The PTR patch notes got an update today regarding several Paladin abilities and talents. Infusion of Light also got an updated note, but its wording is somewhat confusing/potentially misleading:

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Holy

Infusion of Light: This talent now causes the paladin’s Flash of Light spells to heal the target for 50/100% of the Flash of Light healing amount over 12 seconds.

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There are three questions I have regarding this.

1) Does this mean that the current IoL functionality is gone and being completely replaced?

2) FoL no longer requires Sacred Shield to be up on the target in order to get the HoT functionality (for Holy Paladins)?

3) As an extention of #2, does this mean that Prot and Ret no longer have access to the HoT component of Sacred Shield?

I'm not all that concerned one way or another regarding PvE/PvP. It was nice to have to have the HoT as Ret (or Prot in some cases) in PvE, usually soloing/questing, but it's not a gamebreaking loss. #1, however is of more concern to Holy Paladins. We'd MUCH rather have that instant FoL if we had to choose between the HoT and a way to add an instant heal to our already paltry repertoire.

As such, I'm just seeking clarification on what exactly is going on with IoL and its full functionality.

1. No, this is extra functionality to IoL.

2. No. Sacred Shield must still be on the target to get the HoT.

3. Yes, Prot and Ret no longer have access to the HoT component of FoL+SS.

If this is how it is, then cool. Won't take getting used to much at all. :)

Thanks Greg. I think your team scored a bullseye with this one. It feels like the right kind of nerf in the right place (much better than the "triggers once every 30s" originally tested).

Now, if we can just find a solution as clean as this for the Lay on Hands business that will be fantastic.

Thank you for the reply (Coriel) and the confirmation (GC). With this info in hand, I can ween myself from the current version of the HoT by altering my playstyle to match the future version. This kind of info I find most useful - lets me not be so n00b-ish (god I hate typing words like that...) once the new patch comes out.

Nice change indeed.

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Thanks Greg. I think your team scored a bullseye with this one. It feels like the right kind of nerf in the right place (much better than the "triggers once every 30s" originally tested).

Now, if we can just find a solution as clean as this for the Lay on Hands business that will be fantastic.

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Honestly I think they have pretty much nailed where lay on hands should be. It needed to be nerfed in that it was a bit OP that you could have say a prot paladin hold off 3 DPSers for 2 minutes at say a cap point in AB (plenty of time to get backup from say his buddies that died) because he could heal himself so well while taking basically no damage, and when he did get low he would just bubble, and if he got low again he would lay on hands, and perhaps (if he lived long enough, which he may) hit BoP on himself afterwards.

This change would prevent that from happening completely. The problem isn't specifically with LoH, bubble, or bop. The problem was how 2 or 3 of them could all be chained together to make them survive for an absurdly long time. Ret wasn't as bad with this, but at the same time was still a problem in many situations. They shouldn't be able to just chain those abilities like that, and forbearance is a good answer to that particular problem (because when you think about it, this is exactly what forbearance was meant for - preventing several very powerful defensive abilities from being chained.)

I do hope this will be enough erradicate holyprots in 3s, though i doubt it.

And yeah, they are still are a problem in rated Arenas, the #1 3v3 team in my BG is one and we can't help but feed points to them each mach we meet.

Edit: BTW Ghostcrawler it has been very pleasant to see your improvement in forum communication. Sarcasm and trolling players should be below a Dev Lead post's, and you have been doing amazingly well lately.

I'm not sure I understand. What is the point of having a trainable ability that does nothing without deep talents in a talent tree to give it functionality? One might better just make it a Holy Talent. It's like if Chaos Bolt was trainable for all, but did no damage unless you had 51 points in Destruction.

SS still absorbs so it's still useful for all specs. The FoL HoT on SS component was added when they nerfed SS to only be able to be put on one person.

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I'm not sure I understand. What is the point of having a trainable ability that does nothing without deep talents in a talent tree to give it functionality? One might better just make it a Holy Talent. It's like if Chaos Bolt was trainable for all, but did no damage unless you had 51 points in Destruction.

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The absorption effect of Sacred Shield is still quite potent, and multiple DPS & Tank paladins can keep SS up on a variety of targets so that a single Holy Paladin can take advantage of FoL HoT's around the raid.

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and forbearance is a good answer to that particular problem

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Forbearance is and has always been a terrible answer to the problem.

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I do hope this will be enough erradicate holyprots in 3s, though i doubt it.

And yeah, they are still are a problem in rated Arenas, the #1 3v3 team in my BG is one and we can't help but feed points to them each mach we meet.

Edit: BTW Ghostcrawler it has been very pleasant to see your improvement in forum communication. Sarcasm and trolling players should be below a Dev Lead post's, and you have been doing amazingly well lately.

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I politely disagree. Greg's humor was one of my favorite things about him back in Wrath Alpha (that, and the fact everyone thought he was a woman {including myself 0_0}).

I think that we need more jokes and making fun of bads from our favorite Crawler with the Tankard O' Gin.

Remove the SS requirement for the FoL HoT. Just add Forbearance to FoL.

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Honestly I think they have pretty much nailed where lay on hands should be. It needed to be nerfed in that it was a bit OP that you could have say a prot paladin hold off 3 DPSers for 2 minutes at say a cap point in AB (plenty of time to get backup from say his buddies that died) because he could heal himself so well while taking basically no damage, and when he did get low he would just bubble, and if he got low again he would lay on hands, and perhaps (if he lived long enough, which he may) hit BoP on himself afterwards.

This change would prevent that from happening completely. The problem isn't specifically with LoH, bubble, or bop. The problem was how 2 or 3 of them could all be chained together to make them survive for an absurdly long time. Ret wasn't as bad with this, but at the same time was still a problem in many situations. They shouldn't be able to just chain those abilities like that, and forbearance is a good answer to that particular problem (because when you think about it, this is exactly what forbearance was meant for - preventing several very powerful defensive abilities from being chained.)

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I don't want to derail, because this is the healing forum, but you're way off here. A prot paladin (in prot gear!) will not have the mana to fully heal in the bubble and then do anything at all. Killing the healing gear/prot spec combo is fine. I used to do this in AV before Wrath, but it was mostly for the fun factor of having a rogue come up to bash the "healer" and taking a face full of Holy Shield reflected damage.

The thing is that the defining talent of a Paladin in general, and a prot Paladin in particular is not dying. If prot is hard to kill that's fine, so long as he's not killing you. That's why Ret have a 30s lockout on AW and DS, and outgoing damage is halved on DS. Killing someone while invulnerable is OP, standing around not being dead is fine.

There are a few problems with using Forbearance as a mechanism here. Fisrtly, two minutes is a long time in any WoW fight. BoP and DS are much more powerful than LoH (because they remove debuffs) and deserve to be more-or-less mutually exclusive. LoH is powerful, but really only buys a focus-fired paladin a few seconds. A 30s exclusion the same as on AW seems more justifiable. Other classes do not have such long lockouts or shared cooldowns on their powerful offensive and defensive abilities. A rogue can chain CoS and Vanish, a frost mage can reset the cooldown on Ice Block and use it again after only 30s, and a DK with full Runic Power can use Summon Gagoyle with IBF.

Secondly, Forbearance can be put on you by someone else using LoH, which then locks you from using some of your own abilities -- but only if you're a Paladin. It would be like causing Weakened Soul on a priest if you used Cleanse on him, or if Last Stand were not usable under Forbearance. There is also a very dangerous interaction between Forbearance and Divine Protection ("bubble wall") for prot Paladins in PvE, whereby a "clutch" move by a healer could cause the tank to die on the next boss special attack because the damage-reduction ability that the encounter is tuned around is not available.

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And people @#@!% and moan when Paladins ask for new @@*#, citing all of our @@*#ty cool downs. Meanwhile, they've all been constantly nerfed, and now they're starting to be exclusive of eachother. Blizzard have no *!#%ing idea, and it's just band-aid after band-aid.

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Speaking personally, I would rather see abilities locked out from each other than removed entirely or nerfed so they can't even be useful separately.

"Band-aid", as used here, is a strange term, because it seems to mean "simple fix" but it's used disparagingly. What does it mean?

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Speaking personally, I would rather see abilities locked out from each other than removed entirely or nerfed so they can't even be useful separately.

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Personally, If a spec is told it's going to remain stunningly boring to play because it has a heap of **%!ty situational cooldowns, i'd like to be able to use those cool downs as necessary.

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"Band-aid", as used here, is a strange term, because it seems to mean "simple fix" but it's used disparagingly. What does it mean?

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The constant 'fixes' to the class that continually make it more boring to play, without addressing the real issues. See also: Blizzards Vision.

...what?

You're assuming facts not in evidence. I read the vision post, and it basically said they wanted to differentiate the trees more. I have no idea where the rest of this is coming from.