Tag Archives: paladin

Infusion of Light Not Finished Either

Ghostcrawler just posted on the Paladin forums, confirming that Infusion of Light was nerfed for arena balance (which, let’s face it, we all knew anyway). She followed up with “I know it can be frustrating when a PvP concern ends up making a talent less useful for PvE. We have some ideas of what we’d like to do with it though.”

This is heartening; I just hope that however they change IoL – or the Holy Tree in general – ends up giving us some mobility back. My favourite suggestion so far is to have IoL proc an instant Flash of Light instead, or for it to reset the cooldown on Holy Shock. Either would be fine; it’s the division between “instant” and “1 second cast time” that’s the important one, not the division between “1 second cast time” and “2 second cast time”.

(Tangentially, I’d happily give away all PvP content in WoW to stop PvE stuff getting balanced around it.)

Drama and Woe Averted in Healadin Land

So, beta build 9014 landed on us overnight, and the paladin forums exploded in a storm of weeping – and pretty justified, too, I feel. Heck, people were upset enough that the main forum thread about it grew 16 pages overnight.

The two key changes were:

  • Infusion of Light no longer gives instant Holy Lights. Instead, it reduces cast time by 1 second.
  • Divine Plea is now confirmed to return 25% of mana, last 15 seconds, and reduce healing by 100% while active.

Infusion of Light is still nerfed – which is very disappointing, because it was the only talent that really felt fun – but Ghostcrawler has just posted that Divine Plea will be changed to a 20% healing debuff, instead of 100%, but DP will now be dispellable to compensate for it which seems like a pretty good tradeoff to me.

Somehow I managed to get the first response on the thread, but as I posted further down, I think it’s a pretty smart change.

Until now, the premiere healing spec for paladins post-3.0 has been a Holy/Ret hybrid build, 37/0/34, which goes deep enough in Holy to get Infusion of Light and deep enough in Ret to get Judgements of the Wise. This is largely because anything deeper in Holy is fairly average – the 51-point talent, Beacon of Light, is situationally groovy but not a must-have (it’s hideously expensive, and doesn’t proc off overheal), and everything between Infusion of Light and Beacon of Light ranges from ho-hum (Divine Illumination) to downright awful (Sacred Cleansing).

Making Divine Plea suddenly pretty awesome for healadins is a very smart choice. It means we’ll be regenning a decent chunk of mana in PvE every minute. Which means we don’t feel compelled to take JotW any more, because we won’t have mana woes that necessitate it. Which means we’re more likely to go deeper in Holy to take Beacon of Light (or Bacon of Light, as Ghostcrawler calls it) because JotW doesn’t look so ridiculously awesome next to it any more.

Holy Paladins in Wrath: New Spells

Note: this post contains information on Wrath of the Lich King. And in addition, it’s a bit speculative because it’s discussing things that may still be tweaked, nerfed, buffed, folded, spindled, mutilated, digested, adjusted, rejected, abolished, emasculated, disembowelled, inflated or otherwise amended. This is a beta, after all.

There’s been a lot of talk around the blogosphere about the changes to existing Paladin spell mechanics: in particular, the way situational Blessings are becoming Hand spells, and others are disappearing altogether. Now it’s time to take a look at what’s new, not just what’s different. I’ve held off on this post, since so much has been in flux, but now that Holy is officially not likely to change too much more, let’s take a look at what’s in store.

Continue reading Holy Paladins in Wrath: New Spells

Healadin Glyphs – A First Look and a Revelation

Note: this post contains information on Wrath of the Lich King.

Inscription is still being tuned, and a lot of glyphs are incomplete or non-existent – not to mention we haven’t seen a single Minor Glyph yet for most classes.

However, some of the existing Glyphs are worth taking a look at; of course, they may change before Inscription goes live. And some of the glyphs lead to some very interesting conclusions about possible playstyles when Wrath goes live.

Continue reading Healadin Glyphs – A First Look and a Revelation

Holy Paladin Raiding Consumables – Revised

This is a revision and update of this post, incorporating some items I’d overlooked the first time around (and with thanks to commenters who reminded me about some of them). Thus, I present: the Revised Guide to Holy Paladin Consumables.

Two things to note:

  1. I’m recommending consumables that give you a good balance of stats, where feasible. If you’re very well-geared in one area and need to boost a specific stat, you can make your own choices.
  2. My recommendations are specific for holy paladins. If you’re a priest, all those +Spirit consumables I wrote off are great for you. If you’re a protection paladin trying to heal, anything with spell crit is relatively useless and you’re looking for all the mp5 you can get. Et cetera.

Elixirs: Battle Elixirs

Adept’s Elixir – the increase to spelldamage is irrelevant, but this elixir gives a boost to both throughput and mana restoration. For holy paladins, this one’s a show-stopper.

Elixir of Healing Power – this one’s a good alternative for situations where you just need healing oomph, and nuts to the regen. In other situations, it’s inferior to Adept’s Elixir, but better than nothing.

Elixirs: Guardian Elixirs

Elixir of Major Mageblood – the standout choice for paladins, who tend to suffer over passive in-combat regen.

Mageblood Potion – it may be a pre-TBC recipe using Azerothian mats, but this is surprisingly effective as an emergency replacement for Elixirs of Major Mageblood.

Elixir of Draenic Wisdom – inferior to Mageblood elixirs, as paladins derive no benefit from Spirit, but 30 Int is still nothing to sneer at.

Flasks

Flask of Mighty Restoration – again, the standout choice for paladins. Shattrath Flask of Mighty Restoration is a good alternative if you have the relevant rep to buy it (Exalted with Cenarion Expedition, Sha’tar, and Scryer/Aldor) and you’re raiding the appropriate zones.

Flask of Distilled Wisdom – again, inferior to the regen-boosting Restoration flask, but an acceptable alternative for the all-around boost to healing, mana pool and spell crit.

Unstable Flask of the Elder for Gruul’s Lair raids; this is superior for paladins to the Unstable Flask of the Physician, although that’s certainly better than nothing.

Weapon Oils

Brilliant Mana Oil – arguably the best choice, with a balance of mp5 and +heal. Unfortunately it’s an old-world recipe (requiring Zandalar faction). Brilliant Wizard Oil is a good alternative for paladins seeking crit rather than mp5, also requiring Zandalar faction to learn.

Superior Mana Oil – inferior to the Brilliant Mana Oil, but much more readily available. Superior Wizard Oil is also a good option; although the tooltip says “spell damage”, it does apply to healing as well.

Foods

Blackened Sporefish – for mana regen and survivability. The mp5 boost is small enough, though, that this is on-par with:

Golden Fishsticks – which has a really good healing buff. The Spirit is useless for paladins, but 44 +Heal alone is nothing to sneeze at.

Skullfish Soup – slightly weaker for most healadins than the other two buff foods, as it gives less than 1% crit which is weaker than 44 Heal or 8 mp5 unless you’re really into crit-stacking. Still better than nothing, though!

Any stamina food, such as Feltail Delight (which is the one I use most often). The spirit does little for a paladin, but an extra 300 health is always welcome, and 20 Stamina foods are common enough that you should keep this up pretty much all the time unless you need one of the better food buffs for a boss fight.

Potions

I won’t list them all, as one of my earliest blog posts was a guide to mana and healing potion types; however, these are the ones I specifically recommend:

Super Mana Potion, or the stacks-to-20 version, the Mana Potion Injector. Your basic mana potion; you will, at times, drink these like water. You can replace these with any of the alternatives I list in the linked post, of course. And if you’re raiding somewhere specific, don’t forget zone-specific potions like Bottled Nethergon Energy or Blue Ogre Brew as very cheap alternatives.

Super Healing Potion and the Healing Potion Injector. You don’t need to take nearly as many of these to a raid, but you should always have at least some on you for emergencies.

What about Super Rejuvenation Potions, or the Alchemist-only equivalent Mad Alchemist’s Potions? Carry one stack, but don’t use them unless you gotta. Remember that healing received will top up your mana via spiritual attunement, so if you’re healing yourself with a pot, that’s a lost opportunity for mana regen.

Obviously, don’t stint yourself on healing (self-heals, pots and healthstones) at the expense of other healers’ mana pools, but if there’s ambient healing available (Leader of the Pack, Vampiric Embrace, etc) and you’re not likely to take a big spike of damage you’re better off taking advantage of those to restore your health, and taking an ordinary mana potion instead.

Scrolls

These aren’t essential, as they don’t stack with player buffs, but they are handy for situations where rebuffing is unlikely (for instance, after receiving a battle-rez) or where you’re missing a particular buffing class from a raid (not uncommon in 10-mans). You can safely ignore Strength and Spirit scrolls, but scrolls of Intellect are always good for a boost to your mana pool. Scrolls of Stamina, Protection, and Agility can also be useful if you’re expecting to get hit.

Other Items
Note that these all share a cooldown.

Demonic Rune – it’s only a small amount of mana restoration, but it’s enough for 5-8 Flash Heals (and causes you damage, thereby giving you the opportunity to regain mana via Spiritual Attunement). Demonic Runes drop from satyr demons in Azeroth (for instance, in Felwood and Azshara); Dark Runes are a BoE equivalent you can get from Scholo or the AH.

Charged Crystal Focus – available from the AH in their uncharged state, or farmed from mobs around the Ogri’la daily quest hub. Excellent for when you don’t have a healthstone handy; even if you buy it from the AH it’s likely to be cheaper than a repair bill.

Nightmare Seeds are gathered by Herbalists from Nightmare Vine nodes, but can be used by anyone. They’re on a separate 3-minute cooldown, and they’re useful for those moments where you need a health buffer to accommodate a damage spike without dying. Useful if the fight involves spiky raid damage (such as Naj’entus in Black Temple).

There are some profession-specific extras, as well: Fel Blossoms are good for herbalists, as a damage shield isn’t affected by healing reductions (from mortal-strike-y effects); Dense Stone Statues for Jewelcrafters heal you for 1250 healing across 25 ticks, but it counts as healing rather than ‘health restore’, so it does give you a small amount of mana back as well.

Personally?
I carry: 20 Healing Potion Injectors, 20 Mana Potion Injectors, 10 Mad Alchemist’s Potions, 1 stack of each type of elixir, 1 stack of Mighty Restoration flasks, 10 charges of Brilliant Mana Oil, 1 stack of Blackened Sporefish and 1 stack of Stamina food, 2 stacks of Dense Stone Statues and 1 stack of Charged Crystal Foci. Oh, and a stack of Intellect V scrolls.

Spellpower and You: Gearing in WotLK

Note: this post contains information on Wrath of the Lich King. However, it’s not really ‘spoilers’ as such, and I recommend you read it anyway in the interests of being prepared.

One of the big changes in Wrath of the Lich King is a revamp of gearing and the way gear stats are handled. This is for a number of reasons – such as making hybrids more flexible and making gear pieces more useful – but here’s the basic summary for holy paladins (and, well, all healers and casters).

The Theory

  • Spell crit, spell hit and spell haste ratings are disappearing. Crit, hit and haste ratings now affect both spellcasting and physical abilities.
  • +heal and +dmg/heal ratings are disappearing, and being replaced with spellpower, which affects both spell damage and healing.
  • Existing items with +healing are being translated to spellpower stats instead; it’s not a direct 1:1 translation, so on Wrath Day you’ll end up with a lot less spellpower than your current +heal.
  • This is not a problem, because other mechanics are being revamped to account for it (for instance, healing spells are getting a much bigger boost from spellpower).
  • Existing items with +dmg/heal are being translated to spellpower as well, at close to a 1:1 transition.

The Practice

On Wrath Day, you’ll see a big change in your stats: no longer will you have Spell Crit or Spell Haste, and your giant +Heal will turn into a much smaller Spellpower number.

Let’s take a look at a sample healadin with a fairly standard 42/19/0 build (based off my own character), Here’s a warcrafter.net sandbox showing the paladin in a fully gemmed and enchanted set of Karazhan gear (including some gearing choices I wouldn’t actually make, but I’m sticking to the Kara-only guideline).

Examplia, as we might call her, has the following vitals:

  • Health: 7,717
  • Mana: 10,427
  • Healing: 1734
  • Spell Damage: 703
  • Mana Per 5: 113
  • Spell Crit: 16.34%

On Wrath Day, she’ll have the following:

  • Health, Mana, Mana Per 5: unchanged
  • Spellpower: 1078
  • Crit: 16.34%

So, you can see that her base stats and regen remain unchanged, while her +Healing turns into Spellpower at a ratio of about 1.6 : 1. Her spell damage increases, which means her effectiveness as a shockadin may also increase (depending on how much benefit Seals and Judgements will derive from spellpower, which is still being revised).

(Remember, of course, that Blizzard may revise items differently depending on the gear in question. Examplia is wearing Karazhan gear, which was designed two years ago when The Burning Crusade was being developed; characters in gear from Sunwell Plateau or badge purchases from the Isle of Quel’Danas may see different tweaks, as Blizzard’s developers had eighteen months’ more experience when developing those items.)

The Effect

What does this mean? Well… we don’t entirely know yet. (All that math for nothing!) Blizzard have said that the change of condensation of +dmg and +heal into spellpower won’t reduce healing output; I haven’t seen any equivalent statements about the effect on shockadin DPS, so it could yet be an improvement, reduction or no real change at all.

What we do know, however, is that existing gear will be more versatile, and upcoming gear will be useful to more people.

Compare a couple of items:

Previously a healing shield and its DPS equivalent, in Wrath of the Lich King these items will be all but identical – which means if you only ever got one, now it will do dual-duty. This effect can be seen in a lot of other places as well:

As you can imagine, once healing and spell damage are condensed into Spellpower a lot of DPS caster items suddenly become excellent for holy paladins. Compare the Karazhan rings; all of a sudden the Violet Signet of the Archmage is suddenly better for a holy paladin than the Violet Signet of the Grand Restorer, as it has Crit Rating instead of Spirit.

Obviously, this effect will become less important after Wrath Day as people start doing quests, running instances, and upgrading their gear – new caster/healer gear in Wrath only comes in one flavour, and that’s Spellpower. However, the better your gear is on Wrath Day, the longer you’ll take to upgrade it, and the easier you’ll find questing and instancing in the meantime.

In closing, I note that I expect paladin gearing-up to be bunches of fun at level 80. No more getting stuck with stacking mp5 until you hit Tier 5; now all those caster Crit/Spellpower items will be just as tasty for us!

Change is afoot.

Firstly, apologies for the week-long silence – I’ve had family staying with me, and computer time has been rather limited.

Note: This post contains spoilers for Wrath of the Lich King.

So, the WotLK beta is open, and there are a lot of changes coming to light. I need to spend some time thinking before I post anything substantial, but for now let’s look at a few points relevant to pallies, particularly holy pallies. I’ve boldfaced the really notable stuff of interest to endgame healadins. Observe the giant nerf to Blessing of Salvation. I’m trying not to knee-jerk QQ about it – it can only really be analysed in the context of WotLK gameplay and game mechanics – but man, that’s a complete evisceration.

Continue reading Change is afoot.

A Raiding Paladin UI

I’ve been meaning to make one of these posts for ages, so here goes:

A Guide To My UI

First up, here’s a shot of my UI, full-size, for comparison’s sake. Note that I’ve resized it down to 1200×750, so you can actually see it onscreen; I play at 1920×1200.

Now, let’s take a look at it piece-by-piece:

Sailan's UI

1. FuBar and a whole swag of FuBar plugins. This provides me with configuration menus for a lot of my other addons, and informational displays on all kinds of things (reputation progress, bag space, who I’m set to assist, and lots more). Similar to TitanBar, but much less memory-intensive.

2. BunchOfBars, my raid frames. Excellent for healers, this mod is compatible with the LibHealComm-3.0 library (which means, in practice, that you can see incoming heals being cast by other healers if they’re using BunchOfBars, Grid, VisualHeal or similar mods).

3. PallyPower, a blessings manager for Paladins that allows you to set Greater Blessings by class and single Blessings by individual, and then recast your set blessings repeatedly with just a few mouse clicks. Even better, the config allows you to set blessings for other pallies in the raid too, making sure that every blessing is covered and no-one’s doubling up. Almost essential for pallies.

4. ag_UnitFrames, also known as AGUF, which I use for my party frames…

5. …and AGUF again for my unit frames. Here you can see that on the left of my action bars, I have my own unit frame; above it is my focus frame, and above that is the target of my focus unit. On the right of the action bars is my target’s unit frame, above that is my target’s target, and above that is the target’s target’s target. (Confusing, yes? In practice: if I have the MT targeted, he’ll be my target, the boss will show above him as the MT’s target, and then the MT will show at the top as the boss target. If that top bar changes to another player, it means the MT has lost agro and someone else needs some healing – usually urgently. ;-)

6. Informational bars. The top two are PallyTimerFu, below them are main tank and tank target displays, courtesy of oRa.

7. Action bars! Trinity Bars 2.0. Others swear by Bongos or Bartender, but I love Trinity, despite the fact that it’s not an Ace mod. What I love about it more than other action bar mods: you can set each bar’s number of buttons individually, which means I can have a five-button bar here and a ten-button bar there with no problems. It also has some neat other features, as you’ll see:

7A: These are my “use in combat” consumables: health and mana pots (and various specialty variants), healthstones and charged crystal foci, bandages.

7B: My main spell bars. The square buttons at the top are activatable effects (mostly trinkets, with a macro and a cooldown spell for good measure). The round buttons below them are spell buttons. Yes, pallies have a lot of spells – and that doesn’t even include those spells that are bound to keypresses only, with no position on the actionbars. (Again, something handled by Trinity.) The class bar of auras is positioned vertically down the left side.

7C: My “tank emergency” bar. This bar is set, via Trinity, so that all spells on it are automatically cast on my focus, regardless of who I have targeted. I’ll usually set focus on someone likely to need emergency heals – usually the tank, sometimes someone else with a critical role. The bar has my “holy shit” heal macro, cleanse, Blessing of Protection and Lay On Hands, which means if I see the essential person is in trouble I can get a one-click heal onto them without having to acquire them as a target first. On Australian latency, that can be a wipe-saver.

7D: Miscellaneous crap. Mount macro, hearthstone, tradeskills, food/drink/elixirs, that kind of stuff.

8. ElkBuffBars for buffs and debuffs. Buffs go to the left of the minimap, debuffs and weapon buffs go to the right (although I don’t have any in this screenshot).

9. The minimap, as repositioned and squarified by SimpleMiniMap.

10. Chat windows, managed by Prat. As a guild leader, raid healing lead and master looter, I use a lot of chat – as you can imagine. I manage this by splitting different channels into different windows. The left-most window is for guildchat, officer chat, and custom channels (healer channel, tank channel, some server-wide custom channels, etc). The middle window is for raidchat, party chat and battleground chat. The right-most window is for general chat, trade chat and whispers – ie, it’s the one I can usually safely ignore unless I hear the ‘whisper’ alert sound.

Others: You can also see a Recount window open to ‘healing done’ on the right hand side of my UI. Normally I don’t have Recount open, but this screenshot was taken during a PuG raid and I was curious to see how I rated compared with the other healers. (Top on healing, top on overheals – such is the price of Aussie latency! ;-)) I also use a number of other addons that aren’t really visible on my screen, but I still wouldn’t want to play without them. These include:

  • ItemRack inventory manager (not an Ace mod). Others swear by Closet Gnome or Outfitter, but I still prefer ItemRack.
  • BigWigs raid boss warnings, and its 5-man cousin LittleWigs.
  • ACP Addon Control Panel, for activating and deactivating addons without having to log out.
  • ClearFont2 font changer.
  • SunnViewport, for the black section underlying my chat windows.
  • AtlasLoot loot reference mod.
  • Cartographer: the best map addon ever.
  • Quartz casting bar.
  • BankItems and Possessions inventory managers, great for those of us who are packrats. BankItems is better for browsing what you have on a character, Possessions is better for searching by text string when you know you have something, you just don’t remember where you put it (or which alt you mailed it to).
  • Parrot: scrolling combat text of awesomeness.
  • TradeSkill Info: a handy browser of tradeskill recipes, filterable by name, profession, what your characters know, etc. Very useful for looking up crafting mats.
  • TankPoints helps you assess tanking gear by giving each item a points value based on how much effective health it grants. Invaluable for tanks and occasional tanks.

There are others I use, but those are the awesomest – the ones I wouldn’t want to do without.

Link Round-Up II

Some useful links for your day, in bite-sized chunks:

Bre of Gun Lovin’ Dwarf Chick has a very useful list of pre-raid gear guides, by class and spec. She’s kieeping it updated, too.

Seri of World of Snarkcraft has a great guide to reputations. It’s aimed at priests, but there’s a very useful roundup of all the major Northrend factions in there as well. Wynthea over at World of Matticus just made a similar post, too, so between those two your rep-guide needs should be covered.

Last week, Anna of Too Many Annas posted a great rant about why dual specs aren’t the answer to healer DPS woes. I echo that — when I gripe about holy paladin DPS, people feel compelled to point out that healers shouldn’t be able to do great DPS. All I want, though, is parity with the other freshly-DPS-buffed healing specs.

There’s a meme circulating the WoW-blogosphere at the moment: the noble and virile Ratshag, of Need More Rage tagged me to answer: who was the first commenter on your first post? Well, my first commenter was my old friend Leafshine, welcoming me to the ranks of WoW bloggers. It’s his fault that I’m WoW-blogging at all, in fact.

Although I love healing, it’s not without its problems and frustrations. This thread on the official forums (relinked from a recent post by Anna) does an excellent job of summarizing the main frustrations of the role.

New Blog Recommendation: I’m really enjoying Binary Colors, from a RPing paladin on Feathermoon-US. I don’t RP in-game, although I do think about how in-game events would affect my characters, and I’m a veteran player of pen-and-paper RPGs. Binary Colors is, I’m finding, insightful and interesting and funny.