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  1. #1
    Moderator Malthanis's Avatar
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    [WoD] Holy Paladin Megathread

    All Holy Paladin specific discussion for Warlords is to happen here.

    General Paladin information to be found here (thanks to Zabannith for being awesome and opening that thread up).


    I'm going to try and keep a log of things that are happening here in the OP. If you've got info about something, leave a post and I'll record it here (each item will be a link to the post adding it). If I ever miss something, feel free to call it out in the thread again for me, or to shoot me a PM about it.

    Dev Watercooler: Building Healthy Gameplay [03/07/2014]
    There's a bit of talk about health pools and damage values, but the last two sections are on retuning the "core" healing spells and on instant spells.

    Paladin changes:
    • Eternal Flame and Word of Glory now each have a 1.5-second cast time when specced Holy.
    • Light of Dawn now has a 1.5-second cast time.

    Blue tweet responses to the dev watercooler (as compiled by Lovestar) [[link]]

    Reported by Lovestar (3-12-2014):
    Originally Posted by @Celestalon
    Hoping for an answer. I <3 Arc Torrent on my healadin for the mana return. Still happen in WoD? Or all pally specs getting HP?
    All Paladins get Holy Power instead of Mana. Holy Power will be more valuable, though.

    will it still do aoe silence or will it just be a resource gain?
    Still does that.

    WoD Alpha - Build 18156 (4-17-2014):
    Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
    Paladin (Forums)

    Talents
    • Eternal Flame HoT now scales with 6.6% of spellpower, up from 3.3%.
    • Seraphim now also increases Readiness.

    Holy
    • Divine Favor was renamed to Avenging Wrath - Increases all your damage and healing done by 100%, increases your haste by 20%, and increases your critical chance by 20%. Lasts 20 sec.
    • Divine Plea (New) Instantly regain 4.5% of maximum mana. Paladin - Holy Spec. 3 Holy Power. Instant.
    • Holy Light now costs 18.5% of Base Mana, down from 19.5%.
    • Holy Radiance now costs 49% of Base Mana, down from 51.5%.
    • Holy Shock now costs 15% of Base Mana, down from 15.5%

    Major Glyphs
    Last edited by Malthanis; 2014-04-17 at 02:09 PM.
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  2. #2
    Thank god, i was sick of reading Inq QQ in two different threads.

    I think EF will be nerfed and HR*, HL, DL and FoL will be buffed, They said they want to cut down smart healing, so probably our mastery will be changed or nerfed to the ground the result will be a more emphasis in single target healing.

  3. #3
    For what it's worth, I'm not sure there isn't much to discuss before the Healer Blog Post comes up. Even then I am curious as to whether there will be any actual specific mechanics changes or just some dumb rehash of "We want less smart healing and less absorbs" which is obvious from MoP and from Blizzcon statements, like how the first blog post was 90% restatements from Blizzcon.

    Changes to Mastery would require every talent and ability to be re-evaluated. So would changes to absorbs. So would a new smart heal model. There's still nothing about 100 talents other than that one is not making it, another is worthless (might as well not exist), and the third is the blandest talent imaginable (Double Beacon).

    Couple of things that IMO could use a look, though:

    1) Eternal Flame. In a single patch it's gone from an ability that requires thinking to a dumb fire and forget 30 second HoT. If anything, what I would do is simply take the ability, make it baseline on both Word of Glory and Light of Dawn, but make the HoT last only 6-12 seconds instead. Right now Light of Dawn could use a bit more than a single hit especially as a finisher. It's also nice to have at least one HoT ability, since everybody (even Disc Priests) have them, and we are not a "pure absorb" healer like Disc Priests are.

    2) Level 90 Talents. Stay of Execution could use a rework. One thought of mine was to make it act as the opposite of Execution Sentence, in that it applies a big burst heal first, then a trickle-down effect. Another option would be for 2-3 bursts, to make it a little less similar to EF. It is a talented 1 minute cooldown that heals a single target, it should actually do more than an EF does. Another option would be to make it an external cooldown, similar to Dark Bargain, where it prevents damage for X seconds, and then spreads it out over Y seconds (in that sense, your execution is stayed). Holy Prism could feel a little less anemic at times. Among tuning changes, one thing I would do is to make the direct heal transfer 50% healing to Beacon of Light. I'd probably also make the single target component a little stronger than the AoE component.

    3) HP Generators. As put by others, right now our generators just suck, period. One possibility is to cut down to Flash of Light, Divine Light, and Holy Radiance, while adding a new "fast cast" AoE heal, similar to Glyphed Binding Heal. This would be a 3-6 target fast cast splash heal, that would cost a lot of mana but generate quick Holy Power. I do like the idea of resource mechanics, but generation needs to be a lot less clunky even if most of our heals are finisher-based.

    4) Holy Power. An idea of mine earlier on was to make Mastery buff Holy Power finishing moves, with a baseline Illuminated Healing at a flat X% (I went with 20%). If the HoT were on the finisher (12 seconds) as well with IH generated, this would buff finishers - both direct, HoT, and IH components. Another idea would be to use an "energizing brew" type mechanic where you get stacks per HP spent, which can be converted into a short CD buff. If that happens, Mastery could buff that CD also, which would make generation a bit more exciting.

    5) Infusion of Light. I would make Infusion of Light proc on every Holy Shock, instead of only on critical hits as is, but if we listen to Idea #3 this could make this unnecessary.

    ---

    Emphasis on single target healing with active mitigation on tanks will just make for a shit class, shit spec, and boring gameplay. The era of "tank healer" is over since AM has come into play. And unfortunately ST raid healing doesn't happen without smart heals.

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Masterik View Post
    Thank god, i was sick of reading Inq QQ in two different threads.

    I think EF will be nerfed and HR*, HL, DL and FoL will be buffed, They said they want to cut down smart healing, so probably our mastery will be changed or nerfed to the ground the result will be a more emphasis in single target healing.
    If their objective is to cut down smart healing, they really shouldn't nerf one of the iconic manual healing spells, tbh.

    For one, our mastery shielding hasn't been a problem since 5.4 hit. EF changed to not reapply IH was one of the healthiest changes the healer landscape has seen in a while.


    Quote Originally Posted by nightfalls View Post
    Emphasis on single target healing with active mitigation on tanks will just make for a shit class, shit spec, and boring gameplay. The era of "tank healer" is over since AM has come into play. And unfortunately ST raid healing doesn't happen without smart heals.
    If tanks took as much or more damage on every fight as H Paragons, there might be a reason to actually run dedicated tank healers.

    And rework all AMs to do % damage reduction and nerf/remove tank healing as a whole.

    As a side-note, I really don't want to contend with another situational holy power generator to bind on my bars, I rather they simply make radiance have a 1.5-2 second cast time since it's ridiculously expensive as it is anyway.
    Last edited by PosPosPos; 2014-03-03 at 06:10 PM.
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  5. #5
    As Voidspark said, make IH baseline(I thought about 25%, but 20% would be fine too I guess) and rework mastery.

    I'm not sure what they're gonna do with the 45 tier, I like having the choice between 2 playing styles, but with Blizzard wanting less smart heals(SH) and EF being as it is now I can see a rework of the tier as a whole. I just hope Blizzard doesn't do it like the 5.4 ptr all over again, where we waited a long time for nothing and then they just flat out buff a talent to compensate for their lazyness. If Blizzard wants to work on smarthealing and absorbs they nééd to be carefull. It would be nice to roughly have the same way of healing from tier to tier,, and not change healing styles from tier to tier like what happened between 5.2 and 5.4.

    Also, please balance classes this time blizz, don't redo 5.0 with discs and monks!
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  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Viriel View Post
    I'm not sure what they're gonna do with the 45 tier, I like having the choice between 2 playing styles
    I would if they weren't equally awful.

    EF pre-5.4 was a "smart" mechanic. You had a finisher that was your main heal, and you had to decide who to place it on based on a balance between its immediate (immediate reactive heal on a low player), short-term (HoT to top off a medium-health player), and long-term (IH for 30 seconds) mechanics, with trade-offs based on sacrificing one or more of the two to take advantage of the other mechanics. The only truly overpowered aspect was the duration of the HoT (30 seconds), and even that "overpowered" aspect dramatically pales in comparison to Priest 90 talents which will be in place for much longer than EF 5.2 was.

    Right now we have 3 not just under-tuned but absolutely horrible mechanics. A HoT without IH is just that, junk for the most part, and to ensure the ability isn't sorely underpowered the HoT became very good. Problem is, since it is a HoT and not an absorb, there is no more thought required - it matters very little which raid members the ability is put on (since overhealing will be high regardless of who). So it's gone from its previous nuances to just "fire and forget" - the best part of that HoT is just the Beacon transfer.

    SH is the dumbest I think I've ever played, being reliant 100% on smart healing and repeating an ad nauseum rotation. It's the opposite of "thinking," its worse than what 5.4 Shaman is, only without the raid benefits. While SH is undertuned as hell, it is good because all abilities benefit from mastery (unlike EF) so Mastery actually is worth its full weight, not a pathetic % of it. But that doesn't matter, you could give it a 30-50% healing buff and it would still be as boring and mindless as it is now.

    I'm not worried about tuning so much as good mechanics, and I think most of us should do that as well. This expansion has somewhat renewed my faith in tuning, but definitely not when it comes to mechanics design.

    ===

    Right now the most fun I've had this tier is on my alt Disc Priest by far, and that's NOT because of its tuning, but because it actually requires a lot of thought and setup to play, and is rewarding for the effort. Similar to 5.2-5.3 Paladin.

    Also, Disc healing ability in 10 takes a nosedive if played poorly, so it's definitely a skill cap. Not like smash-4-buttons Paladin.
    Last edited by nightfalls; 2014-03-03 at 08:37 PM.

  7. #7
    I think my biggest problem with the spec personally is a lack of an Oh shit button. I think if they trimmed down some of the CD's for HPallies, like Avenging Wrath, Divine Favor, Holy avenger and gave us an actual Oh Shit button for large raid damage it would go a long way to helping the spec over all. Right now their only way to deal with heavy AoE damage is to use a lot of heavy mana dumps and a Cooldown, it's really inefficient and if it's persistent AoE raid damage hard to deal with.

    Granted my only experience is Proving Grounds and LFR for holy. It just seems like the spec is more about mana dumping after damage goes off and less about keeping people topped off and shielded with our mastery. Also i only have about 2 months experience as i have only played in 5.4 for about 2 months now.
    I'm glad to have multiple personalities, if i didn't i would be talking to myself, and that's just insane.

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Borigrad View Post
    Granted my only experience is Proving Grounds and LFR for holy. It just seems like the spec is more about mana dumping after damage goes off and less about keeping people topped off and shielded with our mastery. Also i only have about 2 months experience as i have only played in 5.4 for about 2 months now.
    As your total lack of experience may suggest, you are totally, 100% wrong about what the spec is about.

    Quote Originally Posted by Borigrad View Post
    I think my biggest problem with the spec personally is a lack of an Oh shit button. I think if they trimmed down some of the CD's for HPallies, like Avenging Wrath, Divine Favor, Holy avenger and gave us an actual Oh Shit button for large raid damage it would go a long way to helping the spec over all.
    Such a button has absolutely zero correlation with how well a spec plays. The best healing specs of MOP have all lacked such buttons, at that.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by nightfalls View Post
    As your total lack of experience may suggest, you are totally, 100% wrong about what the spec is about.


    Such a button has absolutely zero correlation with how well a spec plays. The best healing specs of MOP have all lacked such buttons, at that.
    First part, yes i totally agree, my own ignorance is clashing with my previous healing experience, so i'm basing how this expansion feels on that.

    As for the second part, that was more for WoD healing, since they want to trim down the healing, i would like to see something to replace the loss of three cooldowns with a fun mechanic or oh shit button. The spec lacks them and thats more personal taste as i like the feel of them.
    I'm glad to have multiple personalities, if i didn't i would be talking to myself, and that's just insane.

  10. #10
    They havent said they are removing the three cooldowns, we only know that DF will be merged with something else.

  11. #11
    Dreadlord MetroStratics's Avatar
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    Actually, he is entirely correct. In 25 man heroic raiding, without a real throughput CD that helps the raid, Paladin are weak.
    Don't let the mastery pad cloud your vision, we bring the least to the table of any healer (minus on thok, where we bring the most)
    Devo aura needs to be increased to all types of damage, and guardian needs to duplicate all healing across all targets like Ascendance.

    Luckily, we are still extremely versatile with the Hand options and a combination of our three self-throughput increases can be quite potent when underhealing.
    But its extremely obvious on a fight like Thok. With Tranqs, Hymns, and Totems OWNING the fight, if it wasn't for the silence immune on Devo, we would be completely useless.

    Hope to see something big come WoD for those big coordinated moments.
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  12. #12
    Regarding mastery, imo the solution is to have it only proc off effective healing (including hots) but buff the absorb % a bit. It prevents overhealing for the sole purpose of stacking a shield but makes mastery more useful in a high damage fight.

    I actually think they should do something similar with HP generators. HR only generates HP when it effective heals 4+ targets say. Have DL generate HP in some way as well.

    Combined the idea is that we don't just spam HR to generate / roll shields and pick up HP. Make HP generation more intelligent. Dumping a HR on a topped off group is useless but maybe a smart DL on a target below 50% health generates 2HP. We'd actually have some cause to individually triage rather than just roll out the HR and use EF to top people up. Ultimately we couldn't shield and generate HP as easily as now in low heal situations but being smart in heavy damages phases would allow you to generate more HP and drop bigger shields. Add a bit of finesse to the class.

    I also agree with the above. Make EF baseline and have it effect WoG and LoD. It's a core Paladin ability now.

  13. #13
    Deleted
    I think Nightfalls already brought many good suggestions to the table to adjust how we heal. From my own perspective one of the biggest problems in healing is that at the beginning of at least the last two expansions healing was extremely interesting, challenging and therefore a fun experience. You had low resources to play with and really needed to min-max, not overheal too much and make use of triage healing. With each tier this more and more boils down to spam your biggest hps spells as fast as possible brainfuck gameplay. The only real thought process left is when do I use my healing cooldowns - if there even is a hard hitting mechanic to plan for.

    I like that they introduced a second playstile option with buffing selfless healer next to Eternal Flame. It is right that it does not provide a really meaningful thought process behind because you do a set rotation to generate Holy Power as fast as possible and dump it into Light of Dawn which is completely smart heals and use here and there your healing cds to buff your output. To my mind in SoO Eternal Flame is not really a super sophisticated gameplay either. I played 10 man with Eternal Flame and what you did boiled mostly down to keep 1-3 HP Eternal Flame on nearly everyone running. Later I changed to 25 man healing and I have to say that after one raid with eternal flame I decided to give Selfless Healer a try and stayed with it. Both are not really great choices of interesting gameplay and I would neither call a fun experience. At least in 25 man SH is far more convenient and straight forward than trying to heal random raid wide damage with EF.

    After all the changes to Holy Paladin in MoP for raiding I have to say that I am really disappointed where we are standing currently. All options are kind of bland and the variation in gameplay is minimal. To my mind there has to happen something more radical. They already said they want to implement more healing mechanics in WoD to make the healing experience more engaging. I just hope they stay true to this announcement because fights like Tsulong where it really matters what and how you heal and react to the situation is far more interesting as just hammering your max hps rotation.

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by MetroStratics View Post
    Actually, he is entirely correct. In 25 man heroic raiding, without a real throughput CD that helps the raid, Paladin are weak. Don't let the mastery pad cloud your vision, we bring the least to the table of any healer (minus on thok, where we bring the most)
    He is not.

    I agree that Paladins don't have a "one button CD" and that Paladins are weak. That said, there is zero causal link whatsoever. Paladins do not need a "one button CD," we need our abilities that we do have to not suck. Take 5.2, Paladins did not have a "one button YOLO CD" but we were not weak. Disc Priests were the Golden Child of healing all expansion and they do not have a one button YOLO CD either.

    Quote Originally Posted by MetroStratics View Post
    Devo aura needs to be increased to all types of damage, and guardian needs to duplicate all healing across all targets like Ascendance.
    This I can go with, though I'd rather Guardian be phased away altogether (it's extremely clumsy of a CD) which I think is what is happening.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Pasture View Post
    Regarding mastery, imo the solution is to have it only proc off effective healing (including hots) but buff the absorb % a bit. It prevents overhealing for the sole purpose of stacking a shield but makes mastery more useful in a high damage fight.
    No, absolutely not. Tying core healing mechanics into lack of overhealing is an extremely clumsy solution ESPECIALLY when it comes to generating proactive heals and worse yet resource mechanics. That's just a horrible idea.

    Notice that the closest example to a direct healing class, Shaman, rewards effective heals (versus overhealing) only with a throughput boost which they can still choose to minimize the reliance on that by not going for Mastery. By contrast ALL of their core mechanics both proactive and reactive in nature (Ancestral Awakening, Resurgence, Earthliving, Ancestral Vigor) still trigger even on 100% overhealing.

    Even with their core mechanics kept, it's STILL not like Resto Shaman mastery (esp. in PvE) is seen as a smashing success, either.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Borigrad View Post
    First part, yes i totally agree, my own ignorance is clashing with my previous healing experience, so i'm basing how this expansion feels on that.
    It's really difficult to take people's opinions on class changes seriously when they have no experience with the class as it is. Please don't take this as a personal attack on you, on the contrary, I welcome newer players and hope that you enjoy playing the class (and yes, I agree it's not that great right now).

    But it's difficult to actually take arguments seriously until you've realized how a class works, and the only way you can do that (or any of us, for that) is just by theorycrafting and playing it at a decent level - for instance, when you improve your paladin you'll realize that Mastery is actually king, and most of encounters are best played by preparing cooldowns in advance, not after the fact. That said when you master preparing abilities in advance, it's a lot more fun than just pushing a button after the fact.

    We have 4 classes with "oh shit buttons" that they rely on once damage has appeared, and I much prefer to be one of the two that prepares in advance. I really recommend you give the latter playstyle a try, but if you really cannot stand it even after trying then well... there are 4 specs for you already.
    Last edited by nightfalls; 2014-03-04 at 12:43 AM.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by nightfalls View Post
    He is not.

    I agree that Paladins don't have a "one button CD" and that Paladins are weak. That said, there is zero causal link whatsoever. Paladins do not need a "one button CD," we need our abilities that we do have to not suck. Take 5.2, Paladins did not have a "one button YOLO CD" but we were not weak. Disc Priests were the Golden Child of healing all expansion and they do not have a one button YOLO CD either.
    It's technically not a one button wonder, but Spirit Shell is pretty much THE cd disc had prior to 5.4. Said spell negated pretty much any dangerous mechanic a boss might put out, same as or more than a 3 minute HTT/DH/Tranq, except it's on a one minute timer.

    They may have nerfed Spirit Shell in 5.4, but disc gained the ability to effectively spirit shell the entire raid every 15/25/40 seconds with a single GCD. While still retaining 66% of pre-5.4 Spirit Shell.

    So yes, if anything, Disc priests had the most egregious and overpowered raid cds the entire expansion.
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  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by PosPosPos View Post
    It's technically not a one button wonder, but Spirit Shell is pretty much THE cd disc had prior to 5.4. Said spell negated pretty much any dangerous mechanic a boss might put out, same as or more than a 3 minute HTT/DH/Tranq, except it's on a one minute timer. They may have nerfed Spirit Shell in 5.4, but disc gained the ability to effectively spirit shell the entire raid every 15/25/40 seconds with a single GCD. While still retaining 66% of pre-5.4 Spirit Shell. So yes, if anything, Disc priests had the most egregious and overpowered raid cds the entire expansion.
    Disc priests don't have an "oh shit" CD and never have this expansion, regardless of your points. Spirit Shell required effective set up pre-mechanic, that's a far cry from one-button-YOLO after the fact which is what some people here are wanting.

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by nightfalls View Post
    Disc priests don't have an "oh shit" CD and never have this expansion, regardless of your points. Spirit Shell required effective set up pre-mechanic, that's a far cry from one-button-YOLO after the fact which is what some people here are wanting.
    Waiting for 10 seconds to be left on a DBM timer doesn't require much effective set-up.

    Divine Star/Cascade/Halo are all fairly effective oshit buttons given their ridiculously low cd.

    P.S. Spirit Shell is a two-button-YOLO. Press Spirit Shell and spam PoH away.
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  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by PosPosPos View Post
    Waiting for 10 seconds to be left on a DBM timer doesn't require much effective set-up. Divine Star/Cascade/Halo are all fairly effective oshit buttons given their ridiculously low cd. P.S. Spirit Shell is a two-button-YOLO. Press Spirit Shell and spam PoH away.
    That doesn't change the fact you're totally wrong. I'm not denying that Disc is overpowered when it comes to tuning, but it does not have one-button CD's and never has this expansion. Cascade/Divine Star/Halo are not one-button CD's just like Uplift and Healing Rain are not.

    Spirit Shell while powerful is definitely far, far from what you are claiming and anyone who even knows a shred about priest would know that.

    There's zero correlation, let alone causation, between having a one-button YOLO and being overpowered.
    Last edited by nightfalls; 2014-03-04 at 02:29 AM.

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by nightfalls View Post
    Disc priests don't have an "oh shit" CD and never have this expansion, regardless of your points. Spirit Shell required effective set up pre-mechanic, that's a far cry from one-button-YOLO after the fact which is what some people here are wanting.
    I didnt mean a one button mechanic to save the Raid. I just meant an oh shit button or set-up cause i like the feeling of them. It also opens up healer diversity, other healers might not use them or depend on them, but they have them which is important for saving a Raid and having something in your back pocket.
    I'm glad to have multiple personalities, if i didn't i would be talking to myself, and that's just insane.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Borigrad View Post
    I didnt mean a one button mechanic to save the Raid. I just meant an oh shit button or set-up cause i like the feeling of them.
    Now you are being a bit confusing (if not contradictory, but I don't think you're intentionally doing so). What DO you want, if not a one-button mechanic? Perhaps an example spell of what you'd be looking for? Or an existing spell that you want a version of, something to get a point across I mean.

    P.S (Yes, I edited my post, but thought I'd note this): No player worth their account would not use an "oh shit" 3 minute CD that they had.
    Last edited by nightfalls; 2014-03-04 at 02:38 AM.

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