Good morning everyone…
Lots of new news coming out now that Patch 4.1 has made its way to the PTR….
What?… you wonder where I’ve been? I kind of expected that. Anyway, I’ve been really busy with some RL changes, most of them keeping me from really getting onto WoW much. But that’s changed a bit, and I’ve gotten a little more time on my hands, and my workload has shifted at work.
Anyway, back to the subject at hand. Looks like there will be a few changes to the Paladin with this new patch. here’s a quick outline.
Paladin
Word of Glory: We hope Retribution and Protection Paladins occasionally do the right healing to others, but as we know Paladins sometimes feel that Holy Power is only for the healing. We rather like these specs use more Holy Power on damage abilities, and occasionally heal.
Holy
- Divine Light now costs 30% of base mana, down from 33%.
- Flash of Light now costs 27% of base mana, down from 30%.
- Walk in the Light (Mastery) now removes the cooldown on your Word of Glory.
- Word of Glory now has a 20 sec cooldown.
- Aura Mastery now improves the effect of Devotion Aura, Resistance Aura, and Retribution Aura instead of all auras.
- Conviction now procs from non-periodic spells.
Protection
- Divine Guardian now has a 3 min cooldown, up from 2 min.
Retribution
- Divine Storm now grants a charge of Holy Power if it hits 4 or more targets.
- Sacred Shield now cannot occur more than once every 60 sec, up from 30 sec.
Well, as the title states, it looks like some of the Light is fading for Protection. What I mean by this is the change in Word of Glory. At the moment, it has become a practice among some Paladin tanks in raid environments to use WoG each time you have 3 Holy Power. This saves a bit of mana for the healers, and provides a nice little buffer. With this new change, Paladins are now forced to use Shield of the Righteous or Inquisition. I have yet to follow the WoG spam method, but I’m also not raiding yet. Time is still a little restrictive. But do see how it could be a boon for healers. I myself have moved towards using the more damaging Holy Power dumps in dungeons, in fact here’s how I usually work the rotation, boss tactics especially.
-
- Avenger’s Shield > Divine Plea (3 Holy Power) > Shield of the Righetousness
- This is then followed by: Judgement > CS > Avenger’s Shield (if off cooldown) > CS > Holy Wrath > CS > Inquisition > Judgement > etc. etc.
Following this method, I’ve been able to keep threat, as well as increase my damage after the initial threat build. using Inquisition as my second HP dump, has been a way for me to increase that outgoing damage, gaining a nice little buffer, where I can then move to WoG as the HP dump. But instead of using WoG each time I have 3 HP, I would instead spread it out: WoG > Inq. > ShotR > WoG > Inq. > ShotR
Of course this is situational, as sometimes ther eis a need to burn down the target, and in those cases, i would often use ShotR on each 3HP cooldown. Something I’ve come to love about the abilities linked with HP.
Some may be asking “What about Holy?” Well, the Walking in the Light mastery has fixed that by removing the 20 sec cooldown, allowing Holy Pallies to continue with their normal usage of WoG, as it is very unlikely that they’ll need a DPS increase while healing.
I have also noticed that the healing costs are still being tweaked and twisted. I was a bit set back by the initial nerf to the cost, but do see that Blizz recognizes this too.
I am sad that Aura Mastery does not work for Crusader Aura, but had already gotten used to that. Though I’m unsure why Consentration Aura was removed. I guess it is due to the fact that CA is already being modified by the Aura Mastery spell itself, but time will tell.
Lastly is changes to Conviction. As there aren’t that many HoTs, it doesn’t really affect us a lot, outside of the fact that Holy Radiance does not proc it. As I’ve said, I’ve yet to do any raids yet, so am not totally sure how it is going to affect healing.
The last change is Divine Storm now working almost like Hammer of the Righteous and providing a charge if Holy Power if the attack hits more than 3 targets. This is a nice change, as when I was specc’d as Retribution it almost didn’t feel necessary to use Divine Storm at all, with the nice damage of Templar’s Verdict. I have yet to experiment with the Sacred Shield change, since I haven’t even experienced it before (Have been Holy/Prot since about 81).
Anyway, with all the other changes including the return of Zul’Aman and Zul’Gurub as heroic 5 mans and the introduction of the Firelands raid, 4.1 looks to be an interesting patch.
Light be with you.
Illumination 