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alliancesjrThis is a column I've wanted to write for a while, and I'm in a writing mood. I'm hoping to make this a semi-regular occurrence; sometimes I'll talk about characters and classes, sometimes I'll talk about mechanics, and sometimes I'll talk about world-building and campaign-setting exercises. I'll be pulling from a variety of my experiences all across the roleplaying board (as it were); sometimes from Warcraft, sometimes from D&D, and sometimes from text- and forum-based adventures.
I put varying amounts of thought and dedication into my roleplaying, and it's all tied directly into my writing skills and creativity. Some of it, of course, is tied into my mathematical and scientific skills, and sometimes I pull from just about anywhere that makes sense. I'm a true Red Mage, after all; I'm a jack-of-all, master-of-none. (True story: my manager at work calls me Versatility Guy.)
This week kicks off with a class that's very near to my heart. When I want to kill things in Warcraft, I rock the Hunter, but when I want to be Group Utility Guy, there's nothing better than a Holy-spec Paladin.
The Paladin
Paladins were developed originally as a "defensive support class" in the early stages of World of Warcraft. It an Alliance-only class that was meant to counterbalance Shaman, the "offensive support class". Both were more or less balanced around each other, as they were exclusive to their respective factions. Once the Burning Crusade expansion was released and the faction limitation was removed - Shaman were available with the introduction of the Draenei while the Blood Elves brought Paladins to the Horde - there was no need to counter-balance the classes against each other, and further development allowed them to grow independantly.
The Paladin is a hybrid class, and one of two that I consider to be of "Ultimate Versatility". Like a Druid, a Paladin can do all three major roles - Tanking, DPS, Healing - with a simple change of gear, and be able to hold their own in any of these roles no matter what their original purpose. By changing their talent trees along with their gear, however, their abilities increase exponentially; for example, a Retribution Paladin can heal a five-man normal instance in an emergency and have little-to-no trouble as long as he has his healing gear on him, but swapping specs to Holy will give him the abilities to hold off a heroic and become the primary tank's healer in a raid.
The specs are easy enough to understand; Holy gives unrivaled healing abilities, Protection makes you an effortless tank, and Retribution turns a simple farm boy into an unstoppable zombie-killing crusader.
I've played around with all three specs, and they're all fun, but time and time again I find myself respeccing back to Holy.
Healing as a Paladin
Healing in Warcraft has changed throughout the years as the rest of the game has evolved, but the core tenets have remained the same: Someone's taking damage. Heal it.
There are four classes in the game with the ability to heal; Paladins, Shaman, Priests and Druids. Technically, there are five - Priests are blessed (*cough*) with two separate specs that deal with healing, but they're still the same class so I'll only mention specifics if/when they come up. (Perhaps another column will deal with healing in detail; I'll definitely consider it.)
The Paladin is unique amongst the four in that they get the most benefit out of critical heals. Everyone gets a benefit, of course; in addition to heals that are half-again stronger than a normal cast, Shaman and Priests place an automatic damage-reduction buff on their criticals, and Druids place an on-hit embedded heal on their targets. Holy Paladins, however, get an even more useful (in my opinion) bonus from their criticals; 30% mana return on the spell.
Mana Regeneration and You
I am, of course, upset that they reduced this amount. In Burning Crusade content, when I first maxed out a Holy Paladin, it was the talent entitled Illumination; 100% mana return on a crit heal, meaning crits were free casts. With Divine Illumination active - a talent spell that reduces mana costs of all spells within the duration by 50%, all crits were returning more mana than they cost. A favorite trick of mine when running out of mana during Prince Malchazzar in Karazhan was to pop both Divine Illumination and Divine Favor - a spell that guarantees the next spellcast being a critical - and charge up a Holy Light, which was the highest-cost heal available to me. The returns on mana for that and the subsequent popping of a mana potion meant I had just given myself 60% of my mana pool back. Healing back then was a steady stream of Flash of Light, the most mana-efficient spammable heal in the game, and with my high crit rate it meant that it took a long time for me to run out of mana - unless I had to drop a few Holy Lights that didn't end up critting. If I ran out of mana a second time and the fight wasn't over yet (something that did happen on occasion since Prince Malchazzar is a fairly long fight if most people are in heroic blues and a few piece-meal epics) I could blow my emergency Lay on Hands on myself - a 60-minute cooldown spell that healed for as much health as I had, sucked out all your remaining mana, and gave the target 900 mana. Due to the nature of the mana cost, I could use it with one mana point remaining and get the same benefit; using it on myself gave me 900 mana, which is enough for five non-crit Flashes of Light. With the amount of mana-regen on my gear and if any of the heals crit, I could maybe squeeze in two or three more before I ran out of mana again. By then, the fight was usually over.
Later on, the mana return of crit heals was reduced to 60%, in an effort to balance mana use across the board. As much as I grumbled, this was fair; a raiding paladin would have an even higher crit rating, and the mana usage would balance out. Between this and a few changes to game mechanics in the early Wrath of the Lich King expansion, mana return during combat was never really an issue. It became so much a part of the end-game content that Blizzard had to reduce mana regeneration across the board to keep things challenging; the Paladin side of that became another reduction of Illumination to become a mere 30% mana return on criticals. But by then, mana regen became a lot more versatile, both in raid buffs and in the complete redesign of the role of the Holy Paladin. For one, there are a couple different ways to bring the mana efficiency of Holy Light down to almost Flash of Light scale.
The Healing Hammer
Paladin healing was never about complexity. We handle healing like we handle everything; swinging a giant hammer at a problem to make it go away. The analogy is certainly visible in the form of Retribution, and it's certainly a factor in Protection - Hammer of the Righteous, a major threat-building spell, also makes a comical "hammer striking a cartoon anvil" sound when it connects - but aside from caster maces, you might say, hammers don't really factor into healing. That's when you have to take it metaphorically.
First, you have your standard heals. One is a light-weight heal; it doesn't do a whole lot, but it doesn't exhaust you so you can keep doing it quickly and for a very long time. Flash of Light lets you keep tap-tap-tappin' away at your tank or your group, fixing small problems and minor damages. When a little more muscle is required, you have Holy Light; heals for an enormous amount, but it wipes you out a lot faster.
The hammer metaphor extends to the less-common spells, as well. Lay on Hands has a massive cooldown, it used to wipe out your mana completely, but it's also your strongest heal. Putting talent points into it also gives it a damage-reduction buff to the target. It's your sledgehammer; takes all your strength to swing it but the effects are felt and they stick around. Holy Shock can be used to either heal an ally or harm an enemy; it's instant-cast and has a short cooldown. It's the healing equivalent to...I don't know, a punch in the face. (On a similar side-note; Holy Paladins sparkle. No, really. No, really.)
The intricacies of the hammer has changed a bit in the Wrath-based redesign; Lay on Hands no longer sucks your mana and is on a shortened cooldown (20 minutes, can be talented and glyphed down to 11!), and various haste- and proc-related abilities have given our treasured healadins a glimpse into a hitherto-unrealized world; versatility and group-healing. I'll touch more on that in a bit.
You mean there are people aside from the tank?
The strength of the Paladin's healing hammer is unrivaled; my current healer is decked out in mostly entry-level epics, with a couple heroic blues and a couple T9-equivalent items scattered around, and her Holy Light has been known to crit for upwards of 19,000. What's the drawback to that? Especially since, as both crit rates and mana efficiency go up, Holy Light becomes a lot more spammable in emergencies (although Flash of Light, since I'm not in high-scale endgame content, is still the weapon of choice).
Well, for one hand, those healing spells I've mentioned? Those are the only ones we have. Every other healing class has way more versatility than a Paladin; Shaman have healing totems, Earthliving Weapon procs, Chain Heal and Riptide, in addition to their Primary and Flash heal analogues, Healing Wave and Lesser Healing Wave. (Let's not even mention Earth Shield.) This gives them multi-target healing and a couple choices of heal-over-time spells, so that they can forget the tank for a few precious seconds and make sure the rest of the group doesn't die. Holy Priests have Circle of Healing, Lightwell (which I was surprised to find out is not a wasted talent point as long as you use it the way it was intended - i.e. situational), Empowered Renew and Guardian Spirit, and a bonus to Prayer of Healing, which gives them massive group-healing benefits. Discipline priests have damage reduction and empowered Power Word: Shields coming out their keybindings. Druids are the masters of heal-over-time and group healing.
What this comes down to, then, is this: If you're Holy, you're going to have your work cut out for you if more than one person is taking damage at a time. Since just before Wrath came out (patch 3.0 gave us the new mechanics before the expansion went live), though, we've had a few new tricks that's alleviated the brunt of this major drawback.
Beacon of Light is the end-tier Holy talent, attainable at (minimally) level 60. It allows you to place a Beacon on a player (anyone, including yourself), and when anyone else in the group or raid that receives a heal from you in the time it's active it will also heal the player with the Beacon for the same amount. The best use for this in a dungeon or raid is to place the Beacon on the tank, and when someone else takes damage, you don't have to pray that the tank survives the time it will take to drop a quick Flash of Light or even an emergency Holy Light.
Sacred Shield is our level 80 spell, and while it is useful for any spec, it really shines when used by a healer. Sacred Shield, like Beacon of Light, can be placed on any player in the party or raid, but it's most effective (except in various other situations) when placed on the tank. While Sacred Shield is active, any damage dealt to the person shielded has a chance of activating a Shield which absorbs subsequent damage. While that Shield is up, any Flash of Light cast on the person by you (and only you, so make sure nobody else shields the tank) has a 50% increased crit chance. What this means is that not only does the person get damage reduction, but you'll be healing that person for a whole lot more (and being a lot more mana efficient to boot!) If that wasn't enough, they have since added another little tidbit; any Flash of Light cast by you to someone with Sacred Shield on them will receive an additional 100% of that heal split over time. Simply having Sacred Shield up at all times means that every single Flash of Light you cast on the tank will heal for double the amount! There is absolutely no downside to this spell.
In addition, Blizzard has given us the option, through talents, to make our Judgement spell long-range, and casting Judgement on an enemy will give you slightly quickened spell casting for a full minute. Pair this up with Judgement of Light and that means that anyone hitting that target will be constantly getting minor heals; it's not enough to counter massive AoE damage a boss is putting down, but it can certainly make recovering from it that much easier.
Finally, any Holy Shock crit, damage or healing, gives you a buff that either makes your next Holy Light as fast as a Flash of Light, or your next Flash of Light instant-cast. Time it right, and you can heal a well-geared tank for his entire health bar in less than three seconds. (A fun thing to play around with this is Divine Favor.)
It doesn't mean that you'll have the group healing of a Druid or a Holy Priest, but it definitely turns certain heroics from impossible to merely challenging. There were definitely various Burning Crusade level heroics that I absolutely dreaded healing without an awesome tank.
I should probably leave it here for now; it's already a crushing wall of text. I'll probably get into it more next time.
I put varying amounts of thought and dedication into my roleplaying, and it's all tied directly into my writing skills and creativity. Some of it, of course, is tied into my mathematical and scientific skills, and sometimes I pull from just about anywhere that makes sense. I'm a true Red Mage, after all; I'm a jack-of-all, master-of-none. (True story: my manager at work calls me Versatility Guy.)
This week kicks off with a class that's very near to my heart. When I want to kill things in Warcraft, I rock the Hunter, but when I want to be Group Utility Guy, there's nothing better than a Holy-spec Paladin.
The Paladin
Paladins were developed originally as a "defensive support class" in the early stages of World of Warcraft. It an Alliance-only class that was meant to counterbalance Shaman, the "offensive support class". Both were more or less balanced around each other, as they were exclusive to their respective factions. Once the Burning Crusade expansion was released and the faction limitation was removed - Shaman were available with the introduction of the Draenei while the Blood Elves brought Paladins to the Horde - there was no need to counter-balance the classes against each other, and further development allowed them to grow independantly.
The Paladin is a hybrid class, and one of two that I consider to be of "Ultimate Versatility". Like a Druid, a Paladin can do all three major roles - Tanking, DPS, Healing - with a simple change of gear, and be able to hold their own in any of these roles no matter what their original purpose. By changing their talent trees along with their gear, however, their abilities increase exponentially; for example, a Retribution Paladin can heal a five-man normal instance in an emergency and have little-to-no trouble as long as he has his healing gear on him, but swapping specs to Holy will give him the abilities to hold off a heroic and become the primary tank's healer in a raid.
The specs are easy enough to understand; Holy gives unrivaled healing abilities, Protection makes you an effortless tank, and Retribution turns a simple farm boy into an unstoppable zombie-killing crusader.
I've played around with all three specs, and they're all fun, but time and time again I find myself respeccing back to Holy.
Healing as a Paladin
Healing in Warcraft has changed throughout the years as the rest of the game has evolved, but the core tenets have remained the same: Someone's taking damage. Heal it.
There are four classes in the game with the ability to heal; Paladins, Shaman, Priests and Druids. Technically, there are five - Priests are blessed (*cough*) with two separate specs that deal with healing, but they're still the same class so I'll only mention specifics if/when they come up. (Perhaps another column will deal with healing in detail; I'll definitely consider it.)
The Paladin is unique amongst the four in that they get the most benefit out of critical heals. Everyone gets a benefit, of course; in addition to heals that are half-again stronger than a normal cast, Shaman and Priests place an automatic damage-reduction buff on their criticals, and Druids place an on-hit embedded heal on their targets. Holy Paladins, however, get an even more useful (in my opinion) bonus from their criticals; 30% mana return on the spell.
Mana Regeneration and You
I am, of course, upset that they reduced this amount. In Burning Crusade content, when I first maxed out a Holy Paladin, it was the talent entitled Illumination; 100% mana return on a crit heal, meaning crits were free casts. With Divine Illumination active - a talent spell that reduces mana costs of all spells within the duration by 50%, all crits were returning more mana than they cost. A favorite trick of mine when running out of mana during Prince Malchazzar in Karazhan was to pop both Divine Illumination and Divine Favor - a spell that guarantees the next spellcast being a critical - and charge up a Holy Light, which was the highest-cost heal available to me. The returns on mana for that and the subsequent popping of a mana potion meant I had just given myself 60% of my mana pool back. Healing back then was a steady stream of Flash of Light, the most mana-efficient spammable heal in the game, and with my high crit rate it meant that it took a long time for me to run out of mana - unless I had to drop a few Holy Lights that didn't end up critting. If I ran out of mana a second time and the fight wasn't over yet (something that did happen on occasion since Prince Malchazzar is a fairly long fight if most people are in heroic blues and a few piece-meal epics) I could blow my emergency Lay on Hands on myself - a 60-minute cooldown spell that healed for as much health as I had, sucked out all your remaining mana, and gave the target 900 mana. Due to the nature of the mana cost, I could use it with one mana point remaining and get the same benefit; using it on myself gave me 900 mana, which is enough for five non-crit Flashes of Light. With the amount of mana-regen on my gear and if any of the heals crit, I could maybe squeeze in two or three more before I ran out of mana again. By then, the fight was usually over.
Later on, the mana return of crit heals was reduced to 60%, in an effort to balance mana use across the board. As much as I grumbled, this was fair; a raiding paladin would have an even higher crit rating, and the mana usage would balance out. Between this and a few changes to game mechanics in the early Wrath of the Lich King expansion, mana return during combat was never really an issue. It became so much a part of the end-game content that Blizzard had to reduce mana regeneration across the board to keep things challenging; the Paladin side of that became another reduction of Illumination to become a mere 30% mana return on criticals. But by then, mana regen became a lot more versatile, both in raid buffs and in the complete redesign of the role of the Holy Paladin. For one, there are a couple different ways to bring the mana efficiency of Holy Light down to almost Flash of Light scale.
The Healing Hammer
Paladin healing was never about complexity. We handle healing like we handle everything; swinging a giant hammer at a problem to make it go away. The analogy is certainly visible in the form of Retribution, and it's certainly a factor in Protection - Hammer of the Righteous, a major threat-building spell, also makes a comical "hammer striking a cartoon anvil" sound when it connects - but aside from caster maces, you might say, hammers don't really factor into healing. That's when you have to take it metaphorically.
First, you have your standard heals. One is a light-weight heal; it doesn't do a whole lot, but it doesn't exhaust you so you can keep doing it quickly and for a very long time. Flash of Light lets you keep tap-tap-tappin' away at your tank or your group, fixing small problems and minor damages. When a little more muscle is required, you have Holy Light; heals for an enormous amount, but it wipes you out a lot faster.
The hammer metaphor extends to the less-common spells, as well. Lay on Hands has a massive cooldown, it used to wipe out your mana completely, but it's also your strongest heal. Putting talent points into it also gives it a damage-reduction buff to the target. It's your sledgehammer; takes all your strength to swing it but the effects are felt and they stick around. Holy Shock can be used to either heal an ally or harm an enemy; it's instant-cast and has a short cooldown. It's the healing equivalent to...I don't know, a punch in the face. (On a similar side-note; Holy Paladins sparkle. No, really. No, really.)
The intricacies of the hammer has changed a bit in the Wrath-based redesign; Lay on Hands no longer sucks your mana and is on a shortened cooldown (20 minutes, can be talented and glyphed down to 11!), and various haste- and proc-related abilities have given our treasured healadins a glimpse into a hitherto-unrealized world; versatility and group-healing. I'll touch more on that in a bit.
You mean there are people aside from the tank?
The strength of the Paladin's healing hammer is unrivaled; my current healer is decked out in mostly entry-level epics, with a couple heroic blues and a couple T9-equivalent items scattered around, and her Holy Light has been known to crit for upwards of 19,000. What's the drawback to that? Especially since, as both crit rates and mana efficiency go up, Holy Light becomes a lot more spammable in emergencies (although Flash of Light, since I'm not in high-scale endgame content, is still the weapon of choice).
Well, for one hand, those healing spells I've mentioned? Those are the only ones we have. Every other healing class has way more versatility than a Paladin; Shaman have healing totems, Earthliving Weapon procs, Chain Heal and Riptide, in addition to their Primary and Flash heal analogues, Healing Wave and Lesser Healing Wave. (Let's not even mention Earth Shield.) This gives them multi-target healing and a couple choices of heal-over-time spells, so that they can forget the tank for a few precious seconds and make sure the rest of the group doesn't die. Holy Priests have Circle of Healing, Lightwell (which I was surprised to find out is not a wasted talent point as long as you use it the way it was intended - i.e. situational), Empowered Renew and Guardian Spirit, and a bonus to Prayer of Healing, which gives them massive group-healing benefits. Discipline priests have damage reduction and empowered Power Word: Shields coming out their keybindings. Druids are the masters of heal-over-time and group healing.
What this comes down to, then, is this: If you're Holy, you're going to have your work cut out for you if more than one person is taking damage at a time. Since just before Wrath came out (patch 3.0 gave us the new mechanics before the expansion went live), though, we've had a few new tricks that's alleviated the brunt of this major drawback.
Beacon of Light is the end-tier Holy talent, attainable at (minimally) level 60. It allows you to place a Beacon on a player (anyone, including yourself), and when anyone else in the group or raid that receives a heal from you in the time it's active it will also heal the player with the Beacon for the same amount. The best use for this in a dungeon or raid is to place the Beacon on the tank, and when someone else takes damage, you don't have to pray that the tank survives the time it will take to drop a quick Flash of Light or even an emergency Holy Light.
Sacred Shield is our level 80 spell, and while it is useful for any spec, it really shines when used by a healer. Sacred Shield, like Beacon of Light, can be placed on any player in the party or raid, but it's most effective (except in various other situations) when placed on the tank. While Sacred Shield is active, any damage dealt to the person shielded has a chance of activating a Shield which absorbs subsequent damage. While that Shield is up, any Flash of Light cast on the person by you (and only you, so make sure nobody else shields the tank) has a 50% increased crit chance. What this means is that not only does the person get damage reduction, but you'll be healing that person for a whole lot more (and being a lot more mana efficient to boot!) If that wasn't enough, they have since added another little tidbit; any Flash of Light cast by you to someone with Sacred Shield on them will receive an additional 100% of that heal split over time. Simply having Sacred Shield up at all times means that every single Flash of Light you cast on the tank will heal for double the amount! There is absolutely no downside to this spell.
In addition, Blizzard has given us the option, through talents, to make our Judgement spell long-range, and casting Judgement on an enemy will give you slightly quickened spell casting for a full minute. Pair this up with Judgement of Light and that means that anyone hitting that target will be constantly getting minor heals; it's not enough to counter massive AoE damage a boss is putting down, but it can certainly make recovering from it that much easier.
Finally, any Holy Shock crit, damage or healing, gives you a buff that either makes your next Holy Light as fast as a Flash of Light, or your next Flash of Light instant-cast. Time it right, and you can heal a well-geared tank for his entire health bar in less than three seconds. (A fun thing to play around with this is Divine Favor.)
It doesn't mean that you'll have the group healing of a Druid or a Holy Priest, but it definitely turns certain heroics from impossible to merely challenging. There were definitely various Burning Crusade level heroics that I absolutely dreaded healing without an awesome tank.
I should probably leave it here for now; it's already a crushing wall of text. I'll probably get into it more next time.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-15 12:27 pm (UTC)On a personal note, Paladins are the one class I could never really get into.
Then again, the last time I played one was back when BC was first released, and I only made it to Level 20 or so. If they give us more character slots come Cataclysm, I might give one a shot.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-15 01:03 pm (UTC)What I eventually want to do is have a healer of every class, so I can more accurately compare things. As much as I love my Hunter, my Frost-DPS Death Knight, and my Rogue, I've found that I enjoy healing even more. There's just something about group utility and the fact that in certain instances, the only reason that we made it is because of how well I know what I'm doing. (Part of that comes from levelling Holy the first time; I always knew how to heal properly, but horrible BRD pugs in which people would be dying left and right because they go off in different directions and accidentally pull extra groups and tanks that are in DPS gear, and the only reason those pugs were successful was because of me.
When you heal a great group, you learn how to do things properly. When you heal a horrible group, you learn really quickly where all your emergency spells are and how they work.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-07 05:55 am (UTC)I've spent the last 3 days in, essentially, lockdown at work (over at the DoJ, where I only have a visitor pass since I'm DoI, which means I have to be escorted *everywhere*, including, like, the bathroom OMG I AM NOT MAKING THAT UP AND IT'S SO WEIRD) and coding my BiL's website at home for hours on end (ALMOST DONE THANK EVERYTHING). I really, really want the weekend to be here already.
But now I'm going to DL the latest MoF and I am sure I will listen to it at work tomorrow and feel better. *g*