[Holy] Patch 5.4 PTR - Changes Discussion

[Lumineux]

Question: how many weeks and PTR builds has it been since they announced we're "getting compensation?"

3, maybe 4. Haven't had so much as a hint of getting any love besides the one blue post on the ptr discussion forums almost 4 weeks ago

[IxilaFA]

I don't know if I missed it previously, or maybe somebody can confirm, but my EF HoT is healing for as much on PTR as Live (disregarding mastery obviously)

Did I miss them reverting the HoT nerf, or did they sneak this in? It's probably not enough but it might be something.

They never nerfed the HOT on EF. They nerfed the fact that the HOT no longer applies the shield, which was the major part of EF HOT healing that Pallies are interested in.

Question: how many weeks and PTR builds has it been since they announced we're "getting compensation?"

4 now, I believe. They initially nerfed Eternal Flame, then a week later announced compensation was coming, then a week later reverted the EF / SS changes, and then a week later nothing.

It's so ridiculous like can they at least make some effort? They made a point to reassure Resto Shaman before the extended holiday weekend but didn't say a word to Holy Paladin.

[Diatenium]

Geez I go off for a day and I get hit with this when I return:

Armory and epeen show no regular raiding since Cata.

Go back into a raid and look at the Disc priest spec before trying to give us more opinions first.

Please refrain from invoking Ad Hominem in polite discussion.

Regardless, this digression regarding how blizzard would rebalance Holy Paladins around a nerf to EF was not the core of the argument I intended to carry, rather it was supplemental to the argument of EF and it's lack of validity in the role of a talent.

Another theoretical route would be to just make EF baseline for Holy. But that raises a number of additional mechanical complications and I fear discerning the repercussions would misdirect the core point I'm trying to get across again.

Really, my mistake was pushing the discussion in that direction when it was first brought up.

[Diatenium]

Seal of Insight no longer has a chance to restore mana on attacks are part of the latest nerfs, a way for us to regain mana on a few fights is now gone.

That's an extremely peculiar nerf. I actually had to rummage around and make sure this wasn't some datamining error, but nope, it's been added to the patch notes. I don't get it, were Holy Paladins generating too much mana from it? If they wanted us to focus more on mana regen stats I'd figure they would make DP spirit-based.

[nightfalls]

Please refrain from invoking Ad Hominem in polite discussion.

There is a point behind my statement, I don't think you've realized that without EF providing HoT and absorbs, there's very little healing that can be done that a Disc Priest (even a 3rd or 4th) won't do significantly better. Point is, the healing game has changed considerably since Cata with a spec (Disc) able to singlehandedly neuter most spike raid damage on a ~40 second cooldown.

That's an extremely peculiar nerf. I actually had to rummage around and make sure this wasn't some datamining error, but nope, it's been added to the patch notes. I don't get it, were Holy Paladins generating too much mana from it? If they wanted us to focus more on mana regen stats I'd figure they would make DP spirit-based.

The change itself isn't very peculiar. Basically fights that you can melee on can make a pretty big difference over fights where you can't, to the point where you could almost regem out of spirit simply because you can melee. On my last Lei Shen kill SOI gave me 747.7 MP5 or the equivalent of ~1,300 spirit that I could reforge away. Even more if you consider the fight dynamics (a regen phase between two high-damage phases). Rather than allowing paladins to melee or allowing a range-based mana regen on downtime, Blizzard's decided to simply remove the mana regen, basically amounting to yet another nerf.

The lack of compensation given is the peculiar part, because Blizzard's M.O. seems to be nerf first, say you'll compensate later, forget and either don't compensate at all or come up with some junk "band-aid" buff at the last minute like "increase daybreak healing by another 100%" instead of actual useful compensation.

While they have said compensation is coming, it's been a month (!) since then and we have seen nothing but additional nerfs.

[Deleted]

I seriously hope they add a few % onto Divine Plea's regen due to this latest nerf. It's getting a bit ridiculous.

[IxilaFA]

Hunters get an entire dissertation on their changes or lack thereof on the PTR and Holy Paladins don't get anything regarding a follow-up to GC's extremely vague statement that "compensation is coming."

I know hyperbole doesn't lead to helpful discussion but it really seems like Blizzard marked a file "Please review" for Holy Pally changes, dropped it off in some intern's inbox and forgot to check up on it. I don't even care at this point for an elaboration on the changes coming, it would just be nice to hear that they have changes in store that we'll see on a future build rather than nerfs that just don't seem to make sense.

[rohendar]

Seal of Insight giving no mana back is pretty hard nerf for some fights. I seriously hope they will buff DP in return. As it stands now, SoI giving mana is the only way my 10man guild 2 heals Tortos HC. I regen about 350k Mana on that fight from SoI, which is about 3125 mp5. And I still run OOM in the end.

[Hypasonic]

Seal of Insight giving no mana back is pretty hard nerf for some fights. I seriously hope they will buff DP in return. As it stands now, SoI giving mana is the only way my 10man guild 2 heals Tortos HC. I regen about 350k Mana on that fight from SoI, which is about 3125 mp5. And I still run OOM in the end.

That's probably down to people not getting their crystals fast enough, or lack of spirit on your part than anything. But they hope they buff plea a bit, or redo the glyph of plea to increase it or something.

[Deleted]

Blizzard finally starrted to fix intellect plate problem.
Nerf holy paladins to the ground- make them reroll other healers - problem solved

[Diatenium]

There is a point behind my statement, I don't think you've realized that without EF providing HoT and absorbs, there's very little healing that can be done that a Disc Priest (even a 3rd or 4th) won't do significantly better. Point is, the healing game has changed considerably since Cata with a spec (Disc) able to singlehandedly neuter most spike raid damage on a ~40 second cooldown.

Hm... I'm going off on a bit of a tangent again, but I've been getting quite the impression that the bulk of the issue here is less to do with EF and more to do with Spirit Shell. Perhaps we should be concerning ourselves more with the potency of that particular cooldown and less on the potency of EF? If SS is setting the tone of absorption coupled with small-scale periodic healing, then it'd be exacerbating the strength of EF.

In such a case, it's unlikely to see SS significantly altered until another expansion comes along, given how drastically it'd alter disc priests mid-expansion.

[Deja Thoris]

Seal of Insight giving no mana back is pretty hard nerf for some fights. I seriously hope they will buff DP in return. As it stands now, SoI giving mana is the only way my 10man guild 2 heals Tortos HC. I regen about 350k Mana on that fight from SoI, which is about 3125 mp5. And I still run OOM in the end.

We 2 healed it this week with holy being my offspec. Its perfectly doable without meleeing to be honest.

[franto]

Acutally, i like the changes.

Currently when you want to be on top of HPS you need to stack HoTs on raid. Yeah, you call it the right way, cause you end up at the top of HPS chart, but do you like it? Personaly i don't!

When you look at the other changes, they are not nefrs, but quality of life improvements! - Divine Plea, mana on mele attacks. Simple less stuff to focus at and more time left for raid memebers and environment.

[Deleted]

Acutally, i like the changes.

Currently when you want to be on top of HPS you need to stack HoTs on raid. Yeah, you call it the right way, cause you end up at the top of HPS chart, but do you like it? Personaly i don't!

When you look at the other changes, they are not nefrs, but quality of life improvements! - Divine Plea, mana on mele attacks. Simple less stuff to focus at and more time left for raid memebers and environment.

Yeah lets go the the days of wrath and just press 3 buttons and win.. /sigh

This is another step in the retardization of the class.. I like to be ocupied and always doing something.. In most bosses i got 105 110% activity time.. If i ran the show we would even get judgement on cd to regen mana and keep a healing buff..

This is a major nerf.. In horridon i always try to get a couple hit when i can to regen some mana.. The same on Jinrok.. Iron qon on the last phase etc (talking hc in normals you dont even go oom) With this change we will be forced to get even more spirit.. I really dont get it.. Why so many nerfs..

At this point im still ahead of the druid and shamy in my guild but not by a long margin and not in every figth (in megeara and iron qon our shamy tops me) but in the next patch so far all we are getting is nerfs nerfs and more nerfs.. And all other classes are gettgin buffs..

[Freia]

That's probably down to people not getting their crystals fast enough, or lack of spirit on your part than anything. But they hope they buff plea a bit, or redo the glyph of plea to increase it or something.

Not getting crystals? You realize you have to heal those crystals up right? And lack of spirit shouldn't matter much when every other healer is dropping to very low spirit. We have the worst regen so they nerf it more while monks pretty much do not use their mana and they get nothing. And what apparently on the ptr MW monks are hitting 26k haste and doing something like 280k damage. This game is just getting ridiculous.

[Floopa]

In light of the new Resto Shaman changes (and again lack of Discipline nerfs...) I'm going to reiterate what I said before: Blizzard has no clue how to balance healing at the moment. That's obvious.

[Corrupt]

Removing mana gain from SoI is hopefully in preperation for a more stable way of gaining mana? As a 10m healer without a resto shaman in raid when not able to melee I feel like the mana regen is really bad while when I can melee its good..
Or they could just make us count as melee so we dont have to worry about putting shit in melee camp..

For each day that passes by without any mention of the compensations GC mentioned very vaguely a month ago, im wondering if they actually have a plan at all how to fix paladins with the huge EF nerf..

[SoundOfGuns]

Honestly; Blizzard NEVER had a clue on how to balance healing and by now im convinced all they do is trying hard to push down the Paladin-Population with their changes, since we are said to still be the most played class. Currently Paladin is yet again the healing-class who gets bashed most violently for no real reason while they blow sugar up the asses of their current favorite. There was always that one class in an addon that was ridiclously far above the others. Currently it's obviously Shamans, even far before monks.

Imo we got the worst Manareg of all Healingclasses and Blizzards way to deal with it? "Trololo lets take the manareg out of seal of insight. DATS SMART." while Shamans (and thats said in agreement with the two Restos in my Raid) actually need to try hard to get oom, and the difference between a Shaman on first place in healing-meters, and a Shaman thats way behind all others with a significant gap is placing their stupid totem that basically does all the work for them.

Also i like to agree to Zarry. It IS a major nerf and further is entirely pointless. It is important to serve to regenerate a bit to stay at low-level mana at least when chaos in certain situations made you blow out mana to correct a mistake. Nerfing it also comes without a point. There is just no justified reason to remove that effect other then making the seals feel even more gimmicky and to me, this is a pretty obvious reason to believe Blizzard just fumbles around to piss people off, and yes; I really think that. So far that i want another "Does Blizzard really hate Paladins?" right now... The nerf also serves further to make the class even less interesting to play. You can't honestly tell me that you really got so much todo that you can't focus on using the mana-reg-seals. In this Addon Paladin is as unsatisfying as it wasn't in a long time, and again you got that situation were there simply is no existing skill-level to distinguish Paladins from after a very basic level of understanding... Heck, next they pull of is making us plant tiny wooden things on the ground, that does the healing while we fall asleep on our keyboards... such a retarded concept.

[cakin]

Honestly; Blizzard NEVER had a clue on how to balance healing and by now im convinced all they do is trying hard to push down the Paladin-Population with their changes, since we are said to still be the most played class. Currently Paladin is yet again the healing-class who gets bashed most violently for no real reason while they blow sugar up the asses of their current favorite. There was always that one class in an addon that was ridiclously far above the others. Currently it's obviously Shamans, even far before monks.

Imo we got the worst Manareg of all Healingclasses and Blizzards way to deal with it? "Trololo lets take the manareg out of seal of insight. DATS SMART." while Shamans (and thats said in agreement with the two Restos in my Raid) actually need to try hard to get oom, and the difference between a Shaman on first place in healing-meters, and a Shaman thats way behind all others with a significant gap is placing their stupid totem that basically does all the work for them.

Also i like to agree to Zarry. It IS a major nerf and further is entirely pointless. It is important to serve to regenerate a bit to stay at low-level mana at least when chaos in certain situations made you blow out mana to correct a mistake. Nerfing it also comes without a point. There is just no justified reason to remove that effect other then making the seals feel even more gimmicky and to me, this is a pretty obvious reason to believe Blizzard just fumbles around to piss people off, and yes; I really think that. So far that i want another "Does Blizzard really hate Paladins?" right now... The nerf also serves further to make the class even less interesting to play. You can't honestly tell me that you really got so much todo that you can't focus on using the mana-reg-seals. In this Addon Paladin is as unsatisfying as it wasn't in a long time, and again you got that situation were there simply is no existing skill-level to distinguish Paladins from after a very basic level of understanding... Heck, next they pull of is making us plant tiny wooden things on the ground, that does the healing while we fall asleep on our keyboards... such a retarded concept.

In all fairness to shamans currently, they are so bad in general that they might as well gem/reforge for straight spirit for bigger mana tides since their actual healing is really bad. So if they do gem/reforge that way it should be pretty difficult for them to oom.

But I do see your point.

[mcbubble]

In all fairness to shamans currently, they are so bad in general that they might as well gem/reforge for straight spirit for bigger mana tides since their actual healing is really bad. So if they do gem/reforge that way it should be pretty difficult for them to oom.

But I do see your point.

Shamans actually shine on stacked fights. Look at Ra-Den and Magara. They're amazing on those fights.
They have severe problems on non-stacked fights. The chain heal and new healing stream totem talent change should help that.
That being said, they will always have a raid spot since they bring mana. They're basically a raid battery with - wait for it...GOOD cool downs.

What do we bring that a dps or tank doesn't bring? Go ahead and say absorbs and I'll point you to the disc forums.
We're in a bad spot right now...and this mana nerf is definitely going to hurt.
I feel really beat up as a holy paladin right now...no more nerfs, please.