Life Cocoon is the equivalent of Blessing of Sacrifice not Lay on Hands. MW has no % damage reduction external, just Cocoon. Pain Suppression, Guardian Angel, Ironbark, Blessing of Sacrifice and Time Dilation would all be in the same category.
No other healer has a direct equivalent to Lay on Hands that I can think of. The closest things would be Power Word: Life or Holy Word: Serenity, but they are much weaker in comparison.
In 11.1 I guess you can talent Sheilun’s Gift into a Lay on Hands like spell with Emperor’s Favor, but even at max clouds this is still not as big as Lay on Hands. Lay on Hands will be 9-10 million at an ilvl that will do 3.something million with Sheilun’s.
The caster MW playstyle (or Paladin) should work just fine in 5 mans. They do probably up to +10 at least. I haven’t bothered to play them in a long time since that’s not what pugs would probably expect and M+ is a toxic mode where only meta builds are accepted.
A caster MW can use all of their tools, it’s just the damage that is much lower and as I mentioned they should get other utility to compensate.
It is incredibly stupid design in a holy trinity style game for the healer role to have to do a frequent direct damage rotation with no alternative specs. There should be some specs that are like Augmentation style healers where you fill with buffing/debuffing between healing rather than filling with direct damage. Caster MW, cast holy paladin, holy priest (probably oracle), and Keeper of the Grove resto would all make sense thematically as support focused specs that didn’t focus on direct damage at all.
Caster MW should be like a Mercy style healer where fistweavers are a Moira style healer.
I honestly don’t know if it needs buffs or if it needs some fundamental reworking at this point. Its priority between spenders and builders is godawful, its group healing is janky at best, and the things it had that made it feel like it was keeping up with other healers for snap AoE healing have been blatantly nuked or trimmed from the spec.
The current iteration of Lightsmith AC Holy is probably one of the worst iterations of Holy I’ve ever played. It feels awful.
They may not all be equal but they are all in the same category of damage reduction externals and Lay on Hands is on its own in its own category with no equivalent on other healers. Or I suppose you could argue there are much weaker shorter cooldown versions on some other healers, but long cooldown full health heal is pretty unique to paladin.
Hpal feels sooooo bad. And I put up with DF Season 3 and Season 4 Hpal (Did mythic+ over 3k both seasons) and I won’t even touch Hpal now. It feels like you have these long windows without cool downs so if someone makes a bad mistake it’s going to be an up hill battle. Also they somehow did not fix the mana problem.
IDK call me crazy, but I liked glimmer, daybreak, and I at least had a decent CD to press whenever something went wrong in DF S3 and S4. Spec needs a rework, it feels awful for 5 player healing. Also so many dead, useless, non-impactful talents in the talent trees.
Lay on Hands is a unique spell that has done what it has done for 20 years (and technically has a much shorter cooldown now!).
Life Cocoon is a Mistweavers version of a damage reduction external.
Interestingly you see plenty of MW complain that Life Cocoon is worse than other DR externals because it is a fixed absorb amount where a % based DR scales better into higher level content.
Whether holy paladin’s kit is good or bad currently the spells still aren’t in the same category.
I think the design is OK, but the output is bad. WoG and DoL need huge buffs. So does holy shock. Outside of CDs and a bunch of procs Holy Paladin healing spells don’t move healthbars. Damage could also use a big buff. But as we’ve seen before when Holy Paladin healing becomes good the spec becomes super meta and everyone wants it nerfed to the ground.
I liked Legion holy shock but I think they intentionally made holy shock smaller when they added holy power back. I guess they think it would feel redundant to have a big holy shock and a big WoG or wanted the generators to be smaller and spenders bigger.
For years it has suffered a never-ending tug of war in its overall design. The strength and usage of builders vs spenders, and how holy power fits into the spec. Avenging crusader vs regular wings. Melee vs ranged. Instant spells vs casted spells.
It has suffered from years of failed and wasted developer time. During the TWW beta, the focus was on Light of the Martyr, which has still remained useless. Prior to that, it had a rework in DF S2, which ended up being one of the shortest lived spec reworks to date. Tyr’s Deliverance was quickly nerfed into oblivion. Daybreak has already been removed from the toolkit as a cooldown.
Glimmer, which was a primary part of its healing profile since its healing profile since BfA and required a ton of development time to balance, was abruptly removed. Even more wasted development time.
The only meaningful development it’s received since Legion is Divine Toll. And even then, they’re needing to buff Holy Shock a full 40% leading into the upcoming patch. The so-called core spell for the spec is so weak it needs a whopping 40% buff.
I call it a Frankenstein spec because it’s hobbling along. A stitched mess of a bunch of failed ideas. It pains me to say it because it was my first healer main in this game. But it hurts to see my OG healer in such a sorry state.
I feel like they design holy paladin around static groups with tight communication, where having agency over cooldowns probably feels good. But every time I try to pick up hpal casually it feels like a hectic mess. I only felt fun in random BGs or LFR where I could screw around and let people die. But in actual pve it was super stressful.
Because that is exactly how holy paladin works. Our toolkit is designed to heal our allies as we deal damage. Crusader Strike heals nearby allies, Judgment heals nearby allies, holy prism heals nearby allies when targeting an enemy, Avenging Crusader makes all our attacks heal nearby allies, Consecration heals allies, even Hammer of Wrath can heal nearby allies. Choose your talents correctly and understand how your abilities work.
We don’t ever have to “take a break from healing to dish out some damage to build up holy power so we can heal”… we deal damage to provide constant AoE healing while we build up holy power for larger bust healing.
If you are standing back throwing out Flash of Light or Holy Light, you are actively wasting time and mana to accomplish nothing. They are our worst heals and serve absolutely zero purpose now. Also, our Mastery, Lightbringer, encourages us to get up close to our allies. Unlike most healers we should actually be standing up beside the tank, the closer we are to them the more effective our heals are on them.
Holy paladins like you who want to stand back and spam flash of light and holy light all day infuriate me. You are giving us a bad reputation by refusing to play the spec correctly. If you want to be a back row healer, go play Holy Priest instead.
This thread is golden, you have half of the regards arguing about the dude’s weapon instead of his point which literally nobody disputes, because hpal is absolute dogwater in 11.1 , and the other two regards are arguing about cocoon vs lay on hands, which is another irrelevant discussion to the dogwater that is hpal right now.
And it has nothing to do with tuning. The design, even after the rework, is terrible. They can’t figure out if they want hpal to be a builder-spender healer with meaningful spending, or a melee caster hybrid with meaningful casts. So they get to do neither.
The person posting wasnt even using the correct stats for healing… so to fit your analogy its more like a karen ordering a well done steak and then complaining that its tough and dry…
I miss the days of DF S4 after the 11.0 patch release. Paladins jumped to the top. WoG and Holy Light were mega nukes if you played your cards right. It felt good.
Hpal has a niche in the dmg reduction they offer party wide. They are still effective at the role, may not be the most optimal however which in a game like wow is normal. MW monk went many years being the “meme anti-meta healer” for example, and now pally is taking a bit of a back seat as devs focused on priest (who are in desperate need)
Prot pally was also just reworked this season… again… despite starting the whole mass rework craze back in s1 DF when they were also reworked…
Other classes need some attention too, which sucks for pallies but is per the course.
And in regards to the op, your weapon has a significant amount of primary stats, so yes that is a HUGE reason why the OP is suffering so much. Remind me, why does ilvl matter again? Oh you have more stats at higher ilvl? Stats matter too then
