Holy Paladin: Rework Needed - Years of Wasted Development Time

In Development Undermine(d) PTR Discussion
1

Hello, PTR testers.

I’m posting today to bring attention to Holy Paladin, a specialization that is in dire need of a ground-up rework after years of wasted development time.

Looking back across several expansions, nearly all of the development time and “reworks” Holy Paladin has received have been ineffective. Ideas were often started but never fully fleshed out, or a significant amount of development went into a few spells or talents during alpha/beta, only for them to have little impact. Some design philosophies have been completely discarded after years of iteration.

Since Battle for Azeroth, we saw the introduction of the Glimmer mechanic, which became central to how the spec heals for several expansions. In The Winds of Winter (TWW), Glimmer was tossed, along with years of development work behind it.

In Dragonflight Season 2, Holy Paladin received a major rework. It got a treasure trove of new, powerful cooldowns and even further integration of Glimmer into the spec’s flow. Spells like Daybreak, Hand of Divinity, and Tyr’s Deliverance were added, but after the season, they were swiftly nerfed into near-uselessness, rendering all the development work for the rework effectively wasted. Daybreak (along with Glimmer) is gone, Tyr’s has been a dead portion of the talent tree since Season 2, and Hand of Divinity is a clunky, non-competitive option compared to Divine Favor.

During the TWW beta, nearly all the development time was spent figuring out how to make Light of the Martyr work. The entire alpha/beta cycle passed, and this portion of the talent tree (like Tyr’s) remains useless and untouched—another example of wasted development time.

This has all culminated in a spec that feels lost and underdeveloped. When compared to its more successful counterparts, which have received substantial reworks over the years, the core toolkit feels like it lacks meaningful interaction between spells, and abilities often feel like they lack a clear purpose.

For years now, we’ve watched the development team struggle to balance core interactions for Holy Paladin, trying to answer questions like:

  • What effects or power should be tied to offensive Holy Power builders like Judgment or Crusader Strike? Are they just a builder? Should they heal? How much mana should they cost? This is complicated further by the existence of Avenging Crusader, which changes how these abilities function. Crusader Strike keeps changing its charges and behaves differently when Avenging Crusader is active.
  • Holy Shock: This spell has fluctuated in power patch by patch. Should it be used offensively? Should it heal effectively? Is it just a Holy Power builder? As the primary applicator for Glimmer (which is now gone), this spell should be the glue that ties the whole kit together, but without Glimmer, it feels lost among the rest of the abilities.
  • Holy Light/Flash of Light: The ongoing struggle between caster vs. melee healing playstyles. Personally, I believe Holy Priest already fills the role of a ranged caster healer. Moreover, the days of healers deciding between fast, mana-expensive heals or slow, mana-efficient heals are long gone. If it were up to me, these spells would be reworked. Since Ret and Prot both have semi-ranged abilities, I see no reason why Holy couldn’t do the same. Building the spec as an intentional melee-hybrid would also be beneficial, similar to how Mistweavers heal at range while maintaining a melee-centric playstyle with abilities like Sheilun’s, Vivify, and Crackling Jade Lightning.
  • Beacons: The beacon healing mechanic has been a constant balance headache. With the ever-increasing AoE healing demands in dungeons, Virtue has become more and more necessary. Which leads me to my next point…
  • Light of Dawn: This is the only Holy Power spender specific to Holy Paladins, but it feels useless and unsatisfying to press. Playing armchair dev here, but I’d love to see Virtue and Light of Dawn on a choice node—where Virtue is the M+ option and Light of Dawn is the raid healing option. In this scenario, Beacon of Faith could be pruned, and Virtue would be redesigned to extend Beacon of Light from its original target to 4 allies.
  • Avenging Wrath/Crusader: Holy Paladin has struggled with the amount of power baked into Wings for years. This often leads to feeling overpowered when it’s up, but then struggling to meet healing checks when it’s down. Avenging Crusader compounds this issue by offering cooldown reduction (which is critical in M+) and changing the rotation significantly. Having a major healing cooldown every minute feels essential for how M+ is being designed, but 2-minute Wings feels inadequate when other specs like Chi-Ji, Convoke, and Archon-Halo offer major cooldowns every minute.

These issues are exacerbated by the hero talents, Lightsmith and Herald. On this PTR, we’ve seen the systematic dismantling of Lightsmith, but unfortunately, it doesn’t look like Herald has been adjusted in any meaningful way to compensate. This is disappointing, as Holy Paladin was already a mid-tier healer going into the next patch. I’ve played Lightsmith Holy Paladin, and while I enjoyed it, the playstyle was such a departure from the traditional Holy Paladin that even months ago I called it gimmicky and problematic. It felt like a completely new spec, which likely wasn’t the intended direction. The incoming nerfs seem to support these concerns.

I could probably keep going, but it seems clear that Holy Paladin is a bit lost and lacks a clear design direction. I implore the development team to take meaningful time to address Holy Paladin and give it the actual rework it desperately needs.

5 Likes
2

I enjoyed the points you made and the carefully crafted responses to the problems. Thanks for posting this for all to read. Hopefully, Blizz will take some of this into account since I’ve long since given up ever healing on my pally.

2 Likes
3

I agree with everything you said and hope developers see your thread.

What bothers me most is having some talents so weakened to the point of becoming useless.

Speaking of Light of Dawn, I didn’t even have it on my action bars when I played as a Holy Paladin. In my opinion, it’s a useless ability in M+, besides being a weak heal that only affects players in front of you, making it ineffective for healing ranged DPS most of the time. Even in mechanics that require the group to stay stacked, I felt that using Beacon of Virtue + Word of Glory was much more worthwhile.

3 Likes
4

Thank you. I haven’t have Light of Dawn bound to my action bars since I started playing in Legion…it’s astonishing how long this spell has remained useless.

2 Likes
5

I appreciate the sentiment of your overall post, but it is plainly and absurdly biased to Glimmer which was only really a thing for like 1.5-2.5 expansions when you include Dragonflight rework. There have been many times since Legion that LoD hasn’t been useless but players like yourself complained about its use and got it nerfed into the ground because they wanted to play whackamole with Holy Shock & WoG.

Beacon of Virtue with LoD was extremely powerful in Shadowlands M+, yet many deliberately chose not to use either because they didn’t like the extra global on Virtue or the range on LoD. It wasn’t just complaints about it needing to be better either, people who had deliberately chose not to use it even when it was useful wanted to have it removed, and now they are campaigning to remove Virtue and blaming that for design choices.

6

I want to talk a little about Holy Paladin, however, more directed to PvP, which is the modality I participate in the most and because there are already solid arguments and questions focused on PvE. Which does not prevent some points from applying to both cases.

I anticipate my difficulty speaking English, I will try to be as clear as possible. Therefore, I apologize for any miscommunication.

  • Class fantasy: I imagine a holy warrior, heavily armed on a battlefront, being the infantry of any army. But the holy paladin fails insistently throughout his history in WoW, whose development has always prioritized a construction version where it is better to remain in the back by casting his skills. This has been his nasty design model, much questioned but largely ignored. His frequent good performance in this activity, I feel that silences the questions of the community.

The Melee Wings build is more theoretical than practical, and with each adjustment made to paladins, this becomes more real. Note that there is no benefit in getting close to use Crusade strike, given the enormous risks. With the arrival of the Lightsmith Hero talent, and talents like Blessed Assurance and Hammer and Anvil, they were an incentive for more aggressive paladin builds.
But as always, it didn’t last long, both talents were severely nerfed, and so far, no explanation justifies this nerf, other than discouraging a more aggressive playstyle and keeping the paladin as more of a ranged caster.

Talents and Skills:

  • Hammer and Anvil = Why this, Blizzard? Why nerf a talent that activates once per minute? With a lot of luck, twice… Remember, you need to activate Critical Strike for it to work! You need a build that is completely focused on this stat, but we depend on high Mastery values. This doesn’t make any sense!

  • Blessed Assurance = It was a great incentive for Holy Paladins to take the front line, get close to the enemy to use their skills, now with the exaggerated nerf, it makes no sense at all to have this talent, and even less to get close to the enemy to use Crusade Strike.

  • Crusade Strike (speaking of which!) is a skill that offers a lot of risk and little reward, and becomes more realistic in high-level ranked PvP. Every time I use it, I feel a certain regret for having gotten so close to combat for so little. I use it more for the sake of the class’s fantasy than for its utility. It’s missing something, a buff, a debuff, or in the case of the Blessed Assurance talent, significant damage that justifies so much risk. I imagine this skill gaining a talent, to perhaps change its range by 15ft or that it distributes small damage mitigation shields to the closest allies.

  • Holy Prism = Why does Blizzard insist so much on this talent/skill? It’s not good. It doesn’t offer results for a 30-second CD, I believe it needs to be deeply reworked or simply removed from the game. If it at least applied a slight debuff to the opponent, it would justify its existence, as happens with the shamans’ Sundering.
    When researching popular builds, I notice that no one uses it, it’s always been like that. Why insist so much on the same skill format?

  • Light of Down = I don’t want to comment too much on this, it’s my favorite skill in the spec, so I don’t want to be biased. I hope that the change to the Unending Light talent is exactly what this talent deserves to really shine in a build like mine that emphasizes this skill. But I have a question. Why the hell does this ability heal more pets than players?

  • Denounce (PvP talent) = You almost got it right, almost… But unfortunately, the classes are too aggressive to spend 3HP on a high-cast skill, when most of the time, we’re healing as much as possible with high APM. Searing Glare seems much more viable. I associated this talent with Lightforged Blessings, making it a very attractive skill, but with the NERF and the high cast, I don’t see any reason to use it.

  • Divine Plea = Seriously, Blizzard? Making a defensive CD that’s so important to respond to burst damage (Aura Mastery) lose 50% of its healing due to some mana regeneration? I refuse to even suggest changes to this, since the situation is so obvious.

  • Holy Light = The increase in healing values ​​was welcome. But I really hope you’re not thinking that this will make up for the losses we’ve had. No paladin player will use this without mana cost reduction procs. The talent that turns part of your healing into damage would be a good draw for such a slow and expensive heal.

Considerations:
The rework done during Dragonflight, for ranged cast heal builds, was very beneficial and added layers of complexity and fun to the class. But it was clear that the intention was to make this gameplay the core style for Holy Paladins, wasting the opportunity to be equally beneficial to a wide range of players who expect the class’ fantasy to be a more aggressive, frontline healer. Unfortunately, the nerfs indicate that we won’t have these desires met. And that Blizzard’s vision of an aggressive Paladin is to just sit in the background, casting Judgment so the player feels that false sensation.

1 Like
7

its always been this way. we have never pressed light of dawn in a key, unless theres something wrong with you.

that being said, the spec was honestly fine at the end of dragonflight. i was healing 25s and wasnt even fully extended, 100pct pug. the problem is, nobody knew how to play the spec, so they all complained it was too complicated or had too much bloat. this complaint came from people who mindlessly watch ellesmere’s guides and have no concept of how the spec actually works in the real world. elle is a god, but he plays with gods. i have compared logs and i healed more than him in every comparable key. people took his talents and complained. so they pruned off daybreak, the best cooldown the spec has literally ever had since ive played the game, and now its pretty meh. i dont play it really anymore

1 Like
8

Yes, LoD has been a flawed spell for several expansions in a row, and players such as myself have (and will continue) to complain about its use because no matter what talents, procs, legendaries, or what have you, that they throw at the spell to make it feel worth pressing it still doesn’t.

The Glimmer mechanic was something that, in my opinion, was something that was developing the spec into a positive direction. It was a healthier healing mechanic to design and balance around than say, beacon, and could have continued to be iterated on as a more meaningful tool within Holy’s kit (much like how PoM, Renewing Mist and Riptide work for their respective healers). But all of the development time on this mechanic got tossed away when they got rid of Glimmer, sad to say.

The only real development Holy Paladin has gotten since Legion that’s stuck around is Divine Toll from SL. The rest has been pretty negligible, and the spec is suffering from a lack of clear design goals and vision. When I look through my Disc or Mistweaver’s spell books I feel each ability has an intended goal and meaningful interaction with the core healing mechanics. Holy Paladin is lacking in this regard, I feel.

1 Like