Ive been raiding as a caster all xpac, and now that im swimming in haste, I actually really like how it feels.
My only gripe is having to heal the beacons only to generate hp, though the recent tower changes are a step in the right direction.
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It’s impossible for me to have fun as a healer whose healing is gated behind damage abilities. It does not matter how well designed it is. But yeah, my comment was more about demonstrating the absurdity of the statement that caster paladin is holding back melee paladin and not the other way around.
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That’s not what you said though. You previously said “Holy Paladin” not “caster Holy Paladin.” My only point was that melee Holy has also been a god-tier healer (in terms of healer balance), and therefore it’s not the playstyle preventing it from reaching those heights. Going full-on caster isn’t actually required for Paladins to be the most powerful healer in the game.
Also, I’ll add that the comparison between now and then isn’t necessarily fair, as Holy Paladin was utterly untouchable in its capacity to be the ‘tank healer’ for some of that time- a niche that doesn’t exist in the same way today.
Also also, I’ll add that I object to the phrase “rightful place as god-tier healer.” I don’t think any healing spec’s “rightful” place is “god-tier.”
This is really all you need to say, and I would have no beef with you.
I’m not saying my preferences are. You’re the one out here claiming that your own preference is that of a “real healer,” or that people who might enjoy the melee playstyle are, in fact, “ret paladins who want healer queue times.”
Shickadin was a toxic playstyle, thats why its fround apon has nothing to do with the talents holy paladins are in a fine spot evoker is just has op cooldowns nothing to do with there talent tree there cds are broken.
Honestly the only thing it really needs for m+ is damage and Tyr’s Deliverance and Barrier of Faith to be better. The fact that these talents are designed for caster build and yet caster build doesn’t even want to take them is just sad. H Pal is already the lowest damage of all healers by a margin now with standard melee build after resto shaman, monks and both priest specs got big dmg buff. Then with caster build the already low damage becomes actually a complete joke.
Damage can be helped by making Veneration actually good and worth taking, make it’s bonus HoW do 50% extra dmg or something. They could also make Barrier of Faith explode in aoe for the damage it absorbs. And add a choice node to “hallowed ground” in the class tree, the other choice being “consecrate is now a ground targeted spell”. Meaning you can lay it down from ranged. Now you have a caster build that can actually do some damage even from range, throwing out a bunch of extra HoWs and consecrates from range.
Then Tyr’s Deliverance needs to be 15-20 seconds baseline. Problem with that ability is the 10 second baseline window is just too small and you need to basically spam HL/FoL on already full hp targets for Boundless Salvation to make a difference, which is dumb. 15-20 seconds initial window would give a better window where youd actually need to use HL/FoL on people who actually need it, and start building up the duration. The max duration with Boundless Salvation can remain the same, because if you actually got the max duration regularly in dungeons it’d be a nice talent, but you odn’t 90% of the time it runs out in 10-20 seconds max because there’s just 0 reason to be spamming HL/FoL enough to build it up in time.
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I think if infusion of light being an instant cast for holy light or flash of light could do a lot to open up the talent tree.
I think it sounds like some assumptions need to be cleared up here.
With the talent tree revamp, the first order of business is making the LEVELING experience more interesting or meaningful than before. Check, the primary driving force for the talent tree revamp is an outstanding success for literally all specs. Before, some specs would see about half their kit by 1/3rd the way in and hit halfway in with most of their kit, while others wouldn’t even have their core until that point. Now, nearly every spec has their core mechanical identity and rotation in place by level 20ish, with a few being closer to level 28; that’s remarkably earlier than before. Primary target set, goal achieved.
Next, the talent system wanted to aim to serve as a means of permitting more meaningful choices to augment playstyle. It is important to note than changing playstyle were never a focal point of this system. By augmenting, the goal is to be able to create sections in trees to permit some degree of customization for situations. This has largely been a success, but as they correctly assumed and forewarned when revealing these trees, some classes will land there easier than others and that these are intended to become a “World of Warcraft” CORE system. Let’s look at ways this has been achieved as well as missed.
Druids have had it great with these trees, which makes sense because they tend to have a wide variety of kit options. Druids traded the high amount of options any one spec had and gained slightly less options at once, but options most specs didn’t have before. Feral and Guardian picking up innervate, or keeping Moonkin range while being able to also grab Ursol’s, or all specs being able to pickup frenzied Regen in tandem with other prior “sub spec only” items is a MAJOR win for this system. This design is an example of a design that not only hit the specified target, but shattered it. Lazier players may default to cookie cutter builds, which is great that they can do so with losing power. Creative players can use these new combinations to leverage situations differently. For example, resto druid picking up an interrupt AND more feral core traits allows it to lean into damage, or interrupts, or more zone CC, or opting to take a soothe kit or taking more utility instead. This is the bulk of why resto druid is such a strong healer, beyond throughout. We may have less TOTAL options than other healers, but our options are IMPACTFUL.
Meanwhile, Disc priest which DOES have an alternative playstyle available via squid build does something more like what you wanted to do. And, if it wasn’t quite literally and specifically Disc priest, I would classify this as a failure if the system. By doing the alternative playstyle route, Disc priest effectively sections off utility and choices rapidly. I love squid build and penance is my favorite spell, but the moment I touch a Penance buff node, it’s hard to not start chaining the left and middle of the tree together, having perhaps 1-3 points free for choice but in the end cap area, which is where power lives. This execution would and should be a HARD FAILURE of the talent tree revamp as it flies in the face of it’s goals and, in any non-disc case, would RESTRICT gameplay more than OPENING it.
So why does Disc get a pass from me? Because of it’s identity. Disc has been a spec that has always had a Light/Dark/Hybrid identity with a mechanical identity wanting to be between these three. In that regard, the “playstyle” commit that you want and that I would feel a critical failure of the system does something unique with Disc, in that it opens up it’s flavor AND mechanical identity in a way such that they match one another for the first time.
For the first time in WoW history, Disc FEELS like a Holy/Shadow hybrid spec instead of “Holy with Shields and Penance” or “Yeah, you have a DoT and Death”.
Your desired idea works AMAZINGLY for any spec like that, and might even be a way to address Mistweaver’s identity crisis.
But let’s look at Holy Paladin a bit. Why do we keep seeing the non-caster builds continuously returning and being played, even during the points where they aren’t as good as pure casting builds?
Because people like the mechanical identity and uniqueness of the playstyle. They clamor for it, and every time it has ever left, people want it back in large enough number that they always do so.
I think you are correct, and that they SHOULD just stop supporting paladin caster build. Paladin is an odd class historically, because it’s often one of the most popular classes and it has so much utility baked into it from early days where utility was compensating for power.
Holy Paladin and Mistweaver often dance on one another’s toes, and because paladin is sacred, they try to give it more love.
In reality, what Mistweaver needs in it’s kit to stand out is more utility, and much of what it wants are things paladin already has en masse. They really need to do a Lock->DH style pass a la Meta and shift some H Pal Utility into Mistweaver.
And then, hard commit one of those specs to being a melee damage (paladin makes more sense here )healer and the other two being a caster damage healer.
And to clarify, I’m not referring to a healer akin to Disc, which is a hybrid DPS / heal playstyle that alternates and weaves them in, but something more akin to a Holy priest big boom playstyle (which is what H Pal had been for ages) but with more of an active DPS playstyle.
And…that’s what Pres Evoker is!
But now we are landing in a hot take for WoW healers; some healers have an identity crisis that is on the teeter of being solved and the solve is really REALLY easy to address IF…
…we got rid of Holy Paladin altogether.
Mistweaver and H Priest could pickup the various utility options they are missing that would address their spec clunkiness.
Mistweaver can assume that melee DPS healer role full swing. They can shift into being the “charged based resource healer” and stand out more mechanically.
Shamans can pickup options to lean more into the big boom healing style that some H Pals loved and what H Pal had most of WoW.
And Evoker gets just a little bit more room to lean into a few more direct heals, such as something akin to Flash of Light.
Nearly EVERY single thing that the other five healing specs need in order to shine and feel fluid are all the things that H Pal had baked in for free and en masse
And as long as H Pal exists, with the utility it does, your big boom H Pal days are always going to feel subpar… because they HAVE to. The all-in DPS builds give you power at a commitment and it’s easy to flesh out and design with balance in mind.
But the other side, pure casterdin, HAS to hold back on the caster side or it starts outright eating into R Shaman and H Priest and MW space.
And had this been any other class, Blizzard probably would have taken some of the utility options away over the years and filtered them back into the other specs that need them
But as paladin is a sacred spec in terms of popularity, their utility is equally as sacred. No other class complains as hard about their nerds than paladins, however big or small, and that sweet little precious precious community presence keeps this spec from making the changes it needs as well as other healing specs.
And so I agree with you, in the regard that they SHOULD just axe casterdin spec OR split their utility out and revamp trees so you have that choice without being busted OR remove the spec altogether.
Anything short of one of these three options, and it’s always going to feel unsatisfying and clunky to play casterdin For better, for worse.
Being in melee is encouraged by our mastery; however, hard casting and being in melee aren’t mutually exclusive. Paladin could be a primarily close ranger healer that also has significant hard casting heals.
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Holy shock. Oh wait, that’s ranged. /s
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Thats pretty much my playstyle.
Im by no means an expert player, however I have a number of purple heroic parses while staying mid range.
It can for sure use some work to feel better, but no idea why anyone would think caster is a write off.
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What I said was accurate. I guess I worded it ambiguously, I didn’t mean you weren’t healing while in melee range but not healing by meleeing directly. You don’t do any direct melee healing like a MW does with ancient teachings outside of a CD if you talent into it. You go into melee as an alternative kind of resource management IE: generating HoPo in melee.
Your main AoE heal is shorter range by default now, which is a poor design choice, but LoD used to be longer range baseline. It’s also not really “melee” even at its base range.
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34 is a boomer? Either way, the boomer/zoomer name calling is childish, regardless of the age of the person saying it.
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Paladins (ret) getting a rework soon.
No.
/10 char
I don’t agree. Even in Legion, caster paladin was still my preference. Others may not agree, and that’s fine, but I prefer caster paladin to the crusader’s might build. Weaving in crusader strikes is just very awkward for me to do. I do like the idea of being in the action, close to the melee stack in raids and right up on the tanks, but having to tab in and use crusader strikes to get holy power is just awkward to me, and I can’t be an efficient raid healer like that. I think there’s honestly nothing preventing the two prevalent play styles existing in the talent tree on opposite sides, with some interplay in a middle section. Maybe the tree just needs some extra work, but both play styles should be supported.
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Comparing it to Evoker is a bit laughable… youre looking at the FOTM meta versus … well, not.
I for one am loving the caster HPal.
Ive rearely been HP starves when ive needed it.
Granted im not top level player or anything but the caster paladin and even Shockadin builds of the past have been some of my most favorite playstyles.
To each their own but a couple of minor tweaks would absolutely make this a competitor to that mid range healer crown.
As we have skills that allow crusader strike to affect it just allow holy shock with a similar cooldown to have the same effect and effectively replace CS for Holy, let consecrate be targeted as others have mentioned, the options for a viable style are for me 100% there.
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Honestly I want them to decide on one or the other. If they want to make it melee? Fine I’ll go play another class, melee healer is boring to me. If they do make it a caster please make it better, don’t just go back to how it used to be. I don’t get why they can’t just separate it into two different specs when priests have two healing specs and druids have four different specs but whatever. Just decide on one and let people know in advance so we can stop playing Paladin to pick something else and gear them up, don’t let us sit on the back burner till it’s too late and we wasted time gearing our Paladin just so we can shelf them forever.
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Tyr’s deliverance didn’t make sense when they made it in Legion and makes even less sense now.
It would work great with melee or caster builds if it was instant cast and actually an AOE heal, not a single target heal that bounces around.
Quickly mouseover shock into crusader strike crusader strike back to mouseover shock another, back to tossing a judgement, mouseover WoG for Emp. There’s so much awkward weaving and there’s about 10,000 swirlies on the ground in between while i’m keep tracking of my mouse cursor. Sometimes I just a want a break to do one thing or another and not have it totally gimp me. AKA smart healing via damage. Avenging Crusader is so half baked it makes me mad.
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i’ve been trying to make it work, and unfortunately full tyr build sucks. lol even if u manage to reach 50sec max, it is just too random to hopefully fall into someone who’s actually injured, just like beacon of virtue, sometimes it doesn’t apply to 5 people.(i forgot it got nerfed to 4 LOL)