Holy takes a Slap in Patch 3.1 Build 9658
Ouch! So much for praying for more flexible, versatile (READ: AOE) heals. Instead the latest patch notes restricts our ability even more.
- Sacred Shield: This effect cannot be cast on more than one friendly target at a time.
With Sacred Shield limited to only one target, a paladin healer’s capability is reduced. My method is usually to Beacon of Light and Sacred Shield the Main Tank and then cast Sacred Shield on another raid member, normally the target i’m assigned to heal or an offtank. This way damage mitigation is provided on both raid members and increased healing from the crit bonus of Sacred Shield. Heck if you’re adventurous you can cast it on several raid members. Sacred Shield was somewhat our answer to AoE healing, sure it didn’t heal but it provided protection which benefitted the raid.
- Infusion of Light: Now increases the critical chance of your next Holy Light by 10/20% instead of reducing cast time. Moved to Tier 10.
Seasoned/geared paladin healers probably loathe this change. When you have the gear, critical chance isn’t an issue anymore. Geared holy paladins have nearly 40% or more critical chance, which is more than needed. The essential factor in raids is that your heals are reaching the tank in time. This is the reason Infusion of Light was so effective, it addressed one of the disadvantage of paladin healing, Casting.
Even if your Holy crits heal for 20000, it wouldn’t matter if the boss hits your tank 0.1 second before your heal reaches the tank.
Infusion of Light was a emergency button for us paladins. Divine Favor, Holy Shock and then a Holy Light to save a tank from being killed.
It’s hard to balance PvP and PvE, that’s understandable. But it sucks when such changes happened.
March 30th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Re: Infusion of Light. While the 40% crit that you find on many Healadins is nice, I would never say that it’s “more than enough” simply because the higher the crit, the greater the mana regen with Illumination, and the higher the throughput.
A reduction of cast time will hurt if you’re reliant on waiting for the damage to hit BEFORE casting the heal. I’ve found that predicting the damage intake is a large part of healing effectively.
With the changes to mana regeneration, I welcome the additional crit chance. I’m “okay” with having to heal smarter in order to be as (or more) effective.
Re: Sacred Shield, I actually wrote up a post regarding how I think that the Sacred Shield change will turn out to be more beneficial for us with a 4-piece bonus than in its current state. Feel free to take a look and offer feedback!
http://pallymar.blogspot.com/2009/03/holy-paladins-t8-4-piece-bonus.html