5.4 PTR: Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change (Part 4)

No new information regarding holy paladin in the new 17124 build deployed today other than the rollback to Eternal Flame which was stated in the earlier game designer post.  I can only assume that they aren’t ready to release whatever changes they have planned and not that they don’t have any changes planned.  But rather than focus on what’s lacking in this build lets focus on the things they have released.

5 new healing trinkets!
If you remember back when the 5.2 trinkets came out, I also took an in-depth look into them and I intend to do the same with the 5.4 trinkets.  Since they haven’t even been given names yet I’ll make up some of my own names to distinguish them.  Remember that these trinkets are always likely to be removed, replaced or slightly changed.  I won’t look into them too in-dept for now but lets take a precursory glance…

Standard Spirit On-Use Trinket
+1,959 Intellect
Use: Increases your Spirit by 9,795 for 15 sec. (1.5 min cooldown)

The first trinket I’ll talk about is your standard spirit on-use trinket which (in its original form) was skipped over in 5.2 Throne of Thunder trinkets but was substituted by the Shado-Pan Assault trinket which returned a static chunk of mana.  There’s not much to talk about for this one.

Spirit Proc Trinket (Decreasing on Spell Cast)
+1,959 Intellect
Equip: Your heals have a chance to grant you 23,520 Spirit for 20 sec. Each spell you cast reduces this effect by 1,176 Spirit.

I haven’t seen a trinket with a proc like this before but it does provide for some interesting mechanics in the sense that during trinket procs you could be more conservative on your heals to regain more mana for those 20 seconds.  23,520 spirit is quite a lot of mana regen, approximately double what a majority of the holy paladins with current gear have right now.  Even decreasing the spirit amount by casting a few spells still leaves this trinket as a powerful contender for that spirit-proc trinket spot.

Multistrike Proc Trinket
+1,959 Spirit
Equip: Your heals have a 9.9% chance to trigger Multistrike, which causes instant additional healing to your target equal to 1/3 of the original healing done.

The basic idea of this trinket isn’t hard to grasp however the actual increase in healing from this trinket is a lot harder to gauge.  Let me break it down.  Essentially every 1 in 10 spells your spell will heal for an additional 1/3 of the original healing done.  This 1 in 10 spell could be anything however and there really is no good way to gauge which spell it will be or plan in advance to make a certain spell to benefit from the proc.  It does present in some aspects a small benefit to casting spells since those typically heal for more but nothing that will make casting long spells a better way of playing.  I don’t think that this trinket will benefit HoT classes unless they make the whole HoT tick amount for the duration heal 1/3 more which I find very hard to believe will happen.  This trinket in its current form tho I see greatly benefits holy paladins (not specifically) because our spells are generally moderately powerful spells and our only HoT (EF which I don’t even know if we’ll be using) begins with a powerful direct heal which will likely benefit from this trinket proc.  Totes got my eye on this one!

Cooldown Decreasing Trinket
Equip: Increases the cooldown recovery rate of six of your major abilities by 39%. Effective for healer roles only.
Equip: Each time your spells heal you have a chance to gain 11,761 Intellect for 15 sec.

The intellect proc on this is self-explanatory.  The other equip effect on this is extremely interesting.  6 of our major ability…I am almost positive will include holy shock.  I’m not sure if this trinket proc was aimed at holy paladins but it certainly seems a way to slightly temper the flames of hate in the holy paladin community.  What spells this trinket applies to is unclear for example if it lowers the GCD on casting spells but lets predict both ways.

Edit from original post: A helpful user Lvg commented below that the spells affected by this trinket have already been datamined. The six spells affected are Guardian of the Ancient Kings, Devotion Aura, Divine Plea, Avenging Wrath, Hand of Protection, and Divine Protection.  This would give:

• Guardian of the Ancient Kings a 3:00 cooldown, down from 5:00
• Devotion Aura a 1:48 cooldown, down from 3:00
• Divine Plea a 1:12 cooldown, down from 2:00
• Avenging Wrath a 1:48 cooldown, down from 3:00
• Hand of Protection a 3:00 cooldown, down from 5:00 (base not including reduction from Unbreakable Resolve)
• Divine Protection a 0:36 cooldown, down from 1:00 (base not including reduction from Unbreakable Resolve)

I’m not really sure if this is exactly how this is going to work but right now the trinket seems pretty overpowered.  Avenging Wrath and GotAK both powerful healing cooldowns have their cooldowns go down to close to 1.5 minutes and 3 minutes and divine protection which is a fairy underappreciated spell has its cooldown go down basically half a minute.  Of course other classes have their own abilities decreased as well.

Stat Increasing Trinket
Equip: Amplifies your Critical Strike damage and healing, Haste, and Mastery by 14%.
Equip: Each time your spells heal you have a chance to gain 11,761 Intellect for 20 sec.

Once again the intellect proc is self-explanatory.  However, the stat increase is very nice and makes me highly doubt the wording of this trinket and the one before.  Most likely the last two are on-proc spells, actually I’m 99% sure they are.  If so this would still be a very nice trinket to track the proc of.  Otherwise it would be a damn good trinket to have…14% increase in healing? Yeah…

So far these trinkets look pretty overpowered but this is generally the case with PTR.  Eventually these trinkets will be nerfed into the realm of uselessness like a few of the trinkets from 5.2.  Still exciting to get a glimpse of what kind of ideas the devs are toying around with.

Here’s to hoping they will release some Holy Paladin adjustments!