[HOLY] Holy Sh*t!: Legion Edition

[Rainess]

I'm not understanding the positioning with our mastery if we take Lightbringer? (I'm not in beta). I keep reading on different forums that positioning is important for us in Legion. Can someone please elaborate on it if possible?

[Deleted]

Well I'm not in the beta so of course I have no experience. And I don't raid mythic, no. But in regards to anything else? fuck right off, in the nicest possible way - your statement to my experience has no basis. Regarding our mobility, I've 100% raided with speed of light which is part marginally worse, part marginally better mobility than Holy Pony. Its never - I repeat, never, been an issue. I don't particularly like the talent row it's on, it's a difficult choice to make, but it's no dealbreaker.

You litterally have no idea what you are talking about yet you keep talking. Speed of Light is better than divine steed in 98% of all situations where you would need a speed boost, the uptime on Divine Steed is awful and to make matters worse the speed enchant is gone. Not to mention that divine steed is competing with a talent that is mandatory on a large amount of bosses because our mastery generally speaking is terrible.

Lol that last part is a bit fat fetched. Our mastery is actually really nice, it's rewarding for good positioning and it also works well with the lightbringer talent. I don't understand people saying "oh but we have to stand in melee now lol" when we don't. We can choose to take the lightbringer talent allowing our beacon to act like we were standing melee (full benefit from our mastery) while we stand in range and still get that full benefit. What's the issue with this? I've been having a fantastic time on beta with it, I've healed a lot of mythic dungeons so far for testing. Explain why you think it's such a bad mastery. Do you want the proactive (do nothing other than heal which we do anyway so it's nothing extra) type we have now which is boring or just a passive bonus to our healing (+12% on holy shock, holy light, etc)? The one we have now is interactive compared to the boring shit we've had in the past, so I wanna hear your thinking behind this statement.

Its a bad mastery because it puts us in harms way with no way of getting out of it. It rewards good pre-planning but does not reward skillful play. Prot paladins are the least mobile tanks and they have divine steed baseline, want to know what happens when the tank moves the boss? They use a sprint/charge/leap and holy paladins cant keep up. Our mastery is not strong enough to change how you play, you basically either choose to stand in the melee group or in the ranged group.

If the mastery had been more powerful with exponential scaling and paladins had more mobility they could have completely transformed the paladin playstyle where you would be running arround all the time to be close to the players who are low on hp. Instead they gave us this passive garbage which all boils down to two choinces, stay in melee or say with ranged.

If you really have healed mythic dungeons on beta you would also know that the new mastery is just as boring as the old one, LoD is more dependent on proper positioning than our mastery is.

[siccora]

i am on the same boat with aladya here. a good position should be a reward to your healing and not the "normal scenario".
it reminds me of playing a medic in wildstar. grp had to be stacked all the time, dont spread. and if they did, you had to run around jumping, shifting and shit. and now when you go in random dungeons and you got 2 melee 1 range, dont believe for a second, that the ranged class will stand at the melee camp. not even close.

i would like to have our mastery as reward and not as punish. "if you stand by me, good, if not, it is not that big of a deal"

the mastery idea is what i like. to fix that, blizz should amp up our heals. but then the outrage begins.

[Deleted]

You litterally have no idea what you are talking about yet you keep talking. Speed of Light is better than divine steed in 98% of all situations where you would need a speed boost, the uptime on Divine Steed is awful and to make matters worse the speed enchant is gone. Not to mention that divine steed is competing with a talent that is mandatory on a large amount of bosses because our mastery generally speaking is terrible.

Its a bad mastery because it puts us in harms way with no way of getting out of it. It rewards good pre-planning but does not reward skillful play. Prot paladins are the least mobile tanks and they have divine steed baseline, want to know what happens when the tank moves the boss? They use a sprint/charge/leap and holy paladins cant keep up. Our mastery is not strong enough to change how you play, you basically either choose to stand in the melee group or in the ranged group.

If the mastery had been more powerful with exponential scaling and paladins had more mobility they could have completely transformed the paladin playstyle where you would be running arround all the time to be close to the players who are low on hp. Instead they gave us this passive garbage which all boils down to two choinces, stay in melee or say with ranged.

If you really have healed mythic dungeons on beta you would also know that the new mastery is just as boring as the old one, LoD is more dependent on proper positioning than our mastery is.

Exponential scaling on our Mastery. Running around. Uhuh. Are you fucking serious?

Moving on swiftly...

i would like to have our mastery as reward and not as punish. "if you stand by me, good, if not, it is not that big of a deal"

the mastery idea is what i like. to fix that, blizz should amp up our heals. but then the outrage begins.

I've not seen anything that suggests our numbers are weak in the beta, does anyone have anything concrete to this effect?

[Deleted]

Exponential scaling on our Mastery. Running around. Uhuh. Are you fucking serious?

Moving on swiftly...

See I change one parameter on the mastery and all of a sudden you are disgusted by it, perhaps you just didn't understand it in the first place? Your disgust is understandable though as the mastery does not fit paladins at all.

Im sure a playstyle like that could be fun on a new class or maybe even on monks if they were given Mistwalk baseline. The paladin mastery is basically made for running around but when you cant do that it just becomes a disgusting BS mastery.

[toolsv]

So I think I'm getting to the Acceptance stage about the demise of the melee Paladin and I'm looking at this spec again. I think it's looking pretty good, kit-wise, aside from losing all the running races. Some simple questions though:
- Is Beacon of Light (and Virtue, I guess) on the GCD?
- Is there a graphic for the various auras? I'm a sucker for an Empowered Seals/WC3 style graphic projected down on to the ground and I think it'd be handy to have a visual indication of the 10yd radius of the auras.
- Do you count as an ally in the radius for your Auras? I can't decide whether I'd rather have a 20% DR for one person in the radius or a 20% personal if I'm on my own.

[Deleted]

See I change one parameter on the mastery and all of a sudden you are disgusted by it, perhaps you just didn't understand it in the first place? Your disgust is understandable though as the mastery does not fit paladins at all.

Im sure a playstyle like that could be fun on a new class or maybe even on monks if they were given Mistwalk baseline. The paladin mastery is basically made for running around but when you cant do that it just becomes a disgusting BS mastery.

I'm more just amused that someone who suggests I don't know what I'm talking about doesn't seem to know the meaning of the word "exponential". Because I can't see how you could possibly think, in any way, that that's a reasonable suggestion.

[Davryn]

So I think I'm getting to the Acceptance stage about the demise of the melee Paladin and I'm looking at this spec again. I think it's looking pretty good, kit-wise, aside from losing all the running races. Some simple questions though:
- Is Beacon of Light (and Virtue, I guess) on the GCD?
- Is there a graphic for the various auras? I'm a sucker for an Empowered Seals/WC3 style graphic projected down on to the ground and I think it'd be handy to have a visual indication of the 10yd radius of the auras.
- Do you count as an ally in the radius for your Auras? I can't decide whether I'd rather have a 20% DR for one person in the radius or a 20% personal if I'm on my own.

It's on the GCD, and there is no graphic currently, and you count as an ally. Would be nice to have a graphic as long as it's relatively subtle to avoid adding to the visual clutter.

[Floopa]

I'm more just amused that someone who suggests I don't know what I'm talking about doesn't seem to know the meaning of the word "exponential". Because I can't see how you could possibly think, in any way, that that's a reasonable suggestion.

Pacer thinks Paladins are balanced in WoD, pay no attention to him.

[Vivir]

Pacer thinks Paladins are balanced in WoD, pay no attention to him.

Everyone has their strengths. We'll blow you out of the water most of the time, but monks solo m arch on the reg now.

[Taeldorian]

Its a bad mastery because it puts us in harms way with no way of getting out of it. It rewards good pre-planning but does not reward skillful play. Prot paladins are the least mobile tanks and they have divine steed baseline, want to know what happens when the tank moves the boss? They use a sprint/charge/leap and holy paladins cant keep up. Our mastery is not strong enough to change how you play, you basically either choose to stand in the melee group or in the ranged group.

If the mastery had been more powerful with exponential scaling and paladins had more mobility they could have completely transformed the paladin playstyle where you would be running arround all the time to be close to the players who are low on hp. Instead they gave us this passive garbage which all boils down to two choinces, stay in melee or say with ranged.

If you really have healed mythic dungeons on beta you would also know that the new mastery is just as boring as the old one, LoD is more dependent on proper positioning than our mastery is.

It's not nearly as boring as the old one. I could sit and turret without ever worrying about my mastery, at least now it's somewhat interactve. LoD isn't really dependent on positioning because you don't really have to be in front of everyone. We have a little circle around us when it goes off that will hit people at a small range behind you as well and people off to the side. We're already near everyone we want to be because of our mastery so we can pop LoD whenever we want and hit everyone. If you healed in dungeons you would know this. That's not to say I wouldn't prefer the live version of LoD but this one works just as well due to our mastery.

Most of your points here aren't right like the one above. I didn't say mastery changes how you play I said a talent changes how you play. Lightbringer can change whether you stand in melee or range, but with that talent you can get full benefit on your mastery in both melee and ranged which is fantastic. Our heals are already pretty strong, obviously the strongest healer atm is resto druid but they're getting a somewhat big nerf (3 hots max) so we'll see. The mastery on live doesn't really fit paladins either. W3 paladins were on the front lines fighting with their allies (we don't really do this anymore, but we're still on the front lines) and healing them. This mastery fits way more with the paladin fantasy then this boring "i dont need to do anything other than heal" mastery. If you like having a mastery you don't need to think about then roll a class that has one, ours is more interactive and requires more thinking. "When is the group going to move?, I should get a few yards ahead of everyone so when they move I'm with them" etc.

It also doesn't put us in arms way, what are you talking about? We can stand in ranged while both melee and ranged get the full benefit so it'll be just like it is now, or we can stand in melee and beacon a ranged (you'd never do this..) and put yourself in harms way. That's a dumb decision though. Also, if you don't take lightbringer and you sit in melee all you need to do is think and move out of shit just like you do in ranged, that's fine.

Important part/TLDR: It's subjective whether you like the mastery or not. Some don't, some do. Is it good? Yes. That's undeniable. Having to stack up on fights happens extremely often and when it does we'll be going crazy. When stacking isn't happening I'd be taking lightbringer and using it on the tank so melee can get the full benefit while I stand in ranged and they get the full benefit. There's a lot of ways to make our mastery work and in most situations it works well. Here's the thing, we have rule of law (which is on the same row as divine steed...retarded talent placement) which increases the reach of our mastery and the range of our heals by 50% for 10 seconds and has 2 charges. If there are situations where people are spread out, we can use that and still reach everyone. Our mastery is reliable with the talents we have (lightbringer and rule of law) so I don't see your point. It fits the fantasy, it's reliable, talents help it in certain situations like spreading out, etc.

I do agree that our mobility should improve to help our mastery be more reliable. We need to be able to keep up if the boss moves since we have no base movement speed anymore and right now having divine steed on the same row with a healing ability is ridiculous and I'm hoping they either make steed baseline and put another mobility thing there or just move that talent elsewhere. I was thinking they should put the healing talent on the same row as bestow faith and lights hammer, they can remove crusaders might since we no longer have to do damage to heal.

[Deleted]

We're already near everyone we want to be because of our mastery so we can pop LoD whenever we want and hit everyone. If you healed in dungeons you would know this. That's not to say I wouldn't prefer the live version of LoD but this one works just as well due to our mastery.

I guess your dungeon groups consists of 4 melee players? Even running Lightbringer and Rule of Law it is borderline impossible to hit all 5 people because the ranged in 9/10 cases stand on two different sides of the room.

I didn't say mastery changes how you play I said a talent changes how you play. Lightbringer can change whether you stand in melee or range, but with that talent you can get full benefit on your mastery in both melee and ranged which is fantastic. Our heals are already pretty strong, obviously the strongest healer atm is resto druid but they're getting a somewhat big nerf (3 hots max) so we'll see. The mastery on live doesn't really fit paladins either. W3 paladins were on the front lines fighting with their allies (we don't really do this anymore, but we're still on the front lines) and healing them. This mastery fits way more with the paladin fantasy then this boring "i dont need to do anything other than heal" mastery.

Yes the talents changes how you play but that is true for most talents on most classes, and lets be honest here, weather you stand in a melee clump or in a ranged clump is not much of a difference in play style, you are still chasing the clumps.

Is it good? Yes. That's undeniable. Having to stack up on fights happens extremely often and when it does we'll be going crazy. When stacking isn't happening I'd be taking lightbringer and using it on the tank so melee can get the full benefit while I stand in ranged and they get the full benefit. There's a lot of ways to make our mastery work and in most situations it works well.

The mastery is average at best, you will not be doing more healing than other healers when grouped up, you will be doing roughly the same amount as them. Paladins are basically being punished when it comes to healing people that are far away and thus we are completely useless on fights where everyone is spread out (those fights are rare so atleast we got that going for us).

[Floopa]

Everyone has their strengths. We'll blow you out of the water most of the time, but monks solo m arch on the reg now.

if i had to choose between being opieop on progress and opieop on farm i would choose progress

... as im sure any1 would

[Taeldorian]

I guess your dungeon groups consists of 4 melee players? Even running Lightbringer and Rule of Law it is borderline impossible to hit all 5 people because the ranged in 9/10 cases stand on two different sides of the room.

No, but 10 yards is enough space to get close to everyone in a dungeon. So far whenever I bring 2 ranged 1 melee (usually what I do) I can reach all of them. Nobody is as spread out as you say, maybe in your groups people for some reason are standing as far away from you as possible but in mine they're close enough so I can stand near them or run to them if they take big damage. Usually I just have to run for a second or so before getting to where they're standing. The tank also has beacon with lightbringer so I don't need to stand near him. I stand near the ranged anyway, so if one takes damage I just move 2 inches to the right or left and heal him. It's not an issue, at least in my experience as shown above. I stand with the 2 ranged, and I have lightbringer so my mastery already counts fully towards the tank and melee dps. Therefore, everyone gets the full benefit. If the ranged are on opposite sides of the room (they're usually 2-3 yards away, not 10) I either stand in the middle of them both and heal them but I normally don't see ranged that do that.

Yes the talents changes how you play but that is true for most talents on most classes, and lets be honest here, weather you stand in a melee clump or in a ranged clump is not much of a difference in play style, you are still chasing the clumps.

No you're right, it's not that much of a difference. With both masteries at one point in time you'll just be standing there. This mastery does require more thinking though, there's no way around that. "Should I move now so I can be standing with the group when burst damage goes out, or should I move with them as it goes out?" and other things.

The mastery is average at best, you will not be doing more healing than other healers when grouped up, you will be doing roughly the same amount as them. Paladins are basically being punished when it comes to healing people that are far away and thus we are completely useless on fights where everyone is spread out (those fights are rare so atleast we got that going for us).

I don't think so, but we won't know the answer to this until pre patch is over and tuning is 100% done. In raid testing previously during alpha I did way more healing then my priest and shaman when everyone was stacked up. Cenarius is the one boss that gave me trouble because melee dps spread and have to kill tentacles (there's 2-3 tentacles at a time) so at this point I usually use rule of law twice in a row and by then it's over and everyone is back in normal position. This requires good timing though. So no, we aren't completely useless when people are spread out, we have rule of law which completely helps with that which is shown in my example during raid testing above. These fights are also rare as you said so we won't be seeing it much but when my raid had to deal with it on cenarius I did fine using rule of law. The platform is small so there isn't much running on that fight for us, just use rule of law (20 seconds of full coverage time total) and you can reach everyone for the entire duration they're spread out. The problem with this is that our mobility talent is on the exact same row as rule of law and they need to fix that.

[Deleted]

I don't think so, but we won't know the answer to this until pre patch is over and tuning is 100% done. In raid testing previously during alpha I did way more healing then my priest and shaman when everyone was stacked up. Cenarius is the one boss that gave me trouble because melee dps spread and have to kill tentacles (there's 2-3 tentacles at a time) so at this point I usually use rule of law twice in a row and by then it's over and everyone is back in normal position. This requires good timing though. So no, we aren't completely useless when people are spread out, we have rule of law which completely helps with that which is shown in my example during raid testing above. These fights are also rare as you said so we won't be seeing it much but when my raid had to deal with it on cenarius I did fine using rule of law. The platform is small so there isn't much running on that fight for us, just use rule of law (20 seconds of full coverage time total) and you can reach everyone for the entire duration they're spread out. The problem with this is that our mobility talent is on the exact same row as rule of law and they need to fix that.

Cenarius is not a fight where the raid is truly spread, and to add to that we have received 4 rather big nerfs or fixes if you will since then. Also not sure why you would use Cenarius as an example when boss fights like Ilgynoth exists.

[Davryn]

Unfortunately we will probably be forced to take Divine Steed on many fights for the sake of dealing with certain mechanics.

[Taeldorian]

Cenarius is not a fight where the raid is truly spread, and to add to that we have received 4 rather big nerfs or fixes if you will since then. Also not sure why you would use Cenarius as an example when boss fights like Ilgynoth exists.

Ilgynoth falls under the same category it's just a lot more spreading but that problem is resolved with rule of law. We can reach everyone for 20 seconds if you use both charges with good timing and by then the spreading issues are over. Ilgynoth is a fight where I chose lightbringer, threw beacon on the tank and ran to the ranged (whenever each group would take big amounts of damage) to heal. It wasn't bad, just a bit more movement than other fights because I wanted to heal each spread group as much as possible. Rule of law+lightbringer is an insanely big help for spread fights. The one problem with rule of law is that it's on the same talent tier as our mobility talent which is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. If they don't change that we may have an issue, but so far I've taken rule of law+lightbringer for spread fights and it's worked great. I really want them to make divine steed baseline and either put a talent that alters it in place of the current divine steed OR just move rule of law to the 15 talent tier and move crusaders might to where rule of law was.

Another good use for rule of law is when the entire raid is spread and taking big raid wide damage (usually you stack when that happens but there are some fights in Legion where you don't) I use rule of law and AW, it's an insane amount of healing. I just want them to move divine steed from that talent tier, I have no idea why the hell that's still in the same row as rule of law. Makes no sense and it causes issues. They need to move it.

Yeah, we've had some nerfs since then but I wasn't really looking at HPS, hence why I said "we won't know the answer to this until pre patch is over and tuning is 100% done" in the post you quoted. We're in the tuning phase right now so we won't know where we stand in terms of HPS and healing charts until pre patch is officially over (shit gets insane during pre patch, everything is unbalanced).


Edit: That's a nice little buff to aura of mercy with aura mastery it seems. 100% increased healing to everyone, that's pretty sexy. It got nerfed from 20% to 15% which isn't huge, the 100% increased healing buff counters that because it's still on top of the 15% healing over x amount of seconds to everyone in the group (with AM).

[Davryn]

Oversimplified comparison, not counting artifact traits, talents, legendary items, secondary stats:

Aura mastery for Aura of Mercy = 15% spellpower x6 seconds = 90% spellpower (per person)

Tranquility = 750% spellpower (per person)

Healing tide = 400% spellpower

Revival = 600% spellpower

Divine Hymn = 600% spellpower, + healing buff

So it's not even close to an actual raid CD, but better than nothing I guess.

[Taeldorian]

Oversimplified comparison, not counting artifact traits, talents, legendary items, secondary stats:

Aura mastery for Aura of Mercy = 15% spellpower x6 seconds = 90% spellpower (per person)

Tranquility = 750% spellpower (per person)

Healing tide = 400% spellpower

Revival = 600% spellpower

Divine Hymn = 600% spellpower, + healing buff

So it's not even close to an actual raid CD, but better than nothing I guess.

Very true. I like seeing your feedback in the Hpal thread, but I'd like to know what you think of Holy Paladin as a whole. I know you've focused on Legendaries and such (thank you for doing that), but I'm still curious about your stand on Holy Paladins in Legion.

[Davryn]

Very true. I like seeing your feedback in the Hpal thread, but I'd like to know what you think of Holy Paladin as a whole. I know you've focused on Legendaries and such (thank you for doing that), but I'm still curious about your stand on Holy Paladins in Legion.

I've been healing 5-mans on Beta and I enjoy it a lot. As long as the core gameplay (Holy shock, holy light, holy light) remains the same, I will enjoy it more than the other healing specs which generally play quite differently (more emphasis on HoTs and AoE healing, which is less interesting to me).

They experimented with the battle healer and martyr fantasy themes for Legion, but they didn't go very far with those themes, so ultimately the impact on gameplay is minimal. With the exception of Holy Prism (and maybe Judgment if I take JoL), I won't use DPS abilities unless there is nothing to heal. I will rarely use LotM and maybe never use Aura of Sacrifice.

I think the mastery concept is okay, but it's a bit frustrating to have other players control how much healing we can do to them (by choosing where to stand). I would be fine with it if they tuned Mastery to be a desirable stat for most encounters, but I don't know if that will be the case.

I like the removal of holy power because it was not interesting or fun to use for Holy.

I like the return of the cone LoD because it actually requires you to have some positional awareness to use properly.

I think completely removing damage reduction from Hand of Sacrifice is too much of a nerf, I think they should have at least made it reduce damage taken by 10%, then transfer 20% to you.

Making us choose between our only mobility talent and an HPS increase (Rule of Law) is a pretty bad idea. I would be okay with choosing between mobility and survivability, but not between mobility and HPS.

I like our level 100 talent row. Virtue is great for 5 mans. After using the same 100 talent throughout all of WoD, it's nice to have some variety.

I think we still have a strong niche as tank healers and spot healers in raids. We are less powerful without absorbs, but I accept that absorbs needed to be removed. As long as they tune our overall HPS to be close to other healers, most raid leaders will still want at least 1 paladin. There is a concern that we will fall behind in HPS due to our bad tier set bonuses, legendary bonuses, stat scaling, stat availability on raid gear, and other issues. I tend to think that Blizzard won't let that happen, but still I would appreciate it if our set bonuses and legendary bonuses were actually desirable.