Instants given cast times - how does it affect playstyle?

[The Penguin]

Title says it all. Thinking of leveling or boosting a Holy Paladin for WoD. The fact that Eternal Flame, Word of Glory and Light of Dawn are now cast time spells concerns me however given the assumed ramp up time. ( I main a Rogue atm ).

Is this change helpful or cumbersome?

I wanted to also know if the people on the Beta were finding any disparity between the current WoG and LoD, and the one with the cast time. This information would probably help me in figuring out whether I want to try the class, or another. Instant Casts are sort of a big part of the game.

I heard the Devs Furor and Tigole have a special hate for the Class stemming from EQ or some stupid thing. Because I don't want to play something that radically changes on a whim, some thoughts and input will tell me whether to try the class out or whether to stick to my rogue.

[Deleted]

Whether all those spells are instant or not shouldn't matter too much as everything will most likely be balanced around that. Also consider that spamming instant casts will drain your mana quickly, and downtime in between instant casts might as well be considered a cast time. The only real advantage to instant casts would be mobility.

[Raugnaut]

This means 3 things-1) all your heals now come in 1.5 seconds later then they normally would.
2) you can be interupted while casting these spells.
3) you cannot move while casting these spells.

Thats about it. 2 is more on the PvP side of things (There are only a very few fights per expansion where you have to worry about being interupted). 3 is more tricky on intensive movement fights. 1 COULD make a difference on ridiculously healing intensive fights, but I don't believe there has been one where a 1.5 second lag always made the difference between life and death.

You will notice the 3rd point more then the other 2 come WoD. The first one is basically unnoticable if you aren't moving, and the second one is almost of no concern except on a few very specific fights (I think Thok is the only interupt fight this expansion) for PvE (Is a noticable difference in PvP, but allmost all of the healer classes got hit with this)

[Xs]

The biggest difference so far is the feel of it, the obvious differences are very evident while we're not used to it, being movement (theres quite a bit of fire to move out of). The differences we'll see to come are in raiding, where heal sniping becomes a real bitch, which will level out a bit as our mana isn't quite as tight as it is with the pvp gear we have to play with.

[nightfalls]

At this point, it's extremely cumbersome in high-pressure situations if only because there's very few instants to begin with, and taking away most of the few instants a class has is pretty crippling.

In terms of absolute theoretical HPS, nothing has changed, since 1.5 second cast is equal to a GCD in terms of HPET. In theory, how you use the abilities does not change, since again, the only differences are what Raugnaut pointed out.

In practice though, as is we'll likely be unable to handle raid mechanics that other classes can, unless either we are given back mobility or other classes are also nerfed and encounters become a lot less mobile in terms of requirement.

As for rerolling the class? I'll give the same advice I give to most. Sit back, wait, if you want to play the class play it. Things can change quickly especially in a Beta, but even post-launch, and people don't give this credit. Even a small one-liner in patch notes can be abso-fucking-lutely game breaking, so don't take the current state as the state in a few months.

[Vash The Stampede]

Title says it all. Thinking of leveling or boosting a Holy Paladin for WoD.

What's this Holy Paladin you speak of? Is it like a ranged Ret Paladin dps?

Instant Casts are sort of a big part of the game.

MoP introduced instant cast spells for spell casters and it just made things worse, specifically for melee and PvP. Melee's big strength is the ability to dps on the move, which is something casters didn't have. In PvP, healing while moving also made killing healers harder. Hence why battle fatigue exists.

They're reverting it for all ranged casters, not just Holy.

[nightfalls]

MoP introduced instant cast spells for spell casters and it just made things worse, specifically for melee and PvP. Melee's big strength is the ability to dps on the move, which is something casters didn't have. In PvP, healing while moving also made killing healers harder. Hence why battle fatigue exists.

They're reverting it for all ranged casters, not just Holy.

Comments like this and ShadowyFanatic's are the least helpful comments OP and others reading can get.

===

Yes, most people (including myself) agree mobility and instants and healing needs to be tuned down from current. Yes, we agree some classes need more than others (see Holy thread regarding us versus druids) tuned down.

That still says absolutely nothing as to what the specific changes for Holy are going to do which is what the OP was asking about, and you saw the answer from other paladins (both good and bad) above. For that matter, without losing instant EF and LoD Holy mobility has already been reduced from Live, in both PvE (loss of SH) and PvP (change of 4 set bonus), to a degree.

My own contention above is this degree of loss currently in Beta is way too much. Some have disagreed on b.net forums, but they posted specifics (and, ya know, actually played a holy paladin instead of talking about it) instead of general statements like "we need less mobility" (duh?) that mean nothing.


P.S. Battle Fatigue exists because Resilience exists, health pools are too low relative to damage due to scaling. Not because healers are that overpowered out of that.

[The Penguin]

Part of my reason for asking is because I played a Healer in Cataclysm, but I felt really really overwhelmed in the transition from Wrath to Cata. Like I just didn't have the tools I needed to get the job done. Finally I just gave up on it. I like the Paladin Class in concept and always have considered trying it.. but it's a significant expense to boost or to level the toon all the way up. So I figured before I considered it I'd ask you guys opinions.

For my part, and maybe this is not correct.. but I thought that since Paladins already have to ramp up Holy Power before casting these spells, they above any others would make the most sense as Instant Casts. But if they must use a cast time.. why can't that be strictly for PVP? It just feels like a PVP change and since I haven't PVPed since 2005.. it irritates me.

I want to try the class, but at the same time the last thing I really want is to have a situation where I bust my tail to max out a toon and then it gets sidelined because other classes can do a better job. I played Druid and Rogue prior so the idea of many cast times worries me on if a Paladin which lacks a bubble like say a Priest, or the HoT up abilities of a Druid runs the risk of the character being insta gibbed before I can start doing my job. I mean I'll admit I'm not the best player, but I like to think I'm also not the worst.


Just don't want to deal with the stress-fest Cataclysm healing was again. Don't even get me started on LFD..

Thanks to all who have posted so far, I welcome more discussion or perspectives if any can give it from the Beta. I'd test it myself if I could but lacking that I have to rely on your input.

[nightfalls]

For my part, and maybe this is not correct.. but I thought that since Paladins already have to ramp up Holy Power before casting these spells, they above any others would make the most sense as Instant Casts.

That is my primary criticism and should be an "obvious" one.

Thanks to all who have posted so far, I welcome more discussion or perspectives if any can give it from the Beta. I'd test it myself if I could but lacking that I have to rely on your input.

I'd advise just waiting until closer to live before deciding. A lot of things are subject to change.

[Nurvus]

At this point, it's extremely cumbersome in high-pressure situations if only because there's very few instants to begin with, and taking away most of the few instants a class has is pretty crippling.

This is a perfect example of a distorted perspective.
Existing mechanics force Blizzard to design encounters in a certain way.
Changing the mechanics allows Blizzard to change their encounter design philosophy.
When I say encounter, it also applies to PvP combat pacing and dynamic.

So those "high-pressure" situations exist in their current form specially BECAUSE there is so much instant healing available, otherwise there would be absolutely no challenge...

If Blizzard takes away some instant healing, not only does it give Blizzard more leeway in encounter design, it also allows them to give healers powerful healing - because it's more counterable.

And we all know what happens when healing isn't counterable enough.
Whenever healing is too convenient (mobility, instants, etc) there must be loads of burst (PvP & PvE) to compensate.

We all know that in PvP seasons where there was insane burst healing, victory was ALWAYS decided by a mix of CC and burst damage.
Mostly burst damage, because even with CC-chains not enough burst usually meant endless arena matches.

[nightfalls]

This is a perfect example of a distorted perspective...

So those "high-pressure" situations exist in their current form specially BECAUSE there is so much instant healing available, otherwise there would be absolutely no challenge...

This is a perfect example of selective quotation. Here's just 2 lines down:

In practice though, as is we'll likely be unable to handle raid mechanics that other classes can, unless either we are given back mobility or other classes are also nerfed and encounters become a lot less mobile in terms of requirement.

[Freia]

Hey non-holy paladins! Maybe you shouldn't be responding to a thread asking how holy paladin changes effect the holy paladin playstyle.

This is a perfect example of a distorted perspective.
Existing mechanics force Blizzard to design encounters in a certain way.
Changing the mechanics allows Blizzard to change their encounter design philosophy.
When I say encounter, it also applies to PvP combat pacing and dynamic.

So those "high-pressure" situations exist in their current form specially BECAUSE there is so much instant healing available, otherwise there would be absolutely no challenge...

If Blizzard takes away some instant healing, not only does it give Blizzard more leeway in encounter design, it also allows them to give healers powerful healing - because it's more counterable.

And we all know what happens when healing isn't counterable enough.
Whenever healing is too convenient (mobility, instants, etc) there must be loads of burst (PvP & PvE) to compensate.

We all know that in PvP seasons where there was insane burst healing, victory was ALWAYS decided by a mix of CC and burst damage.
Mostly burst damage, because even with CC-chains not enough burst usually meant endless arena matches.

You want to know why there is so much burst in pve currently? Due to absorbs and smart heals(mostly absorbs), so please stop talking. Holy did not have a ton of instants. LoD and WOG/EF requires getting holy power which mostly came from casts except when the 5.4 Selfless Healer spec happened which got completely reverted. And holy paladin pvp? Yea holy paladins are not the healer that had it too good. And the two healers that did still are healing with mostly instants.

[Diggy]

Quoting Blizzard'd wishful thinking doesn't make you sound smart. In fact the effect is quite the opposite. When you do that, you are completely ignoring the state of other healers in the game, ignoring class specific problems such as requiring actual time to generate the holy power as opposed to spamming rejuvs and riptides. The argument comes down to "don't worry. It will be all right". Anyone who healed for a while at this point will know that everything will not be all right. Every time we are told healing will be fixed(surprise, surprise wod isn't the first, second or third expansion to make this claim), healing goes though a convoluted point and ends up in a horrible place such as the one on the live servers right now.

An example of "everything will be all right" idea going wrong would be 5.4 ptr. We were all told that it would be fine and we should trust developers to get us to the right state. We've sat it out and we shouldn't have. The only person was Aladya bombing GC's twitter at a time and what do you think? We ended up with Selfless Healer, the most idiotic talent in the game. A talent that every person that actually plays a holy paladin would agree that it needs to die in a most excruciating manner. Eternal Flame ended up being neutered to the point that it also became even more boring than it was before. We've all talked about it here in this thread since we actually have experience playing our class and spec and have a general idea of what could and couldn't work, but it all got ignored.

[nightfalls]

Even if "everything were alright" it would be because objectively the changes do not make Paladins any worse healers than other healer classes in both raids and PvP. Not because of some overused, overgeneralized phrase being bleated over and over.

[Vash The Stampede]

Comments like this and ShadowyFanatic's are the least helpful comments OP and others reading can get.

So are yours, but you don't see me complaining about it.

Yes, most people (including myself) agree mobility and instants and healing needs to be tuned down from current. Yes, we agree some classes need more than others (see Holy thread regarding us versus druids) tuned down.

And yet to some degree you agree with me.

My own contention above is this degree of loss currently in Beta is way too much. Some have disagreed on b.net forums, but they posted specifics (and, ya know, actually played a holy paladin instead of talking about it) instead of general statements like "we need less mobility" (duh?) that mean nothing.

Good, then maybe Paladins can get a mobility gap closer.

P.S. Battle Fatigue exists because Resilience exists, health pools are too low relative to damage due to scaling. Not because healers are that overpowered out of that.

P.S. Battle Fatigue exists for a lot of reasons. Mainly because healers are too good. Instant cast spells maybe just a minor part of the problem, but it was a problem.

Until open beta, you won't know how things will play out until then. Obviously the developers believe that Holy Paladins are going to be so strong that giving them cast time in abilities was the best way to nerf them. It's not like Blizzard hasn't done that throughout MoP.

[Viriel]

OP, the cast times on LoD and EF/WoG are big changes. I'm personally fine with it, but seeing videos of the dungeons with bosses where you constantly have to move it makes you wonder how paladins are supposed to be dealing with that.

Dukenukem, I agree having 85 instants is too much, and reducing the amount of instants in some way is good. However, as it currently is on the beta druids and holy priests have so much more movement, and several of the bosses I've seen require so much movement(See the whole video of blackrock spire by fatboss for instance) that the dungeon will be much easier on class X(in this case druids) than class Y(paladins). It's fine to reduce movement, but do so equally, you can only partly fix broken mechanics with number tuning.

[Simulacrum]

Dunno why so many people are here saying that the removal of instant casts is fine... well, except for Dukenukemx who seems to be here just to laugh at casters as a melee representative.

Assertions that a reduction to mobility will be a good thing is based on the almost certainly false premise that blizzard will design encounters around the expectation that mobility won't be extremely important. Even just from 5 man heroic encounters so far, mobility is often just that, and for heroic (or mythic or whatever) raids it almost certainly will be as well. I don't expect to see 5 mans having more complex encounter design.

I still see druids in beta jumping around like rabbits while spamming instant cast heals almost nonstop to keep everyone alive. If nothing changes, I expect this to be a huge problem, and personally? I've spent my free character lvl boost to boost a druid to max level just in case.

[Balazaar]

"Mobility? What's mobility?" asked the arcane mage.

[Xs]

P.S. Battle Fatigue exists for a lot of reasons. Mainly because healers are too good. Instant cast spells maybe just a minor part of the problem, but it was a problem.

Battle Fatigue exists for healers because it was forcing comps with Mortal Strike, Mortal Strike has existed since Vanilla and is just a mechanic that had its potential realised in TBC when matches started taking as long as Dota/Moba games and anyone without it would instantly lose. Its a result of healing being reasonably in-line with DPS, which required resilience to combat, and with the removal of resilience they simply removed the MS effect from players and added it to PvP to allow more class diversity. It has very little to do with healers being OP, and more to do with it being an unfair advantage for certain classes.

[Vash The Stampede]

Its a result of healing being reasonably in-line with DPS, which required resilience to combat, and with the removal of resilience they simply removed the MS effect from players and added it to PvP to allow more class diversity. It has very little to do with healers being OP, and more to do with it being an unfair advantage for certain classes.

Healing is "in-line with dps, and therefore resilience? Resilience is due to the lack of larger health pools compared to damage in. Remember, resilience only effected crit damage originally. So therefore damage was out of control since TBC.

Battle Fatigue is new to MoP and was introduced due to out of control healer scaling. That and matches that lasted forever. The introduction to casting in spells is meant to nerf healing in PvP and mobility in PvE. It was too stinking good. Get over it.