This is just a casual’s super-casual alt, but I like playing all of the healers. I figured I’d ask some of the more expert Paladin healers out there about our mastery.
I feel like Holy’s mastery feels way more like a punishment than a boon. It feels like the mastery is balanced around standing near your targets, so when you stand near people, you just heal for “the correct amount”, and when you are far, you’re penalized. Does this feeling go away at super high gear thresholds, or do you all just use Rule of Law on CD and tough it out? I’d say the mastery is my biggest gripe with the spec, and I wish it’d go away.
From other forum threads I’ve seen about it it certainly looks like a lot of Holy Paladin players hate the current mastery and feel the same way as you do.
I think, from what I read, that this is how most players feel about it. I personally feel like it does give me a better output from standing nearby and from correct use of Rule of Law but that’s just my perspective (and not shared by many it seems).
Mine is not a very popular opinion but I don’t mind the mastery, I mean I don’t love it but don’t particularly dislike it either. At least I like it more than the Resto Shaman or MW Monk one. I think if I was more into PvP then I’d probably dislike it a bit more.
Anyway, even if I don’t particularly dislike it my take on it is that if most Holy Paladin players hate it that should be a good enough reason for the Devs to explore something different. Maybe now with Holy Power coming back that opens the window to have a mastery with some sort of interaction with it.
I suppose a viable strategy is simply to avoid +Mastery on gear? I imagine if I lean heavily into other stats, I can happily just ignore the Mastery mechanic entirely.
I could take it or leave it. It does make me tend to heal people closer to me even if they have slightly more health than someone far away but that’s my choice. It doesn’t feel right though.
Even without mastery you have to stand close enough to the tank or other players so they get the aura benefit. But it does feel lackluster in certian situations
It especially feels bad in PvP where I get almost no benefit from it while healing others due to having to avoid CC. Receiving any gear with mastery feels awful as a result.
No, our mastery is garbage. That it made it into this expansion is sheer ego on the part of the devs. 99% of the paladin community either hates it or doesn’t care. Maybe 1% of paladins actually like it.
Hate it. And with glimmer in SL being so weak it feels even worse knowing I still have to deal with it.
I dont feel like a stat should have a negative built in. That’s just bad design when its the exception and not the norm. I agree above though it’s the dev ego so unlikely to change.
Ive said this before but Rule of Law should be changed to reverse your mastery. Making it so the further away you are the stronger the heals. This would mostly be ideal for pvp and would give players a choice in how they wanna heal.
The problem is that it punishes rather than rewards the player…or at least that is how it feels in practice.
I don’t feel like its this great bonus healing…its more dread that I am standing to far away and my HPS is suffering.
Even Prots mastery Divine Bulwark feels like this to some degree. Its a very immobile option being forced to stand in consecration. Its fanastic in low level content where you can face tank anything or raid bosses where movement is infrequent. However, in challenging content constant movement is a reality so it feels annoying - consecration to me should be some type of aura that is part of being a Paladin.
Back to Holy, I personally think they should take the ‘Avenging Crusader’ talent and make it into the classes mastery and also link it into Crusader Strikes CD.
I try to ignore mastery. I pvp as holy and find no real benefit of it. It’s impossible to keep everyone next to me all the time as everyone is usually running around trying to blow everyone else up and I’m trying to avoid being smooshed myself. It’s too chaotic and hectic in pvp environments to be useful.
Maybe it’s different at higher level pvp than I do, I’m a super casual player, but I don’t see how it could be.