Holy Paladin has thrived since abandoning hard casting

Classes Paladin
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I’d argue no spec of paladin feels as true to the fantasy of a WoW paladin than Shadowlands Holy. The best thing that ever happened to Holy was HP generators on melee attacks, the Lightbringer mastery and instant heals. When it comes to class fantasy, paladins should always be in the front lines with the melee.

Necrolord holy paladin is probably the most fun the spec has ever been. I have no idea where the demand for a hard casting ranged paladin comes from but it’s a huge step backwards and has clearly had a negative effect on the classes design for Dragonflight.

There are plenty of ranged healers already, don’t sacrifice the niche that Holy Paladins have been successfully playing with for years now.

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I wholeheartedly disagree, and I hope the devs find a proper balance of dps and hard healing. Many paladins stopped playing their spec because of what happened in BODA. I’d like a proper trade off where the more damage you are generating as a healer should result in some kind of hps loss.

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Can’t say I am a big fan of necrolord/tier. Spamming LoD for wings uptime resulting in overhealing is just really zzzz. Though i do enjoy seeing fat crits from it but other than that I would prefer BFA melee paladin. When I first read Glimmer I thought the class was ruined and stopped playing the game until the last raid tier and realized I missed out on so much fun.

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I hear you but I’m not saying we need to deal big damage, just that the play style of building spenders by being in melee is the most fun holy has been. I think the statement that a lot of people stopped playing is anecdotal at best. I’d just as easily say Holy has never been more popular. Plus there are plenty of other hard cast healers who don’t wear plate and historically swing big hammers…

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Yeah I mean, wouldn’t that be a better direction for the class than what we’ve been presented with today? Choose between Necro play style or Kyrian play style? Diversify the melee healer specs even more! Kyrian glimmer with shock barrier is REALLY fun, just as fun as Necro LoD spamming to me.

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I personally would prefer a different variation in melee playstyles than having a caster one. Especially as the paladin only generates HP effectively in melee via crusader strike. Though I know a lot players have been asking for old caster paladin. Was watching ellesmere talk about the talents and he had a good idea about having a talent that you could swap with crusader strike that allows HP generating with hard cast.

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A melee build for dps and some healing is fine in my mind as long as a hard healing build does a lot more healing (and much less dps).

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What we have currently is passive dps that helps with our healing. We as paladin out damage most classes in a raid environment with no effort, but all healers are able to weave in damage while healing. As this expac I have played all classes in a “mythic”(not a CE player) environment . I can easily out heal someone afk healing while having 1.5k+dps on any class while they sit like at 150dps. Which is okay depending on the expectations of your raid, but I don’t think 500-1k dps difference between an optimal healer vs passive dps healer should have an impact on whose hps should be higher.

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That sounds like a tuning issue instead of a play style issue.

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Not tuning, I meant it as a comparison of a player and myself on the same class. But my post is in reference to his thing about you should trade off dps to have more hps. Balancing currently is pretty good in terms of damage but a lot of players don’t put in effort throw in simple damage spells to dps and just press healing buttons during raid. Which is more of a skill difference but not dpsing in raid is okay if that’s your type of raiding environment.

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You don’t “passively” dps though. Current Holy paladin has to dps non-stop to maintain hps. Like on a Holy Priest, if I shadow word pain, that has no bearing on my hps. I don’t reduce the cd on my power word spells, I don’t cause my heals to double in size or cast faster. Whereas, if I told a holy paladin in the current expansion to build the same as they do right now, and not click crusader strike, their healing will vanish.

Once again, I am fine with holy paladin being able to do damage and some healing, but it should result in a similar healing profile to that of another healing spec dpsing that much. In an ideal world, a hard cast holy paladin will do the most hps of its builds, but they will also do the least amount of dps. Unless Blizzard deletes most of the core holy paladin spells that have existed for nearly 2 decades, nothing can change this fact.

Just to be clear, I am more focused on the holy paladin’s current competing builds in something like Dragonflight than I am in how they stack up against a priest or monk in damage to healing. Comparing the healing specs is a whole other beast of an issue that hasn’t been solved since disc became a dps healer spec.

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Dpsing to generate healing like getting HP or atonement is “passive dps” because in order to do healing you are required to dps. I can press wild growth and rejuv while maintaining dots on a boss and press wrath to generate damage. Me maintaining my dots is not passive but easily done.

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We are splitting hairs on semantics, I don’t think we are really disagreeing on anything perse. My point is that holy right now is depending on a dps spell to heal when it is clearly not intended to have this level of dependence.

In early Shadowlands testing, crusader strike was originally meant to have a way higher mana cost to make it balanced and prevent players from just spamming it non stop. Players complained, claiming they wouldn’t get to dps. Devs caved, being short on time, and with holy power brought back, holy paladin became basically a disc priest in melee but with much more damage and a small fraction of the cost in mana. And all its spells were instant. The mana cost, i believe, was worked on a bit in a later patch, but you still have the core problems of too much damage and everything instant cast. Something has to give here, or the spec will be a mess again.

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Relying on melee to build spenders is one of the things I like most about the spec. If CS did no damage but instead procced a heal and built holy power I’d still find it an improvement over hard casting.

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It’s been like that since I started playing paladin at the end of legion. CS in order to reduce the cast of HS. I mean it’s true that current paladin has zero mana issues, we finish fights with 100% mana.(Probably should be nerfed, but it’s not like we are currently top dog atm) I wouldn’t say it’s completely like disc because unless we are running Avenging Crusader our dmg doesn’t actual heal, our HP does. I wouldn’t say paladin has too much damage. A lot of our damager was nerfed throughout the expansion and can easily be outdone by other classes. This is easily seen via keys, but damage among healers is quite balanced. But with everything being instant is just how the class has evolved since I have been playing it. If it remained the way it was before the spec would play no different than other hard casting healers. I understand players like yourself would have be hard casting paladins, which is fine and cool. It seems like the direction they are trying to go to please both parties but it’s currently a mess and doesnt work well for both sides.

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Yeah, playing in BFA with Glimmer and instant cast made me enjoy the spec a lot.

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And this gets to a root issue with current holy paladin, that blizzard and the players have developed by accident two styles of gameplay in one spec. It is very similar to the problems we see in the survival community.

Let me stress there is nothing wrong with liking an active melee healer concept. The problem is that holy paladin does not on a fundamental level build around that. The obvious proof to that is holy light, flash of light, and infusion of light existing to this day. Along with holy shock, those are your foundational holy spells. all range. Crusader strike was thrown in as a filler a few expansions ago to let holy do some kind of dps, but they never intended you to treat it like a flash heal. You stack crit, and you pump out big meaty heals while being able to travel a room, always confident you have the clutch button to save a person in a time of need, whether that be a lay on hands, sac, bop, light of the martyr, etc.

Glimmer of light changed everything. Some person with a lot of free time realized that if you change your entire stat weights and talents, you can actually do really good hps in BODA. Suddenly, a melee healer spawned, and the devs let it go because holy’s numbers were actually low (pre glimmer). They couldn’t really afford to gut this lifeline and have to fix the underlying problem of holy doing low hps. Factor in the plans for holy power, and it made sense to let it ride and deal with it in Shadowlands.

So, over these last 5 or so tiers, you have had a group of people manifest who like this “melee” healer while another group (usually older holy mains) dislikes it. Blizzard tried 2 tiers in to balance the spec for Shadowlands, but holy power turned it all into a giant mess. Add 3 more tiers, and the problem has only gotten worse.

Tying this all together, we now have a repeat of Shadowlands alpha/beta where half the players want melee, and the other half want range. In my mind, the soft answer is to water down the hps of the melee build to get the best balance while trying to keep both groups happy. The real, much harder answer, imo, is that the devs should have made a lot of what is melee holy part of the mist weaver kit. I won’t get into too much why since it’s not really important, but to put as simply as I can, mist weaver needs more of reason to be taken to things in general, unlike holy paladin. Regardless, I’m hopeful the devs will try to find a proper balance to end this issue once and for all.

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I see the comment often, that it would play too much like other healers, but that’s not true. Large single target heals, tons of crit, many powerful single target utility buttons to save people in bad moments, immunities, auras, blessings. In many expansions holy paladin was taken because it always did things that other healers just couldn’t, regardless of hps.

That isn’t to say you can’t have it doing damage, but the idea needs to be tempered and refined, somewhat like they are trying to do for holy priest. I would be fine with holy getting, for example, a proper holy power dps spender. I think it is lame that shield of the righteous is the only option. Why not make a talent that lets you word of glory as damage too? Or maybe mini sort of shield of vengeances you put on allies that explode when they expire? There are so many possibilities.

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But two separate playstyles/builds with some hybrid talents in the center would actually fix holy pally.

Seemingly most paladins just want that option.

Mistweaver has two separate playstyles. Why can’t Holy Paladin.

The problem right now is that the talents are scattered haphazardly.

Glimmer with crusader strike should be on one side, probably with LoD and hopefully Vanq Hammer
LotM, Beacons, Divine Toll should be in the center with some choices
And all ranged stuff like procs off Holy Light and Flash should be on the other.

That way ppl can work out their own path and mix and match.

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Currently probably the closest healer to this is Resto Shaman, and they lack the big tank save (Spirit Link is nice and all, but it’s not a reliable tank save).

The thing I loved about Pally healing back in WotLK was knowing that as long as I didn’t mess up and move at the wrong moment, I could make any half-decent tank unkillable. Huge Holy Lights, cast in 1.6-1.7s because of stacked Haste, backed by tons of Crit and Int to allow casting forever.

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