Holy Paladin 4.2 Changes. Some fun possibilities

After looking at the patch notes for 4.2 the changes to holy paladins for PVE and PVP healing.

Starting with the nerfs

• Divine Light mana cost has been increased to 35% of base mana, up from 30%.
• Flash of Light mana cost has been increased to 31% of base mana, up from 27%.
• Holy Light mana cost has been increased to 12% of base mana, up from 10%.

These obviously are aimed at reducing our efficiency, and while the increased mana costs don't look great, I don't see them making us any less viable. This nerf is really just making other healers more able to compete with our awesomenss. 

Now to the Talent Changes

Denounce has been redesigned. It still reduces the mana cost of Exorcism. However, it no longer has a chance on Holy Shock of making Exorcism free and instant. Instead, it has a 50/100% chance to prevent the Exorcism target from causing critical effects for the next 6 seconds. This effect can be dispelled.

This is pretty interesting. I talked previously about possible pvp specs that I was going to go with Denounce. This talent allows us to put out some damage without sacrificing to much mana to do so. It still makes us able to use Exorcism liberally, but now the debuff applied can be pretty powerful. Casting Exorcism every 6 seconds will prevent the target from landing a critical. While this is obviously great for pvp, I'm thinking about the possibilities in dungeons and raids. This talents could allow Holy Paladins to tank (potentially). Better yet, if there is a dps trying to tank, the holy paladin could make it so they don't need to worry about being critted on. The change is probably more designed for pvp, but the other option is fun to think about. 

Some other interesting changes

• Infusion of Light can now lower the cast time of Flash of Light by 0.75/1.5 seconds, in addition to Holy Light and Divine Light. In addition, the old Denounce spell overlay effect has been transferred to Infusion of Light since Denounce is no longer a proc.
• Speed of Light now increases movement speed when Holy Radiance or Divine Protection are cast. In addition, this talent now reduces the cooldown of Holy Radiance by 13/26/40 seconds, up from 10/20/30.

The Infusion of Light changes are very interesting. Making Flash of Light instant is rather amazing. I don't really see how this is going to be balanced, but I have no problem with it being overpowered. Flash of Light does have a hefty mana cost, but it will be interesting to see how it works out being instant cast. 

I am looking forward to the speed boost from casting Divine Protection, that will definitely come in handy. And on top of that, being able to cast Holy Radiance more often will definitely help our Raid healing ability, but it could hurt our mana if it's used too often. 

Current outlook

As it stands I think think that Patch 4.2 will be a positive one for holy paladins. We may receive a heavy mana increase, but the changes to some of our core talents should help us to forget about the nerf,. I am looking forward to these tweaks, and I am interested to see what changes manage to go live with the patch.

P.S

I know I haven't posted about holy priests for a while. I haven't been able to play that character very much lately, and there aren't any interesting changes coming to holy priests in the newest patch. I hope that I'll have some good material to post about with regards to holy priesting so stay tuned.