Wednesday, October 01, 2008

WotLK Beta - Holy Updates

Divine Plea

Following a massive outcry on the official forums, Elitist Jerks, and pretty much every paladin site in existence, Blizzard changed Divine Plea to only decrease healing by -20%, but it is now a dispellable buff.

To be honest, I always assumed it was dispellable. Every other paladin ability is.

Infusion of Light

No changing on Infusion of Light. Holy is still looking very boring.

Honestly, there's nothing to look forward to in Holy. I macro Divine Favor and Divine Illumination to HL11, that's how boring those two abilities are. Holy Shock is kind of cool, but it's been lackluster for so long, it's hard to get enthusiastic. And even then, without IoL, HS loses a lot of its new shine.

You look at Ret, and you have Vengeance, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm to look forward to. In Protection, Avenger's Shield is more exciting than all of Holy combined. You get to throw your shield at people like Captain America! Never gets old. (Though, the 10s daze is a little excessive. Takes the mobs a bit too long to get to you, and the fighting to actually start.)

JoW bug/nerf

If this is intentional, it is a big nerf to JoW. However, I sort of see the logic behind it. JoW is a very powerful buff that only a paladin can provide. Blizzard is trying to move away from buffs which only come from one class. If JoW had remained unchanged, it's quite possible that having a paladin would be mandatory for any raid content.

It is a severe hit to an ability that we love. But Blizzard's goal of making it easier to form a raid--being able to bring people because they are more skilled or are friends, instead of bringing them for their buffs--is more important than JoW being powerful.

On the other hand, I don't think this change should apply to JoL. Healing scales in a way that mana regeneration does not.

17 comments:

  1. Until Heroism is given to a second class there is no possible way to argue that any nerf to unique utility is justified because of the class homogenization.

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  2. If JoW had remained unchanged, it's quite possible that having a paladin would be mandatory for any raid content

    I agree, the decrease made sense.

    I'm not sure what to think about JoL. Its healing has always seemed weak. Whether it affects all melee, every 4sec, or just affects one random melee, every 4sec, I suspect it will still be weak healing.

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  3. I'm biased to JoL, because it's been essential for me on a couple fights. In particular, Void Reaver without JoL would have been impossible (no priests, shamans).

    It's weak, but it's one of the very few ways we have of healing several people at the same time.

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  4. Why not change to this build: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?paladin=052320502033012302130000000503200523101300531000000000000000000000000000000000

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  5. The real underlying problem is that the holy tree for paladins is provides nothing new in the way of holy play style. Specing holy gains you an instant attack/heal, Beacon of light, and some other efficeny tools. The other talents are medicore fillers that you get depending if your a pve or a pvp healer. Blizz really needs to rework the whole holy tree because something is very wrong if people want to spec deep ret for healing.

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  6. Without changing IoL back to its original state, I see no reason to put any of my new talent points into Holy come the new patch. That was going to be the new talent that really worked well with and for the spec, and it's like Blizzard took it out back and shot it.

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  7. I think a step in the right direction for Blizzard the holy tree is to combine both of the judgment talents into 1 5 point talent. Then give use both the orginal aoe hot version of beacon of light and the current two target healing buff version of beacon of light.

    In my opinion they really screwed up with BC two great heal spells that would be been great on paladins when to priets as base abilities. Prayer of Mending and Binding heal. Either or maybe both of those heals would have worked better as talented holy paladin heal spells.

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  9. Are you referring to the change to Judgement of the Wise (JotW) or Judgement of Wisdom (JoW)?

    With all these new names they can all get confusing after a while. I'm thinking you meant JotW though.

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  10. You just need to browse the ej forums to see the state the holy tree is at. People are discussing about going 28/0/43, 28/43/0 or 15/43/13 for healing. And tbh, if no major changes to deep holy are incoming I see myself either speccing 28/0/43 or 28/43 for either an offensive healer with quite some utility or a defensive caster with huge crits (the sta->sd and +30% crit heals are nice).
    It has the nice side effect that leveling is a lot faster and you can heal/dps/tank with a gear swap.
    Most hilarious thing I have seen is the suggestion to go 20/0/51 and go for hunter mail with int, ap and crit on it for a true hibrid.

    And divine plea sure does not make me want to skip out on jotw. Even in its current form its about 900 mp/5, do I say no to that? Especially not in the arena, where its an easy mana recovery mechanism.

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  11. One thing to add:
    is anyone else dreading warrior pally mirror matches? Or pally lock ones? With divine plea those outlast matches can take a reeeeaaaaallllly long time...
    If two holy paladins are the last 2 standing its more of a who dcs first match...

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  12. Galoheart, no, I mean Judgement of Wisdom. It's currently proccing once per 4s for the entire raid. Previously it was proccing once per 4s per person.

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  13. Oh Ok. I guess i must have missed that change then. Good to know also.

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  14. Does IoL stack with Light's Grace? If so, then wouldn't HL still be instant cast from IoL as long as Light's Grace was up?

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  15. IoL only reduces the cast time by 1.0 seconds now. It's a *big* nerf.

    Base - IoL - LG = 2.5 - 1.0 - 0.5 = 1.0s

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  16. Does anyone think they will actually get paladins right by the time Wotlk is released?

    This shotgun to the paladinface every week is getting old and for them to continue with the stationary heal spamming healbot paladins is just plain obtuse.

    They need to get Holy some truly innovative talents, and not just some nice to have, but dont need driveby talents. And is it that hard? What do you expect a fully holy paladin to be? I would say they should be just as pew pew as a mage and perhaps at the cost of their physical prowess and defense.

    ~Ten

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  17. problem with holy is that there is no spec defining heal spell to it. priets have coh/lightwell/pennance. shamans have earth shield riptide. druids have swiftmend/wildgrowth. holy paladins just have tools to make their 2 heals better.

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