Good Morning,
I’m asking for some pure speculation here. Do we believe the glimmer build is here to stay? I’ve found myself really drawn in to the high APM melee centric playstyle i’ve seen used with glimmer. I’m in the process of dusting off my pally and worry that it will be nerfed prior to me getting to enjoy it in all of it’s wonderfully spammy goodness.
Thanks for your thoughts!
I think so. It’s a lot of fun, high paced, and has tremendous throughput.
Make sure you get a piece with Lights decree and Glimmer so your wings will extend to 31.3 seconds. With a bunch of glimmers out, wings up, and back to back procs, throughput is just silly.
I’m working towards that on my pally, but I believe there are only two pieces (one helm and one shoulder) that work for that, so I’m actually saving the 7k ish residuum to get the specific one.
I’d say focus on getting the 3xGlimmer first with whatever other trait you can get and form there you can start optimizing the rest.
As for the OP’s question, I seriously hope so it’s a very fun playstile and much more interesting than the traditional one… Long way to go for this but I kind of wish that for 9.0 on they could add it as a talent maybe making divine purpose baseline (or move it elsewhere) and putting glimmer to compete with the beacon talents (BoV and BoF)…
Here’s how you tell if something is going to stay in game for a long time.
Is it fun -> No
Is it tedious and too clunky -> Yes
Pretty much this. With the new expansion we will revert back to having 4 heals and beacon. 1 instant and 1 aoe on long CDs and then good old holy light and flash of light.
Blizzard keeps throwing tons of new options at us then taking them all away and forcing us to regrind later. If we do get it in the next expansion it will be locked behind piles of RNG and hours of grinding to be allowed to feel powerful again.
You know it was only the artifact that made us feel complete last expansion and I am sure the power from azerite will eventually atrophy away to nothing being disconnected from azeroth herself.
It is here to stay in the short term. HPal is gargage but this is the bandaid. Now HPal is in the same boat as Disc priest. Play like a douche bag and ignore priority healing and just follow a rigid rotation. Divert from it and you will pay the price!
Sadly the price is not blizzard imposed but community acquired.
If a group values your ability and willingness to spot heal like a champ and keep tanks alive over the details hps report then you could well be an asset without needing to play a totally stale rotation.
The problem is that all healers have evolved into this dps mentality… and every fight is an aoe fight. There really isnt a difference between tab targeting and multi dotting a whole room of mobs vs casting rejuv on everyone who doesnt have it and hitting wild growth on CD… or shielding everything and then firing off a penance when damage comes across.
At the end of the day the player mentality is the biggest numbers deserves the spot. Being a smart healer and dpsing when healing isnt needed or trying to conserve your mana (you know things old school healers used to be expected to do) is legit the fastest way to get kicked. I love disc and hpal because I can put out the same dps as a tank and still be able to use my CDs to heal when its needed. Sadly if you do anything other than try to snipe through the small damage taken in a raid that is more than likely being over healed you will get removed or accused of being a carry.
Every spec in the game is a rotation based spec now. I dont know what your main is but its pretty salty coming from a druid where you legit just put as many hots up on people as possible and push wild growth when damage happens. I can see how irritating it is when healing out snipes your own because the number monsters will assume you are bad and remove you. Hence every spec in the game must become snipe master elites and follow the very basic roadmap to executing the perfect snipage. Glimmer just makes it super easy because if you prepare well you can land 15-20k healing to dang near everyone in the raid every 1.5-2 seconds for a good chunk of time.
If anything glimmer takes more mana and wasted set up and planning before the damage comes out to be effective than most other healers who can just push 1 button to do nearly the same thing.
This has been my experience. You either do everything you can to look good on the meters or you get kicked. I’ve done the healing/dps what I “should” and most people don’t care unless you look good on the meters. People say they don’t but they do. I can show them priority healing/dps, mechanics executed, actions per minute and all i get is “L2Play noob”. It’s a consequence of what the community actually expects and does as opposed to what they say.
I’ve run with people who think I’m the best healer in their group and I tell them you have no idea what I’m doing to make you think that. I can literally show them why I’m not and they don’t care.
Exactly. Sadly that is why glimmer is a thing. Because without it it is very hard for hpal to make that presence know. Hpal healing 2 targets at a time when so much of it is overhealing cant really compete. Is it great at padding tanks and getting big beefy heals on priority targets? Of course. Does it compete with every other healer who can rock aoe nonstop? Heck no. Blizzards answer was glimmer. Sadly glimmer is so good when executed well on a fight that has large damage being dealt rapidly every minute or so that it is difficult for hot based classes to compete. I always hated being on druid when a fight wasnt constant damage going out all the time because the other healers just naturally snipe aoe faster and for bigger amounts.
With glimmer hpal is far and away the best sniper of massive aoe healing every 1.5 minutes or so. Grong and the first boss in crucible of storms were pretty nearly made for glimmer to shine.
Idk man, I run with Glimmer on my Holy Paladin almost always (I find the traditional build flat out boring to play) and while priority target healing requires some playing around your glimmer buffs it’s not like you ignore it, in fact when compared to the other healers in my group I’m always the one doing the most healing on priority targets, maybe I could be doing a bit more with the traditional build but that would come in exchange of a lot of HPS and raid healing, which imo is not worth it in most cases.
It is true that with the traditional build you have more freedom/flexibility to cast heals on whoever you want w/o any worries since there are not too much things to min/max or play around in your kit, that’s also why a lot of people complained that Holy Paladin is boring, most of us like to have those sort of synergies, it’s only normal that when there are more interactions between spells there’s less flexibility in your playstile (since you want to optimize and take advantage of those interactions).
With Glimmer of light there’s this little mini-game of spot healing while also trying to optimize spreading the buff which is quite fun to do, you are still the best spot healer (I mean you are casting Holy Shock every like 4.5s on average which is pretty hard to match), sometimes you need to sacrifice glimmers to focus priority targets, like other healers have to choose single target healing over AOE healing.
I mean padding has existed forever and every healer is capable of doing it. That said, I believe the reason Glimmer is a thing is simply because it’s very strong: It provides almost the same spot healing power than the traditional build but a lot more HPS and raid healing, hard to call it padding when Holy Paladin is still the best spot healer even when using the Glimmer build…
Also I don’t get all the negativity or why the “sadly” word every time you talk about Glimmer, I think a lot of us are really glad for this build for me personally it’s not because it’s “powerful” but because it’s much more fun to play, I may not like a lot of things in BFA, specially when comes to class design, but this Glimmer Holy Paladin is imo one of the bright spots we currently have in the game.
About the “sniping” like ffs the other healers are not your enemies, you are on the same team!, you are supposed to work together and figure out a CD rotation so you don’t overlap. If you are in a guild where HPS is all that matters and healers actively work against each other rather than as a team I suggest you look for a new guild.
Again with the “sniping”, Burst AOE healing is a strong tool to help you get through difficult moments of encounters. I get that in lower difficulties or farm you can use it to “snipe” other healers, but I mean what’s the alternative? not give burst healing to anyone?. Tbh I think it’s kind of good design to have specs with strong burst healing but that require set-up.
Glimmer Paladin has good burst AOE healing during Wings when you set it up correctly (every 2m not 1.5). When comes to burst windows it kind of depends, Disc has more burst and can do it slightly more often (every 1.5m) but Glimmer Paladin’s CDs and burst window last longer and also let you keep spot healing during them.
A Paladin relying on melee to boost heals from a lore, plate armor (meant to be front line) and overall class fantasy level makes 10000000x’s more sense than a Mistweaver (Fistweaving). I’m split 50/50 on Disc Priest being a range damage healing spec but I does make sense since it’s basically acting a hybrid between a Holy and Shadow Priest.
This should have been default for Paladins at the start of the expansion. Since it’s not and if people won’t invite or kick you because the RNG gods were against you that’s generally when Blizzard brings out the nerf bat. Rarely do they go wow this is a great play style for Holy Paladins, a melee healer, let’s run with it.
I see 2 things happening, either Blizzard reworks Holy with Glimmer in 8.2 or it gets hotfixed/nerfs and other spells get buffs so people who don’t have 3 for 3 Glimmer can get invites. These days many times it doesn’t matter if you can prove your HPS, it’s, “Oh you have RNG on your side, here’s invite”, when someone without any do higher HPS.
I think Blizzard will go the easy route and nerf this, enjoy it while it last ![:worried:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/worried.png?v=6" ":worried:")
I simply say sniping to refer to when your group purposefully overheals content and your ability to stay in said group is reliant on the meter on a pull by pull basis.
When you are in heroic or normal and 5 healing a 20 man group sniping is as legit a term as you can make. An instant cast heal that crits for 50k 55%+ of the time and can cleave half the raid for 10k as well not in wings… sniping is the only word for it.
Is it great for progression when premeditated? Heck yeah. Is it sniping? Yeah. I use sniping simply to refer to a person who gets hit and 2-5 healers who are bored all start casting their heal on that person. You can use a mana efficient heal on a 2.5 second cast or an expensive heal on a 1.5second cast or… if you are lucky an instant heal. Most instant heals arent that great. Except holy shock. Its instant low CD and dang near the strongest single target heal in the game. Everyone else is racing to get that hps. You can be a second slower on the uptake and still swoop it for more than any of them would have healed that target for. Is it good for progression heck yeah. Is it fun for other healers when overhealing a pug? Heck no. Noone likes being mid cast and seeing the target go from half hp to full right before there mana bar gets a little more empty. Its a large reason shaman mastery feels so bad in 95% of content. People just dont stay low hp long enough anymore. Everything lifethreatening gets fixed by a CD or two and there is minimal damage between these lifethreatening events.
I would love to see glimmer worked into a talent for next expansion but blizz has a bad habit of taking everything gameplay altering away between expansions.
Yeah I mean I understand what sniping is and how it can be a thing in Normal/Heroic. And I get that the average group, specially pugs, will judge your performance based purely on the numbers they see in the meters and some specs will always be better at sniping than others.
My point is that the game should never be balanced around specs being able to “snipe” heals better than others in cases where the raid is being overhealed for lower difficulties.
I guess what you are saying is that people are picking Glimmer paladin purely because it helps them “snipe” better and appear higher on the meters, that might be motivation for some players but I believe the real reason Glimmer paladin is a “thing” it’s mostly because players will always copy the meta builds and if top-end players are going for the Glimmer is because it’s good, quickly topping people off in this context is not necessarily sniping it can also mean keeping people alive through a difficult situation.
My entire sniping point was in response to this:
I know the playstyle is good. It is wicked fun to play. I just can see how a resto druid playing a hot build could be upset with paladin and disc and consider then to be slightly douchey. Putting hots on everything and being very limited in what hps actually gets turned effective against massive spot healing that can cleave onto 15 other people for 3x what a tick of your rejuvenation does at nearly the same rate kind of blows. Its not douchey in mythic and progress. Its very useful when played well in progression. But if the glimmer secret gets out certain other specs are in danger in the pug world. This is the way the game works and we all know that. How often do you purposefully bring an enhancement shaman to your pug when a DH or rogue of the same ilvl signed up? Dont lie.
The playstyle is fun and effective. I also really like the judgement build. Cleaving 50k+ healing every judgement of extremely efficient heals is pretty dang boss as well. I would rather a free cast 50k healing that is 100% mana efficient than a holy shock where i purposefully overheal like mad for a buff that makes the spec feel whole.
I love bursting 30+k dps with wings and the ability to heal dang near an entire raid with good glimmer set up with the same build. Its awesome.
I think my least favorite part of glimmer is that you spend 20-25 seconds of wings overhealing putting the buff on as many people as possible so you can use the last 5 seconds of wings to snipe 90% of healing needed during the 75 energy tantrum.
I think the build has room to be royally screwed up and the build has room to be insanely efficient… but it is also screwed up that in order to be the most efficient for the end of your wings you have to be super inefficient for 20+seconds before them. Throwing a 100k holy shock on someone who hasnt taken damage so you can cleave glimmer heals onto them in 20 seconds kind of almost feels as bad as it feels good. Its great seeing big numbers… its not so great knowing that they are largely inefficient because you are trying to prepare for the big damage the boss is getting ready to do.
Of course this isnt every fight. There are plenty of fights where everyone is taking dot damage all the time. But how often do you get that efficient of holy shocks on anyone during wings to the point where that person didnt already have glimmer on them and the juicy massive heal doesnt overheal them by 25-50% or even more? Not very often.
Yeah I hear ya. It’s not as bad as disc or rdruid where you have to ignore spot healing for 15 seconds, or longer, at points.
It’s probably here to stay until the expac is over, that’s my guess at least. While Devotion aura is extremely powerful it doesn’t show up anywhere in game or on logs, making it look like Hpal is very weak. You have to go to a third party website (Wowanalzyer) in order to get an estimate of devos DR and I don’t think many know how to or want to. Not only that but our heals were weak previously outside of IoL and AC, and AC isn’t a very good raid CD considering it heals people randomly. It’s a great CD for the tanks though as it transfers through beacons so raid+tank dmg allows it to shine.
Either way though, I’m not sure how to feel about glimmer. On one hand it captures the melee healer fantasy almost perfectly imo. Use melee abilities to reduce the cd of healing abilities. I feel like this is a better way to go about that than AC (deal dmg to heal) because AC heals targets randomly but if it smart healed it’d probably be too strong. On the other hand though this doesn’t exactly feel like a holy Paladin, it’s a bit too similar to disc and we’ve never played like this before. I personally enjoy it a lot but that’s only because the playstyle we had before was horrible imo.
I also like this build because it feels a bit better stat wise. You don’t completely ignore any stat with glimmer, as you get more haste you’ll start having the stat weights even out. With the prior build you’d basically ignore mastery as it didn’t function with your main healing CD (Avenging Crusader) which while maybe necessary felt pretty bad.
It’s pretty obvious blizzard has developed the healing game around raid CDs. They didn’t have to. They could have balanced the game around spot heals but they chose not to. I like the spot heal game. It’s more frequent thereby engaging the healer more often in doing a good job. If you can suck 90% of the time and decide to excel 10% of the time then you shouldn’t be rewarded.
Looks like they are keeping it for 8.2. IMHO it’s just lazy development. The difference between glimmer build and non glimmer build is the difference between top hps and at worst 2nd top healer dps and worst hps and worst healer dps. Blizzard at any moment can remove the glimmer build and hpal woud be screwed. It is the reason I won’t bite the bait. C’mon blizzard figure hpal out. I dare you. I think you won’t just to keep people rerolling for your own monetary gain.
They are indeed keeping it, but come on lazy development?, quite the opposite imho… There are many elements on BFA that I would qualify as lazy development but this on this subject at least I strongly disagree…
Lazy development would be to flat out removing it or nerfing it to the ground w/o listening to player feedback or taking the time to evaluate it properly and consider pros/cons.
The post shows that they took the time to evaluate and understand what the build does and why are players enjoying it, then they explain what elements of it are slightly “broken” (using their own words) and finish by saying that they are keeping the playstile but might tweak it a bit (essentially saying they will balance it if the data shows that it’s too OP).
On this subject it really feels they are taking the right approach and I hope to see more of this in the future from the Devs.