[Holy] Patch 5.4 PTR - Changes Discussion

[Diatenium]

Gonna repeat what others said during reglitchgate. There's no point derailing the discussion by conversing with people who aren't aware of our issues. Just don't reply to him amd keep it constructive.

Indeed, when you have to explain basic MoP Hpaladin issues (eg. spread out healing, hp generation...) that anyone who actually plays the class already knows you're just wasting your time.

This is a perfect example of just how out of the game you currently are. We already spam HR just for the HP, and have for quite a while. Either learn how healing works now or just leave the thread, because you aren't helping anyone or contributing to a good discussion

A right Ad Hominem-palooza here!

...Look, friend, buddy, I'm being genuine here when I'm saying I'm not trying to rouse a conflict for conflict's sake. You're not talking to a developer, you're talking to another player who's just as passionate about the game as you are, the entire purpose of a forum is that it's a place to exchange ideas and views with others, I can't believe I have to explain this. If you think I'm wrong, patiently articulate your disagreement and maybe we can learn something from the dialogue, there's no rush.

I hate derailing the discussion like this, but I'm heading off for a bit anyways, take care!

[Deleted]

A right Ad Hominem-palooza here!

...Look, friend, buddy, I'm being genuine here when I'm saying I'm not trying to rouse a conflict for conflict's sake. You're not talking to a developer, you're talking to another player who's just as passionate about the game as you are, the entire purpose of a forum is that it's a place to exchange ideas and views with others, I can't believe I have to explain this. If you think I'm wrong, patiently articulate your disagreement and maybe we can learn something from the dialogue, there's no rush.

I hate derailing the discussion like this, but I'm heading off for a bit anyways, take care!

There are multiple threads where you can learn how paladin works, and how to play one. This isn't one of them.

[Freia]

Indeed, when you have to explain basic MoP Hpaladin issues (eg. spread out healing, hp generation...)

I am going to explain this again though. Spread out healing isn't our only issue. Stacked healing is not much better.

[Pasture]

Paladin AoE sucks at both spread and stacked up encounters when compared to other classes.

Agreed.

1. Stacked AoE is a ridiculous healing niche. The healers that perform well at spread AoE healing are just as strong at stacked AoE (often stronger) but the reverse is not true.

2. Paladins aren't even that strong at stacked AoE. If you're going to force stacked AoE as a healing niche then it needs to be stronger than the other healers. True perhaps for shamans but not for paladins.

Something to muse for 6.0 rather than now, but buffing the range of HR, LoD and HP could at least make us more proficient at spread healing.

[nightfalls]

As I had feared, I missed a fair amount regarding how MW monks operate in terms of their AoE abilities. I don't have an intimate understanding of how they operate and when the two abilities were brought up (Specifically, REM and Uplift), I researched those abilities almost exclusively, missing the numerous talents that also offer AoE healing as well as forgetting how MW handles SCK. The mistake was in my claim that these were their exclusive sources of AoE healing, my apologies.

This is why the posters are getting so impatient with you Diatenium, you basically are showing you don't know how any of the healing classes work. Monks don't just have two buttons that are ReM and Uplift.

This ain't Cata anymore, where HR actually did healing. Nor does it help your case when you even mention Daybreak at all. We can sit down and go through every ability every heal class and what it does or doesn't do, but that is off topic from this thread. You are driving this thread off topic. Nor is this Cataclysm, you cited a MOP fight (Tortos) that doesn't even matter, if you actually raided you would understand why.

I, too, hate that it is resorting to "ad hominem" and simply putting you on ignore since I used to raid with you, but that seems to be what it is slowly coming down to because you are derailing this thread. If I didn't know you beforehand, I would not have responded and you'd be on ignore, but I figured I'd do this as a favor.

[Xern]

I am going to explain this again though. Spread out healing isn't our only issue. Stacked healing is not much better.

Yeah, I didn't bother listing more than 2 since they are somewhat clear to anyone who has stepped into ToT. Our stacked healing is pretty awful aswell. Just this week mine and Pacer's average HR heal on raden was around 210k. I think we both know how much a PoH will do regardless of being stacked or not, which is one of the points someone brought up (Other classes have better healing stacked and spread).
We are just left with a mediocre AoE heal that we cast even if everyone is spread just to get HP.

[Venism]

I am going to explain this again though. Spread out healing isn't our only issue. Stacked healing is not much better.

In 10m our stacked healing is perfectly fine even with HR hitting like a tissue. In 25m on the other hand, holy paladins were perfectly competable until they did the buff of tranq, revival, divine hymn, and soon to be healing tide totem. Spread aoe healing can be difficult at times, but we aren't hurting as much as you think we are. The main problem is with the changes to illuminated healing with ef, that causes us to need throughput somewhere else (justified change talent balance wise, but will change holy paladins significantly). The raw buff to some of our spells seems to be blizzards solution to the nurf. On the other hand, I feel that the changes to guardian are supposed to be the changes that help compete with the newly designed 25m aoe cd's

[nightfalls]

Just this week mine and Pacer's average HR heal on raden was around 210k. I think we both know how much a PoH will do regardless of being stacked or not, which is one of the points someone brought up (Other classes have better healing stacked and spread). We are just left with a mediocre AoE heal that we cast even if everyone is spread just to get HP.

The heal itself is terrible, but with the loss of EF and LoD not being buffed, basically we have nothing to spend the HP on that's good. LoD needs way more than that pitiful 8% buff it got.

To continue, we don't want every paladin playing like a Resto druid, and honestly neither should you paladins. EF shouldn't be mandatory.

Here's the problem. Right now out of the 5 non-druid heal specs, 3 have resto-like play. Resto druids getting Genesis, in fact, makes monks even closer to druids. That leaves us and Disc. Right now with EF not stacking IH and not becoming baseline, they seem to want to rob our absorbs (making us less of a Disc playstyle?)

So what the fuck are we supposed to be, because Blizzard even mentioned they want to emphasize HoTs in SoO (given the amount of NPC's we have to heal, that fact is obvious), but now they want to take away/neuter any HoTs we have. Looks like a triple whammy.

And +8% to Light of Dawn and -25% to Eternal Flame (given changes since 5.3) isn't going to do shit.

[Deleted]

First of all Monks have Chi Torpedo, Chi Burst and SCK. All of them are instant on demand aoe.

Just to point this out, none of them are instants. Chi burst has an actual cast time and you need to be behind the raid to use it correctly, SCK is a channeled ability, I'll give you Chi Torpedo that has a travel animation you can abuse anyway during the GCD.

[Deleted]

Just to point this out, none of them are instants. Chi burst has an actual cast time and you need to be behind the raid to use it correctly, SCK is a channeled ability, I'll give you Chi Torpedo that has a travel animation you can abuse anyway during the GCD.

I wrote instant on demand aoe not instant cast :P. Renewing Mist for example while being instant cast is not instant on demand aoe is it

[Freia]

Just to point this out, none of them are instants. Chi burst has an actual cast time and you need to be behind the raid to use it correctly, SCK is a channeled ability, I'll give you Chi Torpedo that has a travel animation you can abuse anyway during the GCD.

A spell with a cast time. You realize our main aoe is HR with a slow cast time.


In other news: Reglitch has stopped posting in this thread it seems but he has decided to start messaging people instead.

[Deleted]

A spell with a cast time. You realize our main aoe is HR with a slow cast time.


In other news: Reglitch has stopped posting in this thread it seems but he has decided to start messaging people instead.

rofl, other people too?

"There are multiple threads where you can learn how paladin works"
i take it you havent found them yet

[Freia]

rofl, other people too?

Yes, pretty sad.

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-50...?s=4890&e=5262

yeah man that stacked healing is just terrible i feel u

[Deleted]

In 10m our stacked healing is perfectly fine even with HR hitting like a tissue. In 25m on the other hand, holy paladins were perfectly competable until they did the buff of tranq, revival, divine hymn, and soon to be healing tide totem. Spread aoe healing can be difficult at times, but we aren't hurting as much as you think we are. The main problem is with the changes to illuminated healing with ef, that causes us to need throughput somewhere else (justified change talent balance wise, but will change holy paladins significantly). The raw buff to some of our spells seems to be blizzards solution to the nurf. On the other hand, I feel that the changes to guardian are supposed to be the changes that help compete with the newly designed 25m aoe cd's

Right now [in 10] we can compete on farm with monks and shamans (taking meg as an example) by preemptively shielding everybody and keeping those shields up until the damage phase comes. If we do it the other way we'll still be raped. And it's still clunky as it's a fuckton of HR when no damage is happening. Priests, no chance. I hate it, but without the ef change we'd still be 'viable'.

[cakin]

rofl, other people too?

But he was my favorite...

[Luqt]

First time poster in this thread and paladin forum for that matter lol

Firstly I would like to ask for a more civilized approach when responding to other users, there's no reason to answer in an aggressive manner so if you disagree with another user you either present your view or you don't post at all.

On to the main argument, I've been following this thread for quite a while and there has been some interesting discussion. Personally I'm not very experienced with 5.3 holy paladins as I've only got a blue geared alt running the occasional lfr (and rocking :P), so my opinions may be wide off the mark. Paladins are in a very awkward position in terms of healing because it seems that whilst you can "perform well", it's all thanks to the ludicrous amounts of overhealing and IH shields being placed. The EF nerf to the HoT portion not being able to roll IH on the player is a substantial nerf and it certainly does go about the issue, however this raises other issues which may or may not be related solely to holy paladins. It seems like you're forced to practice this style of healing because your genuine heals just get sniped by smart heals and absorbs.

If my memory serves me correctly, I don't recall these passive heals playing such a big role back at the start of Cata and the WotLK, when you didn't have say HR as a spammable ability (it had like a 30 sec cd, good fun lol) and your main healing abilities were actual single target spells like holy shock and divine light. This is in my opinion the main culprit for the downfall of resto druids, shamans and now holy paladins. This has been mentioned by other users but as much as we pick about on it the truth is it would require more than 1 patch to fix and it certainly wouldn't be 1-2 months before the next raiding tier so if we could put it in light terms, holy paladins need "a temporary fix" so they can be viable for next tier. However, this makes me raise some questions: With the EF nerf which was literally the reason why you "performed well" (I used quotation marks because I find HPS to be an awkward measure of a healer's potential),

1. How will you be spending your holy power? Will you still be using EF?

I question this because from what I can gather, you basically use EF because LoD's healing is subpar and because EF had the ability to keep IH rolling on players. With the nerf, it just seems like you have no "rewarding" ability on to which you can spend your holy power, and I completely agree with the user that mentioned that you should feel that spending your 3 holy powers should be special in the sense of having a powerful heal. Seeming as they buffed 25 man healing rain to only apply diminishing returns after 14 players, could LoD not have a similar buff. I mention this without considering the state of holy in 10 man but I would assume LoD to be stronger in 10 simply because you'll be healing 60% of the raid with it whereas in 25 man you're only healing 24% of the raid.

2. A couple of users mentioned a reduced cd on holy shock, or the need to have quicker and cheaper holy power generation. With the current 5.4 notes what would this imply?

Obviously this question once again touches on the matter of your holy power spenders being garbage, but how would faster holy power gen help in this regard. This brings me to the subject of using CS to generate holy power. The first thing it reminds me of is mistweavers using jab to generate chi, which is personally something I enjoy but often you're not allowed to do this as paladins during encounters simply because you're classified as a "ranged healer" and therefore you are targeted by ranged abilities. If monks are exclusively a melee class and therefore the healing spec is classified as melee for all purposes, why can't holy paladins also be classified as melee? Somebody will probably have better insight on that topic but from my knowledge it makes no sense.

As the last suggestion, and as much as I dislike touching the EF subject partly because I've grown tired of absorbs, I think EF's nerf should be completely reverted so that the HoT portion still grants IH. I still recall how paladins were powerful for progression this tier, and reverting EF would probably make them mandatory for next tier but I personally don't see a fix that would not imply a complete rework of the whole heal paradigm.

As I've mentioned, a healer's potential shouldn't simply be judged by their HPS, having the right cooldowns and abilities also plays a big part. Having a healer that can switch between healing and dpsing with very little to sacrifice provides a massive benefit to the raid composition in my opinion. Just as an example, my guild killed Lei shen hc for the first time with an average ilvl of around 529, and only some dpsers had the legendary meta gem. The phase 1 dps check was high, but I believe that having me and a disc priest full on dpsing was a deciding factor for pushing that requirement. As for the 2 holy paladins that were present in that kill, they weren't asked to denounce the boss, their role was to cover healing (which in all fairness isn't very high during that phase) because there's nothing else they could offer. I'm not saying you have no utility, because your Hand toolkit (although HoSac could have its shared damage component removed) and DA are already decent enough to bring to a raid, but perhaps as a future note Blizzard could consider giving every healer the ability to deal damage without a tremendous loss of mana / healing throughput.

[Deleted]

Imo, LoD needs to be changed. I'd personally like something along the lines of; once you have spent 10(maybe a bit high?) HP, LoD can be used and heals the raid for something along the lines of a druids mushroom at full power. Maybe make it so you only use LoD when it activates @ 10 HP or something.

[nightfalls]

1. How will you be spending your holy power? Will you still be using EF?

I question this because from what I can gather, you basically use EF because LoD's healing is subpar and because EF had the ability to keep IH rolling on players. With the nerf, it just seems like you have no "rewarding" ability on to which you can spend your holy power, and I completely agree with the user that mentioned that you should feel that spending your 3 holy powers should be special in the sense of having a powerful heal. Seeming as they buffed 25 man healing rain to only apply diminishing returns after 14 players, could LoD not have a similar buff. I mention this without considering the state of holy in 10 man but I would assume LoD to be stronger in 10 simply because you'll be healing 60% of the raid with it whereas in 25 man you're only healing 24% of the raid.

Basically ideally what I would like to see is WoG/EF being used for single target healing AND as a proactive heal, and LoD for when the raid is taking damage. (In 5.3 EF is mandatory and used for all of the above situations).

2. A couple of users mentioned a reduced cd on holy shock, or the need to have quicker and cheaper holy power generation. With the current 5.4 notes what would this imply?

A reduced CD on holy shock is unlikely, because it would imply 1) MANY more instant heals (both HS and WoG), 2) more infusion of light procs along with the desired effect, more HP.

As the last suggestion, and as much as I dislike touching the EF subject partly because I've grown tired of absorbs, I think EF's nerf should be completely reverted so that the HoT portion still grants IH. I still recall how paladins were powerful for progression this tier, and reverting EF would probably make them mandatory for next tier but I personally don't see a fix that would not imply a complete rework of the whole heal paradigm.

I completely agree with this, if anything, a better solution than gutting paladins would be cutting EF HoT's IH generation by say 50%, this would still allow EF to be used as a proactive heal without gutting the class. That and make EF simply a baseline part of Holy (it is unused in Ret/Prot really at any rate) and replace it with a talent that's more on par with the other two (vomit) and amenable to Ret/Prot also.

[Freia]

Luq, a lot of the questions you ask (such as "Why paladins can't be classified as melee?"?, we don't know the answer. It is pretty much because the developers said so. We asked many times for it, but they responded with taking mana regen out of Seal of Insight. And on the topic of crusader strike, not only are we not classified as melee to always use it, but we aren't hit or expertise capped for crusader strike to always hit so you can't always count on it.

[Deleted]

First time poster in this thread and paladin forum for that matter lol

Welcome!

Firstly I would like to ask for a more civilized approach when responding to other users, there's no reason to answer in an aggressive manner so if you disagree with another user you either present your view or you don't post at all.

It's no excuse, but you have to remember you're talking to a very disgruntled sector of the community here, and when people come here posing as constructive and then end up just arguing and wasting time because they cant and refuse to understand the issues, it can be utterly frustrating. (one has even resorted to pm'ing people to get a rise now we ignored him here)

On to the main argument, I've been following this thread for quite a while and there has been some interesting discussion. Personally I'm not very experienced with 5.3 holy paladins as I've only got a blue geared alt running the occasional lfr (and rocking :P), so my opinions may be wide off the mark. Paladins are in a very awkward position in terms of healing because it seems that whilst you can "perform well", it's all thanks to the ludicrous amounts of overhealing and IH shields being placed. The EF nerf to the HoT portion not being able to roll IH on the player is a substantial nerf and it certainly does go about the issue, however this raises other issues which may or may not be related solely to holy paladins. It seems like you're forced to practice this style of healing because your genuine heals just get sniped by smart heals and absorbs.

This is part of it, but the other part is we have no burst aoe healing for the hps not covered by asbsorbs, which every other class has. Lets say theres 500k damage, 100k is covered by absorbs, the other 400k will be healed up in a matter of seconds. In this time we'd be able to get off a prism or lh, 2xLOD and an HR if we're lucky. Or with HA perhaps a few more LoD.

Additionally, while other classes can spam rejuv/wg/poh/chain heal/whatever for that period; unless everybody is stacked for a slow casting HR (which does less than all of these), we have to spend time 'setting up' our aoe heal. Even with HA, only 3 out of 5 gcd's will be an aoe heal. the others will be hs and cs/hr.

1. How will you be spending your holy power? Will you still be using EF?

I question this because from what I can gather, you basically use EF because LoD's healing is subpar and because EF had the ability to keep IH rolling on players. With the nerf, it just seems like you have no "rewarding" ability on to which you can spend your holy power, and I completely agree with the user that mentioned that you should feel that spending your 3 holy powers should be special in the sense of having a powerful heal. Seeming as they buffed 25 man healing rain to only apply diminishing returns after 14 players, could LoD not have a similar buff. I mention this without considering the state of holy in 10 man but I would assume LoD to be stronger in 10 simply because you'll be healing 60% of the raid with it whereas in 25 man you're only healing 24% of the raid.

Unsure at this point [10m perspective]; it depends on the amount they buff LoD eventually. It's entirely possible we'll just continue to spam HR and EF for the shields we do get, maybe using 1hp LoD's to refresh the shields as much as possible.

2. A couple of users mentioned a reduced cd on holy shock, or the need to have quicker and cheaper holy power generation. With the current 5.4 notes what would this imply?

Obviously this question once again touches on the matter of your holy power spenders being garbage, but how would faster holy power gen help in this regard. This brings me to the subject of using CS to generate holy power. The first thing it reminds me of is mistweavers using jab to generate chi, which is personally something I enjoy but often you're not allowed to do this as paladins during encounters simply because you're classified as a "ranged healer" and therefore you are targeted by ranged abilities. If monks are exclusively a melee class and therefore the healing spec is classified as melee for all purposes, why can't holy paladins also be classified as melee? Somebody will probably have better insight on that topic but from my knowledge it makes no sense.

We don't know why we can't be melee, the holy paladin community feels a lot of double standards are being applied with the way we are treated versus the other healers. That said, melee cs is something a lot of holydins don't like, and would like to see removed completely.

The reason behind the 4 sec hs need to my mind is twofold. Firstly it's a good spell, it can give a useful proc too. Secondly with HS at 6 seconds, we need 2x HR (4.5s) to get off another finisher, or to use HR's twice between LOD/EF is HA is up. It just 'feels' so clunky and slow.

As the last suggestion, and as much as I dislike touching the EF subject partly because I've grown tired of absorbs, I think EF's nerf should be completely reverted so that the HoT portion still grants IH. I still recall how paladins were powerful for progression this tier, and reverting EF would probably make them mandatory for next tier but I personally don't see a fix that would not imply a complete rework of the whole heal paradigm.

Yea, at this point I agree. Most others probably would too.

As I've mentioned, a healer's potential shouldn't simply be judged by their HPS, having the right cooldowns and abilities also plays a big part. Having a healer that can switch between healing and dpsing with very little to sacrifice provides a massive benefit to the raid composition in my opinion. Just as an example, my guild killed Lei shen hc for the first time with an average ilvl of around 529, and only some dpsers had the legendary meta gem. The phase 1 dps check was high, but I believe that having me and a disc priest full on dpsing was a deciding factor for pushing that requirement. As for the 2 holy paladins that were present in that kill, they weren't asked to denounce the boss, their role was to cover healing (which in all fairness isn't very high during that phase) because there's nothing else they could offer. I'm not saying you have no utility, because your Hand toolkit (although HoSac could have its shared damage component removed) and DA are already decent enough to bring to a raid, but perhaps as a future note Blizzard could consider giving every healer the ability to deal damage without a tremendous loss of mana / healing throughput.

This is the other problem, we bring no utility that another paladin does not bring, and it's a cause of contention that every other healer has multiple throughput cd's and we have nothing.

The final issue is probably the trinkets...

- - - Updated - - -

Luq, a lot of the questions you ask (such as "Why paladins can't be classified as melee?"?, we don't know the answer. It is pretty much because the developers said so. We asked many times for it, but they responded with taking mana regen out of Seal of Insight. And on the topic of crusader strike, not only are we not classified as melee to always use it, but we aren't hit or expertise capped for crusader strike to always hit so you can't always count on it.

It's not just the insight nerf either. Every time we suggest or ask for something, they respond with a nerf to discourage it. It feels like we're being pissed on over and over.

eg. the poor t15 set bonuses; they respond by nerfing the t14 one.
insight, they respond by nerfing the mana