[WoD] Holy Paladin Megathread

[Lucyrotten]

Not even that, it just makes for extraordinarily shitty gameplay.

That too, but in no way does it solve any problem that exists with the class to only have it work on effective healing.

[Pasture]

Then get rid of IH (and figure out something to replace it with), but having a core mechanic be triggered only by effective (and not over) heals is absolutely dumb and dare I say, retarded.

I think we all on the forums know that, yes, you do dare say it.......

If they can't make IH anything other than spam AoE heals for shields then by all means let's get rid of it. It has the effect of making a Paladin feel really dull when you're well geared and you can dump even more expensive heals into raid members on full health.

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Not even that, it just makes for extraordinarily shitty gameplay. We want healers to have more fun during farm, not less, and making a healing class literally "break" because you cannot get off effective healing is absolutely stupid.

What on earth are you talking about?

This is the problem with IH as it stands. People like you think it's the only option now. You do have other abilities. Improve the other abilities and weaken the shields. It's not rocket science.

[nightfalls]

If they can't make IH anything other than spam AoE heals for shields then by all means let's get rid of it. It has the effect of making a Paladin feel really dull when you're well geared and you can dump even more expensive heals into raid members on full health.

Mana is supposed to be the limitation to that. Right now, the problem is not that we are so swimming in mana we "can" just dumb near-100% overheals for shields, but there is little to do besides dump ~100% overheals for shields so that we can plan for incoming damage. Unlike Shaman, when incoming high damage hits, we have far worse reactive tools to take care of it without using shields. So it's a problem with the healing game as is, not with IH.

In any case, I'm done with this particular discussion other than that my point (tying things only to effective heals is absolutely stupid) stands totally. I don't think you thought your "brilliant idea" through, one bit.

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This is the problem with IH as it stands. People like you think it's the only option now. You do have other abilities. Improve the other abilities and weaken the shields. It's not rocket science.

And it supposedly isn't "rocket science" to realize that tying things to effective heals is absolutely dumb, but I guess that was beyond you...

[Pasture]

That too, but in no way does it solve any problem that exists with the class to only have it work on effective healing.

To be fair, I'm targeting IH because I think it makes for horrible play. Making it not proc on overheals is the only way that people will stop spamming (because we will always have enough mana to spam at the end of the expansion). If it stays like it is we will always spam people on full health as a core Holy Paladin mechanic. I want it to go away.

But it sounds like you guys find it enjoyable so maybe it's just me.

[Lucyrotten]

To be fair, I'm targeting IH because I think it makes for horrible play. Making it not proc on overheals is the only way that people will stop spamming (because we will always have enough mana to spam at the end of the expansion). If it stays like it is we will always spam people on full health as a core Holy Paladin mechanic. I want it to go away.

But it sounds like you guys find it enjoyable so maybe it's just me.

I hardly find it enjoyable but for a lot of the fights in SoO it's the only thing to do. Priests shield better than we do, everyone but priests heal better than we do. The only to do is stack some shields proactively and then try to go ham and get some real healing in between the tranqs and HTT. It's a problem with both healer balance and fight mechanics. Changing the way our mastery works in the way you describe only makes the mastery terrible but doesn't fix any of the causal issues that make it good now.

[nightfalls]

Making it not proc on overheals is the only way that people will stop spamming

That is the only thing making for truly "horrible play" - again I'm being "gentle" and going to just say you didn't think anything through at all(*). Please come back when you have and actually have an idea that isn't going to be total shit when implemented.

But it sounds like you guys find it enjoyable so maybe it's just me.

That was my suggestion, which was to change mastery and make IH a flat 20%. That will significantly nerf IH but not make gameplay shit. Removing IH and replacing it (which somehow, I had to point that out as an option to you) will also remove shielding altogether but not make gameplay shit. Your "brilliant idea" does little to fix actual issues as Lucy pointed out, but only makes gameplay even more shit. Do you see the difference?

You haven't thought anything through other than repeating your "brilliant idea" - you just saw what you perceived to be a problem (heal spamming for the secondary effects) and went for your gut reaction (make secondary effects only proc on effective healing) without ANY analysis as to what the actual consequences (numerous and disastrous) of said implementation would be... IMO this is what the game needs a LOT less of today. /sigh.

(*) The other possible conclusion is that you have no ability to think at all, but I like to have faith we are all educated here.

Anyway, this thread's been hijacked enough... back to actual ideas, please? Pretty please? (I'll respond some more when I come back as to what CD's we could use).

[Pasture]

In any case, I'm done with this particular discussion other than that my point (tying things only to effective heals is absolutely stupid) stands totally. I don't think you thought your "brilliant idea" through, one bit.

No one but you claimed it was brilliant. You silly billy.

I think the whole system could use a leaning toward more actually being smart with heals and less AoE and smart heals.

I would much rather our mastery be tied to effective healing and be less useful, along the lines of Shaman mastery, than be so defining and destructive to the spec like it is now.

And it supposedly isn't "rocket science" to realize that tying things to effective heals is absolutely dumb, but I guess that was beyond you...

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(*) The other possible conclusion is that you have no ability to think at all, but I like to have faith we are all educated here.

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Anyway, this thread's been hijacked enough... back to actual ideas, please? Pretty please? (I'll respond some more when I come back as to what CD's we could use).

Maybe you could specify a list of agreeable ideas to save you having to RAGE.

[Freia]

No one but you claimed it was brilliant. You silly billy.

I think the whole system could use a leaning toward more actually being smart with heals and less AoE and smart heals.

I would much rather our mastery be tied to effective healing and be less useful, along the lines of Shaman mastery, than be so defining and destructive to the spec like it is now.

Maybe you could specify a list of agreeable ideas to save you having to RAGE.

Without any changes to our current toolkit(and likely nerfs to the toolkits of other classes), changing our mastery to only proc on effective healing would break the class. Atm the only thing keeping Paladins afloat in 25m is mastery. If you took away all mastery procced from overhealing, it would just drop them and it would in no way stop the spamming because every class is spamming to snip as much healing as possible. Paladins would just spam hoping to heal the damage because if you wait for it to happen it is probably going to be snipped by the Healing Rains, Healing Streams, Atonements, Efflorescences, etc. as proven by nearly every 25m holy paladin log. I think there are better ways to go about stopping spam healing over your idea, and I'd rather see that happen before touching our mastery.

[Clrg]

We dont have enough information to draw a conclusion that with X change the spec will be destroyed.

[Pasture]

Without any changes to our current toolkit(and likely nerfs to the toolkits of other classes), changing our mastery to only proc on effective healing would break the class. Atm the only thing keeping Paladins afloat in 25m is mastery. If you took away all mastery procced from overhealing, it would just drop them and it would in no way stop the spamming because every class is spamming to snip as much healing as possible. Paladins would just spam hoping to heal the damage because if you wait for it to happen it is probably going to be snipped by the Healing Rains, Healing Streams, Atonements, Efflorescences, etc. as proven by nearly every 25m holy paladin log. I think there are better ways to go about stopping spam healing over your idea, and I'd rather see that happen before touching our mastery.

I agree that we'd need other changes to move away from that playstyle AND still be effective healers. It's core to how we heal right now. I'm sure there are better ways to achieve it than my suggestion and hopefully we will see some of them in the notes (or suggested on here).

My concern is that unless they make it impossible to play like we do now we're going to fall straight back into it mid expansion. I think it will take a really big deterrent, a really big incentive, or just making it flat out impossible, to stop it. Little tweaks here and there I don't think will do the job. So long as we can roll shields, and mana permits, we're always going to be using HR as a filler regardless of the situation.

Tbh I really want it to change but I'm not hopeful that it will (and it's just my personal irk about Paladin healing).

[nightfalls]

I think there are better ways to go about stopping spam healing

So first of all, I think we need to step back a bit when it comes to stopping spam healing...

1. Mana should matter again, I think most people agree with that idea but in practice it's been failed to be carried out over and over.

Short of dropping Spirit entirely, I think its significance toward mana regen needs to be a lot, lot less and maybe reducing it only to certain pieces of gear is the right way to go. In any case I think this old cycle of "always oom in first tier" to "spam spam spam in last tier" has gotten ridiculous, and I'd much rather see mana regen fixed around what mid-tier (ToT for instance) levels are - a happy medium.

2. ST healing needs to be reworked. The 3 spells for just one effect (heal one target for X) has been a totally uninteresting button-bloat failed model. Would rather just see Flash Heal and Greater Heal, with ST spells costing a lot less mana. To that though, AoE heals should cost more mana and I think more classes need an option for using faster AoE heals as a "mana dump." It's pretty ridiculous a 6 target heal costs as much as a 1 target heal.

3. Others have said this but much less smart/blanket healing, much less passive % absorbs which needs to be on all classes. Also think that 3 minute CD's on other classes (HTT/etc.) need nerfs if not massive ones at that. Part of the reason 3 minute CD's are so OP is just because of the arms race that Disc Priests have started.

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In any case, stuff that requires too long to build up, or is meant to be a penalty, or requires just horrible use of mechanics to accomplish isn't really the goal. I'd like a class that is actually fun to play.

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We dont have enough information to draw a conclusion that with X change the spec will be destroyed.

No, but we know what bad mechanics are. Examples: "OP effect but kills yourself." Anything in combat that has a 10 second cast time, goes on.

[Freia]

We dont have enough information to draw a conclusion that with X change the spec will be destroyed.

Did you not notice the "without any other changes to our toolkit" part? I made it more than clear that I am looking at the suggested change to mastery without any other changes. The suggested change would not succeed in doing what the person who suggested wants it to do nor did he make any suggestion to help the obvious hit it would do to our hps. Your post was not needed.

[nightfalls]

Did you not notice the "without any other changes to our toolkit" part? I made it more than clear that I am looking at the suggested change to mastery without any other changes. The suggested change would not succeed in doing what the person who suggested wants it to do nor did he make any suggestion to help the obvious hit it would do to our hps. Your post was not needed.

It was not, but I think it's worth keeping in mind that bad mechanics are bad regardless of context, but tuning needs to be done with all classes in mind. As far as I am aware, at this point we really should be thinking about mechanics and not tuning, while there have been issues in the past I do trust Blizzard at tuning most mechanics once they are done

[Lovestar]

I expect the reason it was ignored is because each spec will have its own scaling with regards to Readiness. Thus, they'll tweak it such that it will not be a crappy stat even if the cooldowns it affects aren't something to write home about.

This is one of those situations I feel like there's not much hope on; either they make Readiness a mutant stat that's totally inconsistent from spec to spec (making sharing gear irritating, or even adding extra features to Readiness until it becomes so convoluted it's absurd), they make it a Tertiary perk, or they scrap it. Readiness is not going to work as a 2nd-tier stat competing with 'real' stats.

It would be cute and appealing as a Tertiary you just "get" unpredictably like Movespeed or Lifesteal, and as a stat on Trinkets like we have in SoO.

[Lumineux]

1. Mana should matter again, I think most people agree with that idea but in practice it's been failed to be carried out over and over.

I agree with your premise but the problem I see with this is that it could potentially lead to standing around waiting for mana to regen and this called being "efficient" (since this has been blizzards only way to make mana matter). Standing around doing nothing is not fun - just ask any DPS on Nazgrim how much they love standing around waiting for defensive stance to be done (assuming adds are dead). It's not fair to ask healers to stand around "to wait for mana to regen" (what a fun and exciting mechanic!) and do nothing just as much as it's no fun for dps and tanks to stand around and do nothing.

This could potentially be solved by having active forms of regen (and no, I do not consider standing and meleeing a boss for mana to be an active regen, something that could be done while afk). Like making it so casting Holy Light (our efficient heal) also returns some mana. This would force us to not only cast our efficient but low HPS spells but give a more fun way to regen mana and reward good game play. With this model you could also potentially just take out all the mana regen CDs (Divine Plea, Shadowfiend, Innervate, etc.). Or you know, even something like mana tea for all classes would be better than standing around to passively regen mana.

And this is completely unrelated to what I just said, but speaking of holy light and how old abilities will be upgraded when we level - wouldn't it be nifty if the upgrade for holy light was a splash heal like we had in ICC? Doesn't have to be OP like it was back then, would just be a fun upgrade. But they've said they're toning down smart heals anyways so I doubt it would happen :|

[nightfalls]

@Lumineux: I was actually thinking this would be better for a blog post, because while my ideal model of the game has mana as the main "throttle," it's not the most ideal thing. Even if it was your fault, running on fumes because you didn't plan ahead 5 minutes in advance is not really fun.

One thing that could be done is a Mana Tea model for Paladins too which converts Holy Power spending to Mana. I don't really like Holy Light as is, I think the model of "shitty but efficient" is outdated. I'd rather see a model where Fast Cast costs more than Slow Cast and Group Healing costs more than ST Healing.

It sucks, but I guess as I pointed out earlier there's not much to talk about until we see what the ideals for the 6.0 healing model are, since pretty much most big things have to be based around that (we aren't built in a vacuum). I'd rather see some obviously shitty abilities fixed, example, the healing version of Execution Sentence needs a redesign regardless of healing model.

[Deleted]

So first of all, I think we need to step back a bit when it comes to stopping spam healing...

1. Mana should matter again, I think most people agree with that idea but in practice it's been failed to be carried out over and over.

Short of dropping Spirit entirely, I think its significance toward mana regen needs to be a lot, lot less and maybe reducing it only to certain pieces of gear is the right way to go. In any case I think this old cycle of "always oom in first tier" to "spam spam spam in last tier" has gotten ridiculous, and I'd much rather see mana regen fixed around what mid-tier (ToT for instance) levels are - a happy medium.

2. ST healing needs to be reworked. The 3 spells for just one effect (heal one target for X) has been a totally uninteresting button-bloat failed model. Would rather just see Flash Heal and Greater Heal, with ST spells costing a lot less mana. To that though, AoE heals should cost more mana and I think more classes need an option for using faster AoE heals as a "mana dump." It's pretty ridiculous a 6 target heal costs as much as a 1 target heal.

3. Others have said this but much less smart/blanket healing, much less passive % absorbs which needs to be on all classes. Also think that 3 minute CD's on other classes (HTT/etc.) need nerfs if not massive ones at that. Part of the reason 3 minute CD's are so OP is just because of the arms race that Disc Priests have started.

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In any case, stuff that requires too long to build up, or is meant to be a penalty, or requires just horrible use of mechanics to accomplish isn't really the goal. I'd like a class that is actually fun to play.

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No, but we know what bad mechanics are. Examples: "OP effect but kills yourself." Anything in combat that has a 10 second cast time, goes on.

1. The issue with mana is that its not tied with Spirit at all. Do you know how many times the class with the most spirit had the best mana regeneration in the history of WoW? Not even a single time. Every time some mechanic of some class was messed up and allowed them to have infinite mana and low spirit/mp5 levels.

Mana should matter, I should not want to spam spells pointlessly of course...but you shouldn't ever be punished for casting the right thing. Right now for example its really punishing to play EF as a paladin because of the mana cost of Holy Radiance(God bless metagem procs) and you simply have no options in spells there.

2. Single target cast timed heals are the hardest spells to land without overhealing and yet the least rewarded

1)Tanks self heal for so much you can forget healing them
2)Smart heals+ground effects+raid cds are too powerful

To make matters worse they also cost insane amounts of mana and for us don't even generate Holy Power without beacon being involved. Its just a joke.

3. The biggest mistake Blizzard has EVER done(outside of disc priests) was scale cds like HTT and Tranq to 25 man. Their reasoning for doing it was bad to begin with, yeah Devotion Aura affects 10 ppl in 10 man and 25 people in 25 man so obviously there's better scaling, but Tranq/HTT solo healed mechanics in 10 man. Guess what, now they solo heal stuff in 25 also.
And then they had to buff Dstar for Disc Priests to "compensate" and we end up with the worst state of healing in history.


Anyway, this is a thread for Paladins and WoD, so more focus on Paladin& the Future and less on past and present.

I'd personally be really happy if we could get the old Daybreak from Cataclysm back.

I'm really trying to get that mechanic back to life, and if possible I'd like to ask anyone who agrees to tweet it to Celestalon https://twitter.com/Celestalon .

For new(post Cataclysm) paladins Daybreak used to be:

Your Flash of Light, Holy Light and Divine Light have a 20% chance to make your next Holy Shock not trigger a cd if used within 12 seconds.

This talent is(to me) the essence of how Paladins should be, not the Holy Radiance Illuminated Healing spamming monkeys we became due to all this aoe bullshit.

[Binko]

Perhaps it's time for the current mana system to go away completely. Mana has never really worked well. Back in the early days healers had to stop and drink after every pull which is little more than an artificial slowdown mechanic. In recent times healers just play around with their spirit until they have enough mana to last through fights.

Instead you could treat mana like a Monk's Chi. Some spells could be mana generators and some spells consumers. Healing would revolve around managing the casting of your generators to build up mana for the more valuable consuming spells. This could be much more elegant than the current clunky model of mana.

[Lucyrotten]

Perhaps it's time for the current mana system to go away completely. Mana has never really worked well. Back in the early days healers had to stop and drink after every pull which is little more than an artificial slowdown mechanic. In recent times healers just play around with their spirit until they have enough mana to last through fights.

Instead you could treat mana like a Monk's Chi. Some spells could be mana generators and some spells consumers. Healing would revolve around managing the casting of your generators to build up mana for the more valuable consuming spells. This could be much more elegant than the current clunky model of mana.

We have "chi" called "holy power" which does exactly what you're saying.

[Tyranader]

All I want for WoD is Guardian to be changed to be something like a HTT or Tranq.