Gotta say that I have to thank BfA Hpal
because of it being so counterintuitive, so clunky compared to what I was used to in my Wrath days, it made me try the Protection spec and i´m not looking back
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I don’t get it, if I want to roll hots I just go on my resto druid without the melee clunkiness.
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Glimmer isn’t really a HoT, it functions differently. The only thing it resembles is when you heal with X ability all of your Ys heal the targets they were applied to. Glimmer itself isn’t considered a HoT though.
Also, Rdruid playstyle is completely different. It’s not a good idea to really compare the two especially since they function on fundamentally different levels of healing. Rdruid is mainly a reactive healer with proactive elements but thrown in while glimmerpal is completely a proactive healer. I wouldn’t call Glimmer clunky or being in melee clunky but that’s just me, our mastery is definitely the clunkiest(?) thing about the spec atm I think.
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Honestly I don’t they ever intended the Glimmer build to be a ‘build’. It just kinda happened when players figured it out.
Two things I hate about it. Crusader Strike doesn’t hit harder than my regular melee attacks, couldn’t CS at least be more impactful? Also, Glimmer only lasts so long, it reminds me of a faster buffbot role back in Classic, but you’ll have Glimmer on people who don’t need it, and it will fall off your enemies while you are attempting to deal with burst damage.
I really don’t get how people think of it as being so great, it feels absolutely like a gimmick build that people are just running with. Unintentional, clunky, and ultimately the result of a TERRIBAD mastery type.
I love the WC3 Paladin style role of being melee support. Yes, stick me in with the melee groups with my plate armor and 2 hander. But the Glimmer build is NOT that playstyle.
Either go whole-hog on making the Paladin a melee/support healer who’s attacks heal and protect, or make us into healbot turrets again. I prefer the former, but it will require a rework. (or give us a fourth spec)
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Rdruid is mainly a reactive healer
Rdruid is mainly a proactive healer. You usually put the HoTs on beforehand. If you’re healing a big damage spike you need multiple HoTs to take advantage of the mastery healing bonus. If you wait until damage occurs to heal as a Rdruid you’re going to have trouble.
Glimmer isn’t really that different. Instead of spreading HoTs, you’re spreading glimmers. You put the glimmers on before damage comes just like HoTs.
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I wouldn’t call the HoTs proactive as most of the time theyre rolling anyway according to logs as it’s how druids heal. I’m not sure what I’d call it really, maybe a bit of both. Tranq is largely reactive and you’re going to have a bunch of HoTs rolling regardless so putting some more out to prep for damage is certainly proactive but not really as much as glimmer or atonement is. Glimmer also acts differently as well.
I’d say disc and glimmerpal are a lot closer to each other than Rdruid and Hpal. Maybe I’m wrong, definitely could be, but from what I understand people usually list Rdruid as the opposite of hpaladin regarding playstyle. Holy Paladin is very frontloaded as well, requiring every healing cd outside of devo to be popped for maximum glimmer output and requiring specific timings in order to do so. When you start breaking down both specs there’s a lot of fairly big differences, if the only thing you see is “both blanket raid and heal” then sure they won’t seem that different.
Realistically though this doesn’t matter, if you wanna play an Rdruid then you should probably do so. They offer different things, hence why both are taken usually.
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Rdruid is a mix of proactive and reactive, leaning slightly more proactive. But Glimmer paladin is absolutely closest to Disc. And yes, people who dislike Disc say the same thing: that’s its clunky. I wish I could find it now, but there was once a dev watercooler about how the word “clunky” is used for anything that people dislike but can’t put their finger on, but its largely used when people feel like it’s not reactive - that you don’t see an immediate benefit to using it, or the payoff is down the line from its use. So it comes up a lot because a lot of people dislike proactive play.
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I completely agree. I tried out Disc a few times in dungeons and raids and to me it felt…as you say, clunky.
I got my pally 3x glimmer pieces and tried it out and I felt the exact same way about it. Almost eerily so. It’s very similar to Disc, but with the added pressure of being in melee range and spamming Crusader Strike.
Rdruid is mostly proactive (it is a HoTs based healer) but for some reason it feels more intuitive (i.e. less “clunky”) to me. It’s actually my favorite of all the healing specs, for whatever reason.
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Yeah, because traditionally the hpal has been the reactive healer with big single target heals while rdruid is proactive with smaller HoTs rolling on more targets or stacked on tanks beforehand. This is why they are listed as opposites usually. There is some mixing of course, with rdruid having swiftmend and hpal having light of dawn for example.
This makes a lot of sense… Holy Paladin has typically been a very reactive healer, but the Glimmer playstile is more proactive and more similar to Disc than to the traditional Holy Paladin (not for the DPS part but for proactively applying glimmer and ramping-up), so I can see how players who are used to reactive healers might dislike it or find it “clunky”, from my perspective it’s quite the opposite, I find the playstile very fluid and engaging.
As for the whole discussion above about Paldins and Druids being reactive or proactive… I think Resto Druid is a healer that benefits from being proactive but it’s not as essential and can still be played reactively to moderate success part of it is because Tranq can be used reactively. Holy Paladins have traditionally been 100% reactive but now with the GoL build they are also a mix between proactive and reactive, it wants to be pro-active but it’s also pretty competent at being reactive when needed (except for the use of Wings which should be done proactively to ramp-up at the right time).
Disc is still the one that is almost entirely pro-active imo (which also comes with drawbacks like being generally “poor” at spot healing).
Ah yeah that’s a good point. Probably mixing up the previous comparisons to now. I still think Druid is more of a mix but then again most healers have something in their toolkit that’s proactive while also having reactive healing as well. Hpals still have a bit of reactive as Holymonky said, devo is also reactive similar to tranq. I’ve still tried to play Druid and it just feels like a different playstyle to me but surely they’re a lot closer to each other now than before like you said.
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Best variation of pally healing was a mix of proactive and reactive healing. When our healing left bubbles. Were only two classes In the game that healed like that.
Now we just attack people and push glimmer. All other builds are weak(for pallies) in comparison
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I hate the positioning requirements , and don’t bother with holy anymore this expac . Healers shouldn’t have to worry about standing in melee to get bigger heals unless their dropping a cool down or something.
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Meanwhile druids are running faster than a Lamborghini while healing in arena
I love the glimmer build. You actually get rewarded for not just being in melee, but smacking around the enemy. Plus you can be pro-active in your healing by spreading glimmer around early if you want. The more stuff to pay attention to and maximize the better.
I don’t like Glimmer build. I don’t mind standing in melee, or even swinging to get a lower timer on Holy Shock, but stacking Glimmers on people just feels like a Druid stacking rejuves, or a Monk stacking clouds. I like paladin spot healing and I am determined to make the old build work.
And I am willing to argue, once you take out the Overhealing numbers in Glimmer, there isn’t much difference in output between the two builds.
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I’m pretty sure HPS metrics and logs already take the overhealing out, they show effective healing/shielding (unless specifically configured otherwise I guess). So the overhealing number being showed is more for reference and analysis.
That said I do agree that there’s some merit in the standard vs the glimmer build still (not a lot though)… In terms of total HPS it doesn’t really compete tbh so for cutting-edge levels of play where every little bit counts GoL will be better if played right. I think the advantage that the standard build offers is mostly in terms of ease of play, it is less punishing for standing in range, it gives more flexibility on who to heal and doesn’t require the player to keep track of the GoL buff, purely reactive playstile, etc.
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Huh? Nobody is looking at overhealing numbers to determine if glimmer is better or not. Actually if you look at overhealing it works against glimmer considering how much it does. What you’re saying doesn’t really make any sense but the original build won’t be competing with glimmer, at least not right now. There’s already math done to back that up, you can head to the holy Paladin discord to potentially get a rundown on that.
Not only that but spot healing is something Paladins still do. I’d even argue that glimmer is closer to traditional Paladin than the previous build was because we get to use SW and pump with wings. AC didn’t feel like Paladin much at all imo and our ST heals were extremely weak (and still kind of are) so it really didn’t scream Paladin to me.
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You’re going to find out as our Ilvl and stats increase, that standard healing comes back in pretty strong, AND, that holy light, holy shock, LoD healing comes back in too.
So adding in some extra abilities, we will even become viable as just casters again as our haste/crit start hitting higher levels
Personally, I don’t like the glimmer build either. Feels clunky and not holy Paladin feeling. Bring back holy radiance and that fixes the issue.
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