There’s a lot of ideas from other games that just function better, but I do think if we want a unique healer the melee style is that. Glimmer was a neat idea, and should probably just be the mastery imo. It’s not overpowered in it’s current form, but it does provide good value for a talent point and by extension in a mastery form.
Seals I think are fine, but I do kind of wish the different specs committed to a seal. Prot with devotion, ret with retribution, and holy with something else. Focus on fun interactions with judgment and the seal from there out similar to what we’ve had in the past, and remove the seal swapping. If the interactions were interesting enough, you’ve cut out some button bloat and at the same time made things more fun. It’s not like we’re really seal swapping a lot anyways.
There’s a lot of examples of healers in plate out there in games that worked really well like WHO’s melee warrior priests/DoK’s, medic from wildstar (not really in plate iirc but close enough), D2’s paladin if you played more support oriented, Lost Ark’s Paladin, and even some variants of the DnD clerics. Monk from the original guild wars could be a great option to steal a bit from. It had a lot of heals and things that interacted differently with health bars than just push this on someone to make their bar go up. Templar in GW2 again has some pretty interesting skills they could borrow from.
They’ve changed the iconic image of a warcraft 3 paladin into what we have now too. I honestly preferred the 2 hand wielding holy paladins from Legion as that felt the closest to the source material. I still remember the clang sound as you were smashing things with the 2 handed hammer in War 3 and I never played the remake.
The problem is that the real melee healer was the monk.
Then Blizzard started experimenting and they didn’t know what to do with the monk anymore.
The same could be said for the paladin.
Those who wanted to heal at melee range could have simply switched characters.
Now we have 2 healers that don’t have a well defined base.
Are they casters or are they melee? They are not very good at either of the 2, but they are not bad either.
Blizzard should stop re-inventing the wheel with every expansion and play it safe.
Expand an idea. If it fails then backtrack to the last thing that worked and try another way.
It’s too late now. There are people who like the HoPo paladin and others who don’t. Some people like the melee healer and some people don’t.
The paladin right now should have 4 specs:
Prote, Ret, melee healer and ranged healer.
The same way Blizzard decided to split Feral Druid into Cat and Bear because they were not very good sharing a single talent tree.
And they should do the same with the monk.
Unless Blizzard decides to put on their pants and say something like:
“those who want to heal at melee range go with paladins and those who want ranged healing go with monks.”
Your entire second paragraph is somehow completely wrong. That is not at all how gameplay was when we didn’t have holy power in legion and bfa lol.
I’ve seen quite a few ideas that are better than this current iteration of holy power. A resource shouldn’t be restrictive but this version is which leads to a lot of ideas or previous versions of hpal being better than current. Legion and bfa (outside of uldir) had far better gameplay than this. Even mop/WoD versions of holy power were much better than SL/DF holy power.
The best thing about the MoP/WoD era is that there were not as many HoPo spenders as there are now.
And Light’s Hammer was something completely different than today.
I don’t understand the need to nerf a skill to oblivion like that.
We need less generators and spenders in general.
And if Blizzard wants to bring back Consecration in the rotation then talents should work differently.
All skills have increased damage and generate AoE while the enemy is standing on Consecration.
For example the talent Sanctify, Divine Storm should do 100% increased damage on enemies that are under the effect of Consecration.
It was also not necessary to bring back Exorcism, after all BoJ works the same way. They are the same ability, BoJ works the same way Exorcism did back in the day.
According to WoWHead BoJ is going to do AoE damage.
Is it really necessary ? Just change Sanctify to what I say and the paladin’s AoE damage will be totally different.
We don’t need so many CDs either.
All the damage accumulated in CDs could be dumped into base skills and if we want burst then that’s what we have skills like Light’s Hammer for.
Blizzard could increase the CD to 2 minutes and at the same time increase the damage.
What are you talking about lmao? You could spend 1-3 holy power in mop and WoD on both wog and eternal flame. We had far better and faster generation, and more ways to spend. You could spend from the second you generated 1 holy power, that was a major playstyle when you took eternal flame. You obviously have no clue what you are talking about
And yeah what you said about dps is also entirely wrong. Not surprised, you seem to have 0 clue.
Also your reading comprehension seems to be struggling a bit. I specifically said when we didn’t have holy power in bfa and legion we had good playstyles and didn’t have castscript macros at all. I said previous iterations of holy power in MOP and WoD were better. “ Even mop/WoD versions of holy power were much better than SL/DF holy power.” not difficult to read, not sure why you’re having trouble
I should rephrase from earlier, it isn’t holy power that I mind, it’s this iteration of holy power I find to be insulting to the past iterations of holy power. Current iteration is restrictive of your healing and the only reason you even want to generate 3 is because none of our other spells do any form of good healing. Holy shock only heals a lot due to 4 set and the fact it is pressed so much, prior to 4 set its healing was weak and it will be the same after.
They made every generator extremely weak, and they made the only 2 spenders we have extremely strong rather than having a multitude of options/buttons that all contribute good healing. Holy radiance, daybreak+holy shock, eternal flame (useable from 1-3 hopo), LoD, WoG (useable from 1-3 hopo), etc. We had actual ranged and melee dps buttons so you could both stand in melee or ranged and do damage. Didn’t have a 20 second maintenance buff to constantly manage that arbitrarily forces you to 5 holy power. Didn’t have awakening that forced you to spam lod into full health targets for procs.
Past iterations of holy power were far better than current. Much smoother gameplay where spells interacted with each other and generating actually felt good. It wasn’t overheal central. I’d rather have MoP/WoD holy power back than have it removed, but I’d rather have it removed than have SL/DF holy power.
For Prot/Ret Holy power is a great mechanic. I know some wish to go back to classic style paladin but that’s what classic is for. But one thing from the older expansions I do like, is more complex class gameplay, and less complex encounter design. The feeling of mastering a skill that carries over day by day, to whatever content you choose to play. I know a lot of M+ junkies would NOT like this, because they feel mastering the dungeon is more important than mastering the class - but that is a symptom of the decrepit class design we’ve had since the borrowed power era. That era is over, which means it’s back to valuing the player’s skill with their class, rather than the specific slice of content.
Holy Power helps achieve that goal, because managing it properly makes better results. It’s a skill expresser. Although people try their hardest to remove that skill element, doing everything from using rotation helper addons to buying boosts, or any other shortcut possible- Those folks exist but I don’t think that mindset should be rewarded.
That said, DF’s design for the class and spec needs work. Holy Power does feel bad in DF. Specifically for me, I like maintenance buffs like Dusk and Dawn, but with the RNG holy power gains it’s extra annoying. Sometimes it feels like the spec is trying to troll itself, some talents have anti-synergy but we choose them anyways because they are simmed as the best choice. That isn’t the fault of Holy Power though, just how it was used this time around.
Tbh It feels very clunky this expansion. I feel like Im having to manage too many things just to heal. (Mana, Holy Power, Dusk/Dawn) Overall its been extremely off putting but Ive been determined to main HPally this expan.
I love being able to DPS while healing but this doesnt feel right. My DPS is trash, even with good gear, build, and resource management and if everything hits the fan and I need to hunker down and cast then I lose my better healing CDs because Im generating HP so slowly.
Personally if they are going to keep the system the way it is, which Im fine with, Id like at least a small increase to my DPS so I feel like Im actually doing something instead tickling the boss/enemy with my weapon.
It works fine with prot and ret but for holy it ruins the spec, if they are so stuck on us using the HP system then they need to go back and make builders 0 mana cost.
Seals are just passives, there nothing unique about them. They’re just as generic and boring as Rogue poisons. They don’t add to the rotation nor change the rotation. They could bake the effects in and just have placebo seal buttons put in and you wouldn’t even notice.
But the answer to that is to use CP ?
Druid
Rogue
They were the original classes to use CP.
Since Cata practically all classes went on to use something similar to CP. Well, no. The DK that debuted in WOTLK already came with something similar to CP, but at the time it still felt like something original and new.
Then the following members joined the CP club:
Paladin
Monk
Demon Hunter
Evoker
Then we have classes or specs with something similar to CP but with a little variation.
Hunter/Shaman don’t use CP, but the way their resources work gives you the same feeling.
Arcane Mage and Warlock (I only got to play with Destro and Soul Shards are not that different either).
From my point of view the use of CP became boring and at this stage of the game it’s a very vague mechanic, just to not spend the work to design something else.
My job is not to design games, I have no idea what else they can implement or design.
But honestly I’m getting bored that they always do the same thing.
At this point I welcome with open arms a class that is based only on short CDs and works like clockwork before a class with CP, as it would be something “new”.
At this point I no longer care about the “theme”.
I want something new, original and fun.
For example, for me the “theme” of Hunter was to use ranged weapons and in case of emergency use a melee weapon.
As it was from Vanilla to WOTLK.
Now we have 2 ranged specs that still use bow or shotgun even if they have enemies in their face and one spec that always uses melee weapons.
No one can come to me and talk about “theme” when Blizzard was the first to take charge that it doesn’t matter anymore.
So faceroll whack a mole, stuck behind and limited by Cooldowns. No thanks
Go play something else like your priest. Instead of wanting paladins to be basically priest too.
Hunters have used melee weapons from the beginning of WoW and have had melee abilities. Changing one spec to become more strictly melee, doesn’t change the theme of being a hunter. As being a Hunter has never been solely define as being a ranged weapon user.
HPal main, I like holy power, especially when the spenders feel good to press. It’s also one of the reasons we’re (usually) one of the more mana efficient healers. It’s much more interesting than a CD.
and the good news is, if you dont like HP you can always go play a priest.
I only started seriously playing in BFA, before that I just quested and leveled a bunch, didn’t even buy the current expansions lol.
Ret works really well with HP. It’s true that almost all dps are builder spenders in some form now. Rage/sanity/CP/Fury/chi/soul shards/runic power, it all is builder spender. HP isn’t very similar to CP in a few ways, most importantly because it’s harder to waste HP since we can build up to 5 before spending a max of 3. Rogue and Feral build points so fast, and have a lot of passive point procs, even just from critting, that it’s so easy to overcap and waste. So even though they look similar they feel different when playing. Pally has a lot more control. I don’t know how the class would function without HP, and I definitely don’t want a bunch of spells on a cooldown and nothing else. Just about any other builder spender they implement would just have the same complaints that it’s just a copy of rage/energy/runes or whatever they use.
Prot in BFA vs SL played a lot better and was more fun with HP. Having more access to your active mitigation and healing made the spec feel better than just having charges on them. Plus effects that gave more holy power generation had a noticeable impact on how the spec played. Whereas a second or 2 off your mitigation in BFA might have had a similar increase in potential, but you wouldn’t even notice that it was there. All in all it feels better and plays better.
HP doesn’t work well for holy in it’s current form. Healers need to have access to large on demand healing for a lot of mechanics. I think if the change mentioned above were implemented that allowed holy to use spenders with 1-3 HP then this problem would be solved