[Holy] Patch 5.4 PTR - Changes Discussion

[Cairhiin]

mfw people argue over me asking opinions on an idea, I understand how powerful Radiance is (In both settings) But I don't feel DL / Flash are as worthless as people make them out to be, while Radiance is a better choice 8/10 I feel like you guys are saying neither have any real place outside of meta gem procs, though my experience in 25m is limited I completely agree maybe my idea was underwhelming for 25s.

FoL is in my opinion near worthless (outside of meta procs), DL is situational, probably a bit more useful in 10. Next patch, with nerfed EF, it will probably see more use. Currently however it is much more beneficial to cast Holy Radiance.

[Deleted]

FoL is in my opinion near worthless (outside of meta procs), DL is situational, probably a bit more useful in 10. Next patch, with nerfed EF, it will probably see more use. Currently however it is much more beneficial to cast Holy Radiance.

If anything, HR may get more use at the expense of DL. Firstly, it generates HP. Secondly it'll refresh mastery shields from initial EF's that the HoT can't do. (even if it only hits 2 or 3) Thirdly as EF will be less used for blanketing, it'll replace DL in the toolkit. The only question is, what the fuck will be cast when HS is on CD? atm, we'll likely literally be spamming HS... maybe DL will get some use on beacon guys as the rest of our toolkit is literally so shit.

[Freia]

I'm sorry, I honestly have no idea what you're trying to argue here, you're being too vauge. In what manner is our heals ineffective, and how does our reliance on mastery influence this? You'll need to expand upon your argument a bit before I can really offer my opinion on it.

I mean exactly what I said. Buffing our heals to heal for more isn't going to be enough. Do you raid? Our actual heals do little healing. They are mostly result in over healing and are really doing nothing but stacking our mastery on the raid. Our mastery is what we are relying on to stay competitive. Most of the other healer's toolkits are better than ours and it allows them to snip much of our actual healing. This same point has been said over and over again throughout this thread and really should be figured out by anyone who raids currently. The actual healing EF is doing is not why it is so powerful, it is the mastery it keeps rolling on the raid that we use it for.

[Rathimis]

Do you raid?

Armory and epeen show no regular raiding since Cata.

I really can't think of any "compensation" they can make that won't end up just shifting our mana wasting, over healing, bubble bot spam from EF to something else. If the current PTR build went live today, our over healing would just go through the roof as we tried to pre shield even more inefficiently than we do now.

We're already playing like the poor mans Disc priest, popping CDs before burst damage to build shields. Removing IH from EF is not going to change that, it's only going to drop our HPS and make us more mana inefficient. So in my eyes, its not EF that has caused an unintended play style, its our mastery, the raid mechanics, and the proliferation of high burst and shielding to other healers.

I was hoping there would be more sustained raid wide damage in SoO, and that it would prop us up by turning our over healing into healing. Having seen the PTR meters though, that doesn't look to be the case. I've yet to even see any suggestions that would put us on the right path to staying competitive.

I love healing and I have been staying competitive through the ghetto disc priest style, but I'm really glad they have made ret so good now. I've stacked my raid with discs, mistweavers, and druids and gone main spec Ret indefinitely at this point.

[Dânce]

The actual healing EF is doing is not why it is so powerful, it is the mastery it keeps rolling on the raid that we use it for.

Yes, exactly. That's why I posted a modified sacred shield for holy that aoe heals as well as helps our tank healing. Two things we are weak at, more so the spread healing though. Without any means of effective spread healing we don't have a leg to stand on. Eternal Flame was the answer to that problem and really the only thing keeping our head above water on any front.

[nightfalls]

Armory and epeen show no regular raiding since Cata.

I used to raid with Diatenium back in Cata, as far as I know sometime after the 60% Madness nerf came out, he quit raiding since.

I'm sorry, I honestly have no idea what you're trying to argue here, you're being too vauge. In what manner is our heals ineffective, and how does our reliance on mastery influence this? You'll need to expand upon your argument a bit before I can really offer my opinion on it.

Go back into a raid and look at the Disc priest spec before trying to give us more opinions first.

[Deleted]

Armory and epeen show no regular raiding since Cata.

I really can't think of any "compensation" they can make that won't end up just shifting our mana wasting, over healing, bubble bot spam from EF to something else. If the current PTR build went live today, our over healing would just go through the roof as we tried to pre shield even more inefficiently than we do now.

We're already playing like the poor mans Disc priest, popping CDs before burst damage to build shields. Removing IH from EF is not going to change that, it's only going to drop our HPS and make us more mana inefficient. So in my eyes, its not EF that has caused an unintended play style, its our mastery, the raid mechanics, and the proliferation of high burst and shielding to other healers.

I was hoping there would be more sustained raid wide damage in SoO, and that it would prop us up by turning our over healing into healing. Having seen the PTR meters though, that doesn't look to be the case. I've yet to even see any suggestions that would put us on the right path to staying competitive.

I love healing and I have been staying competitive through the ghetto disc priest style, but I'm really glad they have made ret so good now. I've stacked my raid with discs, mistweavers, and druids and gone main spec Ret indefinitely at this point.

4 sec hs. devotion aura working like revival for holy. (reducing dmg taken instead of dispelling). 200% lod buff. Would see us through until the next iteration of holydin in the new expansion.

And yep, 100% right. The problem isn't ef, it's that everything we do is geared towards our mastery, as without it we have nothing. No burst healing, no big single target heals, no unique utility. So any nerf is just going to alter how we attempt to best utilise our mastery. Literally the only 'real' spell we have that's useful is holy prism. Perhaps removing the cd on that and increasing the mana cost....

[Deleted]

You're twisting the context of my statement. When I claim the ease of buffing spells it was in the context of compensating for a healing loss should ever EF be removed entirely and it results in a clear dropoff in performance. The merit of having a HoT like EF is not my central argument, but rather that EF is too powerful to work in the context of a talent and is mechanically designed as such that it cannot be tuned in a way to make it work for every spec.

Moreover, these particular numerical changes are mechanical in nature as they alter the headspace these spells occupy. If you suddenly did 5% more healing it wouldn't alter how you behave and largely be visible just in the logs, but altering EF to not proc IH means a behavioural change, you no longer use EF to maintain IH, and how you interact with your gear itemization has now been altered.

How am i twisting it. They did 3 mechanic changes:
*Divine Plea(QoL should have been done at 5.0)
*Selfless Healer. Addition of Divine Light. Still shit.
*Eternal Flame HoT component no longer refreshing/stacking IH.
Not going to add Sacred Shield to it because that was a 100% fail and was reversed instantly. 30% nerf to EF base is just a pure number change.

They might not have removed it entirely. But they did remove the HoT part which is what made it so good/op to begin with. The base heal is just WoG with a different fucking name. So if you ignore the base heal they just removed 50% of the talent.
What most paladins are worried about is the mechanic change to the EF HoT component. The devs dislike the master shield stacking and want to change it and thus they nerfed EF HoT. Which will result in a lot of our effective healing being lost. Nothing has been done to compensate us for this change. And like i said in the previous post the last thing we want is them to buff our other healing spells as a form of compensation. The longer they wait the more likely this will be.

To reiterate on that statement, they will attempt to adjust how the ability behaves before, failing that, replacing the ability entirely. Depending on how long they spend trying to make EF "Work", we may not see them change the spell until next expansion.

And now i'm even more worried. Trying to follow what you said without "twisting it". So lets go over the events that transpired so far on the PTR.

Eternal Flame 30% Base AND HoT nerf applied to PTR. Paladin healing numbers drop substantially while other specs are getting buffed or not even touched and they new trinkets and tier bonuses to work with.
Sacred Shield and Selfless Healer mechanics adjusted to make it more attractive compared to EF. Patch notes are released/datamined and the community comes to the conclusion it's a big fat facepalm moment. SH still is a loss in HPS/ Effective Healing. The "new" SS is stupidly super super super situational.
30% base nerf is undone and Sacred Shield changes are undone.

This is where we are right now! No other changes have been made.
They won't do big Core spec changes mid expansion so our mastery is no longer an option. They can't really change our HoPo either because it's a core mechanic across all 3 specs. So what now? Replace EF? Then why nerf it to begin with. Shouldn't this have been done right when SS/SH was changed? So either we get a last minute rush job new talent(extremely unlikely) or we get the lovely numbers buff on our existing heals. YAY!

[Medario]

They won't do big Core spec changes mid expansion so our mastery is no longer an option.

It depends on what you consider core spec changes, either way what you consider it, my answer might or might not match, but they have just made massive changes for druids (think 1 new spell and 5 talents reworked), so it´s not impossible something might happen. The fact they haven´t announced anything is worrying, although I do hope they are currently working on it and announcing it soonish for PTR.
They will not give us Ef 5.3 back, except they really can´t find any solution at all. Imo they should make EF baseline and increase the HoT strength and therefore give us a new lvl 45 Talent and rework Sacred Shield (i dont really care about SH; 2 talents in a Tier are good enouigh for 1 spec, as not all 3 talenst of a Tier can be a valuable Option for all 3 specs) My thoughts: affected by Mastery and Crit and make it maybe proc on a crit to duplicate on another target (full copy or only 1 application)+ a number Change.
Furthermore SancWrath and Execution Sentence need to be reworked too, same a GoAK either Needs to be reworked or changed to a 3 Minute CD. Anything else is more or less a number Change at the Moment (Lod etc).

PS: Mastery isn´t an Option anymore?-What ´s the alternative? i think Mastery will either way remain the strongest secondary stat

[fjeenzy]

I havn't read many posts in this thread, but considering these talent changes/nerfs we're seeing, it's going to be very interesting to see what the set bonuses have to offer. Perhaps they might solve a few worry points.

[Freia]

I havn't read many posts in this thread, but considering these talent changes/nerfs we're seeing, it's going to be very interesting to see what the set bonuses have to offer. Perhaps they might solve a few worry points.

They already announced our horrible set bonuses (they are and have been on the ptr for testing) and have not done anything to make them less horrible.

[fjeenzy]

They already announced our horrible set bonuses (they are and have been on the ptr for testing) and have not done anything to make them less horrible.

I must be living under a rock. Been checking MMO on and off but havn't seen any official announcement about them. Got a link?

Edit: Nvm, found them. Like you said, complete dogshit and not game changing in any way. Feels a bit like a joke, I guess we'll see when it goes live!

[Pasture]

They won't do big Core spec changes mid expansion so our mastery is no longer an option.

They might not change mastery but they have done some big changes mid expansion. In Firelands HR was a 1 minute AoE centred on us. In DS they completely changed this to a spammable AoE heal with hot.

It's not outside of the realms of possibility. The fact they're leaving it so late is concerning for testing purposes, however, and may mean they're just going to opt for misguided % buffs.

[Deleted]

Seal of Insight no longer has a chance to restore mana on attacks.

...

meanwhile in shaman land

Chain Heal's effectiveness will no longer decrease with each jump (up from a 30% reduction to healing with each jump).
Earth Elemental Totem's summoned Greater Earth Elemental will no longer taunt off players that are tank-specialized.
Healing Rain's radius has been increased to 12 yards, up from 10 yards. For 25-player instances, Healing Rain will heal for a reduced amount when healing more than 14 raid members. It remains the same in 10-player instances, healing for a reduced amount when healing more than 6 raid members.


Talents


Astral Shift now has a cooldown of 90 seconds, down from 120 seconds.
Conductivity has been redesigned. Casting Healing Wave, Greater Healing Wave, Healing Surge, or Chain Heal, increases the duration of Healing Rain by 1 second. Damaging an enemy with Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Earthshock, or Stormstrike increases the duration of Healing Rain by 1 second.
New Talent: Rushing Streams. This new talent replaces Healing Tide Totem, increases healing done by Healing Stream Totem by 100%, and causes the totem to heal 2 targets at once.
Healing Tide Totem is no longer a talent and is a baseline ability for all Shamans. Additionally, this totem will now heal 12 raid members (up from 5) when used in a 25-player instance. now heals for 50% more.
Stone Bulwark Totem's initial damage absorption shield now absorbs an additional 33% in damage.
Unleashed Fury

Earthliving Weapon effect now applies to the Shaman, not the target.
Flametongue Weapon effect now increases Lightning Bolt damage by 30%, up from 20%.




Glyphs


Glyph of Chaining now increases the cooldown on Chain Heal by 2 seconds, down from a 4 second increase.
Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem now reduces the cooldown and duration for Fire Elemental Totem by 50%, up from 40%.
Glyph of Riptide reduces the initial direct healing of Riptide by 75%, down from a 90% reduction to healing.

This will put shamans insanely ahead on 25 man healing.

[Floopa]

Wow. I feel bad for Paladins. They're just terrible right now.

[Deleted]

"Healing Rain's radius has been increased to 12 yards, up from 10 yards. For 25-player instances, Healing Rain will heal for a reduced amount when healing more than 14 raid members. It remains the same in 10-player instances, healing for a reduced amount when healing more than 6 raid members."

"Let's double the healing off the most powerful stacked spell in the game"

[Floopa]

"Healing Rain's radius has been increased to 12 yards, up from 10 yards. For 25-player instances, Healing Rain will heal for a reduced amount when healing more than 14 raid members. It remains the same in 10-player instances, healing for a reduced amount when healing more than 6 raid members."

"Let's double the healing off the most powerful stacked spell in the game"

They wanted to increase Shaman's 'stack up healing' power because MWs were overtaking them with SCK. Maybe SCK will get a buff like that! Would be hilarious/upsetting.

[Deleted]

"Healing Rain's radius has been increased to 12 yards, up from 10 yards. For 25-player instances, Healing Rain will heal for a reduced amount when healing more than 14 raid members. It remains the same in 10-player instances, healing for a reduced amount when healing more than 6 raid members."

"Let's double the healing off the most powerful stacked spell in the game"

At least you'll still outheal them on spread encounters, of which SOO is not lacking.

What can Holy Paladins do?

[Floopa]

At least you'll still outheal them on spread encounters, of which SOO is not lacking.

What can Holy Paladins do?

Absorb Crawler Mine damage without taking damage every 5 minutes?

[Deleted]

"Seal of Insight no longer has a chance to restore mana on attacks."

When did that happen? something recent or did I just completely miss that?