[Holy] Patch 5.4 PTR - Changes Discussion

[Freia]

Nowhere near in my opinion. And doesn't help when there's AOE dmg going on and we've used our 2 lod's. Disagree about the number of targets though; I'd prefer to see us get a heavy throughput cd which affects more people in 25 than in 10.

I don't think that will happen in this expansion. And I would rather see them get rid of the 25m scaling on all heals period.

[Deleted]

I am just thinking 10% isn't enough overall. And LoD needs to hit more than 6 targets in 25m. Of course the fact they are just buffing throughput is also concerning.

Well we dont know how good guardian is going to be so 10% could be enough in terms of numbers. I also wouldnt expect them to buff anything other than throughput, Blizzard almost seem to have given up on holy paladins and we are probably in for a complete redesign next expansion.

[Deleted]

I don't think that will happen in this expansion. And I would rather see them get rid of the 25m scaling on all heals period.

Indeed, they already think our ascendance on 3 min cd would be 'too overpowered'. Agree as well on the latter [though I havn't healed 25H since the change so can't speak too intelligently on it], it should be an emergency triage not a 'lol lets top the entire raid.'

In terms of our viability, as long as they add the [expected imo] 4 sec holy shock, I think we'll be 'ok' [dependent on how good the guardian buff is] - meh, but ok. Still see no reason to take us over any other class.

[Deleted]

Indeed, they already think our ascendance on 3 min cd would be 'too overpowered'. Agree as well on the latter [though I havn't healed 25H since the change so can't speak too intelligently on it], it should be an emergency triage not a 'lol lets top the entire raid.'

I expect it to be as strong as ascendance and ancestral guidance together (in 5.4) which means you are looking at ~10-12 million healing from GoAK per use. Maybe I'm expecting too much but that is how strong it should be considering shaman cds in 5.4.

[Deleted]

Its probably small changes trying to fish for player reaction and to check how much does healing increase in relation to other healers.
Need the build to go up+testing on a boss to say anything other then lol 10% on LOD/EF only. Need to see if DP scales with spirit procs(it'd better) and need to see the new GoAK.

[Bythelights]

Are we seriously accepting this as a potential fix? Does anyone else think is just another retarded move by them showing that they have literally no clue how to balance us and make us effective healers.

They buff 2 spells no ones uses in place of eternal flame and eternal flame the same shit they already nerfed. Holy shit wtf developers. Except that nerfing mastery working with EF was half of the benefit of that spell. Now they are buffing the remaining 50% left by 10% so we get what a 55% EF compared to what it was originally. I feel compensated yeah totally.

I do not understand why this guardian buff is mentioned in such a vague way as to have no clue how it actually works. Correction I do because I know the designers have no clue how they want it to perform as well yet. I just do not like the wording of nit being based off the heals we cast. Reason one all of our heals are really really awful. Reason two most of the time abilities based off other ones that do a spread mechanic whether dps/heals whatever are a fraction of the original less then 1 per say.

Maybe Aladya will post thoughts on how bad this is again seems people see it then.

[Tiberria]

I expect it to be as strong as ascendance and ancestral guidance together (in 5.4) which means you are looking at ~10-12 million healing from GoAK per use. Maybe I'm expecting too much but that is how strong it should be considering shaman cds in 5.4.

Yeah - that is not going to happen. It would need to copy somewhere between 500% - 600% of your total healing to give 10-12 million (basing this on Ascendance, which copies 100% and does around 2-2.5 million per average use). Shaman CDs are strong because our baseline throughput outside of cooldown based burst has been complete garbage this entire expansion. Our baseline throughput will be amazing if the raid is stacked in 5.4, but will still probably be inferior to everyone else on typical SoO spread mechanics. Therefore, we are given extra CD strength to compensate; you can't directly compare CDs across classes.

That said, a 10% buff to HP spells is going to be probably at most a 3-4% throughput increase. The new GoAK might be a 5% increase if it's similar in function to Ascendance. I still think Paladins will need at least another 10% somewhere.

[Freia]

Are we seriously accepting this as a potential fix? Does anyone else think is just another retarded move by them showing that they have literally no clue how to balance us and make us effective healers.

They buff 2 spells no ones uses in place of eternal flame and eternal flame the same shit they already nerfed. Holy shit wtf developers. Except that nerfing mastery working with EF was half of the benefit of that spell. Now they are buffing the remaining 50% left by 10% so we get what a 55% EF compared to what it was originally. I feel compensated yeah totally.

I do not understand why this guardian buff is mentioned in such a vague way as to have no clue how it actually works. Correction I do because I know the designers have no clue how they want it to perform as well yet. I just do not like the wording of nit being based off the heals we cast. Reason one all of our heals are really really awful. Reason two most of the time abilities based off other ones that do a spread mechanic whether dps/heals whatever are a fraction of the original less then 1 per say.

Maybe Aladya will post thoughts on how bad this is again seems people see it then.

Have you looked at the posts? No one is accepting this. We are discussing the changes, period.

[zepyjoe]

Was just on ptr and EF ticks are applying IH shields again..
Is this a bug? OR
Did they give up on doing any real improvements to our tool kit?

[Deleted]

Was just on ptr and EF ticks are applying IH shields again..
Is this a bug? OR
Did they give up on doing any real improvements to our tool kit?

LOL. they probably just decided they don't know how to fix it, so reverted it.

edit: working for me too btw.

[Freia]

Was just on ptr and EF ticks are applying IH shields again..
Is this a bug? OR
Did they give up on doing any real improvements to our tool kit?

Confirmed. No idea. I hope it is intended (not holding my breath). I just highly doubt they will do a rework which is actually what we need.

[Pavlov]

I'm curious to see how the changes to guardian play out. If it interacts with mastery it couple be quite a hefty cooldown, assuming of course that the vague description is trying to say that it's going to be a holy paladin carbon copy of ascendance. A lot of potential for overhealing but if the heals benefited from mastery I could see it being used as a "spirit shell" of sorts given the right circumstance.

[IxilaFA]

We're horribly bad in PVP on 5.4 lol. So bad holy won't be viable anywhere near decent ratings. Doubt you'll see them at all in arena tbh.

Oh I have no idea where we're at in PvP since I exclusively never do it. But I was saying that a lot of times Blizzard wants to implement a change to Holy but they won't because of concerns on it being overpowered in PvP.

[Deleted]

Oh I have no idea where we're at in PvP since I exclusively never do it. But I was saying that a lot of times Blizzard wants to implement a change to Holy but they won't because of concerns on it being overpowered in PvP.

Aye indeed. But it's partly due to the fact we're SO bad in pve i see the 4 sec HS as almost mandatory now.

- - - Updated - - -

Confirmed. No idea. I hope it is intended (not holding my breath). I just highly doubt they will do a rework which is actually what we need.

It just feels like such a monumental fuckup, every step of the way.

Every other class gets a development cycle, we get toddlers pressing random buttons to see if it turns the machine on.

[Flaring]

With the numerous buffs we just received (especially if GoaK works similar to Ascendance and the new DP works with spirit procs) along with EF hots proccing mastery again I believe we will be in a decent place come 5.4. We'll have to see in testing.

I still wouldn't mind seeing 4second HS, but I don't think it's going to happen.

[Deleted]

Yeah - that is not going to happen. It would need to copy somewhere between 500% - 600% of your total healing to give 10-12 million (basing this on Ascendance, which copies 100% and does around 2-2.5 million per average use). Shaman CDs are strong because our baseline throughput outside of cooldown based burst has been complete garbage this entire expansion. Our baseline throughput will be amazing if the raid is stacked in 5.4, but will still probably be inferior to everyone else on typical SoO spread mechanics. Therefore, we are given extra CD strength to compensate; you can't directly compare CDs across classes.

Currently on live ascendance and ancestral guidance together with pot engi gloves and in ilvl 550 will easily get you 6 million healing (yes a lot of overhealing). On ptr it is going to be atleast twice as much and that is on a 3 min cooldown if you want to line the two cds every time. So I dont think asking for 12 million healing or 800000 hps for 15 seconds on a 5 min cd is too much to ask from GoAK. Remember shamans also have healing tide and much much higher healing than us when the raid is stacked. Oh and AG + Asc is 560% healing done so yes GoAK would have to copy arround 600% healing done.

I'm curious to see how the changes to guardian play out. If it interacts with mastery it couple be quite a hefty cooldown, assuming of course that the vague description is trying to say that it's going to be a holy paladin carbon copy of ascendance. A lot of potential for overhealing but if the heals benefited from mastery I could see it being used as a "spirit shell" of sorts given the right circumstance.

I really hope it does not scale with mastery, it just has to be strong enough to justify being a 5min cooldown. Something a long the lines of ascendance + ancestral guidance is how strong it should be.

[Freia]

Lets just hope that if the EF revert isn't a bug they aren't going to add in another mastery scaling nerf.

[Hypasonic]

Was just on ptr and EF ticks are applying IH shields again..
Is this a bug? OR
Did they give up on doing any real improvements to our tool kit?

Maybe they want to see how we are compared to other healers (since most others have got buffed) WITH EF still applying IH. Since the other 2 talents in that tier are still most likely going to be ignored, they might want to see what our overall healing is like on the ptr and make adjustments accordingly with regards to taking the mastery part away from EF again and then making further adjustments.

(Although the above is more than likely just a bug on their part, we can hope)

Far as I'm concerned, they have atleast addressed the divine plea issue, they've buffed EF/LoD by 10% (band-aid fix but w/e) are making guardian a LOT better and also giving us some useful glyphs (sacrifice springs to mind) so overall it's not all doom and gloom, as it was (or seemed to be) a few weeks a go.............give them a few more weeks on the ptr and who knows, they may actually make the nail meet the hammer.

[Absyrd]

It's better than it was a few weeks ago, yes.... but overall I don't know if it will necessarily fix our issues. xxfingers for the IH/EF bug on PTR to be legit and GoAK to be a useful raid wide CD comparable to the other healers 3min CDs.

[Flaring]

I really hope it does not scale with mastery, it just has to be strong enough to justify being a 5min cooldown. Something a long the lines of ascendance + ancestral guidance is how strong it should be.

Same, we would end up using it as a raid-wide (assuming we're stacked) spirit shell with 200k+ mastery bubbles before damage goes out. That would be....massive, along with how much healing we'd be doing once the damage started.