From what I understand and played in classic, on some level the paladin was always intended to be a frontline supporter, the whole seal and judgment system was intended as a passive system for damage while the paladin wove quick heals and buffs between swings, but the game design as a whole failed to accommodate a hybrid style at the time due to a variety of reasons, and thus every class basically got reduced to their one most efficient button, and that mind set basically sat in people’s head.
Heck, even in wotlk, I’m willing to argue that alot of the mechanics they added to the class tree where attempts to get the player in melee more, more frequent holy shocks + Infusion making FoL instant, combined with the hit from enlightened judgments and judgments of the pure granting MELEE haste alongside casting haste seems to play into the idea that even if it’s just for mana sustain with seal of wisdom (which is actually what alot of hpally guides for wotlk are recommending you do) that they want paladins to be frontline.
The only eras that seem to me to truly the idea of “Hpal should be ranged” is cata through wod when they had the denounce mechanic giving them a spammable ranged.
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Just jumping in to say now that the tier is over, caster as a playstyle has absolutely failed. All it has done is take away talent spots that could better holy paladins gameplay as a majority of the ‘caster’ centric talents are dead.
Tyrs deliverance, boundless salv and power of the silver hand are all entirely dead in every difficulty (check Warcraftlogs)+pvp. Resplendent/moment of compassion is also barely ever taken, sunwell is also entirely dead in pve. Caster performs worse than melee wings hpal in pvp too, so it is not even played there anymore.
On top of that, for the last 3 expansions hpal has been designed for melee. You can’t undo that by throwing 6-7 caster talents into the tree. Hpal is fundamentally melee based, that was not changed therefore caster should be played in melee to get the most out of it and it feels bad to play.
They made a mistake trying to separate the playstyles into two distinct versions of holy paladin. They should have fused them and made hpal a hybrid melee healer. Talents like sunwell can stay as that can contribute to a hybrid playstyle, but tyrs/boundless/potsh should be replaced. Holy shock should work with barrier of faith, etc.
Combine the playstyles, separating them has not worked out. Make HL fast and FoL instant from selfless healer or sunwell+lights celerity so we can use them in melee, things like that.
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I’ve been a huge supporter of caster build all xpac long, and have been using it to good results, however now what my guild is starting to progress in mythic Vault, its clear now that caster is utterly unplayable at a high level (at least on some bosses).
On mythic Terros, with 35% haste and a 1.8 second holy light cast time, rarely are you standing still long enough to generate enough HP with holy light, VS CS.
It sucks, because ive spent a lot of time getting good at/used to the caster playstyle, but it is what it is.
Yep, thats what I’ve said the entire time to people playing caster in lower difficulties. Once you hit a difficulty where mechanics are largely present, movement gets in the way of playing it because they did not bring back fast cast HL, and FoL isnt actually a generator unless you heal someone below 50% hp.
It isnt an actual caster build. In order to maximize it as well you have to stand in melee to do damage+gain mastery benefit or you can stand in ranged and do far less damage (because they didnt give us any ranged damage spender or ability that matters) and lose out on mastery benefit.
All caster healers have a way to deal with movement. They did not give that to hpal.
Also, i went and looked through wclogs from mythic all the way down to normal, caster is a pretty dead playstyle overall. You can tell by seeing what the talents played are, shows you a percentage. Tyrs/boundless/power of the silver hand are all at 0% in every difficulty, not even pure caster players touch those.
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Without a meaningful nerf to tank self-healing, Caster Paladin is a DOA niche. The game has evolved beyond the single-target casted direct heals Paladin pushed in Vanilla.
I also chuckled that the advocate for caster Paladin up at the thread start a month ago… Was a Priest avatar. Irony? 
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I don’t see why you wouldn’t recommend mouseovers to new players. It’s infinitely easier to heal and you don’t lose your current target. It doesn’t make you lazy, it makes you more efficient and you will heal people faster than having to click on them first.
I fully support playing the way you want. You don’t have to play in a way that you don’t enjoy. You don’t have to use add-ons, or meta chase, but I imagine most groups wouldn’t be happy to have someone not help cc, kick, or DPS, when possible, throughout the run. Your first job is to keep people alive of course, but anything extra you do will help time runs.
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