I originally posted this as a reply to the recent glimmer nerfs but I feel it deserves it’s own discussion and I would like to hear more from holy pallys and if possible the devs on this…
I understand why Blizz feel they need to nerf glimmer. With that said, while I will agree that the cap and now this 12% nerf is needed for glimmer, I would hope for some new azerite trait or buff somewhere else; maybe buff Avenging Crusader, which is really fun to play, but has limitations and requires prep to do well, and mana is still a concern if you’re not careful but is currently out performed by glimmer.
I have a Holy Pally in my raid who’s playing avenging crusader vs my glimmer build and it does suck how behind on throughput and HPS Avenging Crusader or any regular Holy paladin healing is to glimmer. When it was first introduced I absolutely loved the idea of Avenging Crusader and what it meant for class and spec identity. It was exactly what I wanted for Holy Paladin. I wanted to feel like a melee healer again, and not only were we encouraged to heal from melee, but now we could also do a fair bit of damage, and it worked really well with our mastery. I was hoping to see how the azerite traits and essences would add to, change, synergise or buff Avenging Crusader to make it stronger or even more fun to play as a viable main healing spec for the expansion. Then someone found a way to exploit glimmer and no matter what i tried with AC, it would not be able to match AC. So what mainly worries me about these nerfs to glimmer without changes to the rest of the kit is that we will still be forced to use it if we want to be competitive. Simple put this will not be enough to get players to stop using the glimmer spec. Why?
- It’s stupid easy to play if you get the right gear/traits and anyone already using glimmer already meets the gear requirements. 3 glimmer stack -easy to get, haste trinket from mecha= auto BIS trinket no matter what’s in palace, and riot helm or lockjaw shoulder for easy 3 glimmer + 1 Light’s Decree from ret and its GG.
- it eliminates mana as a concern for a healing spec, this is a huge advantage on progression mythic content. I’m used to paladins being top choice for wisdom bcause they are supposed to be the tank healers that are great at spot healing, and now there is no mana penalty for machine gunning out holy shock/crusader strike/light of dawn non stop.
- It’s capable of Tank/Raid healing while blanketing/spot healing all at the same time, provided you have enough haste. one spec should not be able to literally do it all!!!
- It outperforms all other healing specs on throughput. this may change with the nerfs but we’ll see where glimmer falls to and more importantly if top Hpallys will even try to make AC or reg holy pally work competitively.
- It completely changed our primary and secondary stat priority from Int>Cri>Mastery>w/e to HASTE>everything else… unless you’re like me and have 3/5 of your inventory full of “what if” gear, it will take time for players to swap back and optimize healing gear, azerite traits, and maybe even essences for the reg spec.
So Blizzard, while I’m sure you already know this, I’m hoping some of the feedback is useful on balancing the Holy Paladin spec as a whole, or change glimmer itself to have some synergy with how “YOU” intended Holy Paladins to work this expac. It’s obvious that for better or worse, glimmer is popular, it works, and even though it’s easy, it’s engaging and can even be fun if only it worked well with the rest of the healing kit. I personally would love to see it changed to synergise with Avenging Crusader because it feel like there is sooooooooo much wasted potential with that talent, I loved it when you first introduced it and all i want is for it to thrive as a core part of holy pally healing.
Love you all, and hope some of this is useful or at least gets the conversation going in the right direction. I would love for more holy paladin players to share their thoughts on this and let’s make AC great again XD!!!
4 Likes
While I agree with some of your points and the fact that Glimmer is so overpowered compared to the “traditional” build (and every other healer for that matter) is an issue that needs fixing, I strongly disagree with you feelings about Avenging Crusader.
Leaving aside the “overpowered” factor, the playstile you get when using Glimmer is imo a much better iteration of how a melee healer should play: Fast paced, weaving melee attacks and strong instant heals, choosing who gets healed rather than smart heal BS, and on top that it’s pretty proactive in the sense that you need to prepare in advance to get maximum throughput at the right time. You also need to keep track of your glimmer and the cool-down resets on your Holy Shock.
In comparison, the “Avenging Crusader” build is a mess: You want to be in melee for your mastery but you still want to stand still and hard-cast a lot, it’s also quite slow paced and has very little going on, nothing to really keep track of or min/max. Then when you pop Avenging Crusader sure it looks cool but what you actually do is just AFK DPS for smart heals on people, no real decision making or control on who gets healed the game does all for you.
In fact the main complain Holy Paladins had early in BFA was not about them being weak but the spec being incredibly boring to play, slow paced, and with very little going on.
A few more considerations:
I guess deppends on the player a bit, but typically playing “Glimmer” right is harder than the traditional build due to the fact that is more proactive, much faster paced, and has more stuff to keep track of. Sure you can get a lot of healing even if you are not too good at it but that’s more due to the fact that it’s overpowered rather than it being “easier”.
I agree the fact that it has very little mana concerns is an issue. But let’s be real, even before Glimmer Holy Paladins were among the worst choices for Wisdom.
4 Likes
The default Judgment / AC build is fine. The only change it needs is to put Infusion of Light back to 100% chance (whether that be through 100% HS crit chance or just changing the mechanic, I don’t care), because it’s aids to have RNG play such a huge role in our healing kit.
I love AC, but don’t forget that SW was a very viable option even before Glimmer existed. AC was usually higher on the metres but SW is incredible for priority spot healing.
I personally almost quit during uldir because of how terribly bland the AC build was. Outside of pressing judgement and CS every two minutes with AC, you hard casted holy light while praying for IoL procs. It was probably the worst time I’ve had playing holy Paladin and I’ve been playing for a long time now. BoD was slightly better due to the nerfs/buffs to HL/FoL to switch our hardcast to FoL but it was still quite bland.
Glimmer itself has a pretty high skill ceiling and requires you to play well for good results. I think there’s definitely some core issues with it outside of it being broken but overall it’s much faster and requires much more attention than the previous build. It’s a proactive playstyle as opposed to reactive which is why it requires more focus, more planning and more attention.
We still have extremely strong single target healing. Usually if you plan things right you’ll get ~10 seconds of wings maybe more during the big damage you were ramping for and our holy shocks are insanely strong. In legion we had the same thing, huge ST heals with 1 big raidwide CD. I’m not really sure where our niche is playstyle wise but legion and the latter half of BfA gave us extremely strong ST and a very strong raidwide CD. (wings and devo in BfA, Aos in legion). I think that’s fine but I’m unsure where our niche actually is here.
Also, the glimmer playstyle fits the melee healer fantasy much more than AC imo. You have to be in melee to heal and you rely heavily on minimizing CS downtime, along with the dps glimmer pumps out due to being melee it feels much more melee-healer like to me.
2 Likes
Is that what melee dps do? Just AFK and net results? I think the Glimmer Build is probably one of the most skill and attention demanding playstyles in the game. But I don’t think Avenging Crusader should be knocked because for 20 seconds out of every 2 minutes your attention is redirected from traditional healing to that of what melee dps are typically tasked with in a battle.
I agree with this and think this is in large part due to how few Infusion of Light procs the spec was able to produce. I think the spec would greatly benefit from changing Holy Shock to always generate Infusion of Light and making Divine Purpose baseline.
I also think Holy (and Ret) really missed out by not getting access to certain talents that Protection gets, like the talent Crusader’s Judgment. I quickly found Protection to be far more enjoyable as a melee healer (in BGs) than Holy, and a large part of this was due to the frequency of Judgment casts combined with triple Grace of the Justicar. The fun was further compounded by the talent Righteous Protector turning all those Judgments into a direct increase in Light of the Protector casts as well as reducing the cooldown of Avenging Wrath. Avenging Wrath gives increased crit chance, crit doubles Judgment’s Shield of the Righteous cd reduction, and Shield of the Righteous reduces the cooldown of Light of the Protector and Avenging Wrath.
Where Protection was seeing far more access to and benefit from casting Judgment, which can be augmented by a versatile array of Azerite Traits, Holy was left wanting to mash Crusader Strike for their increased activity. The difference between the two was jarringly disappointing. Protection just plays as a well-oiled machine while pre-Glimmer Holy felt like an old man pulling a wagon with square wheels.
AC build is so clunky. You’re only really a useful healer for 20 seconds while AC is running. The rest of the time you’re casting weak single target heals and hoping for an IoL proc from HS.
To fix the AC build, I would rather they add smart healing to judgment and crusader strike as a passive for all hpals and then have avenging crusader amplify it. Ideally, the numbers would be tuned that the priority order would be as follows:
Normal: IoL proc > HS > judge/CS > unbuffed FH/HL
During AC: judge/cs > IoL proc > HS > unbuffed FH/HL
1 Like