New Talent: Unbound Freedom – Blessing of Freedom increases movement speed by 30%, and you gain Blessing of Freedom when cast on a friendly target. Choice node with Echoing Blessings.
Unending Light has been redesigned – Now causes Holy Power spent on Word of Glory to increase the healing of Light of Dawn*.
Light’s Conviction now additionally causes Holy Shock to refund half its mana cost when cast offensively.*
Flash of Light mana cost reduced to 0.6% base mana (was 1.8%).
Flash of Light healing decreased by 25%.
Holy Light’s healing increased by 90%.
Infusion of Light now increases the healing of Holy Light by 30% (was 100%).
Infusion of Light now increases the healing of Flash of Light by 30% (was reduce mana cost).
Inflorescence of the Sunwell now increases Infusion of Light’s healing increase to Flash of Light by an additional 15%.
Inflorescence of the Sunwell now increases the healing of Holy Light by an additional 15% (was 50%).
Developers’ notes: Flash of Light and Holy Light have a lot of power tied into talents modifying their effectiveness and we would like these spells to be more effective to cast without these talents and casting these spells without Infusion of Light active to be a more viable option.
Echoing Blessings now increases movement speed during Blessing of Freedom by 30% (was 15%).
Lightsmith:
Hammer and Anvil healing decreased by 20%.
Blessed Assurance now increases the damage of Crusader Strike by 20% (was 180%).
Two good changes in my opinion (Light’s conviction and Unending light) , but LS AC is now apparently dead, be it good or bad for you.
No changes to spot healing whatsoever except for some casting spells tuning which are mostly tied to infusion procs and tried to correct that.
With LS AC gone (around a 8% healing nerf and a overall huge dps nerf to the spec), we will most likely be back to herald (unless mana issues in raid fights makes that impossible), but Herald is NOT in a good spot right now. We will be losing WoG and HS healing with the loss of our current tier sets.
I imagine the Devs sit around, dead eyed and slackjawed, throwing darts at the wall to decide balance changes.
I’m pretty sure that the Holy Light/Flash of Light changes are nerfs disguised with a lot of math. You’re basically never wanting to hard-cast a non-infused Holy Light, and Flash of Light does such low healing that you’re wasting a global casting it. Overall both have gotten reduced effectiveness.
In terms of Lightsmith, the (bug fix) change to Blessed Assurance is an over tune, and guts the flow between CS and HP spenders during AC. If they really needed to make a change, they could keep the value as it is on live, but only make it apply during wings, and I’d be happy. I’m salty about the Hammer and Anvil change, but its honestly kinda warranted because we’re going to be getting enough crit to pop it constantly.
Unsure if Hpal is going to be getting the 2>1% LFB change, but that feels like an unnecessary change if so. Its not LFBs fault that LoD is so under powered that it can pull similar numbers if you’re dedicated. The 50% Seal change looks like its intended for prot, but if Holy gets it, its another weird change.
Between these changes and the attempted 5% overall healing nerf a while ago, I think a Hpal broke a Dev’s heart and we’re all paying the price.
Seal of the Crusader which does 1.5% of our total healing. Nerfed by 50% Light Forged Blessing which does like 1% of our total healing. Nerfed in half.
Both are final gate talents on our class tree btw.
Hammer and Anvil healing decreased by 20%. Blessed Assurance now increases the damage of Crusader Strike by 20% (was 180%).
Light’s Conviction is a nice change, but it should have worked like that already tbh. Living Flame worked like that already.
I’m happy for the caster HPals out there I guess. You’ll have fun spamming free Flash of Lights that heal for like 200k in today’s numbers.
I’ve had some time to read about the class changes for other healers, and wow, I thought we had it bad. Nope, we got royally and unceremoniously tossed in the trash compared to what other classes received.
Coal for Christmas, everyone. You’ve been naughty this year.
Blizz needs to revert some of them My raid team is only going to accept “Hpal technically has a ton of hidden hps from Devo aura” for so long before they realise Hpal is actually just in a really poor state XD
I really only heal M+, but the LS changes sound abysmal.
The general AoE damage, specifically the array of ‘pulsing AoE’ damage that can be found in dungeons is counter-intuitive to the nerf of the AC/Judgment/CS play style, but also the buffs to cast time abilities.
In general, moving a melee healer to prioritize hard cast abilities is not intuitive game play. Holy Shock should be receiving these Holy Light throughput buffs. The Hpal damage profile and triage healing will be awful comparatively in the proposed state.
In M12’s+ Hpal representation is barely 3% of healers. These changes seem out of touch with functionality and game play. The risk vs reward for being a melee healer is not present, and is worsened by stationary cast bars.
I was pretty flabbergasted looking at the changes. I felt hpal was weak relative to the other healers in m+ and was expecting buffs. Reading the patch notes and seeing nerfs was something I really wasn’t expecting.
I guess Blizzard is scared of making them too good in raid so they suffer in other forms of content per usual?
This basically reads: stop playing crusader. Hard cast more.
I play both talent trees and I’m working on 14’s
LS takes no thought
Herald takes much consideration for cooldown and awakening planning.
The spec NEEDS to not have two wings options. There are way too much talents catered to each leaving no choice based on the style of wings you use.
Our wings should be 1.5 minute cd, 25 seconds long. Awakening should reduce the cooldown based on HP spent. It should give +% to crit, HPS, DPS
Judgment and crusader strike should AOE heal by default.
The playstyle should be, during low damage periods, you can show maintenance heal through damage, but during high damage you need to HS, use spender (and dare I say, hard casts with infusion, or even better, infusion makes holy light instant cast)
This allows both playstyles to exist and the same time making balancing easier due to the consistency and talent choices more bountiful, as you can prioritize AOE healing through damage, or single target through the other abilities
Based on the class changes today, I can’t help but think the designers have lost all possible creativity and direction for this spec.
All other healers (perhaps minus Evoker) got new talents that build on their strengths, plug holes in their weaknesses, develop the class fantasy and above all else, showcase the developer’s thinking and creativity behind spec design.
Holy Paladins literally got nerfs to already incredibly weak passives, nerfs to our already pretty mid LS + AC build and a minor retuning of casted spells.
Oh and dispelling someone will now heal them more than a Holy Shock.
There’s no other way to put it but it’s such a shame.
If they want us to cast Holy Light or Flash of Light more, then add new talents that compete with talents like Crusader’s Might, Glorious Dawn, Imbued Infusions which put GCD pressure on this spec. While those talents exist and there’s no alternative there will be no room for these other spells.
Someone on the design team needs to sit down and actually think about what this spec’s identity is because our talents, hero specs and gameplay is a hodgepodge of a mess right now and these changes today only make it worse by trying to squeeze more caster spells into the already crowded hot mess.
my issue is with them attempting to balance healing in this spec. in one aspect, they are buffing hol but then nerfing it there after. I mean iol for example, was at 100 percent, now its at 30 because hol was increased by 90 percent. so they nearly double the heals from hol without having to worry about iol. while I get some of the changes and understand them, I feel like this is sorta a huge nerf towards the spec. I think they need to buff holy a bit more on the sun side and make ls more viable of a spec to have in raids. like id like to see ls actually provide absorptions that are meaningful in raid, while adding some sense of decent healing. I think the biggest problem with the spec it self, is the reliance of virtue as being an aoe type of ability for healing. if anything virtue should become passive, linked to beacon of faith/light so it procs on crit healing, or just applies it as an over all passive with a certain percentage of healing being done. if they dont want to do that, then in my eyes, they need to increase the duration of it by a few seconds because 8 seconds to squeeze every healing ability you can get in there is insane for an average healer. also, hs needs a massive buff imo. the amount of healing it does, isnt even decent enough to fend off damage. some of the fights in raid and even in m+ clearly show its struggle.
As much as I wanted a Lightforged buff instead for holy only (you know, maintenance healing while doing dps with no mana cost), I do think removing or flat out killing these are not neccesarily bad thing.
Hpal has a lot of ridiculous passive healikg sources that amount for less than 3% overall and you dont even feel in PvE.
The issue here is that Holy Shock,LoD and WoG were also not getting buff at all.
Edit: just read that FoL was a nerf and not am overall buff. Glad but still.
I agree with you here. If you are gonna kill AC every time its used for half a tier, why have it in the first place? They already killed the playstyle again.
I love your idea for baking.our maintenance into our main dps abilities, because I also love how MW works. And that way cattering to both playstyles.
Also, we need dps buffs. How come SoTR is doing so little of our overall for our main spender?
Anyway, I feel like this is going to be a Mw/disc/disc situation and after PTR the spec will receive just flat buffs to compesate being behind after raid testing. Unless raid fights are extremely favorable to our healing profile and we dont get anything of course.
They clearly want melee combat healing to be a thing, but can’t let it be better than just hard casting spells because then what will the ranged paladins do so? So ranged has to be better but if they are too strong then they can’t function in melee well and oh no I’ve gone cross-eyed.
I wonder how it would go if they reworked Infusion so that instead of a random proc, it was something that had to be prepped, so that it then makes FoL instant and and reduces HL’s cast time.
Not sure if this will be a good idea or not, but it would it’s clear Blizzard very much wants us to be be casting these spells, but do very little to make casting them actually worthwhile. The only way to incentivize them is with Tyr’s but every time Tyr’s is good it absolutely dominates the spec.
I’ve spent the last couple of weeks catching my holy paladin up with gear and was finally getting the hang of Lightsmith AC. While it did feel a smidge gimmicky to me, I was enjoying it and it was a possible main contender for 11.1.
After seeing these changes I’m back to square one, with Mistweaver and Resto Shaman remaining my two favorite healers. Maybe someday I can come back to my holy paladin main, but the spec has been in shambles since they started nerfing the hell out of it after S2 DF.
I am honestly tired. Every patch is the same. They don’t buff what needs to be buffed. They fear our class’s popularity, so they push RET and PROT to be absurdly broken to the point that the Holy Paladin is the last option as a healer.
Trying to make 1% of Holy Paladin players happy with the hard casting stuff just because they want to play Paladin like a Holy priest. But here we go again, I will say it again.
The Light of dawn pumped out of WoG sounds great. IT might be a good skill for raiding. But the problem with LOD is how limited it’s and the cone doesn’t help.
Hard Casting Holy light? no It’s not going to happen blizzard stop it. that spell is bad for the type of content we are playing.
Holy shock is more of a sacred message in terms of healing. doesn’t do anything besides building Holy power.
You had melee wings doing some stuff, it was weird cause we did not use holy shock, but you decided just to kill the 2 skills that make them work. instead of reworking the skill to interact with holy shock like Black out kick and sunrise kick do with the mist weaver monk.
On a non negative comment. I think our tier set is great. It’s like glimmer of light on steroids.
I have to raise a hand here. You realize that glimmer was also a big issue when balancing the spec in the past right? If this bonus is a good % of our overall, then design wise, we would be back right to square one before TWW reworked the spec for a another season.
My raid team is only going to accept “Hpal technically has a ton of hidden hps from Devo aura” for so long before they realise Hpal is actually just in a really poor state XD