Cataclysm expected for December 7th!

There is another build on the beta test servers, Cataclysm Beta - Build 13117. This one doesn't change much for Holy Paladins.
I was kind of sad to see the global nerf to resto druids, I hope it is a balance change and indicates they were a bit too high, as they have already been strongly nerfed by the change of most of their core talents as our mana regen has been savagely put "To The Ground Baby" ...
Retribution paladins also see the increase of Two-Handed Weapon Specialization from 10% to 20%. It is good for them, but indicates that they were probably very low on the dps charts, I'll probably go ret for questing, I hope it won't be too bad ^^

But the new build is not the big news of today. Cataclysm will hit live on the 7th of December according to MMO Champion and some clever datacrossing. Thx Boubouille, you're as always, on the top of news.

Paladin Tier 11, first Cataclysm armor set

Keep in mind that as my previous posts, these are only Beta PTR versions and could be changed before coming to live (which was postponed to early/mid December it seems).

The Holy Paladin set is here (from MMO Champion):

Head - Reinforced Sapphirium Headguard

cost is one head token from raids
+281 Intellect

+512 Stamina

+228 Spirit

Meta Socket Socket Bonus: +30 Intellect

Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 168.

Shoulders - Reinforced Sapphirium Mantle

cost is one shoulder token from raids
+233 Intellect

+380 Stamina

+149 Spirit

Red Socket Socket Bonus: +10 Critical Strike Rating

Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 169.

Chest - Reinforced Sapphirium Breastplate

cost is 2200 valor points (gained in raids and probably daily heroics)
+301 Intellect

+512 Stamina

+228 Spirit

Yellow Socket Socket Bonus: +20 Intellect

Equip: Increases your mastery rating by 188.

Hands - Reinforced Sapphirium Gloves

cost is 1650 valor points (gained in raids and probably daily heroics)
+233 Intellect

+380 Stamina

+169 Spirit

Yellow Socket Socket Bonus: +10 Mastery Rating

Equip: Increases your mastery rating by 149.

Legs - Reinforced Sapphirium Greaves

cost is 2200 valor points (gained in raids and probably daily heroics)
+301 Intellect

+512 Stamina

+213 Spirit

Red Socket Socket Bonus: +20 Intellect

Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 203.

All are epic ilevel 359 plate armor items. The set bonus is:

• (2) Set: Increases the critical strike chance of your Holy Light spell by 5%.
• (4) Set: Whenever your Holy Radiance spell is active, you gain 1620 Spirit.

I won't discuss costs or valor points, I have my views on the topic but it is not the day for that, and we're not yet sure about anything related to them.
The items themselves reflect the changes to spirit regen, though int will stays a very important stat as it now provides you with the equivalent of spellpower.
If you've followed my last posts about Holy Paladin talents, you know that crit does not provide us with any sort of mana regen anymore. Hence I am sad to find 3 pieces with a huge amount of crit on this set and only one with haste. I guess a lot of us will be reforging them into more haste, at least we have this option now.

About the set bonus mmm ... I'll have to see it live to decide. The crit bonus isn't bad but I wonder if Holy Light will be of much use in raids, remember that it is now our "medium" heal hence not useful for emergencies neither for big pushes on the tank.
The 4 pieces bonus seems to be a nice mana regen bonus, though Holy Radiance is both on a 1mn cooldown and consumes 40% of our base manapool to cast. Once again, has to be tested.

Not much comments from my part, but if you wanted to look at our next gear set, that's a first view of it.
See you soon for more cataclysmic news.

edit (10/13):
Patch 4.0.1 is now live. You can find the last update concerning gear, stats and reforging on this post: Patch 4.0.1 is going live. You are not prepared!
It is worth noting that Spirit is considered a secondary stat and can be reforged into. It is hence possible to change half the crit rating of an item into spirit. I'll probably do that on most of my gear.

edit (12/30):
I'd advise you to read the neat Home | Best in Slot Holy Paladin Resource. You will find there a complete list of BiS items for Holy Paladins and for each slot an alternative to our poorly itemized T11 with some greatly needed haste rating.

Build 13066 does change everything.

Or Not :P
You can find all the details on MMO Champion, but for Holy Paladins here is the only change that concern you:

Spiritual Focus no longer gives you hit based on your Spirit. Renamed to Paragon of Virtue - Reduces the cooldown of your Divine Protection by 10/20 sec and the cooldown of your Avenging Wrath by 30/60 sec.
Enlightened Judgements now also grants hit rating equal to 50/100% of any Spirit gained from items or effects.

Nothing linked to PvE though Spiritual Focus can have PvE uses, they are very limited. It won't change the 31/5/5 build I gave before much, though if Enlightened Judgements grant range to our judgements as the mmo talent calculator says, then it'll replace the 2 points into the Improved Judgements ret talent. As the calculator has changed, you can find the new build here. It will be a 33/5/3 or a 31/5/5 depending on range being linked to Enlightened Judgements or not.

For another view of our new talents, you can find a Prot analysis of build 13033 on Rhidach website Righteous Defense.
If you want more analysis of Holy Talents and skills, I'd advise you to read the detailed article on Paladin Schmaladin and the healing "tips" and comments on Blessing of Kings.

See you soon hopefully patch 4.0.1 will hit live soon, for good and bad :)

Cataclysm Holy Paladin Build

Good News Everyone !

I'm sorry for the lack of activity on my blog for such a time, summer job isn't easy (fewer people and often as much work to do), and summer raiding isn't either (same reasons ;p).
On the plus side, my small guild is now on Putricide hard mode in 10-Man, reason for the silly intro. I've had a lot of fun with ICC hard modes, more than normal modes from what I recall of them so many months ago ... (yes one year on a single instance is way too long Blizzard :p).

But I'm not here to discuss ICC, I guess most of people reading blogs are close to the end anyway now. A new build has been deployed on the PTR (news on MMO Champion as always). Paladin talents have been modified as always too (hybrid classes are those that give the most problems to Blizzard clearly). And as you can guess the Holy build has changed accordingly. If it wasn't completely true before, I now can say that there is a cookie cutter build for PvE Holy Paladins in this PTR Build 13033.

You can use MMO champion talent calculator to look at my 31/5/5 build, that I guess most paladins will get as soon as the patch is out (assuming talents don't change until then).
Why am I so sure it's cookie-cutter ?
The reason is very simple, it contains all +heal talents and not a single pure PvP talent like Arbiter of the Light, Blazing Light, Denounce, Blessed Life and Spiritual Focus from the Holy tree.

I'm a bit sad that Blizzard didn't keep their words saying we would have choice, but I guess it's too hard to do on an hybrid class with PvP talents required in nearly every tree.

Feel free to discuss, and as always have fun :)
Can't wait to roll a Goblin Squig Herder myself, oh sorry .. hunter :P

edit:
The talent builder has changed since this post on MMO Champion due to new patch builds. You can find the build on this link. Future builds/patches will probably break it again follow the blog updates to find the last build.

edit 2 (10/13):
Patch 4.0.1 is now live. You can find the last version of my build and a detailed discussion of the talents and gameplay on this post: Patch 4.0.1 is going live. You are not prepared!

edit 3 (12/27):
The update for Cataclysm and lvl 85 is finally up, you can find it here:
Holy Paladin Cataclysm Build at level 85

More Cataclysm Beta and news

Heyla here, not posted for some time, holidays and raiding have more or less taken all my time (and did you say Starcraft 2, noooo, sure not ^^).

On the front of Paladin updates in the beta I would advise you to follow the news on Righteous Defense by Rhidach. A lot of changes happened for paladins in the last builds, and nothing is final yet (far from it). The developers decided to introduce a new mechanic for us, called Holy Power, that will stack with some abilities (up to 3) and will allow us to empower some existing abilities or use new ones. I am partly excited by this news, some change to our usual pretty lame gameplay can be fun, but I'm really not in line with some of the current builds for that, we'll see how it goes. Go visit Rhidach site for details :)

Raid news, my guild has finally downed the Lich King in 10 man first time without me (my computer having been dead for 2 weeks) and the second time with me. Nothing great now I would agree but raiding attendance during the holidays is always scarce and it is nice to have been able to keep at it and finally reach our goal: which was going into heroic ICC. The 3 first bosses are already down in heroic, we're currently working on Saurfang heroic who's a bad ass :)

I must say that heroic really has revived my interest for ICC, the normal modes until the Lich Kings were really becoming lazy farming. Heroic bosses are much much more interesting, at least for some of them. They are less forgiving to blunders, which is kind of what I like in raids.

Oh and if you are one of the few to not have played Starcraft 2 already ... it's great :P
The campaign is the best solo play for a rts game I've ever played (and I've played a lot of them). I liked the strategy aspect of the last Dawn of War campaign, but Starcraft 2 really get you into the "story" of the campaign, and even if the mission choices are kind of irrelevant, it's still nice to chose the order in which you play them.
I've not started multiplayer yet, or I won't have any time left for raiding :)

On these few words, see you, have fun, and I'll try to finish my healing through ICC articles now that I've got enough experience on the fights.

New Cataclysm Beta, New Paladin Goodness

A new build of the Cataclysm beta has hit the test realms and Boubouille at MMO Champion has given us the updates on all abilities and talent trees.
You can find all the update for paladins with abilities and talent trees on this page.

Main change for Holy Paladins is the healing spells we will have at our disposal:

• Holy Light ( lvl5)

Heals a friendly target for 3880.99 to 4324.07.
6% of base mana, 40 yd range, 3 sec cast

• Flash of Light (lvl16)

Heals a friendly target for 4830.14 to 5419.5.
27% of base mana, 40 yd range, 1.5 sec cast

• Divine Light (holy talent tier 3)

Heals a friendly target for 7761.99 to 8648.14.
30% of base mana, 40 yd range, 2.5 sec cast

• Holy Shock (lvl 40)

Blasts the target with Holy energy, causing 1399.45 to 1516.07 Holy damage to an enemy, or 3938.43 to 4266.63 healing to an ally.
8% of base mana, 20/40 yd range, Instant cast, 6 sec cooldown


So Holy Paladins are now on the same model as priests, we have a medium relatively slow and mana efficient heal (Holy Light), a fast but very costly heal (Flash of Light) and a slow costly but big heal (Divine Light). We still keep our instant heal that will be the same size as a Holy Light for nearly the same price (that makes it very very valuable mana wise especially with Holy Mending that adds a 15% hot on the target of Holy Shock at lvl 80+).

These are the major changes to our gameplay that I see. Even if the holy talent tree has changed a lot the core talents are still here and the gameplay should be relatively unchanged.
As for the fears we had about BoL, it is now only duplicating Holy Light and Holy Shock ... as I see them as our two spam heals I don't think it'll be too bad.

See you later for more comments on cataclysm holy when more news come out.

Cataclysm Videos on Cynical Brit

The title says everything. If you want to see numerous videos of the late Alpha / early Beta of Cataclysm, head over to The Cynical Brit. Total Biscuit has put a lot of different videos for our enjoyment on his blog. You can see there long videos of the new starting zones, the two first instances and other fun.
What I will say is that the starting zones seem good, definitely better than what they were in vanilla or BC. If you have not started a character recently, try it, you'll discover that Blizzard has also included a lot of help for beginners explaining most functions of the game while you gain access to them (battleground pvp at lvl 10, dungeon grouping at 15 ...etc).
My last comment will be about the instances. They are fun and relatively difficult. I do really think that (with the addition of a way too easy and nerfed first raid) was missing in WotLK. Most new players never got any training before coming to raids and when they have to learn the most basic things (like not stand in the fire) and also have to cope with the performance pressure that raiding is, they most of the time do very bad in one way or the other. So yes to harder instances that really teach something, and I hope Blizzard won't back up on that.

See you soon for the sequel of the Healing Through series in ICC.

Back in Business

No you are not doing Violet Hold for your daily heroic and fighting Xevozz. It's just me being back in the game and the blog being alive again.
My guilds advanced while I was out, Icecrown is nearly done (they carried me through Putricide, Lanathel and Syndragosa last week) and we're on the Lich King (ouch phase 5 hurts ^^). We had fun with Halion in the Ruby Sanctum 10-man normal last Thursday with my paladin. Even though it's not very hard it requires everyone learning the fight for a few tries.

For my first post after a few months out I want to talk about :

Cataclysm for paladins

You can find the changes as they are during the closed beta build start on MMO Champion.

We'll get three new skills: Blinding Light (lvl 81), Healing Hands (lvl 83) and Guardian of Ancient Kings (lvl 85). Blinding Light looks like a fun tanking talent and Guardian of Ancient Kings, even if we'll have to see if it's really effective, will surely be neat to look at. Now for Holy paladins Healing Hands is what counts.

Healing Hands (lvl 83): Heals all friendly targets within 10 yards for 683.58 every sec. Lasts 10 sec.
40% of base mana, Instant cast.

Definitely a raid healing ability, but yet another reason for us to not move, which does not really makes me happy when I see fights like the Lich King.

Holy Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

• Healing
• Meditation
• Critical Healing Effect

Meditation will be the mana regen ability of all healers based on spirit (yes we're going to need spirit as all other healers in Cataclysm).
Critical Healing will probably boost our crits to 175 or 200% of a non crit heal.

The other big change is that Flash of Light and Holy Light will be exchanged in therm of mana efficiency. FoL will become a fast expensive heal, and HL a longer more mana efficient one. And we should get a third very big and long heal. This brings the paladin model in line with priests, fast heals are expensive, longer ones are less.

Last but not least, Beacon of Light will change to not simply double our heals for free. The health pools are supposed to be bigger in Cataclysm, and the heals not as strong, which means less overhealing and the development team consider BoL overpowered as it is considering these changes. They have not yet announced the final decision, it could be BoL only working with FoL or doubling the cost of our heals.

You can read the complete reports on MMO Champion, I only discussed what I think are the most game changing points.

As a side-note, the blog passed 50K visitors during June, thank you all and I hope you'll continue to find useful things to read here.

Healing Through: Icecrown Citadel - Deathbringer Saurfang

This one was already nearly finished, so I'll post it before I move. Have fun in ICC everyone.

Deathbringer Saurfang is the fourth boss of Icecrown Citadel and the end of the entrance part. It was considered as the second test of Icecrown, the first being the purely gear check of Marrowgar. Saurfang is a healing and dps check, if you can finish him, you should be able to try the inner halls.
For a guild at least partly in T10+ items and with the new buff Saurfang should not be a problem anymore. Your raid should still know what to expect, or you can be sure of a raid wipe.


Deathbringer Saurfang: Trash Mobs

This will be a short section, the reason being that there is not a single mob between the gunship battle and the fourth boss of Icecrown. The only opponent you'll have is waiting for npcs to finish their speech (especially if you're horde).


Boss Description

Saurfang has relatively few abilities, but they have all to be mastered by your raid to kill him.
The first mechanic is Blood Power, this will increase Saurfang damage through the fight. When his Blood Power is low, his damage will be light and healing the tanks will be easy, but it gets harder with his blood power increasing, at 100% Blood Power he hits twice as hard. You should understand that every damage taken by your raid during the encounter give Blood Power to Saurfang, hence one key of the encounter is to reduce damage and shorten the encounter as much as you can.
Pro-tip: All damage prevention abilities are extremely effective during that encounter, a discipline priest is nearly overpowered with his shields that can reduce Saurfang Blood Power influx by more than 50% in 10-Man. If you have any damage prevention ability, use it as much as you can.

The second main ability is Mark of the Fallen Champion. This ability is used each time Saurfang Blood Power reaches 100%, and resets it to 0. The target of the mark will take damage each time Saurfang hits the tank (around 4K each 2s). You have to understand that this additional damage will also give Blood Power to Saurfang, hence with each Mark he will gain more Blood Power, and will cast the next Mark faster. This ability is Saurfang "time limit" mechanism. It adds up to his enrage at 30% health which makes him hit faster, hence producing more Blood Power, especially if several Marks have already hit.
Pro-tip: Oh last thing, if anyone hit by a mark dies, never ever battle rez him, as the mark sticks through death.

Saurfang has two other abilities that will generate Blood Power for each character hit. The first is Boiling Blood and the second Blood Nova.
Blood Nova is only cast on members at range and hits the target and anyone in 12 meters. It is the reason why your raid ranged and healers should be all 12 meters apart (in 10-Man) or positioned in groups of 2 or 3 characters each 12 meters apart (in 25-Man).
Boiling Blood is a dot, you'll have to heal it nothing else to say.
Pro-tip: Boiling Blood will generate Blood Power with each tick, if you can shield the target that is a must, if you can Hand of Protection the target that will remove the dot, preventing 8 Blood Power for Saurfang, do it fast. What you should know is that Boiling Blood can be cast on the target of a Mark of the Fallen Champion. This is one of the main reasons for losing a Mark target and could be a good reason to keep your Hand of Protection.

Rune of Blood is the reason you need two tanks during the encounter. They should switch as soon as this debuff is cast on the current tank. Nothing else to say.

The last ability of Saurfang (did I say he had few abilities ... he does have some but most of them only impact healers) is Call Blood Beast. This calls for 2 beasts in 10-Man and 5 in 25-Man. These beasts need to be dpsed quickly and most of all they should *not hit anyone*. Anyone hit by a Blood Beast will give Blood Power to Saurfang. The best is to use all what you can to prevent them from reaching your dps, hunters Frost Traps are one of the best tools for that.
Pro-tip: All melee, the tanks included, should avoid any sort of aoe damage when the Blood Beasts pop. If they don't, the beasts will stay hitting them and Saurfang will gain a big amount of blood very quickly, which can cause a raid wipe a few minutes later when the marks are too numerous for the healers to endure.

If you want more details you can find very good info on Bosskillers or Tankspot.


Raid Composition

Both in 10-Man and 25-Man you need 2 tanks. This encounter being a dps-race, you need to take as few healers as you can, usually 2 in 10-Man and 5 in 25-Man.
This will put a lot of pressure on your healers, and they will need a very good mana sustainability to finish the fight.
Pro-tip: Though spellpower is obviously important for healers, this will be more an endurance fight. If you have any source of mana replenishment in your raid you should save it for your healers in this fight if they need it, an oom healer during the last 30s of the fight will seal your fate.

The rest of the raid should be dpsers, both melee (they will be 100% of the fight on Saurfang and the main source of damage to him) and ranged (they will spend a large portion of the fight dealing with the blood beasts). Don't forget the ccers for the beasts that can be slowed, rooted ... anything but completely cced (no fear, mc or anything).
If you have a shaman, keep the Heroism/Bloodlust for the last 30% of Saurfang, you can call for it as soon as he enrages.


Healing Build

As I said, expect this fight to be very very mana consuming and put a lot of stress on your shoulders. Especially until all members of your raid master it. The more blunders there will be (blood beasts staying on the melee, tanks not switching fast enough ...) the more marks you will have to deal with at the end of the fight, and the harder it will be.
Remember you'll have to heal the tank and a few raid damage at all time (nova, dot, beasts). Each time a mark is cast, that will need at least half a healer attention to keep the target alive.

The last thing that I didn't say in the boss description is that for any death in the raid, Saurfang will regain 5% health ... this obviously means that you have to keep everyone alive as much as you can, Saurfang is not a boss you can finish at the very last moment with only 2 raid members alive.

In 10-Man you won't be able to endure more than 2 marks for every long, and most probably not more than 1 death.
In 25-Man if your healers are good you can manage up to 4 or 5 marks depending on your raid composition, and you can probably win with 2 deaths. More will probably lengthen the fight too much.

Whatever your class is, aim for fast "small" heals, as much damage prevention as you can, and the best sustainability you can get.
Use your mana cds as soon as you can get the full benefit of them, and if you can't use them during a strong healing phase, before the first mark is cast.


Paladin Healing tips

Holy Paladins are among the best healers for this fight, with Discipline Priests, but for very different reasons.
A Discipline Priest can greatly reduce the amount of Blood Power gained by Saurfang through the use of Shields.
A Holy Paladin can use his Beacon of Light to heal the target of a Mark of the Fallen Champion and continue to heal the raid. He can even heal both the first and second marks by himself.

Until the first mark is cast, the healing is light. But, as a paladin, you will have much more job as soon as a mark is cast. In a 10-Man raid you will most probably be the only Holy Paladin, and the two first marks will be your job. In a 25-Man raid Holy Paladins should share between them the first marks, 2 per paladin.
Once your first designed mark is cast you'll need to cast your Beacon on it (and remember to refresh it, use your focus frame or an add-on for that) and start cast continuous heals on the raid.
Pro-tip: You can never stop healing for much more than one gcd or your beacon target will die especially if it's a clothy (mark damage is physical and reduced by armor). Remember to recast your beacon/judgement when your Holy Shock is up in case you need the speed-up healing boost.
Once your second designed mark is cast you'll need to keep your Beacon on your first target and heal the second mark regularly, keeping both alive.
Pro-tip: As soon as your mark is cast you will not be able to stop healing, or use a Divine Plea because the healing reduction will be too strong. Try to use it before your assigned mark is cast (use Deadly Boss Mod to check Saurfang Blood Power), you should be full mana when you start healing a mark.

Remember to recast your Jugement of Light on Saurfang, both to increase your casting speed, and to heal your raid.

Keep in mind that your Hand of Protection removes the Boiling Blood dot, it is your choice to use it as soon as you can in the encounter, and have the opportunity to use it again later at the end of the fight. Or to keep it to protect someone being "double hit" by a mark and the dot (this can be very hard to keep up with healing wise).

Good luck and have fun, though very chaotic at first this is a quite fun encounter once your raid will master it.

Updates and blog asleep

Hello everyone,

I've not posted for a month, and will probably not post much more for the coming weeks. Real life is very busy right now. I'm in the process of moving to the US which, as you can imagine, is very time consuming to manage with work and all.

I've tried to continue raiding and helping my guildies, and I'm happy we're advancing. The introduction of the recent 5% buff seems to have been enough for us to down both Putricide and the Blood Council in 10 Man, and we've decided to move further into 25 Man by extending our schedule to two 25 Man raid nights a week. We hope that attendance will be enough for the guild to advance to the same point we have in 10 Man. Overall it's a nice progression since last November when we had a hard time having enough people once a week for a 25 Man. The guild is lively and I hope will stay like that once I'm not there anymore (this could sound a bit cocky but I was the gm after all).

I've been a bit surprised myself by how fast the "nerfing" of ICC started, considering not even one guild in the world had down the Lich King in hard mode (either 10 or 25) before its introduction. I would have liked for the original version to live a bit longer.

While I'm off from the internet, I advise you to read my fellow paladin bloggers, especially Rhidach on Righteous Defense, and Ophelie on The Bossy Pally that I both always enjoy to read.

Until next time, in some unknown future that I hope not to far.
Have fun :)
Shazalyn / Dreaming