Holy Pallies So Far in 4.2

[Megacode]

I wanted to start a thread for Holy Paladins on their Firelands experience so far.

Last two nights have been grinding trash and attempting some bosses. The trash grind for me now just to get to the bosses has been somewhat of a bore since my AoH rep is honored now.

It seems also that my healing strategy is confirmed to be that of WotLK method where I BoL one tank while healing the other(yay were only tank healers). Although I try and help out with raid healing using my AoE heals, I have to be careful so I don't run OOM. Even though were not at the point where we are spamming only one heal it just seem to me that Blizzard is slowly pushing us back over to being only tank healers. Granted, this is coming from a 10 man perspective.

Also, 90% of the time I was BoL one tank while healing the other tank with HL's/HS's/WoG's while using DL's on either tank if they dipped around 60% health. So is ToR a viable talent now??

Would love to hear other H Pallies thoughts.

[Matuzak]

I have switched to a pure mastery gear build. For tank healing, our mastery is simply too OP now that it stacks. This style of healing is proving a bit odd to adapt to. I still find myself wanting to bomb raid members with direct heals while letting BoL aid with tank healing (as we did with our spirit/haste build in T11), but this is not very efficient with a mastery set.

With current levels of mastery (32% converting to a shield), my shields stack very quickly, and will nearly top out during short avoidance streaks from the tank. Utilizing the WoG>HS>HL priority (with DL being substituted for HL for heavier damage) on my BoL target, the tank healing has proven to be very stable. My raid healing contributions are almost exclusively from Holy Radiance, and for soft-enrage style constant AoE damage I will use LoD to assist further (DL directly on beacon to proc Tower of Radiance as well).

I find myself missing the haste as my casts are noticeably slower, but the results I have seen so far seem to legitimize a mastery/spirit suit with a ToR spec to support a tank healing role. It's early in the tier though, so we'll see how well this holds up in heroic FL encounters. I wont hesitate to go back to the spirit/haste build and INT gemming if it feels more appropriate for progression on a certain heroic fight.

[Papapaint]

I have switched to a pure mastery gear build. For tank healing, our mastery is simply too OP now that it stacks. This style of healing is proving a bit odd to adapt to. I still find myself wanting to bomb raid members with direct heals while letting BoL aid with tank healing (as we did with our spirit/haste build in T11), but this is not very efficient with a mastery set.

With current levels of mastery (32% converting to a shield), my shields stack very quickly, and will nearly top out during short avoidance streaks from the tank. Utilizing the WoG>HS>HL priority (with DL being substituted for HL for heavier damage) on my BoL target, the tank healing has proven to be very stable. My raid healing contributions are almost exclusively from Holy Radiance, and for soft-enrage style constant AoE damage I will use LoD to assist further (DL directly on beacon to proc Tower of Radiance as well).

I find myself missing the haste as my casts are noticeably slower, but the results I have seen so far seem to legitimize a mastery/spirit suit with a ToR spec to support a tank healing role. It's early in the tier though, so we'll see how well this holds up in heroic FL encounters. I wont hesitate to go back to the spirit/haste build and INT gemming if it feels more appropriate for progression on a certain heroic fight.

I think you're wildly overestimating how effective your mastery is.

Consider this explanation first, and then I'll back it up with some math:
Most well-geared tanks at the moment have roughly 25% total avoidance. That means that of every 20 (ish) melees, not counting AoE (which many encounters seem to have), only 4 or 5 of those will result in you "stacking" the shield. Since you've reforged/geared/gemmed away from throughput, crit, and regen, you heal for less, have lower conviction uptime, and regain your mana more slowly--all to a significant degree. In exchange, you gain at best an additional 50k healing over that time period, and that is ONLY if you're spamming divine lights non-stop. When you start factoring in all of your spells with much lower spellpower which are used to maximize efficiency (WoG, Holy Shock, Holy Light), you end up gaining much, much less than that (my estimate of 50k comes from 5 Divine Lights, each hitting for around 32k, which is where you would be with full conviction stacks and your spellpower. 30% of that, or 10k, is turned into a shield, since I'm not factoring in the base 15% mastery).

So, (assuming you are the sole tank healer and 15 of your divine lights are fully effective with the other 5 overhealing, since those 5 come after the tank has not taken any damage in order for you to "stack" the shield) over roughly 40ish seconds of spamming 20 divine lights, you have done 658,000 healing--608k from direct heals (4 of which crit), 50k from mastery stacked shields.

I, in worse gear than you, choose instead to have 10% more spell haste, meaning I am casting 10% more heals in the same time window. In addition to having superior throughput and regen, I also am not restricted to "overhealing" my target after a dodge or parry, and can instead opt to heal another tank, another raid member, etc. For purposes of illustration, though, let's say I am simply blindly healing my tank anyway. This means that over the same time window, I cast 22 divine lights, 7 of which are "overhealing". Let's say that my increased throughput gives me another 1kish healing on my divine light after factoring in raid buffs (my math shows it would be closer to 1200, but it depends on which buffs are available). We have roughly the same crit. In the exact same time window, I heal for 661,500--627,000 from direct heals, 34,500 from Mastery shields.

Over the exact same amount of time, I have higher throughput, larger heals, better mana regen, and (ironically) larger healing from mastery stacks than you do. Reforging from crit also means you're giving up IoL procs. This discrepancy actually becomes much larger when you start factoring in using holy light on raid members, holy shock, holy radiance, LoD, WoG, etc. I also have almost 10k more mana than you do. In addition, I get extra holy radiance ticks!

Here's some more numbers as well. 45% (your mastery level) sounds like a lot, doesn't it? Well, with no reforging to mastery (reforging AWAY, in some cases) and no mastery gems, my mastery works out to 30% mastery. In practical numbers, however, that means that your 32k heal produces a 14k shield, and my 33k heal produces a 10k shield. As with the earlier example, that means that your mastery has only allowed you to heal for 20k more than my mastery allowed me to heal, but I got to do two more 33k divine lights for a total of 66k healing.

In addition, your mastery value remains the exact same as it did pre-4.2 if you're swapping your healing target regularly or doing spot healing and allowing beacon transfer to keep up one tank, or if the damage is continuous due to raid mechanics (most of the Cataclysm content so far), then you won't see your shields stack even 4 times over 20 heals.

Mastery is not really any more valuable than it was before. It's still by far our least efficient stat since we do so much healing via Beacon and HR, and I definitely don't see it as being even remotely close to Haste in value, particularly since many of the fights in Firelands encourage heavy movement and have a large amount of continuous raid/tank damage (for example, our shields almost never stack on Shannox because of the DoT on all of the tanks). There is no practical nor mathematical advantage to favoring our weakest stat over int gems, haste/crit gear and enchants, or even reforging away from crit to mastery.

EDIT: I also want to make it clear that Divine Light spam is the BEST case scenario for mastery stacking. In practice, your numbers would actually be much lower over the same amount of time compared to mine, because I'm able to sustain expensive spells for longer, heal more with beacon transfer, and can heal more effectively on the move without putting myself in danger.

[Matuzak]

Most of your arguments seem to be assuming that you are using your beacon as an assist to tank healing. The reasoning behind a mastery build is predicated on the fact that you will be directly healing your beacon the overwhelming majority of the time. The two styles are completely different. There is no denying that a haste build using beacon as a tank assist while bombing raid members with direct heals while assisting further with Holy Radiance and LoD will produce higher HPS than using this same style with a mastery set.

The idea was, when being assigned as a primary tank healer, you would use your beacon (along with ToR) as a holy power generating tool, and will focus nearly all of your direct healing spells on that beaconed tank. You are correct that a haste build following this healing strategy will produce more overall healing, but the tests I did indicated that this margin was fairly small (anywhere from 1.5%-5% difference).

The real potential with the mastery build for tank healing seemed to be in the HPM department. Haste is very much an anti-HPM stat, while Mastery provides excellent HPM returns so long as all of the shields are being consumed(as is the case when you are bombing one target that is constantly taking damage).

I am not saying that suddenly all holy paladins should be dumping everything they can to go after mastery. I was merely testing the viability of a mastery build with certain HM FL fights in mind where I will probably find myself being on a tank 90% of the time. I actually have three different suits built for heroic FL:

One is a spirit/haste non-tier suit that hits the 1860 HR breakpoint, and should see usage on fights with soft enrage AoE raid damage mechanics, or raid AoE that is heavy enough to warrant the extra tick from HR.

The second is your standard 4PC T11 stacking INT>SPIRIT>HASTE. This suit will see usage for fights that require my raid healing contributions to be higher, yet are tough enough on my mana pool that running the first pure haste suit isn't practical.

The third is the Mastery suit. This has the potential to see use in situations where I will be focused on healing one target, and maximizing HPM becomes paramount.

There has to be something else going on with the mastery thing. I couldn't help but notice that Zaroua of <Premonition> is also trying it: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...aroua/advanced This guy has always been a very progressive and forward-thinking holy paladin and has tons of hardmode progression experience at the top10 world level. I really wish Premo would make their logs public so I could get a look at his results.

[Matuzak]

It seems that Zaroua has started to comment about his mastery choice on a public forum!

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2743690008?page=1

[Theotherone]

Been healing Firelands trash runs (although now that I'm honored, it's not worth it anymore) and we took some shots at a couple bosses, mostly just messing around and getting comfortable with the environment and I can't say that I've had any mana isues, I really don't notice much of a change. I still feel comfortable with haste/intell and I'm not sold on mastery. Even with the stacking, I can't really see a tank staying damage free long enough for my bubble to stack to a point where it's substantial enough to make me want to move to mastery. (disclaimer, I also heal on a Disc priest so any bubble is measured against what that toon puts out, it's not fair, but it's my personal yardstick).

That said, I'm lov'in crit - 53k WoG heals and 30k HL's that my beacon is transferring 100% of. I've noticed that my beacon tank's bar pretty much stays green while I throw heals around and use him for some holy power procs.

Unless, things change I'm not going to reforge my gear crit to haste anymore, but I will still be reforging mastery to haste when available.

[Papapaint]

It seems that Zaroua has started to comment about his mastery choice on a public forum!

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2743690008?page=1

Thanks for linking this!

This will come down to agree to disagree. I see his point, and how it could be beneficial, but I don't think that tank healing has gotten to the point where this is a necessary response. No longer can bosses push out more damage than we can heal, so I don't see that this mastery would actually improve my ability. I already keep up the tank up just fine in my gear, and my gear is still more efficient.

If I were in a situation with extremely strict healing assignments, and could rely on the rest of my raid team to reliably keep up their own assignments 100% of the time, I would probably be interested in experimenting with this as well. Thanks for the link!

[Sebadoh]

Good points in this thread (and the linked one).

I have about 350 Mastery rating, and tonight in 10 man Beth'tilac and Shannox my Mastery was responsible for 7-10% of my total healing. Not exactly the most impressive, so in my situation I'm not going to value it highly at all. I would argue that it's better than Crit just by virtue of being reliable, but this is my highly unscientific opinion and I hate RNG for healing (part of the reason I jumped at the opportunity to swap from Disc to HPal).

To speak to the OP's original post, I can't imagine going without Tower of Radiance for 10 mans at least. In 25's, I can see rarely needing to directly heal your Beacon target, but in 10's it's often necessary to hit them with a Divine Light. It's not an uber talent by any means, and I certainly see a valid argument for skipping it sometimes, but it's always been viable.

edit: One more thing I'd like to add - people who ask us to use Ret Aura because the Shammy can do fire resist.... no, just no. BAD

[Theotherone]

I like ToR; I'm always throwing out an FoL or DL at my Beacon generate a charge of Holy Power. I love keeping Holy Power full since it gives me a mana free bomb with WoG or an AoE heal and with Eternal Glory I get another free one a fair amount of the time.

Based on what I've seen so far, and comparing my Holy Pally with my Disc Priest (both are around 362 ilvl), Pallys are just stupid powerful these days. Could be just a function of getting used to the new gear level, but even in the Troll heroics 12k hps without even thinking about tossing DL or WoG bombs around is just plain fun. I see a nerf bat in our future.

[Papapaint]

I'm going to test mastery for myself in our farm night tomorrow and run some numbers.

[Megacode]

Good posts so far. Looking forward to Papapaint's logs on Mastery. Now Zaroua from Premonition is stacking Mastery, but you can look at Adam from "Vodka" who are top ten raiders, who is still prefering Haste>Mastery. Personally, since I not only heal the tanks but throw out heals on the raid will be stacking stats Intel>Spirit>Haste>Crit>Mastery until proven otherwise.

[Papapaint]

Good posts so far. Looking forward to Papapaint's logs on Mastery. Now Zaroua from Premonition is stacking Mastery, but you can look at Adam from "Vodka" who are top ten raiders, who is still prefering Haste>Mastery. Personally, since I not only heal the tanks but throw out heals on the raid will be stacking stats Intel>Spirit>Haste>Crit>Mastery until proven otherwise.

A post from Matuzak on the WoW thread that made me consider giving this a try:
"Paladins are crappy raid healers as it is when compared to the other healing classes. Not to mention that bombing raid members directly with DL might look good on the meters, but usually just snipes hots and AoEs that would have taken care of the job anyway."

My post in the same thread:
"I'm willing to give this a try for one main reason:

A majority of the fights in Firelands so far are either one-tanked (Beth'tilac since you're only in range of one tank at a time, Baelroc, Majordomo) or feature one tank taking a significantly larger chunk of damage than the other tank OR more consistent incoming damage (Shannox, Ryolith, Ragnaros).

As a result, we aren't as required to heal two tanks at the same time as we were in T11 (Magmaw, Omno, Maloriak, Nef, Halfus, Council, Chogall). In addition, as mentioned, the AoE damage in firelands tends to be mostly unaffected by HR usage, which seems to me to act as more of a meter buffer than anything else right now.

That being said, I may think differently in hard modes. For now, I'm going to give mastery a try and post some solid numbers on the EJ thread."

[dream146]

I find when I'm healing I primarily use FoL, HS and WoG, this may well not be the most efficient or at all the best way of doing things but I find it works for me in a lot of cases. This is quite expensive in terms of mana but with a trinket that buffs spirit when used, divine favour and judgement/seal of insight with BoM I find it at least sutainable, though I do drink often between fights. I haven't really crunched the numbers but in my expriance FoL lets me heal around quickly and lets me generate holy power when healing the tank with ToR.

I do try to use HL when I can but I find it often takes too long to be a reactive heal and Divine light I also feel is quite long and expensive for it's payoff, I prefer to use FoL and holy shock to generate holy power so I can use WoG or LoD whenever I can. So what are peoples thoughts on this approach/ I'm going to assume it's been tried and shown to be awful and I'll be laughed out for even suggesting it but I do find it works so I'm interested in hearing peoples opinions.