Hello. Just want to make 3 requests for holy paladin that I think would really make the spec feel better overall after trying it on the beta for a while recently.
Denounce in the spec tree. Right now on the beta holy paladin can play both melee and ranged, and is feeling a lot better after the removal of glimmer (still needs some tuning though).
However with the push towards casting holy lights, resetting holy shocks with casted infusion spells, etc it feels a bit disconnected to have to play in melee to use our damage holy power spender when the rest of the spec can be played in range. Denounce would be a really nice addition to hpal overall in every form of content (pvp already has it and it works great). Shining righteousness can even work with it making it splash damage.
Low dps ability with no cd and no mana cost/very low mana cost. Right now holy paladin doesn’t actually have the ability to do anything to conserve mana. If you want to conserve mana you basically just don’t do anything as your dps spells cost mana and the two you can use (cons and HoW) are both on 8 and 12 second cds. Having a filler ability similar to lightning bolt/smite would make hpal feel so much better during downtime or mana conservation in raids specifically.
Maybe it can do something small like increase the healing/damage of your next holy shock by a small % per cast similar to how smite resets chastise as you cast it.
Blessing of seasons removed or moved to an optional spot in the spec tree. Honestly I like the change to summer, but I still feel like this ability just has no real place in holy paladins kit. It’s mostly just a boring maintenance spell that you press every 45s.
The problem is it’s in one of the most important spots in the spec tree, making it essentially non optional. Moving it somewhere optional on the tree would be much better overall imo or just removing it would work too.
Infusion of light uptime needs a bit of help. Adding in a bit more baseline crit to holy shock would help, especially for the beginning/middle of an expansion where our stats are lower.
It feels absolutely terrible to go 5+ casts of holy shock without a single proc, and that is happening both on beta and live. Infusion of light is so integral to hpal it feels like there should be a failsafe with this either through more baseline crit or an ability that gives you a charge of infusion on demand, maybe a passive built into holy power spenders or casted spells?
I support denounce but it shouldn’t cost you a talent to take. Either make it baseline or make it one of those talents you have to take as a choice node with SotR or something. Baseline would be best imo.
Imma have to say absolutely not for this one. I love the suggestion about needing something to be done for dps/mana management, but we have way too many % modifiers which are absolutely out of control. Perhaps the DPS could reduce the cooldown of some ability on each cast, or increase the length of wings. Say it takes one second to spend a GCD/cast on DPS, then wings would increase by 1 second (when active)
The cooldown reduction is probably easier and could be tied to any spell, even LoH
Kinda goofy that you lose your damage-based spender with a damage-based weapon slot equipped. That is, if you get lucky to find an int hammer, you can’t do better damage with it as Holy. You are softlocked into shield mode.
Plus, that could encourage some complexity with weapon swaps for ST vs AoE. Would be an interesting layer (as long as the balance team doesn’t involve themselves).
Choice node with SOTR is what I’d want, because assuming all requests were fulfilled here we’d have a baseline spammable dps ability to use in downtime. I like having the ability to talent into damage, it just feels good when it’s worthwhile (ie holy priest) so denounce/sotr on a choice node pathing into shining righteousness would be sweet. Or it can just be denounce somewhere optional, I think hpal tree could use a bit of shuffling so pathing to damage is both optional and possible.
Solid point for sure, it was mostly just an example though, I think you could take that kind of ability multiple ways but I think you are correct when you say cdr would be the best way. Providing cdr to divine toll would be my favorite option now that divine toll procs rising sunlight in TWW, that would feel extremely fun for damage but could also benefit healing too.
Firstly, I would never use Denounce, but I support it existing in PvE for those who want it. Personally, I like having fewer infusions, rather than relying on them as a central gameplay mechanic. Lower crit also makes efflorescence of the sunwell feel more meaningful (though it’s already very powerful and has been for a while).
I feel like SotR sort of IS our dps mana-management ability, since it casts for free and, if you talent for it, also does reliable maintenance healing with every cast. I never use Light of Dawn, and consider using WoG a failure on my part in a way, and try to pour all my holy power into SotR. So long as I can maintain people’s health while using SotR most of the time, I find I rarely have mana issues.
I do think it is a necessary change to just let us use SotR without a shield though. Why can’t we attack with a shield made out of light? I can throw a million different types of hammers made out of light despite not equipping a hammer. The Lightsmith hero tree is based entirely around shaping Light magic into arms and armor. Why can’t I just blast people with a light shield while using a +int 2-hander?
Sotr is not our dps mana ability, it is only free because it costs holy power which typically requires mana to gain unless you talent inflo (which we do) but then that requires you to also have an iol proc which can sometimes take 3-5+ holy shocks to get which costs mana. No matter how you slice it mana is spent in order to use sotr, it is not for conserving mana. Keep in mind I’m not sure what content your doing but this a concern for raid mostly.
Also, it is not spammable either since it requires resource building. Hpal is lacking an ability to press when you don’t actually want to do any healing/don’t need to do any healing. You press judge, cs, cons, maybe hs now that glimmer is gone and that’s it. After that there is nothing left and you kind of just sit there until one of those comes back up. On top of that, we also lack the ability to dump or conserve mana reliably. Still no actual way to convert mana into raid healing, and still no actual way to conserve mana because our dps abilities both cost mana and have semi long CDs, so you run out of things to press if you don’t want to use HS due to mana constraints.
In terms of denounce, it’s mostly just an ask for people who want to be casting in ranged. Like it feels really weird that hpal is being pushed into a hybrid caster while also kind of needing to remain in melee if you want to use your dps spender. There should be an option for people imo, it feels a bit odd when you can do everything from ranged but one thing keeps you in melee. Hpal feels a lot better in pvp strictly due to denounce imo.
I never intended to imply that we had an entire rotation of mana-free dps, sorry if it came across that way. No healer has a 100% mana-free dps rotation except Druids choosing to stay in cat form nonstop, as far as I’m aware. My intent with what I said was that, unlike WoG and LoD, casting SotR itself does not incur a mana cost, and the mana cost of Judgment/CrusaderStrike/HolyShock on their own, weaving in free SotR’s, is very mana efficient and will not drain your pool.
Between HS, CS, Judgment, Consecration and SotR, there is no chance you’re ever sitting around not doing dps. One of those buttons will always be available, and they all feed into each other with various talents. I can’t imagine a scenario where none of them are available to press.
So I don’t think you are understanding what I’m saying. If you are trying to conserve mana, you can’t press holy shock as it has the mana cost of a healing spell, not a dps spell (think smite, wrath, etc) so if your goal is to stop healing to conserve mana, you will not press HS. That is one negative to having healing spells also be damage spells (difference between mw monk, disc priest and hpal though is that those other 2 have the ability to dps when conserving mana without it causing them to stand around doing nothing for 2-3 seconds every time you press those buttons)
You can press CS, judge, cons and sotr. Cons generates no holy power and doesn’t even feel good to press in ST. Judge is fine but a semi long cd, CS is fine but also has a cd. These 3 spells will go on CD and you will have nothing to press, this happens in raid all the time if you want to conserve mana as holy paladin by not healing. You just end up standing around waiting for judge/cs to come back up so you can press sotr. No healer has a mana free dps rotation but thats also not what I said, their dps spells cost less than their mana regen rate, meaning they still regen mana while using these dps spells even though they cost a little bit.
ah, I see what you’re saying. Our opinions are so different because I’m figuring in using HS and you are figuring in not using HS.
My personal opinion is that I conserve a non-maximal, but entirely sufficient amount of mana using SotR instead of the other, mana-intensive spenders, and I don’t worry so much about the cost of Holy Shock. And, if I understand correctly, you feel that the cost of Holy Shock is too prohibitive to spam as a damaging ability if you’re trying to conserve mana. That’s completely fair, just a difference of opinion. You may do more demanding content than I do, you may spend more mana in your spending phases than I do, you may have higher expectations of mana return on conserve phases than I do, I can’t say for sure either way.
Given that I do use holy shock on cooldown while attacking enemies, I never have any downtime dpsing, but I acknowledge how there would be a gap in the rotation if you did not choose to press that button.
You can use holy shock on cd to dps in m+, if you do so in raid you will oom assuming you are actually playing properly (in TWW especially since we lost daybreak mana return). I do more demanding content in terms of raiding, I only go as high as 3k m+ typically but only if I enjoy the dungeons that season (my profile is not private anyway you can check what you need to check). This isn’t really an opinion, it happens frequently to those playing content (raiding specifically) that requires spending mana constantly without the ability to stop and drink.
Also its not like there needs to be massive concern over this anyway, there is really no negative from them adding a spammable dps button to the spec especially if you have to maybe talent into it so you can opt out of if you don’t want it. Ellesmere who does high level m+ also has been asking for this so it is not just high level raiders that want it either.