I'll talk here about the new protection talent: Divinity.
In a comment to my last Holy spec post, Celton was saying that for him, if you have to chose between Divinity and the ret talent Sanctity of Battle, you should chose the crit bonus.
The argument will be: take 5 points into Divinity or 2 points into Divinity and 3 into Sanctity of Battle. Giving you a spec like 51/2/15 +3.
Divinity for a Holy Paladin is just healing bonus, you'll perhaps be saved by the increased heals on you once in your life, but it's not going to make a large difference. Before 3.1.1, we were gaining back mana when healed, and that would have been valuable then. Sadly you need to be deep protection for that now, so nothing good considering mana regen.
Sanctity of Battle gives you 3% crit, which means more big heals (1.5% increase in hps), more mana return with Illumination (1.8% more mana) and more procs of all our crit related talents/gear.
Now from a pure item points, considering around 2000 spell power, a 3% increase in your heals will be around 60 spell power. On the other hand 3% crit is around 90 crit rating. So going for Sanctity is around 50% more valuable in theory.
Now, I went with 5 Divinity, and I'm going to stick to it for some time. The reason is that I chose gear for int & crit over spell power on the tier 7 raiding arc. Looking at Ulduar paladin gear, it is clear that our crit rating will suffer while our spell power should go up. So I plan on keeping 5 Divinity until I start replacing some tier 7 gear by ulduar gear, and once my crit goes under 45% raid buffed, I'll change to 2 Divinity + 3 Sanctity.
The same choice can be made between Divinity and Pursuit of Justice:
Divinity 2pts + Tuskar Vitality (boots enchant)
total of +2% to healing, 150hps, +8% move speed
Pursuit of Justice 2pts + Icewalker (boots enchant)
total of 0.37% hit, 0.26% crit, +15% speed
I think 2pts Divinity / Tuskar Vitality is better on total, but moving fast is never bad and if you have issues with survavibility in Ulduar Pursuit of Justice can help (Kologarn lazer beams anyone?).
I am a great fan of move speed bonuses as a paladin, we have nearly no heal ability while moving so for me positioning and moving is a really important issue to improve your hps in raids. So no Divinity + Icewalker for me, though it's obviously the best if you don't need the speed.
In the end look at your toon stats, chose what you think is best for you. At least we have choice here, which is never a bad thing :)
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Divinity vs. Sanctity of battle is a choice I have been struggling with since 3.1. I will link my armory so you know where I am coming from.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Azuremyst&cn=Lancelet&gn=Swords+and+Spells
I would be the first to admit that I might have gotten sucked in by the 5% extra healing=win reaction, and the more I think about it the more I think I would like some points in Sanctity. 51/2/15 +3 should be the cookie cutter spec, with those 3 going into Sanctity.
I would really like your opinion on Val'anyr, if you have time to check out that post.
Theorycraft wise, 3 Sanctity is probably better than 3 Divinity, but it's trading crit&mana regen against global healing.
ReplyDeleteAs for myself, seeing my already huge overhealing score on raid (sometimes up to 40-50%), I thought I was going to give a shot to Divinity and see what happens. Crit will mostly result in more overhealing and I can manage mana in Ulduar even if, for once in WotLK, I have to mana pot sometimes.
As for Val'anyr, I think most of the healing community agrees to say that is it a paladin weapon.
The shield is a fraction of the healing spell cast, for its full power, whatever fraction of it result in overhealing, as long as it is not 100% overhealing (it has to heal at least 1 hp).
Hence, a shield proc on a critcal Holy Light will absorb more than 2K damage, which is huge for a completely free proc that Blizzard says to be also a regular proc. No other healing class can obtain such result with it. And the shield renewal suits our "mono target" healing too.