Kadi

Moar Hyjal? RAWR! I'd be up for this, and a certain ret pally still wants her hat, I'll bet >_>

I'll be respeccing back to Holy for this run. So actually... it'll be a certain holy pally who wants her hat.

Mmm... hat.

Grr on Making BWL (my favorite old school instance) and MC on Saturdays! 99% of the time I won't be able to make these runs, but luckily(?) I should be able to make it at least this coming week.

So far, the runs have been an utter blast! Thanks so much for putting them together.

My roflcopter went *fwoop-fwoop-fwoop* IRL at how insane the prices are. Then again, who remembers paying a fortune for pre-Hyjal/BT gems when BC first hit? Fanatical number crunching FTL.

Hm, I should go sell all of those extra Herbs I have on Burana... <.<

It actually gave me the choice first time and as usual Im stubborn and went with the original place, the 2nd time I asked I didnt fight karma

I installed it in the public directory where they told me to... then picked up that directory and moved it to the old spot after it was all done. Works fine though!

I had no problems getting the patch (hides from Holy) so I spent the server downtime updating my addons and then trolling the forums. I found it funny that some warrior from a PVP server was already screaming for the Ret Pally nerf bat before Argent Dawn was even back up.

I also watched some TV. And played with the talent calculators some more.

Kadi your avatar made me laugh my arse off =p

Lets clean up TK SSC!

Scrunchies for everyone! Including Kael. I saw him in MgT, and it's a tragedy how he let himself go.

Remember to dodge Lootreaver's blue balls after we kill A'lar tomorrow. They hurt!

If I completely lose my sanity, I might go with something like this for a Holy Spec...

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=sxA0gMzhVuMxRtZVf0xbh

I have to agree with V. Although i've not played all the way to 80 on the beta, I did play with the talent points and skills I do have access to. I just cannot see any bright side to the changes. I am trying really hard to see how these changes benifit raids,other classes, and well all of us. And I cannot see it. To be quite blunt, from my perspective Blizzard completely caved to the PvP crowd on these changes. Nearly ALL of the changes seem geared toward PvP, arena PvP specifically. And i'm still confused as to why they felt the need to gut blessings such as Salv. (I see many dead hunters, warlocks and a few shamen in the not so distant future.. and can hear Bar wondering why DPS sucks. :oP )

In short, most of the changes to the Holy tree instead of being inspiring or exciting have left me baffled, and outright disenfranchised. If I am far off the mark with my analysis here, feel free to speak up, :o)

Nope, that sounds about right.

I want to post something here and get some feeback before I go posting it on the Blizzard Beta forums and sounding like a noob. I think you all know that I sometimes have a knack for missing the obvious, and I'm fairly new at this theorycrafting stuff, so please take a read and let me know what you think!

-------

I have played Holy ever since I leveled up to 68 at the release of Burning Crusade. At first, it was a challenge to see how many targets you could heal through an AOE before everyone died. But as dungeons became more difficult and raiding started requiring more movement (ie: more challenging) the weaknesses of the Holy Paladins really started to show. The mere throught of Healing Heroic MgT as a Holy Pally, while it is indeed doable, makes me want to go get a stiff drink.

I was looking forward to the expansion, and new toys. All we get is Beacon (no, not Bacon. I love bacon. It is yummy).

The suggestions for an AOE Heal have been numerous, and I don't know if the lack of having one is a deliberate move by Blizzard, or simply a glaring oversight. Either way, we still don't have one, and I thought I would add a couple of different suggestions here that I think would make Holy a bit more fun in a way that I think would be able to be 'balanced' while using skills and talents that are already in the game... thus hopefully making it easier to implement than something that it completely new to the class. I'm not sure if these have been brought up before, and apologies if they have.

First, with the apparent emphasis on Judgements, even for Holy Paladins (like the Judgements of the Pure talent), I think that adding a component to judgements to have them do HEALING instead of damage if cast on a friendly target would add incentive for Healing Paladins to use it, even with the global cooldown. Since that would make Holy Shock pretty much obsolete, Holy Shock could possibly be removed altogether (or revamped somehow), and the talents that affect holy shock could be applied to healing judgements instead. The talent points used to gain Holy Shock could instead be used to gain this new aspects of Judgement and thus not 'breaking' the Ret and Prot Trees. I think this would take more pressure off of the movement issues that Healdins have than merely relying on Holy Shock, especially with the reduced cooldown and haste buff talents that are already available.

Second, adding 'healing' or 'spells' to the 'melee attack' component of seals of wisdom and light. With seal of wisdom, it would give us mana regen based on HASTE (which seems to be the current trend of Blizzard talent trees and equipment) instead of just on crit with the Illumination talent. I've had to hold back on the amount of Haste I use, because if I use too much, my mana pool cries. A lot. This would help with some of the mana issues we have been experiencing. Or, alternately, in groups that have a lot of extra mana regen, such as a raid stacked with shadow priests, ret pallies, etc, seal of light could be used to do tiny heals to ourselves while we furiously try to heal everyone else in the raid. While I COULD heal myself, obviously, it's just a little extra burden off of our shoulders after that AOE hits and help us make sure our tank lives without falling over. Keeping the tank alive, IMO, is still the one thing that a Holy Pally should be able to do well.

I realize that there is no way that something like either of these suggestions would be able to be balanced before Release, but a little light at the end of the tunnel would be a good thing for us all.

Bear in mind folks: this and all other BC-related dungeons are getting adjusted in the form of a 30% HP reduction to all mobs, and this is a perfect opportunity to adjust to all our new class changes post-patch.

More Elemental sheep-breaking pew pew love! I'm in!

I dedicate this victory to my beloved Orcala, who could not be there for personal reasons. In her honor, I had my /AFK tag up the entire night, even when we roflstomped Vashj, Al'ar & Winterchill.

... and then half the group proceeded to port before the screenie!

I think these two things are related <.< What's being AFK when you aren't in Shattrath? *hugs Orcala*

It was a fun night, and I look forward to seeing ya all around!

If I completely lose my sanity, I might go with something like this for a Holy Spec...

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=sxA0gMzhVuMxRtZVf0xbh

The divine plea change is nice, but I'm still on the fence about which character I'm going to level up first. Maybe I need to take more time off of work and level them both.

Wait... no. I wanna preserve what little of my sanity I have left.

The ranged taunt change to warriors and druids are nice as well, especially considering the changes to Blessing (now hand) of Salvation. Makes the threat mitigation slightly better, IMO.

Blizzard is teasing you, just like how God teased Moses in the desert! Why? Lookie:

Righteous Defense -- cooldown lowered to 8 sec. It had been 10 sec recently and is 15 sec on live.

Infusion of Light -- now affects Flash of Light or Holy Light. Flash of Light is reduced to 0 cast time with 2 ranks, meaning that if you're running around and get a Holy Shock crit, you can also Flash without stopping.

Judgements of the Pure -- haste benefit now up to 15% with 5 ranks (was 10%).

Enlightened Judgements -- range benefit is now 30 yards with 2 ranks (was 20). This means you can judge or heal from the same range without having to run around so much.

Bacon of Light -- no change here, but I can never miss an opportunity to call it Bacon.

Shorter taunt cooldown? Me like. Bacon of Light? *nom-nom-nom-nom-nom-nom-nom~*

Yeah, I just saw that on the pally boards. I'm glad to see that prot got their taunt change, and that ret didn't get any nerfs.

I'm still confused by where they're going with those holy changes, though. The range increase to 30 yards for EJ makes it much less of a PITA, but our heals are 40 yard range, not 30. Even Elemental shaman, who are currently restricted to 30 yards, will be able to stand farther back than that with their new talents. The much bigger issue, and what will cause it to not be used much in PVE is the bleeding mana issues. If we can't keep up with our mana, 15% haste is useless. I had to REDUCE a lot of my haste when we got to BT for that reason.

The best route for Holy in WotLK, like TBC, is not haste, but to become a crit monster as illustrated by the IoL change. But, Blizzard seems to be discouraging that pretty much across the board, so I really don't get it. Someone help me understand! *bangs head on desk*

*sighs* I really really want to like the changes to holy, but I just don't. Bacon of Light (yes, I spell this Bacon intentionally) is probably the best improvement overall, but I'm not convinced it's worth the talent point investment quite yet. I also really want to see the bright side here...I seriously do want to, but it's just not there. Maybe this will be a case of "works out better when played", but I'm doubting that.

I would have to agree with you on this. While this 'hope' still makes it somewhat tempting to level up my Pally first (though the 'fun' factor of Ret is much more tempting), I don't think even the time I have between the Xpac release and the time I hit 80 would be enough to find out for sure, much less get any real 'fixes' in place. I have a feeling that I'm not the only current holy pally to feel this way, so many of us will be on to other things even if the class works in its current form (thus the hope being reality), or they fix the glaring problems with the class (ha!). Either way, I expect to see very very few Holy Pallies around... just pretty much guys like this one who still are insane enough play Holy to think that it is overpowered.

For once, I spotted some advice on the Maintankadin forums that didn't have anything to do with...well, tanking. This gentleman provides some insight on the new spells, talents, and abilities which change the way everyone's favorite single-target heal/blessbot works without surfing through mountains of old patch notes.

Oh, grab a snack: this is one long-@$$ read. But if you own a Holy paladin (or a paladin in general), it's worth the time.

Reading through that almost convinced me to stay holy. Almost. I had forgotten about the range increase of judgements through holy talents, which does make it a little more bearable than I thought, and the fixing of Divine Plea also makes things a bit better as well.

The bigger issues, though, such as mana regen (unless we want to be flash of light spammers), and movement really haven't been fixed. They tried to bandaid them with Holy Shock and Divine Plea, but I don't think it goes far enough. Holy Shock is a drain on mana, and if I use the larger heals, my mana goes down far faster than what even the 'new' divine plea will make back up.

Right now, if I had to use non-downranked holy-light, notwithstanding any holy shocks thrown in while moving, I would probably have to drink a mana potion every 15-20 seconds. There has been more than one occasion where I have a flask, kings, blessing of wisdom, mana totem AND mana oil and having to go back down to flash of light spamming for a few seconds because I'm almost out of mana and my mana potion/divine illumination timers are down.

With all of the emphasis on haste, and the loss of downranking, I'm not sure if it's really going to get any better, even with 'divine plea'... and then I'd have to do something to mitigate that 20% healing loss while regenning my mana... which would probably cost more mana. *sigh*

Divine Plea sucks a lot less, Warriors and Druids get a ranged taunt, and shamans had many nerfs undone. And don't let the 100 yard range on Glyph of Holy Light trick you - it's a tooltip bug.

Prot pallies can also cheer (again), since the great crab has delivered mitigation news:

"Shield of the Templar now also reduces all damage taken by 1/2/3%."

PWNSAUCE.

The divine plea change is nice, but I'm still on the fence about which character I'm going to level up first. Maybe I need to take more time off of work and level them both.

Wait... no. I wanna preserve what little of my sanity I have left.

The ranged taunt change to warriors and druids are nice as well, especially considering the changes to Blessing (now hand) of Salvation. Makes the threat mitigation slightly better, IMO.

Sorry all I won't be raiding with you on your last week due to a death in my immediate family. See you all in the expansion!

*HUGS* I'm sorry to hear that, Orcala. You and your family have my condolences. Take care, and I'll see you when you get back.

In all seriousness, I wanted to add that on Voidreaver, when you see blue balls coming at your face, turn around and run STRAIGHT BACK towards the wall. Don't run side to side as it then puts you too close to the person next to you and there is a tendency to start clumping up... which is bad.

So be the anti-emo. It's down the road this time, not across the street! (Or in other words, front to back, not side to side)

I see what you did there.

Where's Karrock's macro when you need it? >.>

What did I do? <.<

And is this the macro you're thinking of? "I just shot something. It's coming."

>.>

Many blue posts today reacting to the nerfs.

A few other interesting notes from these posts...

Paladins: However, we are getting feedback that they may be struggling with mana and perhaps even with boredom. To help with both of these potential problems, We are going to change Divine Plea to only reduce your healing by 20% (up from 100%). However, the original nerf to the spell was partially because of it being difficult to stop a paladin in PvP, so we are going to make the effect dispellable.

Hopefully they apply this same change to mages' Evocation as well. I don't understand though how it's supposed to get rid of the BOREDOM issue for pallies.

Paladins: We understand that some Holy paladins still feel that their movement and group healing mechanics aren't sufficient yet. However, we still like Bacon of Light , Holy Shock and talents like Infusion of Light to help with these problems.

.....

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

WTF? Holy shock is a SINGLE TARGET heal so how the hell is that supposed to help with multitarget healing?!? Oh wait... that's for movement, so beacon of light must be for multitarget. Wait, ######, that only allows us ONE additional target! yeah, that'll make it aaallllll better. /wrists

Well okay, I did notice that they were trying to incorporate more use of holy shock into a pally healer's list of buttons to push, but it isn't worth the mana in a PVE situation. Flash of light will have about the same cast time when you consider the global cooldown, and costs half the mana for almost the same amount of healing. What holy shock/infusion of light really does is put more burden on a holy pally's already strained mana pool, and I don't think that the divine plea change is enough to offset it. To me, it really is more of a PVP combo for that 'zomg quick heal!' ability they need.

I have to admit, though, when I had the holyshock/infusion of light combo coupled with sheath of light from ret (before they moved it), it was awesome to have an instant heal slightly better than a flash of light PLUS a hot for additional healing. That is one firetruck they took away, and I guess understandably so.

Hunters: Polar Bear Cub -- This wasn't intended to be a tamable pet, and it looked ridiculous.

No way! It was like the cutest. pet. ever!

Holy paladins, already in a really bad situation with scaling and mana regen woes, got a nice one-two combo donkey-punch/uppercut...but no comparable reduction in spirit-based regen for priests/druids (and resto shaman seem to have gotten a tiny buff in the regen department). This coming along with a marked increase in haste gear in Wrath...seriously, do they really WANT us all to be ret? Maybe it's time for me to try out another spec finally. I knew about (and agree with) the JotW change, at least...a certain holy/ret spec in beta was basically never out of mana (EVER), which was obviously too good and made them unkillable healing machines. I still look at the holy tree wondering why anyone would really, really want to invest in the later talents...still looking...still looking...

I've been wondering the same thing about the upper level holy talents. It really is sad that Ret almost has better talents that would benefit healers in the upper branches of their tree than Holy does. I also agree that the JotW talent change is really pretty trivial. If a ret pally really needs more mana than that talent gives, they can just use seal/judgement of wisdom for awhile. Right now, I'm playing with an almost pure ret build with 5 points in holy and probably about 8 points in prot (for the strength buff and a few points and eventually a few points in blessing of kings. I still boggle at blessing of kings costing 5 points now). It seems to work pretty well, and I think that even though Ret pallies lost the ability to refresh judgements with crusader strike they will still be useful in a party/raid.

Oh, and Perthes, don't QQ too much about AotV being changed to reduce your damage...take a look at mage's evocation some time and consider the cooldown and the fact that we do ZERO dps while gaining only a portion of our mana bar back (and that's just one class' example, others exist as well).

Yup, the Divine plea ability was changed to match Evocation, basically. No ability to do any healing and longer time to regen the mana. Maybe this is when they're supposed to stop healing to run into melee to do their judgement for their haste buff? *boggles*

Good job last night guys! It was an awesome effort by everyone.

Little tips for when we tackle Kael's Candy Factory next week:

- Grab sunglasses. If you hate pink/purple colored architecture, this place will be a true test of your patience as well as your tolerance to vomit-colored wallpaper.

Big purple Vaj, here we come!

- Please don't break CC if you can help it. There's a lot of pulls in TK which are much more unforgiving than SSC when you spank the sheep/traps, especially the first pulls leading to Al'ar.

Awww. *puts the chain lightning away*

In all seriousness, I wanted to add that on Voidreaver, when you see blue balls coming at your face, turn around and run STRAIGHT BACK towards the wall. Don't run side to side as it then puts you too close to the person next to you and there is a tendency to start clumping up... which is bad.

So be the anti-emo. It's down the road this time, not across the street! (Or in other words, front to back, not side to side)

Paladin (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9014))

Skills

Holy

* Divine Plea changed to : You gain 25% of your total mana over 15 sec (Old - 10 sec), but the amount healed by your spells is reduced by 100%. (Old - 50%)

Talents

Holy

* Judgements of the Pure now lasts 1 minute. (Up from 30 seconds)

* Infusion of the Light now reduces the cast time of your next Holy Light spell by 0.5/1sec. (Down from 1.25/2.5 sec)

Retribution

* Judgement of the Wise has been changed to grant you 33% of your base mana instead of 20% of your maximum mana.

Glyphs

* Glyph of Exorcism - Your Exorcism also interrupts spellcasting for 2 sec.

* Glyph of Flash of Light - Your Flash of Light heals for 50% less initially, but also heals for 140% (down from 200%) of its inital effect over 15 sec.

* Glyph of the Warhorse - Removed

* Glyph of the Wise - Reduces the mana cost of your Seal of Wisdom spell by 50%.

Shaman (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9014))

Talents

Elemental

* Totem of Wrath now lasts 5 minutes. (Up from 2 minutes)

Restoration

* Ancestral Awakening now affects Riptide as well

* Improved Water Shield now affects Riptide as well

My god. This. Build. Sucks. A$$.

Hold me. *sniffle*

The ONE buff they gave holy pallies is really more useful for shockadins than healers. It's also too far into the holy tree to be useful for any 'hybrid' spec as well, so it's essentially useless to Ret and Prot pallies. It is also CLEARLY a 'shockadin' talent and not a 'healer' talent, as explained below:

In order for a healer to use the talent and 10% 'spell' and 'melee' (LOL) haste buff, they would have to get off their 'grid/healbot' crutches, as they'd actually have to target the bad guy and do *gasp* dps in order for the judgement to work. It also requires extra downtime for the global cooldown twice per minute (which, granted, is better than twice per 30 seconds). Also, pally judgements only have a 10 yard range! which means that the healer would have to get practically into melee range as well. This is a definite distraction as the Pally Healer's one useful niche is in single-target (ie: tank) healing, and this would detract from our ability to focus on it.

So tanks, get your shield blocks ready! You're gonna need them.

This just adds fuel to my current belief that my new main for raiding will be my shaman as Elemental spec. My pally will go Ret and be mostly for PVP and some fun 5-mans where I don't go crazy playing Melee. I might try my hand at raiding as melee since ret pallies in beta really are fun, but it would be a bit of a steep learning curve for me to do it effectively. If I need to play a healer, I'm more likely to take my Shaman resto than take my pally Holy at this rate.

Second: I finnnnnnalllllyyy got an interview - albeit unexpectedly - after whoring myself out at every architectural firm in the city- with an architecture firm on friday. I'll let you all know soon as I know how this will affect my raiding capabilities (i.e. will work hours overlap raid time)

Good luck on that interview, Fuzzybutt!

Oh, while not art related, shamans have a new reason to masturbate furiously:

Stat totems now serve as summoning totems. MOAR BAG SPACE!

Mmm... all the more reason to switch my main to my shaman.

Unless Holy Pallies get some serious love, I'll be switching my main to my Shaman, Burana (who still stay elemental, though I might go resto if really really needed). Kadi will go Ret and be more of a PVP-type of alt. I could go Ret for raiding, maybe, but I don't like melee for raids, and with the DKs I'm not sure how useful a Ret pally would really be anyway.

Don't forget, everyone: We're starting on Archimonde tonight.

Everyone should be there. No Replacements.

Welcome back, Kalea! ;p

More hats! Rawr!