Prot Paladins and Exorcism

I sometimes managed to slip in Exorcism on the mob I am currently tanking for more threat or more damage. And I definitely use it when I'm not currently tanking but helping to do some damage. I assume that HoR causing that extra damage is done after the taunt effect so that we get a giant boost on threat? Or is it just intended to be useful on mobs immune to taunt?

We realize Prot paladins sometimes use Exorcism to generate threat at range. While you can technically still do that, we understand that sometimes you might not be able to afford the cast time (say you are already in melee and adds join the battle).

To address this, we are going to change Hand of Reckoning to cause a lot more Holy damage. However, it will not cause this damage if the target is already attacking you. This lets you use it at range on adds, but won't turn it into a rotational ability that you have to keep using while something is beating on you.
Source

on the topic of Paladin mana regen

Not sure I agree with GC's numbers here. I know I certainly can't afford to use Plea all that often.

Illumination 70,000
Divine Plea 50,000
Replenishment 36,000
Other sources of mana 30,000
Mana from gear 10,000
Overhealing 60%
Source

Here's 2 records of me on Mimi:
Illumination 30371
Replenishment 30155
Divine Plea 12122
Mana Restore 9000
Revitalize 2909
Hymn of Hope 1600
Judgement of Wisdom 440
~ gear mp5 / wisdom buff 54000
Overhealing 43.6%

Illumination 42758
Replenishment 27907
Mana Restore 11400
Divine Plea 5738
Revitalize 4606
Hymn of Hope 728
Judgement of Wisdom 175
~ gear mp5 / wisdom buff 54000
Overhealing 56.3%

Here's our primary holy:
Illumination 61560
Replenishment 30165
Soul of the Dead 9900
Mana Restore 4800
Divine Plea 3661
Revitalize 1375
Judgement of Wisdom 88
~from gear mp5 / wisdom buff 25000
Overhealing 61.8%

Now, that mana from mp5 estimate would be if we weren't full the whole time. Generally we both divine plea up to full at each phase transition. So it's probably safe to drop that by 10% to 25%, even then, I'm way different from GC's figures.

Also in GC's thread, if there was confusion, in the next patch Beacon will be able to be applied multiple times to one target.

on Illumination nerf

Resilience thread, GC talks about doing the illumination nerf because of the beacon buff. Honestly, I think they've been wanting to nerf Illumination for a long time and this Beacon buff is really just a fix (making it truely reliable without much additional effective healing, tons more overheal) and it still doesn't solve the problem of raids not wanting 2 holy paladins.

Illumination was nerfed for PvE reasons.
Source

Patch 3.2 pre-PTR notes

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html
I doubt we'll see all the ardent defender changes last through testing. Exorcism is a Ret change but it hurts Prot. We'll have to see how Seals they play out in game. Holy didn't really get anything to help with raid healing better; it's just heal the tank better while getting some raid healing--still don't see a reason to bring 2 holy paladins?

• Blessing of Sanctuary: This blessing now also increases stamina by 10%. This effect is not cumulative with Blessing of Kings.
• Charger: Can now be learned at level 40.
  Exorcism: Now has a 1.5 second cast time, but can once again be used on players.
• Hand of Reckoning: Redesigned. Now does damage only when target does not currently have the caster targeted, but damage done increased to 50% of attack power, occurring after the taunt effect is applied.
• 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.
• Lay on Hands: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 10/20% instead of increasing the target's armor.
• Righteous Fury: No longer has a duration or mana cost, remaining until cancelled or death. Also cancelled when a Paladin activates a different talent specialization.
• 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.
• Seal of Blood: This ability has been removed. Seal of the Martyr: This ability has been removed.
• Seal of Vengeance and Seal of 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.
• Shield of Righteousness: Now deals 100% of shield block value as damage instead of 130%.
• Warhorse: Can now be learned at level 20.
• Talents
• Holy
• 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%.
• Protection
• Ardent Defender: Redesigned. Currently, any damage taken by the paladin while at 35% health or below is reduced. Instead, any attack that would reduce the paladin to 35%
  health or below has its damage reduced. In addition, once every 2 minutes an
  attack that would have killed the paladin will fail to kill, and instead set the
  paladin's health to 10/20/30% of maximum.
• Retribution
• Art of War: Now only applies to melee critical hits, but will make your next Flash of Light or Exorcism instant.
• Crusader Strike: Damage reduced to 75% weapon damage to match the new 4 second cooldown.
• 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.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

Big Paladin Changes Coming

Pre-Patch note info, Patch Notes to follow.
Protection: Ardent Defender will no longer “skip over” the 35% health level – it will always be reduced and it has a new effect that if a blow would kill you, it instead sets you to 30% health. This portion of the ability cannot occur more than once every 2 minutes. Blessing of Sanctuary will likely increase stamina to be competative with Kings. And they are doubling the effect of bonus block value on items.
Holy: Changing Flash of Light so that it places a heal-over-time effect on any target with Sacred Shield on them. Bacon to do overhealing.
Retribution: Damage seals to be redesigned; Martyr being removed. Exorcism to have a cast time and work with Art of War. Crusader Strike down to 4 second cooldown. Vindication to attack power reduce like Demo Shout.
Source

3.2 will have holy paladin changes

They said they were working on it; and here they now say it will come in patch 3.2.

We have some changes in 3.2 that will address some of the concerns healing shamans and paladins have.

---

We are working on a (long) post to explain some of the paladin changes. I don't have an ETA.

...We're okay though with expanding their breadth a little bit for those situations where you have more paladins than tanks or the raid is taking a lot of damage...
Source

Slow News

Been rather slow on Paladin news last few days.
Ulduar has seen some nerfs. Source I know I enjoy no more mind control on Yogg while tanking.
They also announced riding mount changes for next big content patch; prices and level lowered, as well as cast time down to 1.5:

Paladin
Warhorse: Requires level 20
Charger: Requires level 40
Source

mp5 on gear

Probable mp5 amount on gear increase (as in, increase the amounts that are already there, not add more to gear without). Makes sense as an easy first step.

Regardless of any other changes we might make, mp5 just doesn't seem to provide enough point for point on gear. It's possible (likely?) we'll just increase all of the mp5 on gear.
Source

Ret Vindication Nerf

PvP nerf, at least this one didn't nerf PvE as a side effect.

We are in the process of completing a hotfix that could go live as early as this afternoon that will make the Paladin talent Vindication no longer reduce Intelligence or Stamina from the target it is applied to. The talent will continue to reduce Agility, Spirit, and Strength as it currently does. We felt this change will help balance the ability out, especially in the lower arena brackets where they are very prominent, while not being a negative impact on a Retribution Paladin’s PvE dps.

---

Increasingly it felt like someone playing against a Ret-Pally really only had 60% of their health bar because Vindication took away 20% from the start and then Hammer of Wrath kicked in when they had 20% left. This change was something
we could confidently hotfix and would have a minimal to no impact on the PvE side of things.
Source

2 Holy Paladins and Niches

More than 1 holy paladin, yes please. Aren't paladins the only ones with a healing niche? Aren't all the others able to do everything?

We understand a lot of players like the play style of paladins. We aren't interested in turning them into priests by any stretch. What we would like to do is make having more than one Holy paladin in a raid slightly more attractive. If you do a 10-player raid with 2 Holy paladins and 1 Resto druid, you should not feel gimped. If you have excess Resto druids, one of them can always hot and Nourish a tank. If you have excess Holy paladins, then you have one of them just using Flash on the rogues or furiously overhealing them with HL.

We like healing niches and we think we are pretty close with them currently. If there was a healing niche of say "Good at healing melee on very long and heavily magical fights" I think everyone would agree that is probably too narrow a niche. We just need to make sure healers feel somewhat useful even when they are not in the perfect healing situation for their particular class.
Source

Paladin Healing isn't fun?

Actually, stacking Int is kinda fun...
I so use some mp5 on my gear personally though and just so much of the gear has it and haste on it that it would be great to make them more useful at least so there isn't so much gear that everyone is pissed when it drops wasting a slot for a good item that week. Focusing on the Main Tank isn't the issue so much as not being able to raid heal at all like other healers (while they can do main tank healing as well).
Paladins are going to need to end up getting mp5 made more useful and get some new skill to help make us able to raid heal better on Ulduar massive AE fights.

This topic has strayed a little bit from "Why are there healing niches?" to "I am a paladin healer and I hate my class."

Look, we get that....

1) Stacking mostly Int isn't fun.
2) Having 70%+ overheal isn't fun.
3) Focusing so much on the main tank in a raid isn't fun.
4) Casting nothing but Holy Light isn't fun.

We do have some ideas for how to fix these problems. They aren't redesign-the-class level because frankly we don't think the class needs that, but the proposed changes would fix the above four problems. Understand though that part of reducing overhealing and being a more flexible raid healer might come with regen or mana pool nerfs. It is possible that the only thing keeping Holy paladins from being too good right now is their narrow focus.
Source

Blizzard Collecting Paladin Questions

Blizzard is collecting questions from players for a class Question&Answer series. The Paladin collection thread is up here:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=17367605251&sid=1

Patch 3.1.3

Freedom nerf hit. Apparently E4e needed changes for pvp? Knew it was coming in advance but no one was really talking about it. Shields finally getting stats that make sense. Related to tanks, DKs got another nerf to their mitigation(AC).

Eye For An Eye: This talent now deals 5/10% of the critical strike damage taken by the paladin back at the attacker.

Hand of Freedom: The base duration of this buff has been reduced from 10 seconds to 6 seconds.

Ice Layered Barrier: Upgraded to item level 232. In addition, the stats in the tooltip have been correctly adjusted to 78 spell power, 48 haste rating, 16 mana per 5 seconds, 52 Intellect, and 50 Stamina.

Pulsing Spellshield: The stats listed in the tooltip for this item were incorrect and have been adjusted. This item provides 69 spell power, 34 haste rating, 42 critical strike rating, 45 intellect, and 45 stamina.