[Holy] Patch 5.4 PTR - Changes Discussion

[Dânce]

I'd love to know why so may people think paladins are "in a good spot". Even on live we have fallen down the list a fair amount after our last round of nerfs. This became clear when we moved into heroics and our Druid suddenly started to shine. It worries me that a huge amount of damage on SoO is raid damage and our tools to deal with that are limited, or should I say inadequate to deal with that. Not being able to roll shields is going to severely handicap us in SoO. Even if we had gone into 5.4 the way we are now, we would have struggled. I'm really not sure what Ghostcrawler is thinking, he should have seen this too.

[Dubalicious]

I'd love to know why so may people think paladins are "in a good spot". Even on live we have fallen down the list a fair amount after our last round of nerfs.

I can agree with these statements, but I think realistically we *ARE* in a good spot on live. We're likely not the best or worst healer, and even if we WERE the worst we wouldn't be far enough behind to be concerned all that much (unless you are on a VERY competitive roster).

This is why a lot posters keep using that term "compensation" because Blizz is essentially taking a spec that's in an arguably good place and neutering it pretty significantly with no visible plans of how exactly they plan to counteract that balance hit. Mostly I think a lot of paladins are worried that it's NOT going to happen because we haven't seen any mechanics changes on the horizon and there isn't much in our base toolkit that could be that "compensation"- or maybe there is, hopefully the devs will find it and nail it.

[Deleted]

All the other healers know that Blizzard will give you your buffs before 5.4 and you will be all very happy campers. They work so much on the paladin class every single PTR patch that I can't even keep up with all the changes they have done so far for 5.4. Resto shamans? Glyph changes that nobody will use and slightly bigger healing rain lol. GC is the biggest troll in the universe every time he answers tweets about resto shaman legitimate complaints, and god knows there are many. The day you will be in the same place as resto shamans will be the day where you will see the bench more often than not and your peers will start to massively reroll. Until then, be happy that you are the second most popular healing class right now and most likely in 5.4 too.

Let me TLDR; that for you. you can ignore the first 2 if you like.

Removed Sacred Shield replaced with shitty 2minute cata life save version. 1 DAY after this change they admitted it was a mistake and it made prot op and the new holy shield spell was CRAP for holy/ret.
Nerfed Eternal Flame initial heal by 30%. They undid the 30% nerf because they knew it was a stupid nerf.

Actual changes:
Change to Selfless Healer Added Divine light. Still costs 3 GCD to use Judgment to get 60% buff and no mana cost on basicly Greater Healing Wave. Mostly going to be overhealing and judgment does nothing besides damage and waste a GCD. Just not using it and casting the heal will do more HPS and do less overhealing.
Divine Plea our only mana regen cooldown no longer has a 9s 50% healing reduction. The other option was glyphing it into a 5sec cast. QoL change that should have happend in 5.0.
They nerfed Illuminated Healing from being refreshed and increased by HoT's(Read Eternal Flame)

Now that wasn't so hard to read?

Now some basic numbers. Eternal Flame the HoT part on average will do 100k healing from a 522 ilevel geared paladin. with 30% mastery that means you lost 30k of absorb shields! add that to the fact that the initial shield of ~25k is also lost in 15 seconds instead of 45 seconds. Now these numbers are for lower geared people. At full heroic gear levels mastery is going to be 40% mastery at a minimum. 50% is already reachable quite easy with the current gear and some gems especially in 25mans with those mana cooldowns.

This is why paladins are upset. Yes we agree that it's overpowered and only going to get worse if they don't handle the mastery and eternal flame combo. We said so when 5.3 was on the PTR. But instead of trying to fix it in 5.3 they nerfed the scaling that did FUCK all. And again they just nerf for 5.4 with no indication of going after the root of the problem. The fact is. 1 Failed buff to a shitty talent. 1 QoL change and 1 nerf to mastery/EF. And all that will do is lower our effective healing when we need it the most. With no indication of any new spells/talents to compensate for the nerf. On top of that shitty Tier bonus.

[Freia]

Now that wasn't so hard to read?

No real point explaining it to him because he can't even comprehend the fact there really have not been a lot of changes, they have just been posting the same changes over and over again.

[Pasture]

Do they need to completely rework our mastery in 6.0? At the moment we're pushing out EF when no one needs healing just for mastery shields. In 5.4 we'll be casting HR when no one needs healing just to roll mastery shields. Is it a particularly compelling playstyle? Something like Spirit Shell is nice. You're not overhealing to shield. You're just shielding. Same with PW:S. You can pre-empt damage without having to purposefully overheal. Is there a way to create a similar feel for Holy Paladins?

The problem is is that they have given us this incidental mastery tool to take the edge of the damage but due to our weakness in other healing respects we have taken this incidental tool and turned it into our main coping mechanism in raids. I don't know how they fix it without completely altering mastery so it isn't shields or nerfing it to a Cata level were no one really wants it and it truly is just incidental.

Edit: Is having some ability that allows us to dump HP into eventual effective healing when no one currently needs healing a partial solution? Currently we try and dump our HP so it isn't wasted.

[Dubalicious]

Edit: Is having some ability that allows us to dump HP into eventual effective healing when no one currently needs healing a partial solution? Currently we try and dump our HP so it isn't wasted.

Oooh, really like the potential of something like that. Consume HoPo into some "charge" mechanic that could be applied to a LoD or some other form of healing, possibly a completely new spell that it would interact with.

[cakin]

Do they need to completely rework our mastery in 6.0? At the moment we're pushing out EF when no one needs healing just for mastery shields. In 5.4 we'll be casting HR when no one needs healing just to roll mastery shields. Is it a particularly compelling playstyle? Something like Spirit Shell is nice. You're not overhealing to shield. You're just shielding. Same with PW:S. You can pre-empt damage without having to purposefully overheal. Is there a way to create a similar feel for Holy Paladins?

The problem is is that they have given us this incidental mastery tool to take the edge of the damage but due to our weakness in other healing respects we have taken this incidental tool and turned it into our main coping mechanism in raids. I don't know how they fix it without completely altering mastery so it isn't shields or nerfing it to a Cata level were no one really wants it and it truly is just incidental.

Edit: Is having some ability that allows us to dump HP into eventual effective healing when no one currently needs healing a partial solution? Currently we try and dump our HP so it isn't wasted.

Pasture, do you think that possibly reducing mastery or reducing the percentage that the mastery shield is applied for and just increasing our raw healing would be any benefit to us? I'm just curious cause I agree with what you say about us just rolling HR for nothing other than getting shields at times.

[Pasture]

Pasture, do you think that possibly reducing mastery or reducing the percentage that the mastery shield is applied for and just increasing our raw healing would be any benefit to us? I'm just curious cause I agree with what you say about us just rolling HR for nothing other than getting shields at times.

No I think we need more of a rework than that. In my ideal world the focus would be pulled from overhealing for mastery shields to a greatly buffed burst heal capacity. In my mind our strength should be burst healing. After big raid damage a Holy Paladin would be the class that could respond most immediately. We wouldn't snipe with shields but we would be the best responders.

Disc = mitigation
HolyPriest/Druid/Monk = constant spread raid damage
HolyPaladin = burst heals / quick responders
Shamans = ?

We don't have the toolkit for it at the moment. Holy Prism / LoD are what I think should be the basis of what our healing should be about. Quick response, burst AoE healing. That would be my foundation to work from as a Holy Paladin. As you point out just buffing % healing isn't really going to help. The reason we overheal for shields is because the other healers respond much better to raid damage than we do. We don't have a choice if we want to be effective.

I'm not advocating a mastery nerf and a % healing buff. We need more than that to compensate. We need a mechanic that allows us to be the best at something. Right now we're down the pecking order for constant AoE, tank healing, burst healing and even stacked AoE. We need to be very strong at at least one of these

[Deleted]

Pasture, do you think that possibly reducing mastery or reducing the percentage that the mastery shield is applied for and just increasing our raw healing would be any benefit to us? I'm just curious cause I agree with what you say about us just rolling HR for nothing other than getting shields at times.

Without the mastery we would still spam HR simply due to the fact that we get HoPo from it. We will still spam at least 3 targets with EF the 2 tanks and yourself simply due to beacon healing. And any other target that is going to take steady damage will also get one just like other classes with hot's. Once that's done time to spam holy light on targets since it has the 100% transfer so random 15s shields and then tank healing. Of course we always keep 5 holy power ready.

The problem with the raw healing buff is that it doesn't help us in those spread out constant damage situations. We have a 10 yard aoe(HR). A bunch of single target heals and the Eternal Flame or 30 yard weak AOE(LoD). The only thing that does the spread healing is LoD and it's just super weak. IF they buff it to be more usefull and it will heal for more then EF or WoG. We will just spam LoD again constantly. HR HR HS LoD HR HR HS LoD etc etc etc.

PS. i know i'm not pasture but that's my opinion. And kind of why i feel we are stuck in this shitty situation because of our mastery and HoPo. They both promote "scumbag" gameplay.

[Deleted]

Oooh, really like the potential of something like that. Consume HoPo into some "charge" mechanic that could be applied to a LoD or some other form of healing, possibly a completely new spell that it would interact with.

On one hand it sounds interesting on the other hand it is a terrible idea considering the amount of "combo point" mechanics we already have. Imagine a paladin who had taken selfless healer, he would have to keep track of holy power, daybreak, selfless healer and that new mechanic you suggest. Sure the paladins who know what they are doing would never take selfless healer but its still overkill.

Currently theres so much wrong with holy paladins that we need a redesign.
- A 3 holy power LoD does as much healing as a 1 holy power LoD should be doing.
- EF/WoG should be used when individuals are close to death, for tank healing and never to raid heal.
- Mastery is too good compared to other stats, I loved the idea about having mastery fall off after 15 secs no matter what.
- Guardian of Ancient Kings (5 min cooldown) is our weakest cooldown wtf is up with that?
- Beacon does too much overhealing and is a dated mechanic (was made back when we spam healed players to raid heal). Maybe have it do half healing half shield?

[Deipotent]

Imo, bring back 4pc pvp+dp, amiright pacer?

[nightfalls]

- EF/WoG should be used when individuals are close to death, for tank healing and never to raid heal.

It should also be a way to proactively add some healing to the raid during "down time" to avoid capping HP. Unless you want to have yet another HP finisher serve that purpose. During active raid damage LoD should be the go-to.

[Hrrom]

What if they make haste (more) attractive for us? Perhaps causing it to affect the cooldown of Holy Shock?

[mcbubble]

What if they make haste (more) attractive for us? Perhaps causing it to affect the cooldown of Holy Shock?

They'd have to lower our horrid regen.
Haste is amazing, we just don't have the regen to support it.

It's why I'm not happy with our mastery playstyle. 2 seconds casts is just boring.

[monikasun88]

What if they make haste (more) attractive for us? Perhaps causing it to affect the cooldown of Holy Shock?

This is an interesting idea but I think apart from benefiting holy shock and decreasing the time between our EF ticks, it just wouldn't work with our playstyle which currently relies on cast-time holy power generators and would just deplete our mana more. We could cast things like holy light in between rather than more HR/DL but that kind of defeats the purpose of letting haste affect Holy Shock aka generate more holy power. It would be better in my opinion if they just reduced the cooldown for HS overall. They should punish players using EF on full health targets to roll shields with something rather than taking Illuminated Healing away from it IMO. Something like making the HoT for the spell scale to the amount of effective healing the initial HoT does like the shaman talent which heals for more if the target's lower but also start from a lower coefficient when the player is at full health.

[Seyka]

Guardian of Ancient Kings (5 min cooldown) is our weakest cooldown wtf is up with that?
- Beacon does too much overhealing and is a dated mechanic (was made back when we spam healed players to raid heal). Maybe have it do half healing half shield?

I can agree that Guardian of Ancient Kings needs some tweaking but I don't feel that beacon is a dated mechanic at all. In my opinion its what sets us apart and makes us have some additional freedom in 25 man raiding. You still have some control of the over healing by managing it/moving it around. You can place it on a tank and more or less forget about them or quickly swap it to a raid member taking insane spike damage. To me a paladin is a brute force healer, with the current mastery push we are relying on bubbles rather than making it so we can push out more heals with a build that caters to haste. Again setting us apart from the other healers. It would be nice if we could stand in melee with out the range penalty like monks do, that is infuriating at times.

[Absintheminded]

I can agree that Guardian of Ancient Kings needs some tweaking but I don't feel that beacon is a dated mechanic at all. In my opinion its what sets us apart and makes us have some additional freedom in 25 man raiding. You still have some control of the over healing by managing it/moving it around. You can place it on a tank and more or less forget about them or quickly swap it to a raid member taking insane spike damage. To me a paladin is a brute force healer, with the current mastery push we are relying on bubbles rather than making it so we can push out more heals with a build that caters to haste. Again setting us apart from the other healers. It would be nice if we could stand in melee with out the range penalty like monks do, that is infuriating at times.

The classification as ranged really pisses me off, especially in ToT. But I still do it when I can, I feel like CS + SoI is worth the additional care necessary to be in melee. Iron Qon first phase is an exception.


Edit:

I just tweeted GC and I'm requesting for those of you that frequent his twitter to check it out and please comment as well. He has responded a few times about paladins, but I think it would be beneficial for us to try to continue this conversation (in a respectful and friendly manner!). Here's to 5.4 Holy.

[Dubalicious]

I just tweeted GC

"HR/CS share cooldown a la SoTR" - is this supposed to be "HS"/CS?

I do like the idea of SHx3 causing no CD on HS, but the talent will still be unattractive.

[Absintheminded]

Ah shit, no that should have been Holy Radiance / Holy Shock, and SoTR should be HoTR... FML. The idea being that melee is Crusader Strike/Hammer of Righteous, spell is Holy SHock/Holy lRadiance.

Right, and I don't mean these ideas to be perfect, but I think something like these changes would be a step in the right direction.

edit: also, for clarification, my post does imply adding a cooldown to Holy Radiance, but I feel like having Haste reduce HS cooldown kind of begs for a cooldown added HR to balance. With Haste builds though, the end result for HR would probably be minimal, but we would be able to HS more.

[Simulacrum]

So every target would get a ton of IH shield buffs for the differing amount of absorbs and durations? Sounds more complicated than they would ever do. They aren't going to revert the mastery nerf and nerfing our mastery like that just to revert it is something not many people would be ok with. You would only have 15 seconds to proactively stack mastery on the raid to set up for burst and a lot more mastery would go to overheal. This would in itself nerf the value of mastery that the scaling revert would not recover.

I can't imagine each target would get a ton of tiny little shield buffs with individual durations and absorbs, as much as it'd all be consolidated into one shield that decreases by previous amounts when 15 seconds has passed since that amount was added.

I sort of dubt their intention was to make us proactively stack shields on the raid in anticipation of burst damage. You shouldn't design spells, that (over)heal for more than twice what they shield, to be used to pre-empt damage. That would be an incredibly stupid design choice that makes no sense, and I don't think it makes sense considering how unhappy they are with shields in general either.

Though I'll admit I don't at all understand why they'd then implement them in a rolling state if this wasn't their intent...