(Holy/Midnight) Judgment is looking overbloated

Classes Paladin
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I’m going to start by saying that I am for the most part liking the design direction of hpal going into midnight. I do like the idea alot of the holy shock → judgment → sotr loop and how it still encourages a more melee centric positioning without harshly punishing people who don’t want to engage with it and just strictly heal, I hope they can get it fined tuned.

However. I am concerned about the sheer amount of mechanics being tied to casting judgment. On its own its simple, you generate 1 holy power, do some damage.

Then when you factor in its talents it:

Negates the next X damage the target does (Greater Judgment)

Spends infusion of light to generate an extra holy power (Infusion of Light)

Drops a consecrate (Righteous Judgment)

Heals yourself and splash heals nearby allies if it overheals you (Truth Prevails)

Places an absorb shield on allies (Veneration)

On a crit: Procs a buff to cast both your spenders on the next WoG cast (Empyreal Legacy)

Can be buffed to auto-crit and deal more damage (Awakening)

Converts damage to healing during a major cooldown (Avenging Crusader)

Lightsmith only: On a crit: Heals nearby allies (Hammer and Anvil)

Lightsmith only: Can have the aforementioned awakening effect be activated by the armaments. (Name is escaping me at this time).

While i fully understand that there are alot of less useful and optional effects right here. I am concerned that all of this bloat is putting way to much into one button when it could be spread out a little bit more on the toolkit to make other abilities more effective, or flat out feels like it’s running counter to the stated of reducing incidental effects.

I’m not going to pretend I have the answers on how to resolve this but i am curious to have a discussion on this matter.

3 Likes
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I just don’t think about it. Judgement is so fundamental to our kit even functioning and if they’re not going to give us more options or buttons to use, then it simply is what it is unless they put some of that power into other spells (The other like… three? FoL/HoL/HPrism/DT)

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I love it.

And that’s coming from someone that hates a lot of the changes, like combining ret defensives.

A number of these also change the way you react. “Oh I crit, I should use WoG for an AoE heal now” or “I have an IoL proc do I need to use FoL before Judgement here?”

It’s also nice to have a button you can always rely on to cover some spot healing. It’s like our version of spreading HoTs.

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While this is a rather quick change of heart on my part. I think the primary culprit of my feelings towards the judgment bloat lies in Truth Prevails.

The mana cost reduction should just be baked into the ability and with all the other effects being tied to judgment the self heal with overheal protection feels a little redundant or pitiful by comparison.

I’ll keep the discussion up for others to express their thoughts but the ones posted so far have helped me realize it’s mainly Truth Prevails that is bugging me so much and I’m conflating it to the rest of the kit.

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I agree with both of these statements. Using it in beta feels pretty incredible, I love it! But with so much power baked into one ability, I am concerned that balance patches are going to try and “even out” all the buffs, making all of them individually negligible and requiring you to get all of them to make it worthwhile. If this were to happen, it would be better to just cut a bunch of the buffs and make the few remaining ones still consequential in my view.

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It is worrying, because when so much of our power baked into one spell means that spell must be good or the entire spec starts to fall apart. In the case of Judgemet, he feels great to press but because so much is tied to it, and if and when they start to nerf it, all those effects could take a hit and really mess up the rest of the tree.

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Update #2: I finally paid to access the beta and have tested it.

I still think judgment is too bloated but I’m starting to get better ideas of what the source is.

For me. It’s mainly truth Prevails that feels the most redundant. It is also the one that feels the least impactful to take. Honestly it should just be removed and the mana reduction made baseline.

As for veneration and hammer and anvil. What I currently think is that blizz needs to decide ‘Do we want judgment to heal or shield allies’ and reconcile these two around that. Healing would be safer for balance reasons but I also like that alot of shielding is coming back to hpally’s kit and wouldn’t mind seeing made work somehow.

Make veneration the base talent, then make hammer and anvil upgrade it effectively is what I’m thinking of.

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I kind of agree, but its the new world were living in with the way class design is going.

Judgment being overbloated is inevitably what happens when they remove half the core rotational kit and just reassign everything to either Holy Shock or Judgment.

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I know there’s a lot of mixed opinions out there on the current state of Holy Pally in Midnight but honestly I think they need to wind back some of the stuff that has been removed.

  • Consecration
  • Crusader Strike
  • Divine Toll or Prism
  • Hammer of Wrath/Judgment
  • Blessing of Seasons
  • Lightsmith Armaments replacing DT or Prism.
  • Removing kick

The spec feels a lot shallower now, and the old cooldown-based toolkit and gameplay loop, where you juggled 3 or 4 abilities on different cooldowns to react to incoming damage, just feels completely lost. It’s just a Holy Shock and Judgment spam bot with the occasional Infusion proc which you can spend on Flash.

Some removals I am actually ok with, like Seasons, and merging Judgment with Hammer of Wrath makes sense. But removing CS and making Lightsmith replace DT is, in my opinion, just stupid. Prot LS doesn’t replace any ability. Ret still feels largely the same. Why did they do this to Holy? Did Holy really have so much going on that they had to gut the spec this much?

I haven’t heard much about MW monk but I logged onto one on the beta and the level of pruning seems no where near what Hpal got.

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I’m still trying to figure out the DT replacements. Is there any scenario at all where a Lightsmith would take Prism instead of Armaments (at least last I checked, Armaments only replace Toll itself, not Prism). Doesn’t seem like it. And then with Herald, is there a scenario where they would ever take Toll over Prism, or vice versa? It almost feels like Blizzard should just remove the illusion of choice, take Toll out completely for Holy, and just give them Prism or Armaments depending on hero spec.

That would be wild, given Toll’s prominence over the last few expansions.

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I think that interaction of LS replacing DT only is a bug. If you don’t take Toll, you cannot press Armaments at all. So I think the answer is no.

My understanding is that LS should just replace DT or Prism just like every other interaction in the game where a thing that replaces x ability replaces its alternative choice too.

And then with Herald, is there a scenario where they would ever take Toll over Prism, or vice versa?

I can’t see why Herald cannot take DT. Dawnlights proc after DT too (just like it does with Prism on live).

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To be honest, with all the extra infusion of light that you get as your armaments fade away and the frequency you cast judgment I haven’t felt the lack of hpower generation from not having DT or HP, so that has been pretty low on my priority for worries with the spec design.

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I still don’t think the Lightsmith three had it’s pass yet, based purely on Authoritive Rebuke still being a talent for Holy despite the talent being completely useless. I would expect once it’s actually looked at, I believe they will make Holy Armament give it’s effects to Divine Toll and Divine Prism, since I can’t think of another hero talent tree that requires the ability to not only be a talent, but a choice node at that rather than something baseline.

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I saw a conversation in the Hpal beta discord today between Ellesmere and Clarius that honestly has me worried about hpal in Midnight in M+.

With all its interactions, Judgment becomes a top priority, especially with Crusader’s Might (CM), but as the OP has mentioned, so much of its healing is random, untargeted healing. In M+ where you’re the sole healer trying to top off health bars, having one of your main rotational, high prio buttons be completely untargeted healing is sketchy as hell.

What’s more concerning is that there isn’t really an alternative choice node that I can see. CM is currently being sold as the talent you take to avoid gaps in your rotation. So you take CM to get more Judgments to fill the gaps, or you do what exactly? Free cast uninfused Flash of Lights or hard cast Holy Lights.

Oh dear. :confused:

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Had time to mess with it in Beta and I won’t lie, ignoring how Avenging Crusader into CS is still very dumb, it does feel good to play. However a large part of this is because of Judgement.

It’s 100% just random splash healing and if things get dicey it’s not going to save anyone, but that’s honestly what I would want from it. I’m going to compare it to MW, but unlike MW who’s entire basic combo actually does the healing before needing to focus target things, outside of Judgement, nothing in hpal’s kit will heal outside of direct healing, and of those direct heals nothing heals more 1 target outside of cooldowns (Beacon, Toll, Armaments, ect ect).

If Judgement didn’t do so much extra stuff, they could put that power into our other heals, but the only heal we’d want that power to go into would be Holy Shock because everything else is a HP spender, which means not always available. BUT THEN we can seemingly never have Holy Shock be good, because then it kills the need to ever use WoG/EF since they functionally do the same thing, unless they buff WoG but then if that’s too strong then we’d never waste HP on LoD and good lord things get messy.

Basically what I’m getting at is that I feel like because of how hpal’s kit is designed, stuffing Judgement is really the only place they could do anything, while at the same time if they do anything to the spell, the entire tree just falls apart.