vile Spirits kills them but I’ve never gotten it to work. Most of the time, I’ve already used my bubble as an emergency resort by phase 3 anyway.

AND THERE YOU HAVE IT. All the things about healing the Lich King fight (and not the Lich King) that Arthas didn’t want you to know.

Now go forth and complain about others standing in defiles.

Next best thing to a real defile screenshot

ps. Huge thanks to Hempia for the first screenshot.

Aura Mastery

There’s a lot of things in game, things about my paladin even, that I don’t really stop to think about. Every time I feel like I know my paladin, I discover stuff that I’ve been taking for granted, that I never stopped to wonder if it’s right or wrong.

Aura Mastery is one of those things.

The part about “improve the effect of all other auras by 100%” leads to confusion. Does it affect all other auras that are currently up, or just any aura the paladin casting Aura Mastery happens to have up?

For example, say I have Shadow Resist Aura up and my pally friend has Fire Resist Aura up. I cast Aura Mastery. Will we get a bonus on both Shadow and Fire Resistance or only on Shadow Resistance?

I’ve sorta asked myself the question before. I did a quick search through various guides, but found no answer. Instead of testing it like I should have, I just shrugged it off and forgot about it.

Then yesterday I came across this thread at Plus Heal, where Vine states that Aura Mastery only affects the Aura the casting paladin has up. It reminded me of my past inquiries, so I decided to give it a try.

I tested with a few different paladins. I picked one aura, they picked another. With my character tab open, I hit Aura Mastery.

Sure enough, the stats from my aura increased, but the stats from the other paladin’s aura did not.

So the question revisited:

For example, say I have Shadow Resist Aura up and my pally friend has Fire Resist Aura up. I cast Aura Mastery. Will we get a bonus on both Shadow and Fire Resistance or only on Shadow Resistance?

The answer is: Only on Shadow Resistance.

(Of course, as I go to write this post I discover that both Wowhead and Wowwiki have the answer, but still, nothing like checking it out for yourself.)

What this means in practice

In a fight where Aura Mastery is needed, the paladin(s) with the talent (typically the holy paladin(s)) should be running the aura targeted by Aura Mastery.

Side note about Concentration Aura:

The 3.1 Patch notes read: “Aura Mastery: Now grants anyone affected by Concentration Aura immunity from Interrupt and Silence mechanics”

The spell description in the tool tab (the image at the top of this post) specifies the casting paladin’s Concentration Aura is needed for the silence immunity effect but the patch notes seem to be contradictory. I couldn’t figure out how to properly test this (I don’t know anyone with a horde character willing to silence without killing a pair of paladins for the sake of research.), but judging from how Aura Mastery affects other auras, until someone corrects me, I’m going to assume that the casting paladin’s Concentration Aura is required for the silence immunity effect.

Holy Specs Debate: The Big Picture as of 3.3

Ah, speccing holy! For no other reason but to confuse us, there are two general PvE trends: Holy/Prot, sometimes called Bubble Spec, and Holy/Ret, sometimes called Crit Spec.

Making choices shouldn't be frightning.

There are tiny sparks of discussion floating around the internet, but I have yet to see someone address the issue the way I want it addressed. Ferraro’s holy speccing guide needs to be updated (I think it will be soon). The Holy Paladin does an excellent job of describing both specs, but doesn’t tie them together (here and here). At World of Matticus, @Dtotheug and jeffo briefly skimmed over the topic and left me spectually frustrated (sorry, bad joke, couldn’t help myself). At WoW.com, Chase Christian did a good job on his Holy 101 article, but I’d like to go more in depth. There’s the occasional thread on specs at Plus Heal, but forums are limiting. So I’m taking matters into my own hands.

Here’s the deal with the two holy spec trends.

Bubbles and Crits : An Overview

A Bubble Spec, 51/17/0+3 for example, is all about utility. Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian (DS/DG) are considered must haves for progression raids (read about them in 3.3 here!). Your Sacred Shield, a respectable source of damage mitigation, gets a boost via the Divine Guardian talent as well. The lowered cooldown on Hand of Protection is a favorite of mine for keeping those unruly dps (and occasional overzealous healing priest) under control. Stoicism, Improved Righteous Fury and the extra point in Toughness are lovely to have when you want to do some BGs without having to switch to a PvP spec. While they are considered PvP talents, they also shine at the most crucial moments in raids.

A Crit spec, 51/0/15 +5 for example, maximizes healing output and mana conservation/regen. Depending on what you do with your extra points, you can get 5 to 8% extra crit. What does that mean? It means your mana efficient Flash of Light heal and your instant Holy Shock have a higher chance of hitting harder. Harder is good, we like hard. Ok, the crit also boosts your already crazy powerful Holy Light heals, which will likely all go to overheal. Still, a toe-curling Holy Light crit has triggered many sighs of relief in my WoW life and shouldn’t be disregarded.

Who says crit also says Illumination. The more you crit, the more mana back you get. Everyone likes mana back, especially new 80 healers being tortured by merciless dps standing in junnk and pulling aggro left and right.

Other landmarks in the Crit spec are access to Heart of the Crusader and Improved Blessing of Might, should your raid be depending on you to contribute these buffs.

For discussion on debatable or “optional” talents, scroll down some! Also inserting cut due long long long post.

The Holy Paladin : Your Beacon and You

EDIT: Reviewed for 3.3 and up to date!

I wrote this for my guild since we had a few new holy paladins that we’ve been trying to drag through Ulduar before they even got to heal their first 5 man. Everything in here is very basic, but I thought it might be helpful for other new holy paladins as well, or for other classes who’d like to know the basic mechanics of paladin healing.

As Holy Paladins, our healing technique revolves mainly around the appropriate use of Beacon of Light. Going through stats, watching grid (yes, I keep track of beacons, even when I’m not healing), I’m saddened to see Beacon mistreated and, more often, neglected. While healing is very situation-dependent, as a general rule, if you’re not keeping beacon up an entire fight, you’re only using about half of your potential.

Note that this concerns beacon in 3.2 and beyond. Beacon mechanics were different in the past, but since this isn’t a paladin history lesson, I’m not going to talk about pre-3.2 beacon.

Lets take a closer look at this beacon thingy:

The target becomes a Beacon of Light to all targets within a 60 yard radius. Any heals you cast on those targets will also heal the Beacon for 100% of the amount healed. Only one target can be the Beacon of Light at a time. Lasts 1 min.

If you’re not squealing right now, you didn’t read it properly.

60 yard radius : The typical range of a heal is 40 yards. This heals your target as long as you’re healing someone within 60 yards of them. Excited yet? Let me go over this again. We’re facing Hodir. The MT (your target) charges and is out of range long enough to be pounded into the ground. BUT! You had put beacon on MT, so you can just dump a heal on castery-guy-next-to-you, and MT is getting healed. Beacon just makes your arm so much longer! Other fights where this comes in handy are Emalon (as a holy pally you can pretty much solo heal it on 10 if the group is decent), Iron Council and the trash to Aury.

Will also heal the Beacon for 100% of the amount healed: One Hundred Percent. ONE HUNDRED. This counts overheal as well. If your heal lands on X for 16k, regardless of effective heal, your beacon is healed for 16k. Two heals for the price of one, always. This makes us disgustingly OP. On single tank fights (think Hodir), we tank heal while raid healing, on 2 tank fights (think Gormok), we’ve got them both covered. Note that if you directly heal your beacon target, he (or she) will only be healed once (not twice), which is why you should spread the Light’s love around.