My, You’re A Tall One!

My, you're a tall one!

As the more alert amongst you may have spotted already, the paid race change service that everyone and their tennis partner said would never happen… happened.  And I finally got to realise a long-held ambition…

CALLI IS A GNOME!

Let’s just count the good points.

1.  She’s a Gnome!
2.  5% more intellect, that’s 29,500 mana self buffed, friends and neighbours!  She’s one helluva smart gnome!
3.  She’s as cute as a button!
4.  Reaching your keys under the sofa has never been easier.
5.  Smaller target!
6.  Extra humiliation factor when she slaughters horde Tauren!
7.  She’s a Gnome!
8.  Groovy dance!
9.  Squeaks when hit in combat!

And now the bad points.

1.  No more human racials, might actually have to get a pvp trinket now.
2.  There is no 2!

Gnomegeddon, you better watch out, Larissa’s got competion now!

While we’re on the subject of race changes, Galadan’s had a complete makeover too.

Get yer coat, you've pulled.

Now there’s a fine figure of a Dwarf if ever you saw one.  The changes are more than skin deep, however.  Galadan has also changed spec.  After being Holy for five years, I finally gave up trying to heal 5 man instances on him effectively.  He’s a great Main Tank healer, but in any instance where the entire group takes damage at the same time, which is like, every frikkin’ instance in the game, trying to keep everyone alive was making him so stressed his hair fell out.  So Galadan has crossed to the Dark Side and is now lolret.  Or is that retlol?  And should it be capitalised?  I can never remember.

You may recall this post where Galadan dabbled briefly in the waters of Retribution Cove and Protection Bay, before hastily retreating to the calm and serene safety of Holy Valley.  Well that was before Wrath of the Lich King and the big changes to Retribution.  And let me tell you, Retribution is actually more interesting than watching paint dry now.  You can still pop a Seal, Judge, autoattack and go make some coffee while you wait for the bad guy to die, but that’s so 2005, darlings.  Yes, I know, late to the party again, so sue me.  I missed the Retribution train when it boarded at LOL Central early in Wrath, but that means I also missed the “To the ground, baby!” phase, and now that Ret seems to be nicely settled I thought rather than just retire Galadan completely until Paladin healing in 5 mans wasn’t so stressful, I’d have a go at Retribution.

And it rocks.

The best part is, in Wintergrasp, thanks to the utter carnage that Ret Pallies wreaked early in Wrath and despite my being completely inept where pvp is concerned, people see a ginger-bearded Dwarf Paladin with a massive two-hander running towards them,  screaming incoherently at the top of his lungs and they… run away.  Try it yourself, it’s hilarious.

The Light And How To Swing It.

Anyone tried getting a group for a normal, non-heroic instance at level 80 lately?

Not easy is it?

Some explantion is probably due to explain where this is relevant.  Galadan hit 80 before Christmas, and was pretty much still wearing his 100 Badge Holy Paladin Legs and Chest from level 70.  Now these are still decent pieces of gear at level 80, but they’re no longer anything even remotely special.  Worse, he was still wearing his plate healing shoulders from Karazahn, which is frankly embarassing.

So as a fresh level 80 Holy Paladin you immediately jump into the non heroic instances to gear up for the Heroics and the Naxxramas raids, right?  Er..  not really, no.  Well, ideally you would, but no-one is running normal versions of the instances!  Seriously, with around 1400 spellpower buffed, Galadan jumped right into healing heroics, mostly with guild groups.  The problem here is that Galadan is physically incapable of healing some of those heroic instances due to two reasons:

1. Gear.
2. He’s a Paladin.

Ok, some explanation of those points is in order.  In a 5 man group, Galadan had around 14,500 health.  The last boss in Heroic Gun’drak essentially one-shots him if he gets charged and impaled, so Galadan cannot heal heroic Gun’drak.  He’s not the only boss who pretty much has a “You must have this much health to enter” requirement, but he’s the most brutal.

Secondly, Holy Paladins have no Area of Effect heals.  Shut up, Beacon of Light is not an AoE heal.  It’s a two-target heal, and it’s great, but it’s not AoE.  So on those exceptionally rare occasions where everyone in the group takes damage at once, Holy Paladins have a very tough time.  Oh sorry, did I say “exceptionally rare”?  I meant every damn boss fight in the game!

Yeah, so I’m exaggerating, but not by much.  The combination of those two factors makes it really hard for a fresh level 80 Holy Paladin to get along.  There is some great Healing Plate gear in the normal-mode level 80 dungeons, but no-one’s bothering to run them because the loot in heroics is so much better, and with any other healer but a paladin you can comfortably do them, so everyone expects to be able to do nothing but heroics.

Note, I’m not saying that you can’t do certain instances with a Paladin healer, because that would be rubbish.  There are some exceptionally talented holy pallies out there, and the quality of the group as a whole can be the major factor.  If your dps and tank won’t move out of Sjonnir The Iron Shaper’s lightning rings, your healers’ class isn’t going to make any difference to the outcome – you’re wiping anyway.  What I am saying is that unless your paladin has already has the great gear and unless your group has a good tank and smart dps, it’s going to be much harder for your Holy Paladin to keep everyone alive.  Let’s see what your average healadin has in their arsenal…

Flash of Light.  Previously known as “Flash of Doesn’t Heal For Enough”.  This is a great spell.  A 1.5 second cast but at level 80 in a dungeon, this is pretty much as close to a 1-second cast as you’re ever going to get.  Depending on your gear levels, this is going to pump out at least 2000 health per second or better, and it’s going to crit a LOT if you’re smart about it.  More on that later.

Holy Light.  Previously known as “Holy Heals For Far Too Much”.  Our second heal, and it’s a big one.  Typically heals for 8k or more, with a base casting time of 2.5 seconds.  However it’s never going to take that long to cast if you use your Judgements wisely.

Holy Shock.  Our first instant cast “oh crap!” button.  It’s on a 6 second cooldown which isn’t bad.  Where it becomes awesome is with the talent Infusion of Light, which causes Holy Shock crits to give our next Holy Light a 1 sec reduction on casting time and our next Flash of Light a 1.5 second reduction.  Yes, that means an instant Flash of Light and a 1.5 second Holy Light.

All seems a bit random though, doesn’t it?  Indeed it does, but you can tip the odds in your favour with:

Divine Favour.  This Holy talent is also instant cast and makes our next healing spell an automatic crit.  You can use this to great advantage by guaranteeing a crit on your next Holy Shock, which makes your next Flash of Light an instant cast, and if Sacred Shield is also up, that Flash of Light is about 75% going to be a crit as well.  Note the heavy use of the phrase instant cast here.  Yes, Paladins can heal on the move.  Alternatively, you can use it as another “Oh crap!” button for when your Lay on Hands is on cooldown and you need a BIG heal on the tank right now!

Light’s Grace. This talent gives you a 0.5 second reduction in casting time on your next Holy Light for 15 seconds after casting a Holy Light.

Sacred Shield You put this on your Main Tank and keep it there.  This spell means that not only is your Flash of Light the most mana efficient heal in the game, it’s going to crit like a mofo too.  Damage mitigation and bonus crits?  Yes please!

Beacon of Light.  Or Bacon of Light, as Ghostcrawler christened it.  This spell is a band aid.  It does not give Paladins the AoE healing that we’ve been begging for and every other healing class has, but without it we would simply not be able to heal anything other than the Main Tank in a raid.  Without this spell, we would never be able to find a spot as a healer in a 5 man.  Ever.  So I’m not about to criticise it too much.  You cast it on your Tank, and then whenever your dps (or you) take a hit, you ignore the tank and heal the dps, and through the magic of Beacon of Light, the Tank gets the same heal as the dps.

Next we have Judgements of the Pure and Enlightened Judgements also Holy Talents.  One gives you a 15% casting speed increase after you Judge a target, the other extends the range of your Judgements to 40 yards and increases their chance to hit by 4%.

And finally we have the Glyph of Holy Light which gives 10% of the amount healed by your Holy Light to anyone within 5 yards of the heal target.

So, taking ALL of the above into consideration, no, we may still be the only healing class to not have any Area of Effect heals, but despite that we’re still pretty capable group and raid healers.  Let’s look at the anatomy of a Boss fight in a 5 man to see how it all hangs together.

1.  Beacon of Light and Sacred Shield on the tank.
2. Throw up your Seal of choice.
3. Tank engages boss, Judge Light on the boss so melee can trickle heal themselves with their melee hits.  Gain 15% spell haste from Judgements of the Pure.
4.  Tank takes a big hit, cast Holy Light, your next Holy Light, taking into account Light’s Grace, Judgements of the Pure and your haste from gear is now almost a 1 second cast.
5.  Boss does AoE, tank and dps health starts dropping.  1 sec Holy Light on the dps with the lowest health, which also heals the tank for the same amount.  Spam 1 second Flashes of Light on remaining dps, also healing the tank for the same amount too.
6.  You have to move to avoid some AoE, pop Divine Favour to make your next Holy Shock 100% crit, zap a dps with it for a 4k+ heal, which makes your next Flash of Light also instant cast, top your selfoff for another 4k instant heal.  Thanks to Beacon of Light, all these heals also hit the tank.
7.  Kill boss, pick up loot.

Easy?  Hell no.  I’d argue that a Holy Paladin in a 5 man has to work harder and faster than any other healing class to get the same result, especially given how much group damage Blizzard are keen to toss about in their boss and trash encounters.  There are certain instances that are hard for any class to heal, not just paladins, it’s just harder for us.  Whole group took damage at once?  For every other healer you fix that with one button press.  Not for us, not by a long shot.  We do on the other hand have the fastest and most efficient single target heals in the game, and unlike most other healers, we have more armour than the USS Missouri, so we can take a beating if stuff goes wrong without getting instantly gibbed.

Am I glad I levelled a Holy Paladin as my second level 80?  Yes, on the whole I am.  I wish in retrospect I’d levelled Aluriel (priest) or Shinano (druid) first, but now that Galadan’s starting to gear up from those tough heroics and I’m becoming better at playing him, it’s infinitely more rewarding.

And we do look good in pink.

How YOU doin'?

I’m So Pretty…

So I managed to get Galadan to level 76 this week, which was nice, and did it while specced Holy, too.  No, do not adjust your sets, you heard me right the first time.  I’m levelling a Holy Paladin, not a Paladin who’s going to spec back to Holy when he hits 80.  He was Holy at 70, he’s Holy now and he’ll be so Holy at 80 it’s going to hurt your eyes to look at him.  “But Calli” you cry, “For the Love of the Light, WHY??”  Good question.

I'm so pretty, oh so pretty...

I actually ground out Shattered Sun Offensive reputation to Exalted on Galadan (and Calli, and Shinano) while specced Holy, so I do have some experience of it.  This was back in the bad old days when Holy Shock had something like a two month cooldown and Divine Plea was only a glint in Ghostcrawler’s eye.  I also had a very decent tanking set gathering dust in the bank and a reasonable Retribution set, but my experiments with LOLret and the Tankadin er..  didn’t go well.

I just didn’t “get it”.

Granted, this was before the changes in patch 3.0, but having decided that I wanted to get the Exalted Shattered Sun alchemist trinket, I immediately respecced Retribution, gemmed and enchanted all that dps plate that had been sitting in the bank and took the Isle of Quel’danas by storm!

Except that’s not quite how it worked out.  After 10 minutes or so of throwing up seals, judging and auto-attacking, I felt that I was missing something pretty fundamental, so I whispered one of the guild Ret Pallies and asked if I was doing anything wrong.

Me:  Hi, I’ve specced Ret to grind out some reputation, but I think I must be doing something wrong.
Him:  You’re throwing up Seal of Command and judging it every time it’s up, right?
Me: Yep.
Him:  Ok, good.
Me:  …..
Him: Anything else?
Me:  You mean that’s IT?
Him: Well you should try to time your Judgements to coincide with Hammer of LOL of course.  And use Crusader Strike.
Me:  I see.  Well, obviously.  Thanks.

Believe it or not, people used to do this for fun.  Anyway, after maybe another 10 minutes of this pointlessness, with massive chunks of downtime between each kill to replenish lost health and mana, I returned to Ironforge, vendored my Ret gear and respecced back to Holy. Yes, it took longer to kill anything, but I didn’t spend any time sitting on my ass waiting for health and mana bars to creep back up, I was virtually unkillable and I knew when a mob was likely to die on me, because I wasn’t at the mercy of the random number generator waiting for crits to happen.

It’s safe to say I just didn’t get Retribution at all back then.

So, the day of Wrath arrives and I’ve got a pretty good Holy plate set, mostly Karazahn level, rounded out with some of the 100 badge pieces.  I’ve also got a great plate tanking set gathering dust in the bank and really like the idea of gathering up 7 or 8 mobs and watching them kill themselves on me while I hide behind my massive shield and occasionaly poke my sword out to have a quick stab at them.  So it’s Protection for me, baby, YEAH!

Well this lasted about half an hour, too.  My stats were roughly 15000 health, 2 mana.  Yes, I could gather up half a dozen mobs and take them all down at once, yes it was like being a plate armoured Frost Mage, but there were a couple of issues with this play style.
1.  This was Howling Fjord on Wrath release.  You were lucky to find one mob not being molested by half a dozen other players, let alone half a dozen.
2.  Mana pool from full to empty so quickly you’d make an Arcane Mage look conservative.

One quick return trip to Ironforge to vendor a Prot set and respec back to Holy later, and I’m back in Howling Fjord prepared to level as Holy again.  Except this time, things are slightly different.  Holy Shock now only has a 6 second cooldown.  Prior to 3.0, whatever seal I threw up was what was going to be Judged too, whether I liked it or not.  Post 3.0 I can throw up Seal of Righteousness and Judge Light to heal myself from melee hits.  My health and mana bars barely moved at level 70 with ilevel 141 gear.  As I gained levels and new ranks of old spells, I started to notice my mana bar was actually starting to drop alarmingly.  In one multimob fight I think it may even have gotten as low as 75%!!!  And it was at roughly this point that Blizzard decided to give me Divine Plea.  Problem solved!

It’s ironic that the tools Blizzard gave to Holy Paladins to aid them with solo healing groups, (reduced Holy Shock cooldown, Divine Plea etc) don’t actually do a massive amount for Pallies who are healing, but by the Sacred Jockstrap of Robert E. Howard, they are GREAT for levelling and grinding!

The Sacred Jockstrap of Robert E. Howard

I realise at this stage of the game I’m probably only talking to people who have Pally alts, but the advice is the same.  If you’ve played at 70 as Ret, by all means stay Ret.  It doesn’t actually suck anymore.  If you played Prot, same advice applies.  If on the other hand you’re a healadin and are looking at the steep climb to 80 with growing apprehension, fear not!  Holy dps IS a viable alternative, no need at all to throw away your healing gear until you hit 80.

And on the bright side, when you’re asked to heal for Azjol Nerub you’ll actually be capable of doing it.

Spell Downranking and Mana Cost Inflation

It seems there’s another beta build on the test servers and there’s a fairly massive change been slipped in. WoW Insider just reported that downranked spells now cost much more mana than maximum rank, sometimes more than 100 mana more than the highest rank.  How is this going to affect you?  Over to our panel of experts.  Calli, you first.

*yawn*  Oh sorry, you wanted a comment? Well I guess that on fights like Morogrim Tidewalker in Serpentshrine Cavern, Mages are going to have use max rank Frost Nova to root the murlocs in place and keep them away from the healers, assuming your raid uses that strategy and doesn’t have a tankadin or a Water Elemental to do it from a safe distance.  The increased damage is fairly trivial, so threat shouldn’t be an issue.  Can’t see anything to get excited about, personally.

Ow! Put the stick away!  Ok, ok..  pvp implications…  Well the days of spamming Rank 1 Arcane Explosion to flush Rogues and Kitties out of hiding are well and truly over.  Yes, the Rogues are rolling their faces all over their keyboards in utter glee at this one.  Rank 1 Frostbolt will probably still be used to get that initial snare off quickly but it’s probably going to be a lot more situational now, and the days of spamming Rank 1 Frostbolt to get that Winter’s Chill debuff up are probably long gone too.  Rank 1 Frost Nova in pvp is also dead and buried.  Speaking personally, I’m a raiding Fire Mage who’s already paid the pvp penance to get the trinket, so I have no need to either use downranked anything or pvp at all anymore.

Now on the other hand if I was a Frost Mage who did Arenas or Battlegrounds…  ouch.  Shinano, over to you.