[MoP] Holy Paladin Guide 5.0

[Elovan]

Just noticed this little tidbit in the newest ptr patchnotes:

Selfless Healer now boosts Flash of Light by 20/40/60% (down from 33/66/100%), and can be activated by Holy Shock (in addition to Judgment). (Bolded for emphasis)

What do you guys think? That's a pretty large step towards making Selfless Healer more attractive imo.

[skuzzie]

What do you guys think? That's a pretty large step towards making Selfless Healer more attractive imo.

This might even make it a better option then EF and SS in some fights.
The reason i don't use FoL atm is because DL does that much more for its mana cost per healing (and also adding a higher shield ontop of that), but with the healing increase of 60% FoL becomes equal or even slightly higher then DL.

Will certainly be trying this out

[monikasun88]

Basically provides another strong instant cast heal that doesn't use up any holy power. Also, I've never used selfless healer but I'm assuming if you use it on the beacon target, you will still get one charge of holy power? That would increase our holy power generation by a reasonable amount as well.

[Karazee]

Hmmm... so basically, the tradeoff is the HoT of Eternal Flame for the burst of Flash of Light.... For fights with constant damage like Garalon, the hot might still be better, but it probably depends a lot on your comp. However, there's definitely something to be said in favor of a free flash of light every 18 seconds (every 12 seconds before we drop T14 set). I might have to go onto the PTR and test this out a bit.

Also, let's not forget about the Flash of Light Glyph. A holy paladin using Selfless Healer would definitely get a nice boost from this glyph, and for periods where someone is going to take some known burst damage, you can save up a free Flash, hit them with it and then a Word of Glory. That's a very large amount of healing with two instants. Throw in Holy Prism and then maybe a Holy Infusion'ed Divine Light, and a Divine Favor proc and the burst healing you can do becomes really impressive.

My question becomes this: If we're using all of these instant casts: Holy Shock, Word of Glory, Holy Prism, Flash of Light, and the only casted heals are Holy Light and Divine Light (which is sped up due to Holy Infusion), and maybe some Holy Radiance here and there, and we're not using the HoT component of Eternal Flame, does that devalue haste any and maybe increase the value of crit?

[Dubalicious]

If you call 50% small . I already use HR alot on our melee group, or stacked ranged group.the mana cost realy isn't an issue. And i can safely say HR will stay in my rotation, and probably make into others aswell, especially as mana becomes less of an issue for players.

I think your definition of "rotation" is off a little bit, which is where some of the disagreement can be attributed. If you randomly use a spell, it's not part of a "rotation" - it just means that it's situational like almost every healing spell is. The T14 4pc pushes you towards a more true "rotation" because you now have a much smaller window/variation between your "fixed" holy shocks. In other words:

w/o 4 pc = HS > filler of choice > filler of choice > filler of choice > HS

w/ 4pc = HS > filler > filler > HS

As you can see, neither one is a true "rotation" because you can 'fill' with whatever spell is best, but with the 4pc T14 you essentially have one less "filler" which makes it a much more "set rotation" than without the T14 4pc.

50% is a large number, but when you apply it to a healing mechanic that typically comes in under 5% of your total healing (from my logs, it's closer to 1.5%-2%) than it's not all that significant. When you consider that the mechanic is also linked to using a fairly situational and expansive spell it makes it even less 'powerful'.

---------- Post added 2013-01-17 at 10:26 AM ----------

does that devalue haste any and maybe increase the value of crit?

It depends how much you value it currently imo. Remember haste still reduces your GCD which is very valuable even for spamming instant spells. I don't think it reduces the value of haste much, unless you currently have haste as your highest priority, which I still consider inferior to mastery.

[monikasun88]

If the proc on selfless healer comes from holy shock, we could potentially get one every 5 seconds with the tier 14 set I think unless I'm overlooking something

HS -> Judgement -> HS, if using FoL on the Beacon, the next one would be within 5-6 seconds if we still get the HP from using FoL on Beacon.

[Pasture]

Certainly the change makes a lot more sense for Holy than using Judgement. No one wanted this 'alternate' play style. I still don't like it, though. Holy Shock will be generating two free instant cast spells all at once.. It just feels a bit off.

[skuzzie]

Now all they need to do is let us cast judgment on friendly targets, applying some sort of healing buff/damage reduction effect and we're in business (or heaven)

[Karazee]

Now all they need to do is let us cast judgment on friendly targets, applying some sort of healing buff/damage reduction effect and we're in business (or heaven)

Judgment: You judge the friendly target and find them worthy, increasing all healing they receive from you for the next X seconds by Y%.

[Starsinn]

You judge a friendly target and find that they have been sleeping with your spouse. They become your enemy and you want your golf clubs back that you lent them last summer. Your wife denies it but you know the truth so you remove beacon of light from her and call your highschool girlfriend to see if she is free this saturday. Causes remorse.

Remorse: you cannot see your ex girlfriend again out of disgust with yourself. Lasts 48 hours.

[Xs]

My question becomes this: If we're using all of these instant casts: Holy Shock, Word of Glory, Holy Prism, Flash of Light, and the only casted heals are Holy Light and Divine Light (which is sped up due to Holy Infusion), and maybe some Holy Radiance here and there, and we're not using the HoT component of Eternal Flame, does that devalue haste any and maybe increase the value of crit?

The value of haste wouldn't change, as they're all based under the 33% reduction we need for the GCD, the only thing this focus on instants would give us is a more Resto Druid/Shadow Priest type clause, which I believe is around the 8k haste mark for them, so for us it would be slightly lower given SoI, but still not beating out Mastery.

Also I don't think using Holy Prism is going to be of value unless we see some substantial buffs. The AoE you get from Light's Hammer is just far too powerful to ignore

[Karazee]

The value of haste wouldn't change, as they're all based under the 33% reduction we need for the GCD, the only thing this focus on instants would give us is a more Resto Druid/Shadow Priest type clause, which I believe is around the 8k haste mark for them, so for us it would be slightly lower given SoI, but still not beating out Mastery.

Also I don't think using Holy Prism is going to be of value unless we see some substantial buffs. The AoE you get from Light's Hammer is just far too powerful to ignore

It already got buffed and it's definitely of value on several fights in T14.

[skuzzie]

My question becomes this: If we're using all of these instant casts: Holy Shock, Word of Glory, Holy Prism, Flash of Light, and the only casted heals are Holy Light and Divine Light (which is sped up due to Holy Infusion), and maybe some Holy Radiance here and there, and we're not using the HoT component of Eternal Flame, does that devalue haste any and maybe increase the value of crit?

I've already prioratised Crit over Haste. I think haste is the least good. I rather crit some more to get bigger SoI's then cast more normal holy lights (and in a way drain your mana faster), and well I use LoD more then i do WoG, so there the crit does matter more.
Still Just always reforge the highest stat to mastery, nothing else to do realy. mastery = master

[monikasun88]

Apart from DPS classes where haste is useful for obvious reasons, an example where haste has become useful is protection paladins for the reason that haste helps generate HP quicker by decreasing the overall cooldown not just the GCD. I think it's possible for haste value to decrease from where it is if pallys are going to selfless healer as the only thing spell haste affects for us is our GCD and casting speed which is (arguably) not as important since half our spells are now instants, especially in the case of SH and the fact that we can't mindlessly spam one button with endless mana for top heals anymore. Crit actually scales with our mastery and could become more useful in this patch for reasons stated above.

[Xs]

Apart from DPS classes where haste is useful for obvious reasons, an example where haste has become useful is protection paladins for the reason that haste helps generate HP quicker by decreasing the overall cooldown not just the GCD. I think it's possible for haste value to decrease from where it is if pallys are going to selfless healer as the only thing spell haste affects for us is our GCD and casting speed which is (arguably) not as important since half our spells are now instants, especially in the case of SH and the fact that we can't mindlessly spam one button with endless mana for top heals anymore. Crit actually scales with our mastery and could become more useful in this patch for reasons stated above.

The reason why crit is valued below haste is because its not a constant, what happens if you have 20% crit and you cast a Divine Light that doesn't crit, and the tank dies? How would that situation have gone differently if you could cast it with 15% more haste and probably gotten a Holy Shock off?

Also if you think Haste will be devalued because we use instants, go take a look at theorycraft for all the other primarily instant spell users that almost exclusively have haste as their secondary of choice, the only thing that would change from now is we'd need to get 7000ish haste to cap the GCD (and they'd probably need to pull the 1.5 cooldown off Eternal Flame)

[monikasun88]

I'm not debating the fact that crit is not a reliable stat and like I said haste is still arguably important for casting speed in fact if you spec in to Eternal Flame, it might be good to hit the EF cap regardless. But also notice what I said about instant spell users. Apart from DPS where it is obvious why some go haste as faster, more DPS never goes to waste, stacking haste for the purpose of casting instant casts quicker is in my opinion not very useful. Resto druids prioritize haste because their main spells are instant cast heals without default spell cooldowns and because a majority of their spells have HoT components. Shadow priests prioritize hast because they are a DPS class, faster casts from them never go to waste and 50% of their spells depend on DoTs. Personally I don't think haste will be devalued from where it is currently, but I do see getting crit as a reasonably useful secondary stat.

[Dubalicious]

At a certain gear level mastery is no longer the way to go imo, at least not in the traditional "stack it as much as possible" sense. I finally abandoned mastery stacking for haste stacking once I hit ~16k spirit with raid/consumable buffs. With that much spirit you NEED more haste just to be able to burn through it. Obviously the other option would be to start dropping spirit, which I will likely try in the near future as well as a crit-stacking build.

Anybody else find themselves altering or needing to alter their gearing strategy at high gear levels?

Any gearing variations people would be interested in seeing how they perform? (maybe revisit the low spirit builds and see how they do in MoP?)

[voidspark]

Anybody else find themselves altering or needing to alter their gearing strategy at high gear levels?

I'm not very high-geared (502 equipped), but on Tsulong I have a mostly spirit/crit build with less mastery, and it actually does alright on the raid healing phase. Probably not as much as a mastery build would, but the difference isn't that huge.

If/when we finish progression I might compare the builds.

[Dubalicious]

on Tsulong I have a mostly spirit/crit build with less mastery, and it actually does alright on the raid healing phase. P

A crit build is actually the one I'm most looking forward to testing out. Nobody ever has anything nice to say about crit =*(

[Pasture]

While the dedication is admirable, reforging and regemming out of mastery really isn't necessary for Tsulong.