Pizzashark
12-03-2008, 10:25 PM
With the changes in WotLK, I've been thinking about actually dusting off my frooty little elf (god I wish cows could be pallies) and seeing if the paladin can be fun again. I'm looking at a primary Holy build, since I still firmly believe it's the ONLY Pally spec :P
Something I've been looking at:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft (http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sxAdxhdG0uMtRZZVf0xrh0b)
The idea is pretty much the old shock jock concept, which seems even more viable now that Holy Shock so strongly benefits from talents.
You take most standard healing talents, since your primary role is certainly still that of a healer, but with some Ret talents and the revamped Holy talents, you're still capable of reliable burst.
Pretty standard fare, I think. I'm taking Blessed Hands because I won't get access to Stoicism - can't have those Hands getting purged. I'm also skipping Holy Power in favor of 3/3 Sanctified Light and 2/2 Pure of Heart - DK diseases and Curse of Tongues are less of a problem this way. I'm taking Enlightened Judgements as it gives you the option of bursting someone while still being more or less safely behind your pillar, and it should also make keeping druids hampered by JoJ easier - or keeping JoL/JoW up more easily for your teammates.
Picking up Benediction reduces the rather high cost of Holy Shock, and Improved Judgements allows for more frequent bursting. Conviction gets us the 5% crit we missed out on Holy Power, Sanctified Seals further improves this, and Divine Purpose further improves our Hand of Freedom.
With these talents, we'll get a whopping 14% crit bonus to our heals and - more importantly - Holy Shock. With a focus on those Holy Shock crits (for Infusion of Light, of course), this lends itself to both burst healing (instant FoL or HL following a shock crit, assuming Light's Grace) and burst DPS. At the same time.
I would really like to pick up Holy Power and Stoicism, but I just can't see a practical way of doing so without sacrificing a lot of those juicy Ret talents. Thoughts?
EDITED 12/12/08: I slightly altered some talents. I took out 2/3 Crusade (which, honestly, isn't much use for a Holy pally to begin with) and used them to pick up 1/1 Aura Mastery and 1/3 Sacred Cleansing. An alternative would be 2/2 Improved Blessing of Wisdom, but I think that without Stoicism to protect those Blessings, it'd be wasted points.
As mentioned below, I could drop everything after Sanctified Seals and be able to pick up Blessing of Kings and either Stoicism or Guardian's Favor, but that would mean losing Divine Purpose. Stun immunity for my teammates just sounds more useful than global 30% dispel resistance.
Additionally, I was looking at glyphs, and this is what I'm liking so far:
Major: Glyph of Turn Evil, which will allow me to instantly get felpuppies off of me, as well as make Lichborne DKs and Metamorphosied Warlocks cry. Glyph of Seal of Wisdom, which will increase my mana efficiency, and combined with Sanctified Seals, is essentially a permanent -5% to healing spell MP costs. Glyph of Hammer of Justice, which increases the duration of the stun effect to 7 seconds. Of the three, HoJ is by far the weakest, but I don't really see any of the others being especially useful, though maybe Glyph of Cleanse. While most folks will either have stun reduction or trinket out of it, landing a 7 second stun on someone that can't trinket it would be devastating.
Minor: Glyph of Blessing of Wisdom, which increases the blessing's duration to 30 minutes for me only. Mostly a soloing/grinding thing, since any team with dispels will strip my blessing almost instantly. Glyph of the Wise, which reduces the MP cost for Seal of Wisdom by 50%; since I'll be keeping SoW up on myself permanently for the MP cost reduction for my healing spells, it's handy, and it's not like there are better options, really. Finally, Glyph of Lay on Hands, which increases the amount of MP restored to the target by 20%. It's filler. Glyph of Sense Undead might actually be more useful in some way :P
Glyph of Holy Light and Glyph of Flash of Light are enticing, but look far too situational. Even with the upcoming increase to 10 yd on the Glyph of Holy Light effect, it's rare that enough of my team members will be in range of each other that it'll be useful, and Glyph of Flash of Light greatly hurts my ability to pump out crazy-efficient chain heals while the felpuppy is off running in circles. They just seem like situational PvE trash.
Something I've been looking at:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft (http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sxAdxhdG0uMtRZZVf0xrh0b)
The idea is pretty much the old shock jock concept, which seems even more viable now that Holy Shock so strongly benefits from talents.
You take most standard healing talents, since your primary role is certainly still that of a healer, but with some Ret talents and the revamped Holy talents, you're still capable of reliable burst.
Pretty standard fare, I think. I'm taking Blessed Hands because I won't get access to Stoicism - can't have those Hands getting purged. I'm also skipping Holy Power in favor of 3/3 Sanctified Light and 2/2 Pure of Heart - DK diseases and Curse of Tongues are less of a problem this way. I'm taking Enlightened Judgements as it gives you the option of bursting someone while still being more or less safely behind your pillar, and it should also make keeping druids hampered by JoJ easier - or keeping JoL/JoW up more easily for your teammates.
Picking up Benediction reduces the rather high cost of Holy Shock, and Improved Judgements allows for more frequent bursting. Conviction gets us the 5% crit we missed out on Holy Power, Sanctified Seals further improves this, and Divine Purpose further improves our Hand of Freedom.
With these talents, we'll get a whopping 14% crit bonus to our heals and - more importantly - Holy Shock. With a focus on those Holy Shock crits (for Infusion of Light, of course), this lends itself to both burst healing (instant FoL or HL following a shock crit, assuming Light's Grace) and burst DPS. At the same time.
I would really like to pick up Holy Power and Stoicism, but I just can't see a practical way of doing so without sacrificing a lot of those juicy Ret talents. Thoughts?
EDITED 12/12/08: I slightly altered some talents. I took out 2/3 Crusade (which, honestly, isn't much use for a Holy pally to begin with) and used them to pick up 1/1 Aura Mastery and 1/3 Sacred Cleansing. An alternative would be 2/2 Improved Blessing of Wisdom, but I think that without Stoicism to protect those Blessings, it'd be wasted points.
As mentioned below, I could drop everything after Sanctified Seals and be able to pick up Blessing of Kings and either Stoicism or Guardian's Favor, but that would mean losing Divine Purpose. Stun immunity for my teammates just sounds more useful than global 30% dispel resistance.
Additionally, I was looking at glyphs, and this is what I'm liking so far:
Major: Glyph of Turn Evil, which will allow me to instantly get felpuppies off of me, as well as make Lichborne DKs and Metamorphosied Warlocks cry. Glyph of Seal of Wisdom, which will increase my mana efficiency, and combined with Sanctified Seals, is essentially a permanent -5% to healing spell MP costs. Glyph of Hammer of Justice, which increases the duration of the stun effect to 7 seconds. Of the three, HoJ is by far the weakest, but I don't really see any of the others being especially useful, though maybe Glyph of Cleanse. While most folks will either have stun reduction or trinket out of it, landing a 7 second stun on someone that can't trinket it would be devastating.
Minor: Glyph of Blessing of Wisdom, which increases the blessing's duration to 30 minutes for me only. Mostly a soloing/grinding thing, since any team with dispels will strip my blessing almost instantly. Glyph of the Wise, which reduces the MP cost for Seal of Wisdom by 50%; since I'll be keeping SoW up on myself permanently for the MP cost reduction for my healing spells, it's handy, and it's not like there are better options, really. Finally, Glyph of Lay on Hands, which increases the amount of MP restored to the target by 20%. It's filler. Glyph of Sense Undead might actually be more useful in some way :P
Glyph of Holy Light and Glyph of Flash of Light are enticing, but look far too situational. Even with the upcoming increase to 10 yd on the Glyph of Holy Light effect, it's rare that enough of my team members will be in range of each other that it'll be useful, and Glyph of Flash of Light greatly hurts my ability to pump out crazy-efficient chain heals while the felpuppy is off running in circles. They just seem like situational PvE trash.