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The Light and How to Swing It: Deciphering holy paladin talents
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 comments or awesome holy paladin screenshots you have. I was planning to talk about how Conviction was broken and only affected self-healing, but Blizzard's crew has hotfixed that bug already. Conviction now grants the proper healing bonus when we heal anyone. The end result is that our healing done is going to go up significantly. I'm actually wondering whether or not we're going to see a nerf because of it. A 9% boost to healing done is certainly enough to throw off whatever balance we had achieved with the other healing classes' performance. Between the first time I heard of the Conviction issue and the recent hotfix, I have respecced about a dozen times. There are so many viable talent options available for our final flex points that I simply can't decide what I want to pick up. I couldn't even make up my mind when I had three free talent points after dropping Conviction from my build. I love the flexibility that we have when speccing our holy paladins.
The Light and How to Swing It: Fresh patch 4.0.6 PTR notes for holy paladins
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, or with any screenshots of huge LoH crits. When Wrath was released, there were just over a dozen bosses available to fight immediately. Most of them were found in Naxxramas, which fell to the superguilds so quickly that not all of them were even level 80 yet. A few achievements like A Poke in the Eye and the first "hard mode" of Sartharion with three drakes were all that the talented raiders had to keep them company during the first few months of Northrend. By the time that Ulduar was released, nearly everyone was clamoring for new content. Cataclysm's launch hasn't shared the same fate. With heroic raids now the de facto form of progression and miles of new non-raiding content to explore, the content available at release has definitely lasted far longer. Even the most difficult bosses are still not on farm for the big guilds. Blizzard's developers have used this opportunity to start working on the first major patch after Cataclysm's release, which is of course includes plenty of holy paladin changes to keep us on our toes.
The Light and How to Swing It: One heal or two
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. On Sundays, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email Chase with any questions you want answered, like how to party with Thrall. There's no need to be ashamed. Many people have felt how you're feeling right now. Let's get it out in the open: You're concerned about mana efficiency. Running out of mana is not a nightmare -- it's a reality. If you choose the wrong heals, your mana pool plummets. Being inefficient with your heals isn't the status quo; it's a death sentence. Mana went from our least important stat to our most thought-of concern. I have been working on different techniques to refine my healing strategy within the confines of our new healing paradigm, and I have come up with a method for saving mana and maximizing your healing done. One of the mechanics that makes holy paladins unique from other healers is our talent Protector of the Innocent, while another is Beacon of Light. When we combine the two abilities, we can achieve far more healing than would normally be possible through the method of splitting holy power points.
The Light and How to Swing It: Holy paladins make a trade
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 about how Blizzard finally fixed the Light of Dawn animation. I'm not going to sugar-coat it: Holy paladins saw a massive stealth nerf delivered recently. Tower of Radiance, once the pinnacle of a holy paladin's healing strategy, was reduced to rubble. ToR previously granted us an extra holy power point any time we used a core heal on our Beaconed target. The new version only works with Divine Light and Flash of Light, our two most expensive heals. Our holy power generation mechanics basically limit us to one holy power point every 6 seconds. Daybreak can help by letting us snag extra Holy Shocks, but not in a predictable manner. Tower of Radiance allowed us to control our holy power generation by using Holy Light to pick up a few extra points whenever we wanted. The key to Tower of Radiance's potency was the cheap price of Holy Light. If we needed extra AoE healing, we could generate holy power points and then spend them on Light of Dawn. When low on mana, we could use our cheap Holy Lights to build points towards a zero-mana Word of Glory. ToR gave us the flexibility to do something productive with our Holy Lights during downtime and allowed us to exploit our free holy power-based heals. To make matters worse, the developers nerfed us from the other direction, by lowering Light of Dawn's potency by 40%.
The Light and How to Swing It: Pre-raid gear for holy paladins
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. On Sundays, 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 I'm wielding a stick in my off hand. Has your holy paladin reached level 85 yet? I was able to dedicate enough time to finish up the job, and I've been hard at work ever since. While Holy Shocking and Exorcising my way to the level cap was a blast, we have to get back to reality. Shockadins aren't really viable at any competitive level once 85, and so we're going to revert to our healing ways. I changed my spec into a more traditional holy build and got to work running dungeons and heroics. I even got an opportunity to knock out a couple of raid bosses, which was eye-opening. With Blizzard's new in-game version of GearScore controlling your ability to enter dungeons or heroic groups, it's important that your holy paladin is geared properly and quickly. We don't have the same infinite mana pool to lean on, and Holy Light's throughput is maybe a quarter of what it was at level 80. When we first reach the level cap, we're feeble and frail. Our old epics are meaningless, and we're left scrambling for any gear we can find. If we take a bit of time to plan out our gearing strategy, we can apply a method to this madness.
The Light and How to Swing It: The relationship between intellect and spirit
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. "Stack intellect." All you had to do was ask any question about holy paladins in Wrath, and you'd receive that infamous answer. Intellect was the solution to all of our problems, and it was through intellect that we conquered our corner of the healing game. Intellect allowed us to cast indefinitely without ever running our mana wells dry, and intellect allowed us to cast our most powerful heal without even a moment's pause. It was a matter of fact. Holy paladins would simply overheal in massive amounts, and nobody cared. I suppose intellect was only half of the problem. Holy Light clearly scaled too well as our gear improved. It was meant to be expensive but powerful, a necessary evil for dire situations. Once the scare of running out of mana was debunked, there was no reason not to use the most potent tool in our arsenal. While the developers may still blame the imbalances in Icecrown Citadel on the extra tiers of gear they had to add to accommodate heroic raid encounters, when an errant DPS class' performance scaled out of control, they were quickly reined in. Holy paladins' power was left unchecked because we were merely healers. The hammer would drop on us in Cataclysm, anyway.
The Light and How to Swing It: Leveling your new Sunwalker
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 how awesome tauren paladins are. After The Shattering hit Azeroth, it was clear that the world was never going to be the same. Entire zones were torn asunder, and everyone who can take up arms to combat Deathwing has stood up to fight. The Horde recently inducted the Sunwalkers into the fold, and they're eagerly training in the way of the Light. Now players won't be stuck with blood elves when they want to play the paladin class. If you've been on the general forums in the past few days, you've seen some of the clever names that people have come up with for their tauren paladins. Retbull (gives you wings), Skim (Light milk), and Bovinity (divine cows) were among my personal favorites. I decided to start a new tauren paladin myself, figuring I could heal my way through the low-level dungeons and try out the new starting quests and zones at the same time. It's been years since I've played a new paladin, and it was time for a refresher course.
The Light and How to Swing It: Real numbers for future shockadins
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. On Sundays, 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 how awesome the Draenei casting animations are. I have heard from a plethora of patient paladins who are very excited about the new shockadin spec. Holy paladins have traditionally missed out on the fun of dealing ranged damage due to various issues with our abilities and talents. Now that Blizzard added some support for the build, we are now tasked with figuring out if it's even viable and how exactly to best play the spec. We're discovering new territory here, boldly going where no paladin has gone before. While we're sure that holy paladin DPS is going to be at an all-time high no matter what, the question is exactly how powerful we're going to be. Luckily for us, the Cataclysm beta servers are still active, so I took the opportunity to run some tests on exactly what type of damage we can expect to be doing. Obviously, if we're just killing mobs for a daily quest, time isn't exactly of the essence. However, if we want Exorcism and Holy Shock to be viable options in PvP or a raid environment, their damage needs to be substantially larger than it has been in the past.
The Light and How to Swing It: Light of Dawn's latest rebirth
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 how to pull off an awesome dive heal, as pictured above. Gregg, my fellow paladin columnist, and I like to make jokes about Blizzard's strategy for naming paladin abilities. Holy This, Something Retribution, and Divine That. Their creativity can only stretch so far, as paladins have a very defined set of lore, and there are only so many words that relate to their holy upbringing. Paladins have the additional downside of being a hybrid class, and so this means that the number of available ability names depletes faster than ever. Blizzard changed Healing Hands' name to Holy Radiance, which is probably a great move, considering that we already had a heal named Lay on Hands. Duplicate names didn't stop Blizzard's team from christening our second AoE heal with the same name as one of the game's most prestigious achievements and a title, Light of Dawn. Light of Dawn itself isn't safe from the instability, either. Its function went from a simple heal that was boosted by holy power, to a regular AoE heal that had no target cap, and it has even been changed again. The new version of Light of Dawn is a smart heal that consumes only holy power, which completely changes its functionality and usefulness.
The Light and How to Swing It: The return of the shockadin
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 how Holy Shock can change your life.. I still remember my very first character. After logging in on the first day WoW was released, I chose a paladin at the character select screen, hoping to embody the role of "holy crusader." I started leveling up my character, and once I hit level 10, I had to decide on a talent specialization. I was waffling between retribution and protection, until I saw holy's 31-point talent. Holy Shock called out to me. It was the only ranged attack that a paladin could obtain, and I was certain it would lead me to victory. Consecration's place in the tree was just icing on the cake. Unfortunately, once I hit level 40 and obtained Holy Shock, I realized just how awful it was for DPS. I never played that paladin again. We're getting two new AoE heals with Cataclysm's arrival, something we've desperately needed for years. Our holy talent tree is getting a revamp, and much of the clutter it previously contained is disappearing. We're seeing numerous quality of life improvements like the extension to Beacon of Light's duration and a newly revamped Lay on Hands. All of these changes are nice, but there's one that has me even more excited. Blizzard has granted us every single element necessary to facilitate a caster DPS holy build, featuring Holy Shock as the signature spell. While rumors and whispers of the shockadin spec have been circling around since WoW's release, it is now a reality.
The Light and How to Swing It: Holy paladins are all about throughput
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 how to pull off an awesome dive heal, as pictured above. Blizzard has tried to give holy paladins so many interesting tools. We saw our first absorption effect in our level 80 ability, Sacred Shield. Its potency was limited due to the proc mechanics involved, and once it was limited to a single target, it became just another buff we kept active. The dev team tried giving us not one but two different HoTs. The first was via the old Glyph of Flash of Light, which took our weakest heal and cut its up-front healing in half in exchange for a weak HoT. It simply didn't make sense. The second HoT we received came from the interaction between Infusion of Light and Sacred Shield, which would put a HoT on our SS target when we used FoL on him. While more powerful than the last iteration, it was still far too weak to make any difference, and its limitation of a single target really made it untenable. Our ability to prevent damage via absorption effects or proactively heal damage via HoTs was basically nil, and holy paladins relied on massive throughput to solve every healing dilemma. It looks like that model hasn't changed today.
The Light and How to Swing It: How to heal before Cataclysm
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. Blizzard's development team really has its hands full. They're working on implementing some of the largest class changes ever introduced, while also trying to maintain some semblance of balance at both level 80 and 85. While a few things have fallen through the cracks (like the DPS of every plate class after the patch initially launched), most players are able to adapt to the changing environment. We've all been busy regemming our gear, reforging to the stats that are the best for us, and ensuring that we've gotten rid of all of the mail healing gear we stole from shaman before patch 4.0.1. I've covered several of the upcoming holy paladin changes in detail and also talked quite a bit about some of the future healing strategies that we'll be implementing. Unfortunately for us, holy paladins are stuck between a rock and a hard place right now. We're without Holy Light's old potency to carry us, and with Holy Radiance eluding us until level 83, we're in a pretty weak place. We used to have Judgement of Light and a full 100 percent Beacon of Light to carry us on the healing meters. Now, we've got resto druids dropping Efflorescence patches all over the raid while we're praying to hit even a handful of targets with Light of Dawn. What can we do in the meantime to keep us effective while waiting for Cataclysm?
The Light and How to Swing It: Hot talents and glyphs for holy paladins
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. The holy paladin talent tree has historically had issues with its filler talents. While many of the talents and abilities were spec-defining, there were other talents that literally had no purpose and were never taken. I'm talking about Sacred Cleansing, which actually didn't work at all throughout most of Wrath. How could we forget Purifying Power, whose usefulness was completely negated by the Glyph of Holy Wrath, which itself was only used to exploit a difficult encounter? Even with all of these junk talents in the tree, we also had a distinct lack of DPS talents, leaving holy paladins nearly helpless when left to fend for themselves. Cataclysm's new truncated talent trees resolve many of the issues our previous talent tree had, as well as providing several DPS talents to give us some flexibility when we need to up our damage output. Exorcism has finally become the spammable attack we can use from range to nuke our targets, and Crusader Strike gives us some DPS presence while we're in melee range as well. The core focus of the holy paladin will always be healing, but it's nice to see that Blizzard created talents and glyphs to support both the healing paladin and the pseudo-shockadin that's emerging in Cataclysm.
The Light and How to Swing It: New paladin heals in Cataclysm
Every Sunday, Chase Christian of The Light and How to Swing It invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. This week, we examine the cool new heals that paladins can look forward to. If you've been playing a holy paladin for any period of time, you're familiar with the feeling of spamming one button. I pushed Cleanse so often in Molten Core that my mouse nearly broke, and the number 2 key on my keyboard has never forgiven me for the rough treatment it received in The Burning Crusade. Our ability selection has been a bit more flexible on Wrath, largely due to our potent mana pool, allowing us to cast any heal we want to. Holy Shock has found its way into our arsenal on a regular basis, and Flash of Light gets a fair amount of usage as a backup spell when Holy Light isn't necessary. While Cataclysm is introducing us to an entirely revamped healing model and our new core heal, Divine Light, the spells look nearly the same as they do today. Our hands do the glowy-light thing, and then someone gets some sparkles raining down over their head. Meanwhile, restoration druids are covering the ground with more flowers than Cenarius' gardener, and resto shamans are literally making rain to water them. Luckily for us, Blizzard saved a few tricks for holy paladins, and our new abilities actually have some amazing animations and useful functions.
The Light and How to Swing It: Holy paladin changes in beta build 12984
Every Sunday, Chase Christian of The Light and How to Swing It invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. This week, we examine the changes in the latest beta patch. Recently, I read a great thread on the official healing forums. Ghostcrawler, the lead systems designer for WoW, posted several times with interesting information and a few explanations regarding the new healing model in Cataclysm. I've talked about the idea of triage healing before, but there were a few specific points that Ghostcrawler made that really resonated with me. One of the commenters referred to the idea of "auto attack" heals, relating spells like our cheap Holy Light to the automatic attacks of the physical classes. It's a very succinct way to think about it, since we're used to raiding in environments where we never stop casting. It's true, most paladins on the beta have just been spamming Holy Light. I'm guilty of it as well. It almost feels like the old Flash of Light days back in TBC, where FoL was the only spell we used because we'd never run out of mana. Blizzard saw this as a problem, and so the latest Cataclysm beta build contains a major nerf to Holy Light. Ghostcrawler's statement that healers shouldn't be spamming one heal seems almost prescient now.
The Light and How to Swing It: The latest casualty in the mana war
Every Sunday, Chase Christian of The Light and How to Swing It invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. This week, we examine the changes in the latest beta patch. If you read my post last week, then you're familiar with the pretty serious nerfs to our mana regeneration that came with the previous build of the Cataclysm beta. Apparently Blizzard was only halfway done, and they released build 12942 on Thursday with even more cuts to our already-weak mana regeneration situation. Our last powerful tool to restore mana, Seal of Insight (the old Seal of Wisdom) was changed to only restore 4% of our base mana, instead of 4% of our maximum mana. While I was already upset from reading that my vision of a melee-centric holy paladin was coming apart, I then saw that Holy Shock's base healing was also nerfed by 30%. While Holy Shock was definitely powerful, it wasn't a spammable heal and you still needed to use the other heals in your toolbox to keep everyone alive. We had already lost Sacred Shield and the Infusion of Light HoT, and our proactive healing is now purely based on our mastery bonus. We need strong reactive healing to counter our lack of HoTs, and so nerfing Holy Shock just didn't make sense.
The Light and How to Swing It: Why is the mana gone?
Every Sunday, Chase Christian of The Light and How to Swing It invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. This week, we discuss the future of mana regeneration for holy paladins. When you play WoW on a beta server, you accept that there's going to be a lot of bugs. There's the stacking modifier that doesn't actually stop stacking, and you're left with retribution and protection paladins swinging for 5-digits with every attack. I'll admit that I felt a bit guilty when I one-shot someone with a thirty-thousand damage Avenger's Shield. There's also the programmer who accidentally misplaced the decimal in another spell, letting Crusader Aura grant us 600% mounted movement speed. Even with some of these glaring issues present, it's our job to ignore the urge to exploit and to continue working on testing balance and content. Well, it's our job to only gank a few people at the teleport NPCs and to then get moving to test balancing. Well, maybe more than a few. Well, maybe all of them. Anyway, Blizzard unveiled its most comprehensive patch to the beta last week. It contained a ton of changes to paladins, and specifically there were a lot of holy paladin talent changes. While some of these edits are positive, like the new Denounce and Exorcism changes which FINALLY give us a spammable ranged attack, others are fairly grim. I'm talking about the complete removal of Illumination and the ruination of Divine Plea. They're both toast.
The Light and How to Swing It: The holy paladin checklist
Every Sunday, Chase Christian of The Light and How to Swing It invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. This week, we discuss how to mentally prepare for every encounter. Way back in the day, before any of us had the opportunity to actually play the game, Blizzard was in the process of developing the classes of WoW. Rogues were designed to be sneaky stabbers and priests were based around doing heal-y things. Shamans and paladins were created to be in direct opposition to each other. The designated shaman archetype was the offensive hybrid, giving their friends extra damage potential and eventually Bloodlust. Paladins were the antonym, created to help defend their raid and party from damage and to provide useful buffs. While much of the original intentions have been diluted via homogenization, paladins are still the ultimate defensive class. Unfortunately, in order to perform our role in the face of constantly changing opponents and venues, our toolbox of abilities has become fairly large. We've got a utility spell for nearly every situation, and there are a vast number of situations out there. The key to being an effective paladin is to do your homework and to come prepared.
The Light and How to Swing It: Holy paladin gear diversity
Every Sunday, Chase Christian of The Light and How to Swing It invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. This week, we examine how holy paladin gear is evolving. I think that holy paladins have been pretty blessed this expansion, pun definitely intended. Our holy tree has been very solid throughout Wrath, and we've even got a few flex talents that we can use to pick up Improved Lay on Hands or even Blessed Hands. Our massive healing throughput has also made us one of the healers of choice for Anub'arak and the Lich King on heroic mode and even for bugging out Yogg-Saron's heroic mode, as well. Our progression throughout Northrend has settled holy paladins into a pretty comfy healing niche. Even with all of the development our class has seen in the past few months, a few questions still remain. For example, why are we still using the item level 200 Libram of Renewal instead of one of the shiny new librams from the Emblem of Frost vendor? The reason is that our old libram is too strong, and our new librams are poorly designed. Specifically, the Libram of Blinding Light just doesn't mesh well with our playstyle. It forces us to use Holy Shock on a regular basis to keep it active and only provides extra spellpower. Of all the stats possible, spellpower is probably the one that holy paladins need the least of. What can Blizzard do to get things right the next time around?
The Light and How to Swing It: How to heal different tanks
Every Sunday, Chase Christian of The Light and How to Swing It invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. This week, we examine how to handle healing the different tanking classes. I've recently started leading a 25-man pickup group that raids Icecrown Citadel. A few of the DPS classes in my guild are focused on obtaining a Shadowmourne, and so I offered to set up a run so that they can start collecting the legendary shards. While just about everyone has been to a PUG raid, leading them can be quite different from simply participating. The biggest difference for me is deal with the variety of personalities that come together. Once nice thing about having such a diverse group of people in the raid is it allows me to talk with other healers that I normally wouldn't interact much with. Recently, in our group 5 party chat discussions, the topic of "favorite tank to heal" came up. I had a few particular players in mind, but the healers actually started talking about the tank classes that they preferred to heal. While there's more to tanking than simply picking the right class, the fact is that the tank classes take damage in different ways. Who's your tank of choice when healing?
