Holy 3.3

[Spey]

Some observations about where we are now in 3.3. As we move into ICC, the healing challenges continue. My philosophy is "always prepare for the fight to come!"

1)My goal is 40K mana ASAP. Intell is still the best stat by far, and I continue to gem for that.

2) I also am very interested in keeping at or near soft cap for haste at 676 so that I have my 1.3 Holy Light. These two stats will serve me well. So some of the mail pieces may be better than the plate - if a resto shaman is not in the raid, I will not hesitate to roll.

3) Mp5 - the argument appears to be over - Mp5 is a superior stat than crit. A Holy crit around 40% should be good enough. So, for example, I have switched out my head and shoulder enhancements to Mp5 instead of crit. To gauge whether you have enough Mp5 - do you ever pull a Holy Light and cast a Flash? Do you ever cast Divine Plea in a dangerous situation? If so, you do not have enough Mp5. Many pallies have also dropped the ret talents and picked up the prot ones, but I haven't gone that far yet!

4) Spell Power continues to be a less than fantastic stat for us since most of our healing is over heals anyway. This also supports the idea that crit is not that great anymore (it used to be when the mana return was high) - the crit heal just results in bigger over heals. But you can never have too much.

5) I am currently using Elixir of Mighty Thoughts and Gurus for the boost to mana. I usually just eat the Fish, but I may start eating the mp5 food instead.

Cheers!
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Spey

[Spey]

I am going to try a new build after reading up more on the ICC fights we are working on. It is hard for me to give up my ret talents - I always loved the crit, but honestly with the mechanics of the fights we are currently working on and those to come, I think the prot abilities are really necessary. It also means none of our paladins will have Improved Might (the one that is not over ridden by abilite other players use or cast), so not sure how that might effect the raid. But I think as a healer, my primary duty is to maximize the healing and healers, and let others deal with maximizing the dps. Therefore, I am going to go into the prot tree to get Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian which will transfer raid damage to me.

Blizz's explanation as of 3.3

* Divine Guardian: This talent no longer increases the amount of damage transferred to the paladin from Divine Sacrifice. Instead it causes all raid and party members to take 10/20% reduced damage while Divine Sacrifice is active. In addition, the duration has been changed to 6 seconds, however the effect does not terminate when Divine Sacrifice is removed before its full duration.
* Divine Sacrifice: Redesigned. The effect of Divine Sacrifice is now party-only and the maximum damage which can be transferred is now limited to 40% of the paladin's health multiplied by the number of party members. In addition, the bug which allowed Divine Sacrifice to sometimes persist despite reaching its maximum damage has been fixed. Divine Sacrifice will now cancel as soon as its maximum damage value is exceeded in all cases. Finally, damage which reduces the paladin's health below 20% now cancels the effect early.


I will also make the following macro:

#showtooltip
/cancelaura Divine Sacrifice
/cast Divine Sacrifice

Hitting this macro twice will cast Divine Sacrifice and then cancel it. This is because although it is not supposed to allow you to get below 20% health, latency and lag can prevent that message from arriving in time. The effect persists after it is canceled however (as described above), so this will be very useful in Blood Queen and Princes to mitigate raid damage. Hunter and I will maybe want to coordinate use of DS as I know he has been popping it.

I am still toying with the build, but hope to be able to still get points in the first tier of ret in the reduction of mana costs for instants.

In addition, I find I am using Flask of Pure Mojo and eating the mp5 food. I think Elixir of Mighty Thoughts and Gurus are still the best, but with all the wipes it is very expensive. Once we have these down, I will revert to that combination.

Finally - one tip I had missed - if you gem one nightmare tear, it will count for both the blue and the red gem to proc the meta. Therefore, I am going to park one in my head slot and gem all intel everywhere else.

Cheers
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Spey