#0 - Sept. 3, 2010, 5:03 p.m.
Before I get into the numbers, Guardian of Ancient Kings!
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h314/kaikulu/guard3.jpg
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h314/kaikulu/guard4.jpg
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h314/kaikulu/guardret.jpg (ret version, carries a large sword instead of a prayer book)
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h314/kaikulu/guardprot.jpg (prot version, carried a shield when not channeling)
As holy, melees for ~1k, is aggressive (hunts down critters in Stormwind even), and lasts 30 seconds or until five heals are used. Functions just like the tooltip states.
Anyways, here are the numbers:
My gear
Twilight Highlands and Uldum are not itemized yet. I have three Deepholm greens and two Cata heirlooms, with ICC25 heroic gear in every other slot. 5% plate specialization bonus is currently broken in favor of numerous more powerful non-plate healing items. My gear has all been reforged to drop haste or crit in favor of spirit when possible, and mastery when spirit is not available. ICC25 H gear is still full of spellpower gems.
Basic Stats
Health: 74k
Mana: 58k (~25k base)
Spirit/regen: 1100, 2065 mp5 while out of combat, 1032 while in combat.
Spellpower: 3848. This is lower than my current live value due to the lack of leveling gear present and talent changes.
Mastery: +10% healing converted to shields (416 mastery rating, 2.16 mastery)
Heal mana costs, and average unbuffed heal value without Conviction on self, with Divinity/Insight glyph
Divine Light: 7k mana, ~14k healing
Holy Light: 1.4k mana, ~7k healing
Flash of Light: 6k mana, ~9k healing
Holy Radiance: 9.4k mana, 1164/tick healing
Light of Dawn: 4.9k mana, 3.4k healing without Holy Power
Holy Shock: 1.9k mana, ~8.8k healing
Beacon: 1.4k mana
My Holy Light on live currently hits harder than my Divine Light at 85 with a few buffs.
These are numbers out of context, though. What is your impression of content since the cap was raised?
Unfortunately, the in-game dungeon finder tool forbids me from running any dungeon past Vortex Pinnacle (lvl83 dungeons) due to my gear being 20 ilvls below that which is required. Vortex Pinnacle itself, a new dungeon, hard-freezes whenever most players mouse over or target any mob, so it is currently untestable for many players.
I only have two references upon which to contextualize the lvl85 numbers: Twilight Highlands levelling and the new Ring of Blood. Level 85 mobs in Twilight Highlands tend to hit very hard - taking me down to about half hp in ret per mob to <5%, depending on the cooldowns I had available, while fighting mobs solo. The hardest hitting non-elite mobs I found dual wielded and could crit for 9.5k on their autoattacks, with spells hitting in the 7k-15k range. Several non-elite quests were not soloable, and one even required a group of seven before we were capable of downing the quest. There are many unavoidable groups of two social mobs in Twilight Highlands. Mob hp was typically in the 80k range, though there are a number of 115-130k hp non-elite mobs with the same damage as normal mobs.
Holy paladin grinding is downright evil. Do not even think of attempting it parring changes going to live. Exorcism hits for 2.1k unbuffed. 2-4 non-elite mobs (depending on the mob) are capable of doing more damage than Divine Light spam. Also mana issues - you don't really melee for mana back since Exorcism is so much more damage than other alternatives available (crusader strike).
The new Ring of Blood was interesting. The bosses were pretty simple and involved tank damage over and over again. A combination of Divine Light, WoG, and Holy Shock with few interruptions could handle the tank damage, but it drained mana very quickly - despite the bosses having the same hp as lvl80 bosses, mana could easily drop down to 25% when Holy Light was unusable. Word of Glory is extremely nice for tank healing and mana longevity, especially when combined with Tower of Radiance, given the extreme mana-starvation conditions present in Cataclysm.
Three second tank deaths are still in the game. I'm going to go with a broken ability on that specific boss (Earl of Evisceration) but his damage output wasn't actually that much worse than any other boss except when performing his flurry attack. For that Ring of Blood boss we had to do a rotation between tank cooldowns, healing cooldowns, and Heroism to down the boss (well, get him down as low as possible, the server crashed the one attempt he did not bug after he picked up the carriage).
Fun screenshot: the Earl of Evisceration on the attempt he did not bug out for! The damage output caught everyone by surprise, but it's ridiculous regardless. http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h314/kaikulu/earlofevis.jpg
I'll be able to provide more meaningful updates once I find a non-dungeon finder group for the lvl85 dungeons. And as usual, everything in beta changes wildly every other patch, so take my words with the usual grain of salt.