Holy Paladin 5.0.4 Guide

[Azshira]

Basically, you're saying we should gem full spirit?

It's something I am still testing. I don't think you should gem it fully but you should consider in MoP to be aiming for higher spirit through gems. Gems such as: Int + spirit, int + mastery, full spirit etc. A blue socket could be a full spirit or go purple, also depends on the socket bonus. I'd still spend slots on full intellect for throughput such as int only etc.

[travis339]

I will be shelving my paladin due to the unnecessary 8 second cool down on Cleanse. This has to be the most unbalanced change I have seen. Shamans can freely cast/spam purge and mages can freely cast/spam spell steal while we have to die to a combustion debuff since our Cleanse spell is on CD. I will most likely be switching to a class that won't suffer nearly as much as caster classes. That is all.

[Azshira]

I will be shelving my paladin due to the unnecessary 8 second cool down on Cleanse. This has to be the most unbalanced change I have seen. Shamans can freely cast/spam purge and mages can freely cast/spam spell steal while we have to die to a combustion debuff since our Cleanse spell is on CD. I will most likely be switching to a class that won't suffer nearly as much as caster classes. That is all.

All dispels are 8 seconds on a friendly player. Purge is not a dispel on a friendly target nor could Cleanse clear buffs/debuffs on an enemy, these are totally 2 different spells. 1 for friendly, 1 for enemy. Purge removes a buff from an enemy, same with spellsteal so your sentence makes no sense.

[Tomana]

Basically, you're saying we should gem full spirit?

My plan so far is to gem int+spirit / int+mastery / spirit in red/yellow/blue sockets in MOP

[travis339]

All dispels are 8 seconds on a friendly player. Purge is not a dispel on a friendly target nor could Cleanse clear buffs/debuffs on an enemy, these are totally 2 different spells. 1 for friendly, 1 for enemy. Purge removes a buff from an enemy, same with spellsteal so your sentence makes no sense.

My apologies. To clarify, ALL defensive and offensive despells and/or cleanses should be on an 8 second cool down, not just defensive despells/cleanses.

[Azshira]

My apologies. To clarify, ALL defensive and offensive despells and/or cleanses should be on an 8 second cool down, not just defensive despells/cleanses.

Ah ok I get it

[Tomana]

My apologies. To clarify, ALL defensive and offensive despells and/or cleanses should be on an 8 second cool down, not just defensive despells/cleanses.

On the other hand, defensive dispels now remove all the effects at the same time, rather than one by one

[Very Tired]

You may choose 1 of the following talents per tier, you can always change your mind by purchasing a regent to remove your choice:

What is this regent? I haven't heard about this before.

[Azshira]

What is this regent? I haven't heard about this before.

There's a reagent similiar to dust for glyphs, it will be available for MoP.

[FiveDkp]

Thanks for the numbers and thank you guys for your thank yous with regards to haste you must also factor in faster spending on mana, where mana is a huge issue at the moment, you can stack haste but you can't do much when oom. On the otherhand mastery will provide the shields to help you conserve mana. Both stats are great but mastery will be our prime stat put of the two until perhaps better gear.

How do you conserve mana when you already have 12% shields from the start? I severely doubt that someone would go "oh yeah I don't have to cast another holy/divine light because my 4k extra shield I did warrants me to not heal". Haste mainly relies on the person's spell selections, if you make bad choices, you oom. I'm saying that increasing mastery only increases the shield from the initial value (12%) to whatever your mastery rating increases it too so there won't be much of a difference in the amount of the shield.

You can still melee the boss if you need mana (which should be encouraged). Using the Divine Plea glyph scales with haste. There are haste breakpoints for Eternal Flame if you are using that. Especially since it is a 30 second HOT. As the theorycrafter said in April, haste is a universal stat and can boost the value of mastery aswell as other stats. Having an extra eternal flame tick has boosted the stat value of mastery since you would get 1 more tick which results in another round of shields being put on a person.

I think people especially theorycrafters have overlooked haste considerably. They have not looked at haste's interaction with beacon of light since Mastery cannot apply through beacon heals (unless they decided to give us that).


On a second note, If Spirit doesn't provide the most regeneration then it will be likely that mastery will be used as a HPM mechanic but provide HPS. Crit is absolutely garbarge because its HPM is random and offers some throughput at random times. Mastery is consistent. If Spirit does provide it then Haste will be used regardless of your stat priority because if your mana is fine then the only thing you need is HPS.

[Deleted]

I'd be interested to see how Selfless healer will work when used with the flash of light glyph.

Increasing a heal to a target by 10% after casting a free/instant Flash of Light could turn out to be worth the time/mana spent on judging. This could be extremely useful on powers like Holy Radiance.

[Azshira]

I'm not de-valuing haste, but I think mastery is going to be better. Things can still change. On live my mastery absorbs 27% of my heals, sure it will be less at the start of MoP but that's a lot of absorb. Mastery procs from every single spell cast, and many talents too:

Holy Radiance is no longer a HoT and procs mastery fully, Eternal Flame despite being a HoT procs mastery on each tick. Holy Prism and Executioners Sentence. Haste has side effects, more casts = more procs chance right? Well haste does not provide quicker Holy Power (unless you want to go into serious mana issues chain casting DL and FoL on the beacon target). Well sadly Daybreak is gone (the old one which had a chance to make Holy Shock refresh), Infusion of Light depends on your Holy Shock cooldown and is not reduced by haste and that is our main source of Holy Power. Holy Power can be gained quicker by haste with the expensive spells when combined with Tower of Radiance (FoL + DL as mentioned previous) but that's not a reasonable source of Holy Power if we are going to spend too much mana on them.

So why am I talking about Holy Power regen? Am I going off-topic? Nope... In case you haven't realized by now, haste will not effect our Holy Power gains and Holy Paladins depend on instant mana free heals for longer sustainability, so tell me where does haste lie now? But wait, mastery has none of those side effects, it will provide absorb shields on every heal and several of the talents mentioned. Sure you may cast more and heal more, but that won't do anything for your mana, and that's proven with the above, haste does not gain Holy Power quicker unless you go crazy with casts, which you can't afford to do. So where does this bring us? Mastery costs no extra mana to see it's effects, as you will be healing normally to see the benefits. In the long run Mastery will be the bigger player.

When mana becomes less of an issue I'll gladly get more haste as now HPS will be the issue, but for now, at the moment, mastery will be better. I hope this makes sense and others players can gain insight to what I've said.

---------- Post added 2012-08-28 at 11:45 AM ----------

I'd be interested to see how Selfless healer will work when used with the flash of light glyph.

Increasing a heal to a target by 10% after casting a free/instant Flash of Light could turn out to be worth the time/mana spent on judging. This could be extremely useful on powers like Holy Radiance.

SH is probably the weakest out of the 3 talents. The problem is you must judge 3 times (which costs mana) it also costs a valuable gcd. Sure you get a nice heal after it but a shield that costs zero mana and stays for 30 seconds absorbing damage or a brilliant free cast heal which has a small HoT is much better. But it is your choice

[FiveDkp]

You just basically stated what I said about mastery being good as a HPM stat then argued that Haste is better HPS stat.

Haste and Mastery do not affect holy power generation. Haste affects the breakpoints for Eternal Flame and give more mastery procs and beacon procs. Mastery affects WoG, Light of Dawn and other mechanics besides beacon of light.

[Azshira]

Haste will be the HPS stat of course it will. Haste does not affect HP generation as I stated, either does mastery but it adds shields and does things haste cannot, there is no real downside to Mastery. Haste affects breakpoints for Eternal Flsme but you are going to needs ALOT to make it have extra ticks, that's even assuming you pick Eternal Flame anyway, not everyone will pick Eternal Flame, it will probably be a big split between Sacred Shield and that. I already mentioned Mastery affects all our heals and several talents.

[FiveDkp]

Haste will be the HPS stat of course it will. Haste does not affect HP generation as I stated, either does mastery but it adds shields and does things haste cannot, there is no real downside to Mastery. Haste affects breakpoints for Eternal Flsme but you are going to needs ALOT to make it have extra ticks, that's even assuming you pick Eternal Flame anyway, not everyone will pick Eternal Flame, it will probably be a big split between Sacred Shield and that. I already mentioned Mastery affects all our heals and several talents.

Mastery actually doesn't affect Sacred Shield.

[Tomana]

Haste affects the breakpoints for Eternal Flame and give more mastery procs and beacon procs.

Eternal flame sucks after the nerf. Personally, I'm taking sacred shield, especially since we don't have any pally tonks at the moment.

[Stevemcqeen]

I'm saying that increasing mastery only increases the shield from the initial value (12%) to whatever your mastery rating increases it too so there won't be much of a difference in the amount of the shield.

Going from 12% to what I had on beta(30%) is significant. 100k heal = 12k shield vs 30k shield
Earlier you used a 4k shield as an example, there is no heal we currently use that only provides a 4k shield, a holy light provides a shield 3 times that number.

Haste mainly relies on the person's spell selections, if you make bad choices, you oom.

True, however the problem on the beta is you can choose to play very conservatively and still oom before the fight ends. This is where I don't get why you try to argue Haste as an option. Haste gets its value from spending more mana(casting more spells), when its already hard to make it to the end of a fight why would I attempt to ignore the problem and use more of what I don't have.

Using the Divine Plea glyph scales with haste.

I really wanted to be sarcastic here.... needless to say that is just about the worst reason to use as a justification for Haste as a stat, while that statement is completely true, why would I spend more mana, to regen the same amount of mana faster, so I can get back to spending more mana.

There are haste breakpoints for Eternal Flame if you are using that. Especially since it is a 30 second HOT. As the theorycrafter said in April, haste is a universal stat and can boost the value of mastery aswell as other stats. Having an extra eternal flame tick has boosted the stat value of mastery since you would get 1 more tick which results in another round of shields being put on a person.

Have you bothered to look at what those haste breakpoints are?
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...kMWFxWmc#gid=1

Getting to those haste points is not worthwhile.
With how much the HoT portion of Eternal Flame currently heals for, even with the extra tick+ mastery shield, it does not surpass what an extra ~10% mastery shield on each tick would give you over a 30 second period

I think people especially theorycrafters have overlooked haste considerably. They have not looked at haste's interaction with beacon of light since Mastery cannot apply through beacon heals (unless they decided to give us that).

Again we go back to the problem of not currently having the mana regen to warrant the use of a stat that by definition gets its value from using more mana. Nobody has overlooked anything, people have simply been focused on what provides them the best solution to deal with the mana problems we currently have.

When mana becomes less of an issue I'll gladly get more haste as now HPS will be the issue, but for now, at the moment, mastery will be better. I hope this makes sense and others players can gain insight to what I've said.

This from Azshira basically sums things up

[Azshira]

Mastery actually doesn't affect Sacred Shield.

I'm not saying it will, I'm saying people will most likely decide between EF and SS.

---------- Post added 2012-08-28 at 05:15 PM ----------

Also to Stevemcqueen excellent post, pretty much what iw as saying and you summed it nicely.

[FiveDkp]

Have you bothered to look at what those haste breakpoints are?
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...kMWFxWmc#gid=1

Getting to those haste points is not worthwhile.
With how much the HoT portion of Eternal Flame currently heals for, even with the extra tick+ mastery shield, it does not surpass what an extra ~10% mastery shield on each tick would give you over a 30 second period

Why is there no breakpoint with Seal of Insight O.o. You should have 12 ticks of EF with 5% spell haste and 10% haste from Seal of Insight. You get 13 ticks at 8.25% haste from gear. 14th tick on 16.86% haste from gear.

I guess you don't know what your haste breakpoints are especially if you're looking at a shaman website. You need to paladinise those numbers. (you get 1.155 points for 1 point of haste rating on gear). You get 15.5% haste raid buffed. Stay of execution is a weird spell, I've tested it 4-5 times and it doesn't give extra ticks from what I've been seeing. That should be cut from the list, haste doesn't seem to be working with that talent. Light's Hammer doesn't scale off haste aswell from what I see.

(ITT - I have beta)

After testing and mathing out stuff on the beta, EF works better off mastery by a tiny amount on an extra hot tick. (Mainly because of the initial heal being so high).

The formula tested was using the 8.25% haste rating from gear (for the 13th breakpoint) and convert it to mastery 8.25 x 425 - convert that number by dividing it by 600 then times that number by 1.5. It ends up haste losing out by 1-2k depending on what your initial heal of EF does and the healing that the hot does after it.

This from Azshira basically sums things up

Yep and I agree with him. HPM is important but to justify Mastery as a superior stat by not exploring every option is lacking. Everything needs to be poked, prodded and tested. This is the joy of theorycraft.

Stat Priority - Spirit ----> Int -----> Mastery/Haste depending on my situation with my mana > Crit (Sucks to be inconsistent).

If i do choose EF, I'm likely to stack mastery over than haste even with the extra hot tick (It loses out by literally 1500 healing from my calculations to the mastery shield, it is closer than what people seem to say it was.

[Daws001]

Bah! I didn't realize Infusion of Light no longer gave us instant FoLs. That blows.

Tough choice between SS and EF.