[Holy] Patch 5.4 PTR - Changes Discussion

[Ceresc]

What do you guys think about making Holy Prism some kind of 'chain heal' like mechanic? I personally like Holy Prism for usage on the boss, on a player it's a nice single target healing. I just dont like the fact that if you cast it on a player it directly 'jumps' to the boss and does damage. Wouldn't it be much nicer to add some kind of 'smart heal' system in it to heal the most injured player after the target in a specific region?

No, because many of us (Holy paladins included) use Holy Prism on a friendly target with the express purpose of distributing to adds. Both in raid environments and outside of it.

[Floopa]

Nope. You aren't even arguing reactive vs. proactive healing at this point. You are arguing absorbs vs actual heals. Protip: If you are using a HoT on cooldown to blanket as much of the raid as possible, you aren't a reactive or triage healer anymore.

Uplift is arguably reactive. Saving 4 chi for Thunderstrucks in p3 on Lei Shen HC, or for Rampages etc. But most of the time it's 2 chi > Uplift no matter what the situation. Kinda bogus, don't you think?

[Deleted]

Oke that whole what if situation with "mastery was nerfed and our baseline increased" has gone on long enough. It's very simple to show why we would still be spamming HR/EF/LoD

Lets give LoD 12 targets. So double healing in 25man
HL/DL/FoL/Daybreak 100% healing buff.
HR receives no buff at all.
Mastery won't go past 30%

How do we generate HoPo? By spamming HR -> HR -> HS. This also generates our 15s shields. Which we can only keep up by keeping the spam going. HR is still our only effective HoPo generator and AOE. Our base toolkit is not strong enough to reactively heal any type of AOE damage. And we don't give a fuck about random single/double/5 people target damage because all the smart heals and instants is going to block any hardcast from being effective.

So we end up with 2 situations stacked up raid wide aoe damage and spread out raid wide aoe damage. This is why we go 4-6 healers in 25man anyways. And this is what every healer wants to be good at because that gives us a raid spot. When we are stacked up we are going to use our HR rotation to stack up shields a good 20-30 seconds in advance. It doesn't matter if the aoe is 1 big hit or constant damage over a period. When we are spread out we are going to chain cast HR even more on small groups of people all the way till the big hit comes. And then we are going to keep doing that with some LoD added in there. Because that is our most effective healing for aoe moments whether they be spread or stacked. Even with the EF nerf we are still going to drop 30s hots on people to prepare for the aoe hit. Because nothing else in our toolkit can provide us with the same healing for burst moments. And remember i did not even buff HR. If they buff HR it would only be worse.

So we keep spending all our HoPo because saving it for 2 LoD's which will heal 24 people for ~40k(with mastery)(I believe this is a correct average for 540ish ilevel) is not enough when people are taking 400k hits. That means we only healed less then 10% of the actual damage when we should be doing 20% being 1 of 5 healers. By pro-actively healing and stacking shields is the only way we can get close to that 20%. It's not like we have 60 seconds to top everybody of after the big AOE hit. We need to do it FAST before the next ability is cast and that kills those that have not been healed. So doing this: LoD -> HS -> LoD -> HR -> HR -> HS -> LoD -> HR -> HR -> HS -> LoD is simply to slow. And i believe 400k is still conservative. I haven't done much PTR testing unfortunately but i'm pretty sure some of you have the correct numbers.

[Freia]

Uplift is arguably reactive. Saving 4 chi for Thunderstrucks in p3 on Lei Shen HC, or for Rampages etc. But most of the time it's 2 chi > Uplift no matter what the situation. Kinda bogus, don't you think?

Everyone has reaction heals in their tool kit. But most healers now are proactively blanketing the raid with hots or absorbs to cover sustained and prepare for burst damage. It isn't a coincidence that the healer with the least amount of tools to proactively heal is the weakest healer this tier by far (shaman). And yes monks do use uplift at times just to burn off chi. These issues require overall mechanic reworks.

[Dubalicious]

Once again,

I suggest ignoring (ie. not responding) to bad/off-topic posts as they tend to turn otherwise constructive discussion into a flame war.

Let's be real here, Reglitch wants what is best for Monks, not Holy Paladins. I have no idea why you think your input is crucial in this thread, but some of your posts are devaluing our discussion and it's really not appreciated, and to be honest it's becoming quite tiresome to see you manage to get posters to reply to you and get the discussion off-topic, non-productive, and not constructive. Can we ALL just ignore the posts? Or perhaps we should go invade some Mistweaver threads?

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Basically I'm wondering why we are running with Reglitch's whole premise of nerfing our shields and turning us into a "reactive healer". That isn't happening in the last patch of the expansion, so let's drop the discussion related to it, regardless of how hard he pushes it. Thank you.

[Bythelights]

Ok dubs, lets instead discuss the new changes to compensate our actual hps toolkit.
........wait for it....
...................I am still working on this..........
...............................oh shit there is nothing yet......................


Spot on about Reglitch. Why can't idiots stick to posting in their own class threads. If you want to read holy pally posts to maybe learn how and why we play the way we do go for it. Maybe it will help you suck less. Do not post no one cares about your uninformed opinions.

[Pasture]

We're just derailing actual useful discussion here. A sweeping redesign isn't going to happen now. It might not even happen in 6.0, but the 6.0 ptr is the time for that discussion. We need to focus on what they can do now. Lots of our ideas are taken on board and implemented and we're consistently letting a certain monk completely derail discussion away from that.

Maybe Reglitch could create a dedicated thread for cross healer issues in some general healer forum somewhere instead.

For what it's worth I think there's still a space for reactive healing. We have abilities like Holy Prism that are great for it and our version of proactive makes for crappy play.

One of the ideas I liked for increasing proactive healing for 5.4 was some way of dumping holy power during phases with no healing. Some alternative to using EF for mastery like we were before.

[nightfalls]

One last thing, not because it's a "reply" but rather because I feel that it's important for people to distinct:

Uplift is arguably reactive. Saving 4 chi for Thunderstrucks in p3 on Lei Shen HC, or for Rampages etc.

Uplift is very far from reactive. The proactive aspect of Uplift comes from intelligently putting your Renewing Mists on desired targets; in fact I will go back and dig this out if he denies it, but even Reglitch himself remarked that "effective uplifts must be planned at least ~15 seconds in advance"

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On Topic, since we went off on multiple tangents. First of all I'm glad we're finally being examined. I was almost worried Blizzard had forgotten about us. That said there's still some glaring issues some pointed out by others and some that I noticed myself.

* Holy Power Generation is slow. Crusader Strike is still an elephant in the room. I'm not sure if replacing it with Judgment is a good idea, I'm not keen on Judging so often in a rotation but it might be worth trying. If this is the case I don't believe that Judgment giving HP is a good idea to put on Selfless Healer, it should be baseline.

* Guardian of Ancient Kings: I'm glad this is made into an actual cooldown rather than what it is now. One concern was that reducing the cooldown of GoAK would lead it being macro'd with Divine Favor, however, I'm not sure that it wouldn't just be macro'd always anyway especially given its long CD. If anything, one thing that I think can make it stand better on its own would be a longer duration, perhaps 20 seconds instead of 15 seconds.

* Perhaps this is a bit much to ask, but one thing I can think of to improve Sanctified Wrath would be to have it lower the cooldown of Avenging Wrath by 1 minute instead of extending its duration by 10 minutes (for Holy only, of course). This would still allow it, with the 4pc, to be stacked with Divine Favor if need be. In return, you sacrifice Holy Avenger for not just a more powerful, but more availble Avenging Wrath.

* Direct Healing: One possible way to improve Light of Dawn, aside from increasing its direct healing and its number of targets, would be to allow it to also put a HoT on each target healed. No ideas regarding single-target heals.

[Pasture]

* Holy Power Generation is slow. Crusader Strike is still an elephant in the room. I'm not sure if replacing it with Judgment is a good idea, I'm not keen on Judging so often in a rotation but it might be worth trying. If this is the case I don't believe that Judgment giving HP is a good idea to put on Selfless Healer, it should be baseline.

4 second Holy Shock would be such an easy fix for this until they figure out something better for the next expansion. No one ever complained about slow HP with the pvp /pve 4 set.

* Direct Healing: One possible way to improve Light of Dawn, aside from increasing its direct healing and its number of targets, would be to allow it to also put a HoT on each target healed. No ideas regarding single-target heals.

I've always thought EF talent should modify LoD in addition to EF. Talented LoD would have a similar hot effect to the old version of Holy Radiance. But that said nothing in the tier would be able to compete then.

On another note, they talked a lot about making Sacred Shield more attractive after the reverted the changes a while back. Still nothing on that front and no further mention. I wonder if they've ditched that idea.

[Verdell]

* Holy Power Generation is slow. Crusader Strike is still an elephant in the room. I'm not sure if replacing it with Judgment is a good idea, I'm not keen on Judging so often in a rotation but it might be worth trying. If this is the case I don't believe that Judgment giving HP is a good idea to put on Selfless Healer, it should be baseline.

If the proposed SH change with Judgment goes through, I might just cry. Don't get me wrong DS healing was "ok" but with this change, they have essentially gone a full circle from 4.3.

Am I missing something?

[Diatenium]

* Guardian of Ancient Kings: I'm glad this is made into an actual cooldown rather than what it is now. One concern was that reducing the cooldown of GoAK would lead it being macro'd with Divine Favor, however, I'm not sure that it wouldn't just be macro'd always anyway especially given its long CD. If anything, one thing that I think can make it stand better on its own would be a longer duration, perhaps 20 seconds instead of 15 seconds.

I pretty much agree with you there. I'd rather be able to play with it before making any conclusions, but if it doubles up our AoE healing then, coupling it with other CDs, it could easily punch out massive numbers.--Again, largely speculative, though there's no question that this is an improvement, I only found GotAK to be really useful if I'm running on fumes and I need something to prop up very minor healing for a little while, else it's generally overkill.

* Perhaps this is a bit much to ask, but one thing I can think of to improve Sanctified Wrath would be to have it lower the cooldown of Avenging Wrath by 1 minute instead of extending its duration by 10 minutes (for Holy only, of course). This would still allow it, with the 4pc, to be stacked with Divine Favor if need be. In return, you sacrifice Holy Avenger for not just a more powerful, but more availble Avenging Wrath.

I'm a little more OK with CDs lining up with one another for Holy since you're less inclined to just macro them together--allowing you to use as many cooldowns as the circumstance affords. My main concern with a reduction of CD for AW is talent consistency--though, to be fair, Sanc' Wrath is the only talent in the paladin tree that can get away with this. Overall, though, I agree that SW needs to be more attractive for holy.

* Direct Healing: One possible way to improve Light of Dawn, aside from increasing its direct healing and its number of targets, would be to allow it to also put a HoT on each target healed. No ideas regarding single-target heals.

LoD is a peculiar subject. Really, LoD isn't tuned around EF and I get the impression people are wrongly making the comparison between the two, rather it's tuned around WoG. I would argue that having EF affect LoD would exacerbate the issue of mastery-maintenance if they didn't alter EF's interaction with our mastery--though there's still a plethora of little details that make the matter of buffing LoD complicated, which is why they've said they're "considering" buffing it rather than flat-out saying that they will and how, which likely means they're still trying to figure out the best way of doing it.

[Deleted]

Once again,



Let's be real here, Reglitch wants what is best for Monks, not Holy Paladins. I have no idea why you think your input is crucial in this thread, but some of your posts are devaluing our discussion and it's really not appreciated, and to be honest it's becoming quite tiresome to see you manage to get posters to reply to you and get the discussion off-topic, non-productive, and not constructive. Can we ALL just ignore the posts? Or perhaps we should go invade some Mistweaver threads?

- - - Updated - - -

Basically I'm wondering why we are running with Reglitch's whole premise of nerfing our shields and turning us into a "reactive healer". That isn't happening in the last patch of the expansion, so let's drop the discussion related to it, regardless of how hard he pushes it. Thank you.

Ye, agree. Getting a bit ridiculous. However it may have struck a chord with people, because his attitude seems to mirror blizzards for holydins, with the same misunderstandings....

Personally I was attempting to make him actually understand the issues with the spec, and why fixing us isn't as simple as buffing x and nerfing y. Many people, holydins included don't seem to get the fundamental nature of the problem, so was kinda musing it out.

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4 second Holy Shock would be such an easy fix for this until they figure out something better for the next expansion. No one ever complained about slow HP with the pvp /pve 4 set.

I think a 4 sec holy shock is almost guaranteed, but they are waiting to see the finisher values before implementing.

Whatever bandage we get, needs to move us away from spamming HR. Or the ef nerf makes no sense.

[Deleted]

* Holy Power Generation is slow. Crusader Strike is still an elephant in the room. I'm not sure if replacing it with Judgment is a good idea, I'm not keen on Judging so often in a rotation but it might be worth trying. If this is the case I don't believe that Judgment giving HP is a good idea to put on Selfless Healer, it should be baseline.

I think we should really band together on the removal of crusader strike. However just flat out replacing it with judgment is a really poor way of trying to fix holy paladins. We should be generating HoPo by healing not by doing 20k damage to a boss. It's almost impossible to make judgment good because it has to fight with HR when it comes to HoPo. And HR still does the healing as awful as it is. It's more then 0 healing judgment does. 2s cast with some healing/shielding or 20k dmg.
Right now i believe my undergeared paladin is around 20% haste. Perhaps with more gear and the raid buffs we can get enough to do 2x HR 1x judgement and then HS. But i would have to go test that to see if it's acceptable.

Still the fact is we will probably focus the boss and just blindly use a focus macro. Not a very fun playstyle tbh. It's not essential to our healing. We would be much better with just a shorter HS cooldown as a compensation/replacement.

[Absyrd]

Once again,



Let's be real here, Reglitch wants what is best for Monks, not Holy Paladins. I have no idea why you think your input is crucial in this thread, but some of your posts are devaluing our discussion and it's really not appreciated, and to be honest it's becoming quite tiresome to see you manage to get posters to reply to you and get the discussion off-topic, non-productive, and not constructive. Can we ALL just ignore the posts? Or perhaps we should go invade some Mistweaver threads?

- - - Updated - - -

Basically I'm wondering why we are running with Reglitch's whole premise of nerfing our shields and turning us into a "reactive healer". That isn't happening in the last patch of the expansion, so let's drop the discussion related to it, regardless of how hard he pushes it. Thank you.

Was waiting for someone to say it. This thread was starting to give me a headache. WTB people that actually play/understand paladin giving useful suggestions.

[Tiberria]

Here are the updated 5.4 notes:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/101...y_12-7_12_2013

Divine Plea no longer reduces the amount of healing done, and now restores mana based on the Paladin’s Spirit.

Guardian of the Ancient Kings (Holy version) now deals additional healing based on any heal cast by the Paladin for the 15 seconds for the duration of the spell. The Paladin also has 10% additional haste for the duration that the ability is active.

Holy Insight now increases the effectiveness of Eternal Flame, Light of Dawn, and Word of Glory by 35%. Effectiveness of other heals are still increased by 25%.

10% buff to WoG, LOD and EF on top of what was announced yesterday. It isn't clear yet how the new GOAK works. Is it going to copy and duplicate 100% of healing for the 15 second duration, basically making it a carbon copy of Ascendance?

[Freia]

Here are the updated 5.4 notes:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/101...y_12-7_12_2013



10% buff to WoG, LOD and EF on top of what was announced yesterday. It isn't clear yet how the new GOAK works. Is it going to copy and duplicate 100% of healing for the 15 second duration, basically making it a carbon copy of Ascendance?

If it is a carbon copy of ascendance, it is a carbon copy on a 5 minute cooldown.

[Deleted]

Am I the only one who was hoping they would buff LoD to almost get it in line with EF (to make LoD + SS equal to EF)? Kinda sad that EF and LoD got the same buff.

[Freia]

Am I the only one who was hoping they would buff LoD to almost get it in line with EF (to make LoD + SS equal to EF)? Kinda sad that EF and LoD got the same buff.

I am just thinking 10% isn't enough overall. And LoD needs to hit more than 6 targets in 25m. Of course the fact they are just buffing throughput is also concerning.

[Flaring]

We tell them that a flat % healing buff will do nothing; so of course that's what they do!

[Deleted]

I am just thinking 10% isn't enough overall. And LoD needs to hit more than 6 targets in 25m. Of course the fact they are just buffing throughput is also concerning.

Nowhere near in my opinion. And doesn't help when there's AOE dmg going on and we've used our 2 lod's. Disagree about the number of targets though; I'd prefer to see us get a heavy throughput cd which affects more people in 25 than in 10.