Holy Pally Beta Part 2

Posted on May 16, 2012. Filed under: Home, Paladin |

I finally got to jump back into the Beta and take a look and see what’s going on with things like Glyphs, and the revamped Spellbook. Like before, I tested a few things out on characters and test dummies but haven’t yet experimented with healing in Beta Dungeons. While my guild continues to finish off Heroic Dragon Soul I won’t be able to really commit to healing any of the new and/or old dungeons introduced thus far in Beta.

So I opened the new Spellbook and took note of a few adjustments, additions, and changes to our spell repertoire.

BEACON of LIGHT: As mentioned before its pretty much the same spell however 15% transfer of Holy Radiance has been added and it now has a 3 sec cooldown, up from instant cast. There will be a glyph to make it instant cast but quite honestly, I didn’t notice that much of a change or concern with the cooldown.

BLESSING of KINGS: Same spell however Magical Resistance has been removed as well as the 1 hour timer.

BLESSING of MIGHT: Completely changed so that it places a Blessing on the friendly target, increasing mastery by 3500. No longer has 1 hour timer.

DENOUNCE: Casts down the enemy with a bolt of Holy Light, causing 15,582 Holy damage and preventing the target from causing critical effects for the next 4 sec. Looks like this is a combination of Holy Wrath and Denounce Talent for MoP. Played around with it on target dummies. Cool looking affect.

Denounce

DEVOTION AURA: Inspire all party and raid members within 40 yards, granting them immunity to silence and interrupt effects and reducing all magic damage taken by 20%. 3 min cooldown and lasts 6 seconds. This is sort of a combination of current Blessing of Kings, Resistance Aura, and used to replace Aura Mastery.

DIVINE PROTECTION: Reduces magical damage taken by 40% for 10 sec. Changed it so that Magical damage is the priority and if you want physical damage protection then use Glyph of Divine Protection.

DIVINE SHIELD: Unchanged however used with Glyph of Righteous Retreat (During Divine Shield, you can invoke your Hearthstone 50% faster) can add a little spice to leveling on a pvp realm. 🙂

HAND SPELLS: These haven’t changed thus far in Beta. Hand of Sacrifice, Hand of Protection, Hand of Salvation, and Hand of Freedom.

GUARDIAN of ANCIENT KINGS: Will heal the target of your next 5 single-target heals, and nearby friendly targets for 10% of the amount healed. Every time the Guardian heals, it increases your haste by 10%. 5 min cooldown and lasts 30 seconds. No longer doubles the single target heal but gives a haste buff for 30 seconds.

SEAL of INSIGHT: Fills you with Holy Light, improving healing spells by 5% and giving melee attacks a chance to heal you for (0.15 * AP.15 * holy spell power) and restore 4% of base mana. Our healing Seal remains un-nerfed however they added that 5% increase to healing spells.

HOLY INSIGHT(Passive Ability): Increases the effectiveness of your healing by 25%(Replaces our current Holy “Walk in the Light“). Increases your mana pool by 400%(Since Intellect wont affect the size of our mana pool we need some way of increasing its size). Allows 50% of your mana regeneration from Spirit to continue while in combat(Replaces Judgements of the Pure, & Meditation). Increases your chance to hit with Holy Shock, Judgment, and Denounce by 15%(Replaces Enlightened Judgements).

INFUSION of LIGHT(Passive Ability): Your Holy Shock critical effects reduce the cast time of your next Holy Light, Divine Light, or Holy Radiance by 1.50 sec. Removed Flash of Light from heals affected.

MASTERY-ILLUMINATED HEALING: Got a bump up from 12% to 15%.

TOWER of RADIANCE: Same as 3 points into ToR but Holy Radiance was removed.

Unfortunately as of this Beta build our current Divine Favor healing cooldown has been removed from our toolbox.

I changed a few talent points around to try out some different abilities and two really struck me as ones I’m sure I’ll be switching out from time to time.

SELFLESS HEALER: Your successful Judgments reduce the cast time and mana cost of your next Flash of Light by 35% per stack and improves its effectiveness by 35% per stack when used to heal others. Stacks up to 3 times. I really liked this one. With 3 stacks my FoL went from 33k to a 70k heal and crit’d for 135k. Didn’t even hurt my mana. If spec’d into this talent while using the Flash of Light Glyph, put out some nice single target heals. With this talent you’ll more than likely want to cast your Judgments when off cooldown like we did pre 4.3.

ETERNAL FLAME: Consumes up to 3 Holy Power to place a protective Holy flame on a friendly target, which heals them for 1548 per charge of Holy Power every 3 sec for 30 sec. When tested on a subject it put out a HoT which healed from 10k-21k. I got about 12 tics over 30 seconds. At first I saw myself picking the Sacred Shield talent however after playing with EF, I may be using this healing spell from time to time. Basically gives us a third free Holy Power heal in addition to Word of Glory and Light of Dawn.

I looked at a few glyphs that were accessible in game and pertained to what I’d use as a Holy Paladin. Also incase you didn’t know, Prime glyphs were removed so now we just have Major Glyphs(Major changer to game play) and Minor Glyphs(Cosmetic/fun changes to game play).

MAJOR GLYPHS

GLYPH of ASCETIC CRUSADER: Reduces the mana cost of your Crusader Strike and Judgment by 100%. I could see using this with Glyph of Battle Healer and/or Glyph of Flash of Light.

GLYPH of BATTLE HEALER: Using melee attacks while using Seal of Insight heals a nearby injured friendly target, excluding the Paladin, within 30 yards for 10 percent of damage dealt. I really can’t wait to experiment with this glyph however it isn’t accessible yet. Being able to become a Shockadin and dps and heal like Priests, count me in 🙂

GLYPH of FLASH of LIGHT: When you Flash of Light a target, it increases your next heal done to that target within 7 sec by 10%. Used with Selfless Healer talent, I would follow up with a 50k-100k Divine Light Heal.

GLYPH of BLESSED LIFE: While Seal of Insight is active, you have a 50% chance to gain a charge of Holy Power whenever you take direct damage or are affected by a Stun, Fear or Immobilize effect. Like the Cataclysm talent I see using this glyph based on the type of damage we’ll be taking and mechanics of fight.

GLYPH of DIVINE PLEA: Divine Plea now has a 5 sec cast time, but you receive 12% of your total mana instantly and your healing is not reduced. The 5 sec cast time wasn’t all that bad and to receive your mana instantly with no reduction to healing seems like a must have until we get better geared.

GLYPH of DIVINE PROTECTION:Reduces the magical damage reduction of your Divine Protection to 20% but adds 20% physical damage reduction. Fight specific.

GLYPH of DIVINITY: Increases the cooldown of your Lay on Hands by 2 min(10-12 min) but causes it to give you 10% of your maximum mana. While learning new fights and getting better gear for mana regen I’ll plan to have this one glyphed.

GLYPH of ILLUMINATION: Your Holy Shock criticals grant 1% mana return, but Holy Insight returns 10% less mana. I’ll let the theorycrafters figure this one out.

GLYPH of LIGHT OF DAWN: Light of Dawn affects 2 fewer targets, but heals each target for 25% more. Best used for Dungeons and 10 man Raids.

GLYPH OF PROTECTOR of the INNOCENT: When you use Word of Glory to heal another target, it also heals you for 20% of the amount. Could see this beneficial for fights with mechanics like Heroic Yor’sahjs Deep Corruption and healing in arenas and battlegrounds.

MINOR GLYPHS

FIRE from the HEAVENS: Your Judgment and Hammer of Wrath criticals call down fire from the sky. Found it to be nothing really special.

WINGED VENGEANCE: Your Avenging Wrath depicts 4 wings. I like and plan to glyph this one.

Glyph of Winged Vengeance

GLYPH of CONTEMPLATION: Allows you a moment of peace as you kneel in quiet contemplation to ponder the nature of the Light. AFK, RP fun glyph I’ll more than likely save this glyph for those “First Kill” screenshots.

Glyph of Contemplation

So as you can see that while not much was taken from our toolbox, we’ve gained some new talents, abilities, and glyphs that are just gonna expand our ability to heal successfully regardless of what role or job is thrown at us. I really like what I’ve seen so far from our healing toolbox. Because of the way the new talent system is allowing us to switch our talents around at a moments notice, its gonna make this game that much more interesting. I can mix and match my talents and glyphs around depending on the fight to help benefit the team, going from an AoE raider healer(talent-Holy Avenger,glyph-LoD for 10mans, and Daybreak) to a hardened tank healer(talents-Sacred Shield & Selfless Healer, glyph-Flash of Light). I’m also really curious to try out the (dps and heal) style of healing using the glyph of Battle Healer. Blizzards intention was to end the must have cookie cutter talent build and so far it feels like they’ve succeeded.

I really enjoyed playing around and looking at all the new stuff so far in Beta. Keep in mind that this is Beta, so some of these talents and glyphs won’t make it into MoP Live. As we move closer to the launch date I’ll continue to experiment in Beta and write about it. Also at some point I’ll get in and heal a few Dungeons. I hope this post came in handy and like always, please leave feedback or send me an email. Thanks 🙂

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