Holy pally isn't fun

[Photonfervor-ravencrest (Photonfervor)]

If you’re in a raid Light of Dawn shouldn’t ever be overhealing, it’s targeting five injured allies and that only includes yourself if you’re injured or there aren’t enough targets.

Which again, trying to keep yourself lower HP through LotM just to prevent the smallest amount of overhealing is just pointless.

There’s more to WoW than just raiding. Also, there is a PVP talent as well as stackable Azerite trait that can significantly increase the healing of Light of Dawn. Additionally, it’s not just about worrying about overhealing so much as ensuring that Light of Dawn will transfer as much healing as possible to your Beacon. If you are in a situation where you will be one of the targets of Light of Dawn, this won’t happen if you’re sitting at full health when you don’t need to be. It boils down to managing your health as a resource.

Having to constantly top yourself off and use Mana to keep yourself alive so you can use it more often is a terrible gameplay gimmick and honestly isn’t fun at all.

In any situation that involves other healers, you don’t even have to spend mana because it’s almost a certainty that you will have HoTs rolling on you as well as AoE heals beneath your feet. In this scenario Light of the Martyr is damn near free instant-cast healing. Again, it’s about health management, even if the current low tuning of the spell makes the notion a chore not worth the effort.

Just, no. Holy isn’t a health sacrificing spec, and it never should be.

I don’t view it as sacrificing health so much as a redistribution of damage. You could change the wording and adjust the function so that you heal the target and then 50% of the amount healed worth of damage will be redirected to you. While this would be more in line with how Aura and Blessing of Sacrifice work, it creates a potential for problems such as being bombed by multiple LotM targets getting hit at the same time. What we have now is just a lot cleaner, even if it requires a bit of forgiveness that the mechanic doesn’t -quite- match the concept.

At the end of the day, Holy Paladins are a heavily armored, shield bearing frontline healer. It just makes a hell of a lot of sense for such a spec to help bear the brunt of the damage so that his more fragile allies have less to suffer.

Similar to Spirit Link Totem, the sacrifice mechanics of HPal serve to redistribute damage to lessen the threat of death to any one member of the group and I feel like this concept should be given greater emphasis to help further define the role of the spec.

[Abruek-turalyon (Abruek)]

There’s more to WoW than just raiding. Also, there is a PVP talent as well as stackable Azerite trait that can significantly increase the healing of Light of Dawn. Additionally, it’s not just about worrying about overhealing so much as ensuring that Light of Dawn will transfer as much healing as possible to your Beacon. If you are in a situation where you will be one of the targets of Light of Dawn, this won’t happen if you’re sitting at full health when you don’t need to be. It boils down to managing your health as a resource.

Breaking Dawn is an Azerite primarily used for the LoD range increase, as the healing itself isn’t worth stacking compared to other options such as Grace of the Justice or Glimmer of Light. Also, Light of Dawn transfers an incredibly small sum of healing to the Beacon’s target, about a 12-14 percent of the total Beacon Healing. Having to manage your health as a resource to get higher efficiency out of Light of Dawn is a bad gameplay mechanic, managing Holy Power to cast Light of Dawn was an amazing and fun gameplay mechanic.

In any situation that involves other healers, you don’t even have to spend mana because it’s almost a certainty that you will have HoTs rolling on you as well as AoE heals beneath your feet. In this scenario Light of the Martyr is damn near free instant-cast healing. Again, it’s about health management, even if the current low tuning of the spell makes the notion a chore not worth the effort.

So we’d only be viable on stack fights and we’d need to have our other healers specifically continue to have rolling HoTs on not only the tanks but also an additional healer that’s throwing out their own HP. Bosses like Mythic Grong can wipe away 80% of you Health Bar in a matter of seconds, repeatedly throughout a fight, health sacrificing mechanics would make the class legit unplayable in any fight designed that way, not to mention dungeons where you have no other healers, or PvP when you just throw yourself into execute range trying to keep a squishy teammate alive.

No sort of tuning will ever make the mechanics fun or viable, unless they decide to make the specialization absurdly overpowered.

What we have now is just a lot cleaner, even if it requires a bit of forgiveness that the mechanic doesn’t -quite- match the concept.

At the end of the day, Holy Paladins are a heavily armored, shield bearing frontline healer. It just makes a hell of a lot of sense for such a spec to help bear the brunt of the damage so that his more fragile allies have less to suffer.

Similar to Spirit Link Totem, the sacrifice mechanics of HPal serve to redistribute damage to lessen the threat of death to any one member of the group and I feel like this concept should be given greater emphasis to help further define the role of the spec.

That’s because the concept of siphoning our own life to keep our allies alive is stupid, it isn’t something that will ever fit the class as a theme. Yes, were heavily armored Frontline healers, we can take physical punishment much for effectively than any other healer can. But having a class in full plate using spell based self damage mechanics doesn’t work.

Light of the Martyr will never not be the worst ability they’ve designed for the class. It’s a beyond terrible replacement for Word of Glory, and frankly the Paladin class design is suffering immensely because of this.

You could change the wording and adjust the function so that you heal the target and then 50% of the amount healed worth of damage will be redirected to you. While this would be more in line with how Aura and Blessing of Sacrifice work, it creates a potential for problems such as being bombed by multiple LotM targets getting hit at the same time.

Aura Mastery with Aura of Sacrifice in some instances will legit instantly kill you if you don’t have an immunity available. It’s one of the primary reasons nobody uses it, and it was use heavily in Legion due to the Aura Mastery effect being the best AoE raid CD at the time.

[Samitsu-cenarion-circle]

Ive always sad how disappointed I was when Blizz took away our bubbles. I just don’t feel like our mastery truly does us any justice. Smack on about 10 or 11% vers and you’ll see mastery seems to fall flat. Bubbles were where it was at, and I really think they messed up changing that.

[Samitsu-cenarion-circle]

If you go in with HoT healers in raid, chances are, if they’re on their game, it will look like they are getting all the heals, or at least bigger numbers, even if they are a lower ilvl. Key examples are MW Monks, even Druids. Disc Priest bubbles can be bad for this too.
Mana issues might be a thing for us too depending on play style ( I recommend alchemy, the trinket and mana pot boost work wonders for us, as well as the vers). That being said, as mentioned over and over again, Devo Aura is doing a lot more than we are aware of unless “deep diving” all of what we are also passively doing in the way of damage reduction. And HPally’s can bring a lot to the table in that regard.
It can be gear, it can be azerite traits, etc. I use the bubble trinket from Champion of the Light, first boss in Battle of Dazar’alor. I just keep stacking it on tanks and any melee in range. I find it especially OP in healing Keys.
Also, think of the content you’re running; are 2 beacons better than beacon of virtue in 5 man content? Not likely. I’ve also found a large measure of success in not using the beacon talents at all (in keys), and going for the free Holy Shocks (free LoD’s are cool, but HS gets me further in direct heals, lets face it).
There’s alot of thinking and what not that can happen if you want to take HPally seriously, and a good portion of it is going to come down to play style, as it is with all healers. You may find that a different healing class entirely is what you need.

P.S.
Lets make a throwback to when HPally Mastery was actually useful, yea? Here’s to you, Mastery: Illuminated Healing. FFS Blizz

[Goobdaysir-proudmoore (Goobdaysir)]

I’ve also found a large measure of success in not using the beacon talents at all (in keys), and going for the free Holy Shocks (free LoD’s are cool, but HS gets me further in direct heals, lets face it).

I’ve been doing the same. I actually don’t like double beacons for M+. I’d rather have the free procs from Awakening with Divine Purpose. It saves on mana and gives more holy shocks which procs even more infusions (and saves even more mana) and if you’re running with Awakening it gives a decent uptime/proc rate of the ten second free wings. If you toss in Crusader’s Might it’s pretty decent for healer dps.

I’m not a fan of the Virtue talent, but it has its place now and again. I feel like I HAVE to spam FoL when it’s up and I just burn mana quicker with that talent des[ite its tooltip on mana reduction, or at least it feels that way. I’m sure the mana loss is equal to the number of people healed but if you’re using it all the time idk.

[Peachès-illidan]

I was skilled at Hpally in MoP and Cata, and then WoD hit and took important spells for no reason and left others behind that made me ask Why? Legion was worse; I felt it wasn’t even playable for PvP, at least. I had other healers I ran arenas with, and my hpally was my most geared and focused character, and I had to have a lot of conquest gear to be on par with another healer. My defenses and whatnot were other stories. I was devastated. I loved being a shockadin, and I just had a knack for holy.

In Bfa, I unshelved my holy pally, still had spells that didn’t even have a seat at the same table as the ones blizzard removed when it came to important. My mana would be gone after one mob fight like it was Classic.

Eventually, balance happened, and in time, hpally had wiggled into being okay, and after a lot of emotional stuff, I had found my spot in Bfa and Shadowlands as holy.

My Bf hit 60 on a paladin and is holy, and I can hear the frustration and general being pissed when he’s working with it.

Unlike priests, I conserve my mana, and I use bestow faith and holy shock and word of glory and try to hold off on holy light and flash of light as much as possible. I kite players around while keeping heals on myself and run to other horde or keep kiting until I can’t anymore and bubble hearth.
I prioritize crit (I don’t care what people say, it’s not a bad idea)

My healing isn’t below average or even bad, it’s pretty good, and I’m normally topping charts in BGs.

In raids, I agree they have weaknesses. Holy Radiance was removed, which was pretty moronic; the light of Dawn has never, ever come close to replacing that. The old mastery was putting on everyone instead of standing right next to the person who is getting floored and hopes no one sees you free cast as a healer.
I don’t get that.
I can handle myself in LFR (I haven’t raided since early legion on holy), but it’s just broken.

[Longwriter-stormrage]

Hey, a blue post! …from two years ago

I miss Holy Radiance, too—if I had to pick one spell for them to unprune, it’d be Holy Radiance. It wouldn’t necessarily have to be in the same form it was in during MoP and WoD; as long as it has no cooldown and is a group heal, I’d be good with it. I’d actually prefer a version of it that’s channelled, that I can move while casting, that radiates healing to allies, and that provides Holy Power after a successful channel completes.

If I had to pick a second spell for them to unprune, it’d be Denounce—I miss having a ranged damage button with no cooldown, and I really liked how, in WoD, it had zero mana cost, so it was a good button to press while I’m not doing anything else. Plus, with our spellbook casting animation, it’d look AMAZING!

Getting Rebuke back would be nice; I’m hurting in Torghast runs for lack of an interrupt.

For a long time, I thought Inquisition in Cata was a better Holy Power damage ability than Shield of the Righteous. To be sure, it’d allow for 2H holy paladins, again…but SotR has grown on me after playing Shadowlands; I’m okay with it now.