I started leveling this guy with friends after seeing the playstyle in Shadowlands (Glimmer especially). I love heal / dps hybrid specs (I tried to play Disc in BFA and it was awful for dungeons, fun for raids). While a lot of things for the Paladin look good “on paper”, it seems to me to currently have some glaring problems, to the point where I don’t know if I want to commit to the spec as my main in Shadowlands.
Maybe I’ve made some errors more experienced players will point out, but I think some of my intuitions at least are common after scanning through this thread.
- Crusader Strike. Why? It costs as much mana as holy shock, and almost as much as holy light, but it doesn’t heal. If you don’t pick the right first row talent, it doesn’t even reduce the cooldown on holy shock. So I’m paying basically the mana for a full heal, to get a holy power, which is worth 1/3 of a heal later.
What should be done? I can see them making one thing baseline and making the other a talent in order to make it worth its mana cost.
A. Make Crusader’s Might baseline, replace the talent with an AoE heal component to CS (found in Avenging Crusader).
Or
B. Make an AoE heal component to CS baseline (like Avenging Crusader) and leave Crusader’s Might a talent.
What either option does is make CS more worth its mana cost baseline, gives people more AoE heal options aside from light of dawn / beacon of virtue.
Alternatively, Blizzard could just nerf the mana cost of CS to be in line with Judgment, but I think they have a real opportunity here to solve a TON of problems with a really simple change. The only downside is that it removes utility from Avenging Crusader, but from what I understand, almost no one takes that talent anyway because it’s a hollow shell of its former self. The talent needs a rework, so cannibalize it, fix CS, and start over IMO.
- Judgment. GCD’s are prime real estate, and while the mana cost for judgment is good, I agree with some comments here which note that it doesn’t do a lot for its GCD cost. It generates no holy power, it doesn’t heal. All it does is do a good bit of damage and increase the damage of the next HS / CS by 30%.
Here again, I think there’s an opportunity for Blizzard to solve multiple problems with one simple change (two if they want to be really really ambitious!). The problems of judgment being a lackluster cast AND the problem of Avenging Crusader can be fixed by reworking Avenging Crusader into a passive that greatly modifies the utility of Judgment.
If Avenging Crusader as a talent increased the damage of Judgment, let it generate a holy power, and gave it an AoE heal baseline, that would create space for up to two more AoE heals as talents (CS and Judgment as individual knobs) for players to play with for themselves, while also encouraging a Judgment / Holy Power build as a legitimate contender with Holy Shock / Glimmer. I’m thinking here of “The Magistrate’s Judgment” legendary item which would act as a good foundation for that build, if Judgment had more foundational support.
If Blizzard wanted to do TWO things to make Judgment and Judgment based builds better, this will probably be controversial but maybe not, I recommend reworking the Necrolord class ability for Paladins to replace Judgment. Don’t make it augment Judgment’s damage “too much” if you’re worried about balance, keep the “next Word of Glory triggers…” just as it is.
I’ve heard basically universally from Holy Paladins that Kyrian feels “mandatory” for Holy due to its ability to get AoE Glimmer on demand, to add more AoE healing. This massive synergy with Glimmer makes Holy Paladins feel pigeonholed into Glimmer and its supporting talents that much more. I can’t fix EVERY covenant problem (I wouldn’t know where to begin with Venthyr tbh) but when you show me a covenant ability where you throw a hammer (where is that familiar?) to synergize with Holy Power spenders that Judgment is encouraged to synergize with ANYWAY, by a legendary (and potentially another once we see the Word of Glory legendary rework). It just looks like it’s begging to happen at this point.
The drawback to this is how it interacts with Ret / Prot, but I think that could be ironed out extremely quickly. The other drawback is that it makes covenant choice more necessary based on build choice, but where we are now is “Go Kyrian / Glimmer if you’re holy” without regard for how that would affect your other specs, whereas this change would allow an interesting Judgment based build, which interacts with multiple specs, with a spec agnostic legendary, meaning the foundations for a “spec agnostic” hybrid build are very much present for people that want to play all 3 roles, who aren’t happy with how Kyrian interacts with, say, Ret.
- The final problem has to do with Holy Light, I guess I just concur with people here that say revert the old Infusion of Light benefit for Holy Light.
