I get it now. They’re not going to change it. They’re not going to change us. This is how they want it to be.
2-Hand (shieldless) Hpals are an option now, but only for those Paladins who want to completely forsake melee and embrace the caster lifestyle. They take Liberation instead of Crusader’s Might, so that they can still do damage with their spenders after taking SotR off their bars. They get Judgment resets from Veneration (instead of Crusader’s Might), which is a fine talent for instant/melee Hpals, but which will get more mileage for casters because of crits on their Flash of Light spam. They’ll retain mana better than instant/melee because of how cheap Flash is, so won’t need SotR mana regen.
I hate it. It’s exactly what they’re going to leave it as.
It’s definitely too late to do anything but adjust some numbers with the prepatch coming on January 20th. It’s very silly though, they literally have Shine of the Righteous on Legion Remix ready to be copy/pasted over willy nilly easy peesy.
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But, why would you need parry if you aren’t in melee range? I just don’t get it.
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Healers are supposed to be casters not be in melee range. I like the change where we can just cast at range and not have to get into melee range
I think we disagree on an ontological level here.
I do support hpals having a viable caster playstyle if they want it though. It just doesn’t make sense to build it the way they have, in my view.
See from the way you worded your post it sounds like you were upset that they could be casters and not be in melee.
Thats how it looked to me
Sorry for the miscommunication. My main complaint is with the talent hpals are getting in midnight that has different effects depending on whether they use a 2-hander or a shield. Using a 2-hander would make the “normal” playstyle suboptimal because we would lose access to an important ability.
Using a 2-hander might still be viable with a completely range-based build, except for the case that they haven’t fully fleshed out any build like that for hpals at the moment. It looks like a suboptimal, stiched-together frankenstein monster. I’m afraid it will disappoint everybody amd serve nobody 
See now this I understand. Yea I can see the issue. But I also saw people making suggestions to help with that issue.
I tried to be a holy pal but I just sucked so bad at it. So I just stick to Prot and Ret mostly Prot. I am envious of those that can play a Holy and be good at it.
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At this point I think the intent is that you are supposed to use a 1h+ shield and armory of light will give you spell block for more survivability.
The 2h effect is basically giving you the standard shield block on a 2-hander so that it isn’t a dead talent when you don’t have a 1-hander+ shield.
I do wish it meant we could use sotr with a 2-hander but that part of the talent is just a trap at worst and a consolation prize at best.
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What is the name of this talent? I have not seen this
Armory of the Light.
It replaces Rebuke on the class talent tree for Holy Paladin in Midnight.
Oh there it is I couldn’t search it for some reason …
looks like melee reduction for 2h and magic reduction with a shield so it’s still advantageous to use a shield … hmm.
Seems like a brand new noob trap
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Yeah, unless they have additional plans or interactions for it, the 2-hand portion seems silly, since 2-handers deny us access to our complete kit (despite an easy, lazy solution already existing in Legion Remix that could just be instantly ported over)
It’d be neat if wielding a 2h gave you access to templars verdict.
I have been out of the loop till pretty much now. I always wanted to try a holy pally caster, but melee was not my jam. Is holy a caster now? I know it could kind of range caster before, but I guess is it viable?
So, Hpal still counts as a melee class for boss/enemy mechanics (unless something changed I’m not aware of). Anything that specifically targets or prioritizes melee will affect the Hpal, and things which target or prioritize ranged will not.
But they’ve removed Crusader Strike from the spec (unless you take Avenging Crusader, and even then you only get it during wings), and lowered the cooldowns on Holy Shock and Judgment. Because of your greater access to these two major abilities for building Holy Power, there is no need to stand in melee for resource generation.
The one current exception in beta is that Shield of the Righteous still requires you to be up close. This may matter for some builds more than others. SotR will now replenish your mana by a tiny amount each time you use it. I don’t know how mana economy will be for hpals in Midnight, but this will either be needed or not needed depending on balancing. Our damage overall is very weak (as with all healers), so you’re not missing out on much damage by not casting SotR, and its value will depend mostly on how badly you need the mana regen.
Our mastery still increases healing based on proximity, but this hasn’t really been a limiting factor since we got the talent that lets our Beacons count as proximity nodes.
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