Patch 5.4 PTR's Level 45 Talents for Holy Paladins

The Changes:
Blizzard recently updated the Public Test Realm patch notes for World of Warcraft's 5.4 patch, which includes significant changes to the level 45 talent tier for Paladins. The relevant patch notes are as follows:

Talents

• Eternal Flame's initial healing has been reduced by 30%. 

• Sacred Shield (Old) has been renamed to Holy Shield and is no longer a talent. Holy Shield is a Protection Paladin ability learned at level 85. 

• Sacred Shield (New)
• Holy: When the Paladin or their Beacon of Light target falls below 30% health, that target gains a Sacred Shield absorbing damage equal to 30% of their maximum health. Sacred Shield can only occur once every 2 minutes. 

• Protection, Retribution: When the Paladin falls below 30% health, they gain a Sacred Shield absorbing damage equal to 30% of their maximum health. Sacred Shield can only occur once every 2 minutes. 

• Selfless Healer stacks now also work on Divine Light in addition to Flash of Light.
• Bastion of Glory will now apply Selfless Healer's bonus to healing to the casting Paladin as well as other targets and consume all stacks of Bastion of Glory in the process.

Holy

• Mastery: Illuminated Healing no longer activates from periodic healing effects.

Don't panic, though! Community Manager Rygarius clarified some of the changes and the intentions behind them in this forum post. I'm not going to go over everything, but here are the salient points:

• Selfless Healer was intended to be a viable option for Holy Paladins who happen to enjoy a playstyle that involves frequent usage of Judgment. Blizzard recognizes that not everybody enjoys this playstyle, so it's not meant to be an attractive talent for everybody.
• Eternal Flame was used far too frequently by Holy Paladins, so Blizzard is trying to figure out how to nerf it so Selfless Healer and Sacred Shield become viable choices. The 30% nerf to Eternal Flame's initial heal will probably be reverted, but the change to make it no longer stack Holy's Illuminated Healing mastery is here to stay.
• Sacred Shield's changes listed above are all pretty much going to be scrapped, because it buffs Protection too much and because the new Sacred Shield is unattractive for Holy and Retribution. Blizzard is looking for a way to make the currently existing talent more attractive to Holy and Retribution, but they haven't decided what exactly to do quite yet.

That means the level 45 talent changes for Holy Paladins at the moment amount to the much more easily manageable:

Talents

• Selfless Healer stacks now also work on Divine Light in addition to Flash of Light.

Holy

• Mastery: Illuminated Healing no longer activates from periodic healing effects.

My Thoughts:
I am actually somewhat intrigued by the Selfless Healer changes. At level 90 and with 26,000 spellpower (roughly normal tier 15-geared), a 3-stack of Selfless Healer grants you the approximate healing power of a Divine Light plus a Holy Light for the mana cost of a Holy Light and 4 nonconsecutive global cooldowns. The big question I have, though, is how does it interact with Infusion of Light procs? If the instant Divine Light consumes the proc, then it loses much of its appeal, but if it leaves the proc untouched (or better yet, allows the instant Divine Light to bypass triggering the global cooldown in exchange for consuming the proc), then it might be worthwhile to give this talent a second look.

However, Selfless Healer still has one fundamental flaw: Judgment just isn't really a Holy spell. Protection and Retribution both have effects that make it something worth casting relatively frequently, but Holy has no real reason to cast it except for this talent. Without some additional base effect for Holy, spending global cooldowns on Judgment will always be seen as a detriment, and I think Selfless Healer will remain unpopular.

As for Eternal Flame and Sacred Shield, the former's HoT ticks refreshing the Illuminated Healing mastery is a blatantly overpowered mechanic, and so many Holy Paladins choose this talent that I can see why Blizzard wants to tone it down, however the biggest reason why I chose Eternal Flame over Sacred Shield (even though I had tried Sacred Shield first and prefer it conceptually over Eternal Flame) is that Eternal Flame benefits from haste, critical strike, mastery, and transfers over Beacon of Light, whereas Sacred Shield only benefits from haste. Unless Blizzard allows Sacred Shield to benefit from Holy's strengths as well as Eternal Flame does, I'm not sure it will ever be as attractive.

In Regards to the Holy Paladin Mastery

I've been working my way through a massive backlog of posts in my feedreader recently and I came across a post entitled Illuminated Healing: An Examination of the Holy Paladin Mastery from Kurn's Corner. In it Kurn talks about the problems with the current Holy Paladin mastery and why the proposed changes in patch 4.1 will do little to make it a more desirable stat for Paladins. She also compares how aptly the Illuminated Healing mastery fits with WoW's Holy Paladin and proposes several alternate masteries she feels would fit the class/spec better.

Kurn's post got me thinking: if I had the opportunity to make it happen, how would I change Illuminated Healing to not only make it more appealing to Paladins as a whole, but also make it feel like a better fit with the class. Here's what I came up with:

Essentially, there are two parts of the current Holy Paladin that still feel a bit off to me. The first part is the new Paladin mechanic, Holy Power. Personally, I think the mechanic should be further ingrained into the Holy spec by tying it in some fashion to the mastery system. The easiest way to do this would be to have mastery either influence its generation or trigger an effect on its expenditure.

Some possible ideas in this regard are to change Illuminated Healing so that it instead:

• allows Holy Light a (mastery-based %) chance to generate a charge of Holy Power when cast; or
• increases the healing done by Word of Glory or Light of Dawn (by a mastery-based %); or
• gives a (mastery-based %) chance for Word of Glory and Light of Dawn to proc a significantly large absorption shield (say anywhere from 50-100% of the amount healed); or
• causes Word of Glory and Light of Dawn to trigger a buff that increases the healing of the next healing spell cast (by a mastery-based % modified by how many Holy Power charges were consumed); or
• has an Elemental Overload/Wild Quiver effect, i.e., a (mastery-based %) chance for Word of Glory or Light of Dawn to trigger an extra healing effect on a nearby injured target. Or, alternately, a set % chance to trigger the effect with the mastery stat determining the size of the effect.

The second thing about the current Holy Paladin that I feel is somewhat off is the lack of synergy with the crit stat. Previously, Holy Paladins were very reliant on crit because we had a talent called Illumination that refunded mana upon critical heals. Sadly, Blizzard removed Illumination from Paladins and instead gave it to Shamans in the form of Improved Water Shield, and now crit is regarded as roughly tied with mastery for being the worst relevant Holy Paladin stat. As such, it would be nice if Blizzard brought Illumination back in one form or another to replace Illuminated Healing. Even if a resurrected Illumination were not directly tied to crit it would still be a welcome nod towards the class' history.

Several possible incarnations of a revived Illumination might be for it to:

• once again restore (a mastery-based % of) mana on critical heals; or
• allow critical heals to reduce the mana cost of the next non-Holy Power healing spell cast (by a mastery-based % of mana); or
• cause critical heals to trigger a buff that restores (a mastery-based % of) mana over x seconds which can roll so that multiple crits in a row do not waste the buff.

Now, some of you are undoubtedly thinking, 'Wait a minute! Paladins don't need any more mana regeneration! Giving them more would be overpowered!' Generally speaking, that's true. Holy Paladins don't really need more mana regeneration. However, currently Holy Paladins value two secondary stats very highly (namely Spirit and haste) and consider the other two secondary stats (crit and mastery) to be mostly worthless. By linking crit and mastery together as well as making mastery a mana regenerating stat, what you get is the emergence of a secondary style of Holy Paladin that substitutes mastery and crit for Spirit and haste. Since Spirit is one of the primary means of Paladin mana regeneration, this substitution means that very few Paladins would actually get more regeneration, since they would effectively have to pick either Spirit or mastery. If they instead tried to keep both Spirit and mastery at the expense of haste and crit, the result would be that their heals would lack throughput and the mana regeneration from mastery would be extremely sporadic and unreliable since it relies on crit (which the Paladin would be avoiding) to trigger.