Holy Raiding with a ToR build.

So the build I discussed in this post has received a name on elitist jerks forums, the ToR build. ToR stands for our Tower of Radiance talent.


Tower of Radiance (rank 3) : Healing the target of your Beacon of Light with Flash of Light, Holy Light or Divine Light has a 100% chance to generate a charge of Holy Power.


The concept is simple: use Holy Shock on cooldown, use Holy Light on your beacon to gain holy power and then use Word of Glory when you reach 3 holy power. The rotations have been analysed on elitist jerks and the optimal hps seem to be: Holy Shock, Holy Light, Holy Light, Word of Glory. If you get a Daybreak proc then Holy Shock twice on your next shock, if you get en Eternal Glory proc then WoG twice (or thrice, or four times ... you get the idea).

Raiding with ToR

I have raided last night with this build. ICC 10-Man regular with achievements (makes it slightly harder on some fights, or at least it did before patch). About 2 and a half hours raiding, 10 bosses down (Sindragosa and LK left). We wiped once on ... a bug after the ship battle, we were still killed by the opponent boat after having finished the battle and reached Saurfang spot ...
Usually we 3 heal ICC, at least on some fights. Last night we 2 healed it (me and a resto druid) but for Marrowgar because we were not sure of raid healing, and Festergut because we only had 1 ranged dps and had to put 2 healers on Vile Gas range.

As always before I was dual tank healing, though my druid friend was Lifeblooming the tank not having my beacon at all times and helping me with hots. Nearly all I used all night was the ToR rotation, Daybreak is huge, and Eternal Glory "proced" 4 times in a row for me once ... crazy 5x10K free heals.
I never went under about 80% mana, and lost a tank once during the princes because he was tanking Keleseth and lost his purple balls (hey dpsers, calm down please).

Discussion and changes

They are nerfing Speed of Light today in the new beta build (see MMO champion).
Speed of Light has been revamped to only affect Holy Radiance - Speed of Light - Grants 1/2/3% spell haste and reduces the cooldown of Holy Radiance by 30 sec. Casting Holy Radiance increases your movement speed by 20/40/60% for 4 sec.
So Holy Light won't be hastened after your Holy Shock anymore, this is a slight nerf to the whole ToR idea. We'll have to see if it's enough to change it.

I had fun with Light of Dawn too, it's cute, it's ... mostly useless. It doesn't heal for enough when serious raid damage happens and the aoe is too situational / the cd is too long, for it to be really a good utility talent. Right now I'll continue to test it, but I'm wondering about skipping it in the talent tree.

Divine Light is strong, even stronger than Holy Light was before. It is an emergency heal, but with the hp pool of tanks right now, a DL crit will heal for about 50% hps of your tank.

Overall view on Holy raiding with ToR

The ToR build is fun to play, it's more reactive and dynamic than before, and we've gained a lot of mobility, which is a really nice change.
You can keep up a tank with this gameplay and a few Divine Lights tossed on your tank here and there while helping for emergency raid healing (HS & WoG).
Your global healing will be ... quite low. I was at about 1/2 to 2/3 of the effective healing of our druid last night, hot spam is still easy to achieve with the mana pool druids have right now, and their hots seem to be stronger than before.
So don't worry if you're a bit low on the meter, have fun with the new gameplay, and wait until Cata to go live to see how healer mana will be impacted by going to 85. The nice thing of this build is that about 50% of it's healing is mana free (Beacon + WoG) and another part is low mana (HL) so even at 85 it should still be very mana effective.

Now a last word ... ICC normal mode is a joke now, even relatively serious bosses like Putricide or Lanathel are going down so fast that you'll never go out of mana or anything. We're definitely going hard mode next time without any fear for mana or tanks.
Btw our tanks had nearly no problem with aggro. Took them one day to adapt to the new talents/rotations, and warrior need to be very cautious with their rage when engaging, but beside that no boss ever left them.
Dps is crazy in ICC, some classes got just shafted (fury warriors and ret paladins come to mind and are buffed today on live it seems), but most others especially casters are all around 15K+ dps when they were around 11-12K before. I tell you, bosses are going down fast.

I guess it is now time for all of us to go get our frostwyrm. I'll be happy to get it, and wasn't sure we could down hard mode LK before this patch, now I don't doubt anymore at all. It's just a matter of a few weeks at most.
I just hope we won't get burned too fast, and pre-cataclysm event will be enough to keep people on until the extension.

Have fun, go go disco paladins ... grin grin.