Holy spec for PVE raiders lvl 70 before WOTLK ?

[Arindelle]

I've read a lot of posts on holy spec here and elsewhere for lvl 80 templates. But I think my guilde will still be raiding BC instances when the new talents come out (and maybe will not let everything go just after the WOTLK release either, just for leveling up).

Could anyone give me some feedback for a level 70 with the new talents and suggest a path to take to add talents as one levels up? Not sure of what is absolutely needed from day one, and balancing out guilde needs, having zero experience on test realms. If I understand correctly, the new talents will be available soon, which means using them in a raid setting in BT/Hyjal for a month or so)

BTW - im' basically a crit based pal, and I think my guild will need kings and maybe concentration boosted for the last weeks before patch.

Thanks much in advance. Any advice truly appreciated.

[Casper7526]

Go holy Priest! imo

[Lifestream]

Go holy Priest! imo

[b37x]

Arindelle, it's hard to plan for the release of the new talents because they're not yet finalized. Specifically, the 51 point talent, Beacon of Light has a lot of bugs. How desirable Beacon will be for paladins will depend on if/how it gets fixed.

If the talents went live today, 46/0/15 would be the holy spec I'd recommend for instancing/raiding/pvp. And the next two points I'd suggest putting in Pursuit of Justice (ret tree) because 15% runspeed is glorious for leveling.

[b37x]

I understand your frustrations Fadibo and everyone else, I really do.

Arindelle, I missed that your guild wanted you to pick up kings. So here's a revised 43/5/13 build. You lose a bit of Spell Power (the new combined +healing and +spell damage) from Holy Guidance and you lost a bit of crit from Conviction. As you level up, I recommend getting both to 5/5. Lastly, I gave you 2/2 Improved Blessing of Wisdom. If you don't find yourself blessing wisdom, you can move those 2 points somewhere else.

[Arindelle]

thanks b37x ...

In seing the changes posted again, today I guess I was really naive in thinking 3.0 would go live this week or the next! At least I hope not, as I really don't quite get some of Blizzard changes (euh I can not remember ever having a 15 secondes pause in a boss fight at least, as an example but at lvl 71 Divne plea is not in 3.0)

To be a bit clearer -- I will never do PVE if I can help it lol (no offense to those that do), and my prior raid specs almost always included kings, concentration boost, and Guardian's favor, so I guess what I am looking for until this all calms down is a 25 man raiding spec, where the compo of the raid is (unfortunately) most often only 2 holy paladins (sometimes we have a palatank and rarely a ret - and we are short priest too often).

Of course it would be possible if one of the holys takes conentration and the other kings I guess ...

any additional ideas always appreciated

PS - any links to a good post on how judgments are going to work ? -- a liitle confused, and don't want to post a question thats somewhere here already; nothing worse in forums than everybody asking questions that have been asked 500 times before

[b37x]

Actually Arindelle, your guess isn't far off. Patch 3.0.2 seems like it's scheduled for the 14th, see post here.

Judgment Rundown:
1) First off you have to pick a Seal. Your choices will be Righteousness, Light, Wisdom, Vengeance/Corruption, Martyr/Blood, and maybe Command. As a raid healer, you will be choosing between Light and Wisdom. Glyph of Light increases your healing by 5% when Seal of Light is cast. Glyph of Wisdom reduces the mana cost of healing spells by 5% when Seal of Wisdom is cast. So whether you want 5% more healing on 5% reduced cost, glyph accordingly and that's the Seal you'll keep up.
2) Your Seal will last for 2min, so you don't have to worry about recasting it every 30sec and messing up your rotation.
3) Once you have a Seal, you get to choose your Judgment. Your choices will be Justice, Light, and Wisdom. All three do damage, the only difference is the debuff they will apply to the target.
4) Judging a target no longer removes your Seal. So judge as often as you can get away with it.

Re: Divine Plea. Want to know the saddest thing? It's a slight buff over how they first implemented it. Before it was a channeled spell and Prot and Ret both said, "uh... was that for me? cause I can't stop tanking/dps just to regen mana." So blizzard made it instant cast with a duration effect and slapped on a healing penalty. At least now holy paladins can run around a pillar or move out of aoe without canceling it. And it's has a 1min cooldown and can be clicked off if need be. There's not much upside to the changes and I personally think it shouldn't have any penalty at all, but they didn't ask me.

Re: PvE. I think it might be possible to level up by instancing, if that's any more palatable to you than questing.

[Arindelle]

@ b37x -- thanks so much again for the info on the judgements - was getting confused on the seals being up and can't get into the test realm in france for 8 more days now to explore myself -- frankly can't even log in tonight at all to get on the waiting list even^^.

and yep if I can do instance leveling, that would be the way to go for me if possible (the memory of leveling my pal from quests at the beginning of BC is not very motivating to me).

Any additional info on raid templates or game mechanics in general for raids lvl 70 for 3.02, but b4 the xpansion (mana problems or whatever) appreciated if you or anyone has the time to post

[Geboran]

I don't anticipate -TOO- many "game-breaking" changes for Holy Paladins at this point in time.

We are "fine", in so few words, though the Tier 8-10 talents are rather "lackluster" compared to what you can get when speccin' a little bit in the Retribution tree.

I would like to see some "solid" specs when 3.02 goes "live" for both PvE and PvP, and what level 80 specs "should" look like -- and why.

Time is "running out"; I'd like to see some solid builds before WoTLK goes "live".

Regards.

[Sparda Strife]

ATM, i´m using on the PTR a 56/5/0 build (It was really 55/5/0 but the last point i didn´t know where to put it in, so, it did go to Blessed hands)

Maybe the tier 8-10 talents aren´t so spectacular as Retri, but that doesn´t mean they aren´t useful, On gruul raids, i found them quite useful, i didn´t test them on Lore bosses, so it would be nice if someone did it, post their impressions here.

As for level up... I have my doubts about it, maybe i´d go deeper on prot, or maybe i would aim for Benediction and improved judgements, to do some sniping with the judgements.