I found myself messing around on 12s this week farming crests not having really pushed IO this season yet. Ive mostly ran LS for fun to see if I could get fat DPS numbers.
I have a couple small tuning adjustments I think might lead to it seeing a bit more play.
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Holy Bulwark - maybe front load the absorb a bit more from 15% up to 25-30% and reduce the shield duration from 20 seconds to 10 seconds. 2% every second over 20 seconds basically does nothing. This will give out a shield around 2.5 - 3mil which is probably more in line with HP pools and damage intake in keys.
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Blessed Assurance - the bug from season 1 that left it at 120% felt great. Maybe meet that number half way around 50%. Add a feed back loop that crusader strike also empowers our next spender by 20-25%. So players are rewarded for the feedback loop between CS and spenders. It might help reduce the gap between eternal flame and WoG.
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Hammer and Anvil - maybe additionally add in a 5-10% increase to Judgements Crit strike.
And that’s it, I think these could make the hero spec alot more viable pushing into higher keys and probably more competitive with Heralds throughput.
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Honestly I don’t think there’s any scenario where Lightsmith will be allowed to compete with HotS. That just doesn’t seem to be something they want. But I do think there needs to be some work done to make it Lightsmith more streamlined.
Holy Bulwark/Sacred Weapon: I think would serve the class better if they were attached to Holy Power Spender instead of an additional button. Bulwark on LoD and Sacred Weapon on WoG. Tweak the numbers to balance them.
Holy Bulwark: Absorb shield stays at 15% and doesn’t go up but only lasts I dunno 5-10 seconds so there isn’t a perma shield on the group.
Sacred Weapon/WoG: Can only be used on one person at a time, but more consistently. Nerf the percentage of the damage/heal it does accordingly.
Hammer and Anvil: Just remove the Judgement crit requirement and make it on cast. They already nerfed it but it being tied to crit makes it either really awesome when it works and completely pointless when it doesn’t.
I think this is mainly because the tier set. I think it was a bad call making it effect divine toll.
Huh.
Guess they finally noticed Lightsmith.
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Holy
- Lightsmith: Blessing of the Forge healing increased by 15%.
- Lightsmith: Hammer and Anvil healing increased by 20%.
TBF if they went into tier set design and a requirement was to fairly benefit both Lightsmith and Hearld, what spell were they supposed to choose?
Lightsmith interacts with Judgment and Wings and that’s about it. Judgment has no hooks on Hearld and so by that logic every tier set going forward would need to be wings related.
Really, the root problem is that Lightsmith has so little hooks that every tier set they design will likely be an issue.
Even last season’s set would have been problematic except for the fact that Lightsmith + Hammer and Anvil was so massively overtuned.
Yeah that’s a fair point. I’m not sure what spell would have been best.
They could have done something interesting to make people actually want to cast holy light or flash a bit more I suppose. But yeah I wouldn’t want that so… 
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I guess the only thing shared would be a tie into wings. Something similar to prot with kings. Like wog extending wings which would have been uber hard to balance.
Another pipedream would be since Herald gets Eternal flame to replace WoG, lightsmith would get Divine storm in place of SoTR or LoD .
- Give it the talent choice node to project 10-20 yards or make the 360 AoE wider somewhere in the tree.
I don’t think lightsmith can ever functionally match Herald in HPS without being overtuned but brings no additional benefit to be worth taking over it either.
This at least gives Lightsmith equal value from tier sets that buff spenders too.
EDIT:
Another adjustment for Blessed assurance instead of adding a spender / CS loop would be just remove the damage buff on CS but give it a 10 yard range so it’s not incredibly punished for being forced out of melee during avenging crusader.
The percentage buffs coming on reset won’t make it viable considering it’s not a tuning issue with the spec but a foundational issue with the spec all together. It just can’t compete with Herald beams and EF in a meaningful way.
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The core issue is, like Westly said above, LS design as a whole for holy pally,
We have too many nodes that just dont mesh well with out kit/playstyle, while Herald does all the opposite and enhance all of our strenghts.
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Blessed Assurance and Divine Guidance are either badly tuned or not effective healing/aka random healing. Both of these could be reworked for Hpal since increasing their numbers would not take the issue away but make it worse in the long run like we had seen in S1. I like the idea of reworking Divine guidance into a “Divine Storm” es que ability that follows you around and heal over time but probably wouldnt fit LS theme.
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Solidarity isnt good because armaments are not good and feel clunky to use. The moment armaments become better this is fine or good depending solely on their tuning.
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Compare LS shield of 15-30% every 45 seconds of HP vs an Oracle on demand 20-70% HP shield. If Herald niche is burst healing, then have LS be passive healing or maybe shields. I still thing LS should proc a reduced effectiveness shield on everyone (Like Chijis on MW) when you pop wings. This way it can compete more with herald in its own unique way.
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Right now, nobody wants to press armaments. Hpal is too busy of a spec to waste 1 GCD on both of them, bot even bulwark. Armements travel time, while thematically and logically fitting, feels really bad in practice. For comparison, Herald gives us extra haste and no extra buttons to press.
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Shared Resolve is 1% DR ONLY during armaments. Extremely bad if you ask me. Could be reworked or buffed to 100% improved effectiveness.
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Valiance focus on infusions which are 2/3 casts which we dont really want to use that much and we only got 1 judgement every few seconds.
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Hammer and Anvil is random, which feels horrible as a healer. Additional crit would feel better like how Herald gives additional HS crit, but I think this ability would just be better if it always healed for a smaller amount instead of relying on RNG.
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Herald makes our spenders stronger with ET and 5% stronger spenders. LS needs its own variant ot that. Have WoG transform 10-20% of its effective healing into a shield, that way it fits LS niche and makes it strong enough to compete with ET.
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Instead of blessed assurance increasing CS damage which is problematic, why not reduce FoL cast time and increase its healing/decrease HL cast? would fit better and help with HPS
TLDR; Even when LS numbers are good, it just doesnt feel as good as herald because we just lack controlled healing.