Pally AoE question

[Qadash]

Now, first off this is not a forum for QQ that pally's need an AoE heal. I am posing a question and want serious pallies to answer, not trolling from other classes. My healer is a resto druid. My friend has a holy pally and we've had our our discussion on the topic. From other forums, pally AoE heal is a hot topic. So my question is this..... As a pally, what do you think would be an acceptable AoE heal for your class? Obviously a group wide Lay Hands with a globalcooldown is retardedly OP. But serious responses please. I would like to here what the pally community thinks, other classes can chime in too, just no trolling please.

[xdwbx]

Between Beacon of Light, Judgement of Light, and the Holy Light glyph, I don't really see a need for a powerful AOE heal. Of course it would be nice, but we are fine without it. The glyph gives you a fighting chance in those "oh shit AOE damage" situations, and is infinitely better than what we had before, which was nothing. 10% of the total heal in a 5 yd radius is great and with holy shock proccing instant FoL we aren't bad off at all. With the high cost of Holy Light we obviously can't spam heal a group with this through an entire instance, but I see that as a good thing. In a large raid the strong AOE heals will be covered by other classes and in small groups you may just have to stop to drink after a hard pull/boss fight.

However, if I had to pick an AOE heal spell, I probably would go for something like changing our consecrate into a heal spell: ie it heals for x amt of damage over 8 secs with an 8-10yd range. Consecration already costs a decent amount of mana so you wouldnt want to spam it, and it forces either the paladin into the fray or people to come to him/her. Between our plate and bubble I see us as really the only healer that can run into some terrible AOE, dropping the healing consecrate around the tank/melee, and getting out without risking much. I think this would add a really neat dynamic to the class, but as it stands, we definitely dont need it. We had a lot less to work with before and still did what seemed to be more difficult instances/raids. Tbh I'd rather be seen as the underdog anyway and praised for my ability to get a group through some heavy AOE damage. Just my thoughts.

[b37x]

Whether paladins need an AoE heal will depends on Blizzard's instance design. They seem to be throwing in AoE damage as a way of challenging the healers. It certainly makes the game more interesting than only having to heal the tank. If beating content with a paladin healer becomes a herculean effort only the overgeared can achieve, they'll provide the tools we need. Otherwise, I think they're comfortable with Paladin healers being challenged more than the rest.

Personally, I think differentiating healers by what they can't do is poor design. Remember how they used to limit Tree-form druids to HoTs? I'd rather see unique approaches to the four tools every healer needs: damage shield, heal over time, direct healing, and aoe healing.

[xdwbx]

Personally, I think differentiating healers by what they can't do is poor design. Remember how they used to limit Tree-form druids to HoTs? I'd rather see unique approaches to the four tools every healer needs: damage shield, heal over time, direct healing, and aoe healing.

/agree. I couldn't have said it better.

[Evereghalo]

Between Beacon of Light, Judgement of Light, and the Holy Light glyph, I don't really see a need for a powerful AOE heal. Of course it would be nice, but we are fine without it. The glyph gives you a fighting chance in those "oh shit AOE damage" situations, and is infinitely better than what we had before, which was nothing. 10% of the total heal in a 5 yd radius is great and with holy shock proccing instant FoL we aren't bad off at all. With the high cost of Holy Light we obviously can't spam heal a group with this through an entire instance, but I see that as a good thing. In a large raid the strong AOE heals will be covered by other classes and in small groups you may just have to stop to drink after a hard pull/boss fight.

However, if I had to pick an AOE heal spell, I probably would go for something like changing our consecrate into a heal spell: ie it heals for x amt of damage over 8 secs with an 8-10yd range. Consecration already costs a decent amount of mana so you wouldnt want to spam it, and it forces either the paladin into the fray or people to come to him/her. Between our plate and bubble I see us as really the only healer that can run into some terrible AOE, dropping the healing consecrate around the tank/melee, and getting out without risking much. I think this would add a really neat dynamic to the class, but as it stands, we definitely dont need it. We had a lot less to work with before and still did what seemed to be more difficult instances/raids. Tbh I'd rather be seen as the underdog anyway and praised for my ability to get a group through some heavy AOE damage. Just my thoughts.

Very wierd yet interesting concept. Goes with how paladins have the stranger heal mechanics. Works like Holy shock damages and heals.

Would make grinding with a holy pally funny. it couldnt crit so it couldnt potentially be over powered. It is constrained enough to where u can run around and CoH everything. I would think it would be a cool mechanic. And would take good skill to make it effective.

great idea.

[xdwbx]

Obviously a group wide Lay Hands with a globalcooldown is retardedly OP.

After thinking about this more, I would almost like to see something like this on maybe a one day cool down, but it kills you like DI. That would be pretty hilarious.

[Tiredhealer]

We need a real AoE heal and not the current BoL. The main reason BoL needs to be changed is that it is a dead end spell for pallys. When dual spec comes out every raid should replace their holy pally with priest. A dual spec. priest will be able to go from Disc for tank healing to Holy for raid healing between every pull if necessary. A holy pally can be replaced by any spec now for tank healing while a holy pally cannot replace any other healing spec for raid healing. Blizz has stated that the disc vision was to be a tank healer equal to pallys.

If pallys settle for less tools than the other healing classes have, how will we compete for raid spots. BoL needs to be changed to a real AoE heal, beacon on a person and the rest of the person's party gets a heal equal to some percentage of the persons heal. Blizz can balance it, they know the raid content and how often it would need to be cast. It won't be as powerful as CoH because it's not smart, and it's limited to party. It would be most effective if the tank or someone else in the party is taking lots of damage, less effective if everyone in the party is taking the same damage. Best for 5 mans, not as good for overall raid healing.

Ask yourself if you're putting together a 10 man, would you want 2 pallys, or would you want someone with AoE and Hot heals. When you're attacking the the first boss and one pally has to heal only the tank, will you want your other healer to be a single target healer with BoL as his only way to heal 9 people from AoE damage. Would you want a pally who cannot move and heal very well, to be on raid healing, while everyone including the healer needs to be constantly moving out of the AoE damage?

If your answer is take only one pally, it proves my point, however would you, putting together the same 10 man, be afraid to take 2 priest as your healers? If you're honest 2 priest wouldn't be a problem, 2 pallys would be a problem.

This example proves the weakness of our class with BoL. If we can be replaced by any other class, we should be able to replace any of them. "Bring the player not the Class" just doesn't seem apply to Holy Pallys.

Someone said Beacon is a good as it gets for a direct healer, why should pallys have to settle for a niche, instead of a healer equal to all the other classes. The fact that conditions were put on how good Beacon is it proof it's not a great heal. He didn't say it was a good as it gets for a healer. No other healing class is asking for BoL, in truth most pallys don't want it, since it's inception in various forms holy pallys have attempted to leave it and get as deep in Retro as possible. We've been herded back to holy by moving the spells holy wanted deeper and deeper into the Retro tree.

Some where in Blizz's vast spread sheet of values, pallys are getting the short end of the stick. Content has changed and with it how spells are valued for balance needs to be adjusted. I don't know if it is our plate, useless while healing 40 yards from the fight, or our bubble, which can be dispelled now, or what ever it was, it's now out of balance. When dual spec gets here how are you going to balance a priest being able to move from a great AoE healer to a great direct healer with classes that don't have that option.

It seems this will create the hero class of healer. AoE first boss, COH Priest, Tank and Spank second boss, Disc Priest, just keep changing to the spec that best fits the situation.

So remember when you considering our curent AoE healing abilities, it's not the current content we should be concerned with, it's the future harder instances that we'll need better tools for.

[Dimelos]

However, if I had to pick an AOE heal spell, I probably would go for something like changing our consecrate into a heal spell: ie it heals for x amt of damage over 8 secs with an 8-10yd range. Consecration already costs a decent amount of mana so you wouldnt want to spam it, and it forces either the paladin into the fray or people to come to him/her. Between our plate and bubble I see us as really the only healer that can run into some terrible AOE, dropping the healing consecrate around the tank/melee, and getting out without risking much. I think this would add a really neat dynamic to the class, but as it stands, we definitely dont need it. We had a lot less to work with before and still did what seemed to be more difficult instances/raids. Tbh I'd rather be seen as the underdog anyway and praised for my ability to get a group through some heavy AOE damage. Just my thoughts.

I've seen that idea before, and tbh I think it's a bad idea. Healers aren't supposed to be close to the tank/melee. Having to be that close can lead to possible wipes from getting attacked from the mobs or even cleaved if you are positioned wrong or if the mob had to be moved and it happened to be moved in a way that made you in cleave range.

[gorefist]

Ask yourself if you're putting together a 10 man, would you want 2 pallys, or would you want someone with AoE and Hot heals. When you're attacking the the first boss and one pally has to heal only the tank, will you want your other healer to be a single target healer with BoL as his only way to heal 9 people from AoE damage. Would you want a pally who cannot move and heal very well, to be on raid healing, while everyone including the healer needs to be constantly moving out of the AoE damage?

You do realise that if you cast Beacon of Light on the tank you can actually cast heals on other people besides the tank AND heal the tank at the same time? Of course to make this kind of arrangement work requires you to not just spamheal mindlessly. So, I honestly wouldn't mind taking 2 paladins as healers for a 10man raid group, given that they are reasonably skilled players.

And correct me if I'm wrong here, but couldn't both of the paladins cast BoL on the tank and keep healing the raid and if the raid doesn't take enough damage to BoL to keep tank up throw heals on tank when necessary. But I do not know if you can even cast two different BoLs on one person.

From what I've seen and heard paladins do have the tools for group healing, maybe not as good as those of the priests' and druids', but where they lack in one area, they have other areas that they are stronger.

[cerbul]

Diversity will be always the best way to form a group.
For 5/10 ppl heroics/raids is realy useful to take 1/2 paladins.
Paladins don't have aoe heal, but they have other great tools to manage hard damage situations wich are in my opinion a must for any raid. Abilities like Divine Shield, Hand of salvation, Hand of Protection, Hammer of justice/Righteous Defence(yes, as a healer) and the "smart" use of Holy shock/Divine Favor/Beacon of Light can prevent damage, not aoe heal out of it. To be honest a stackable BoL would solve this issue for larger raids. Besides the the fact that paladins can heal high amounts of health for tanks, situations where the tank gets alot of damage in a small amount of time can be saved with holy shock (in this case I am missing the old mechanic when critical holy shock would have made the next holy light critical - i would have always kept it for tank or any other situations when holy light would have been desperately needed).
I'm sure all raid leaders would like to take 2 paladins in 10 ppl raids and at least 3 in 25 ppl raids, wich is not bad.
The real question is that the 2 paladins taken in 10 ppl raids would be or not healers. In 10 ppl raids most likely will be 1 pala healer and 1 retri, or will be a pala tank and a retri. But in last case, the tankadin and the retri won;t be able to use the agro/protection tools as good as a paladin healer.
Now to subject:
Would be realy useful for a paladin to have a chance to cleanse double effects based on their holy crit chance, or even the ability to use the beacon of light as a multi cleanse source, based on range to the beacon.
Also if there would ever be an AoE heal for paladin I see it only as the beacon pulsating heals based of the distance between the beacon and the players that receive heals.
Asuming those 2 ideas become true, there will always be at least 2 holy paladins in raids. One for tank/melee beacon/mass cleansing and one for ranged/casters beacon/mass cleasing. There will be alot of cases when casters need to spread out and keep distance between eachother and in this case, comes into play the use of stackable beacon on the tank, or the main tank/offtank beacon.
Tools we have at the moment, together with the new holy shock, makes the paladin more useful in raids. Only thing would make us to compete with priests a bit more, would be the already raised level of criticals(as I've noticed in the lvl 80 gear) and the future posibility to aoe cleanse, wich priests have too. The beacon of light remains unsolved at the moment, and if they don't change it to an AoE source of heals then at elast make it stackable.

Edit: I do believe that priests are in advantage here because they can mass cleanse, but in disadvantage because they can't realy make a way out of agro situations. Druids also I feel they should have some way of protecting a target and shamans have already all they could desire for

[Tiredhealer]

You do realise that if you cast Beacon of Light on the tank you can actually cast heals on other people besides the tank AND heal the tank at the same time? Of course to make this kind of arrangement work requires you to not just spamheal mindlessly.

Beacon doesn't work on over heals, so you probably using flash heals on other party members, you usually can't keep a tank up using only flash heals. I don't think beacon will stack so both pallies putting beacon on the tank is not an option. With both pallys moving constantly to avoid AoE damage it would be pretty risky imo not to mostly have one heal the tank directly.

Using global cooldowns for judging, to keep you haste up and watching beacon timers, throw in some cleanses, protections, and salvation and it seems there will be little time to actually wack a mole.

This is just my opinion, but it seems in most situations you would be off by bringing a dual spec priest than any dual spec combo you can think of pally. A priest as disc is a good single target healer that has somewhat greater AoE heals and a Hot. If the AoE damage is greater just respec Holy.

And the real question is not if a pally can do it, but is it harder for a pally to do it, does it take a better group for a pally to do it, and can a pally healer take the place of any other healer when necessary in any role.

[lumnights]

Regarding the AoE Healing Consecrate idea...

I've seen that idea before, and tbh I think it's a bad idea. Healers aren't supposed to be close to the tank/melee. Having to be that close can lead to possible wipes from getting attacked from the mobs or even cleaved if you are positioned wrong or if the mob had to be moved and it happened to be moved in a way that made you in cleave range.

I totally see your point and I agree to a certain extent, but I think that could be part of the challenge; Knowing when you rush in for a consecrate. Bubble is also your friend.

How about every 1-2 min, paladins have a cooldown to use that makes their next healing spell affect all party members within XX yards of the original target. Just to keep things not-too-OP, blizz could make the spell reduce the healed amount by 25-50%. That would keep paladins from being able to heal 30,000+ total health with one spell, and would stop them from dying instantly afterwards from healing aggro.

I like BoL personally, especially Hand of Sacrifice on the tank and BoL on myself during hard-hitting bosses. But I do think that pallies need SOME kind of AoE help. Nothing spammable, but something to help with those times when you have to decide who gets to live and who has to die because some boss tossed a huge AoE and you can't single-target heal fast enough.

Peace everyone.

[xdwbx]

I've seen that idea before, and tbh I think it's a bad idea. Healers aren't supposed to be close to the tank/melee. Having to be that close can lead to possible wipes from getting attacked from the mobs or even cleaved if you are positioned wrong or if the mob had to be moved and it happened to be moved in a way that made you in cleave range.

Perhaps approaching the boss from behind would work. We also have plate/bubble, which is more than any other healing class has. What about some of the AoEs that some of the very squishy DPS classes have where they have to use them at close range to the boss..ie mages and shamans. They have less of a chance than us and while losing a DPS is in most cases not as crucial as losing a healer, it can just as easily lead to a wipe.

Its just an idea anyway. Perhaps it would suit you more if it would work similar to the way consecrate works, but that we could cast it at a range, like a mage's blizzard except without having to channel it.

[Aerius]

To people who argue against pallies getting an AoE heal, trying healing the last boss of Halls of Lightning with a paladin, and then rethink your statement.

As has been said many times before, here is heal efficiency compared to a Priest (just an example)

Tank healing;
Paladins = 100%
Priest = 90%/95%

Raid healing;
Priest = 100%
Paladins = 30%

Yes, paladins aren't an AoE class, and our niche is single-target heals. But that doesn't mean that we never have a situation when we need to heal more than 1 person (5-mans much?)

[dimiaerl]

This is just my opinion, but it seems in most situations you would be off by bringing a dual spec priest than any dual spec combo you can think of pally. A priest as disc is a good single target healer that has somewhat greater AoE heals and a Hot. If the AoE damage is greater just respec Holy.

And the real question is not if a pally can do it, but is it harder for a pally to do it, does it take a better group for a pally to do it, and can a pally healer take the place of any other healer when necessary in any role.

A disc priest has what.. Holy Nova? Prayer of Healing? I think both limited to party-only.

GC:
Healers are in a slightly different situations from tanks or dps classes because we assume you bring 3 or so on a 10-player raid and 7-8 on a 25-player raid. Since there are only 4 healing classes, this means it is probable you have all 4 of those classes on a 25-player raid. As such, we haven't pushed for as much overlap in the healing classes as we have for the other roles.

We have tried to give you all of the tools you need to heal a heroic 5-player dungeon though.
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/27/1206...the-class.html

[b37x]

A disc priest has what.. Holy Nova? Prayer of Healing? I think both limited to party-only.

Don't forget Divine Hymn (which isn't limited to the party) and even though it's not AoE, Prayer of Mending is a great tool for dealing with AoE damage.

But if we're going to compare Healing Specs... it should really be Holy Priest Vs. Holy Paladin. Which means you can't leave out the excellent Circle of Healing (not limited to party).

So that brings the total to 4 AoE Heals (5 if you count Mending) Vs. Beacon of Light. Is Beacon enough to heal heroic 5-player dungeons? I'm not up to 80 yet, so I don't know. However, I'm reasonably confident that if it isn't blizzard will address the problem.