[Holy] Patch 5.4 PTR - Changes Discussion

[Dubalicious]

Right, it's either go Disc (which would still be better than playing your main) or better yet, get another Disc and sit the tier out. Might as well unsub the game while at it.

[edit] Don't get me wrong, I fully do believe and have faith that at least on paper, Blizzard will buff us.

Of course, on paper having some bullshit like +50% increased Daybreak, T16 2pc buffed to +20%, etc. will equal nothing at all, but I don't think they really care.

Yeah this is all theoretical and I don't see it ever coming down to a situation where Holy is literally not viable for heroic progression, but every day and PTR patch that goes by we all get a bit more nervous/concerned and maybe a bit more miserable lol

[Absyrd]

Probably quitting the game until next expansion,depends how things will turn out in the next 2 weeks. I play at an extremely competitive level though.

this saddens me =(

[Elovan]

Set bonuses got buffed, about time.

Item - Paladin T16 Holy 2P Bonus Infusion of Light also increases the healing done by Holy Light, Divine Light, and Holy Radiance by 25% (up from 10%).
Item - Paladin T16 Holy 4P Bonus Reduces the cooldown of Divine Favor by 60 (up from 45)sec. While Divine Favor is active, Mastery is increased by 4,500 (up from 1,500).

[Floopa]

I just posted some info for Protection in another thread (link) but wanted to make sure we got the message across to Holy as well.

We’ve gotten a lot of feedback from the Holy community that there’s too much of a difference between fights where you’re allowed to stand in melee and fights where you cannot. Seal of Insight is a large part of that problem. By removing the mana gains from SoI, we can balance Holy’s mana appropriately. We don’t think the overall impact will be too large, but just to be sure, we’re planning to buff Divine Plea up to 15% for slightly stronger mana-on-demand.

As I mentioned in the other thread, the Glyph of the Battle Healer changes are largely due to how exceedingly powerful the glyph has become for Protection tanks. We do think it will still be useful in some situations, but we also recognize that many Paladins simply like the idea of healing through melee attacks, and that’s something we may explore more fully in the future. If we do, however, it will most likely not be through a glyph.

In regards to the more general concerns about Holy throughput, we do still plan to buff Holy elsewhere to make up for the changes to Eternal Flame. We’re still discussing exactly what those changes will be (which is why you haven’t seen them yet), but to give a bit of insight, we’re not very likely to buff spells like Beacon of Light or Holy Radiance. When we do make changes, they’ll probably be to spells like Flash of Light, Divine Light, Light of Dawn, and Guardian of Ancient Kings.

Again, please keep in mind that the PTR is a development environment, which quite often means you’ll see incomplete parts of overall changes as work continues. We really appreciate constructive and precise feedback about your concerns – letting us know exactly what is or isn’t working is a lot more effective than hyperbole. Thanks!

Source: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...69?page=25#499

Keep the faith guys!

[Deleted]

Buffing a set bonus that aready to me equals more overhealing, not to mention its laughable in comparison to others, is not a "buff" in anyones regards. As previously mentioned here, buffing random mechanics to a class like daybreak or a set bonus won't make the class viable for hc progression. As much as I doubt also that blizz would leave holy in a bad place like most believe, I do have issues with playing something extremely weak to something else i could be playing. Puts me in a hard place to re roll spec or even toon. Its unjustified still, and its taking far too long for them to do so

[Pasture]

Set bonuses got buffed, about time.

Item - Paladin T16 Holy 2P Bonus Infusion of Light also increases the healing done by Holy Light, Divine Light, and Holy Radiance by 25% (up from 10%).
Item - Paladin T16 Holy 4P Bonus Reduces the cooldown of Divine Favor by 60 (up from 45)sec. While Divine Favor is active, Mastery is increased by 4,500 (up from 1,500).

Both favourable changes though I'm not sure how useful the 2pc is still. 25% on HR every 12 seconds is nice but still feels a little pointless. The 4pc buff should make cooldown stackers happy and comes with a needed mastery buff.

The blue posts implies a LoD buff and a Guardian cooldown reduction. DL and FoL being lumped in there is strange. Both underused spells, particularly FoL. Unless they are going to change the mechanic of the spells by making them do something in addition to what they already do, I don't see the sense in buffing them.

Buffs are buffs, and much needed, but the thought seems to be straight throughput buffs that don't address the issue of what we're losing. We'll see.

Edit: Divine Plea at 15%. Whatever, I'll take it. Better than having to melee for mana.

[Deleted]

So lore just posted this

I just posted some info for Protection in another thread (link) but wanted to make sure we got the message across to Holy as well.

We’ve gotten a lot of feedback from the Holy community that there’s too much of a difference between fights where you’re allowed to stand in melee and fights where you cannot. Seal of Insight is a large part of that problem. By removing the mana gains from SoI, we can balance Holy’s mana appropriately. We don’t think the overall impact will be too large, but just to be sure, we’re planning to buff Divine Plea up to 15% for slightly stronger mana-on-demand.

As I mentioned in the other thread, the Glyph of the Battle Healer changes are largely due to how exceedingly powerful the glyph has become for Protection tanks. We do think it will still be useful in some situations, but we also recognize that many Paladins simply like the idea of healing through melee attacks, and that’s something we may explore more fully in the future. If we do, however, it will most likely not be through a glyph.

In regards to the more general concerns about Holy throughput, we do still plan to buff Holy elsewhere to make up for the changes to Eternal Flame. We’re still discussing exactly what those changes will be (which is why you haven’t seen them yet), but to give a bit of insight, we’re not very likely to buff spells like Beacon of Light or Holy Radiance. When we do make changes, they’ll probably be to spells like Flash of Light, Divine Light, Light of Dawn, and Guardian of Ancient Kings.

Again, please keep in mind that the PTR is a development environment, which quite often means you’ll see incomplete parts of overall changes as work continues. We really appreciate constructive and precise feedback about your concerns – letting us know exactly what is or isn’t working is a lot more effective than hyperbole. Thanks!

FoL and DL getting buffed means nothing at all. LoD will either still be worse than EF or it will be better if it gets better than EF, expect to see a 5% throughput buff over current ptr. The only thing that could really change the tables are a GoAK buff, if they turned it into something that works like AG it could potentially be 20% of our healing done (very unlikely to see such a big buff).

[Deleted]

Both favourable changes though I'm not sure how useful the 2pc is still. 25% on HR every 12 seconds is nice but still feels a little pointless. The 4pc buff should make cooldown stackers happy and comes with a needed mastery buff.

the 2pc in my experience is quite weak compared to monks simply using chi wave or discs who probably already pre casting smites to instantly heal up minimal damage. in large aoe situations like magera itl mean quicker bursts of strong aoe. I don't think its a fitting bonus, and should be changed to something a bit more useful

[Xs]

Since neither of the other two posted it properly:

I just posted some info for Protection in another thread (link) but wanted to make sure we got the message across to Holy as well.

We’ve gotten a lot of feedback from the Holy community that there’s too much of a difference between fights where you’re allowed to stand in melee and fights where you cannot. Seal of Insight is a large part of that problem. By removing the mana gains from SoI, we can balance Holy’s mana appropriately. We don’t think the overall impact will be too large, but just to be sure, we’re planning to buff Divine Plea up to 15% for slightly stronger mana-on-demand.

As I mentioned in the other thread, the Glyph of the Battle Healer changes are largely due to how exceedingly powerful the glyph has become for Protection tanks. We do think it will still be useful in some situations, but we also recognize that many Paladins simply like the idea of healing through melee attacks, and that’s something we may explore more fully in the future. If we do, however, it will most likely not be through a glyph.

In regards to the more general concerns about Holy throughput, we do still plan to buff Holy elsewhere to make up for the changes to Eternal Flame. We’re still discussing exactly what those changes will be (which is why you haven’t seen them yet), but to give a bit of insight, we’re not very likely to buff spells like Beacon of Light or Holy Radiance. When we do make changes, they’ll probably be to spells like Flash of Light, Divine Light, Light of Dawn, and Guardian of Ancient Kings.

Again, please keep in mind that the PTR is a development environment, which quite often means you’ll see incomplete parts of overall changes as work continues. We really appreciate constructive and precise feedback about your concerns – letting us know exactly what is or isn’t working is a lot more effective than hyperbole. Thanks! (Source)

[Tonic]

<snip>

seal of insight nerf.

Infracted. Please refrain from posting memes. ~Fhi

[nightfalls]

Here's what I put on official forums regarding Regen changes:

Buffing Divine Plea from 12% to 15% will give a 375 MP5 (~485 with the 553 CD reduction trinket) increase overall, since with the removal of the reduced healing effect we can assume it will be used on cooldown. However Seal of Insight on melee fights has been giving roughly 800-1800 MP5 (Lei Shen/Ra-den respectively).

This is also ignoring fight mechanics. Having a more "on-demand" regen tool allows us to deal with "burn" and "regen" phases much better than a 2 minute cooldown, which will lead to us delaying it if we are mana capped during a regen phase.

Set Bonuses:

The 25% increase for 2pc has to be multiplied by your mastery to give the actual effective increase, which will only end up being around a 12% bonus. Buffing 3 spells that always overheal is not really a buff. Also just IMO, Divine Light belongs in the CD reduction trinket not in a 4 set that will just decouple all of our CD's.

Spells:

Flash of Light and Divine Light changes for raid as mentioned will pretty much do jack all of shit. The only changes that will make a difference (read: actual changes) are to Light of Dawn and Guardian. Guardian just needs to be rebuilt from the ground up, I like Pacer's idea of making it like AG. Light of Dawn should get a decent throughput buff, and also hit 15 targets in a 25m raid to be on par with Healing Rain, since that's the new baseline standard set by the resto shamans.

[Xs]

I'm so glad that they are deciding to buff flash of light and divine light, I really want to use selfless healer now that they will most likely heal for even more! (not). Guardian needed a buff, and it should have been buffed awhile ago, and buffing Light of Dawn will be nice, but it will still be bad. They just need to give EF to holy paladins baseline, because a HP spender has no place in the talent tree IMO.

I think they could do some interesting things with Guardian, just hope we don't get the same treatment Ret got.
I'd like to see them get their teeth into Light of Dawn to change it and make it something we can potentially use to make up for the massive nerf to EF, along with making Divine Light something that sees more use. Still not holding my breath that we'll come out the other side of this in a good state though.

[Deleted]

What if guardian was made 3 minute and would allow similar behavior to Spirit Shell by copying single target heals @ 25% to the entire raid, that'd be pretty neat

[Kyuuseishu]

What if guardian was made 3 minute and would allow similar behavior to Spirit Shell by copying single target heals @ 25% to the entire raid, that'd be pretty neat

Well considering both the other specs have a 3 minute guardian it makes no sense to keep holy's as a 5, I'm undecided on if it needs a mechanic change but ofc they will decide, I'm just happy the set bonuses got changed to something more...good.

[Deleted]

What if guardian was made 3 minute and would allow similar behavior to Spirit Shell by copying single target heals @ 25% to the entire raid, that'd be pretty neat

Personally I would prefer if it copied 100% healing to 15 targets with lowest hp within 40 yards for the next 5 heals. Obviously still on a 5 min cd, that would make it do 7,5 million healing asuming 100k heals with no overhealing, that would pretty much put it in line with the other healers healing cds. Actually with a 5min cd it would probably still be worse than other cds but it would still help massively.

[mcbubble]

I'm glad they finally addressed us...though we still have to wait and see what will happen.
I honestly just want a playstyle change.
Make us want to cast judgment so Selfless Healer is beneficial for heals
-OR-
Give us a throughput CD (maybe this is what you'll be doing with GoAK - fingers crossed).
-OR-
Give us mana regen equivelant to the other healers. I raid non heroics on my alts and I raid very competitive heroics on my main (who's a paly), and I can tell you that the regen for my paladin is pretty horrid. Granted we can work around that, but this seal nerf will REALLY hurt me.
I just looked at our RaDen kill last night.
I gained 108k mana from Divine Plea
I gained 105.6k mana from Seal of Insight.
The 3% buff to Divine Plea won't make up for this.

Play a monk and have ZERO mana issues and drop your spirit.
Play a priest and have ZERO mana issues and drop your spirit (unless you're holy)
Play a druid and have ZERO mana issues and drop your spirit
Play a shaman and you go full spirit because you're a battery and yet have zero mana issues because you have our old mana regen mechanic.
Play a paladin and in 5.4 you will need to go full spirit (yeh I know some people drop their spirit, but for progression, you'll need it).

[Floopa]

The game needs less absorbs to be honest. Not more. Absorbs ruin healing.

[Dubalicious]

I wish they would give us a definitive *direction* that they want to go with the spec.

I really dislike the last line of Lore's post because it's pretty obvious what the flaws in the spec are and there are infinite amount of ways to fix them. Here's my best summary of our current issues:


- Slow holy power generation, and very restricted means of holy power generation

- Delegated to overhealing as our only (competitive) form of proactive healing

- Tier 45 talents - One is considered "mandatory" based on power and effectiveness, one is a non-option for holy, and the other *still needs* to be made competitive (preferably would fill a similar, but slightly different niche than Eternal Flame). We have lost so much strength from this tier of talents.

- Lacking a competitive raid cooldown - Devotion aura is not powerful or unique compared to what other classes bring.

- Spread Healing - LoD needs to be more effective/powerful for spread and raid healing. Obviously EF is already being heavily considered and looked at.

- GoAK is not effective enough for a 5 minute cooldown.

- Long cast times, expensive spells - I put these together because some would argue that we avoid haste, but haste is extremely inefficient with our mana costs and, imo, our holy power mechanics

- Holy Power finishers need to be more diverse and rewarding in some way.


*I'm working on some propositions for these issues, but if I'd love to hear any other MAJOR ISSUES you have with the spec (I tried to include the ones I hear mentioned most often, but probably missed a couple)

[luc54]

Personally I would prefer if it copied 100% healing to 15 targets with lowest hp within 40 yards for the next 5 heals. Obviously still on a 5 min cd, that would make it do 7,5 million healing asuming 100k heals with no overhealing, that would pretty much put it in line with the other healers healing cds. Actually with a 5min cd it would probably still be worse than other cds but it would still help massively.

That sounds kinda powerful considering we already have devotion aura (despite it being rather crap). With some number tweaks it could be useful tho. Perhaps changing the cooldown in line to be 3 minutes.

[Deleted]

Well my fears have come true! To me this confirms have nothing if they are already talking about buffing DL/FoL/LoD. And again they just started this PTR without a plan behind the changes. Blizz: Holy Paladins shouldn't all be using EF lets persuade them to not use it. NERF EF! Buff SH/SS. 2 weeks later. Oh that didn't work hmmz. Remove the shield stacking and bring out the beers guys! 4th of july weekend WooHoo.

I'm glad we finally got a post. But all classes should have gotten an update post Before the long 4th of july weekend. Really poor planning by the team.

Yay GoAK unless the fights place raid members at 5% hp consistently i only see more overhealing in our future. What are they going to do? 10 heals an 50% haste? If you ask me it's complete redesign time.

Maybe they decided to drop some of that compensation into our tier set... It's kind of like reading patch notes instead of a set bonus. Any ways 5min 3min 2min 2min cooldowns that is a nice change.

It doesn't really matter what they do to LoD it will stay crap till they buff it past EF. And that might make us switch :P

Well the Seal of Insight is a nice confirmation that they don't want us in melee. But now they just need to delete Crusader Strike and be done with it. Maybe they can rebalance the HoPo generation spells for us next expansion with those removed. But i'm afraid the 15% DP isn't enough. It's only 45k mana. You won't even see it on your bars if your chain casting HR to get more HoPo.

OH well more waiting for patchnotes.
Will go read over the official forums now Should be fun. Almost took out the popcorn when i saw that bluepost.