Monday, September 09, 2013

5.4 Holy Paladin Changes

Patch 5.4 comes out tomorrow, and there are a fair number of changes for Holy Paladins. Here is a quick rundown of the major changes as I see them.

  • Tier 3 talents are rebalanced - Mastery no longer affects the Eternal Flame HoT. The HoT does tick for more healing. Sacred Shield can be maintained on 3 targets. Selfless Healer will give you a Holy Power charge when you Judge (but Judgement increased in cost) and you can get free, instant Divine Light and Holy Radiances. I like the new Sacred Shield. Selfless Healer looks powerful, but you have to change your playstyle.

  • Mana changes - Seal of Insight no longer gives back mana. Divine Plea now has no drawback. You should use Divine Plea on cooldown as soon as you have spent some mana. There is no reason to melee anymore.

  • Holy Shock improvements - Holy Shock became cheaper and the cooldown is now affected by Haste. Combined with the change to Eternal Flame, Haste might become the new stat of choice.

  • Guardian of Ancient Kings - cooldown is lowered, but only heals the target, not multiple people.

  • Glyph of Blessing of Sacrifice - removes the drawback on Sacrifice. This is now a must-have.

  • AoE Heals - had their mechanics changed to improve performance during raids. They should still heal for the same amount, but they now heal in a slightly different style.
There's probably a couple other minor changes. I'm probably going to switch to Sacred Shield. I may also try a Haste build and see how that plays. I did like the faster Holy Shocks with T14, and the new changes may bring that style of play back.

There is also lots of new content. I am very interested in seeing how Proving Grounds and Flex Raids turn out.

4 comments:

  1. Technically it's Glyph of Hand of Sacrifice, not Blessing. Kids these days. I still go with BoP though, because then I can bop people.

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  2. I will definitely be moving to haste. It looks like a lot more fun to play as well as remaining competitive. I really fell in love with the accelerated holy shock rotation from T14 and was reluctant to let it go.

    I don't see the Sacrifice glyph as being mandatory. There were a lot of fights in ToT where the transferred damage was eaten up by splash healing anyways. but it's definitely one to be kept in the book for a few of the upcoming fights. There seem to be some moments in the new raid where there's a lot of damage over all, and with players spread out during AoE damage it would be nice to have some true damage reduction where AoE healing would fail.

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  3. I will miss meleeing. I felt it was what separated my paladin out from other healers. At this point, why am I even in plate? (other than the bonus, naturally)

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  4. It will always be Blessing of Protection to me. Forever. BoPing the melee and putting them on time out is still my favourite trolling activity as a pally healer ever.

    The Sacrifice glyph will be fantastic. It's great to be able to use Clemency, throw HoS on both the tank and off-tank, and then bubble. Now I won't have to bubble and can save that for when I really need it.

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