Season 8 has been out for a few weeks now so hopefully you’ve been getting those arenas in.  I certainly have.  My 3s and 5s teams are doing okay and my 2s team is on the brink of a 2100 rating.  We’re gunning for 2200 this week.  Anyways, that partially explains why this post is coming so late, but here it is:  your Holy Paladin PvP/Arena gear guide for Season 8!  Read on for your gear shopping list for the last season before Cataclysm!

Vault of Archavon

VoA is a great source of PvP gear if you get really lucky.  It can save you a ton of honor or arena points and get you that piece of gear much earlier than anyone else.  Make sure to run it every week.

25-man Toravon

• Wrathful Gladiator’s necks (I prefer the one with crit)
• Wrathful Gladiator’s cloaks
• Wrathful Gladiator’s Bracers of Salvation
• Wrathful Gladiator’s Girdle of Salvation
• Wrathful Gladiator’s Greaves of Salvation
• Wrathful Gladiator’s Ornamented Gloves
• Wrathful Gladiator’s Ornamented Legplates
• Wrathful Gladiator’s Band of Dominance

10-man Toravon and 25-man Koralon

• Relentless Gladiator’s necks
• Relentless Gladiator’s cloaks
• Relentless Gladiator’s Bracers of Salvation
• Relentless Gladiator’s Girdle of Salvation
• Relentless Gladiator’s Greaves of Salvation
• Relentless Gladiator’s Ornamented Gloves
• Relentless Gladiator’s Ornamented Legplates

Emblems of Frost

If you’re raiding ICC and getting drops from there it may be more useful to spend your frost emblems on filling out that PvP gear instead of buying more PvE gear that may be replaced on your next run anyway.  The earlier in the season you can get the gear the more edge you’ll have over your opponents.

• Relentless Gladiator’s Ornamented Gloves - 60 Frost Emblems
• Relentless Gladiator’s Ornamented Spaulders - 60 Frost Emblems
• Relentless Gladiator’s Ornamented Chestguard - 95 Frost Emblems
• Relentless Gladiator’s Ornamented Legplates - 95 Frost Emblems
• Relentless Gladiator’s Ornamented Headcover - 95 Frost Emblems

Spending your Wintergrasp Marks of Honor

There’s a new vendor in Wintergrasp with a few new pieces for this season to spend your marks on.

• Titan-forged Pendant of Ascendancy - 25 WG Marks of Honor
• Titan-forged Cloak of Ascendancy - 25 WG Marks of Honor
• Titan-forged Shoulderplates of Salvation - 40 WG Marks of Honor

Spending your Honor Points

Below is the list of gear you can get without needing any Arena Points.  Just grind your BGs!  Note that although the Wrathful Belt and Boots don’t require arena points, they do require an arena rating (1300 and 1400). 

• Relentless Gladiator’s Bracers of Salvation - 21,700 Honor Points
• Relentless Gladiator’s Necks - 26,100 Honor Points
• Relentless Gladiator’s Cloaks - 26,100 Honor Points
• Relentless Gladiator’s Girdle of Salvation - 34,100 Honor Points
• Relentless Gladiator’s Greaves of Salvation - 34,100 Honor Points
• i245 Battlemaster’s Trinkets - 34,100 Honor Points
• Wrathful Gladiator’s Bracers of Salvation - 43,400 Honor Points
• Wrathful Gladiator’s Necks - 52,200 Honor Points
• Wrathful Gladiator’s Cloaks - 52,200 Honor Points
• Wrathful Gladiator’s Band of Dominance - 52,200 Honor Points
• Wrathful Gladiator’s Girdle of Salvation - 68,200 Honor Points, 1300 Arena Rating
• Wrathful Gladiator’s Greaves of Salvation - 68,200 Honor Points, 1400 Arena Rating

Spending your Arena Points

Lastly, below is the gear you can get with your arena points, sorted by the rating requirement.

No Arena Rating Required

• Relentless Gladiator’s Ornamented Gloves - 440 Arena Points, 8,000 Honor Points
• Relentless Gladiator’s Ornamented Spaulders - 600 Arena Points, 10,550 Honor Points
• Relentless Gladiator’s Ornamented Chestguard - 770 Arena Points, 13,200 Honor Points
• Relentless Gladiator’s Ornamented Legplates - 770 Arena Points, 13,200 Honor Points
• Relentless Gladiator’s Ornamented Headcover - 770 Arena Points, 13,200 Honor Points

Minimum 700 Arena Rating Required

• Relentless Gladiator’s Libram of Justice - 700 Rating, 350 Arena Points, 6,400 Honor Points
• Wrathful Gladiator’s Ornamented Gloves - 1400 Rating, 1,430 Arena Points
• Wrathful Gladiator’s Ornamented Legplates - 1500 Rating, 2,370 Arena Points
• Wrathful Gladiator’s Ornamented Chestguard - 1600 Rating, 2,370 Arena Points
• Wrathful Gladiator’s Libram of Justice - 1700 Rating, 1.260 Arena Points
• Wrathful Gladiator’s Gavel - 1800 Rating, 1,300 Arena Points, 38,500 Honor Points
• Wrathful Gladiator’s Shields - 1800 Rating, 350 Arena Points
• Wrathful Gladiator’s Ornamented Headcover - 1950 Rating, 2,370 Arena Points
• Wrathful Gladiator’s Ornamented Spaulders - 2000 Rating (3v3 or 5v5), 1,930 Arena Points
• Wrathful Gladiator’s Salvation - 2200 Rating (3v3 or 5v5), 3,950 Arena Points
• Wrathful Gladiator’s Tabard - 2300 Rating (3v3 or 5v5), 550 Arena Points

Best of luck in your arenas and battlegrounds!

Hi all.  I’ve posted a guest post over on HordeReview.com that goes over pretty much everything you need to know to get started as a new Holy Paladin.  Check it out if you’re interested.

Holy Light in a Can:  The Basics of Holy Paladin Healing

Eyonix made  a large post today announcing the details of many of the changes they are making to gear in 4.0.  A lot of the changes we’ve already known about, but Blizzard is re-interating them here in official form and also offering a few more details.  I’ll go over the ones relevant to Holy Paladins below.

First, it sounds like it may be easier for Holy and Retribution paladins to do some tanking if necessary (probably not in raid content):

• Stamina - Because of the way we will be assigning Strength, Agility, and Intellect, non-plate wearers will end up with more Stamina than before.  Health pools will be much closer between plate-wearers and other classes.
• Armor - The way Armor mitigates damage is not changing, but the Armor stat has been rebalanced to mirror changes to the armor curve in Cataclysm. As a result, bonus Armor will go down slightly overall. We are also changing the mitigation difference among armor types so that plate doesn’t offer so much more protection than mail, leather, and cloth.
• Defense - Defense is being removed from the game entirely. Tanking classes should expect to become uncrittable versus creatures just by shifting into Defensive Stance, Frost Presence, Bear Form, or by using Righteous Fury.
• If you are a tank, you’ll have as much Stamina as you’re used to, though you may notice your tanking plate has a bit less Stamina than a comparable piece of DPS plate, since we tend to take the gem budget out of your most attractive stat.
• If you are a healer, expect to see a lot more Stamina.

These changes mean that we’ll see less of a difference between plate wearers (us) and other classes and also less of a difference between tanks and non-tanks.  Does this mean that a Holy Paladin who switches on Righteous Fury will be defense capped?  I’m going to say probably not.  The defense cap part of the ability will probably be a protection talent.  Even so, with more stamina and a closer armor value to tanks, it maybe be easier for a Holy or Retribution Paladin to tank some content, or at least take a few more hits than usual.  At the minimum, this means that we should see our health pools and armor to be a little more similar to our mail, leather, and cloth brethren and even to tanks than it is now.

There are some big changes to how mana and spell power works:

• Spirit - Come Cataclysm, this stat should only be found on healing gear. Non-healing casters will have other systems in place to regenerate mana, and we are designing special solutions for Elemental shaman and Balance druids who often share gear with healers (more on this below). Raid buffs that currently boost Spirit (such as Blessing of Kings) will only boost the primary stats of Stamina, Strength, Agility, and Intellect. We are also likely changing the five-second rule and other quirks of the current regen system.
• Intellect - Intellect will now grant Spell Power (more on this below). Intellect will also provide less mana than it currently does.
• Spell Power - Spell Power is another stat that you’ll no longer see present on most items. Instead, as mentioned above, Intellect will grant Spell Power. One exception is that caster weapons will still have Spell Power. This allows us to make weapons proportionately more powerful for casters in the same way they are for melee classes.
• Haste - Haste will become more attractive for melee classes by allowing them to recover resources such as energy and runes more quickly. Our intention is for Haste to let you “do stuff” more often.
• Critical Strike Rating - This will still appear on gear.  In general Crit will function similarly to how it does now.
• MP5 - This stat will be removed from the game completely. Holy paladins and Restoration shaman will be redesigned to benefit from Spirit.
• Mastery - This is a new stat that will allow players to become better at whatever makes their chosen talent tree cool or unique. It’s directly tied to talents, so what you gain from improving this stat is entirely dependent upon your class and the talent specialization you choose. We’ll talk more about specific Mastery benefits in the future.
• If you are a healer, expect to see all of your Spell Power converted to Intellect and Stamina.
• If you are a healer, expect to see spirit instead of MP5. You’ll probably be happy with Spirit, though, because mana regen is going to matter more than it does currently. Healing paladins and shaman will benefit more from Spirit than they do currently.

Its no longer speculation, Holy Paladins will definitely be using spirit on our gear in the next expansion.  Mp5 is being removed from the game completely.  Our current spell power is going to be turned into both Intellect and more Stamina.  This means that we should have a lot more Intellect on our gear (our current spell power + our current Intellect).  However, Intellect is going to grant less mana than it used to.  Its interesting that Spell Power is still going to be present on our weapons, which means we’ll need to do some math to figure out how much Spell Power each point of Intellect grants.  Also note that Blessing of Kings will no longer give a Spirit bonus.  One thing I didn’t quote in the post that is interesting is that Elemental Shamans and Balance druids will be sharing healing gear and will get a Spirit -> Hit Rating conversion talent.

I thought I’d make a point about Haste.  Blizzard hasn’t mentioned what haste will do for healers in this post, but previously they mentioned that, like Spirit, it may also increase mana regen instead of reducing spell cast time.  Maybe it will do both.  We’ll have to see how Haste will work in the future because this one is still a mystery.  Update:  Blizzard responded in a subsequent post that Haste will be staying mainly the same for casters, so we should still see the same affect from Haste on our gear as we do now. 

One thing they also mentioned that may affect us is that it will be harder in general to reach “caps” in Cataclysm, so we can probably assume it should be harder or impossible to reach the haste cap as well.  For Hit, Blizzard is doing this by changing the required hit in higher tiers of content.  In other words, if that happened today, you would need more hit to be hit capped in ICC than in Naxxramas.  I’m not sure how that will work for Haste, but maybe Blizzard is just making it more difficult to get to a 1 second global cooldown with Haste at level 85.  Or maybe haste will still have a cap and they aren’t changing it.  We’ll have to wait and see.

We’ll still be stuck being the only spec using healing plate.  Blizzard has said previously that they want everyone to be more encouraged to use their own gear (plate for Holy Paladins), rather than downgrading to a lower type (mail).  However, they haven’t mentioned anything about that in this post.  In fact, if the armor values are more similiar it seems like that encourages us to use mail healing gear even more than we do now.  We’ll have to see if Blizzard has anything else in store.  Maybe an Armor -> Spell Power modifier for us?  Update: According to Ghostcrawler we’ll be getting a small bonus to Mastery when we wear plate gear, so if you wear mail you’re essentially giving away free stats, or so he says.

 So, it sounds like the stats on our gear will be Stamina, Intellect, Haste, Crit, Spirit, and Mastery.  We’ll likely have Stamina, Intellect and Spirit on every piece with two of Haste, Crit, or Mastery on each piece of high-end gear.  Also, keep in mind the new Re-forging ability which will allow you to change one stat into another (at half the value).  Oh, I can’t wait for the theorycrafting to commence!

There’s a few more things of interest to note:

• Resilience - This will only affect damage done by players and critical damage done by players. It will not impact crit chance, mana drains, or other such effects.
• Spell Ranks - Spell ranks will cease to exist. All spells will have one rank and will scale appropriately with level. The levels at which you can learn certain spells are being changed in order to fill in some of the gaps, and we will be introducing some new spells to learn along the way as well.
• Weapon Skill - This stat will be removed from the game completely. Classes will start with all the weapon skills they need to know and will not need to improve them.

The resilience change is going to suck for us in arenas, particularly the mana drain part.  I’ve been really enjoying being able to eat mana drains in some cases while whacking a priest with Seal of Wisdom and have him go OOM first.  The spell rank change is nice but also interesting.  I wonder what new lower level spells paladins may get.  And the weapon skill change is nice as well.  That was an old mechanic that was has well over-lived its usefulness and fun and has just become a big pain.  No one enjoys leveling weapon skills.

I’m very interested in learning more about the Mastery stat and all the other new things Blizzard is planning for Cataclysm, and especially learning about the new abilities they have planned for paladins.  Its gonna be awesome!

Note:  I wrote this post before the recent announcement that Blizzard made about paladins doing more raid healing in Cataclysm.

 Dear Paladin Class Designers:

The paladin class has come a long way since the days of Molten Core.  Each new expansion has brought new talents, abilities and play-styles that have made playing a paladin a truly enjoyable experience.  However, like all things, there are areas for improvement.  I’d like to discuss some of those areas below, specifically relating to the Paladin Holy tree.

The first issue I’d like to discuss is related to gear.  The changes to gear in Patch 3.0 helped greatly to decrease the number of unwanted gear in raids.  However, healing plate is the only gear classification to receive no benefits from these changes.  With only 1 out of 30 specs able to use healer plate at all, it is one of the least sought after pieces, and thus one of the most disenchanted.  Since there is little competition for these pieces, it causes awkwardness in guild loot systems and makes DKP almost useless for a Holy Paladin.  It’s also inconsistent and unfair for other classes who do need to share their gear with many others.  Sharing gear leads to a greater chance of more people seeking that gear and leads to happier raiders.

Ideally, Paladins would share their healing gear with Restoration (and Elemental) Shamans.  However, lore and design issues make this solution problematic.  The best second option is for Holy Paladins to share gear with Retribution Paladins and other plate dps through a Strength -> Intellect modifier.  While this is less than ideal, it is better than the current situation where healer plate has to have a lower drop rate to justify its minimal use.  I understand the complexities of both these options and the unlikelihood of their implementation in Cataclysm.  However, I urge you to take a second look at the issue of healer plate and see if there can be an acceptable solution in the near future.

The second issue I’d like to discuss deals with the overall Holy Paladin play style.  Patch 3.0 ushered in some major improvements for Holy Paladins.  The addition of Sacred Shield, Beacon of Light, Judgements of the Pure and Enlightened Judgements revolutionized the way a paladin heals while still giving us a unique style compared to the other healers.  However, our main healing spells, Flash of Light and Holy Light, went mostly unchanged and still serve as simple, direct, single-person heals.  This has led to two completely different schools of thought for Holy Paladin healing – one focused on Holy Light and one focused on Flash of Light.  The current Holy Paladin design discourages a more balanced approach.  There is little incentive to use both spells within a single encounter or to balance stats around both spells.  A Holy Paladin can focus on either super-charged Flash of Lights or very mana-efficient and fast Holy Lights.  The focus on only one spell makes healing and choosing gear less interesting than it could be.

A possible solution is to add more interaction between the two spells.  For example:  a buff could be added that stacks on the Holy Paladin with each cast of Flash of Light and increases the range of the Glyph of Holy Light AoE heal with each stack (up to 40 yards).  Or a Holy Light cast could add a buff to the target that adds a Prayer of Mending-like effect to the target when hit with a Flash of Light.  These are just two ideas for adding some interaction between the two spells while also giving Holy Paladins more raid healing capability.  I realize that changes like this affect balance in many ways, both in PvE and PvP.  However, changes like this happen with each expansion.   I have no doubt that you will come up with a number of new and unique abilities for Holy Paladins in Cataclysm.  I just ask that these abilities give Holy Paladins more interaction between our two main heals and encourage us to have a more balanced and interesting approach to gear and healing than we do currently.

The last issue I’d like to discuss has to do with the Holy Paladin’s focus on tank healing.  While the recent changes to Beacon of Light were huge in making Holy Paladins viable raid healers, we are still at our best when assigned to heal a tank or two tanks.  Blizzard has done a remarkable job with recent patches allowing a variety of classes and specs to perform multiple roles, particularly with tanks and dps.  Each tanking class can now perform as main tank or off-tank for nearly any encounter, and each dps can serve a single-target or AoE role with almost equal proficiency if played correctly.  This is true while still maintaining the uniqueness of each class. 

You should give the same focus to the healing classes.  While I understand the need to specialize in a role (the way a priest does), I believe each healing class should be able to perform equally well in both the tank and raid healing role if desired (although not necessarily at the same time).  Allowing each class to perform every role does not in itself homogenize the classes, since each can perform the role in a different and unique way.  I’d love to see even more capabilities given to Holy Paladins to fulfill the raid healing role, rather than the opposite, which is shifting our focus even more into tank healing.  I ask that you consider this when developing the spec for Cataclysm.

Thanks for all your hard work and thanks for making WOW an awesome game!

What about you?  If you could write a letter to Blizzard, what would it say?

This was written by a fellow guild member while bored in class one day.  He gave me permission to post it here.  Enjoy!

So here’s a story
that has no moral at all.
It’s about a paladin
and the path that lead to his fall.

It all started quite innocently
and you may have guessed it, your probably right.
This starts with a girl
she was something exciting, attractive, and full of light.

He used to be a self reliant kind of guy,
always wanted to do everything by himself.
He didn’t want to have anyone in his life
and so she had to intrude herself.

He seemed like he had a level head;
the kind of guy who had faced combat and never ran.
She was interested in him
and that’s when she came up with a very clever plan.

She could see the doors he kept locked
so she was coy, mysterious, and vague.
And for a while there
he was almost sure she was messing with his head

Everyday, she would talk to him
about his life, and what was going on,
and he listened to her
but never imagining her as anything more than a pawn

Still, she kept at it
and began to wear him down.
He took an interest in her
and learned of her hometown.

They fought alongside together,
and they exchanged jokes and stories.
He opened himself up to her
letting her know of his joy, anger, and worries.

The two had become quite a team;
there wasn’t an enemy the couldn’t beat.
Even against the mighty dragon,
their bond resisted the heat.

She had decided to execute her plan,
and that’s when she began to open up to him.
He learned all sorts of things about her
and seemed to love her every whim

Without realizing it, he was starting to like her
and like a school kid, he was afraid for her to know.
So she took the initiative
and told him of her woe

For she had liked him for a long time now,
and was starting to despair at not getting results.
She told him everything about her feelings
and prepared for any of his horrible insults.

Alas, she was wrong.  He didn’t turn away.
He was happy that she liked him,
and although his answer was long delayed,
the news he gave her was not that grim

Where she feared he would run away,
he surprised her with his response.
He told her he was very into her
and they began to lessen their ensconce.

The more they learned,
the more the attraction grew.
The more he saw her,
the more his heart flew.

The more they talked,
the more softer she got.
The more he told about himself,
the more she realized, she liked him a lot

Things were serious then,
they were starting to move fast.
His entire mind was preoccupied with the mere thought of her
and his secret wouldn’t last.

She had changed him,
made him give up the charade.
He needed her,
and was very afraid.

She needed him too
for more reasons than one.
The two seemed to be meant for each other
and their lives began to reach a new dawn.

He couldn’t get her out of his mind.
Hell, he couldn’t even remember the date anymore.
His world was spinning,
and he had never ever felt this way before

She was everything he ever wanted.
Her life, he wanted to be a part of
And when he realized he was afraid to loose her,
it dawned on him, just how much he was in love.

He told her this, and was afraid she would run.
He knew he was saying this way too early,
but he didn’t care anymore,
the secret was tormenting him very terribly

She loved him too
and wanted him very much.
Any separation was torment,
as he yearned for her touch.

So in the midst of a great battle,
one of a very immense size.
Both sides were taking heavy losses,
as the men let out their cries.

Our hero stood at the front,
ready to face them all.
She stood next to him,
ready to heal those that would fall.

The enemies came from everywhere,
their weapons glistening in the sun.
He fought them bravely,
but they were to be overrun.

In the midst of the battle,
she was aiding her friends.
She was then knocked from behind,
sure to meet her end.

He heard her cry,
and turned around.
There she laid,
she didn’t make a sound.

He rushed to her side,
smiting the enemy that prevailed.
She stared into his eyes,
and he then exhaled..

For she stood back up,
and took her place by his side.
His emotions for her,
he could not longer hide.

He turned her towards him,
and stared back into her eyes.
Ignoring the deathly sounds,
and the battle cries.

And there he embraced her,
and put his hands around her hips.
And then she kissed him,
as he wrote poem of welcome on her lips.

Their world spun,
and nothing seemed to matter.
The sounds of battle were dieing,
and they ignored the useless chatter.

All around the ground they were on,
people were dieing.
There were explosions and movement,
as corpses went flying.

It didn’t matter though,
for they each knew what must be done
He let her go,
and turned to face to the rising sun.

He rallied his men,
and led a heroic charge.
She ran with him,
towards their enemies at large.

It was an incredible skirmish,
his heart was afire.
He had changed the tide,
when the need was most dire.

And with that perspective,
the battle was soon won.
Now that he was The Hero,
and the war was soon to be done.

What a sight it was to see.
With one hand he burnished a wonderful sword.
And he held her hand in his other,
and they began to walk forward.

So here is where our story is now,
we watched our hero fall.
He was unable to stop himself,
but his story is known by all.

Did he fall into a trap?
To answer the question from above.
Our hero had very much fallen…
he had fallen in love.

Ghostcrawler made a couple posts today about healers and some of the things he would like to see for them in the future, presumably in Cataclysm.

More health, smaller damage and heals

First, he mentions that he’d like to go back to the earlier models from classic WOW and BC where healers had more time to coordinate with each other and let each other where there heals were going without just spamming their heals non-stop.  He mentioned that this could be achieved by giving players more health and making heals more expensive, which is something he’s said before that they were planning to do in Cataclysm.

Raid healing paladins

Now, this is the important part.  In a different thread, he got into more specifics about Holy Paladins.  First, he says that paladins are the outliers of the healing team, because of how effective we are at bombing huge heals on two people at the same time.  In the future, he wants paladins to move into a more raid healing role and not be as required in the group in order to make it through an encounter.  A person should be able to choose any group of healers, as long as there’s a good variety of classes.  He says that the fix for this isn’t to nerf paladins.  There are two fixes.  The first is to change the encounters by reducing damage so there aren’t as many huge constant swings, make heals cost more so there isn’t unlimited mana, and make heals less spammy with more coordination between the healing team.  The second change is to make sure a paladin on raid heal duty doesn’t feel gimped.

Big changes for paladins?

So, it sounds like there are going two big changes to Holy Paladins in Cataclysm.  The first is that we won’t be as overly powerful compared to other healers when it comes to single and double tank healing.  The second big change is that Holy Paladins will be given tools to be able to raid heal effectively without feeling gimped.  Sounds like huge changes to me!

While I recently made a post on the Flash of Light build for a Holy Paladin, right now paladins really are not true raid healers and really shine at our best when assigned to tank healing, especially on fights where two people are taking a ton of damage at the same time.  It sounds like this may change in Cataclysm to make paladins more well-rounded healers.  I don’t see Blizzard giving paladins the same heals that the other raid healers currently have.  Instead, I see Blizzard coming up with something entirely new and interesting to add to our arsenal that will bring us in line with the other raid healers in a way we probably haven’t thought of at all.

Blizzard also posted a short answer about Holy Paladins during the twitter Q&A:

Q. Is there any info you can share on future plans for holy paladins?

A. I hear they need more healing spells.

Confirmation!  Paladins get more healing spells in the next expansion!

What do you think?  What kind of heals do you see paladins getting in Cataclysm?

Read on for the full quotes from Ghostcrawler:

“Now in general I wish there was a little more coordination among healers, but the current damage model we have just doesn’t really allow it. I remember when tanking Molten Core, that the priest would say over vent “Big heal coming on the OT!” as he powered up a Greater Heal. You don’t have that luxury these days. One of our designers was watching an old Illidan video recently and remarked how everyone was at 50% for so much of the fight. Now days someone is at 100%, will hit 100% in the next couple of GCDs, or will be dead. In that environment, you’d get “Big –” out of your mouth before it would be too late. Players need more health and heals have to be a little more expensive.”

“Yeah, as I said in another thread just now, I think the paladin is an outlier. It’s okay for healers to have things they are slightly better at or slightly worse at, but the paladin is too firmly cemented into the role of MT healer. We don’t want building a raid to be “Okay, grab a paladin and another healer.” It should be “Grab 2 healers, preferably different ones.” This doesn’t mean paladin nerfs are incoming, because some of the problem is the nature of healing right now (huge constant swings, unlimited mana, much spamming, little coordination), and the other half of that is making sure a paladin on raid heal duty didn’t feel gimped. “

Using a Flash of Light build is not for someone looking for the safe, easy way to do things.  A Flash of Light build is for those holy warriors looking to absolutely maximize their Holy paladin’s full potential.  Don’t get me wrong, a Holy Light build will work great in many cases.  However, read on while I explain some of its drawbacks and some of the benefits of a FoL build.  In this post, I’ll show you what you first need for a FoL build, when you SHOULD use Holy Light, what the drawbacks of a HL build are, and what exactly you need to do to pull off a FoL build, including how you heal and what gear and spec you will need.

There are a few things you must first have before you can successfully use a Flash of Light build in difficult content.

To use a FoL build in difficult content you must have:

• low latency,
• fast reaction times,
• the ability to simultaneously watch multiple health bars at once (tank and raid),
• the ability to instantly triage targets (including knowing when not to heal at all and let other healers do their job),
• great environmental awareness (which helps a lot with the triage skill),
• the ability to heal many different targets (many clicks per minute) without any mistakes or mis-clicks and
• other healers that will help heal the tank.

People who are very good Starcraft players will probably be very good Flash of Light healers.  A Flash of Light build is not for everyone.  If you don’t have all of the above, it may be hard for you to pull off a Flash of Light build in difficult content.  It is easier to be a great paladin healer using Holy Light and Intellect.  However, if you want to be an exception paladin healer, you need to be able to do all of the above while using both a Flash of Light and Holy Light build.  This applies to any level of content.  It doesn’t matter if you are in Naxxramas or Icecrown Citadel.  Both builds can work in difficult content if you have all of the above attributes regardless of what your gear level is.  Let me explain why a Flash of Light build can be better than a Holy Light build if you (and your raid) can pull it off.

How does a FoL build work?

Here are the questions everyone is asking:

Is it really possible to do a Flash of Light build?  Can Flash of Light provide the same throughput as Holy Light?  How can Flash of Light alone keep up a tank?

The answers are Yes, No, and It can’t (in very difficult content).  The strength of a Flash of Light build is that it distributes the responsibility of tank healing over many different healers, leading to more stable tank health and a lower chance of wipes due to the mistake or incapacitation of a single healer.  At the same time, it provides critical emergency heals for low health members of the raid.

In very difficult content, every single life matters.  A Holy Paladin is uniquely situated to deal with the most deadly raid damage that occurs in difficult content.  Most healer and dps deaths in ICC occur not from AoE damage but from focused single-target damage on a healer or dps.  Paladins have the strongest, quickest, and most efficient single-target heals in the game.  While HoTs, shields, and pre-heals are great for predictable damage (like tank damage), they aren’t as suited for healing a raid member taking immediate burst damage.  For that, you need the quick, strong and direct heals that a paladin can provide.

While a tank death will immediately cause a wipe, ANY death in hard content will also eventually cause a wipe.  Therefore, a Flash of Light build is the optimal way to focus quick, strong heals exactly on those people who need it the most (while also healing the tank).  Its an awesome build to have during many high raid damage, high mobility encounters (and especially Varimathras) and can even work very well in high tank damage situations if done properly.

When is Holy Light required?

Holy Light is almost always used best on a tank.  Tanks are always taking constant steady, predictable, but high damage and they have higher corresponding health pools to deal with that damage.  Therefore, using Holy Light on them makes sense to quickly fill up that large health pool. 

On the other hand, it usually does not make sense to use Holy Light on a dps or a healer (except for the purpose of Beaconing it to the tank).  Raid damage is always smaller and more unpredictable than tank damage, meaning a Holy Light will take more time to hit the target and the amount of healing it will do is not usually necessary to get them out of the danger zone.  Raid damage often needs to be healed immediately in order to save the target, unlike tank damage which is more predictable.  There are also more raid targets taking the damage and they all need some healing as opposed to one target needing a lot of healing.  The damage often comes in bursts lasting a few seconds, meaning the target needs quicker smaller heals rather than slower larger heals to quickly re-fill their smaller health bar multiple times.  Lastly, there are likely other raid healers responding to the same situation meaning a large Holy Light heal is probably not needed.  The shorter cast time, smaller healing, and more efficiency of Holy Shock and Flash of Light better support the healing of multiple raid targets.

The only exception to this is the Glyph of Holy Light, which does an AoE heal around the target.  The glyph can do quite a lot of healing depending on the encounter, but this is all “bonus” healing that is used to help fill the bars to full (similiar to Judgement of Light).  It is not meant as an emergency heal to keep someone alive and is not meant as the only healing a person receives.  It is only useful on grouped targets, unlike FoL and HS which are always equally effective despite raid positioning.  You can’t raid heal with the glyph alone.

So, does that mean that the only time you should use a FoL build is if you are a raid healer?

The answer is… not exactly.  The fact is, due to Beacon, every Holy Paladin looking to optimize themselves should be a raid healer on most encounters and raid healing is done best with a FoL build.  This especially includes any encounter where the tanks swap aggro, where only one tank is taking damage at a time, or where tank damage is lower than usual.  While a HL build is very effective on encounters where two tanks are taking a ton of damage at the same time, there are many encounters where this is not the case and where a FL build really shines.  In addition, even on encounters where two tanks are simultaneously taking damage, a FoL build can still be very effective because it helps distribute tank healing responsibility over more healers.  While a HL paladin is the most effective tank healer, all healers have some capacity for tank healing that becomes especially powerful when used in combination with each other.  Having both a FoL and HL paladin in a raid can be very powerful.

“But I can still use Holy Shock and FoL with a HL build,” you say?

Holy Shock and FoL in a HL build are not as potent as they could be.  They also doesn’t provide as much throughput as two consecutive Holy Lights when used on a tank.  Its usually not worth it to use Holy Shock on a tank with a HL build.  You can (and should) help out with raid healing with a HL build using these two spells when appropriate, but they should not be your primary spells during the encounter.  If you find you are raid healing with FoL for the majority of most fights, then you would probably do it more effectively with a FoL build.  While the extra mana of a Holy Light build may make you feel more secure, (like having a “just in case” cushion), it ultimately represents wasted potential.  If you’re downing bosses no problem with your current setup, then this doesn’t matter and I recommend you don’t change anything.  In the end, downing the boss is the only thing that matters.

The drawbacks of Intellect and Holy Light

There’s no question that Intellect is a great stat for Holy Paladins.  Point by point, it provides the biggest bonus for all of your stats.  Spamming Holy Light while stacking Intellect produces the biggest healing throughput for the longest period of time.  However, there are four drawbacks to stacking Intellect and using Holy Light as your primary heal.  When you use Holy Light with Intellect, you are almost always wasting your resources in four areas.  These four resources are overheals, mana, number of heals (reliability), and mobility.

Drawback #1:  High Overheal

Holy Light will always produce more overhealing than FoL and especially compared to Holy Shock.  The reason is because it is very difficult to predict both incoming damage and the amount you will heal with Holy Light, especially if your Holy Light crits.  There’s a huge difference between a regular Holy Light and a Holy Light crit.  In addition to this, a Holy Light will almost always overheal damage done to a non-tank.  Lastly, Holy Lights are almost always cast pro-actively, not reactively.  This in itself usually causes more overhealing since the heal is made regardless of the amount of damage done.  What this means is that a large portion of every heal is going into overheal.  And with Beacon, this overheal is doubled.

On the other hand, Holy Shock, as well as Flash of Light, will usually have very low overhealing.  Holy Shock is always cast reactively to instantly heal a target who needs healing and thus has very low overhealing.  Also, the amount healed by a HS, and especially a FoL is much more predictable than a HL.  Both spells are used more reactively to direct healing to the exact targets who need it as soon as damage occurs.  These targets are taking less damage and have smaller health pools, meaning these spells fill up a greater portion of their bar compared to a tank’s.  And most importantly, these spells are not used to fill a target’s health bar to 100%.  The point of a HS or FoL is to get a target out of the danger zone while HoTs, AoE heals, and other raid healing (like Judgement of Light), fill the target’s bar the rest of the way to full. 

What this means is that, if used effectively, HS and FoL will have very low overhealing.  With Beacon of Light, every heal you do is doubled on the tank.  Its unlikely that your Holy Shocks and Flash of Lights will fill a tank’s bar to full by themselves.  This means that while getting very little overheal on the raid, you are also getting very little overheal on the tank.  Almost all of your heals are being converted into effective heals and you are “wasting” very little of your throughput or your mana bar.

Does overhealing really matter?

If you are downing the boss with what you’re doing, then nothing else matters.  However, overhealing matters if you are trying to optimize your paladin.  Each encounter will output a specific amount of damage that must all be healed in order to succeed.  In most cases, it must be healed immediately.  The damage occurs to both the tank and the raid.  The purpose of a FoL build is to provide the largest amount of effective healing to the entire raid while also providing key emergency heals.  If you are wasting all your extra healing potential on one person (the tank), you aren’t optimizing your contribution to the raid as a whole.  A HL paladin will spend a great deal of their gear on extra mana which will often go into extra overheals.  A FL paladin will spend that gear on pure throughput while eliminating overheals as much as possible, creating efficiencies in both areas.

Drawback #2:  Wasted Mana

If you are using Divine Plea correctly at appropriate times in a fight (as well as Seal of Wisdom), mana should never be an issue for you with either build.  Almost every fight allows times to pop Divine Plea with no ill effects.  For those fights where there is no lull, there are other ways to mitigate the healing debuff of Divine Plea, such as Avenging Wrath, trinkets, the T10 4-piece, and good communication with your healing team.

Stacking Intellect will give you an extremely large mana pool, as well as small bonuses to many other stats.  This extra mana is completely wasted if it is not used during an encounter, or if it is wasted on overheals.  Its easy to burn through a mana pool healing targets that don’t really need that level of healing.  Do you really need to use Holy Light on that warlock that took 9k damage from a frostbolt?  Both unused mana and excessive overheals represent unused potential that you could convert into more effective heals.

A Holy Light paladin has nowhere to go for a “mana dump” if necessary since he’s already using his biggest heals.  It can sometimes be difficult to use up the mana pool of a HL paladin without a lot of overheals.  On the other hand, a FoL paladin can (and does) still use spell-power charged Holy Lights when appropriate on the tank or near the end of an encounter.  We can spam heal FoL and HS as appropriate throughout an encounter and still have mana left to use HL when needed.  This makes healing the tank through these critical times even easier due to the extra strong heals provided by a FoL paladin.  A FoL paladin has more freedom to be able to use his mana pool in the most efficient way possible since all of his heals are effective, rather than relying mostly on our most expensive and strongest heal.  He can upgrade to the strongest heal if needed.

 Drawback #3:  Number of heals (reliability)

Large heal throughput is not what wins difficult encounters in most cases (this may change in Cataclysm).  Most people (including tanks) die not because they weren’t receiving enough heals but because they weren’t receiving those heals at the right time (usually due to a healer needing to move or being otherwise incapacitated).  When a person reaches zero health, they die, regardless of how soon after their death they may have received a 25k HL crit.   A tank will always receive a smaller number of heals from a HL paladin compared to a FoL paladin who is using Holy Shocks, Flash of Lights, and instant Flash of Lights in addition to the extra raid heals, HoTs and shields that will be going to the tank that won’t be needed on the raid.

Allowing more raid healers to heal the tank (while the paladin helps with raid healing) provides a more stable health to the tank and allows for more mobility (and mistakes) from each healer.  Chances are, your raid is already following this technique and has HoTs, shields and other heals rolling on the tank, which means even more of your Holy Lights are unneeded and going into overheals most of the time.  HoTs, shields, pre-heals, and Beacon are very effective for taking care of predictable tank damage and very powerful when used in combination with each other and in addition to direct heals (Chain Heal, Swiftmend, Penance, etc).  For those times when large tank healing is needed, (like Festergut-25), Holy Light can still be used by a FoL paladin if needed.  This doesn’t mean Holy Light is cast reactively.  A prepared FoL paladin will know beforehand when HL will be needed.

 Drawback #4:  Mobility

A FoL paladin has some big advantages when it comes to mobility.  Because our Holy Shocks are stronger and crit more often (meaning more instant flash of lights) and our FoLs are stronger and their cast times smaller, we may not see any loss of healing at all when we need to move.  This is especially true if we use the Glyph of Holy Shock, which is recommeded over the HL glyph (especially with 4-piece T10).  We are also at less of a disadvantage if Light’s Grace ever falls off for some reason since we don’t rely as much on quick Holy Lights.  Movement is a great time to throw a HS, instant FoL, refresh Beacon, throw a judgement, or refresh Sacred Shield, with very little downside, since those are our bread and butter spells anyway.  We also can rely more on other healers to help keep the tank up while we have to move.  It also easier for a FoL paladin to spec into Pursuit of Justice if desired (although not recommended).

Gearing your FoL Paladin

A HL Paladin should almost always choose gear with Haste and Mp5 and gem for Intellect.  On the other hand, a FL paladin will look for gear with Haste and Crit until reaching the haste cap (about 680 haste rating), at which point he will switch to Crit and Mp5.  Crit is very important for a FoL paladin.  It makes your relatively smaller heals stronger and gives you more instant Flash of Lights, a stronger FoL HoT and, of course, gives mana back due to Illumination.  Note that there is really no specific reason not to go over 50% crit so that your heals crit more than half the time.  Crit is just as beneficial over 50% as it is under, with the one exception of wasted FoL crit for the couple seconds when your Sacred Shield procs.  However, crit is always useful for Holy Shock and producing instant Flash of Lights.  In general, since haste, crit and Mp5 are all useful for us, a FoL paladin will want to go for the gear with the highest item level (and the most spell power) available, but try to keep a good balance of all three stats with a focus on Crit.

The biggest difference between the gear of the two paladins are our gems, trinkets, and librams.  A HL Paladin will gem Intellect in every slot possible.  On the other hand, a FL paladin will try to match socket bonuses while gemming for spellpower, crit, and even Mp5 if necessary to match a good bonus.  This usually means gemming full spellpower in a red socket, spellpower + crit in a yellow socket, and possibly spellpower + mp5 in a blue socket if you want to match the bonus.   A HL paladin will have Intellect trinkets while a FL paladin will have spellpower trinkets.  And lastly, a HL paladin will use a libram like the Libram of Renewal while a FoL paladin will use a PvP libram like the Relentless Gladiator’s Libram of Justice.  This libram only requires a 700 rating and 350 Arena Points, so it should be in range for any FoL-aspiring paladin to get.  If you can get the Wrathful version, even better.

While an Ember Skyflare Diamond is possible with a FoL spec, I still recommend an Insightful Earthsiege Diamond for both specs for the superior mana returns it gives.

As for professions, jewelcrafting and enchanting are great professions for any Holy Paladin, although alchemy can also be very strong if you are always using a flask (Frost Wyrm in this case).

Talents/Spec

Since crit is so important, a FoL paladin will usually go down the Retribution tree to pick up Conviction and Sanctity of Battle.  Benediction is also an important talent for us, reducing the mana cost of Holy Shock, instant Flash of Lights, Sacred Shield, Beacon of Light, our judgements, and our seals if we need to switch mid-battle to regen mana.  A typical FoL paladin spec will look like this:  51/2/18 (feel free to pick up Aura Mastery instead depending on the fight).

It is possible for a FoL paladin to go down the Prot tree for 5/5 Divinity, Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian for certain fights.  You’ll sacrifice some of your healing power and mana efficiency for a stronger Sacred Shield and the Divine Sacrifice cooldown.  Note that Divine Sacrifice was nerfed in the last patch.  It will no longer absorb 40% of raid damage for a full 10 seconds.  Instead, it will only absorb twice your health worth of damage, and an additional 20% of all raid damage for 6 seconds.  The initial effect ends early if you let your health go below 20% (however, the second 20% absorption effect remains).  So, its not as OP as it used to be but still can be good.

Glyphs

A HL paladin will usually get Glyph of Seal of Wisdom, Glyph of Holy Light, and have their choice of a third glyph (usually Glyph of Divinity).

A FoL paladin will usually pick up Glyph of Seal of Light, Glyph of Holy Shock, and Glyph of Flash of Light for major glyphs and Glyph of Lay on Hands, Glyph of Blessing of Wisdom, and Glyph of the Wise for minor glyphs.  Glyph of the Wise will make it a little easier to switch to Seal of Wisdom mid-fight if you need to whack out some mana.  If you find you’re having a lot of mana problems for some reason (like you’re on 25-man Festergut and have to use a lot of Holy Lights), then you can switch to Glyph of Seal of Wisdom instead of Glyph of Seal of Light and/or Glyph of Divinity instead of Glyph of Holy Shock.  You could also switch out your libram, some gems, or anything else until you’ve switched over to a complete Holy Light build.  Sometimes a Holy Light build IS best for a fight.  Use your discretion.

Summary

Hopefully this has helped open your eyes to how a Flash of Light build works.  Look for a future post where I compare the stats of each paladin and how each heal compares with each other in each build.  For now I’ll say that a geared HL paladin will usually have about 8k - 9k more mana than a geared FoL paladin and 600 - 700 less spellpower.  In addition, the FoL paladin will have the libram, glyphs, and talents to boost his healing even more while a HL paladin will be boosting his mana efficiency and utility.  Feel free to post any questions or comments below.  Most of all, have fun experimenting with your paladin.

Good luck!

Related Articles

For another perspective on paladin raid healing, check this recent post by Adgamorix at Divine Plea:  Healing Pigeonholes.  There’s some more great info in there.

So last week Blizzard announced exactly how Wintergrasp works when it comes to giving advantages to a faction that has consistently lost many Wintergrasp battles in a row.  Up until recently, my server has been pretty good at trading Wintergrasp back and forth between the two factions.  However, just last week it seems, Wintergrasp has become completely overrun by the Horde (I’m Alliance, btw).  I think Alliance has only had Wintergrasp 3 or 4 times in the last week on my server.  We’ve been up to 5 or more stacks of Tenacity during every single battle.  What this means is that there are Horde everywhere.  It doesn’t matter whether you go east, west, or try to take a workshop, there will always be more Horde wherever you are than Alliance.  There’s no question that this is mainly due to a population imbalance on the server.  Especially with the implementation of faction changes, more people than ever have been moving over to the Horde faction on my server.

What this means is that it is very difficult to take Wintergrasp, despite the advantages we have with Tenacity and with starting position.  It doesn’t matter if we have 5 stacks of Tenacity, start with all 4 workshops and get 2nd Lieuteant immediately when the Horde can just overrun your siege engines and your flags whenever they want.  What Blizzard needs to do instead of buffing the starting position of the losing faction, is to give more buffs to Tenacity.  Here are three reasons why the current implementation of Tenacity fails:

• Vehicles don’t scale with Tenacity.

Its fun and all being able to solo 4 or 5 Horde at a time.  However, as soon as you jump in a vehicle, you get owned.  Since we are so outnumbered, losing one person’s buffed stats because they are in a vehicle means a big loss to our battle potential.  There’s almost no point to jumping in a siege engine cannon.  However, vehicles are required to win Wintergrasp.  Its just impossible with the number of people we have compared to the Horde to field enough people in vehicles and still be able to defend those vehicles against the Horde masses.  Vehicles need to scale with Tenacity in order to have any chance to survive.

• Flag Captures don’t scale with Tenacity

I’ve had it happen many times where our swat team of 3 Alliance will hold off 10+ Horde at a workshop indefinitely with Tenacity, killing them as new ones cycle in and the old ones rez.  However, we never make any progress on capturing the flag since all the flag cares about is the number of people around it.  It doesn’t matter if we can hold the position indefinitely killing everyone each time, as soon as they rez, we’re back to a losing battle.  Its impossible to take a flag when you’re vastly outnumbered, even if you’re able to hold your own.  Eventually, the Horde get all the workshops just due to sheer numbers.  At that point, its impossible to win since we can’t even get any vehicles and we end up getting camped at our graveyard.  Tenacity needs to scale with flag captures so that someone with Tenacity is worth more to a flag than someone without.

• CC doesn’t scale with Tenacity.

While Tenacity does help us stay alive, do more damage, and kill more Horde, it doesn’t really help as much as you’d think.  The reason is because each person in that vast army of Horde has their own set of stun and incapacitate abilities that can easily remove one of those Tenacity-filled juggernauts from the battle completely.  You can’t use your Tenacity empowered abilities if you are constantly stun-locked by six Horde at the same time.  If the Horde start using CCs and focus fire, there’s no way that a group with Tenacity can survive.  At the same time, there’s no way that the few people with Tenacity can CC even a fraction of the Horde that is attacking.  CC becomes even more powerful against foes with Tenacity and any smart opponent will use it abundantly.  I’m not sure how Blizzard can fix this.  Maybe the first two buffs would be enough.  But there’s no question that Tenacity really isn’t all its cracked up to be.

I hope Blizzard goes back and takes a look at Wintergrasp and the imbalance that can happen on some servers.  You could make the argument that Blizzard wants the faction with the most people to have Wintergrasp more and that they’re happy with the imbalance and that might make some sense.  It probably doesn’t make sense for a lower population faction to have Wintergrasp an equal portion as a higher population faction.  However, I think the balance is still too far in favor of the larger populations and that Tenacity needs a buff.  Starting with all 4 workshops and 2nd lieutenant only allows you to immediately rush your siege engines into the Horde masses rather than waiting for a time.  The Horde are still going to immediately kill your vehicles and eventually take back your workshops.  There needs to be some buffs to Tenacity due to the reasons I stated above (and not just bigger numbers).  At the very least, vehicle health needs to be raised and flag captures need to be faster for the disadvantaged faction.

I’m not saying that Alliance should have Wintergrasp all the time.  I love Wintergrasp, I have the Master of Wintergrasp Achievement, and I’ve had my share of both wins and losses.  I’m just hoping I’ll be able to do VoA sometime this week.

Blizzard made some pretty big battleground-related announcements yesterday that will be coming in the next small content patch before Cataclysm.

First, they are removing the daily Battleground quest and instead have created a random battleground tool similiar to the Dungeon Finder tool that gives rewards in a similiar way.  With the “Battleground Finder” you can queue for a random battleground and get a lot extra honor for the first battleground you win: 30 honorable kills worth.  For every random BG you win after that, you’ll get 15 honorable kills.  You also get an extra 5 honor kills worth of honor even if you lose when using the random battleground finder.  The holiday weekend also works the exact same way, even if you choose that specific BG, but the two bonuses don’t stack, you only get one or the other each day.  There’s no word on whether the first random battleground win will still include 25 arena points.  I hope it does.

The second announcement they made is that they are removing all battleground marks of honor and adjusting the price of anything that requires these marks accordingly.  I’m assuming that anything that requires marks of honor (like the pvp mounts) will now only require honor points.  Vendors will still exist so you can cash in your old marks, but there’s no word on whether you’ll be able to cash them in one at a time or if you still will need one of each or what you’ll be able to get.

The last big announcement is that they are reducing the amount of honor you get from the weekly Wintergrasp quests but doubling the amount of honor you get from honor kills and other objectives in all battlegrounds.  They’ve changed the WG quests quite a lot over time (they used to be daily quests) to try to balance  the amount of honor gained with the effort.  What this means is that Wintergrasp will be more useful to run even after you’ve completed all the quests for the week.  Right now it really only seems worth it to run Wintergrasp to complete the quests, so this is a good change, I think.

Overall, it sounds like honor will be easier to get.  We won’t need to travel to Dalaran to pick up or turn in our daily BG quest, which is good.  The system where you need one of each BG mark to buy anything is just bad (I never seem to have any AV marks) and will get worse as they add more battlegrounds, so the removal of the marks entirely is a smart move, although I will miss the Wintergrasp marks if they’re removing those too.

I think these changes are good.  The biggest thing I’ve hated about the honor grind is how little honor you get from regular battlegrounds compared to doing the weekly Wintergrasp quests.  It almost doesn’t seem worth it, especially after doing your daily PvP quest.  You could do just one or two Wintergrasps and get 25 to 35 thousand honor after turning in Stone Keeper’s Shards and WG marks.  It made the rest of your week seem even more like a pointless grind, especially when you lost over and over.  You might as well wait a week for the big honor injection from the WG weeklys instead of grinding BGs all day for very little honor.  These changes should make regular battleground rewards more in line with the weekly wintergrasp quests and hopefully get more people into the other battlegrounds.

In other news, it sounds like there will be a new single-boss instance in the Ruby Sanctum coming out in the next patch, similiar to the Obsidian Sanctum.  We’ve been waiting for the new dungeons in Dragonblight ever since Wrath launched, so I’m excited to see what they have in store.

What do you think about these changes?

At first glance, the Blood Prince Council is a very complicated fight.  You’ve got 3 different bosses, each with at least 3 different abilities to watch out for and a shared health pool.  The first few times your raid goes in may be like a madhouse… people flying all over the screen, taking damage everywhere, and wipes happening quickly.  However, once you get the hang of dealing with a few basic abilities, the Blood Prince Council becomes  a much easier fight.

Gear Requirement

Blood Prince Council is definitely an execution fight.  The gear requirement probably isn’t as high as Festergut or Rotface.  However, better gear will help give you some leeway on the execution.

Group Make-up

Blood Prince Council is a unique fight in that you will need 3 tanks - one as a ranged tank.  For you, this means you can’t heal all the tanks at the same time with Beacon.  You’re going to have to choose one of the tanks to Beacon and heal the other two the old fasioned way.  The healing requirement on this fight can be low if execution is done perfectly.  Therefore, its definitely doable with only 2 healers, but 3 will help a lot while you’re learning.  As is often the case in ICC, a druid healer will help due to the movement required.

The third tank can really be any class that can keep threat at ranged.  A death knight works great because he can be an actual tank with high health and should be able to hold aggro on the boss and the orbs with no problem.  A warlock or a hunter will also work, usually in their high health or PvP gear.

The Pull

The pull on Blood Princes can be a little hectic because you’ll need to coordinate the three tanks to pick up aggro on their bosses at the same time.  Its possible at the pull for someone to unexpectedly get hit by one of Prince Keleseth’s Shadow Lances, usually a healer, so be ready to heal them up.  Positioning is also important in this fight, so you’ll need to make sure to get it right at the start.

Where you position yourself depends on who you are using Beacon on.  I would recommend using Beacon on the ranged tank (Keleseth’s tank).  The ranged tank will be moving around quite a lot, and using Beacon on him should ensure that he always gets heals, even if he is out of range.  You can then position yourself between the other two tanks (closer to the doorway) and alternate heals on them as needed.  If you do this, you will probably need a little help on the tank heals to keep them both up, although you should still have time for some raid heals while both tanks are at full health.  Alternatively, you could use Beacon on Taldaram’s tank and heal the two real tanks like normal and have another healer dedicated to healing Keleseth’s ranged tank.  You should be able to keep both tanks up pretty easily by yourself this way as well as do some raid healing.  If you choose this method, you could actually position yourself on the far side of Valanar so your Beacon tank is over 40 yards away.  This might help you be in range of the rest of the raid and it will make it easier to avoid empowered ball of flames.

You should try to always be almost 40 yards from both tanks so you can more easily avoid Empowered Shock Vortex and Empowered Ball of Flames.  Also, remind your raid members to stay at least 12 yards away from you to avoid the shared effect of Shock Vortex.  Since you’re healing, they should be the ones to move, but you may also need to move away from them if they are getting close during a shock vortex.

Keeping everyone in range

The biggest obstacle in healing this fight is when people go out of range of you, especially the tanks.  There are three abilities that could potentially cause you to go out of range of the tanks.  Two of them are completely avoidable and shouldn’t affect you if everyone performs correctly.

Kinetic Bomb

Kinectic Bomb is the first ability your raid needs to worry about, but that you can completely ignore.  For the first attempts at this boss, you should assign a dedicated ranged dps to dealing with the Kinetic bombs exclusively.  The bombs are orbs that float in the air that need to be hit regularly like a balloon floating in the air to keep them up.  If they hit the ground, they will explode, doing a lot of AoE damage and knocking everyone across the room, out of range of whatever you’re healing, and probably causing a wipe.  Kinetic bomb may be the source of your wipes for the first few attempts.  Once you get the hang of it though, its easy to take care of.

Shock Vortex

The second ability you need to watch for is Shock Vortex.  Non-intuitively, the regular version of Shock Vortex is actually more dangerous than the Empowered version.  The empowered version is pretty easy to avoid simply by being over 30 yards from Valanar while he is empowered.  If you or someone around you does get hit by it, you may end up flying randomly around the room, although because the knockback happens away from the person who had it, you may actually end up being knocked toward the boss instead of away, which is not ideal, but definitely better than the alternative.  If that happens, just try to run back into position as soon as you can.  The damage from both empowered and regular shock vortex is pretty small and manageable, its the knock back that can cause problems.

The regular version of Shock Vortex happens throughout 2/3 of this fight while the other two bosses are empowered.  Shock Vortex will create a whirling ball of electric mass somewhere in the room.  The ball doesn’t move or do a lot of damage, but it will do a large knock-back to anyone that gets near it.  Its likely that a ball will end up spawning right at your feet sometime during the fight.  You’ll need to watch closely at all times and step away from it if you see it spawn, otherwise it can knock you out of range of the tanks, possibly causing a wipe.  If you do get knocked away from the tanks, do not blindly run back into the same position to start healing again or the shock vortex will just knock you back out again.  The whirling ball can be a little difficult to see since it isn’t bright orange or red, but watch closely for it anyway and be ready to move out of the way of it so you can continue healing.  If you can avoid the shock vortexes, they should never cause you to go out of range of the tanks.

Empowered Ball of Flames

If your raid has Kinetic Bombs and Shock Vortexes down, you’ve pretty much got the fight won (as long as your ranged tank is good at picking up orbs).  The only other ability to worry about is the empowered ball of flames.  You may never get targeted by this, making your job much easier.  However, if you are ever targeted, you must immediately turn around and start running away.  The ball will do less damage to you the farther it flies and the more other people it travels through.  At full power, the ball will one-shot you.  You will need someone to pick up healing on the tanks while the ball is on you so you can run.

You’ll see the ball appear as a large orange orb above Taldaram while he is empowered before it starts flying toward a raid member.  If you see the ball but don’t see the warning that it is targeting you, your job is completely different.  In that case, you want to run into the path of the orb so you can absorb some of its power so it doesn’t one-shot its target.  Don’t worry too much about doing this unless the ball is going near you anyway.  Your other raid members should be helping to absorb the damage and running away from the ball so they don’t get one shot, so you can focus mostly on healing.  However, if one is going in your general direction, feel free to step in front of it to help things out.  The damage it will do to you while passing by is very small.

Summary

Here are the main things to keep in mind and you’ll have this boss down in no time:

• Stay 30 yards away from the Valanar and Taldaram
• Move away (and stay away) from swirling Shock Vortexes that spawn on the ground
• Run away from Empowered Flaming Orbs

That’s really all there is for you to remember, besides keeping everyone healed like usual.  Master these three mechanics and you’ve got the fight down.

Good luck!

Loot to watch for

• Cerise Coiled Ring
• Heartsick Mender’s Cape