Backwards Illumination Nerf Ability

[fendrix]

Word on the street is Illumination is going to be "toned down" to make paladins less effective.

So how about this, paladins receive a fourth heal that negates Illumination while it is in use, or for a short time after it's use.

For example, lets make up a spell, a HoT:

Rain of Light - Light rains down on your target, healing 1850 damage over 20 seconds. While Rain of Light is active, Illumination can not trigger.

Or maybe an AoE spell:

Burst of Light - Light burst from your target, healing the target and up to 4 friendly party members for 958 to 1058. After Burst of Light, mana received from Illumination is reduced by 50% for 30 seconds.

Abilities such as these would give paladins more tools to heal, but at a cost. Not only would the cost of these abilities "tone down" illumination, but it would add a new layer of complexity to paladin healing, making healing a more fun and enjoyable experience.

[Skyro]

Strange and new idea but I like it. I mean I currently love playing my holy paladin and I also love the fact that I can stack crit to get big numbers instead of boring old Mp5. But if they are going to nerf it, I'd like to see something like this. Gives us a new toy. I think a small AoE (or say 3 or 4?) people would be nice but keep the amount healed low, so we do remain as the old MT healer.

It's what makes us who we are I mean, who wants a paladin raid healer :P

[YigiBareTank]

Well, this is possible i suppose but those examples that you made were examples of 2 spells that would never be used in ANY environment where mana is an issue.
Throughput is not a problem of any sort for a pally, so the first one is no good, and the 2nd one just wouldn't be worth it either, you'd be better off just HLing a few times and get your mana back with it.
IMO the only way to nerf illumination is to actually nerf it, though it is a sad thing for paladins, i think it is needed when pallies aren't looking at mana or mp/5 (which blizz wants them to) because they are just so efficient.

[fendrix]

I appreciate your comments on the spells in question, but they are only examples to illustrate my point: new healing ability that negates and/or reduces the effect of illumination.

This is a win-win, as Illumination is toned down and paladins have a new tool to use in their healing tool box.

[Xs]

The problem with Illumination for Holy Light spammers is that they have so many mana reduction effects available to them easily
They should just nerf Illumination to mana cost of the spell, would be a decent nerf to all the reduction effects while leaving it balanced for where its been balance, without reductions

[darkwarrior42]

Word on the street is Illumination is going to be "toned down" to make paladins less effective.

So how about this, paladins receive a fourth heal that negates Illumination while it is in use, or for a short time after it's use.

For example, lets make up a spell, a HoT:

Rain of Light - Light rains down on your target, healing 1850 damage over 20 seconds. While Rain of Light is active, Illumination can not trigger.

Or maybe an AoE spell:

Burst of Light - Light burst from your target, healing the target and up to 4 friendly party members for 958 to 1058. After Burst of Light, mana received from Illumination is reduced by 50% for 30 seconds.

Abilities such as these would give paladins more tools to heal, but at a cost. Not only would the cost of these abilities "tone down" illumination, but it would add a new layer of complexity to paladin healing, making healing a more fun and enjoyable experience.

It's an interesting idea, but I'm not certain it work. I'm not against the added complexity, nor the idea of toning down Illumination in such a way.... but this doesn't do anything to stop paladins from simply choosing to ignore the new spell and keep spamming holy light. If you're doing a 25-man and you've got other strong AoE or HoT healers with you, you don't really need to throw out your own, so Holy Light spam remains the best MT healing trick (and unless these new spells are simply amazing, we'll still be best as MT healers).

In short, it would probably be perfect in 5-man dungeons, possibly even in 10-mans where you might only have 2 healers and both need to use every tool in their arsenal, but in 25-mans where you can assign specific roles to healers, it probably won't do much... which is, unfortunately, likely the format where the nerf is most needed.

But your idea could be a way to give paladins AoE or HoT capabilities without overpowering them. If you forget about the illumination specific part of that, and simply have such spells with drawbacks, you give the paladin teh ability to do things he/she couldn't do before without taking away from the other healing classes.

[Raiss]

If Illumination will work together with mp5 i will go prot. ;]

[Dualkalibur]

While I'm certainly not a hater of complexity, I would rather a change that doesn't give us a new spell to use.

For one, I don't feel we need a HoT or a group heal. It has been said before that those are the niche of the other healers, specifically right now, the priest and the druid. There was a LOT of talk on the wow forums about how if paladins got group heals, there would be no need for the other classes save buffs because a paladin has plate so thier survivability is higher. For example, last night on Freaya in 10 man when the lasher adds spawned, my healing agro grabbed them as I dropped a HL on the MT and they all rushed at me and hit me. I just threw myself a couple heals until the add tank grabbed them and went on with my day. For a clothie or leather wearer, 10 adds slapping you upside the face is a death sentance.

Paladin heals are fine where they currently are. Used properly Beacon is a great multi tank tool. With the Beacon on the main tank, you can throw a crit HL onto a hurt melee dps for 18k, have the splash heal 5 others for 1800 each, and heal the tank for 18k, healing 7 people for a grand total of 45000 and change, for a total cost of 276 mana in the span of 1.5 seconds. Chain heal heals 4 people, PoH heals 5, and its limited to party. It may be range reliant and situation specific but god damn, if 45k health in 1.5 seconds for 276 mana isn't enough for you, I don't know what is.

Sacred shield mitigates 20k+ damage done each minute without the t8 bonus, 30k+ with the bonus and of course the more spellpower you have the better is absorbs.

Hand of sacrifice+Divine shield adds your health to the tanks for 12 seconds, and 2 minutes later when forebarance is up for you can hand of Sacrifice+Hand of Protection on yourself for the same effect again. Twice in a 5 minute fight I can give a tank 21k HP, which is nothing to sneeze at. If the fight goes for 9 minutes, you can pop it with the shield a third time.

Hand of salvation getting thrown on a dps whos getting too high or in a pinch, on the MT so the OT can pick the mob up when a taunt fails.

The 3 healing spells we have(okay, 4 if you don't have a prot paly or a ret paly in your 10 man like I currently have so I have to judge light) are enough when you factor in the other spells we can use. FoL, HL, HoS+bubble, HoS+HoP, HS, LoH, HoSalv, JoL, BoL, SS, thats 10 abilities to use in many different situations. Adding another hot to the mix? No thank you, we're quite strong as we are.

Instead. I can see reducing Illumination down to 40-50%(which will hurt, I still remember 100% and I wasn't even raiding back then, the nerf to 60% hurt my leveling as holy), or possibly when you use Divine Plea, Reduces mana gained from Illumination to 0% for 15 seconds, with maybe talents to put it up to 50% to match the healing reduction. That would make us dead in the water casting wise during DP and if we continute to cast, we would HAVE to rely on MP5 to return our mana unless its 25 man and we can have a healer rotation with 1 paly casting, 1 paly regenning, which would be boring as hell for 15 seconds.

[Copain]

If they are nerfind it, it probably isn't so they can toss in a spell to make Paladins stronger.

EDIT: I'd also like to note that talents don't typically nerf eachother. The "Downside" of your suggested spells would do nothing if the Paladin didn't GET Illumination.

[Unholyground]

They aren't nerfing it, they are changing the scaling so its not going to exceed a certain percentage of your mp5, So likely it will be a mechanic change increasing mp5 after you crit similar to spirit tap for priests when they crit with mind blast and SwD.

[Wintry]

Maybe they'll just remove illumination and justify it by increasing glyph of holy light to 9 yards.

Nevertheless, this really doesn't bother my weird spec much.

[Majokin]

Sorry, but most of the posts here are garbage =(
blizz tells always holypalas are not looking on manareg only on effectivity, pls tell me where is palahealer effectiv? oO 60-80% overheal is NOT effectiv!
turning down manareg (which means turning down healoutput!) means heals must be more effectiv too. if you cant spam big heals on hardmode NOR shield effectiv NOR groupheal, why should you take a palahealer there? yes ok you can do what almost 75%+ healpalas (calculated on the posts on mmo, forum etc) do...simply be carried by the other raidhealers!

turn manareg down, but make us more effective.

P.S: mp5 boost or spirit inc would mean palahealer will need : spirit, int, crit, haste,sp, mp5....nice! pls add agi and str and we are perfect ;>

[PalliesThrowStuff]

Luminescence (Replacing Divine Illumination, probably a toggling self-buff ability, or a 30second/1minute duration with a 2 minute CD, either way it would have high OPTIONAL uptime)- While active, the Paladin may not gain mana from Divine Plea, Seals, or Illumination, but any mana that would be granted by those abilities radiates outwards, healing all friendly targets within 30 yards for 200% of the amount of mana gained by those effects.

Ideally, Divine Plea would NOT lower the amount healed by this, but for balance reasons it could go either way.

[shockpally]

For every piece of gear you stack with MP5 on it you generally lose crit. Less crit heals = less mana savings via illumination.

Here's the rub. A holy paladins mana expenditure is soo massive that without a meaningful illumination mana savings there isnt enough MP5 to prevent a Holy paladin from OOMing.

The need to improve one of the deep holy talents to use MP5 in some meaningful way to make Holy paladin want it. Otherwise they are fine the way they are and MP5 on gear should be almost all but scrapped on the majority of the drops.

When you need a MT healer to put out massive heals on your tank while you are doing whatever it is you are doing Holy paladin are the only true option currently. If they were nerfed to the point where you need 2 healers to keep your tank alive then that will be the end of Holy paladin since every other healer brings AE or HoTs with their class and there is no Holy specific Buff worth while.

[stubot]

I gotta say I'm really worried about a potential illumination nerf.

What concerns me the most is the fact that, as a holy pally who has stacked int. and crit and avoided SP and mp5, it would mean potentially a whole re-learning of the class and how to maximize healing, not to mention getting gear that we had passed on in the past because our class itemization has been changed to reflect a different need. meaning tough luck for those of us who put together the nobles deck, and spent major gold enchanting and gemming for int.

Personally i dont think illumination is where our nerf is needed. I think DP is really the nail in the coffin as to what makes our mana pool bottomless. The only thing I can think of to nerf it is increase the CD or decrease mana restored.

with a potential re-working of illumination to be a percentage of mp5, at this point in time I dont see how that given current gear levels and stats being as they are on gear, that we could maintain a viable amount of crit AND mp5 to be effective. the majority of gear available to us is either mp5 OR crit not both. With that said, I think we've been forced to choose one or the other and we (most of us) choose crit.

[Piscesthepally]

The nerf is coming.. no doubt on that.. However I am interested to see what they'd do to flash of light, as was mentioned in a blue post about the possibility of such.

[Xs]

Hopefully they'll add some kind of rotation other than the current ~25 sec rotation we have at the moment

Something similar to Riptide/Chain Heal's effect on the Resto Shaman cast rotation, like

Your Holy Lights cause a buff which increases the healing done by your next 2 Flash of Light spells by 40%, decreases by 20% for each Heal used. Does not stack.

Your Flash of Lights cause you to gain the YourTearsMakeGoodPolish effect, which reduces the cost of your next Holy Light by 5%, stacks up to 5 times.

That would make Flash better as Holy than as Prot, and allow Blizzard to fuck with our regen a fair amount without completely screwing our ability to keep up tanks effectively

[Heretushi]

Your Holy Lights cause a buff which increases the healing done by your next 2 Flash of Light spells by 40%, decreases by 20% for each Heal used. Does not stack.

Your Flash of Lights cause you to gain the YourTearsMakeGoodPolish effect, which reduces the cost of your next Holy Light by 5%, stacks up to 5 times.

I like this mechanic.

The only thing that has me worried about giving MP5 more value is if there is enough MP5 plate pre-raid to support a Illumination built around MP5.

I mean, there doesn't seem to be a lot of 'em or I just looked the other way when they dropped while I was leveling/gearing up for raids.

[Melonberry]

Unless the spells that nerf illumination are holy light and flash of light, they just wouldn't be used. It just flat out needs a nerf to be honest. Crit really shouldn't be a regen stat.


edit: Would a 6 second GCD completely kill the talent?

[Xs]

The only thing that has me worried about giving MP5 more value is if there is enough MP5 plate pre-raid to support a Illumination built around MP5.

Theres plenty of MP5 gear, look almost anywhere at any point in the game and you'll find some
Besides the leveling Holy gear it mostly has mp5, most of the socketed blues have mp5