I had an idea about holy paladins and AoE healing

[Sevas]

We suspect several paladins would turn your question around and argue that it’s not that they are indispensible tank healers, but that they can’t compete against other healers for group healing. Ultimately, we think the problem is Holy Radiance. Light of Dawn is a finisher so it’s never going to be continuously available for periods of intense group healing without unshackling it from Holy Power. Holy Radiance could be changed however. Our original concept of Holy Radiance being a tool the paladin used to heal those around her never quite panned out – we had to keep bumping the range to make it a useful heal, which removed much of the positional gameplay. Currently it is potent, but fairly “fire and forget.” A paladin is never choosing not to use Holy Radiance, unless perhaps mana is very tight. A better model for Holy Radiance, and something we are considering for the next content patch, is as a cast-time spell with no cooldown that generates Holy Power (for Holy paladins at least). This would give Holy paladins an actual area-healing rotation -- Holy Radiance and Light of Dawn -- that they could use instead of the single-target heals. Currently Holy Radiance can just be layered on top of the other heals, so the paladin isn’t shifting into group-healing mode the way a shaman can focus on Chain Heal or a priest can focus on Prayer of Healing.

Since this was posted in Ask the Dev's #11, I've been thinking a lot about it. Personally, I don't like the sound of losing the Speed of Light boost that comes with Holy Radiance and since it's doubtful that the devs would lower the divine protection cooldown to make up for it, I tried coming up with alternatives that I thought would give us the same affect without losing such a valuable asset in pvp and 25 man raiding.

What if, instead of changing holy radiance, holy shock were changed to a small aoe heal that targeted one person and reverberated through three to four players closest to them, while still generating a charge of holy power? This would create a strong aoe rotation when layered with holy radiance and light of dawn...without changing speed of light. Also, it wouldn't have the same positional requirements that light of dawn and holy radiance do (since in ten mans it is hard to get 5 people in that cone and holy radiance requires you to be amongst the raid -- whereas this holy shock would make someone else the center of the heal, as opposed to the paladin, sort of like prayer of healing).

Is that a bad idea?

[Deleted]

You might as well rename it Circle of Healing and have done with it. Also there would be no difference in the "AoE rotation" except changing WoG for LoD, we Holy Shock spam either way.

Still not a bad idea, it would probably work. I just doubt they'd do it for those 2 reasons.