Long time and less cake.

Cake, phawt lewt and holy paladins after patch 4.0.6.

I rolled to holy paladin after taking our first HM boss, Halfus, however this had nothing to do with the state of restoration shamans. What made me reroll is that I am playing in a 100% Danish guild and therefore the amount of applications is quite limited and the amount of decent application with people who seem to have potential is even smaller. So when my guild who at that time had two holy paladins and three restoration shamans received a restoration shaman application from what seemed to be a decent player I offered to reroll to the holy paladin I just leveled out of boredom a few weeks earlier. Because four restoration shamans isn’t exactly a great cocktail and holy paladins was just plain OP at that current stage along with Aura Mastery, Hand of Sacrifice and shit loads of “I DO MOAR HEALING” stuff. 

I did Halfus on HC with my shaman and had soon rerolled and was fooling around as OP holy paladin. My guild is currently 7/13 HC and I have been presented on every kill and I must admit that I do feel that I more useful as a paladin instead of a shaman, not that shamans was/is in a bad state, in my opinion the only class I feel is redundant is restoration druids on HCs since the burst damage isn’t “HoT” friendly and you usually have to get people above 95% Hp and the druids hots cannot cope with that amount of healing required leaving their hots to heal the last 5% which would be topped off by shadow priests VEB or Healing Stream totems . Shamans do have a massive “on demand” burst with HR + CH spam where it is only surpassed by holy priests.

Though, back to holy paladin who I played a little back in Naxx, Ulduar, ToTC and ICC where it was beacon and HL spam. One may argue that it haven’t changed a lot, but it sure have Holy Power is an amazing tool – Beacon is still very, very strong and at the beginning of the content mana wasn’t an issue as it was for a lot of other healers, but over all I am quite pleased with holy paladins at their current state (yes, even after patch 4.0.6 and the nerf bat). Despite “Protector of the Innocent” being nerfed by roughly 50% it is still a very strong talent and the only difference is that I cannot “ignore” all incoming damage, but I now have to move from some things, but that is hardly an issue. The 10% increased mana isn’t really an issue either since I found myself hardly ever stop casting a DL despite the tank was topped of, but I do monitor that more closely now and I perhaps throw a little less Divine Lights and use Holy Light instead. Here I might add that after this “change” I do believe that the tier11 2-setbonus has become decent and I will be trying to get it, however, this is only shoulder (which is BiS at ilvl 372 anyway) and head. 

Why am I so pleased with the holy paladin currently?

Aura Mastery is an incredible tool and before HC Omnitron nerf it was almost required to use an Aura Mastery at Magmatrons flameshit and on Shadow Conductor. Maloriak Hc – Dark phase, Red phase. Chimaron HC below 25%. Atramedes searing flame. Magmaw Lave spew and this is just a few encounters it is an incredible tool, use it !

Hand of Sacrifice is also a quite useful tool and again on HC Omnitron where a person gets Aquiring Target – Hand of Sacrifice on the person in order to prevent him from dying, however, I did get raped when Magmatron and Toxitron was up and one was pulled into the Poison Cloud by Nefarion, but that could have been counterd if I had pressed my win button:
Divine Shield – Amazing, ignore everything e.g. on Halfus while pumping healing out below 50% while the rest of the raid is being stunned and after patch .4.0.6 if you do have problems with the interrupt after you can acuallty make a difference by moving your sexy paladin arsh in to him while bubbled and take the first interrupt with Rebuke.

Divine Favor / Avenging Wrath / Guarding – amazing “Oh shit, massive incoming damage” pew pew “I healz moar”.
Divine Protection is an underrated talent 20% reduced damage or 40% glyphed for one GCD – I cannot see why you wouldn’t want to use it on almost every encounter. The less healing you will require = more healing on the raid = people get topped faster and thereby reducing the chance that someone will die.

Holy Power – Win, hardly anything to say about it WoG or LoD depending on the situation – more win.
Beacon: How can one not love healing a person while healing yourself and the person with beacon – win win win !

Blessing of Freedom may not seem to have much usage in a raid environment, however, Conclave Hc – Freedom on people who stand in frost path = moving faster, less damage and thereby more mana since you have to heal less (I usually save this for the tanks since they can spike quite a lot and the damage you can make him avoid is quite nifty)

Lay on Hands – 100.000 healing at least and glyphed 10% mana back – amazing tool especially when you reach the last “25%” where you are close to OOM and the tanks is dying – BAM topped of and mana back and there goes DL spam !

So  how is it to play a holy paladin? Great fun, a lot of utilities and despite we aren’t guaranteed to top the healing meter anymore (hello mr. disc priest) we are still putting out quite decent healing and the healing we can throw in two tanks is unchallengeable which is why you want to bring holy paladins.

On a small note I do have a few pages of text which I haven’t completed and some of it is outdated due to the recent patch and this is the reason for my low amount of post, zwarry.