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Steam Name: dfkognus

Gamertag: NickWernham

PSN Name: DFKognus

I just made a post over at the official WoW forums regarding the proposed change to Word of Glory in patch 4.1 (adding a 20 second cooldown to the spell unless you take talents deep in the Holy tree). Here is the original post: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2140508351

I have been playing ret in PvP and PvE for years (since early-2006 when I swapped over from prot with the 1.9 patch), but I took a break from the game for real life reasons last April and just returned to the game about three weeks ago. For the time being I can't afford to schedule my time in a way that allows me to make raids, but I have been doing a fair amount of PvP. I am enjoying Cataclysm so far and think that ret is in the most balanced state it has ever been when it comes to PvP. In the past we have always been either on the lower end of the totem pole (most of the time) or absurdly overpowered (just after 2.0 and then again just after 3.0).

I sort of see Word of Glory/Selfless Healer as ret's compensation for not having any true peels. Instead of peeling opposing players off of our partners as most other DPS can consistently do throughout a match we help to heal the extra damage that they take as a result. Just as peels often come at the expense of some damage for other classes (globals used less efficiently from a damage point of view, cost of mana/rage/energy/focus/runic power, etc.) our Word of Glory heals come at the cost of using our Holy Power and globals for damage.

In some senses simply helping to heal through the damage that our partner takes is an advantage. It is functionally easier to do than peeling because it is a reactionary response to incoming damage rather than something that takes foresight to use effectively to prevent or reduce incoming damage. As such I can see why this nerf is justified.

However, having "heals instead of peels" also has its disadvantages. For one, heals cannot be used offensively. You can use peels to keep a healer out of range or line-of-sight of their low-health DPS and you can use them to do the opposite and keep that low-health kill target away from their healer. Peels can also be used as a way of helping the players on your team who have been snared keep in range/line of sight of the kill target. For another, in order to be pumping Word of Glory heals into our teammates we must be in line of sight of an enemy to build Holy Power on as well as in line of sight of our heal target. Peeling only requires being in line of sight and range of the player whom you wish to peel off of a teammate.

There are advantages and disadvantages to having both forms of utility and I think that having both in the game is a good thing because, as they say, "variety is the spice of life". If ret's off healing is too strong then I can understand why adjustments would need to be made. However, simply slapping a cooldown of this length onto Word of Glory seems like an incredibly clumsy way to go about doing that. Reworking Selfless Healer in some way seems like a far better way to handle the problem. Here is my suggestion:

If the goal is truly to make ret paladins feel as if we don't need to constantly be using our Holy Power on heals as Blizzard has expressed then I would suggest that instead of Selfless Healer making our heals more powerful it instead adds a damage absorption bubble when Word of Glory is used on a teammate. Right now a non-crit, 3 Holy Power Word of Glory heals for around 15,000 health on ourselves and around 22,500 on another friendly player when specced for Selfless Healer. However, what if instead of the talent's tooltip reading:

"When you heal others with your Word of Glory, it increases the effectiveness of the heal by 25% [per talent point] and increases your damage done by 2% [per talent point] per charge of Holy Power for 10 seconds."

It instead read:

"When you heal others with your Word of Glory, they are imbued with Holy Grace which absorbs an amount of damage equal to 25% [per talent point] of the amount that the Word of Glory healed them for and increases your damage done by 2% [per talent point] per charge of Holy Power for 10 seconds."

This change would make spamming Word of Glory on teammates during Zealotry a much less attractive option because you would not be getting the full benefit of the bubble if you used it after every single Crusader Strike. It would also increase the usage of Templar's Verdict overall. Paladins would be using Holy Power for damage more often than they are now, just as Blizzard has said they would like us to do, but Word of Glory would still be a strong defensive option.

Having the choice to use our Holy Power to either do a large amount of burst through Templar's Verdict or heal our teammates with Word of Glory is one of the best changes that Blizzard has ever made to this game. It makes the spec very fun to play. Adding a cooldown to Word of Glory dumbs the spec down a lot and makes it less fun to play.