[Holy] Patch 5.4 PTR - Changes Discussion

[Tiberria]

It really wasn't. And there is no way you will convince anyone in this forum so I wouldn't even try. Forcing niches is stupid and shouldn't be happening. I think your spread healing should have gotten buffed but not increasing the cap on HRain unless they were ready to do so with everyone else's heals.

I think every Shaman on the planet would have preferred that our spread healing mechanics be reworked and new spells be added, but they are so adamant on the "stacked healing niche" thing that it's useless to even try and get that changed - it's their design philosophy for the spec. If they are adamant the stacked healing niche to the detriment of having proper spread healing tools, we have every right to expect to dominate stacked healing. We are the WORST stacked healer on live right now. It isn't unreasonable for the "stacked healing" niche healer to have different rules around target caps that only impact stacked healing.

I would have preferred that they fix Shaman stacked healing by nerfing the stacked capability of every other healer, because overall healer power is out of control this expansion. If they are not willing to do that, the implementation they have is the best they can do.

[Freia]

Ret isn't subpar anymore. But when they were many were definitely forced to go either of the other specs or reroll.

I would have preferred that they fix Shaman stacked healing by nerfing the stacked capability of every other healer, because overall healer power is out of control this expansion. If they are not willing to do that, the implementation they have is the best they can do.

That would not have worked because most of the healers stacked abilities were also their spread.

[Floopa]

It really wasn't. And there is no way you will convince anyone in this forum so I wouldn't even try. Forcing niches is stupid and shouldn't be happening. I think your spread healing should have gotten buffed but not increasing the cap on HRain unless they were ready to do so with everyone else's heals.

See, this is the problem. Blizzard want Shaman to be "the best class" at stacked up healing but there's only 1 problem. MWs beat everyone at stacked up healing. Look at Ra-den in p2, between SCK, ReM, Uplift, CT, CB and unlimited mana no-one comes close to MWs. Blizzard therefore have 2 options: buff HR or nerf SCK. SCK has already taken 2 nerfs so I'm fairly certain GC doesn't think the issue can be solved through nerfing SCK further.

[Pasture]

Greg Street ‏@Ghostcrawler 1h

@TGDLeefa We don't like non-CD AE heals with huge target caps. Trying it with HR only because we want Resto to be awesome when clumped.

I think the question that needs to be asked is what do they want Holy Paladins to be awesome at? There doesn't seem to be anything we're awesome at.

As for increasing target caps in 25. I think it's just a bad idea. Yes, you personally are healing less of the raid, but that's why you take double the healers compared to 10 man. The same for raid cooldowns. In 10 man 1 healers uses theirs. In 25 man 2 healers for the same effect. The only problem is damage reduction cooldowns.

In short, if we're looking for AoE healing buffs, I'd rather they focus on increasing range and actual healing strength than target caps. Otherwise it will just become an arms race for every capped healer ability and 25 man damage will have to be massively ramped up to compensate.

[Tiberria]

Holy paladins have -always- been one of the most, if not the most played healer. It isn't because we are OP. It is because we are the most played class. Ret is a subpar raid spec so most are funneled into either prot or holy and because you can only bring 1-2 tanks to a raid it is usually holy. The holy spec player numbers has gotten to where it is now because we've never been forced to reroll, we've always been viable. Using a spec representation argument should have resulted in nurfs pretty much every patch for the last few expansions. I just went back and looked at heroic Firelands class sampling - even when holy paladins were performing relatively poorly we were still the most played healer.

In what world were Holy Paladins "performing poorly" in Heroic Firelands? It was my main back then, and Paladins were extremely strong healers in FL - 2nd best to Resto Druids in throughput, and arguably better when you factored in utility and quality of output.

[Freia]

Don't think it's really fair to comment in depths on 'what buffs other classes need' if we don't understand the class intricately. It annoys us when others do it to us without understanding our underlying issues.

I do agree there shouldn't be one DR rule for one class, and one for everybody else.

Every shaman was asking for spread healing buffs and what did they get stacked healing buffs. I'm not pretending I know what they need. I am repeating the same thing everyone with a clue knew they needed and wanted. The focusing on stacked healing doesn't help them in 10m and the majority of encounters.

[Tiberria]

Ret isn't subpar anymore. But when they were many were definitely forced to go either of the other specs or reroll.



That would not have worked because most of the healers stacked abilities were also their spread.

Well, they could have introduced mechanics that made AoE abilities of other healers lose effectiveness the more people were grouped. Granted, that would be stupid as well, because you'd have every healer screaming for the raid to spread out all the time even when stacking made sense.

- - - Updated - - -

Every shaman was asking for spread healing buffs and what did they get stacked healing buffs. I'm not pretending I know what they need. I am repeating the same thing everyone with a clue knew they needed and wanted. The focusing on stacked healing doesn't help them in 10m and the majority of encounters.

It doesn't help us that much, and with the SoO mechanics, of the major buffs we got (HTT baseline, a new talent to pick, Chain Heal buff, Healing Rain target cap), the HR buff will be by far the least significant. It's just that a lot of the Shaman community (myself included) will call them out when they keep rattling off the "we want Shaman to be the stacked niche healer" line and we are actually the weakest stacked healers.

On that note, I highly doubt an HR target cap buff will end up being a major Paladin buff, unless they also increase the range of effect. SoO makes ToT look like Dragon Soul in terms of raid spread/stack mechanics.

[Freia]

It doesn't help us that much, and with the SoO mechanics, of the major buffs we got (HTT baseline, a new talent to pick, Chain Heal buff, Healing Rain target cap), the HR buff will be by far the least significant. It's just that a lot of the Shaman community (myself included) will call them out when they keep rattling off the "we want Shaman to be the stacked niche healer" line and we are actually the weakest stacked healers.

On that note, I highly doubt an HR target cap buff will end up being a major Paladin buff, unless they also increase the range of effect. SoO makes ToT look like Dragon Soul in terms of raid spread/stack mechanics.

It doesn't really matter thinking about a Holy Radiance target cap buff, it has already been written off as well as LoD. And GC's tweets pretty much make me think the small buffs we have received are it since "our toolkit is fine and EF was a crutch".

[Deleted]

It doesn't really matter thinking about a Holy Radiance target cap buff, it has already been written off as well as LoD. And GC's tweets pretty much make me think the small buffs we have received are it since "our toolkit is fine and EF was a crutch".

The problem is you're talking to a wall. To give you an example, Shamans were pretty down before

27 March Hotfixes

Shaman
General
Chain Heal now heals for 20% more.
Healing Rain now heals for 20% more.
Restoration
Earthliving Weapon now heals for 20% more.

3 days before, he was saying Shamans are perfectly fine. I'm sure someone can even dig out his tweets from that week.

While I think its understandable somewhat from his perspective(don't want to change anything without plenty of evidence), I think he should realize the MASSIVE amount of tweets his getting about holy paladins aren't an accident. I offered for example to provide our logs from the upcoming 25 testing in private, but he just brushed it off.

On the bright side
"WildStar-The WildStar Beta Wants YOU!"

[Arayaa]

In what world were Holy Paladins "performing poorly" in Heroic Firelands? It was my main back then, and Paladins were extremely strong healers in FL - 2nd best to Resto Druids in throughput, and arguably better when you factored in utility and quality of output.

Was speaking relatively about this. We were comparatively stronger in the first tier of cata, were downright OP in DS and performed quite solidly in 5.0 after mistweaver nurfs (disc priests outperformed us, but that is something else entirely...). It's been quite a while since we've been considered "weak" enough to provide a solid counterargument against GCs "representation = good place" argument. Raidbots doesn't track wrath content.

[Freia]

Logs and raidbots mean nothing to him because they just show HPS and "HPS doesn't matter". Really hard to find proof when everything is written off, so yes a brick wall.

[Dzur]

Quite frankly if output numbers doesn't count on raidbots, then anything else shouldn't either for GC.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^God damnit. One minute, "hps isn't a good metric for measuring healer performance" but class representation when the large majority of the raiding population will be lucky to see reg lei shen pre 5.4 is? What. The. Fuck.

[Deleted]

We really are fucked at the moment. Because everything works against us. Our Mastery and our HoPo combined with current raid mechanics are just taking a big fat dump right on our chest.

We need HoPo ---> Cast HR to get HoPo ---> Overhealing and 40% or more IH shield ---> Don't want to loose the 40% IH shield as well as the overhealing---> So we EF ---> IH stays up for next big aoe hit. ---> which we need more HoPo for so it just repeats.

Even if you take out EF to increase shield duration the same thing will happen because 1 part of our toolkit forces another part which is started by the fight mechanics itself. When we are casting HR on single targets basicly just to gain HoPo to do the actual healing with something is wrong. Even without EF we just revert back to the cataclysm HR/LoD style. We don't want to use LoD but it's the best we got. And since we need 5 HoPo before we need to heal we will still start early stacking shields because we already need to generate 5 HoPo so we might as well do a bit more work so our shields actually stay up.

Also do any of you guys have them PTR logs available? Would love a link to go over some when i have the time. Running on 3G at the moment so searching for a good one is a pain in the ass. And playing on the PTR is definitely not happening with this connection.

[gwenners]

I'm struggling to figure out what holy's niche is supposed to be. Strong single target healing (without strong single target heals)? Good tank healing (without fast, strong single target heals or a CD that won't kill you unless you are rolling shields on yourself with EF-this is going to really suck in 5.4)? Good stack healing (holy radiance is trash and LoD is pretty much a joke)?

Don't understand the tweets about holy feeling like a resto druid; where's my instant on-demand aoe and hots?

[Absyrd]

Part of me feels like these recent "buffs" we got will be our compensation. If that's the case, it's game over. Skimming through the PTR forums reading the suggestions from holy paladins that look to be just LFR heroes is aggravating, if they even consider half the suggestions on there..... then... i don't know. As it's been stated here many times before, we are the odd healer out and the love we so desperately need won't come until 6.0

[Pasture]

I'm struggling to figure out what holy's niche is supposed to be. Strong single target healing (without strong single target heals)? Good tank healing (without fast, strong single target heals or a CD that won't kill you unless you are rolling shields on yourself with EF-this is going to really suck in 5.4)? Good stack healing (holy radiance is trash and LoD is pretty much a joke)?

Don't understand the tweets about holy feeling like a resto druid; where's my instant on-demand aoe and hots?

There was a tweet to Ghostcrawler with a response from him that suggested burst healing should be our strength. He asked would would need to happen for us to be more capable at burst healing.

I've been harping on for weeks that I think burst healing should be our strength. Shorter cooldown Holy Prism with much increased ranged. Stronger LoD. Something else (I don't know what) to add to the toolkit.

They don't us to be the best stacked healers. That's shamans. They don't want us to be the best hots. Monks and druids. They don't want us to be the best spread. Holy priests. They don't want us to be the best absorbs. Disc priests. I think they have to make our burst healing the strongest. Just how we can respond very fast to single target damage with Holy Shock and raid damage with Holy Prism.... they need to expand on those tools.

[Tiberria]

There was a tweet to Ghostcrawler with a response from him that suggested burst healing should be our strength. He asked would would need to happen for us to be capable at burst healers.

I've been harping on for weeks that I think burst healing should be our strength. Shorter cooldown Holy Prism with much increased ranged. Stronger LoD. Something else (I don't know what) to add to the toolkit.

They don't us to be the best stacked healers. That's shamans. They don't want us to be the best hots. Monks and druids. They don't want us to be the best spread. Holy priests. They don't want us to be the best absorbs. Disc priests. I think they have to make our burst healing the strongest. Just how we can respond very fast to single target damage with Holy Shock and raid damage with Holy Prism.... they need to expand on those tools.

A "burst healing" strength is far too vague of a term. There's a difference between single target burst, stacked AoE burst, spread burst, 3 minute CD type burst and on demand/short cooldown burst. Druids probably have the best stacked AoE burst, Monks the best spread burst, and Shaman the best 3 minute CD burst.

If you actually asked what the Paladin niche is, I suspect he would say that it's tank/single target healing - that has historically always been the Paladin niche.

[Pasture]

If you actually asked what the Paladin niche is, I suspect he would say that it's tank/single target healing - that has historically always been the Paladin niche.

I don't think he'd say that any more. There are no tank healing niches now.

I think he's more likely to say we don't have one. That we're a jack of all trades. Can do a bit of everything but nothing very well.

[nightfalls]

I think he's more likely to say we don't have one. That we're a jack of all trades. Can do a bit of everything but nothing very well.

That's how I felt we were earlier in the expansion. We weren't as good "burst healers" (if that is a term) as Disc (the obvious "king" no matter what people say), weren't as good reactive healers as Shamans, had less spread healing than the HoT healers (holy priest, druid, monk), but we sure did everything.

Just now they would have our niche be the loser of all trades instead.

-- edit -- found this gem from the front page of MMO

We do think AE heal spam has gotten out of control again. The healer tookit lacks depth when single target heals are ignored.

This is of course right after he neuters the only class that intelligently uses single target heals in most situations rather than blanket AoE spam, so he would have us going back to the former now.

[naitee]

LoD put 45s IH shield (instead 15s)
EF dont change
beacon transfer 15% from hots if there's more than 2 players with EF