Legion so is Holy as a melee healer dead?

[Thundering]

The 2H + libram thing was a deliberate nod to Warcraft 3 paladins, that's all. Holy paladins still get extra armour as if from wearing a shield.

No it wasent just a nod to warcraft 3, its to represent what paladins should be.

[Taeldorian]

No it wasent just a nod to warcraft 3, its to represent what paladins should be.

Subjective. I don't believe holy paladins should be healing through attacking, I believe they should be on the front lines close to their allies doing the best they can to keep them alive. Not only that, but I'm pretty sure you aren't on alpha based on your responses. Why? Because melee healing as holy was clunky, the only place it was extremely viable in was leveling and possible 5 man content. For raid testing? The one time I had to sub in as a healer I fucking hated it. I love holy paladins in Legion, even more so after melee healing was removed. It definitely feels smoother after savior was switched out for virtue (haven't tried virtue yet) but not having to melee heal is a + for me.

Are we suddenly disc priests? The atonement style of play has been with disc forever. Teleros is right, it was a nod at W3 paladins. Subjective statements don't make things factual.

[Taeldorian]

Taeldorian, I think you misunderstand what he said.
He's talking about wielding a 2H, doesn't even mention a "dps/healing hybrid" style.

I'm responding to what he's been talking about, I'm just not going to quote every single thing he's said in here. I understand his stance on this, "blizzard is lying to their players blah blah blah melee healing should happen it's easy just tweak a few abilities but blizzard is lazy and lying blah blah". Could pull up the quote for you if you want. None of what he's said so far has been true, especially from my experience on alpha. Of course, that's just my experience and we're all different but others on the alpha forums and myself can agree that melee healing is a fun idea but it's not realistic for a raid scenario. It just doesn't work, savior or not, nothing really changes that. It was good for leveling, bad for everything else. I was responding to his stance on melee healing as holy, not exactly just that quote.

[Teleros]

Could pull up the quote for you if you want. None of what he's said so far has been true, especially from my experience on alpha. Of course, that's just my experience and we're all different but others on the alpha forums and myself can agree that melee healing is a fun idea but it's not realistic for a raid scenario. It just doesn't work, savior or not, nothing really changes that. It was good for leveling, bad for everything else. I was responding to his stance on melee healing as holy, not exactly just that quote.

Like I said earlier, I think it could work, and even in raids, but it'd require a lot more work than they have time for ATM. There's also the issue that you'd want to make sure traditional ranged healing still works... I think getting the core of it down isn't hard (Atonement clone + clunk-free rotation + a talent to pick to set yourself as a melee instead of ranged healer), but balancing would be a lot of work ("SimCraft says melee/ranged is superior, but I hate that playstyle QQ!").

Maybe next expansion .

[Taeldorian]

Like I said earlier, I think it could work, and even in raids, but it'd require a lot more work than they have time for ATM. There's also the issue that you'd want to make sure traditional ranged healing still works... I think getting the core of it down isn't hard (Atonement clone + clunk-free rotation + a talent to pick to set yourself as a melee instead of ranged healer), but balancing would be a lot of work ("SimCraft says melee/ranged is superior, but I hate that playstyle QQ!").

Maybe next expansion .

Not 100% against it, but it would have to work well as you said. So far when we were healing as a melee we were having to cope with melee mechanics as well as ranged mechanics since we could still heal from range. It was an extremely weird experience and it just felt clunky to me hence why I'm glad they backtracked for now. It could work if they put more time into it, for sure, but the reason I'm currently against it is because as you said they don't have that kind of time right now, or at least not enough time to make it full proof without the chance of it being clunky and such.

[Thundering]

Taeldorian i havent been lying incorporate means fused, merged, they clearly says that it will be healing & offeensive abiltys will be merged, have even show you link to the offcial site, i even queted their exact statements. Lets do it again for the fun of it......

"Talents will also provide players with options to incorporate offensive capabilities while healing. When allies are in need"

So what does ths statement say, it says we can do attacks "offensive capabilities" while healing it says nothing about rotations or anything like that that is something YOU are saying. Offensive capabilities while healing literally means we can use offensive capabilitys while healing, that is Healing and damage is fused together. Now get your own ides i can quite clearly notice you dont want the current holy paladin to change, and thats fine but i dont like it the current holy paladins are very boring right now, built around the ide of beacon of faith and using 3 heals. We currently are like holy priest but whitout their utility that makes them fun to play.
I dont care if the concept of the melee holyding is 100% finished at legions launch, i belive they can finetune it after launch aswell, the devolpment of a subbased mmo should never stop in my eyes. But what they are doing now is seemgly dropping it couse they dont have the "time" to fix it....It seems like a far to normal thing these days blizzard hit a bump in the road and they just give up instantly.
Not to mention if the game for holy paladins will revolve around beacon of the lightbringer like its currently revolving around beacon of faith what will change? more or less nothing....
That leads to 1 more thing how did they change according to this quote? Why would we ever be "closer" to the front whit the beacon of the lightbringer?
"In addition to shoring up the identities of Protection and Retribution Paladins, we’re adjusting Holy Paladin gameplay to bring them closer to the front, where they belong."
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/199...adin-11-9-2015

Next time you call someone a liar or having too many subjective, maybe you should have something backing you.

One more thing no i dont have a alpha or beta account i wasent lucky enough, and that just make it even worse since you cant give blizzard any form of feedback, beside sitting on the side and seeing what happens. Couse most of us are experianced enough whit wow by now to see beforehand what is happening.

[Taeldorian]

One more thing no i dont have a alpha or beta account i wasent lucky enough, and that just make it even worse since you cant give blizzard any form of feedback, beside sitting on the side and seeing what happens. Couse most of us are experianced enough whit wow by now to see beforehand what is happening.

Lol I can't argue with you man, you believe blizzard is "lying" to you, yet they never promised any of this, it was just for exploring. And who is this "most of you"? Everyone I see that's in alpha/beta are saying it's a wonderful thing that melee healing as a holy paladin is gone because it was too clunky and didn't make sense. I don't think you can speak about being experienced when you clearly have no idea how melee healing as holy on alpha worked. That, or you just didn't participate in raid testing. It was absolutely awful in raids, terrible. Ranged mechanics targeting us while melee mechanics were also targeting us caused issues.

The only thing you keep saying is "blizzard said this" "blizzard said that" but who cares? I don't. If it didn't work and they removed it, that's a positive. They aren't lying and you aren't reading the feedback forums because they gave an answer as to why they removed it there and it was a valid explanation. Please, don't speak of experience if you can't even provide examples of how melee healing as holy was beneficial, because the only place it worked was during leveling and that's it. Are you incapable of reading the Alpha/Beta forums where the actual experienced paladins are talking? You have no idea what's going on, can't argue with someone like that. You haven't provided any facts stating how melee healing is good, or how it worked. Why haven't you? Because it didn't work, at all.

One more thing, I know you don't have alpha/beta, that was plenty obvious within your first post which is why I called you on it. You can't defend melee healing if you don't even know how it plays, I'm telling you for your benefit not mine that it sucked, it was fucking awful, it didn't work. If you don't want to listen to me say it, go to the alpha/beta forums and read for yourself. Nobody liked it aside from using it when leveling. You want to keep it for just leveling? Sure, but that's a waste of assets when they can focus on making holy better rather than balancing melee healing and wasting time on it when it'll only be used for leveling. Hopefully you actually understand because you seem to be arguing with me but you aren't backing yourself up with reasons as to why melee healing was good in other places that aren't leveling.

[Thundering]

Lol I can't argue with you man, you believe blizzard is "lying" to you, yet they never promised any of this, it was just for exploring. And who is this "most of you"? Everyone I see that's in alpha/beta are saying it's a wonderful thing that melee healing as a holy paladin is gone because it was too clunky and didn't make sense. I don't think you can speak about being experienced when you clearly have no idea how melee healing as holy on alpha worked. That, or you just didn't participate in raid testing. It was absolutely awful in raids, terrible. Ranged mechanics targeting us while melee mechanics were also targeting us caused issues.

The only thing you keep saying is "blizzard said this" "blizzard said that" but who cares? I don't. If it didn't work and they removed it, that's a positive. They aren't lying and you aren't reading the feedback forums because they gave an answer as to why they removed it there and it was a valid explanation. Please, don't speak of experience if you can't even provide examples of how melee healing as holy was beneficial, because the only place it worked was during leveling and that's it. Are you incapable of reading the Alpha/Beta forums where the actual experienced paladins are talking? You have no idea what's going on, can't argue with someone like that. You haven't provided any facts stating how melee healing is good, or how it worked. Why haven't you? Because it didn't work, at all.

One more thing, I know you don't have alpha/beta, that was plenty obvious within your first post which is why I called you on it. You can't defend melee healing if you don't even know how it plays, I'm telling you for your benefit not mine that it sucked, it was fucking awful, it didn't work. If you don't want to listen to me say it, go to the alpha/beta forums and read for yourself. Nobody liked it aside from using it when leveling. You want to keep it for just leveling? Sure, but that's a waste of assets when they can focus on making holy better rather than balancing melee healing and wasting time on it when it'll only be used for leveling. Hopefully you actually understand because you seem to be arguing with me but you aren't backing yourself up with reasons as to why melee healing was good in other places that aren't leveling.

Melee healing is only bad as long as blizzard does not design spells and talents to do it well. Like Teleros said a while ago i just think its about devolpment not the facts melee healing as a concept will never work. For some reason blizz have dropped even when stating it was one of the goals for holy paladins in legion.

[Taeldorian]

Melee healing is only bad as long as blizzard does not design spells and talents to do it well. Like Teleros said a while ago i just think its about devolpment not the facts melee healing as a concept will never work. For some reason blizz have dropped even when stating it was one of the goals for holy paladins in legion.

I understand what you're saying but sometimes, especially in development, goals aren't reached or other things take priority. For example, maybe melee healing could've worked if they focused on it more but there's 3 months left in the expansion and it was extremely clunky and didn't work in a raiding scenario therefore they had to focus on making holy viable and fun rather than focusing on one ability that allows us to heal through melee.

Maybe we'll see it in the future and as long as it works I'll be down with it but they removed it for good reason this time around. With so little time and so much to focus on melee healing just wasn't worth it.

[Thundering]

I understand what you're saying but sometimes, especially in development, goals aren't reached or other things take priority. For example, maybe melee healing could've worked if they focused on it more but there's 3 months left in the expansion and it was extremely clunky and didn't work in a raiding scenario therefore they had to focus on making holy viable and fun rather than focusing on one ability that allows us to heal through melee.

Maybe we'll see it in the future and as long as it works I'll be down with it but they removed it for good reason this time around. With so little time and so much to focus on melee healing just wasn't worth it.

Problem is they have been working on making holy fun again since wotlk, and in my personal opinion i think its been pretty boring and in many cases clunky like the light of dawn cone that is comming back for some reason.
I think the current all around is better mainly couse it looks better. I am not a fan of eithere of them

[Deleted]

Problem is they have been working on making holy fun again since wotlk, and in my personal opinion i think its been pretty boring and in many cases clunky like the light of dawn cone that is comming back for some reason.
I think the current all around is better mainly couse it looks better. I am not a fan of eithere of them

That light of dawn pretty much prevents any melee atonement style healing from being implemented.

We might not be a really flashy spec to play. But the other healers i play are resto druid and disc priests. Both of those are the same level of boring in my opinion. Resto druid might not have a strict rotation but there is no excitement in your spellbook. I guess there is something for resto shaman with the totems and utility but the basic healing spells is the same shit really. Haven't raided on my shammy this expac so can't say for sure. That leaves holy priest/monk neither of which have i played this expac.

[Thundering]

Yeah, I had to reread it and see it now.
I think that would be a terrible idea too..

To me it doesn't make a lot of sense to have a hybrid.
How does hitting enemies improve a Paladin's healing? How do they explain that?
It'd be even the opposite, you can either use your holy energies to heal or to deal damage.
Glad they aren't choosing that path.
But I'm also glad that in the beta it seems a Holy Paladin can dish out quite a lot of damage.

For me it makes sence fluffwise, couse a paladin is a cleric that studied the ways of a warrior to become a stronger fighter to protect his companions lorevise i take it most of them are proud and honorable warriors, holy priests, clerics and so on(offcourse there are more typses of compains but you know 2 much). A paladin when standing on the front taking hits doing damage seeing his allies getting hurt and doing their best to purge that is evil. Evry hit fuels your fellings and makes you stronger(warriors) aswell hits is something you truly feel so you get a highers sence of what the evil you are fighting and holy power needed to fend it off. As a warrior fellings fuel their power and whit the clerical knowlagde of the holy light a retribution paladin use this fuel to "hit harder do more damage whit his offensive spells(short into retri palas)" while a holy paladins use these felling to fuel himself and their companions(blessing & hands, heals, divine shield), and a protection paladin uses the fuel to bring up his defences, protecting allies and keep himself alive. As long the fight isent just the paladin losses his faith why he fights and the light thats being channeled true his conviction gets dulled, thats why the light abandoned Arthas.

Some short fluff on how i think around paladins.

That light of dawn pretty much prevents any melee atonement style healing from being implemented.

We might not be a really flashy spec to play. But the other healers i play are resto druid and disc priests. Both of those are the same level of boring in my opinion. Resto druid might not have a strict rotation but there is no excitement in your spellbook. I guess there is something for resto shaman with the totems and utility but the basic healing spells is the same shit really. Haven't raided on my shammy this expac so can't say for sure. That leaves holy priest/monk neither of which have i played this expac.

I played shaman and holy priest & disc priests as a healer i know disc is currently stronger but i think holy is more fun so i play it.
Well one way to easly fix that is to have a talent that makes the light of dawn into the wod one as a example.

[Deleted]

I'm finding that when questing (as holy) and killing trash packs in dungeons, I'm wanting to join in, get a consecration down, crusader strike, judgement etc. But when it comes to a boss fight you can't really do that but there's still that feeling of "i need to get in and do some dps to help kill the boss".

[Thundering]

From what i can see the abilities/talents paladins lack today are offensive abiltys lack heals or bonuses to heals. This can be solved by introducing it the paladin.

I guess one the main problems is for pvp balance since the normal talent tree still affects pvp in legion right? I can see that a melee healer fully viable for pve would be op in arena maybe. If this is the case i just support the dividement of pve & pvp even more couse i always felt that pve is more fun when its more diverse something that is really hard to balance in pvp.

A great post not mine. http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...9282963?page=1

[Thundering]

I think the warrior priest of warhammer could be a good source of insperation. By introducing attacks that heal the paladin & the beacon itself while fighting this would also go well whit the new abilty Light of matyr.
Example Crusader strike heals the paladin for ....% of his max health and the beacon for ....
Judgement reduces the cast time of holy light by ...

Guardian of ancient kings, change this cd for holy and make it an abilty that converts the paladins damage taken into heals for the raid. It would be nice if gave a big aoe heal if the paladin dies during the cd making him a real matyr.

Doing dots just couse the numbers will need tweaking anyway.

[Aleax]

What does "heal + low damage" have to do with "stand behind boss & ignore 50% of abilities"?

1. I don't mind them getting hit by single-target anti-ranged abilities, but what happens when ranged-only AE abilities start dropping all over the melee DPS instead of just the ranged DPS & healers?

2. It's trivially easy to make Discipline or Holy paladins do low damage but good healing. For example: "Crusader Strike deals 50% weapon damage, and heals all friendly targets affected by Paladin-Atonement for 300% of the damage dealt". You can also add buffs etc that adjust how much healing or damage you do for when you're questing and doing solo content etc. For example: "Whenever there are no targets affected by Paladin-Atonement, or you are the only one, all damage you deal is increased by 300%".

3. Just because healers have until now always done low DPS doesn't mean things can't be changed up a bit. The difficulty here is in PvP balance, not PvE.

It wouldn't be hard to get it to work TBH. Make sure melee healadins are counted as melee for the purpose of boss ability targeting, and give them something akin to the Atonement mechanics that Disc priests are getting in Legion.

Completly agree with you on this thread, Teleros. All your replies. (I didn't quoted them all)

I'd want to see Shockadins for a 4th paladin spec personally. Don't care too much if it's not very lore-friendly or w/e, but it'd be fun to see them given some attention.

Holy paladins should be a shockadin spec by default. Just let the players who want to only heal as Holy, move to another class (I suggest Holy priest), and let's be done with it.

Shockadins are VERY lore friendly. Not much by Blizzard standard lore, but in the real world lore where the paladin's coming from, there's the lamb of God from the Apocalypse who is a shockadin. The Holy Shock = the blade from the mouth; Blizzard would just need to change the holy shock animation to a sword (plus give us a real shockadin).

Another example would be Apollo, who dps-ed in the RL lore as ranged (with a bow), and is a god of light, but the lamb of god is more spot on, he just is the mother of all paladins literally (the guy is the number one powerhouse warrior just right after God, according to the Bible, difficult to miss him or ignore him at all).

The RL paladin lore is just there ready to be used, Shockadin RL lore included. Ironically, Paladins playing as priests is not a paladin lore, but Blizzard made their holy paladins that. (for now. Let's hope they will see what is wrong with the holy paladin of now)

[Teleros]

Holy paladins should be a shockadin spec by default. Just let the players who want to only heal as Holy, move to another class (I suggest Holy priest), and let's be done with it.

If we were designing WoW 1.0 I'd agree with you, but as it is paladins have had a healer spec since day 1 and the (entirely legitimate) outrage over changing that to a DPS spec would be tremendous after 12+ years of WoW.

Hence why I said 4th spec. Plus, Druids have 4 specs and DHs 2, so the code exists to do this. As do many of the spells for that matter - Holy Shock, Judgement, Exorcism, Holy Wrath (vanilla or Legion flavour)...

Shockadins are VERY lore friendly. Not much by Blizzard standard lore

Well that's the thing, isn't it: the Naaru et al don't have much to do with the Book of Revelations, nor do they come from Mount Olympus :P .

[Aleax]

If we were designing WoW 1.0 I'd agree with you, but as it is paladins have had a healer spec since day 1 and the (entirely legitimate) outrage over changing that to a DPS spec would be tremendous after 12+ years of WoW.

Hence why I said 4th spec. Plus, Druids have 4 specs and DHs 2, so the code exists to do this. As do many of the spells for that matter - Holy Shock, Judgement, Exorcism, Holy Wrath (vanilla or Legion flavour)...


Well that's the thing, isn't it: the Naaru et al don't have much to do with the Book of Revelations, nor do they come from Mount Olympus :P .

I disagree, how's that? (this time)^^

Shockadins may remain a healer spec in Dungeons and raids. Blizzard just needs to be creative. Like giving shockadin shared cd with their healing and damage. Never I thought that the shockadin should be another dps spec, even if temptating, now that you say it.
A 4th spec will hardly occur, they are even giving only 2 spec to DH in Legion, but a 4th spec is a thing I suggested myself before.

Besides, you didn't get the point of the lore sources of the paladin. Blizzard -built- the wow paladin around the -RL lore sources- (including fantasy lore that was already in place, @D&D), and to this day, chose to ignore or invalidate some of them which are crucial to the fluff of the paladin; the shockadin exists since day one, good to know, but is pretty much ignored right now by the devs
Blizzard paladins could have been bloodthirsty monsters who rever light, and we would agree that this would be way off, even if this would be a Blizzard creation. The holy paladin pictured as a holy priest is just as way off, there, is my point. And we already have a holy priest in the game.

The holy paladin needs more pew-pew. (aka shockadin)

[Taeldorian]

The holy paladin needs more pew-pew. (aka shockadin)

I somewhat disagree. If I wanted to dps in order to heal I'd roll a disc priest, but I do think we can use some damage so that we can actually make sufficient use of our downtime when people don't need heals.

Tbh as long as I don't have to melee in order to do dps so I can heal I'd be fine. If I wanted to melee I'd roll one and if I wanted to heal from damage I'd roll disc. I wouldn't mind seeing the shockadin playstyle incorporated somehow as long as it's a choice though.

[Teleros]

I disagree, how's that? (this time)^^

PURGE THE HERETIC!

Shockadins may remain a healer spec in Dungeons and raids. Blizzard just needs to be creative. Like giving shockadin shared cd with their healing and damage. Never I thought that the shockadin should be another dps spec, even if temptating, now that you say it.

Last I heard, Holy was quite bursty in Legion, but you'd have to check in with someone who has beta access, preferably on the PvP realm.

As regards the principle of Holy being a shockadin/healer spec... I'm not sure it can easily occur if you're planning on it doing competitive DPS for raids etc. You'd have to in essence give them some means of swapping between healer and shockadin... probably with a noticeable cooldown in between, as it'd be pretty powerful if you could blow people up in PvP, swap suddenly to healer to survive yourself, and then back with minimal issues.

A 4th spec will hardly occur, they are even giving only 2 spec to DH in Legion, but a 4th spec is a thing I suggested myself before.

I can dream .

Besides, you didn't get the point of the lore sources of the paladin. Blizzard -built- the wow paladin around the -RL lore sources- (including fantasy lore that was already in place, @D&D), and to this day, chose to ignore or invalidate some of them which are crucial to the fluff of the paladin; the shockadin exists since day one, good to know, but is pretty much ignored right now by the devs

Oh, paladins go back to Charlemagne and D&D and all that fun stuff - I know - but that's kind of irrelevant for the Warcraft conception of them. Of course, Warcraft's paladins were based on D&D paladins and the like, but Blizzard has gone off in its own direction from there. I mean, D&D paladins can't use spells if they act all evil and such, whereas WoW has Blood Knights.

Blizzard paladins could have been bloodthirsty monsters who rever light, and we would agree that this would be way off, even if this would be a Blizzard creation.

Not necessarily.

In the traditional sense, a paladin is a holy knight of some description. Usually, of the Christian variety - ie big on things like chivalry, protecting the weak, blah blah blah.

But... what if there's a pantheon of gods, and what if they have their own paladins? The god of rage might very well have bloodthirsty monsters as his paladins, whilst the god of compassion has a rather different battlefield presence. Under those / similar circumstances, I think it'd be fine TBH.

(Another thought: "paladin" means "knight who wields holy magic" as opposed to "knight who wields holy magic AND holds to certain ethics".)

The holy paladin pictured as a holy priest is just as way off, there, is my point. And we already have a holy priest in the game.

I think you're mostly right (I can sort of see paladins as battle healer types TBH), but in practical terms Holy paladins as healers is here to stay.