Filling in the Gaps

Here is my Holy Paladin loot list for the 4.1 instances Zul’Gurub and Zul’Aman. I am really excited about running these new and improved dungeons.

There is going to be random boss encounters in Zul’Gurub so you never know what you’re in for when it comes to this one. I imagine its sort of like the TOC 2^nd boss encounter Eadric and Paletress. Except there is going to be a ton more bosses to choose from and an achievement, Gurubashi Headhunter for everyone who sees all of them. “Gotta catch ‘em all” to get this one.

There is also going to be a new daily questing hub which I’m thinking will have fun stuff we can win with points, or badges, or commendations like the Argent Tourney. I would love it if this trinket was a quest hub reward but it’s much more likely especially because there is a heroic version that we will not see it until 4.2 Firelands Raid. It may not be BIS but its definitely a fun little proc.

Ring

Soul Drain Signet

• +180 Intellect
• +114 Spirit
• +270 Stamina
• Item Level 353
• Equip: Improves haste rating by 123.

Mace

Amani Scepter of Rites

• One-Hand
• Speed 2.60796 – 1478 Damage(437.3 damage per second)
• +138 Intellect
• +92 Spirit
• +207 Stamina
• Item Level 353
• Equip: Increases spell power by 1848.Equip: Increases your mastery rating by 92.

Chest

Troll Skull Chestplate

• +3366 Armor
• +303 Intellect
• +209 Spirit
• +484 Stamina
• Yellow Socket
• Socket Bonus: +10 Intellect
• Item Level 353
• Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 201



Feet

Boots of Bad Mojo

• 2314 Armor
• +220 Intellect
• +151 Spirit
• +360 Stamina
• Yellow Socket
• Socket Bonus: +10 Intellect
• Item Level 353
• Equip: Improves haste rating by 146.



Headpiece

Plumed Medicine Helm

• 2735 Armor
• +263 Intellect
• +159 Spirit
• +484 Stamina
• Meta Socket
• Red Socket
• Socket Bonus: +30 Critical Strike Rating
• Item Level 353
• Equip: Increases your mastery rating by 201.

 

So where this new gear isn’t too exciting for many of us, it does afford raiders like myself, who are too stubborn to run daily heroics and earn extra valor points to fill in the ilvl 346s with 353s.

Also if anyone has the skinny on Amani Battle Bear leave a comment. Will this model look better than its predecessor?  Will it be easier to get?

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Holy, With Less QQ Than Ever Before

Last week my team downed both Cho’gall and Al’akir. We put a good many wipes into both these encounters and then we finally saw them fall over and go poof, respectively. At this point just under half my gear is ilvl 359. I don’t yet have the four set bonus but I will be desperately seeking it if they make the changes listed on the PTR patch notes. This change would make the spirit proc work off of HS instead of HR. Which seems to me to mean a whole lot more uptime.

All and all I am happy with our toolkit as healadins. I like that it keeps me busy juggling various Cds and that I do not have to spend the entire raid spamming one spell and keeping SS on the tank like in Wrath. We have a lot of heals and Cds to use when we run into trouble and most of the encounters require we use them.

Using HS and Judgement on Cd and taking advantage of procs is a huge part of our new playstyle. This, along with knowing when to use Cds to help spread around the love is what separates the goods from the bads.

As I stated in a previous post, I would like a Cd that reduces the damage to the entire raid to allow us to have a little more raid healing utility. Coupled with HR something like this would be OP.

I have seen a lot of QQ on the forum about our Mastery stat. Many people believe that it is not adding anything to our healing ability. At the same time I wonder how many of us have set up our gear to take advantage of this stat. Rendaelyne of Artifice on Shadowsong US is stacking Mastery like most of us are stacking Haste and says this about the stat,

“Yes, some shields are wasted as people aren’t hit right away (in turn a wasted stat to some people) but I bet I could hold my own against most holy palies with my gear. I am building a full on haste set to test some numbers out but it’s not 100% finished.”

I admire this players drive and tenacity to follow the road less traveled and to hold his own while blazing that path. The biggest complaint I see about mastery is that it does not work with our AoE heals or through Beacon. But our Mastery definitely works through LoD. By stacking Mastery you can basically increase the healing ability of LoD in AoE damage intensive moments.

I don’t see Mastery as a weak stat. I see Mastery becoming more useful in the next tier of raiding when our healing spells becoming even more powerful. We are not getting the full potential out of our healing Cds without stacking Mastery.

Here’s why, the bigger the heal, the bigger the shield. A big shield will not be overwritten by a small shield, instead a small heal will refresh a the shield as for the same amount of mitigation as the big heal. As long as you refresh the shield before it drops off then you will be able to continue getting IH from your beastly Cds long after they have fallen off.

Whoa, really Pork? Really? Yup really.

So before you get out on the forums and QQ all over mastery, do what Rendaelyne did and try it out. See how you like it and if it fits with your playstyle. Rendaelyne, my hats off to you for trying something different and finding success!

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Holy Nerfbat Batman

So I can’t help but notice that half of the healing classes (shamz and priests) acquired some overall buffage with patch 4.0.6 and as per tradition we got more of our mechanics trivialized.

I can imagine that there are some folks out there saying but wait Pork, didn’t you see the buff to DP? Yes I read that bit too but I hardly consider it a buff. With DL, HL, and FL costing us ten percent more mana, I have the sneaking suspicion that Blizz is not happy over abundance of mana (assuming you’re not using FL at all and using HR sparingly) and we should expect some OOMage when raiding tonight.

I am definitely not saying that the other classes did not deserve a buff and to be frank it makes our jobs easier. I was very surprised to see resto droods get an over the head swing with the nerfbat as well. Chad, healing lead and a mate who I talk about on the blog gave up his restro drood in favor for his holy priest. Hearing him talk about the spec’s weaknesses and reasons for rerolling, I was expecting to see some improvements made.

I am not going to start feeling sorry for myself yet but I do feel bad for healadins who are still gearing in heroics. I remember back when I was hating every second of it and I can’t help but think that the headblow to PoTI and our main healing arsenal becoming more expensive is going to take a heavy toll on what I remember being a very strained mana pool.

Last night Yoda, our resto shamz pst me and said something to the effect of is my meter correct that you were at about 100% mana the whole time we were killing Magmaw? I admitted yes and he said that in the future he’d ask for additional raid heals if he was getting low on mana. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I was being pretty liberal in tossing out heals to everyone. I was worried he might reroll and steal all my drops.

All kidding aside I can understand why Blizz increased the mana cost of DL and HL. It would have been nice if they had left FL as is because they just made a very big waste of mana (which was on par with other healing classes big mana heals) an even bigger waste of mana. No one in their right mind should be using this spell now. But to be honest I didn’t use this spell and so I am not upset by these changes.

I am upset about the change to PoTI. I can’t help but think that this isn’t just a nerf to our talent it’s also going to be a nerf to HoSac, which is my favorite Cd. I really hope that we will still be able to use this ability without having to worry about dying because it is perfect for both heavy tank damage mitigation or just saving some mana.  

Some changes I would have liked to see…

• A raid wide damage mitigation Cd, making us a more effective option for raid healing
• A boost to HS healing output for a lil more healing on the go
• LoH returns mana without glyphing (less mana would be ok) so it does not feel quite as mandatory freeing up space for something more fun
• A shorter Cd on HR, again increasing our ability to raid heal, the mana cost is high enough that you don’t want to spam this

These are just some things I brainstormed last night while thinking about the changes that Blizz made to us in 4.0.6. I think none of the changes make our class more fun to play. I also think they further pigeon-hole us in the tank healer role. What changes to holy paladins would you like to see? How could Blizz make our class for fun to play? As alway, your thoughts are always appreciated.

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Halfus Shmalfus

Last night <Obsessive> went round two with Halfus Wyrmbreaker. Last time we went in Halfus mopped and waxed the floors with us in a succession of wipes, this time we made a lot of progress in our attempts. By the time we called it, we were holding our own in the third phase of the fight. We found ourselves losing against the clock and getting our face pwned by Halfus when we went big, red and angry.

Our raid team was made up of myself, chad, our resto drood team leader, and MissQ, our holy priest GM. When we first attempted the fight we were going to to the Storm dragon, the whelps, the Slate dragon and then Halfus but all the healers spent too much time OOMing and desperately relying on the three inervates we had, Mythical Mana Pots, and Manatide for any sort of longevity in the fight. By the time we started in on dpsing Halfus the heals had used up every resource for extra mana.

So we revised our plan of attack. We decided that we would burn storm dragon with lust, then pick up and burn whelps, then move on to Halfus and just forgo the stuns on Halfus by leaving Slate on the ground. This worked surprisingly well. We also reminded the dps that they needed to use the lightwell that MissQ was nice enough to put out for them because only the healers were taking advantage of it.

None of the healers were having the serious OOMing issues of past tries. People were taking less damage from fireballs by staying a minimum of five yards from each other and dps started using the lightwell. Manatide became more of a luxury than a necessity. I was able to keep my mana at around 50% the whole fight even when spamming Holy Radiance on Cd during the third phase.

I was not going to try to use Light of Dawn on this fight. Rather I used the 3 HP Word of Glory on the tanks and a quick heal on any healers if they went scary low. I also did not use Flash of Light, instead relying on HL and DL. For any scary raid damage I would either use Guardian or HR. I saved Divine Favor and AW for use alongside Divine Plea.

If used early enough I found that I could use three DPs during the encounter. The first tank swap was usually marked with raid wide damage. I found it was ok to use Divine Favor with DP when the tank was at about 50% debuff when he got to 60% I would pop HoP on him, dropping his stacks of debuff to zero. This lessened the overall damage both tanks were going to have to take during that chaotic period and left me able to pop some emergency heals on the raid if the need arose. After that it was Dp with DF or AW on Cd.

The fight was not hard to heal after the first dragon went down. Even the third phase with raid wide stuns going off. I think we just need to irk out a little more dps and we probably have it down. Tonight the drakes will be changing so we might be set back a little on the learning curve but I don’t see it standing between us and some sweet sweet loot.

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Raiding Consumables for Holy Paladins

The article I am working on about holy paladin glyphs is taking longer than I expected so in the meantime I thought I might throw out a quick one on consumables and also ask for readers input via comments or email concerning what glyphs they’re using and their experience with holy glyphs in raids.

Most of us have some Cata raiding experience under our belts now and while we are just getting used to the new encounters, we need anything and everything to add a little more Oomph to our over all healing performance.  I am going to quickly outline the best consumables for us holy paladins. Keep in mind holy paladins are now required to find a good balance between the amount of int and the amount of spirit but int is going to be our strongest stat. We should be able to get by with the spirit provided on our gear and buff int but you may have to experiment a little to get the best results.

Food Buff

Probably not a good idea to waste all your Seafood Magnifique Feasts on initial boss tries but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a food buff.

Severed Sagefish Head – This buff offers a 90 int and 90 stam.

Delicious Sagefish Tail-  This buff offers 90 spirit and 90 stam.

Flask

Flask of the Draconic Mind– Provides 300 int for an hour and persists through death.

Flask of Flowing Water– Provides 300 spirit for an hour and persists through death.

Elixirs

Avoid elixirs!  There are some decent choices for battle elixirs but there isn’t a comparable guardian elixir for holy paladins.

Potions

Mythical Mana Potion– Restores 9250 to 10750 mana. Cannot be used more than once in combat. Always have a stack of these handy. Mana potions are going to be essential during a raid boss encounter.

Potion of Concentration–  Another type of mana pot capable of restoring up to 22000 mana over 10 sec, but this will leave you without the ability to cast or move. Can be canceled at any time like a buff. If you can find time to use this potion in a raid then it will restore double the mana of the Mythical Mana Pot. Keep some in your inventory just in case.

Potion of Pure Genius– Increases int by 300 for 20 seconds. These are good for popping right before the fight starts. Temporarily making your mana pool larger and increasing replenishment, spell power and spell crit, it will save you a small amount of mana.

Volcanic Potion– Increases Spell Power by 1200 for 25 seconds. Again use these potions before the fight and save mana pot as you’re in combat potion Cd. Makes your heals more powerful and more mana efficient. This pot will not save you as much mana as the Pure Genius but if you have ’em it won’t hurt to burn ’em and save the PGs for your best attempts.

Hope everyone had a fantastic holiday. And I would love input on what people are using and liking for Glyphs and especially your thoughts on Glyph of the Long Word.

Thanks,

Pkcp

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Obligatory Nerf Post

I have read a few blog posts now about the nerf so I am going to try to keep this short and sweet, without going on too long about this.

The Skinny

• Holy Light no longer grants HoPo from Tower of Radiance, though Divine Light and Flash still do.
• Healing from LoD has been reduced by 40%
• Beacon is now effected by healing modifiers that reduced healing (like Mortal Stike)

Now I can’t help but feel like Dreaming over at A Touch of Arcane that these nerfs specifically target paladin healers because they’re too strong in PVP. They argue that paladins have too much mana at their disposal and that these nerfs target our mana pools. But, I can’t help but be a little suspicious that they’re going to limit our toolkit moreso than our mana pools. 

One of the biggest reason I was not having mana problems was that was barely using Divine Light and not using Flash of Light or Holy Radiance. Divine Light simply takes to long to cast and your target has to be less than 75% health to avoid overhealing. Flash and HR (becuase I could not get people to stack up on me) are a waste of mana.

With mana pools that are even more strained by the nerf to Tower of Radiance these spells will not be an good option untill we have more mana or players have bigger health pools. As it stands I was using judgement for the mana gains every time it was off Cd. Do you think we are going to have time to use Divine Light now that we are required to spam judgement and HS every time they’re up?

Blizz wants us to use all the tools given to us in our toolkit but they want strict limits on mana pools. This put Holy Paladins in a very precarious position because we will have to heavily rely on our healing Cds to use most of our healing spells.  

My Experience

Last night I pugged some Heroics. Why would I put myself through this kind of punishment you ask? Everyone who was on in guild was already busy and I wanted  to see the nerf in action. I was using my newly gimped tools (HL, HS, WOG, and LoD) and avoiding any of those nasty mana burner spells and yes I was having mana issues on boss fights. But more than that if the dps took any Aoe damage, I was not able to get them all back up to full health without using one of my precious mana saving Cds. When the fight was nearing the end and I was low on mana and out of Cds to pop the dps were not getting any heals from me. I had to save what I had for the tank.  

I can only hope that things will get easier as gear scales. I am no longer optomistic about raid healing and I know healing one target in a raid will make our toolkit more accessible than trying to keep five players up at once.

I really want to hear about other players experience with the nerf so if you have time leave a comment or shoot me an email and spill your guts.

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