[Holy] Patch 5.4 PTR - Changes Discussion

[Deleted]

Without wanting to call you a 'poor' paladin, far from it. Is a 30-35%~ reduction in your healing hyberbole or actually going to happen? I'm not 'up to date' on Paladin healing breakdowns, but what you're essentially saying is it's around the same nerf MWs took (at the start of the expansion) on their SCK (reduced by 33%) and Renewing Mists (reduced by 33%) which if I may say so ruined MWs for the rest of t14. We simply were not competitive.

Where do you think you'll get compensation?

I don't make random numbers.

The HoT part of EF is worth ~2/3 of the healing of the spell. Removing the IH part of it completely nerfs the gain of IH from EF by 66%. And then you also need to account for another 30% nerf to the inital hit(10% less IH, 30% less EF burst healing, which is usually unlike the HoT not an overheal).

Someone might say we'll do LoD instead(and take the new SS). The new SS is 30% of the tank/your health every 2 minutes, IF the situation happens every 2 mins. I estimated this at an absorb rate of ~125k/minute and called myself generous. This is much lower then the current SS(~46k/5 sec) anyway. Also remember that unlike EF which translates to 50% Beacon(or 60% if you're bad and using the tier set), LoD translates to 15%(or 18%) Beacon.And besides,might i remind all, that we don't really spec LoD+current SS even on farm due to its much lower output then the current EF anyway?

Regardless,our current Beacon Healing would take a hit even if u went LoD or EF simply because the frontal healing of EF was nerfed by 30%.

On top of all this, you can also add the complete removal of IH from Light's Hammer.

Note that if the patch would descend on us tomorrow it would be a lot worse once Monks and Priests would have their 4 sets and speced into Test of Faith, and once Druids got their Genesis. I'm also not taking into account our usual tank healing role, and the fact that we'd have to cover up for the losses above with inefficient(healing % wise) tank heals.

As for compensations. My fear is they'll just go for a X% healing buff and call it a day. The problem is we're losing absorbs from our healing...none can snipe absorbs. Gaining pure healing in return in equal measure will still nerf us per total.



Edit. Its also really funny(to me at least), that even after such massive nerfs to Illuminated Healing, it would still be our best secondary output stat(although Crit would be significantly closer).

[Gags]

GC has already come out and said we'll be compensated for the EF nerf. Plus the tuning pass hasn't even happened yet.

Since they've taken away our raid healing capabilities with EF, which too be honest I doubt they even planned for EF to be one of our go to raid heal abilities, who's to say LoD isn't going to be buffed to a decent level? Changes are still coming.

[Lumineux]

We're trying both to see which change we like the most, but I predict it will be mastery interaction not the initial heal.

GC Tweet. Doing both at the same time seems like a poor way of deciding which way to go...I dunno. If you guys chose one, which would it be?

[Corrupt]

Can we get any specific detail on what thouse EF compensations will be..Cause it seem sincerly terrible at the moment in ptr..

In a perfect world, we get some WoG use, some LoD use and some EF use.

Reply is by GC..

Well dunno what that answear is meant to mean..

[Lucyrotten]

I guess we can put down the pitchforks for the moment: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/9344634569

Intent behind the Eternal Flame change

We’ve made some changes to Eternal Flame because we feel the talent was being overrepresented within the Holy Paladin population.

Our intent for was for Holy Paladins to pick Selfless Healer if they like to Judge, Eternal Flame if they like heal-over-time spells, and Sacred Shield if they liked damage absorb shields. As it worked out, most every Holy paladin chose Eternal Flame, and we don’t want every Holy paladin to be a heal-over-time machine. (That’s a niche best served by Restoration Druids and Holy Priests.)

We don’t think Holy Paladin’s healing throughput is too high overall (though we’ll gather more information from testing on the 5.4 PTR), so our intent is not to nerf but to reduce reliance on Eternal Flame. One of the biggest problem with Eternal Flame is the way it interacts with the Illuminated Healing mastery, which turns the heal-over-time spell into a potent shield as well. If needed, we will compensate by buffing healing elsewhere.

Our plans for now, are to revert the nerf that was done to the initial healing component of Eternal Flame, but we are unlikely to change the Illuminated Healing back to the way it was.

Sacred Shield

Regarding Sacred Shield, we tried giving the talent as a baseline ability to Protection, but we’re unhappy with that experiment and are likely to revert the change. We agree that the current (old) version of Sacred Shield is more attractive to Holy than the (new) version. We also would likely have to nerf Protection to compensate for getting Holy Shield in addition to another talent. Overall, we think the current (old) version of Sacred Shield is a better design. Perhaps we can still make Sacred Shield more attractive for Holy and Retribution, and make the other two talents (Selfless Healer, Eternal Flame) more attractive to Protection.

Our goal

We understand that Selfless Healer requires a certain playstyle that not every Holy paladin will find attractive. So we want to make Eternal Flame and Sacred Shield feel like viable talent choices as well.

Mastery not benefiting from Execution Sentence or Light’s Hammer isn’t intended and probably just got caught in the change to make Eternal Flame’s heal-over-time not benefit with mastery. We will correct that.

Remember, at this early stage in the PTR, our designers’ focus are on implementation changes (mechanics) first, and tuning changes (numbers) later. Your feedback at this stage will be more helpful to be focusing on the mechanics (e.g. “I liked using hots” or “I like to Judge and wish I could use Selfless Healer more”) and less on “OMG 30% nerf.”

[Vathius]

Pallies like hots because we get cced 90% of the time.

Nice to know your actually providing some healing while unable to do squat.

[Freia]

Without wanting to call you a 'poor' paladin, far from it. Is a 30-35%~ reduction in your healing hyberbole or actually going to happen? I'm not 'up to date' on Paladin healing breakdowns, but what you're essentially saying is it's around the same nerf MWs took (at the start of the expansion) on their SCK (reduced by 33%) and Renewing Mists (reduced by 33%) which if I may say so ruined MWs for the rest of t14. We simply were not competitive.

Where do you think you'll get compensation?

In what right mind are you to try to compare Monks who overpowered as hell at the beginning of the expansion getting a 33% nerf to 2 spells to holy paladins who are not overpowered gettings 30-35% decrease in their overall healing with all the nerfs in the current ptr build. It is not even close to comparable. So yea paladins would need compensation if this was the build that made it live. Monks didn't need compensation for the SCK and RM nerfs because they were OP and miles above every other healer at the beginning of the expansion vs paladins who are not.

Also those nerfs didn't ruin mistweavers. It was the kneejerk mana cost increases to all spells that happened after patch went live and the fact no healer could touch disc priests that hurt you.

[Deleted]

I guess we can put down the pitchforks for the moment: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/9344634569

Losing the shield on EF will be a major nerf.. At least We will be able to get taht initial high heal.. But our shield building(our biggest heal percent at the end of every figth) is going down the drain.. Add that to the mastery nerf we alredy had in 5.3 and yeah.. Not to happy.. But they say they are going to work a bit more on it.. Lets see what they say..

[Mifuyne]

Losing the shield on EF will be a major nerf.. At least We will be able to get taht initial high heal.. But our shield building(our biggest heal percent at the end of every figth) is going down the drain.. Add that to the mastery nerf we alredy had in 5.3 and yeah.. Not to happy.. But they say they are going to work a bit more on it.. Lets see what they say..

they better work more on it considering I don't really feel like leveling a priest.

[Thiron]

With recent changes to 25-man healing cooldowns, paladins are already starting to lag behind in 25-man setting.
The EF change will bring us down in 10-man too. We're going to be pretty much like Resto Shamans are right now in 10-man, maybe even worse because of not having the Big Bad Cooldown. That is - only being good on certain fights that favor us.
In 25-man, you can at least use Light of Dawn more, but in 10-man it's not always efficient.

Mastery, EF and Sacred Shield are the only "over time" holy skills, and if they're all getting nerfed...are we getting back into "Tank Healer" niche...that doesn't even exist anymore?

And Selfless Healer...Come on. For other specs, it's a talent that gives benefit for something they already do. You don't need to change your playstyle for it. For holy, it's a talent that makes us do extra work to get its benefit.

[Viriel]

I can really not see where the devs are heading right now. EF's favourable part for me was the hot and it's shield application/refresh, but they nerf the initial heal and the mastery on the hot is removed. I can see this as a temporary solution, at the end of the expansion I believe our mastery will have to get totally reworked or changed, but the changes just do not make sense to me in any way, and the confusing blue post earlier tonight has not made it easier to understand.

Our intent for was for Holy Paladins to pick Selfless Healer if they like to Judge, Eternal Flame if they like heal-over-time spells, and Sacred Shield if they liked damage absorb shields. As it worked out, most every Holy paladin chose Eternal Flame, and we don’t want every Holy paladin to be a heal-over-time machine. (That’s a niche best served by Restoration Druids and Holy Priests.)

What I wonder about most is why any dev in their right mind thinks we would even consider going for Selfless healer. The problem with this talenttier was not that EF was so ridiculously OP(cause it isnt thát overpowered), but that the other 2 were just flat out worse(SS) or just...lol(SH). They also want us to stop being a druid, but how on earth are we supposed to keep up with other classes output wise, especially in 10 man, if we barely have aoe output besides EF? LoD is just too weak to be viable in most cases, and I really fear for 10 man especially if these changes(or worse, you never know) go live. While in 25 there might be a slight chance you want to bring a paladin, in 10 man nobody in their right mind would bring us. tankhealing specifically is nice, but not if you're 2 healing heroic tortos(to give the worst example).

edit:

We understand that Selfless Healer requires a certain playstyle that not every Holy paladin will find attractive. So we want to make Eternal Flame and Sacred Shield feel like viable talent choices as well.

Does this imply what I think it does? Cause hell no, SS and EF will never be 'viable' NEXT TO SH.

[Floopa]

What's weird about that statement though is that they aren't including MWs in the "HoT machine". Maybe they've totally forgot about MWs? ... Would be nice I guess, avoiding nerfs is always good.

[Deleted]

Seeing the last PTR build, it seems they nerfed our mastery even more. Illuminated healing now doens't refresh anymore after an EF tick.
I'm personally starting to wonder if I should reroll in 5.4. In my opinion a Paladin lacks certain abilities that other classes have, like Tranquility, healing tide and Revival. It just feels like we lack certain good healing cooldowns (because DA also pretty much sucks).

Normally in 10 man's i'm normally #1 of #2 in the healing meters, last week we tried 25 man's and suddenly my healing becomes medicore. I've played a Paladin since Vanilla but now I'm really starting to doubt the class..

[Deleted]

I wonder what they're gonna give us to compensate for a 30% nerf, a freakin totem? Better be a big one...

Hope something gets seriously buffed otherwise we're pretty much screwed like shamans have been for a long time.

Anyhow, they messed up in the 1st place, they admit it, now they take away what made us strong like it's gonna solve everything, but 2 wrong don't make a right and 5.4 PTR is probably not the right time to do that.

Looks like today, if you don't have a good hot or shield, you're just garbage, so I guess I'm gonna jump the bandwagon and play a monk or whatever, not crazy about the idea of getting leftovers and not being able to do anything about it.

[warlocx]

Am i the only one who already used a combination of SS or WoG depending on the fight?

[Lucyrotten]

Am i the only one who already used a combination of SS or WoG depending on the fight?

Yes.

/10char

[Aqua]

Am i the only one who already used a combination of SS or WoG depending on the fight?

...Sorry but you might just be.

[Freia]

Losing the shield on EF will be a major nerf.. At least We will be able to get taht initial high heal.. But our shield building(our biggest heal percent at the end of every figth) is going down the drain.. Add that to the mastery nerf we alredy had in 5.3 and yeah.. Not to happy.. But they say they are going to work a bit more on it.. Lets see what they say..

Yea but lets hope their compensation isn't just increase heal throughput of x by x%. Because seriously any healing not done by our mastery is mostly just snipped by the smart splash heals of other classes. They really need actual mechanic changes such as increasing the number of targets on Light of Dawn, increasing range and other mechanics on HR. Though seriously, am I the only one who does not want to go back to HR and LoD spam?

With recent changes to 25-man healing cooldowns, paladins are already starting to lag behind in 25-man setting.
The EF change will bring us down in 10-man too. We're going to be pretty much like Resto Shamans are right now in 10-man, maybe even worse because of not having the Big Bad Cooldown. That is - only being good on certain fights that favor us.
In 25-man, you can at least use Light of Dawn more, but in 10-man it's not always efficient.

Seriously, these changes effect 25m and 10m equally. And LoD is better in 10m than 25m btw. It only hits 6 people in both settings which makes up a higher percentage of 10m than 25m. And it has a 30 yard range so range shouldn't be a problem in 10m, while in a lot of fights on 25m your raid will be spread out to where much of your raid is out of that range.

[Lennu]

Am i the only one who already used a combination of SS or WoG depending on the fight?

Nope, I also use SS and rarely use EF(simply dont like the EF playstyle), so Ive been looking at thses changes with indifference, as if they were to another class

[Freia]

Nope, I also use SS and rarely use EF(simply dont like the EF playstyle), so Ive been looking at thses changes with indifference, as if they were to another class

If you were looking at the changes you would have saw their planned changes to SS that were nerfing you as well.