After watching a few doing keys these nerfs are gonna kill holy hard these nerfs only hurt more then help holy was in such a bad spot.
was watching a +10 key a group did…they retried it after and they were unable to clear it barely the nerfs hit pretty hard i’m starting to think holypaladins are gonna be garbage going into tww
i hope not but blizzard seems clueless with us
Holy wasn’t in a bad spot. It was actually overperforming in Raid and has been for a while. So these nerfs were expected.
The issue with Herald is how the spec tree waa designed in the first place. I called this out some weeks ago before the rework in beta, we just can’t have Holy Shock and Spenders being as strong as they are now while having Sun’s Avatar and Dawlight doing twice or more HPS than Holy Bulwark. We can’t have talents like Luminosity or Gleaming Rays or Blessing of An’She being as strong as they were in comparison to how bad LS talents are.
At least our core spells are still untouched for the time being and our gameplay hasn’t been changed really.
I hate saying this, specially after two seasons of basically 0 tuning in DF, but numbers can change in a second, so adjusments will happen again, however I dont see these changes killing Hpal in M+. At least not yet.
I was a big fan of the idea of Glimmer ever since it entered the game in BFA, but I really do think Paladin healing overall is improved with it being gone. It was good when it was an alternate playstyle, but the class suffered by having it automatically baked into the entire spec.
Someone else pointed out in another thread, and I agree, that Herald of the Sun has too much synergy between Sun’s Avatar and Awakening. There is too much uptime of Sun’s Avatar as a result, and in order to balance it Blizzard continues to nerf Sun’s Avatar more and more. I don’t know if I would prefer wings from Awakening to not trigger Sun’s Avatar, but I think it’s worth blizzard looking into.
This is what needs to happen.
Awakening is just too powerful a talent choice as is and herald of the sun will continue to be nerfed until this is addressed.
Awakening needs to not proc sun’s avatar and the AoE healing needs to have reduced effectiveness beyond 5 targets.
If they keep it as is they will either nerf the core kit OR herald of the sun to the point where the beams and dawnlights do no healing.
I fully expect more tuning passes.
It might have even been your post I was reading that brought this up. 
I know what I definitely don’t want is for Sun’s Avatar to be nerfed to the point it’s basically a maintenance buff, forcing us to take Awakening just to keep it up long enough to be valuable.
In general, I really like Holy Pally healing. I think it’s a neat mix of melee healing and direct healing spells. I like the healing profile of lulls in healing globals for spells like CS, Cons, HoW, Judgement etc and then strong ST heals to make up for it. I like the unique way Holy does AOE healing via cleaving big ST heals via beacons.
For the TWW it’s a mixed bag imo.
GLIMMER
Removal of Glimmer is a huge W. Glimmer was 50% tax on Holy Shock’s direct healing. ie because Glimmer existed, how much Holy Shock healed needed to be cut in half. Glimmer was a poor mana return mechanic via Daybreak. It went against the class fantasy I mentioned above - Holy Shocking someone and half the healing being spread on up to 8 targets was so bad outside of raid. Good riddance.
The talents they replaced Glimmer related talents with are ok in some cases but not great.
Extrication: extra crit chance on spenders based on target’s health deficit. Good. Passive. Set and forget. Pretty boring.
Liberation: chance on healing spenders to reduce mana cost of next CS, Holy Light, Judge. Super mid. No skill expression. No agency on mana economy. Boring. Completely passive.
Glistening Radiance: Holy power spenders have a chance to proc Saved by the Light effect on your beacons. Ok. I think it’s under tuned. 100% Passive. More proc based RNG.
Truth Prevails: Judgement heals you or 2 others and has a reduced mana cost. This is probably the most interesting addition. It looks like a great m+ talent however it seems to be very undertuned for a capstone talent.
When they removed Glimmer, they redesigned all the Glimmer talents and generally just kept the same effects but tied them to Holy Power spenders or Beacons. I think this is a missed opportunity.
The hpal talent tree lacks build and healing profile diversity. The kit is full of RNG and these talents only make it worse.
I would have much preferred to see talents replace Glimmer that are clearly trying to do something. These aren’t leaning raid, m+, caster or melee at all. The whole middle section of the tree is uninspired and down to tuning, you take all the talents that are numerically good and forget they exist.
LIGHT OF THE MARTYR
The reworked Light of the Martyr is a missed opportunity imo. It needed to be redesigned because it wasn’t taken at all in any form of content for the entire expansion. Passively increasing HS healing is wait for it… boring, passive and waters down the fantasy offered by this kind of talent.
There’s a bunch of people who like the class fantasy offered by sacrificing a portion of your health to help heal others and wanted to Blizzard to lean into it more. This misses on that imo. Because it’s passive, it’s tied to Holy Shock and its a healing absorb now removes any of that feeling like you’re making a choice and an active participant in this fantasy.
On top of that, it seems like a net negative (see: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/so-whats-the-deal-with-the-new-light-of-the-martyr).
I still think it would have been much cooler for this to be moved to the capstone section and built a playstyle around it. Kept it an active button by having it replace Flash of Light.
CAPSTONES
Our capstones suck. No other way to put it.
Some of them are good, interesting and somewhat build defining (like double infusion, and melee wings) but really the rest are completely passive, and set and forget in all forms of content.
The pathing and positioning is off. For example, you have to take Tyr’s (a Holy Shock and casted heals buffing trickle healing CD) to take a Holy Power spending talent. Those are opposing ideas so idk what’s going on there.
We have one of the fewest talents down here compared to other healers. All healers have 15 nodes, Monks have 19 and Holy Priest have 13. Holy Pal have 14. Because talents like Tyr’s gate 3 talents, for any build that doesn’t include Tyr’s you need to spend 10 points in a section where there are 11 nodes. ie take everything else minus 1 choice.
Talents like Crusader’s Might put too much pressure on a GCD starved spec. It wasn’t taken since the rework and so they buffed it by making it reduce Judgement CD too. Now you’re hard press trying to send all these spells on CD, responding to procs and this is at entry level expansion gear before we’ve even got a good amount of Haste.
They should have buffed this talent in another way. Crusader Strike increases the healing of your next Judgment or WoG or something - stacking. We don’t need more globals to spend we need our individual globals to be stronger.
Those are just a few things, I could talk all day about Holy Pally issues and ways they could address them.
Even discounting beacon healing, Holy’s individual globals are already some of the strongest of all healers. Even Light of Dawn, which is currently tuned so low you will never use it over WoG/EF, is healing for more than other classes equivalent spells (as Herald anyways, not so much as Lightsmith).
You can’t really add anything more before taking away power from the base spells.
I completely agree with Westly.
Holy in tWW seems very one dimensional and continues to be flawed in a dated design. While I wasn’t a huge fan of Glimmer, or the output value of Tyr’s, its hard to deny that it gave diversity to the type of healing Paladins could do. It was more unique tunning knobs.
Hpal “feels good” right now on Beta for the same reason it felt good in the rework-- over tuned numbers.
There’s really no HoTs or Shields to supplement between these big burst ST heals so if those numbers are eventually removed, Hpals are back to square one.
While I understand the “identity” of a Hpal has always been a ST niche healer, I think that the state of the game has shifted so drastically over the last few expansions, Paladins just have not found their place.
Using Crusader’s Reprieve and Retribution Aura as an example, (honestly, I don’t care that they were removed) but as an example, this is evidence that the dynamic of the overall state of the game has shifted.
We can lose abilities because the game has evolved, but we still haven’t gained anything. Judgement, CS, HoW, and Consecration all feel hamfisted into the rotation. While spells like, WoG, BoSac, and BoP feel still feel dated.
The best thing to come out of tWW is Eternal Flame… a 15 year old ability. -.-’
Yeah that’s fine. I guess what I’m saying is they seem to give us talents that add global demand.
CS grants 2 HoPo instead of 1, SotR x 5 makes your next WoG free, casting Prism/Barrier of Faith gives you Divine Favor, Double Infusions, Crusader’s Might, Imbued infusions, Divine Purpose procs, Veneration (creates HoW globals and more HoPO), Tower of Radiance, Hand of Divinity. Their value is in more resources which need to be spent, or globals you need cast, or procs you need to respond to. ie to capitalize on their value you need to spend another global/cast. There’s a lot of them.
For a spec that is GCD locked as I mentioned, I’d rather they reduced the number of these and found a way to put some of the power upfront. Remembering that the talent value would remain within the same power level but if Hpal spells are too strong now, readjusting the base power would be fine imo.
The issue with having so many things demanding globals is that the spec starts to feel like a bloated mess and if they do an aura nerf, you’re still left spinning 10 plates but nothing that feels impactful. If so much of the power from talents is locked up in CDR or creating extra globals, aura nerfs have no impact on that kind of power - other than nerfing the eventual impact of capitalizing on them.
Man… I respect your opinon but also kind of disagree a lot…
Ok there are too many “reworks” so let’s call one the live and the other one the beta version.
I agree that the beta version has “no HoTs or Shields” in the base kit (or not signifficant ones anyways) but woulnd’t that be the opposite problem from the live version?
The problem the live version has is that there’s too much stuff trying to supplement the ST heals to the point that in order to fit all of that the ST heals have to be weak and nothing you do feels signifficant.
Also while the “no HoTs or Shields” part for the base kit of the beta version is true, two thigs about it:
1.- That’s literally what the hero talents are adding with things like Eternal Flame and Dawnlights (HOTS). Or things like Holy Bulwark (A shield) or even the Sacred Weapon adds spalsh healing to supplement the base kit.
2.- Is it really “a problem” if there are not too many things to supplement the big ST heals?, I feel that this model of big ST heals that cleave to your beacons is something that has proven to be very strong and consistent. The more you introduce more and more supplemental sources of healing you also need to take some healing from the ST spells to assign to those extra sources since your total “budget” is limited.
Assuming things are tunned correctly (because right now Holy Paladin is still overtunend) I think the reason Holy Paladin will remain meta is precisely because it’s the best at Spot healing, by a wide margin and that’s something other specs don’t do very well. I mean Aura Mastery is also a factor but honestly at 9% I don’t think it’s overpowered anymore outside of the very top 0.1% levels of play.
Holy has both of those things. Holy Bulwark and Barrier of Faith are 2 very strong absorbs, and there is also Saved by the Light and Glistening Radiance.
Herald has a ton of HoT healing. So much so that it has been nerfed almost every beta build for weeks on end now. I am pretty sure Dawnlight is still the single strongest HoT in the game, despite the massive nerfs it got recently. Minus stuff like Healing Tide Totem, if you count that.
I am going to be honest. I don’t know what you are talking about, because i feel like i have more free GCD’s on my Paladin than any other healer in the beta. Mostly because of how overtuned Holy feels right now even after the recent nerfs.
I am probably missing something very important here. Because i feel like Holy has no plates to spin.
I honestly feel like beta Holy can be compared to Fury warriors. Press generator to do big heal, press spender to do bigger heal. Press your cooldown to do mega heals. That’s it.
Holy Paladin, in my experience, is the most basic and simplest of all healers on the beta. Trying to heal on a resto druid or disc priest is a nightmare in comparison.
I don’t know if I can agree with this.
The original rework in Dragonflight felt good because it was overturned.
This rework has brought back the core gameplay of building and spending - it has nothing to do with tuning. Lightsmith feels just as good to play as Herald because the core gameplay is the same.
The problem with the spec now is the same problem we’ve had before: it’s impossible to balance mana, holy power and infusion of light at the same time.
Spenders are much stronger than spending your infusions. This leads to the talents that build as much holy power as possible, which will push the meta into casting as little as possible.
I think this rework was a great step forward for the spec and is miles ahead of everything we’ve had for the last 6 years.
Blizzard could take it a step forward (in a future expac) by removing either holy power or infusion and solidifying an identity rather than trying to appease both audiences and truncating the spec into half casting/melee talent choices.
Believe me, this isn’t meant to be overly negative, it is nice that those are being added, but the issue is that these aren’t baseline solutions to baseline problems.
When more Hero Specs are added, and they will be, these “convenient” things will be gone.
Eternal Flame is a good way to improve WoG, but that should be accessible in the Class Tree. Then in the HotS tree we could have something an example like:
Warmth of An’she
When Eternal Flame critically heals your target, the HoT effect will also benefit 2 nearby allies at X% value.
It’s not meant to be some super deep re-envision of the class, Eternal Flame isn’t a Capstone or Keystone Hero Talent.
If I were to ask: Wouldn’t it make more sense for Eternal Flame to be “baseline” (Class Tree/Spec Tree, w/e) so Holy can have a better Spender? If the answer is yes, then why isn’t it?
Why exclude Lightsmith, and future Hero Specs, from basically a QoL thing?
It’s just my perspective of course, but I think that there could be a nice balance. I think Evoker and Restro Shaman hit that pretty close where your HoTs supplement your ST heals really well.
I just don’t think Paladins have landed in that sweet spot yet because of the kit they were working with. Glimmer was an extremely clunky mechanic to work around, 3 targets, 1 target, 8 targets, offensive use vs defensive use, etc… And of course Beacons transfered a lot of healing.
Glimmer being removed and Beacons being reduced were good, but I’m not 100% sold on the nerfs to Tyr’s atm. I feel like the nerfs have made it an obsolete talent, and this is the issue of gutting Paladins abilities instead of advancing them to a more modern state.
I’m more concerned with these feeling a bit cumbersome and too RNG, appose to things like Eternal Flame and Shock Barrier.
I don’t want Paladins to become a HoT based healer, but a good 70/30 balance could be a good fit.
Leaving other discussion aside… My general feel for Holy Paladin going into TWW:
First thing to discuss is the Glimmer removal:
I really enjoyed Glimmer when it was originally introduced but Holy Paladins were very different at that time, they were coming from losing the Legion artifact and the spec felt totally anemic, so Glimmer introduced a new gameplay loop and made the spec have something interesting going on that you could play around and optimize. (All though admittedly it was very different from what Holy Paladin had traditinonally been in the past).
That said after all the changes, Holy Power being added, and specially after the DF rework too many different things and sources of healing were added and the spec only felt good when it was overpowered because there were simply too many supplemental healing methods competing with each other, each of them eating from the total “budget”
So the only way to fix the spec was to remove something, and glimmer had become less and less impactful to at that point I agree it was best to remove it.
So how is Beta Holy Paladin now:
Honestly, pretty good… It’s not my favorite version but it’s alright and pretty fun, I guess a bit on the simpler side but that’s typically how it has been for Holy Paladin. Also pretty well in-line with what the spec has been in the past in the sense of having those big and impactful single target heals that cleave trough beacon.
You could say AOE is limmited, and that’s true… But for raids that’s not really your role and being the best spot healer is more valuable than being the 4th AOE healer… For M+ where you are the only healer I think the option from having permanent 3 target cleave on your single target heals or 5-target BoV on a short CD gives you all the coverage you really need.
For the talents I feel some of the ones that used to work with glimmer and have been reworked might need a bit more work but overall I don’t find the spec tree so bad, the class tree is a bit worse imo and should be on the short list for those who could use some updates.
Now for the hero talents I feel they are honestly pretty good and supplement your core kit in a good way, right now Herald is a bit overtunned but it gives you some HoT gameplay.
Lightsmith gives a more support-oriented playstile but unlike other similar “support” type talents (like blessing of the seasons or Priest’s Oracle) I feel Lightsmith actually implements it pretty well. I do wish Blessing of the season was gone becuase you already are managing the Lightsmith stuff so having the Seasons stuff on top of that gets pretty annoying.
Meta prediction and personal choices:
I’m fairly confident Holy paladins due to the strong spot healig profile will once again be meta for Raid and that it will land somewhere in the top-3 for M+… But tunning will dictate the exact spot for those.
Over the past expacs I have co-mained a Paladin (Holy / Prot) along with my Priest (Disc / Holy)… And even when raiding “primiarly” on the Priest I’ve on occasion flexed-in the Holy Paladin for prog bosses.
So for TWW even though I have decided to drop the Priest and play Resto Shaman for Raid I’ll still be keeping the Pally on the same role (I also like to have a Tank toon for M+ and Prot Pally is my choice there).
The type of heals and what they do feel more like the “macro problems.” All holy Power Spenders should feel pretty good to press for the Spec as a whole.
The “micro problems” are the lack of those small choices of Crusader Strike vs Holy Bolt, SotR vs Denouce, and “Melee infusion vs Caster Infusion.”
When I read Westly’s response this is what I kindof felt like was missing from our Talent Tree and why the middle of it felt so lackluster. We aren’t making these gameplay choices, but just choose whichever generic talent provided the most throughput.
When I play my Paladin, on the micro scale it feels very cumbersome. Judgement is a good button to press, but CS, HoW and Consecration feel a bit out of place.
Necrolord’s Hammer in Shadowlands (S3/S4) felt good to press, and I wish Hammer of Wrath found that same feeling.
Eternal Blossom on Evoker feels good to press, and I wish Consecration had that same feeling.
To me, it comes down to:
I don’t think Paladins are far off from where they need to be, I just think they need those “common sense” changes.
I don’t really know what that means. Because Holy is overtuned you have less GCDs to spend? Or the talents I explained just demand less of you? I could understand it taking fewer globals to top someone but that doesn’t mean you have less buttons you can or should be sending.
I would like to see more abilities work with Veneration.
I would like to see Crusader Strike having a choice node with Blessed Hammer.
This has been a very interesting thread, its clear there is a lot of passion towards holy paladin.
The dream I’ve wished and asked for for years 
.
After the latest Mythic Raid testing, I’m really worried because last time this happened, Hpal was nerfed by an overall 30% on HPS.
Specially considering 50% of our output is currently HS and ET.