Blizz on holy 4.2

[t3hj0j0]

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/1...anges-paladins

GOGOWALLOFTEXT:

Questions:

We concluded PvE Holy paladins were ending fights with too much mana relative to other healers, so we raised the mana cost of their single-target heals.

This is a silly metric, even if it's true (which again, I very much doubt). Tank healing requires less healing than raid healing, and the burden of preventing damage is less distributed. You should balance around what classes can do and are doing with their mana, not how much they have left over. I suspect whatever paladins you were looking it used LoH late in the fight, and the 20k extra mana provided by a late LoH (which has been nerfed itself, anyway) shows up at the end of a fight more than the 20k extra mana druids and Disc priests start with. This is just an absurd way to balance.

In any case, if your previously cited "40% mana" is actually what you were seeing and meant what you thought it meant, then healers being within 40k mana expenditure of each other would be the most balanced spell costs and regen have ever been. I feel like you guys don't understand the full range and interactions of everyone's differing regen, cost reduction and efficiency mechanics, just as you didn't during Ulduar.

You've already raised and then lowered paladin spell costs in turn this tier. What is even going on? Are you going to do this again before the next tier, as paladins are casting more Divine Light and everybody is is still spamming CH/WG/Rejuv/PoH/CoH?

We tweaked Holy Light because we wanted it to compete a little more with Divine Light, especially when used with Beacon of Light.

Is the intention for Holy Light to be some sort of ghetto raid heal with this change? This doesn't change spell selection, anyway: if there is enough healing to warrant a DL, paladins will use DL. All this does is set up another arcane spell/target selection rule for paladins (and paladins already have plenty of these): never cast HL on your Beacon, ever.

We buffed Word of Glory for three reasons: We felt Holy Power was mattering less to Holy paladins than it did at Cataclysm launch. We wanted to provide more uninterruptible healing in PvP. We knew Light of Dawn was trumping Word of Glory in almost all cases in 25-player raids.

HoPo matters less to Holy paladins because Holy Shock heals for so little, not because WoG healed for so little. Light of Dawn continues to trump WoG in almost all cases in 25-player raids. For a paladin with my gear, in 4.2, glyphed WoG generates 45,007 healing per cast if used off-Beacon. Glyphed LoD generates 83,608 healing per cast if used off-Beacon. 10-man paladins don't glyph LoD and 25-man paladins don't glyph WoG, so the difference is actually even greater. Light of Dawn trumps WoG in 25-mans because you can actually use LoD in 25-mans. Holy Power is essentially twice as worthwhile to 25-man paladins as it is to 10-man paladins.

We buffed Holy Radiance both to help PvE paladins feel like they could make larger contributions to raid healing (especially in light of the single-target nerfs) but also as part of a significant buff to Speed of Light to let Holy paladins have more mobility in PvP.

PVE paladins don't want to feel like they can make larger contributions to raid healing, they want to actually make larger contributions to raid healing. This means improved targeted raid healing through an improved LoD. Furthermore, it's very cute that you call the HL/DL/FoL cost increases "single-target nerfs." What do you think paladins raid heal with when they've already pressed Holy Radiance?

We made a tweak to Holy’s mastery to allow its bubble to stack, so it would be wasted less often when healing a single target.

Seven months after we told you it was necessary. Progress, sure, but mastery is still worth much less to paladins than it is to all other healing specs.

We changed all heals to have 200% crits because we wanted to make crit a more attractive stat to healers. Anything random is already at a disadvantage when viewed by a healer, and one point of haste just flat out increased throughput more than a point of crit.

It still does. Haste continues to be significantly more throughput per point than both crit and mastery, which is almost uniquely a paladin problem.

Response:

Here are developer thoughts on a few Holy paladin-related issues from this and related threads:

Mana -- we still think the 4.2 changes are necessary. Many of you disagree. We're not sure we can resolve the disagreement without all of us (players and developers) sitting around a table going over a lot of raid parses, which obviously isn't very realistic. We don't want to shut down the conversation completely, but at the same time, this is a topic we have spent a lot of time on internally, and we still like the 4.2 changes. If you're right and we overcompensated, then we'll admit we were wrong and make changes. We don't think that will happen though. We think Holy paladins will remain awesome healers.

Beacon of Light -- Ideally the way we want it to play out is that you are healing non-Beacon targets (i.e. using the transfer) most of the time. However, sometimes that 50% healing transfer isn't sufficient and you have to actually heal the Beacon target directly. Yes that is less efficient, but there is no point worrying about efficiency when your tank is dead. (If you can't sometimes heal your Beacon target directly without having severe mana problems, then you probably need to gear up more for the content you're attempting.) Tower of Radiance was designed as consolation for healing the Beacon target. It was a better talent when it affected Holy Light, but unfortunately it was so good that the default behavior became only healing the Beacon target. That's not what we want either.

Light of Dawn -- like many AE spells, Light of Dawn doesn't scale well from 5-player dungeons (or even 3-player Arena teams) up to 25-player raids. Maybe the solution in the future is to somehow have the spells themselves scale with group size, but in the mean time we made 4.2 changes to get players in larger raids to use Word of Glory a little more often. Light of Dawn will still gets tons of use in big raids, and we're fine with that.

Holy Radiance -- this spells hasn't played out as we hoped. The initial design was that the paladin would heal targets around him, perhaps relying on the Speed of Light sprint to get to clumped, wounded targets, or even try healing in melee on occasion. We solved initial usability problems by just buffing the heal over and over, especially the range, such that the position of the paladin in the group is almost irrelevant now. Yet because it maintains an instant cast, there isn't a lot of interesting gameplay around Holy Radiance. It would probably work better as a cast time heal with no cooldown, so that you had the choice of using it or a single-target heal in the same way a shaman chooses Chain Heal when appropriate. Ultimately this might allow paladins to feel like they could be assigned to AE healing. That's a big redesign, but something we're considering.

Any thoughts on this (specially the [IMO] idiotic design they had for HR in mind?).

[Tatsu]

I still love the comment they did to to make us feel more useful. They seem to be having more trouble balancing paladin healing. We have gone from one spell to many and they don't know what to do with them. Major changes again next expansion no doubt.

[Deleted]

First of all, Paladins were very good healers in 4.1 and paladins will continue to be very good healers in 4.2 I'm absolutely certain that the mana cost change won't make pallies lag behind other healers as far as optimal group comp spots go. Now with that said...

The Beacon design makes sense, as does the WoG change. Nothing weird there imo. What I would have liked to see is a little more insight into how the developers feel about mastery and what directions if any they consider for it. But oh well.

Now about Holy Radiance, I can understand why they don't like it, it really isn't a very "interesting" spell in that if we're stacked up and the raid is taking damage, we click it once and then go back to doing what we did before. There isn't much of a choice involved, except when choosing whether to use the CD for the sprint or save it for a later part of the fight. If they chose to make it a no-CD channeled ability or something of that sort, I can't say I'll like or dislike the design, it all depends on how effective they make it. Personally I actually enjoy being the single target healer niche with a nice no brainer HR and I don't really care about the making us more viable raid healers. But if they choose to do that then I'll adjust my raid's healing assignments accordingly and won't loose much sleep over it.

[t3hj0j0]

Yah, the mana nerfs weren't the end of the holy world by any means. Beacon is there, as is WoG, and they have their place and their niches. The big one that bothered me was wanting us to zip around the raid with holy radiance up. What god forsaken healer would do that? Stop casting for the duration of HR and do a "minor" aoe heal. AWESOME IDEA... Kind of bothers me they had the thought that that would work.

[Deleted]

The big one that bothered me was wanting us to zip around the raid with holy radiance up. What god forsaken healer would do that? Stop casting for the duration of HR and do a "minor" aoe heal. AWESOME IDEA... Kind of bothers me they had the thought that that would work.

Well they'd obviously tweak it's numbers to where it'd be worth using as a channeled AoE heal so that it can compete with PoH, Chain Heal etc. I don't quite like the change myself since I like the niche we're in, but I can understand why they'd want to do it from a design PoV. it is just more homogenization though so if I had it my way they'd keep us as is, I don't mind being primarily a tank healer.

[vizzle]

Do not want their version of Holy Radiance. Please no.

[Emaias]

Do not want their version of Holy Radiance. Please no.

Ehhh maybe a glyph or talent for it. I can see some situations where something like would be amazing. For instance Heroic V&T, Heroic Cho'gall P2, Nef, Heroic Al'akir.

Edit** Only Reason I say amazing is because the uptime isnt anywhere near where I'd like it to be sometimes, and I see myself looking at my CD timer to see how long till I can use it.

[Talen]

Yah, the mana nerfs weren't the end of the holy world by any means. Beacon is there, as is WoG, and they have their place and their niches. The big one that bothered me was wanting us to zip around the raid with holy radiance up. What god forsaken healer would do that? Stop casting for the duration of HR and do a "minor" aoe heal. AWESOME IDEA... Kind of bothers me they had the thought that that would work.

Yeah...that struck me as wierd. It always did. Holy was never going to running off into melee from 40 yds back simply to pop an AoE heal. If you wnated him to do that, you need to cut the range on your healign spells by 50-75%, let him cast while auto attacking and make him a melee healer.

EJL

[Asrialol]

I'd love for them to make Holy Radiance something else than what it is now. In 25man heroic, it healing everyone for 300-800 each sec for 10 sec isn't exactly optimal, it just makes you shine on the meters. I'd love for it to maybe cap at 10 people, heal for more, and be a smart heal. Or something.

I hope they redesign in so it's actually useful on its own.

[Talen]

I'd love for them to make Holy Radiance something else than what it is now. In 25man heroic, it healing everyone for 300-800 each sec for 10 sec isn't exactly optimal, it just makes you shine on the meters. I'd love for it to maybe cap at 10 people, heal for more, and be a smart heal. Or something.

I hope they redesign in so it's actually useful on its own.

I think I'd prefer if they kept it as is and simply worked in a new usable spell or effect. Maybe revisit Sacred Shield or the Hand of Purity as oppsoed to a spammable Tranquility?

EJL

[vizzle]

I think I'd prefer if they kept it as is and simply worked in a new usable spell or effect. Maybe revisit Sacred Shield or the Hand of Purity as oppsoed to a spammable Tranquility?

EJL

Just make mastery work with Holy Radiance. That's ALL they have to do and they fix two problems with one stone.

Make mastery work for say 50% of holy radiance healing on each single target + however much mastery % you have (so it ends at about 70-80% shields). It would make our AoE healing and our mastery be more viable.

[Asrialol]

One "Idea" would be to make Holy Shock hit the main target, plus two targets within 20yd for the same amount < Smart heal, somewhat. Then a glyph to make it hit a third.

[Theholypally]

Uh oh, they are thinking of adding another cast time to holy paladins...chock up another ability thats going to get us counter spelled and pummeled to crap in pvp.

I hope they dont change HR to be a cast time.

[Emaias]

Uh oh, they are thinking of adding another cast time to holy paladins...chock up another ability thats going to get us counter spelled and pummeled to crap in pvp.

I hope they dont change HR to be a cast time.

Holy Pallies are in a bad state in PvP anyway so lets not derail a PvE post to a PvP post. Blizzard really needs to stop catering to Arena so much, or have they forgotten this game was made for PvE and arena was extra?

[Deleted]

Don't think so, they actually lowered the cooldown so we can use Speed of Light more often!

Casttime and cooldown are two different things.

[Asrialol]

Holy Pallies are in a bad state in PvP anyway so lets not derail a PvE post to a PvP post. Blizzard really needs to stop catering to Arena so much, or have they forgotten this game was made for PvE and arena was extra?

The idiotic thing is that it's freaking easy to program a ability to work different on a player than a NPC, so they shouldn't have to nerf stuff because of PvP, while it also affecting PvE.

[Talen]

The idiotic thing is that it's freaking easy to program a ability to work different on a player than a NPC, so they shouldn't have to nerf stuff because of PvP, while it also affecting PvE.

They don't want to do that, and with good reason.

Trouble is, PvP wsie, you need to be able to survive to have fun. Being one shotted isn't. So that means survivability ahs to go up, which means you can't do PvE levels of DPS. At the same time, being CCed to death isn't fun. And there are technical issues that ensure other 3emchanics...such as snares and slows...are necessary.

Blizzard does, actually, separate out some effects.

Taunts don't work in PvP.
CC effects are nerfed vs players.
Warriors Colossus Smash has less effect on players.
Resilience doesn't affect PvE combat at all anymore.

And so on.

EJL

[Deleted]

Just make mastery work with Holy Radiance. That's ALL they have to do and they fix two problems with one stone.

Make mastery work for say 50% of holy radiance healing on each single target + however much mastery % you have (so it ends at about 70-80% shields). It would make our AoE healing and our mastery be more viable.

Could make HR too OP if it used mastery. It already does a significant amount of healing for a single GCD of fire and forget, if they added mastery onto that AND lowered it's CD to 20 seconds it would definitely be OP.

One "Idea" would be to make Holy Shock hit the main target, plus two targets within 20yd for the same amount < Smart heal, somewhat. Then a glyph to make it hit a third.

That idea I actually like, I can't see any big PvP repercussions and it'll make Holy Shock a mini-CoH. Again I have to wonder about it's potential for OPness since it would basically be a straight up buff to a class that is actually doing quite well atm.

[Dannz]

you know what would be an awesome redesign of holy radiance? make it player castable, perhapse reduce the healing output, and the cooldown, and let paladins cast it on multiple targets around the raid, that will heal everyone around them (still reduced by the distance), when grouped up it would provide very powerfull aoe heal, casting it on 3-4 targets when everyone is on top of each other. and when you are spread, which are oh-so many fights in cataclysm, it would allow paladins to raid heal without feeling completely useless :3

[Malthanis]

Could make HR too OP if it used mastery. It already does a significant amount of healing for a single GCD of fire and forget, if they added mastery onto that AND lowered it's CD to 20 seconds it would definitely be OP.

It would most certainly be OP, considering they buffed the mastery shield duration to 15 seconds. If somebody doesn't take enough damage to break the shield (or any damage at all), they'd have a constant rolling shield on from HR.


@Dannz:
Hmm, not a bad idea. They'd have to limit the number of targets, otherwise you'd just drop it on everybody on the raid and rock the charts. Two or three should be okay, I think.