Exorcism: Now has a 1.5 second cast time, but can once again be used on players.

Judgements: Some of these attacks were considered ranged and some melee. They are all now considered melee attacks that can’t be dodged, parried or blocked.

Judgement of Light: Now heals for 2% of the attacker’s maximum health instead of a variable amount based on the spell power and attack power of the judging paladin.

Seal of Blood/ Martyr: This ability has been removed.

Seal of Vengeance/ Corruption: These seals have been redesigned to deal substantially more damage. Now, once a paladin has 5 copies of the debuff from these seals on his or her target, on each swing the paladin will deal 33% weapon damage as Holy, with critical strikes dealing double damage. In addition, the damage-over-time effect is now considered a melee attack instead of a spell attack.

Art of War: Now only applies to melee critical hits, but will make your next Flash of Light or Exorcism instant. In addition, this talent now provides notification in the floating combat text when it activates.

Crusader Strike: Damage reduced to 75% weapon damage to match the new 4-second cooldown. Mana cost reduced to 5% of base mana.

Seal of Command: Redesigned. This seal now deals 36% weapon damage on every swing, and deals substantially less judgement damage.

Vindication: Redesigned. Now lowers target attack power, is consistent and does not stack with Demoralizing Shout.

Hand of Reckoning: Redesigned. Now does damage only when the target does not currently have the caster targeted, but damage done increased to 50% of attack power, occurring after the taunt effect is applied.

The biggest change is obviously the removal of Seal of Blood/ Martyr, and Seal of Vengeance/ Corruption the new standard Seal for DPS. The top priority when using Seal of Vengeance/ Corruption is obviously getting its attack to reach 5 stacks as soon as possible. Only when you have applied 5 stacks of debuff then can your Seal attacks yield its full damage potential. With Crusader Strike cooldown lowered to 4 seconds, it should not take long to apply a full 5 stack on the target. Also when at 5 stacks, Judgements proc Seal attacks as well, so you want Seal of Vengeance/ Corruption to stack fully ASAP.

The downside to Seal of Vengeance/ Corruption is that Seal attacks can be resisted, DoT application can be dodged and resisted.

However note that all this information i obtained are from players on the PTR, so there will be changes and adjustments. At the moment the Seal changes seem to be working out pretty well. Talent wise, you will now want to have Seals of the Pure, which increases Seal/Judgement of Vengeance/ Corruption damage by 15%.

Another great change is Art of War, which now allows you to cast Exorcism instantly whenever you crit. At least you now have the option to either heal or DPS when Art of War procs. Currently Art of War is a useful talent, but doesn’t lives up to its name. (Art of War procs, heal yourself? WTH?)

Lastly another change is Crusader Strike, lowered to 4 seconds and 75% damage. Opinion is divided on this one, some thinks a lower CD will yield higher DPS while others disagreed. But one thing is certain, this bloody 41-point needs a debuff effect. It’s been a simple melee strike attack for a few years now, and a debuff effect is due.

First let’s look at the changes again,

Judgement of Light: Now heals for 2% of the attacker’s maximum health instead of a variable amount based on the spell power and attack power of the judging paladin.

Sacred Shield: When a paladin casts Flash of Light on a target with this buff, they also now place a heal-over-time effect on the target, healing that target for 100% of the Flash of Light amount over 12 seconds

Beacon of Light: The healing amount on the Beacon of Light target is now based on the total healing done (including over-healing) instead of the effective healing done. Radius increased to 60 yards. Multiple Paladins can now have this active on the same target. Buff indicating a player is within range of the Beacon target is no longer displayed.

Divine Intellect: This talent now gives 2/4/6/8/10% increased intellect instead of 3/6/9/12/15%.

Illumination: This talent now returns 30% of the mana cost of the spell instead of 60%.

In addition,

Mana Regeneration: All items that provide “X mana per five seconds” have had the amount of mana they regenerate increased by approximately 25%.

Replenishment: This buff now grants 1% of the target’s maximum mana over 5 seconds instead of 0.25% per second. This applies to all 5 sources of Replenishment (Vampiric Touch, Judgements of the Wise, Hunting Party, Enduring Winter Frostbolts and Soul Leech).

Overall great changes but as you can see the mana refund from Illumination went from 60% to 30%, a substantial amount. Still with Beacon of Light buffed and the new ability of Sacred Shield we are able to get more healing than before. Blizzard’s intention is to make paladins worry about their mana regeneration, h
ence the Illumination nerf and the buffs to MP5 gear and Replenishment.

Healing wise we are able to multitask better, with Beacon of Light able to heal the Beacon(usually the tank) for the full amount even if the heal lands on a raid member with 100% health. With Flash of Light providing a HoT on a member with Sacred Shield we are able to dish out more healing.

The counter to this is obviously mana regeneration issues, Holy paladins now have to be more careful with their casting in Patch 3.2 with Illumination nerfed. Unlike Priests and Druids who obey the 5 second rule, where they regenerate substantial mana if they are able to stop casting for 5 seconds. In priest/druid itemization and talents, mana regeneration and spirit is an important stat. Paladins however, place these stats on the lowest priority, with Intellect and Critical Rating being the most important due to Illumination in the past. By having a huge mana pool and a high critical rate, Illumination used to be able to provide the mana regeneration paladins need to last through a fight. With the nerf, Illumination is no longer a reliable way for mana conversation. Actually I should use the word conservation instead of regeneration.

To cope with this problem the obvious way is better mana management. This requires better utilization of Divine Illumination, Divine Plea and other spells such as Divine Sacrifice. When the fight enters a intense situation where the whole raid takes damage, it would be wise to pop Divine Shield with Divine Sacrifice to absorb the raid damage to conserve mana.

Divine Plea is a tricky spell use considering the 50% reduction to heals, which means its only usable when you are able to share the healing tasks with another healer. A popular workaround is to combine it with Divine Illumination, Avenging Wrath and using Trinkets to heal and regenerate in that period. Think about it, with Divine Illumination and Divine Plea, you are technically healing for the same amount, only it takes you twice as long to cast the heal. With Avenging Wrath and trinkets you in fact are increasing your healing. Let me clarify,

With Divine Plea and Divine Illumination,
Healing lowered tp 50% effective
Mana cost lowered to 50% required

which balances out, you’re paying half the mana cost for heals that’s half effective. Full mana cost equals heals that’s 100% effective without Divine Plea and Divine Illumination.

With Avenging Wrath and Spellpower Trinkets
Avenging Wrath adds 20% healing
Trinkets boost spellpower

which effectively increases healing output. So adding these effects, you healing at 60% + spellpower boost with 50% mana cost per spell.

So effectively, you’re healing at full potential or more, only that you are taking twice as long to do that AND you are regenerating mana. The only downside is whether the tank is capable of dealing with the longer inflow of heals.

As of now there are few alternative strategies for regenerating mana, such as attacking with Seal of Wisdom. But with 3.2 still in the PTR, all is not set in stone yet. Watch this page for more news.

You can read it from the source here or at WoW Insider.

If you’re lazy to read I took the initiative of summarizing the changes. Read on:

Holy

1. Flash of Light places a HoT(Heal over Time) effect on any target with Sacred Shield on them. This is somewhat vague, does it mean Flash of Light becomes a HoT on targets with Sacred Shield? Or it adds an additional HoT effect on top of Flash of Light? What if I want a Flash of Light and not a HoT on that target with Sacred Shield?

Rating: 3/5? (Needs more specifics.)

2. Beacon of Light gets a big buff, any heals on a target, regardless of health, heals the tank with Beacon of Light. If you still don’t understand, it means placing a Holy Light on a raid member with 100% HP will still heal the target with Beacon of Light. This is a significant buff!

Rating: 5/5

3. Due to above buffs, Illumination will be nerfed. Reducing Illumination’s mana refund from 60% to 30% would make mana regeneration a issue for Holy paladin. But fear not, adjustments will be made to Replenishment and buffs to MP5 to balance things out (Right… Balance…That turned out well last time.). Gear selection will be affected by this, as CRIT might become a lower priority, let’s leave this to the theorycrafters to crunch it out.

Rating: 2.5/5

Protection

1. Ardent Defender gets some proper adjustments, so that any attack that would reduce the paladin to 35% health or below has its damage reduced instead of while the paladin is at 35% health or below. Also once every 2 minutes any attacks that would kill the paladin would instead set the paladin’s health to a certain percentage.

Rating: 4/5

2. Blessing of Sanctuary will be getting buffed, no details on this yet. But they want to make it the blessing of choice for tanks. So it should be buffed significantly.

Rating: ?/5

3. Block will be changed over time, but for now the effects of bonus block value will be doubled. Currently Block does not provide sufficient mitigation, my friend can attest to that. Boss hits him for 20,000, he only blocks 1500 of it, Block isn’t as valuable as before.

Rating: ?/5 (Needs more details)

Retribution

1. Seal of Blood/the Martyr will be removed and Seal of Corruption/Vengeance will be buffed. Once there is 5 stacks of the debuff, on each swing the paladin will deal 33% weapon damage as Holy, with critical strikes doing double damage. Seal of Command will be reworked to deal 36% weapon damage on every swing, and deals substantially less judgement damage. Finally working on the Seals, but lots to be done here.

Rating: 3/5

2. Exorcism has a cast time of 1.5 seconds but can be used on players again. Honestly, not helpful in PvP as paladins need to be chasing down enemies instead of casting. Would be better if the cast time was 1 second. More like a bandage fix.

Rating: 1/5

3. Art of War makes not only Flash of Light instant, but also Exorcism. Nice idea, considering Art of War procs were not really contributing to PvE DPS. This makes the talent more viable in both PvP and PvE.

Rating: 4/5

4. Crusader Strike cooldown reduced to 4 seconds from 6 seconds, but damage reduced to 75%. Seriously, 4 seconds, 6 seconds, it doesn’t matter. IT’S STILL A 41 POINT MELEE STRIKE, IT NEEDS SOMETHING, A DoT, SOMETHING.

Rating: 1/5

5. Vindication reworked to target attack power. Primarily a PvP talent, this rework only targets melee classes but not magic-users. Would be more useful if it reduced spell power as well.

Rating: 1/5

These are some promising changes, hope they go in the right direction.

For full details on Patch 3.2, check the latest patch notes at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

As I have said I trying to revamp the site and I’m pretty much doing most of the stuff myself. I’m writing my own Wordpress theme (that means new layout for non-geeks.) and looking through the articles. Its been ages since I did coding so development are somewhat slow and I apologize. I’m also going to review the site and update content, such as keeping the PvE guides up to date, writing new leveling guides and looking out for better articles written by others. I hope this site gets a new look and is able to offer more to readers.

I also want to thank you, the reader for your patience. I honestly haven’t been able to run this site as efficiently as I should, but you guys still pop in now and then to give me advice. Thank you.

If you have any ideas about the upcoming changes to the site, contact me or leave a comment.

Been revising, studying ,freaking out, trembling recently due to exams.

Just finished one paper and I got three more to go…

Will get back to the game once the exams are over. Sad to hear they’re nerfing Ulduar. (Yes I’m serious.)

When I’m back I’ll try and revamp the site, or at least review and update the guides and articles on the site.

See you guys and have fun…

With my exams coming within a month and busy preparing for it, I am sorry to say I can’t post a detailed informative document on the new talent specs. I will post core talent builds for each spec, so there will be leftover/spare talent points. These talent points are for you to decide on the kind of build you want.

The good thing (or bad depending the way you see it) about Patch 3.1 is that talent points are freed up, so you can have more variation with your build. Holy Paladins used to spec probably 51/0/20 to amp their critical chance, now with 3.1 you can spec into Protection for Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian. Retribution paladins can also opt to have that talent now that less talent points are needed for a proper Retribution build. This makes the paladin a more “hybrid” class.

HOLY (51/5/5)

In the Holy tree it is still the same old 51 points allocation, feel free to switch between Improved Lay on Hands and Blessed Hands.

Divinity is a exciting new talent, improving heals given and received by 5%.

Benediction is specifically for Holy Shock, so if you find the 5 points here not worthwhile simply pump them into Protection for Divine Sacrifce and Divine Guardian. Divine Guardian increases the duration of Sacred Shield by 100% and amount absorbed by 20%, which is a solid talent. Alternatively invest remaining points in Retribution tree for more critical chance.

PROTECTION (0/56/6)

While reading through sites for info on Protection build, the ironic thing is that the new talent Divine Sacrifice is deemed more a offtank/non-tank spell. This seems more usable in a situation when the whole raid is taking heavy damage, such as EoE Phase 2 ,instead of in a boss fight, so use it wisely. You are only bringing more hurt upon yourself if it is used in a boss fight, apart from boss damage you are taking damage from other party members. In my build you can see I left Divine Sacrifice out, but it is optional. Probably in 25 man raids where raid takes heavy damage it will be needed.

Remember to spend only 1 point in Improved Judgements, this is because of the 9 6 9 rotation. If you don’t already know, 9 6 9 rotation is a spell rotation for tankadins. You can read about it HERE and the SacredDuty blog has a post on it.

Divinity might seem to be a Holy talent, but it works for Protection as well. It increases healing received by 5%, that is enough reason to take it.

RETRIBUTION (0/5/52)

Retribution tree went through some tweaks, what used to require heavy points investment, now has talent points reduced considerably. Seal of Blood/Martyr had Judgement damage reduced but Seal damage increased, bringing a balance to it.

You can see I have no points in Improved Blessing of Might, this is due to Warrior’s Battle Shout. There are problems of Blessing of Might clashing with Battle Shout (Sorry but I will have to look into it in detail in later posts.) Seal of Command is optional.

From then on it’s pretty much the core talents for Retribution paladins. The remaining talent points can be invested in the Protection Tree for the new talents, it will help raid survivability. With instant Flash of Lights and Divine Sacrifice, you can provide additional support in situations where the raid is taking damage or you are unable to DPS the target.

I have used these addons and they have been an immense help to me. This time I’ll introduce 2 more addons I always use and cover other useful addons.

Today’s post will be more beneficial to the Holy paladin as the addons featured are more useful to them.

QUARTZ
Quartz is a castbar mod that is able to track and compensate your latency/lag in your spell casting. If you’re a healer/caster and you don’t have it, you don’t know what you’re missing. Most WoW players are plagued by latency problems in game. (especially now, I haven’t been able to raid 25M, WTH man!?) Quartz is able to reduce the latency problem by correctly tracking your spell casting. It’s hard to explain, but you will understand once you installed it. Basically you can fire off your spell earlier than you think you need.

DOWNLOAD QUARTZ

DECURSIVE
Decursive is a debuff tracking/removal addon. Once installed, you will see another panel of small unitframes on your screen. Afflicted units will be shaded red and all you need to do is just click to dispel the debuff if you have means. So for a paladin raid members afflicted with magic effects, diseases and poisons will be shown red, but cursed raid members will not show for the paladin because he does not have the spell to dispel it. Instead druids will be able to the cursed members as red.

Unforunately I could not find a video for this addon, but scroll down in the addon page you will see screenshots of Decursive.

DOWNLOAD DECURSIVE

HEALBOT CONTINUED
I don’t use Healbot but it has been getting a lot of cheers and boos. It really simplifies the healing process so there’s one side singing its praises and another side saying it degrades healers and makes the game too easy.

It has nice features like tracking who’s healing who, which prevents overhealing, but it also would dull you alertness in the long run. And in raids awareness/alertness is a vital attribute for healers.

My thoughts, I would not recommend using this addon because this kinda automates healing. Where is the fun in that? But if you are really a healer in dire straits, by all means use it. For the Raid.

DOWNLOAD HEALBOT CONTINUED

There’s pretty much I want to cover about addons. Of course there are plenty more addons out there for you to explore. Keep looking and try them out and see which one suits you.

Be careful though, some addon/mod takes up memory and might slow down your game.

If you don’t already know, addons/mods are external programs in WoW that enhances gameplay and capability.

Raiders are familiar with raid mods such as DeadlyBossMods, Omen Threat Meters and such.

The addons I’ll be covering today will be mainly to improve your gameplay and capability in raids. You can look for other addons at either WoWInterface or Curse WoW Addons page.

How to use these addons are really simple, just make sure to read the information posted on the addon page, or the README note in the files.

POWER AURAS
A very powerful addon. Its purpose is to provide visual aid for your spells and buffs.
For example if you’re a Holy Paladin, a visual marker will appear for the duration of Judgement of the Pure after you cast it. A tanking paladin can configure it for Holy Shield so he knows he keeps the spell up. Say you got a Holy Shock crit, Infusion of Light procs, there will be a graphic on your screen when that effect is in duration.

It is a simple to use addon, after installing just type /powa to bring up the configuration window. Say you want to provide a visual aid for your trinkets, create a New Icon and insert the name of the buff. Play around with the settings and you have it. If you are not sure the video below is a tutorial on it.

DOWNLOAD POWER AURAS

GHOST: PULSE
Ghost: Pulse is another visual aid addon. The difference is that it informs you of cooldowns. When spells finish their cooldown, a icon of that spell pulses on the screen to let you know the spell is up and ready.

Say you casted Holy Shock and after 6 seconds when it finishes its cooldown, a Holy Shock icon will pulse on your screen. Alternatively you can configure it to show what spell you are casting, shown in the video below.

DOWNLOAD GHOST: PULSE

GRID
A raidframe addon that can also work as a healing addon. If you’re a healer and you don’t use any raidframes addon but the default raidframes, this is a MUST HAVE. This will increase your healing capability TENFOLD.

Although small and compact, it is able to convey enough information for you to perform your duties efficiently. If you find it hard to understand GRID, it will come to you eventually, or you could configure it to be larger and more instructive.

In non-combat it doubles up as a raidframe, showing all members currently in your party or raid. I really like the fact it does not take up a lot of space. In combat each unit frame will display any loss of health, debuffs, if its in range of your spells and other information.
For instance, a raid member having aggro will have a small red square on the top left corner of his unit frame. Raid members out of range of your spells will have their unit frames transparent.

DOWNLOAD GRID

That’s it for now, I will cover a little more on addons the next time round. See ya.

Written by Absol of Skywall, this guide covers stuff like gylphs, blessings, stats and DPS rotation.

Click here to read the guide

• Sacred Shield: This effect cannot be cast on more than one friendly target at a time.

With Sacred Shield limited to only one target, a paladin healer’s capability is reduced. My method is usually to Beacon of Light and Sacred Shield the Main Tank and then cast Sacred Shield on another raid member, normally the target i’m assigned to heal or an offtank. This way damage mitigation is provided on both raid members and increased healing from the crit bonus of Sacred Shield. Heck if you’re adventurous you can cast it on several raid members. Sacred Shield was somewhat our answer to AoE healing, sure it didn’t heal but it provided protection which benefitted the raid.

• Infusion of Light: Now increases the critical chance of your next Holy Light by 10/20% instead of reducing cast time. Moved to Tier 10.

Seasoned/geared paladin healers probably loathe this change. When you have the gear, critical chance isn’t an issue anymore. Geared holy paladins have nearly 40% or more critical chance, which is more than needed. The essential factor in raids is that your heals are reaching the tank in time. This is the reason Infusion of Light was so effective, it addressed one of the disadvantage of paladin healing, Casting.

Even if your Holy crits heal for 20000, it wouldn’t matter if the boss hits your tank 0.1 second before your heal reaches the tank.
Infusion of Light was a emergency button for us paladins. Divine Favor, Holy Shock and then a Holy Light to save a tank from being killed.

It’s hard to balance PvP and PvE, that’s understandable. But it sucks when such changes happened.