Absolutely
Yall ready to go Out of Mana?
Light of dawn applying a buff that acts like a beacon still suffers from the fact it would bloat our HPS through its AOE impact.
What would the uptime be? 100% uptime would have similar negative consequences that glimmer brought. 50% and its nearly equivalent to current virtue. Applications through a cone would be worse than the random tagrets that virtue currently does.
A potential solution would be to have a method of buff application, giving us controll over the AOE, but, that is too similar to disc, and mistweaver has a variation that is also comparable.
We need AOE healing. It needs to be separate from our single target healing, otherwise it’s likely to have negative impacts on the single target spells.
If our single target spells are strong enough on their own AND contibute to the AOE healing, either AOE becomes too strong or single target becomes too weak.
Either gatekeep the AOE healing behind some type of skill expression, or separate the spells that contribute to AOE vs single target.
My opinion of a perfect solution would be to delete current virtue, and make avenging crusader a 15 second CD with an 8 second uptime - this is because our single target spells are arguably not used during the current wings ritation
2 Likes
The more I think about LoD, Virtue, ect, the more I start to realize again that discussion regarding Hpal AOE is always trying to address a symptom, rather than the problem.
The problem being our kit was designed to heal one person very well. Our talents usually only ever augment the abilities that only heal one target, with the occasional ones doing situational aoe splash healing until you get to the Beacons and that was only ever allowing us to heal two at a time until they added Faith and Virtue.
The way I see it, there’d need to do two things to actually solve the problem instead of just kicking it down the road.
- Completely rebuild Hpal from the ground up. Change how HL, FoL, HS, WoG and LoD all work so that each spell has an actual use and synergy with each other, and talents that actually support that synergy.
- Return Paladins back to their original niche of being able to heal 1 person, very well and effiecently.
I don’t think they’ll ever do the first one because it’s a full rework and that requires work. Also too many paladins would likely revolt.
I think the Second one would at the barest of minimums resolve the issue of our kit just not working the way it’s designed to. Remember back when you could throw a Holy Shock on someone, knowing it would likely crit because of it’s enhanced crit chance and then you’d finish topping them off with FoLs or a big Holy Light? Yeah our AOE healing was trash back in those days, but it was the “flavor” and it actually worked because at the barest of minimums, you know it would only take a maybe 2 casts to actually heal someone.
Because that is how our kit is just designed. We can heal a small number of people very quickly and move on to someone else. Once they nerfed our spot healing into the ground our lack of actual AOE capabilities which rely heavily on RNG splashes of AC or an overtuned Beacon becomes very apparent.
2 Likes
I think those are some pretty great ideas. I love the thought of Avenging Crusader being on a short cooldown/short duration basis, and taking the place and purpose of Virtue would serve to cut out bloat and simultaneously give us really unique AOE healing mechanics.
I also like that the AOE healing would be done through our damage abilities in the AC window, so that single-target heals could be balanced to do their single-target job without having to worry about them being overpowered when combined with Virtue. The only potential headache would be certain circumstances where the AOE damage goes out to the party/raid at the same time you have to be out of melee for whatever reason. I wonder if it would be feasible to add (offensive) casts of Holy Shock to the list of abilities that trigger heals during AC?
I don’t mind that it’s somewhat similar to fistweaving and disc, either. I think healing via damage needs more representation in the game, and that the game would be healthier if it moved more in that direction, with targeted heals being more for emergency.
Bonus: If Virtue is gone and HPal AOE is handled solely through AC, Blizz has free reign to turn Light of Dawn into Searing Dawn: a frontal cone, short/medium range AOE damage ability that we could use instead of Shield of the Righteous so I can finally use a 2-hander again.
All of that is solid. I hate the idea of losing virtue because of how much I appreciate it but it it was replace with some of these suggestions I could manage.
I like the direction with light of dawn change but, it would be cool if it was targeted on a mob and splashed in a small radius, animated like rets falling hammer thing, or if we go with a cone thing, then a wave of fire would be tight.
Just a cool animation would make the come part of it acceptable, but I don’t like the idea of the range being too short to miss, or too long and aggro something else.
Also
This might be a hot take but healers should be able to do tank lvl damage.
3 Likes
Agreed on healers doing tank damage. Even though I wasn’t a big fan of shadowlands overall, I had an amazing time healing on my paladin and shaman, and trying to maximize damage while healing. Resto Shaman with Vesper Totem and an Earth Elemental surrounded by a permanent Earthquake spell melted huge packs.
2 Likes
Yes, this part.
SL was by no means a good expansion, but it was the most fun I had healing in M+.
Healing was more fun when skill expression was meeting the healing needs of your party while also contributing as much damage as you can. M+ is timed, instanced content, and should reward players who play better and do what they can to assist with beating the timer.
SL M+ was fun because your “oh shi-” buttons were meant for emergencies, not regularly cycled CDs you need for every single pull or boss mechanic. Healer DPS was a meaningful contribution to the ease of completing/timing a key, which felt rewarding. Ashen Hallow, Vesper Totem, Earth Ele with Earthquake, Boon Holy Priest, etc were great builds that were a ton of fun.
5 Likes
If nothing else, I really hope they find time to retune this spec further. It feels awful to cast a Divine Favor empowered, Inflo Infused Holy Light for 1.2m only for a Judgment to crit and heal 5 people for 1.2m each. That is, a Judgment crit is the equivalent of casting a fully empowered Holy Light on all party members. This isn’t even accounting the other healing Judgment does.
The spell that requires setup via a 20 second CD + proc + a cast time and 4x the mana heals for 1/5 of a Judgment. The Judgment needs to crit however so it’s unreliable - no skill expression necessary - just rng.
Playing with a mostly range comp who aren’t always within 20 yards of the mob? Well bad luck, you’re losing a lot of potential healing.
Terrible gameplay. Feels incredibly unrewarding.
They are nerfing Hammer and Anvil by 20%, but given the example above I feel like it needs to be a lot more. They need to find a way of putting that power into the rest of the LS kit and keep the crit value modifier if they really want crit to be a thing for LS.
Our current tier buffs Holy Shock by 10%. So the already laughable weak Holy Shock is going to be 10% worse. 
Our new tier will give us a lot more Divine Tolls so lets talk about that.
Divine Toll hits like a wet freakin noodle. ~240k-500k on 5 players. So a Divine Toll heals for 1.25m - 2.5m based on crits. Our current tier set causes the WoG following a DT to be 32% stronger. Without that our WoGs after a DT will heal for 940k 600k.
Casting DT will apply “Insurance!” though, which is a 700% SP heal over 15 seconds.
It’s far to early to say but my goodness, this playstyle sounds so unfun. Even weaker spot healing via HS and WoG, slightly buffed casted spells. More DTs which are weaker upfront but apply a 15 second HoT. Even weaker Rising Sunlights (machine gun HS).
Who’s excited? 
3 Likes
A judgment crit during wings and virtue is the only ability in our entire kit that feels good, but that feeling is washed away by the inability to access that in command.
Avenging wrath with herald is similar in a sense because of the HPS output capabilities but it’s issue is that the dawnlights beam things are, again, or of our control.
It’s unreal how much of our class derives power from Crits, passive healing and stacking 45 buffs to make a spell heal for a mediocre amount.
- allow our buffs to boost spells so that it feels nice to actually use correctly
- reduce the number of buffs that can stack a single spell
- remove the two types of wings
- replace talents that % modify abilities, to instead offer decisions between anything OTHER than range vs melee (also why are there Soooo many talents centered specifically around two spells that are arguably identical-holy light and flash)
Little Doom and gloom here but this form seems pointless considering I see no class changes reflecting sentiments or suggestions made here, not do they include communication about the intentions of changes (they said things about the upcoming infusion changes to flash and holy light which I want to see more of, but it’s unfortunate they did that for the spells I’ve seen people say they hate the most)
1 Like
What they said didn’t even make a ton of sense.
They want FoL and HL to feel better outside of Infusions. Unless my math isn’t mathing, FoL is actually nerfed outside of Infusions. 25% worse than the current patch outside of an Infusion and it’s only 5% better than the current version inside an Infusion. ie you literally have to have an Infusion proc to do the same healing with a FOL that you do now without one.
Holy Light on the other hand is buffed outside of Infusion.
Yeah I wish I understood other healers deeply but Hpal feels so random in terms of where it gets it’s power from. Most of the time, it feels like surviving a healing check is 50% luck and a fluke.
I saw in the class discord the other day Clarius talking about Hpal being watered down into a lot of minor effects compared to the old days. It seems like it’s the general direction of the game with the new talent trees and Hero talents, but I reckon Hpal have got to be one of the worst (amongst healers) in terms of a diluted kit and talents that add no direct throughput but some proc or indirect throughput gain.
1 Like
Remember when I said our kits and talents are always at odds?
Yeah if i recall correctly, because the only thing LS provides are a shield and a damage buff, the spec has no actual direct way to heal someone unless they were really good, like in Beta. So naturally they were nerfed into the ground and LS was basically a dead hero tree until the bug buffed Hammer and Anvil and Blessed Assurance to the point they actually did stuff.
And ironically those bugs provided the some of the only actual synergy we had.
There isn’t really a place to move that power in LS’s kit, short of just adding “and now WoG and LoD does more healing” somewhere, but we know how those tend to go.
1 Like
We are even being ranked at the bottom of potential 11.1 tier list, despite being early.
I do agree though, Hpal has gotten mostly nerfs since 11.0 with some bugs and weird buffs to LS since then (tempered battle is a lot of fun, and unique, but still a weird addition considering where Hpal was at the moment).
The loss of our tier set + tuning we are getting is once again cornering us into the same place that created this while issue backin DF.
Weak spot healing in HS/WoG. Lots of passive sources of healing. Stronger baseline casts. How we came back to this again?
They just gotta buff HS and WoG enough to buff both specs and then tune down the contributions of these kinds of effects. Herald in raid can be problematic, so change/tune down that by either hard capping or reducing even further stack healing of Herald above 5 targets.
Beacon contributions as well, revert virtue then to be 4 targets to nerf raid hps but keep it theorically the same on m+.
Change how anvil and Hammer works to no rely on crits, its bad gameplay.
Iterate by moving down passives, not our main kit
1 Like
I wonder if they continue to mess with the base kit as an approach to make the more temporary parts of the class (like the hero talents) more enticing as the HPS comes from the extra floof instead of the base kit. That would cause the class to change more frequently, potentially keeping people interested, as of its bad, it’ll likely change soon.
On the other hand, they are Soooo fast to nerf hpal but so unlikely to ever buff it’s HPS. There’s a million solutions that people suggest but it doesn’t seem to help. The absolute number one suggestion is - tune raid and m+ separately
1 Like
Either way, hopefully we keep this ball rolling before the next season arrives. Doubt we see them reading feedback or making changes at least until late january at this point.
It’s a scary time out here boys, I’m playing mist weaver now, I want title but don’t see how it’s possible as hpal 
1 Like
It’s almost impossible I am stuck on 13s cause I don’t get any invite to 14s. at this point we just have to pray that blizzard will listen to us (which I doubt)
1 Like
Getting rid of the directional requirement for LoD would go a long way for 5 player content. 2 stacks of Dawnlight for your whole party every 30 seconds would be great.
I’m sorry, literally couldn’t disagree more. Dawnlights on the whole party is disgusting.
- It’s a HoT, the worst possible type of healing (all damage in the game that matters, happens in 6 seconds or less)
- It’s blanket AOE healing that takes zero skill or thought
- It will water down our other spells as it indicates our HPS in a non meaningful/impactful way
1 Like
The good thing is, the new teir set would bring the DT cooldown to approximately 34 seconds. Which pushes us even further to herald build, because how much the build relies on holy shocks, and some random hard cast holy light. Our mana consumption would be in huge trouble next patch…
Also, shout out to you reaching higer io than me on illidan server 
2 Likes