Holy Paladin’s started with the least amount of changes for Patch 5.2 of any classes let alone the Healing specializations, but there have been quite a few changes since the first iteration of the patch notes. There are several changes now coming for Holy Paladins and we’re going to go over them for you. Remember these could change at anytime and may not make it to live.
Patch 5.2 will be released on March 5th 2013. To see the changes in detail:
For a quick & easy summary head to ‘What you need to know as a healer for Patch 5.2‘.
Light’s Hammer now also applies a 50% snare for 2 seconds to targets that take damage from the area of effect.
Quite simply this just adds a bit of crowd control to your Light’s Hammer spell. An improvement to this talent for PvP, but not huge for PvE. Could be handy to use on enemies should they be targeting you.
Hand of Purity now reduces all incoming damage by 10% in addition to its other effects.
This is a fantastic cooldown to place on tanks and it will only be enhanced with this change coming in patch 5.2. It will reduce ALL incoming damage by 10% now along with reducing periodic damage by 70%. As it can be used on any friendly target, this could be a useful spell in those sticky situations. Giving you a bit of wiggle room to heal.
Eternal Flame‘s periodic heal now provides 100% more healing when self-cast.
This is a straight increase to the heal Eternal Flame, but only when cast on yourself. Any increase to Holy Paladin heals is welcome change. If you happen to have this talent you’ll be able to cast it on yourself and then focus on healing others knowing that you have a HoT healing you.
Judgment now costs 5% of base mana.
Just a small reduction in the mana cost from 5.9% down to 5% – a positive change as all Paladins can use Judgement for something, including Holy.
Repentance now has a cast time of 1.7 seconds, up from 1.5 seconds.
A nerf for one of our crowd control talents. Not huge but significant and mainly a PvP change. However worth nothing that you’ll need to be on your toes should you be in a PvE situation and an enemy is pursuing you as the cast-time has increased by 0.2 seconds.
Selfless Healer now boosts Flash of Light by 20/40/60%, down from 33/66/100%
This talent has become mainly a Ret-only talent due to these most recent changes as it can only be activated by judgement (which costs mana and must be used on an enemy target) and doesn’t provide enough of a boost to Flash of Light for Holy Paladins. This change has been made to compensate for the buffing of the Ret ability Sword of Light, but we’re not sure why Holy and Prot are to suffer from this also.
Glyph of Blessed Life no longer requires Seal of Insight to be active.
Not a huge change. Glyph of Blessed Life gives a chance of Holy Power when stunned or immobilized, but previously used to require Seal of Insight to be active, which is usually the seal used by Holy Paladins. Removing this requirement it means Glyph of Blessed Life is open to Retribution and Protection specs, so not a change for Holy really.
Blinding Light now has a 1.8-second cast time for Holy Paladins. It remains instant cast for Retribution and Protection.
A nerf to Blinding Light for Holy Paladins only. But this change should only really effect those in a PvP setting. The only other time this could be a negative change is when you (a Holy Paladin) has a number of enemies coming towards you and you need to cast this ASAP, but if this is the case, your tank needs to lift their game! The reasoning for the change is the Holy in PvP is just too dominant at this stage and this should help to bring them in line.
Here’s Ghostcrawler’s take on the change:
Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler (Source / Blue Posts)
– For Blinding Light, we don’t think it changes much that it’s used at the end of a CC chain. It’s still trickier to get off a cast time spell. You have to stop moving and risk interruption. Yes, you may use it defensively less often, but the net result will still be less being CC’d by a Holy paladin. No, the CC target can’t stop the cast time, but we balance PvP around group play. During MoP development, we wanted to make sure paladins had more offensive pressure. Holy ended up getting plenty with higher nuke damage and access to Repentance. With the recent changes to shaman, Holy paladins are the most dominant healer in high-end PvP. We think this change along with the set piece bonus change will help bring that down a little.
The 4-piece PvP set bonus now grants Holy Power when casting Flash of Light, instead of Word of Glory.
Just a minor change to the bonus the 4-piece PvP set bonus provides. Instead of a Holy Power granted every time to use Word of Glory, it is granted by casting Flash of Light. Obviously, purely a PvP change.
That’s pretty much it for the Holy Paladin changes at this stage. Remember these patch notes refer to the 5.2 PTR and could be changed at any time and some if not all of these changes may or may not go live.
So what do you think of the upcoming 5.2 Holy Paladin changes so far?