[Holy] Patch 5.4 PTR - Changes Discussion

[nightfalls]

I really wish they would just come out and freaking tell us the dffierent ideas they are talking about, otherwise it's just this silly game of back and forths every PTR build and patch release where we get surprized by buffs/nerfs/mechanics changes and fill up twitter and forums until Dev's make more knee-jerk changes.

The reason Blizzard hasn't done so is because they don't have these ideas, or at least, not finished versions yet. I think the Dev process has improved a lot this expansion compared to the past, but there's been reasons limitations have been on classes. A big one was PvP versus PvE (priests, druids anyone?) Here, we have a class which is subpar right now in both.

I'm more disappointed that we got a useless round of raid testing with a bugged Tier 3 talent, a broken Tier 3 talent (without the fix promised to the initial heal), and a soon-to-be-scrapped Tier 3 talent (hence not even worth testing). All of these issues were known before the raid testing went live. Instead of being able to test fixes, we "tested" what we already knew.

The bugged Tier 6 talents weren't as big of a deal since no changes were planned, we know what these abilities do. But considering the T3 talents have the potential to dramatically change how the class works, I'm not sure I would to ride on haphazard, last-minute, sweeping decisions.

[Absintheminded]

The reason Blizzard hasn't done so is because they don't have these ideas, or at least, not finished versions yet. I think the Dev process has improved a lot this expansion compared to the past, but there's been reasons limitations have been on classes. A big one was PvP versus PvE (priests, druids anyone?) Here, we have a class which is subpar right now in both.

I'm more disappointed that we got a useless round of raid testing with a bugged Tier 3 talent, a broken Tier 3 talent (without the fix promised to the initial heal), and a soon-to-be-scrapped Tier 3 talent (hence not even worth testing). All of these issues were known before the raid testing went live. Instead of being able to test fixes, we "tested" what we already knew.

The bugged Tier 6 talents weren't as big of a deal since no changes were planned, we know what these abilities do. But considering the T3 talents have the potential to dramatically change how the class works, I'm not sure I would to ride on haphazard, last-minute, sweeping decisions.

Blizzard has occassionaly talked about the ideas they have for talents, it's not asking for much to do that on a more regular basis. There are tons of benefits for that like I said, the subject matter experts (us) can throw out ideas back and forth, address concerns with the ideas, keeps us engaged, etc. Those reasons aside, I also just don't want to wait for each build to release before I have an idea of how my class will look. Acting like the sky is falling is one thing, but having a back-up plan healer-alt is legitimate if it looks like we will drop enough.

[Dubalicious]

our issues are dismissed (including by some of my guildmates, not naming names) as "paladin QQ."

It was Rotund/Saltycracker wasn't it!?!?

I don't like this situation we're in where you want to think "it's ok, they've acknowledged they're not happy with the current build" and "if they don't do something we're screwed, and even if they DO do something, we could still easily be in trouble".

It's certainly not a fun spot to be, but there is a LOT of time left before things go live and I would rather be hopeful than worrisome at this point in time.

[nightfalls]

It was Rotund/Saltycracker wasn't it!?!?

Not naming names.

I don't like this situation we're in where you want to think "it's ok, they've acknowledged they're not happy with the current build" and "if they don't do something we're screwed, and even if they DO do something, we could still easily be in trouble".

It's certainly not a fun spot to be, but there is a LOT of time left before things go live and I would rather be hopeful than worrisome at this point in time.

I would rather be too, but like I said it's disappointing that 4 bosses worth of testing have been just absolutely wasted on things changes that have already been decided but not implemented. Hoping to see a new patch before end of week, but who knows? It's also disappointing because after changes are announce I would like to have a modicum of time to figure out stat priorities/etc., at least talk with some others and do some work myself on it.

[Dubalicious]

I would rather be too, but like I said it's disappointing that 4 bosses worth of testing have been just absolutely wasted on things changes that have already been decided but not implemented.

I'd argue the SH->Divine Light bug was probably even more problematic since it sounds like a lot of paladins were abusing it (which I will never understand). This was the first session of testing, if we go through another set with these issues still around then I will agree it's a complete failure, but for now we'll just have to wait for the known changes to actually be implemented and hopefully some additional changes to help the spec.

I still remember having to test Lei Shen when you couldn't use cast-time spells - at least this isn't nearly as bad/broken as that =p

[timoteo]

Where do you see us setting in terms of ranking for 10 man raiding? We are currently sitting about 3-4th according to raidbots. Will these nerfs put us even lower?
Would something along the lines of Disc Priest>Resto Druid>Monk>Pally>Resto Shaman seem to be accurate if the changes remain the same?

[mcbubble]

Where do you see us setting in terms of ranking for 10 man raiding? We are currently sitting about 3-4th according to raidbots. Will these nerfs put us even lower?
Would something along the lines of Disc Priest>Resto Druid>Monk>Pally>Resto Shaman seem to be accurate if the changes remain the same?

I think that's close, but it's more in line with:
Disc/Druid -> MW Monk -> R. Shammy -> H. Paly
What I've seen from 10m PTR: Disc/Druid/Monk -> Tanks-> R. Shammy -> H. Paly

[Deleted]

...
Paladins need a lot more direct, targeted proactive healing besides a single talent on a row of 3. Obviously if you put an essential element of any healer toolkit as a talent, that talent will be taken no matter what! The real solution is to baseline that element, and replace the talent with actual talents which are supposed to be of situational use.
...

Well that is the entire issue with our class/spec.

Our toolkit is to limited to work in todays raiding. And this is only made worse by having holy power.

Holy Light / Divine Light / Flash of Light
The 3 single target casted heals. Well all know the differences. Pretty much every healer has something similar.

Holy Shock
Instant cast combo builder. We all love this heal it's great and not to weak. Required due to the holy power generation so we cast that on cooldown.
Daybreak: Tied to holy shock: Heals everybody. With the changes it turns into a 2x HR then shock rotation for aoe healing.

Word of Glory
Strong single target instant but limited by holy power generation.

Holy Radiance
10 yard AOE really strong if you can stack with 25 people. Shit! if people are spread out to much. But we cast it anyways because holy power allows you to use WoG/EF/LoD

Light of Dawn
Requires HoPo. Relatively weak but it does heal in 30 yards. Big downside limited to 6 targets.

That is it!
Oke oke oke. We do have some talents... Lights hammer 10 yard aoe healing and damage. Quite nice. Again only if you can stack up for 10 seconds every minute or you can drop it on the melee in 25man. Holy Prism does really well in 10man mostly due to the smart heal effect and it being instant and usable while moving.

And then our champion spell Eternal Flame.
It helps us get past the HoPo limitations by having absorb shields from our mastery stay up longer and thus use it to prepare for big damage in advance. EF is also amazing for anything of DoT ability/debuff or a blanket constant damage ability from bosses(Primordius Ventral Sacs).
The key thing for me with EF is that it allows us to heal spread out targets a lot better. Yes you can't drop 5 EF's in 5 GCD's. But good luck casting 5 Divine lights right after a big damage that requires you to be spread out. Yes we could heal it perfectly fine with holy light and conserve a metric asston of mana. But them sneaky devs always give the boss a random debuff/ability that will strike somebody and it will kill them if we do not heal the entire group fast enough. And this is the Power of EF. You can save up 5 HoPo EF 1 target then holy shock the second and EF a third target. And 95% of the time your EF is still running for the next attack or you can refresh the shield with a 1 HoPo EF to keep that buffer there so they need less healing on the next round.

If you want to make a TLDR; 5 Single target heals. 2 10 yard Aoe heals. 1 30 yard weak aoe heal. 1 Super strong HoT because mastery.

Even without EF i feel we would still spam HR to generate HoPo to use WoG and Daybreak because there is no other option. Another single target spell that generates a shield isn't gonna do shit. It's gonna go to the tank who already has beacon.
Yes we have our hand spells and Devo and LoH but it's all shared so i'm not really counting them as a core part of our toolkit.

Conclusion.
So no more EF healing? Do i mind my numbers going down? Fuck no. Do i mind not being top HPS? nope. What i do mind is not being able to heal specific boss mechanics and therefore making paladins just terrible on top of nerfing our HPS. Yes HPS is important and if you deny it you better be in a top 10 guild for me to believe you on top of having some good arguments. No freaking raid is going to take any healer/dps/tank if they can't do their job and manage the boss mechanics. I can't think of a single fight that would require a healer who can do single target heals or 10 yard aoe heals. Fucking deathwing is still engraved in my brain asking ranged dps to stack so i can actually aoe heal them. Every time stack up ladies or your gonna die! stack! stack! stack!... DO NOT WANT THAT.

[Kaeth]

At this point, I'm tempted to say ... just scrap this whole talent tier. Make EF baseline for Holy, SS baseline for Prot, and SH baseline for Ret (though I understand some Rets prefer SS to SH, at least in PvE). Then give us a new set of talents at level 45 that aren't so critical and cookie-cutter for particular specs.

[Krekko]

At this point, I'm tempted to say ... just scrap this whole talent tier. Make EF baseline for Holy, SS baseline for Prot, and SH baseline for Ret (though I understand some Rets prefer SS to SH, at least in PvE). Then give us a new set of talents at level 45 that aren't so critical and cookie-cutter for particular specs.

If only it were that simple though, no?

[Dubalicious]

It helps us get past the HoPo limitations by having absorb shields from our mastery

This is a very good point, and is really the crux of the issue with nerfing the EF HoT. Without the strong HoT and subsequent mastery shielding, we are left with our base toolkit which had been propped up by that EF/IH interaction and really offers no other (comparable) options without additional changes (which I think we all still expect to happen).

[Freia]

Not sure if this is a paly alt (sounds more like a shaman), but someone on the wow forums kinda sums it up:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...6556?page=3#44
All of this talk about 'Obsession with HPS' is rediculous.
All top guilds - ALL OF THEM, will take the healers that are strongest - AKA the healers with the best THROUGHPUT and with the best cooldowns.

The paladin 'QQ' is justified. What do they bring to the table? A devo aura? Get a tank or dps to bring that. From what I've seen in the PTR, they definitely don't bring any throughput and they're getting outhealed by the tanks. A guild will not bring them for a 'tank healer' because other healers will be way more efficient for that. The druid living seed buff alone will make them insane tank healers.

Haha that thread. I had to just leave it. Gotta love when that horrible druid from my server goes into every thread to bitch about how OP paladins are.

This idea that paladins niche is tank and spot healing needs to go the hell away.

[Sorshen]

Only warriors and DKs get Riposte (the critical hit rating for 20sec buff)... eh?

[Kyuuseishu]

Only warriors and DKs get Riposte (the critical hit rating for 20sec buff)... eh?

Wrong thread xD

[Deleted]

Haha that thread. I had to just leave it. Gotta love when that horrible druid from my server goes into every thread to bitch about how OP paladins are.

This idea that paladins niche is tank and spot healing needs to go the hell away.

We have been great tank healers for entire expansions, the belief Paladins are for tank healing will probably never go away. And tbh it was a very good niche back when tanks needed healing and spot healing was a question of skill.

Edit: Did you know most priests believe they should always be the number 1 healing class because they were the first Primary healers and they have 2 healing specs? Not even kidding. Deep inside every priest reading this knows its true.

[Freia]

We have been great tank healers for entire expansions, the belief Paladins are for tank healing will probably never go away. And tbh it was a very good niche back when tanks needed healing and spot healing was a question of skill.

Edit: Did you know most priests believe they should always be the number 1 healing class because they were the first Primary healers and they have 2 healing specs? Not even kidding. Deep inside every priest reading this knows its true.

Yes I know. I healed back when we were the "tank healer". Blizzard has decided they don't want a healer to be classified as "tank healer" because that will then make them mandatory. What was the case expansions ago is no longer the case today.

Almost every class/spec thinks they should be number 1. We have had a ton of monks come to our forums claiming the same crap and making dumb excuses for why they should be the top healer. And I even have seen shadow priests saying they should be number 1 on dps because shadow is their only dps spec.

[Pasture]

The bugged Tier 6 talents weren't as big of a deal since no changes were planned, we know what these abilities do.

The tier 6 talents aren't bugged, despite what that blue post said. The patch notes state that mastery no longer works with hots and those abilities are hots. They forgot about these abilities. It's an oversight rather than a bug.

[Dubalicious]

We have been great tank healers for entire expansions, the belief Paladins are for tank healing will probably never go away. And tbh it was a very good niche back when tanks needed healing and spot healing was a question of skill.

I wouldn't even mind being put back in the "tank healer" niche if they brought back the same type of 2-shot/global'd tank damage that used to exist. Come to think of it, can they bring that back anyway? (I realize my opinion that I wouldn't mind being in that niche again isn't a very popular one, but it's not gonna happen anyway so don't fret)

[nightfalls]

I wouldn't even mind being put back in the "tank healer" niche if they brought back the same type of 2-shot/global'd tank damage that used to exist. Come to think of it, can they bring that back anyway? (I realize my opinion that I wouldn't mind being in that niche again isn't a very popular one, but it's not gonna happen anyway so don't fret)

It's not the healing that's the issue, it's the tanking. The new active mitigation system isn't going away (from a tank pov, that's a good thing, since AM is a lot more fun than passive mitigation and relying on external heals alone).

So if you made bosses 2-shot/global tanks who are properly using their active mitigation, this means tanks who are not doing so (read: noobs/bads) will basically be unable to do any sort of LFR/whatever, and it's going to make them all quit and we'll not have many tanks around.

[Dubalicious]

It's not the healing that's the issue, it's the tanking. The new active mitigation system isn't going away (from a tank pov, that's a good thing, since AM is a lot more fun than passive mitigation and relying on external heals alone).

So if you made bosses 2-shot/global tanks who are properly using their active mitigation, this means tanks who are not doing so (read: noobs/bads) will basically be unable to do any sort of LFR/whatever, and it's going to make them all quit and we'll not have many tanks around.

Sad but true =(

I don't like to think about these types of things, makes me wonder why I still play a game that is, often times, developed around making sure people do "ok" even when they do poorly.