10.1 Holy Rework Ideas

Demonsbane-frostmourne · March 23, 2023, 4:29am

So here is how I would look at doing a Holy Paladin rework, I have left values undefined as numbers tuning is easy once you’ve got the baseline functionality sorted.

The basis for this rework is moving back to casted heals. Much like what seems to be happening with DPS casters, making cast time abilities feel impactful and improving the Holy Paladin experience whilst inside the high damage taken zone that is melee.

Baseline Changes

Holy Power removed.

Provides nothing but additional GCD bloat, does not work with the current speed of the game. Mistweavers no longer have Chi, because it was found to be garbage and detrimental to what a healer should be doing. Healing.

Word of Glory
X sec Cooldown
Call down the light to heal a friendly target for X% spell power.

No longer uses Holy Power, and will now also cost mana. Should be a significant heal around 8-12 sec cooldown.

Shield of the Virtuous
6 sec Cooldown
Slam your target with your shield, dealing X% Spell Power Holy damage and increasing your Block chance by 10% for 4.5 sec.

Shield of the Righteous but on the GCD, dealing solid single target damage and buffing your Block chance which is a far cooler form of damage mitigation than just bonus armor. Additional defensive talents to increase your survivability included in the spec tree.

Divine Protection is now baseline for Holy Paladin.

Mastery:Lightbringer
Increase all healing done based on proximity to you or your Beacon of Light.

Sometimes you have to heal at range and doing so shouldn’t negate your Mastery hence the addition of Beacon of Light.

Infusion of Light
Your Holy Shock critical hits reduce the cast time of your next Holy Light by 1 sec or your next Flash of Light by 1.5 sec.

The current iteration of this is garbage, what was once a rotation changing ability now regulated to purely mana conservation. Holy Light can now be cast and still dodge swirlies on the ground. Flash of Light becomes instant, which will aid in the high movement required in melee for both PvE and PvP.

Divine Purpose (Class Tree)
Your Word of Glory, Light of Dawn and Shield of the Virtuous have a 15% chance to make your next cast of any of those abilities free and deal 15% additional damage and healing.

Modified to provide a similar benefit now that Holy Power is gone.

Lay on Hands
7 min Cooldown
Call down the power of the Light, engulfing your ally and absorbing all damage taken for 4 sec. After 4 sec, X% of all damage absorbed is dealt over 4 sec.

Current iteration of Lay on Hands is a weak version of Void Shift on a longer cooldown, and subjected to Dampening in arena. This ability will now be usable more often (benefits from Unbreakable Spirit making it nigh on 5 min CD) and in truly epic paladin fashion, can indeed be a Uther Saves moment whilst still being usable in arena whether 45 sec or 10 mins into the match.

Talents

Row 1

Holy Shock
8 sec Cooldown (Reduced by Haste)
Triggers a burst of Light on the target, dealing X% Spell Power Holy damage to an enemy or healing to an ally and leaving a Glimmer of Light on the target for 30 sec. Maximum of 5 Glimmers of Light can be active at a time.

When you Holy Shock, all targets with Glimmer of Light take X% Spell Power damage or healing.

Holy Shock damage should deal significantly more than it deals now, so a choice can be made between damage or healing. Glimmer of Light is not capstone worthy IMO, but now has additional spell interaction and is baseline.

Row 2

Holy Light
2.5 sec Cast
An efficient spell, healing a friendly target for X% Spell power.

Changes to Infusion of Light will massively improve this spell from one that no-one can ever cast without either overhealing or being interrupted/forced to move.

Divine Insight
You gain X% additional critical strike rating and your healing critical strikes heal for an additional X% based on your critical strike chance.

An attempt to boost the attractiveness of Critical Strike rating to the Holy Paladin, with the coming nerfs to critical strike damage and healing done in PvP it’s going to be an even harder sell having casters gear for anything but Haste/Verse.

Light of Dawn
X sec Cooldown
Unleashes an explosive wave of Holy energy on the target healing it and up to 4 injured allies within a 15 yds for X% Spell Power.

Our main AoE healing ability, changed it’s functionality because of two major issues with the current iteration of Light of Dawn

If you’re in melee range anyone behind you isn’t getting hit with this requiring additional movement and positioning other healers do NOT need to do.
You’re unable to tell from raid frames the location of people who need AoE healing so it’s guess work where you aim unless you like the clutter of 20+ friendly nameplates I guess.

Row 3
Choice Node

Glimmer of Glory
Your Word of Glory will also trigger Glimmer of Light effects on all affected targets.

Hands of Light
Holy Light and Flash of Light healing increased by X%.

Additional AoE healing vs single target throughput.

Choice Node

Judgment of Wisdom
Your Judgment reduces your next healing spells mana cost by X%.

Illumination
Your healing spell critical hits restore X% of their mana cost.

Crit scaling mana conservation is the goal with Illumination vs the offensive melee option in Seal Of Wisdom. Choice is the key.

Choice Node

Unending Light
Your Light of Dawn is X% more powerful and now applies 50% of its healing value as an absorb shield and healing the remaining 50%.

Bestow Faith
Your Holy Shock applies Bestow Faith to the target, healing it for X% Spell Power after 5 sec.

Bestow Faith is cool, but in an effort to combat button bloat, combining it with Holy Shock seems like a great idea.
Unending Light provides a reward for prempting incoming AoE damage for those times there somehow isn’t a disc priest or Resto druid sniping all the effective healing.

Row 4
Choice Node

Moment of Compassion
Your Flash of Light heals targets up to an additional X% based on their missing health below X%.

Resplendent Light
Casting Holy Light on a target affected by your Glimmer of Light consumes it, exploding in Holy energy healing up to 5 allies within 20 yds for X% Spell Power.

Flash of Light when you absolutely, positively have to heal everyone from near death. Accept no substitute. Holy Light exploding Glimmers for burst AoE healing.

Cleansing Light
Cleanse cooldown is reduced by 2 sec and heals the target for X% Spell Power whenever it dispels a negative effect.

There was a time a paladin was highly coveted for his/her cleansing capabilities, now they have returned.

Aura Mastery
No changes.

Echoing Blessing
Moved from Row 6.

Inescapable Judgment
Judgment and Hammer of Wrath deal X% more damage and their range is extended to 40 yds.

Row 5

Divine Favor
1 min cooldown
Instantly add an additional charge to Holy Shock and cause it’s next cast on a friendly target to heal for an additional X% and be a guaranteed Critical Strike.

This should be the biggest single target heal available to the Paladin. Cooldown increased to 1min to maintain balance with other classes “OH CRAP” buttons.

Shining Saviour
Your Word of Glory, Light of Dawn and Holy Shock healing is increased by X%.

Choice Node

Unwavering Spirit
Reduces the cooldown of Aura Mastery by 60 sec and increases healing received by allies under your Aura effect by 10%.

Writings of Tyr
Your chosen Aura is empowered granting you an additional effect.

Devotion Aura:- Effect increased by 100%.

Concentration Aura:- Now immune to spell pushback.

Crusader Aura:- Movement speed increased by 10%.

Retribution Aura:- Critical Strike, Haste or Mastery increased by 5%, whatever is highest.

Unwavering Spirit buffed and combined with Protection of Tyr so it might see some use as 30 sec off a 3min cooldown isn’t exactly mind blowing or talent investment worthy.

Imbued Infusions
No changes.

Row 6

Choice Node

Light’s Hammer
Your Consecration is now ground targetable throwing a Light-infused hammer down and now deals 100% additional damage. Talents that affect your Consecration are empowered by 100%.

Radiant Bulwark
Your Shield of the Virtuous deals an additional X% Spell Power Radiant damage and beams of holy light erupts from the target healing up to 3 injured allies for X% Spell Power.

Consecration and Light’s Hammer overlap each other in design and feel, might as well combine them and reduce button bloat. Should also have additional visual glyphs for the sword, axe and Polearm lovers.
Jammed Holy Prism into Shield of the Righteous. Holy Prism is fairly meh on its own, definitely not worth a talent investment, but buffing our damage with some side healing, now that’s interesting.

Saved by the Light
No changes.

Righteous Weapons
Crusader Strike now has two charges and reduces the cooldown of Shield of the Virtuous by 1 sec when cast.

When you are in melee range, you should be dealing more damage than a Disc priest can deal from the safety of 40 yds whilst also simultaneously healing his allies.

Tower of Radiance
Healing you deal that causes overhealing on your Beacon of Light target will now instead heal a nearby injured ally for that amount.

Alot of overhealing can occur from your Beacon of Light target, especially with Tanks being able to heal themselves quiet well. This talent will ensure that overhealing is being put to use.

*Uthers Resolve
Your Holy Shock now has two charges and it’s cooldown is reduced by 1 sec.

Holy Shock is now a core part of the Holy Paladin experience, having two charges of it will smooth out the gameplay nicely.

Light of the Martyr
Anytime you suffer damage, radiate Holy energy and heal an injured ally within 15 yds for X% of the damage taken up to a maximum of X% of your maximum health.

Sacrificing health to heal is silly and more the realm of those filthy Dark Magic wielders. This new talent is to make wandering into melee and the subsequent increased damage you receive in there a bit more manageable.

Row 7

Divine Revelations
No changes.

Commanding Light
No changes.

Choice Node

Avenging Crusader
Become the ultimate crusader of the Light, healing X% of the damage dealt by your Crusader Strike, Judgment, Hammer of Wrath and Shield of the Virtuous on up to 3 injured allies within 30 yds. Your Mastery also increases the damage of these abilities by X%.

Avenging Wrath:Might
No changes.

Avenging Crusader is now a passive talent promoting the battle healer role and adds additional damage via Mastery scaling. Healing from this damage should not eclipse your dedicated healing abilities, but provide supplemental healing whilst also smashing face.

Divine Glimpse
No changes.

Untempered Dedication
100% of the damage taken from your Blessing of Sacrifice is added to Light of the Martyrs healing effect.

Row 8

Sanctified Wrath
No changes.

Choice Node

Beacon of Faith
No changes.

Sacred Shield
Your Beacon of Light generates an absorb shield for X% Spell Power every 6 sec or when switched to a new target.

With improved on demand AoE healing with new talents and abilities, Beacon of Faith no longer seemed worthwhile.

Veneration
No changes.

Dawn of Light
Your Light of Dawn area of effort range is increased to 30 yds and has a 10/20% chance to activate a second time.

Reverence
Your Hammer of Wrath now benefits from Greater Judgment and it’s critical strikes deal an additional X% damage and reset the cooldown of Judgment.

Power of the Silver Hand
X% of all damage you deal up to X% of your maximum health is added to your next Holy Shock damage or healing.

Get amongst it and benefit.

Barrier of Faith
No changes.

Maraad’s Dying Breath
Blessing of Sacrifice will transfer up to an additional X% of the damage taken by its target based on its current health.

Using Sac on a target at lower health now has a greater chance of saving them at the expense of more damage transferred to you.

Row 9

Crusader’s Might
No changes.

Awakening 2/2
Your Word of Glory and Light of Dawn gain an additional charge and their cooldowns reduced by X/Y seconds.

Balancing around a chance to gain Wings feels really bad when those procs don’t happen when you need them to happen. Healing should be rebalanced around this change.

Relentless Inquisitor
Judgment and Hammer of Wrath increases your highest secondary stat by 1/2% for 12 sec, stacking up to 3 times.

Reworked to use Judgment and HoW to provide their buffs, synergy with Veneration and Reverence talents.

Tyr’s Deliverance
1.5m Cooldown
1.5 sec cast time
Call upon the power of the Silver Hand, making your next two Holy Light instant cast and also trigger Light of Dawn at X% effectiveness.

Picture the Stormkeeper animation but with golden/silvery lightning and big juicy healing. Maybe throw some levitation into the mix for additional visual excellence.

Row 10

Inflorescence of the Sunwell
Infusion of Light can stack up to 3 times and your Holy Shock critical strike damage and healing is increased by 30%.

Making critical strike a little bit more appealing and being able to bank Infusion of Light procs for upcoming high movement scenarios is a much needed QoL change.

Beacon of Insight
Replaces Beacon of Light
Passive
You automatically apply Beacon of Insight to the lowest health party or raid member. Your direct heals on this target heal for an additional X% in addition to Beacon of Light’s normal effects. Beacon of Insight will change targets either once every 6 sec, or when its target reaches 90% of its maximum health.

I really hate Blessing of Summer, especially it’s Night Fae animations ruining my aesthetics. Maintenance buffs are not fun, especially when they don’t overtly change your gameplay. I liked the Beacon of Insight gameplay, and swapping Beacons costing a GCD never felt worthwhile.

Eternal Flame
Replaces Word of Glory
Heal a target for X% Spell Power over 14 sec. If this effect is dispelled, heal the target for the remaining amount and burn the dispeller for 100% of Eternal Flames healing done. Eternal Flame can stack up to two times.

Still limited to X charges depending on talents selected, but will heal substantially more than WoG over its duration. Built-in dispel protection, because these are Eternal Flames and very dangerous.

Boundless Salvation
Tyr’s Deliverance also empowers Flash of Light, causing it to apply Word of Glory at X% effectiveness to targets healed.

Westly-frostmourne · March 25, 2023, 8:35am

Nice post. I really liked some of the ideas you mentioned above. Thoughts below:

I would be ok if Holy Power stayed or got removed for Holy personally. My issue with Holy power is purely it’s current implementation. Namely:

Too much of our power comes from Holy Power abilities which compounds the rest of the issues with Holy Power listed below.
- Our healing breakdown is too top heavy healing, in the melee playstyle a lot of our globals do no healing because it too much of it lives in spenders.
The holy power resets via Divine Purpose. With so much of our HPS coming from Holy Power, a free proc is insanely strong. No proc when you needed it and you’re very sad. This is no way to build a healing spec honestly.

Yes! The fact Ret got this for free baseline and we’re still spending a point on it in our spec tree is (1) weird and (2) awful given the top of the holy tree is full of uninteresting talents in the first place.

Let’s make Infusion of Light (a core mechanic of the spec) relevant please!

I’m torn on the Light of Dawn’s directional healing tbh. I think it makes things interesting. Needing to face the people you want to heal adds an element of skill and plays into the battle healer archetype. Though I do find myself getting frustrated especially in small groups like M+ where healing 5 people in a frontal cone is sometimes just impossible.

As I mentioned above, I think too much of our power comes from Holy Power. In your rework, HP is gone but I like this idea because it takes some healing out of the direct single target heal and spreads it out a little.

Very cool. Adding more depth via a judgment or stat interaction to our holy tree gets a +1 from me.

Love this. I really don’t like the current Unending Light and the impact it has on our playstyle. You LoD spam even if it overheals to (1) juice up your next WoG (perhaps paired with Beacon of Virtue) and to fish for wings procs. The current Unending Light plays a big role in encouraging that. This change would resolve that.

This feels inspired by the change they made to Tower of Radiance. Healing low health targets with a FoL is rewarded by Holy Power on live or + flat healing in your rework. Neat.

This adds more depth the spec. Something that there is a huge need for.

I love the idea of this talent. It’s just a pity that it’s locked down after the first gate and behind a caster exclusive talent. Probably too powerful to have it up in the first bracket but I love the idea of adding more interesting talents up here.

This is a popular piece of feedback I’ve heard. IIRC Ellesmere’s pre beta tree had something similar.

This solves two problems:

Solves the issue of caster players having to stand in melee to drop consecrate for damage and healing via Golden Path.
Makes Lights hammer a little more interesting via interacting with other current cons talents. Light’s hammer at the moment is just a set and forget. This change would go some way to make it do more.

They added something similar on the class tree in 10.0.7 but it’s in an awkward spot to take in a very point-poor section on the tree. The fact wings can’t proc from SotR also makes pressing SoTR bad for Holy unless you’re in very specific circumstances. I’d love for SotR or your Shield of the Virtuous to have a spot.

Noting that in your rework that SotV doesn’t compete with other Holy Power abilities which would make a massive difference

This is tuning related but no doubt this would need to have a “at x% effective” added to it. All over healing being redistributed could lead to a spam-the-beacon playstyle which would need to be discouraged.

I personally like the idea of having 2 charges on Holy Shock but have heard push back that it wouldn’t add a lot of throughput but would be a nice QoL.

You’ve made sure to add some power via the 1 sec CDR and no doubt Holy Shock may not be the use on CD world where Holy Power is no longer a thing.

Yes!

I’ve come to really like Beacon of Virtue. It’s currently very, very necessary to meet the healing checks in M+. It’s hard to know whether that would still be the case in this rework.

I like this. This whole section on the class tree is far to geared towards caster spells. Making this talent passive and retune it around that, sounds very appealing.

I 100% agree. Like I mentioned at the top of my post re-holy power, Holy has far too much RNG banked into the spec and the procs are far too strong. Divine purpose procs are essentially a 2x healing proc. Awakening is a wings proc for 8 seconds… again a huge power gain on a random proc.

I don’t have much to say about your proposed redesign of this talent but I agree with the core idea and direction.

Sounds awesome honestly. I’m not much of caster player but this sounds so cool as a potential throughput CD for both playstyles.

Overall, I really liked some of the suggestions you’ve made.

I don’t know how feasible it would be to remove Holy Power at this point given the class tree heavily relies on it being the underpinning mechanic that all three specs share. Having said that, I don’t even think they would need to remove Holy Power to fix a lot of the glaring issues with Holy Paladins. Your changes to the spec tree even in a world where holy power exists would be a huge improvement.

Greybrook-atiesh · March 25, 2023, 8:52am

A lot of good stuff here, but I hate this. I don’t even want holy to retain Shield of the Righteous. In my dream scenario, holy would lose SotR completely, allowing us to choose between sword-and-board OR 2-hander for our equipment, like how all other casters can choose between staff or mainhand/offhand. To facilitate this, the Lightforged Blessing talent could be changed for holy spec to add an AOE damage component to Light of Dawn (instead of adding a healing component to SotR/Divine Storm as it does now). It could be relatively minor, in line with resto shamans getting a talent to add AOE damage to Healing Rain. For single target, the talent, or a different one, could let us cast Word of Glory on an enemy, as we used to be able to do with the Glyph of Harsh Words.

Paen-area-52 · March 25, 2023, 5:49pm

HPal is in dire need of a ReWork (especially in PvP) but I wouldn’t hold your breath. HPal seems to have been intentionally abandoned by the Devs, the changes to the class tree in the Ret rework made that pretty clear.

Their class design philosophy this XPac seems to be to intentionally handicap and leave certain specs out to die to funnel players onto fewer specs to better distribute their resources to adhere to strict timelines they’ve been set.

It is what it is.

Madnaar-sargeras · March 26, 2023, 8:56am

No thanks, there are enough caster healers, and they should lean in on what makes holy unique and fun.

There’s some things that should probably be done, like redesigning the spec to not require holy power, but forcing more casted abilities is not one of them

Emdr-tichondrius · March 26, 2023, 10:40am

Remove Holy Shock: HPAL is too “busy”. Simplify by adding Holy Shock to to Crusader Strike and have it applied to friendly targets randomly, never overwriting itself, and it spreads Glimmer.

Bring back Vanquisher’s Hammer: replaces the offensive ability of Holy Shock.

Add two more holy power. Being hit generates Holy Power.

Dawn: While at max Holy Power once you cast FoL/HL haste doubles for caster playstyle but you can’t move, and you lose the haste once you move.
Dusk: Every FoL and HL cast during Dawn builds up burst charges for faster and longer Divine Steed automatically procced when Dawn is spent. Stick and move, stick and move. Steed can be cancelled by backpedaling.

Holy Prism spends Holy Power and gives mana. Used on enemies it has a 40 yard range, prioritizes mana users (generally farther away so it looks cool) and it gives mana to other players. Used on friendly targets it merely does damage to enemies but it also relocates Beacon of Light.

Mace Uppercut: like Captain America fighting Thanos you do a mighty uppercut with your mace that sends both you and the opposing player flying upwards into the air, and if you hit with Hammer of Wrath at the apex you slam them down to the ground, damaging and stunning.

Modified Blinding Light: A glowing ember builds in your eyes, your face turns to face relative to every viewer and if they don’t turn their cameras away the entire screen gets a flash and their character is blinded.

Divine Shield can no longer be dispelled or interrupted. At all. By anyone. Ever.

Westly-frostmourne · March 26, 2023, 12:49pm

FWIW this was basically my response when I read that too, however the suggested changes in the post don’t give off the typical “I’m a caster and anti-melee” mindset that you see.

Demonsbane-frostmourne · March 27, 2023, 12:56pm

When I say back to caster heals, I just want Holy Light and Flash of Light to be impactful, any casted heal should be rewarded. With my suggested changes to Infusion of Light, Holy Light would be brought down to 1.5 sec before haste and Flash of Light goes to instant cast.

Hospitaller-stormrage · March 27, 2023, 3:48pm

If you have haste, I guess this might be down from an 8 second cd to 6.x. You can talent for 2 charges and if I remember correctly, 1 second cd reduction. So every 5-6 seconds you can put out 2 shocks, or 1 shock every 2.5-3 seconds, on average. I’m not sure if you can actually time this to get 5 targets to pay off after the hit very well. I’m too lazy to math out the solution, but it would be cool to be able to smartly execute that…or is this intended to work from divine toll?

Puding-cenarius · March 28, 2023, 5:55am

dream on, remove mastery altogether or design it as “avenging crusader” like make all ur melee attacks heal. LOL.

ooohh how i miss you: Mastery: Illuminated Healing

Your healing spells and their multistrikes also place an absorb shield on your target for 10% of the amount healed lasting 15 sec. Does not trigger from healing caused by Beacon of Light.

^^^^ the best thing that ever happened to holy paladin ^^^^ then mist weaver showed up and every design perspective for holy pal went down to septic tank

Atømsk-garrosh · March 28, 2023, 11:14pm

I definitely agree with you here. Forcing a 1h/shield to use an ability baseline to our class is just ridiculous.

Atømsk-garrosh · March 28, 2023, 11:19pm

You can pry my Holy Shock that I’ve had since Vanilla, from my cold, dead hands.

Atømsk-garrosh · March 28, 2023, 11:23pm

God, I do miss Illuminated Healing. I wasn’t super fond of it at the time, but that’s how it goes isn’t it. We never realize what we have until we don’t have it anymore.