I’m currently leveling a Paladin to 25, he’s currently 22. I already have a few lvl 25 healers(priest, mage, and druid). Compared to those classes the Paladin seems weak. Will things change with beacon at 25?
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I have a 25 druid, paladin, and priest.
Paladins are definitely underwhelming compared to the others. They are healing just like they did in classic while everyone else got a spicy new ability to ease the burden (penance/pom, wild growth, etc.). Beacon does help quite a bit in 5 mans (haven’t raided) but it isn’t enough.
I am hoping the next set of runes gives them something special. We’ll have to wait and see.
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I thought they were at least better than mages? If not then yeah that’s unfortunate. I’m sure they will get some decent runes in upcoming phases.
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Maybe not throughput wise, but mage healers scale really well in aoe situations, and also, they heal through dps, so they are more than just their raw hps throughput.
Seems like my impression on Pally in PvE is not alone.
We have:
Priest - PoM and Penance are so cheap it’s nearly free and so strong they curb stomp anything other heals bring, and Circle of Healing is pricey on mana but also insane healing. It feels like there’s nothing you can’t handle.
Druid - Wild Growth is like an ez 40-70%, depending on your HP, AoE HoT on the entire party that’s instant, but kinda mana intense. The heal is so good you spend most of your time just dps’in.
Mages - Have good/cheap AoE or single target healing with those temporal beacons, while pumping on the dmg meters.
**Shamans - I play Alliance.
Paladins - Still chain casting weak flash heal. You have virtually no AoE heals, from what I can see the weakest single target healing. Less mana efficient than Priest and worst single target heals. I believe what made Paladins great before was their efficiency, but with the other classes new runes that’s no longer the case. You add in Ret being a mana battery and mana is not as huge of an issue. At 40 we get a weak instant heal on a 30 sec CD… Pally has nice buffs, a great tank, good dps, but their healing… just bring a Ret and another healing class.
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Priest is basically the only healer in the game. It is so far ahead of everything else.
Paladin is S tier at endgame.
To put it simply, I’ve never seen one.
Currently specced holy to heal solo q battlegrounds and to flag run and with a ton of intellect you can be okay, but druids and priests are superior to you.
They don’t have the tools right now to deal with their mana issues so Paladin Healers outside of PvP really struggle.
This is why Priest feels the best right now, because Penance and PoM are almost free mana wise, and they get their talent to regen mana during casting.
I agree with your points, but am I wrong to say their mana issues don’t get solved till like Tier 2+ raiding end game. So, until then Paladins will be a bottom barrel healer in comparison to the other classes, PvE wise?
I’m not saying they can’t heal through the content, just that they are nearly worse at everything healing wise compared to the other healers till raiding end game - in SoD.
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From what I understand (keep in mind this is all from reading guides not actual experience) Paladin’s mana issues get a huge relief once they get the ‘Illumination’ Talent and that’s when they start transitioning into the ‘Heal Crit Holy Shockadins’ we all know and love.
Just for reference for anyone that’s reading.
Illumination: After getting a critical effect from your Flash of Light, Holy Light, or Holy Shock heal spell, gives you a 100% chance to gain Mana equal to the base cost of the spell.
You can tank/heal any dungeon in the game using the same spec while lvling. You can comfortably raid heal on the back of the talents alone.
Illumination is very good but to knowledge Pallys don’t get good crit until you get end game raid gear. Till then your crit will be relatively low. So compared to the other healer’s new runes in SoD you have: poor mana efficient heals and poor single/AoE throughput heals till late end game raids.
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Is that not the same with all heal classes with a gear swap? I’m not saying Pallys can’t heal, just that they are poor at every aspect of it. Only reason to bring a healing pally is their buffs.
Just pointing out that the holy paladin talent points alone provide enough power to comfortably heal pretty much anything with minimal gear.
Pally healing is incredible in Era
In “Era”, I agree.
This is Era + more. So…
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At 25 it was pretty horrible.
Beacon costs too much to refresh in combat and only lasts one min, no aoe healing, holy light/beacon in theory would be okay if both tanks were taking damage at the same time and you were a dedicated tank healing, but that wasnt the case with damage patterns/tank swapping/etc in bfd, it just overheals a ton. So you are left spamming flash heal, which barely does any healing even with beacon up and trying to minimize overhealing. You’re going to be spending more time and mana healing when a priest can just circle all of that up or let PoM do it for them.
Paly lacking magic dispel was bad, I could dispel the odd chain in BFD with freedom but it was still pretty bad. They should probably have made that effect multiple dispel types. You can also pray and hope you get it and you can just bubble it off too. It sucked.
I swapped to priest after doing BFD once as my h paly and am having more fun as a priest - I dont feel like a liability or huge waste of time due to drinking so much. PoM/Circle and other runes all felt pretty useful to swap around depending on bosses. I had a much better time on the priest. Paly runes felt lackluster and were disappointing, esp beacon;s mana cost and 1 min cd. It was okay in dungeons, but mana heavy, and extremely boring. I spent more time drinking than anything.
If you are there as a paly too you a will be dumping your mana bar on the 1, 2 and 5 min buffs, then spending 1 min drinking… The fear buff was nice on one fight. ( the murlock maybe? ) Wbut it all feels extremely bad because either you A: maintain buffs, but sit and mana up all the time, B; go into fights with less mana because people get impatient, or 3 you just dont use buffs, which I found was the better option most of the time because hunters bring a kings like buff - that pet buff will automatically kick off kings from people.
I imagine holy paly will get better in p3/p4, possibly P2 depending on any new runes if they are any useful because in p2/lvl40 you can get all of illumination talents and holy shock which will help make dungeons better to heal - but the lack of aoe healing plus bad mana costs might still suck in p2. I would swap now unless you are in it for the long haul. Maybe alt the paly till p2, try then and then if you like it swap, if you dont try again p3, etc.
They need to:
-increase buff times to 15-30 mins. ( all blessings and rune buffs )
-Buff beacon’s uptime to 5 mins at least, then lower the mana cost to 100 mana cost. ( even if the healing amt drops to 75% )
-Add that cone of light aoe rune in p2 and make it comparable to circle of healing
-Swap beacon to a different slot so we can pick up crusader’s mana regen rune with beacon.
P2 might bring nuff mana/int to offset beacon feeling horrible to use, esp with all of illumination and holy shock but I dont see it being any better in raids, but really good in dungeons. It will be better in p3/p4 though
No, this is not Era. Era is Vanilla Classic. This is Season of Discovery. Era WoW is not the same as SoD.
Every healing class is much, much weaker than priest.
Paladin is fine by the standards of non-priest healers, which puts them at about half as valuable as a priest.
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Yeah, your experience is about what I’d expect at 25, sadly.