I enjoy the increased complexity in our play, but in the current state of things even if I perform to 100% of my (and my classes) capability, I will still be destroyed (in terms of throughput or HPS) by equally competent druids, shamans, and priests on just about every ICC fight. The reason for this is primarily due to our current lack of consistent AoE healing a la Chain Heal or Circle of Healing variety.
Recently Blizzard buffed our single target heals on Beta in an attempt to close this gap in throughput (as well as to compensate for the Holy Radiance nerf). Blizzard wanted to move some of our healing out of Holy Radiance and into our single target healing. Fine, I’ll take the buffs to those heals I guess, whether they were needed or not I will forfeit judgement. But honestly, what I believe Blizzard needs to do is shift some of the healing out of Holy Radiance and into “Light of Dawn”. That said I also believe Light of Dawn, as it exists now, needs a serious overhaul.
We have our heal everything (unlimited targets) in “this area” spell on a long CD with Holy Radiance. Holy Radiance is a great spell. It’s fresh/interesting, powerful (albeit too powerful, nerf away so long as our overall throughput is on par with the other healers), and fairly simplistic and fun to use. So then, why in the world do we have a second AoE heal that does essentially the same job (unlimited targets in a specific area - with a different shape) that is much less powerful, more difficult to use, significantly more situational, and on the same long CD? Not to mention Light of Dawn’s efficiency and throughput scaling problems between 5, 10, and 25 mans. The mechanic just doesn’t work well and has absolutely no synergy with the rest of our tools.
What we are lacking to stay competitive with the other healers in most cases is a targeted smart heal with limited (4-6) targets and a short CD (5-15 secs), much like the abilities that every other healing class in the game has. If I remember correctly Blizzard has explicitly stated that they do not want to add any more smart heals to the game, so I am not confident we will ever see such a change, but I do hope they will reconsider.
How Blizzard would implement this type of heal for our class would obviously be up to them. I certainly understand the need to not homogenize classes too much so I would never expect an exact clone of CoH, for example. But as Blizzard has stated themselves, different classes in the same role often do the exact same thing, but the way the class or spec works as a whole simply makes doing that same thing feel different from the other classes or specs. Here is a summary of what I would like to see happen...
Light of Dawn (or whatever you want to call it) is now on a short CD (8-12 secs). It is a targeted AoE smart heal that hits a maximum of 4 or 5 targets for a respectable amount of healing on each (I’ll leave the numbers to Blizzard). The spell could either function similar to Circle of Healing where it just hits those 5 targets at once; or a la Chain Heal where it jumps from one target to the next, reducing in potency as “the light” travels; or even function as something completely new and unique in the way that it heals or protects the affected targets (think a holy shield or bubble that protects the affected targets from all other schools of magic until broken – through either damage cap and/or duration limit). This is also now a “finishing move” that scales with Holy Power (exponentially, of course).
This solves a number of issues mentioned above, but also provides our spec with more interesting options (or options, period) for Holy Power use (something that many holy paladins have been begging for). Do I use this full stack of Holy Power to Word of Glory the tank at 50% health or should I toss “Light of Dawn” on the ranged group that just got hit with a slime puddle? Now for there to be a real choice in the matter, Word of Glory and Light of Dawn would need to be somewhat similar in potency, which would probably require a significant buff to Word of Glory (something else that many Holy Paladins have been asking for since it is so very similar to Holy Shock in every way, shape, and form and seems fairly underpowered for a “finisher”). As far as ideas go to make Word of Glory more interesting or desirable, I don’t really have any. All I can think of at present is to simply make it heal for more for Holy Paladins, while still keeping it in line for Protection and Retribution. In the end, changing Light of Dawn to something along these lines is like killing 5 birds with 1 stone.
tldr; we need a smart heal on a shorter CD, and Light of Dawn should be it.
Sorry for the wall of text, thoughts?