Holy Qeustion

[drazzil]

Just use your own judgement about when to use it. - People saying its useless are probably the same people that value crit over mp5 and still thinks FoL builds are good for raiding.

Its pretty simple; Who would take a filler talent that were a flat 6% incoming dmg reduction? - Thats right, every freakin one would take that. - Now lets add +aggro to that. - The answer should be the same except in those cases you risk pulling aggro because of it.

Are you running around healing inbetween adds that needs to be picked up by someone getting aggro on them? -> dont use it.

Are you healing near a boss that resets aggro? -> dont use it

Most other situations -> definitly use it, 6% dmg reduction is a buff most players would kill for.

[Azerox]

Wanna thank all for the help and some good info

[Alkah0liek]

Are you running around healing inbetween adds that needs to be picked up by someone getting aggro on them? -> dont use it.

Are you healing near a boss that resets aggro? -> dont use it

Most other situations -> definitly use it, 6% dmg reduction is a buff most players would kill for.

This.

Its definitly worth if your gonna raid content past naxx. Just be aware with adds and such.

[warlink]

While in ICC where to use RF?
Marrowgar: Use
Deathwhisperer: Dont use
Saurfang: Dont use
Festergut: Use
Rotface: Dont use
Putricide: Use
Blood Princes: Use
Blood Queen: Use
Valithria Dreamwalker: Use
Sindragosa: Use
LK: Use

In normal i dont think it makes any difference but in hardmodes the extra damage reduction will be nice. On Saurfang with RF your dps might not be able to pull aggro from the Blood Beasts if you are keeping two marks and a tank up. Same thing at Rotface tanks kite the adds with very low threat and there isn't just that much random AoE to make use of the damage reduction.

[Montanushiria]

From a PvE raiding perspective:


The Improved Righteous Fury Discussion

To get to Divine Guardian you need to place points in Toughness and/or Improved Righteous Fury.(That is of course unless you choose to waste your points completely on strength or dodge.)

What you're choosing between is:

5/5 Toughness versus 2/5 Toughness + 3/3 Imp.RF

+18% reduced duration of movement slowing effects
+6% additional armor

versus

+6& damage reduction


With current armorlevels at ICC level (20+k) the additional 6% armor would, after diminishing returns only result in 1-2% of reduced physical damage.

The Damagereduction from ImpRF will affect both physical and magical damage and it's at least three times stronger for the same amount of talentpoints.
The situations where there are movement slowing effects that actually matters (as in they can't be removed by other means and it will cause issues in performing your duty as healer) in raiding today are slim to none (and that is a generous statement). Which means the second effect of toughness can be considered insignificant.


As for the dangers and benefits of keeping RF active:

There is really only a problem in fights where there are adds and the tank responsible for them isn't good enough to pick them up fast enough.
I have pulled aggro off tanks by pure healing on occasion. That is however extremely rare and it means you would need to heal a huge amount effectively while at the same time the tank is undergeared and are having trouble keeping his threat up. Remember that overhealing doesn't cause threat, nor does Judgement of Light heals. In any normal situation you'd be the top healer on threat on the boss but still behind all decent dps.

But there are also benefits to having RF active.
The tanks know that you're by far the most likely target for any spawning add (which should hopefully help them to pick up the adds fast).
On fights like Saurfang you will help to direct the adds away from the melee fast (assuming you're not in melee range for SoW procs, in which case you should turn RF off). There are lots of other bosses with similar benefits.

I use it even in heroics. Better that the mobs, the bad tank doesn't pick up or keep aggro on, hits me, someone I know can handle the damage, rather than the PUG in green or blue gear that might even die before my first heal lands.


Speccing down Protection or Retribution?

Ever since Illumination was reduced to 30% mana return, Critical strikes are of far lesser use than they used to be early in Wrath (or even earlier in BC). Critical strike rating is now that healing stat that is worth the least to us (per itempoint) by a fair margin. We really only valued Crit for the synergy with Illumination and not for any additional healing provided. Paladin healing mechanics shows that a crit mostly result in further overhealing. Even though there are situations where a crit will save and a non-crit will not, it is RNG based so there is no way for you to control it. If there's something you should abhore as a healer it's a lack of control. For that reason raiding Holy Paladins go down the protection tree to get Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian. Controllable damage reduction that can make significant contributions.

If you're raiding, and not at a trivial level, then speccing down protection will be more beneficial to the raid and the loss of the 5-8% Crit will hardly be noticed.

Incidentally just so you get things into perspective, 5% crit will through Illumination give you a mana return value of approximately 20-60Mp5 depending on your level of haste and which heals you cast (from FoL+HS spam to HL spam). When you look at the numbers it's really quite small. Decent trinkets will beat that by a large margin as an example.


Judgements and Seals

Someone asked which judgement and seals to use.

For Judgements.. ideally you'll want both up at all times. If you have at least two other Paladins in the raid of the Retri or Prot variety then have them judge one type each. The uptime will be more steady and certain (since there may be times when you don't have the luxury to judge to keep up the debuff because you're too busy). Such a situation free you to judge whatever you want.

Generally speaking judging light is more beneficial, unless your dps are having mana issues (say due to a lack of replenishment etc).

As for the Seals.

There is really no reason to use Seal of Light in a raid unless you also have the glyph of seal of light (for the 5% increased healing). If you do have that glyph then you'll have a good set of gear (haste at soft cap, high SP etc), you cast predominantly FoL and you're the second or third healer on the tanks (with one or two exceptions, but there are usually exceptions to everything). If that's not your situation then don't use seal of light.

When you're talking Seal of Wisdom, there are reasons to use it even without the corresponding glyph. The mana returns from melee hits (and judgements) from SoW is quite significant and it will give you more flexibility in how you heal. In a bossfight where you can be in melee range you can do 10-20 melee hits per minute (that's including judgement) while healing. A lot more if there are phases where you can melee without the need to heal (ex XT heartphase etc). SoW has a PPM rate of 12. That means the proc-chance for each hit will depend on the speed of your weapon. a 1.8s weapon procs 36% of the time. A 2.5s weapon procs 50% of the time. You will often find that people claim that SoW has higher PPM (15 is common), but that's an error. In those situations they have usually not counted for Haste. Haste reduce the swingtime so you get more swings which naturally increase the amount of procs you get. But if you don't account for the extra swings then it will look like you have a higher PPM and thus a higher proc-rate. (Using a slower weapon while healing will often mean you'll get less swings in so weaponspeed versus procrate mostly cancels itself out so don't think too much about it if you have a choice between weapons.)
Anyway for a 1.8s weapon 10-20 hits will give you appr 4-8 procs per minute. 4% of your max mana returned per proc.. means 12-32% of your maximum mana returned every minute. That's similar to casting divine plea on cooldown but without the healingreduction downside. For this reason being in melee range and judging as often as the healingsituation permits is highly beneficial and for this reason alone Seal of Wisdom is the better choice.
If you add the Glyph of Seal of Wisdom and the spellcost reduction you get the situation only looks better for SoW. (The raw healing you can do with the mana you save from GoSoW is higher than the healing you do by GoSoL and that doesn't even account for Seal procs).


There will always be people arguing against some of what I've said above (and someone is bound to argue here as well). The difference is that what I've said can be proven both theoretically and empirically.