Hello, I would like to get right into this skipping introduction regarding this.
The changes are awful, you literally reverted 5 months of hard work on fine tuning and getting Holy Pala rotation down, it went from pressing our fun spells a lot back to a stripped down tww s3 version of the spec, where we have to hard cast a lot of FoL to fill empty globals but we lose the burst healing from our wings ( with the suns avatar nerf no longer giving 4 dawnlights ) and the rework to Rising Sunlight. This is extremely problematic and I’ll happily highlight why CS in its current iteration doesn’t work.
Crusader Strike is a filler spell, that on its own is not bad, the issue is it does 0 damage, offers no healing, its only used in a pinch as a lowest priority filler spell when you have nothing else and need to move so can’t cast flash of light. I understand wanting to bring back the melee healer fantasy as there are a few people who enjoy that, however it should’ve just been brough back without increasing the cooldown of holy shock and judgement, that way, if people who want to press crusader strike they can still do that, then those who don’t and want to play optimal can still retain the fun play style and always have a meaningful button press to use. These changes need to be walked back significantly, we already were not the best healer in M+ and Raid testing, and these changes just straight up nerf the spec with overall slower CPM on spenders (less infused judgements), less empyrean legacy procs, and last but FAR from least is even less infusions with increased cd on holy shock.
To add, regarding the “melee” fantasy, crusader strike is even more of a less prioritized button to use, even if you use it off cooldown with crusader’s might ( which is about 6-7 cpm with s1 haste levels ), that is not even a full extra holy shock or judgement per minute that you’d be gaining, that is extremely laughable at best, so we have to spend more time casting now than we did before as we always had instant cast spells ready to use before these changes, so you quite literally killed melee fantasy whilst trying to bring it back. I am not sure what the best answer is going forward, but reducing holy shock and judgement back to what they were would be a good start, crusader strike could be a great way of introducing a mana throttle if you iterate on it more.
Holy shock > Judgement > Spender rinse repeat with the occasional casted holy light is not a “melee fantasy”. It’s not how holy paladin has played for years, and it’s not what “melee fantasy” people enjoy. So how did adding crusader strike kill the melee fantasy? I’m 1000% happy that crusader strike is back. I don’t want to play a holy priest standing in the back as a caster but wearing plate gear. Boringgg afff.
Your middle paragraph however, there is a lot there I can agree with. Crusader strike is a filler. Yes. Thank god. Now we actually a tiny bit of nuance in our rotation. But I agree with you, they overnerfed the other cooldowns. Okay. So keep crusader strike and adjust the other cooldowns. You think this is the last time we are going to be tuned before season 2? Everybody is overreacting to the cooldown changes. The ideal path forward for all the “Melee fantasy” players is a compromise that retains crusader strike while having short cooldowns on holy shock and judgement, but maybe not as short as before.
The problem is Crusader Strike is not an efficient button press whatsoever, that is my main argument and why they pruned it to begin with. For lower level content and weekly keys it is fine, and I do believe it should still exist in our kit in that regard, but problem is when you make space for it to be “balanced” in our kit, such as increasing the cooldown of holy shock and judgement, it is technically optimal and better to be spamming fol while your core button presses cool down. Crusader Strike should exist as a means to dish out damage and help us recover mana, 100%. But It should not be at the expense of our entire kit
I 100% agree the way it’s tuned now is kinda messy, but numbers can change and I’d like to give them a chance to see if they can make it work with cs. I hated it without cs just due to lack of depth and having no reason anymore to be melee
Thematically it’s nice for class fantasy to RP as a melee healer. Practically, crusader strike is a bad button. It does little damage, no healing, and compromises your positioning. The only thing it does good is reduce the CD on your actually good spells. But we already had our actually good spells on a short cd. We’ve just introduced a bad spell, nerfed our good spells, and we’re hoping to reduce the cooldown enough on our good spells again. that’s like me charging you $100, then saying I have an easy job for you to make 90 bucks, and if you do a good job, I may give you a $10 tip. Like, sure you may get your $100 back if you behave properly, but I’m not doing you any favors, you started with your $100 in the first place. We started with good spells and short cds. Crusader strike takes it away and it might give some back.
Holy Light doesn’t need to be on Infusion of Light, they took it off and increased its healing on its own by well over 200% over all the beta, it’s meant to be a strong on demand heal for emergencies, holy light is least of our problems in that department imo. Making our mana economy better so that we can afford more holy lights would be a better change for holy light.
I still think Resplendent Light’s effect should be Holy Light’s infusion empowerment, and Flash of Light should see a mana refund when consuming infusion. That way we have to choose between a big splashing heal with infusion or regain some mana with Flash or Judgment.
I don’t understand how pressing one bad button that does nothing but get the buttons I want to press back sooner, makes Hpal “melee”.
Current Hpal is like 10 different things. Making it 11 by adding a garbage button has very little impact on overall gameplay other than making it strictly worse, doesn’t suddenly turn the spec into a melee archetype.
I’ll do you one better. Based on what I’ve done in the beta I can say with confidence it actively encourages you do less stuff in melee since the 2 wasted GCDs needed to refresh Judgement and HS could be better used spamming FoL instead. This vastly increases your healing output at the cost of pitiful damage which requires you to be in melee range for.
Their solution to bring back “melee paladin” was to make it so your standing at range to hard cast more. Absolutely genius.
Ugh I feel like they just ruined my excitement for midnight. I thought we were n a good place, I decided to main my hpal since we didn’t have any in our raid comp for this xpac, and how I feel gimped into some lame half baked melee heal role that feels like poo. Thanks for ruining hpal blizz.. you were supposed to remove bloat and useless abilities. And here you are brining it back for no apparent reason or end game vision that you shared. All you did was screw over hybrid range play style since you gimped holy shock to make room for CS. Like wtf WHY??!! /tears I’m so bummed we are reverting back to the poop of a spec hpal was.
Not understanding the mentality that we can’t have both a ranged Holy Paladin and a Melee one.
The changes are not good for either playstyle. I’m in Liadrin’s camp of wanting to be a melee healer but I do not want these changes.
I do think Crusader strike needs to come back.
I do think SoTR needs to be off the GCD
I do NOT want increased cooldown on my healing kit - I want a melee option instead of spamming holy shock and judgment on target in melee.
The idea for Crusader Strike to just give mana and add it baseline is totally fine. I think it would slow down the melee gameplay but that gives incentive for paladins to get into the mix after a big damage phase.
I am no developer and understand there is a lot that goes into balancing these changes but as a Melee healer, I’d prefer they revert these changes.
The recent reintroduction of Crusader Strike as a baseline ability, coupled with the significant cooldown increases for Holy Shock and Judgment, has created a restrictive and frustrating resource issue for Holy Paladins.
While the return of Crusader Strike was intended to address rotational gaps, the current implementation feels like a step backward for the following reasons:
Mandatory Melee Dependency: By nearly doubling the cooldown of Holy Shock (9.5s) and significantly increasing Judgment, players are now “resource-starved” unless they are in melee range. This effectively kills the “Caster” playstyle Blizzard initially promised for Midnight and forces a high-risk positioning that isn’t always viable in modern encounter design.
Rotational “Stalling”: When forced out of melee range due to mechanics, the Holy Power generation drops to an unacceptable level. Because our ranged generators are on such long cooldowns, we are left with long windows of “dead time” where we cannot generate the resources needed to respond to incoming damage.
Reintroduction of Button Bloat: Pruning Crusader Strike was a highlight of the early Midnight design. Bringing it back—while simultaneously nerfing the efficiency of our other spells—reintroduces the complexity that was successfully being streamlined, without the benefit of added fun or flexibility.
The “Clunky” Feedback Loop: Tying Crusader’s Might back into the rotation makes the spec feel “hectic” rather than “impactful.” We are forced to press a low-impact melee button just to make our primary healing spells (Holy Shock) available at a reasonable frequency.
Suggested Adjustments:
Revert the Cooldown Nerfs: Return Holy Shock to a 6-second cooldown to allow for consistent baseline generation regardless of positioning.
Optional Melee Integration: Make Crusader Strike a choice-node talent rather than baseline. This allows players who enjoy the “Melee-Wing” playstyle to opt-in without punishing those who prefer a more traditional, ranged casting approach.
Alternative Generation: Allow Judgment to generate 2 Holy Power if Crusader Strike is not talented, ensuring the Holy Power economy remains healthy for all builds.
The current direction feels like a reversion to the most criticized aspects of the The War Within rotation. Consider decoupling our core resource generation from mandatory melee strikes.
okay yes it’s very fair to say crusader strike with the current balancing is not efficient to press. What would think if they added a mana refund component to it, and adjusted cooldowns and the cdr components of our kit for faster holy shocks and judgements while retaining crusader strike, so that building in melee was more efficient mana wise than the caster build, but both builds were able to heal well enough.
I don’t think that should be too much to ask of a multi dollar company. But tbh when I reread you saying its not efficient, it made me think part of the real problem is our holy power spenders aren’t strong enough. Like generating holy power should be valuable and mean something. But yes as it is right now, spamming FoL would be better, so lets fix that part so that spamming crusader strike is better, but optional. Lower cooldowns on holy shock and judgement, and maybe buff holy light a bit to compensate for the cooldowns not being as low as pre-crusader strike tuning
I think the best way is to bring holy shock and judgement back down again, and have crusader strike be a way for us to regenerate mana, make it return 0.5% mana instead and increase its damage done, remove the holy power generation. This would actually push more depth between what you want to do with your next global like they want as now you have a choice, stop healing and regenerate mana or continue to keep throughput up but keep losing mana. This offers a solution that we have had with Hpal for many years, where we go OOM just putting spells in every global where we can and brings back crusader strike in a healthy way for both sides to enjoy.
Yes! exactly I think both sides of the remove cs and keep cs have been missing the point. CS existing in our kit is not a problem, it just can’t nerf our capabilities to keep people alive to compensate for it, it should be re-balanced to be a way for us to maintain mana sustain