Holy Paladin in 4.0.1 - Part I

I am one of those people that do not moan about their classes. Well not much. It seems this time around its kind of harder to do. Holy paladins are changed, but I am not sure yet if they are 'damaged'. Let’s review what I did do once I went 'live' and how that did work out...

Rebuilt the Gui to the state it was minus Satrina Buff Frames. I currently do not have anything informing me about procs and transient states appart from the default 'Power auras' and some Pitbull 4 notations. This defo needs tweaking...

Bought some new Glyphs as per Rohan's advice which I found quite useful.

Now the hard part...

I tweaked my Haste, Critical and Mastery to the following (unbuffed):

• Haste 728 (quite low by some reports for 4.0.1, more than adequate for 3.X)
• - Crit 39% (probably could do with less as crit is less usefull now)
• - Master ~10% (this is new territory and current reports state that logs do not measure absorbsion - need to check)

With those options and the same talent trees Rohan suggested (31,0,5) I participated in a guild run in ICC, doing some heroic modes.

My reports are:

Paladin healing is, obviously, very different - it looks like we need some time to adjust to the new paradigm. Main changes went from a Pace-type of healing (FL repeatedly for minor damage, HS+Glyph for larger damage+splash, Beacon, shields etc) to a more synergetic style. Holy shock is our secondary resource "counter", Word of Glory is our mana-free-instant counter reset-er and we now have 3 core 'time' heals:

• Divine Light (expensive, slow and very-high-output)
• Holy Light (cheap, average-to-small output)
• Flash of Light (expensive, ultra-fast, high-output)

Coupled with the aforementioned:

• Holy shock (mana based, instant, procs Holy Power)
• Word of Glory (Holy Power based, instant, procs acute pain to my fingers...)

We are much less 'capable' than other healers when it comes to healing meters. I am having trouble determining what our niche is with the current build and I hope this will change within the next few weeks and hopefully some correcting tweaks. Instant (therefore extremely situational) heals in small-damage scenarios (damage either was small or other healers very fast) feels kinda... "where do I fit in"... Last but not least, it is ESSENTIAL to built the UI in an informative way. It may take a couple of runs to adjust to "looking for the right things"

Overall...

1. I am having trouble detecting our niche
2. I need time to learn and put inside my head the timings
3. I need to gain some experience with the new synergies
4. We need to 'measure' Mastery - I am not sure there is a reliable method there. Kinda makes me feel like a Disc Priest
5. I need to make our UIs assist 'counting' and 'pacing'

And I most definitely need to do a few more runs with an alternative build to be able to have a better insight on how the new Holy Paladin paradigm feels. I am particularly intrigued by Eternal Glory and the possibility of chain-casting WoG (which if it does happen it will be eventually nerfed "to the ground"). All in all, I am sure we will be tweaked as things are noticeable inefficient and things look less favourable for the time being. But I could be wrong...

The Return of the Escaping Gnome

Ok, I have to admit, the title is not very indicative of what I am going to say. In fact I am not sure what I am going to say. You see the last few weeks I've been thinking of writing up something in my blog, its been a while after all. But I always felt there is not much to say. As if the fun was drained out from both the game and the surrounding activities.

Yet the last few weeks Escape started assembling back from the holidays and begun raiding again. In order to do that we started recruiting once again, to fill in the gaps and form a raiders group around the veteran core. It a process, we have been accustomed to and it is probably an inherit feature of guilds with a more 'casual' approach like ours - although only our schedule is per se casual.

As with most guilds in our status the question was either push for more HMs or go straight for a Lich King kill to satisfy the popular demand. We kind of did both last week. This week, mostly because our seasoned drill Searg...er... raid leader and GM was not around we opted for a more "relaxed" approach. Get our usual HMs, do not try anything new and overall try to have fun.

Not sure what was the deal, I am not to fuzzed about the technicalities of WoW these days, but our DPS was excellent - think the Boomkin did work wonders there - and the raid was...dare I say it... fun! Even the voices of the raiders were sounding happy. Jokes flew over, our resident gnome got teased, the old-farts exchanged insults and as always I slacked trying to read a couple academic papers while raiding. Yes, I admit I do that during normal modes...

All in all it has been a while I had fun in a raid. But most importantly it brought as smile in my face as I saw Escape sound and healthy after another summer break. It seems Cataclysm - which I have been checking now and then through Beta - will include lots of opportunities to play around with guildmates and get some nice guild-rewards. This was enough to renew my interest to World of Warcraft for a while.

I feel I'll be updating this blog more often now...