Friday, March 25, 2011

Holy...Pally?!

Just a quick post here. I have pretty much always had my Paladin as a tank. I haven't found it to be overly difficult to play, and the practice that I was getting leading our alt runs during ICC was helping me to get - I dare say - pretty good at it. With Cataclysm brought changes, but I'm happy to say that I have started raiding with him and I am getting pretty confident with him again, including using my CDs effectively and learning when to use my holy power for what. I've always been pretty if-y on using my Hands (Salv, Freedom, etc.) but I think I am getting a bit better with them too! Unfortunately, the masachist that I am, I have been slowly building him a holy set...
...with drops in the randoms I have been running and today I took the time to craft the last few pieces I need (epic shield and then some "Stormforged" pieces to round out my set) put some enchants on them and socketed some green quality gems. I then ran a normal cataclysm random. Wow is there a lot to deal with when playing him for the first time as holy since cataclysm. Remembering to judge on cd, burn my holy power on WoG and then if it doesn't use my holy power, too use another WoG, popping hands when I need to, keeping beacon up, shock on non-tanks but try to use bigger heals on the tank (for holy power with Tower of Radiance), and throughout all of that watching my mana is a LOT to get used to. I think one of the biggest things is that the mechanics have changed enough with Cataclysm that it was like I had never Pally healed before, I didn't even realize that my slow mana efficient heal didn't build holy power when cast on the tank until about halfway through when I finally looked at Tower of Radience because I was confused (I was thinking to myself that I was missing, which is the reason that I don't build holy power when I'm tanking...but then realized that didn't make sense because heals don't miss). It's very much a different world from Holy Priest healing, where our proc's are fairly controlled by us (serendipity specifically comes to mind). I think I need to get a hold of power auras again (I removed it because I never got it working quite like I wanted, and it sucks my cpu power - what little there is), and set it up to track some things. The biggest differnce I found was how much you have to be proactive in your mana control. As a Holy Priest I rely on my rediculously high mana regen, supplemented with properly timed pots and Shadow Fiends, but a Holy Pally has to watch their mana like a hawk, and if you miss one Judgement cd, you can find yourself falling behind pretty quick. A lot of it probably has to do with my mana pool being around 80k instead of the 100K that I think would be minimum to have equivalent regen to my priest. Maybe talking to our resident expert Janyaa will help out a bit too. I should note that we didn't wipe, and with the exception of the DK standing in shockwave AND hitting a mine all in one (City of the Tol'Vir, first boss) I didn't let anyone die. Granted it was a normal, but I really wasn't over gearing it by THAT much.

1 comment:

  1. Hehe, there are a lot of things to juggle, aren't there? Now you can see why I look at your mana regen and get a little green with envy.

    Trust me, the playstyle has gotten a TON better since 4.0. That was just ridiculous. You know I love talking holy pally. I'm happy to answer any questions you have. :)

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