Paladin Real Talk: Is Holy Viable in Legion?

[Jaylock]

So I am considering switching my main (currently mage) to a holy paladin come Legion, and I wanted to know from people who have tested holy out in the beta what are the strengths of the spec in comparison to the other healing classes in Legion?

Is Holy Paladin a viable raid healer? In combination with other healing classes, will they perform well? In terms of total output / healing efficiency, will holy be on top of the meters?

[Aftersight]

Without raid testing it's hard to say how they will compare to other healers performance wise since numbers are always fluctuating in beta. As of right now, holy is fine but not great. Their current healing numbers is good but mechanically I think it falls short of the other healers. It's mastery seems like an after thought now since blizzard seems really confused on what they want the play style to be. I don't see them topping the healing charts but I don't see them at the bottom either. It'll be good in raids since it still retains tons of raid utility, but some are worried about their low mobility, especially when you have to be moving from group to group to maximize the potency of your mastery. It's in a weird place play style wise, but they get the job done.

[Taeldorian]

Viable? Yes. Watch Sparty Smallwood stream holy, he's been playing forever. You can check out his old raid testing videos and see for yourself as well. Although I wouldn't because that's when we had the ridiculous battle healer playstyle, so I'd wait until they unlock raid testing. If anything is undertuned that's when it'll probably be buffed.

As of this moment holy in my opinion is very fun, it's definitely viable but there is some worry.

Some including myself are worried that during fights that have everyone spread or a lot of people spread means our heals won't be good, but then we have rule of law which increases the reach of our heals and our mastery by 50% for 10 seconds and it has 2 charges, that means realistically we only wait 10 seconds before using it again if we use it twice in a row, then we wait another 10, etc. This is a tremendous help, but it's on the same tier as divine steed which is our only mobility option. That makes things extremely annoying.

Celestalon did just make a post about re-arranging talents which could be great news for us. Hopefully they don't mess up and not move divine steed or RoL.

Other than that, it's extremely fun and definitely viable. One of the more interactive and fun healers so far on the beta. I just don't wanna get fucked because of my mastery but I'm hopeful blizzard won't let that happen and we do have a talent that helps tremendously on spread fights (mentioned above). Overall, it's good and it's viable. We still have to worry about the issue above until it's resolved though.