yes
also not trying to be rude, but i really dont want the main beta feedback thread turned into a long chain of replies discussion someones feedback post while burying t he feedback posts of others. i know your adding your own ideas but just add your ideas, no need to reply in hopes of starting a dialogue in a place where its inappropriate. i would gladly discuss this in another thread if you want
Also disagree. Ret is at a perfect spot right now with gcds required to set up burst.
I like the idea of 30s wings, especially for M+. However this talent doesn’t play well with others we have like FR and ES as without luck your wings will run out before those other CDs end. I think it would have been a better to replace ES or FR, even both, with this talent.
The RNG aspect is what really gets to me, I am not a fan of the feast or famine playstyle that was Vision of Perfection and it shouldn’t be making a return. It’s not good for Ret at all in competitive content, as your DPS is now subject to the whims of RNG.
Sadly it also ruins Crusade as it doesn’t come fully stacked and you only get an extra 2 seconds when more is needed to reach max stacks.
Radiant Glory actually works insanely well with ES despite ES lasting longer than wings usually.
Yeah I brought this up earlier in this thread. It wouldn’t be so bad for Herald if Divine Purpose counted toward stacks.
I just tried herald of the sun for a couple of hours. That’s the most fun i’ve had in this game in years. No notes. 10/10. Might main it
Edit: Okay one note, i wish the beam were a more…visually appealing graphic. Other than just -orange line-
Disingenuous. There are a couple of glaring functionality problems with Herald, but it is still a 10/10 as you say.
Like I said the most flagrant thing is that Radiant Glory combined with Crusade is bad for Herald of the Sun because the free Divine Purpose proc for Herald of the Sun doesn’t add stacks to crusade. It is akin to just functionally losing a gcd off your wings.
hello again, this is once again a hero tree feedback post thats ret oriented. this will probably be my last post until much later in the beta cycle since i dont want to completely flood thread and eclipse the feedback of others. you can find my class tree feedback post and spec tree feedback post at post 10 and 35 respectively
herald of the sun: i wont lie, i knew this hero tree would be strong in both aoe and st but i didnt realize how strong it actually is to the point its borderline oppressive. frankly this oppressive state herald is in right now is partially due to the talent radiant glory. frankly not a good start at all despite loving the concept and feel of this hero tree.
it gets more cringe. due to common raid positioning, you couuuuuuuuld stand inside a boss and have it eat alot of damage from your 10 lazers. which puts you at risk since alot of boss f rontals start inside or behind the boss. so alot of paladins will just drop dead if theres any frontal type tank mechanics. with 3-4 beams that i could see in ironforge 3 of which were from friendly targets, it did 17.6m damage in my overal which is sizeable at ilvl 611.
i can only imagine how mumch damage it could do with 10 beams in the hands of a better paladin player. this alone will promote alot of unhealthy and degenerate gameplay that will result in mroe fustration than anything simply because of one strong talent in our spec tree
my feedback may seem majority negative and some may think im asking for herald to be nerfed. no this isnt the case, herald is a fine tree it pushes how to the spot light after years of neglect and its strong enough as other trees. its radiant glory that pushes this talent ahead simply because of how its designed.
herald at first glance was intentionally giving more power to our avenging wrath window so its not a “sustain damage tree” with little burst power. it does that job very wel lwith solar grace and sun avatar amplifying a 30sec (wake)-1min (wings) profile. when you throw a rock like radiant glory into the machine, of course its going to gain extreme amounts of power. now instead of getting 6 lazers from suns avatar and a max 24%haste from solar grace every 1min, your instead getting 24% haste + MORE if your lucky and 6 suns avatar+ MORE if your lucky every 30 seconds + everytime wings proc.
with crusade and divine hammer amplifying the amount of holy power spent and if the divine purpose bug is fixed thus giving you 10 stacks in 4 globals after wake of ashes, you could increase the average uptime of radiant glory by quite a bit. also adding mroe rng gameplay of divine purpose procing multiple times. this can lead to a snowball effect. with my play tests ive been nabbing 60%+ uptime of crusade not to mention crusade still feels bad with radiant especially if you dont get procs. however this issue somewhat solves itself with divine purpose, it divine purpose give crusade stacks then it would feel instantly better. so overal this extreme increase in power with herald is radiant glory simply because the last 2 talents in herald directly effects avenging wrath and thus anything that procs avenging wrath will get or add on to its power.
again im not asking for herald itself to get nerfed this is why i was against radiant decree to begin with. im asking for the rng proc of radiant decree to be removed so herald can have its powered toned down naturally without massive nerfs so it doesnt completely overshadows templars.
speaking of which
templar: the visual flair of herotrees, the most cool paladin themed thing i ever had the pleasure of seeing. pure eye candy. people disliked the hammer theme but frankly its perfect it just a explosion of gold throughout your rotation adding on to it visually without changing much. you can tell this is the burst oriented tree simply cause hammer of light hits like a truck and empyr hammers happen so frequently it all adds up. obviously a st low cleave oriented tree. it just sadly falls short on its sister tree due to a singular talent and with its own mechanical bugs or failings
another bug is that involving lights deliverance is that you cant gain any stacks if your at 60 and wake of ashes is off cd. its slightly annoying, effectively you have to use wake, hammer of light and THEN it procs the free hammer of light. missing any stacks from empyr hammer if your at 60 stacks and wake is avaliable to use. perhaps make the 60 stacks turn into a 1 stack cap buff that gives you hol so you can comfortable keep generating light deliverance stacks. simply quality of life change.
another annoyance, not ab ug since its obviously intentional. is that hammer of light procs from lights deliverance, a few seconds before wake of ashes gets off cooldown. then you wont be able to use wake of ashes until you use the hammer of light proc. so you cant hold the free proc for any synergy with execution sentence or have it buffed by wings unless your lucky with procs. it just feels bad to get a hol proc when your close to your main cds getting of cd. a quick fix would be make wake of ashes replace hol if its out of cd or make lights deliverance make your hammer of light after wake of ashes be usable twice. overal its another qol change
overal both are really strong and both suffer from one specific talent in our spec tree. i dont wish to see neither tree nerfed directly when the main issue is outside both of them. im excited to play both since they are both 10/10 trees
Between 76 and 78 (so far) Ret paladins feel very crunchy in the open world.
It is taking FOREVER for my health to regenerate, Flash of Light BARELY heals you for anything, neither does Word of Glory. I’m constantly eating food that barely fills half of my health, and also constantly dying.
I timed that it took 5 minutes for my health to completely regenerate out of combat on its own after finishing a fight with like 1% HP left.
I’ve noticed that healing in general feels somewhat undertuned right now.
I’ll add on this from a healer’s perspective. Our health pools have essentially tripled or quadrupled by the time we hit 80, but our throughput hasn’t, so even running dungeons with my DF 4 piece scaled to 80, healing is going much slower in general, and it’s not just exclusive to Holy Paladin.
Coming from DF where raid healing became super snipe-y with tons of overhealing, health bars are now filling up slower in general, and I, as well as many other healers welcome the change, since it actually gives us something to heal. Using the Divine Toll + Daybreak combo on a party with Beacon of Faith used to be my wombo-combo to top the entire group off; it’s no longer capable of doing that.
That said, I absolutely see the issue for non-healer specs, especially with solo content being more common in TWW through delves and the like. I know off-spec healing was nerfed in Dragonflight due to healer-less Mythic+ runs, and its overall power otherwise, but it might be time to tweak things and make it stronger so that the solo player in a non-healer spec can actually sustain themselves.
Now that I’ve had some time to run dungeons and try out the Hero talents, here is my perspective as a Holy Paladin. My perspective is from that of PVE - I’ve heard Lightsmith is quite strong in PVP, but I don’t PVP, so wouldn’t know anything more.
Herald of the Sun
Simply put, Herald of the Sun feels leagues ahead of Lightsmith.
It enhance a core ability into an improved version (Word of Glory to Eternal Flame)
It intrinsically interacts with much of Holy’s toolkit. We use Holy Prism/Barrier of Faith, we get a Divine Purpose proc and our next 2 spendesr apply Dawnlight. We use Avenging Wrath, we’re suddenly sustaining our group and contributing a solid amount of damage via Sun’s Avatar. We get extra uses and uptime out of this if we spec into Awakening. We then feel like a true avatar of the sun if we use Blessing of Summer while Sun’s Avatar is rolling; suddenly we’re in a feedback loop of SA doing damage and healing, and Summer proccing damage and healing from those accordingly.
On top of everything else, we get some extra healing via additional free casts of LoD/HS via Second Sunrise, and an additional HoT if either of those crit.
Class Fantasy. Between Eternal Flame healing with holy flames, and Sun’s Avatar damaging and healing with beams of sun-infused power, you really feel like a divine avatar of the sun when playing Herald. Wielding righteous fire just feels very right as a Holy Paladin.
If I had to list one con, it’s that many of the existing Word of Glory interactions are currently not working with Eternal Flame, or are just outright bugged. This includes Blessing of the Dawn (it does not consume BotD stacks), as well as the free spender granted by Shining Righteousness (it only grants a free Light of Dawn). I haven’t set up a way to track it on Beta, but I’m not sure if Eternal Flame interacts with Afterimage either. Using Light of Dawn to grant Dawnlight feels unreliable as well. It doesn’t seem to apply to any targets hit by LoD, but rather, just the one I happen to be targeting. But these are all bugs, and less actual feedback on how the spec feels or plays.
Herald of the Sun has so much natural interaction with Holy and enhances what’s already there. It adds so much additional throughput, and allows us to use Avenging Wrath as a throughput CD on top of everything else because of how effective Sun’s Avatar is. There’s been a few spicy pulls in dungeons with lots of damage going out, and that alone has turned the tide on many a potential wipe.
Lightsmith
Lightsmith, quite frankly, feels like it was an afterthought. For Holy, certainly; I can’t speak to how it feels as Protection. Many Holy Paladins loathed the idea of this Hero spec when it was first revealed, and I thought that surely, granting additional damage and absorbs to my allies would feel better than people were giving it credit for. I may have been mistaken.
TL;DR
Herald of the Sun offers more throughput, interacts more with the existing Holy toolkit, provides better class fantasy, and is overall more enjoyable to play.
While Lightsmith offers solid damage options, it feels under cooked, doesn’t provide the same level of spell/talent interaction, offers (arguably) less healing throughput, and adds another cooldown to a spec that’s already bloated with them.
If you’re going to insist on the current Herald design, you need to add another interaction aside from Barrier of Faith and Holy Prism. These are spells that some people do not spec into; I myself strongly dislike Holy Prism, especially as a core rotational element. I would hate to feel as if I’m forced to use it next expansion.
Feels like a very easy solution to this would be to simply make it so that we get the Dawnlight buff naturally on a 30 second icd after both charges are spent.
I had forgot to account for the fact that I have 4-piece during testing, so I’m getting the extra healing and holy power generation on Prism casts. That spell is going to be way less attractive when i eventually replace the tier set.
Blessing of Dawn, Shining Righteousness (After using 5 Shield of the Righteous your next Light of Dawn or Word of Glory cost no holy power), and Afterimage are bugged with Eternal Flame. Eternal Flame is not consuming these buffs, and not reducing the times you need to have the buff of Afterimage. Divine Purporse is working fine.
Lightsmith with holy paladin has a solid dmg but herald has 2.2x better dmg and healing than lightsmith. If you use Avenging Crusader with Lightsmith you go OoM very fast. The absorb is great but the healing throughput is not enough you still go OoM as you have to use Judgment, and hope it crits to do the shockwave, and use Infusions with Holy Light to have good healing.
I love the playstyle of a support healing, but is not performing well compared to herald. Lightsmith needs some changes/redesing in the talent tree or add mechanics to the existent talent trees that only work for Holy or Protection Paladin ( What I mean by this is for example, one talent tree checks if you have holy or protection paladin to apply certain mechanic like Avenging Wrath that for Retribution and Protection Paladin it increases crit, healing and dmg by 20% for 20s and for Holy Paladin is 15%). I’d like to Lightsmith be a caster for holy paladin. So, it could be used for raids (takes out Judgment, Crusader Strike to buff Holy Light, FoL, healing, reduce the mana consumption and cast time), and herald melee for m+. Also, make it Holy Light to do Dmg and gives you an additional holy power if casted on enemies, or applies glimmer but only Holy Shocks can trigger the dmg and healing effects of glimmers.
Feedback on Ret Templar.
It feels great. Been playing it with the new Radiant Glory capstone and it is really streamlined. Executioners > Wake of Ashes > Build to 5 HP > Spend > Divine Toll > Spend. It is very bursty and on a rather short cd of 30 sec (excluding divine toll 1 min cd that lines up every other).
Will add more later.
Please have lightsmith apply both the shield and sword at the same time to the target rotating spell buffs are so annoying as we have learned with blessing of summer. While I do not play holy paladin currently due to the abomination it has become, I am a former holy main. If lighsmith did this I would play it over herald for thematics alone. But rotating buffs are so annoying.
As it stands, Holy Paladin (especially Herald of the Sun, although Lightsmith has its pros too) is looking much better than it currently does on live in terms of playstyle. However, there are a few key issues in the rotation and the balancing of its spells that I’d love to see addressed.
Holy Light
The tooltip for HL calls it “an efficient spell” likely in contrast to Flash of Light, a spell that “expends a large amount of mana” for a quick heal. However, FoL costs 90k mana, while HL costs 120k. If HL is going to be a mainstay in Hpal’s rotation, I think a mana cost reduction is mandatory to 1) keep the rotation fun and interactive (casting already feels like a chore to many who play Hpal, going oom in the process makes it feel even worse) and 2) make sense of the currently contradictory spell tooltips.
Tyr’s Deliverance and Hand of Divinity
These two spells are almost always cast together outside of niche situations or pure accident. Working HoD into Tyr’s (similar to how Shadow Covenant was added into Shadowfiend/Mindbender for Disc Priest) would be an incredibly welcome QoL change.
Other requests/suggestions
These are more minor changes, but I think they would help Hpal feel a lot better especially in comparison to very fun & smooth-to-play specs like Flameshaper Pres/Conduit MW.
Thanks for reading 
I’m more of an off-and-on Paladin player, but Herald of the Sun is seriously making me consider maining Paladin for TWW. It feels fun in all the right ways, doesn’t feel like it’s forcing me to do something out of the ordinary for its benefits, and makes me want to just play Ret and Holy.
^ Same boat tbh
I was over here agonizing over Evoker and DH for next expansion and then i was like “oh yeah, i wanted to see how templar was”, and i thought that was pretty good. Then i tried herald, and i’m not sure why, i wasn’t very interested in it initially, but i’m glad i did.
It just flows so well, even without much haste. I’m probably maining this.
Same. I looked at it, went “oh cool sunspots” and moved on during the talent previews.
Got on there on the beta, grabbed Radiant Glory and Herald, and it just… perfectly integrates into Ret running Radiant Glory. It is just awesome.
I still need to try Avenging Crusader for Holy, I could see that being fun in tandem with Herald’s stuff.