holy-paladin-tier-12

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  • The Light and How to Swing It: Patch 4.2 shakes up our heals

    by 
    Chase Christian
    Chase Christian
    05.22.2011

    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 wasn't very happy with the first round of notes for patch 4.2, as they contained several holy paladin nerfs. I had originally thought that Blizzard's developers were just trying to keep holy paladin mana in line, but it looks like they actually had a few other changes up their collective sleeves. We've learned about several new mechanics that shift the balance of power between our healing spells and even offset much of the expected loss of power. Our new set bonuses help us recover some of that lost mana and also boost the effectiveness of our expensive heals. While Blizzard states that class power is not designed around set bonuses, our potency is still affected by them. In addition, some key talent adjustments have the potential to completely change the roles of our heals, including letting Flash of Light be instant-cast (with a proc) and significantly bolstering the effectiveness of Holy Light when used in a Beacon of Light environment (which is always). These are the type of exciting patch notes that I can get behind, as they are aimed at adding diversity to our relatively stale lineup of direct heals.