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.
1 Like
This is pure gold.
1 Like
I also did KSH on a Mistweaver this season.
Lay on Hands is Paladin’s version of Life Cocoon. Both are “Oh fudge” buttons with Life Cocoon winning out in every way.
If you want to be literal, no, they’re not the same. If you want to be practical, they’re fundamentally the same.
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.
3 Likes
Exactly. Holy Shock healing 280k is shameful.
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. 
I also threw on my holy gear (635) and hit HS a couple of times. Non crit is 230-250k and 500kish crit. But this is just raw numbers without any modifiers like Dusk & Dawn.
On one of best raiding parses for heroic HS median healing is about 350k ish.
Casting Holy Bulwark on CD does 5x as much HPS as casting Holy Shock, lmao. And it’s basically a passive.
Here’s my Pink 99% healing parse, even here HS did only 119k HPS which is half of Holy Bulwark
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/pYTCQB67wVAtkGdK?fight=37&type=healing&source=1
1 Like
Holy Paladin is a complete design mess.
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.
1 Like
We need to demand buffs for Holy Paladin on the PTR forums.
I hate to break it to you but I’m switching to Mistweaver so I can kick and punch to fill peoples health.
All I want on Holy Paladin is Ancient Teachings. I want to steal that talent from them.
It actually upsets me that we don’t have it.
4 Likes
And vivacious vivification. Good lord that would make flash of light or holy light feel so much better.
2 Likes
8/10 this is a good troll i chuckled
1 Like
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.
2 Likes