As the title suggests, holy paladin has been one of the worst healers for PvP in rated arena for most of the entirety of Dragonflight (they were also not amazing after S1 SL).
I realize there was a small stint in S1 DF where it was used to counter the overly broken Deathmark goes from assa rogues before they were nerfed and there was a small stint in S2 DF where they were overtuned, making them the best healer until Resto druid gained treants. I also realize this will probably fall on deaf ears from blizzard, but I am writing to vent, as a forum for discussion and just generally for some good paladin solidarity.
In this thread, I will address the main systemic issues of why I believe Holy Paladins has fallen behind most healers (and will remain so without changes) and potential ways of bringing them back to the same level as most healers in PvP (pouring one out for the disc priests out there, the only healer seemingly worse than Hpal).
Issues
Overreliance on casting: One of Holy paladins main issues, and part of the reason they are so trainable, is that they need to cast frequently. In particular, the overreliance of needing to cast Tyr’s on cooldown to have similar throughput to other healers is one of hpals weakest points. It’s like the game needs to be paused for a second and any disruption to casting Tyr’s throws you extremely far behind compared to other healers.
Sacrifice and CC: Blessing of Sacrifice is one of Paladin’s strongest cooldowns. Recently, there was a change so that fear would not break on damage. Before this change, sac was not always reliable to break CC, but since the change, sac has become nearly 100% unreliable. Other healers have ways of defending themselves from CC (grounding/shroud/fade/shifting).
Lackluster Offensive options: Compared to other healers, holy paladin needs to invest a lot more into gaining any sort of offensive option. We need to spend an honor talent for an ability that also costs Holy Power. Denounce is very strong, but it has very similar issue to Disc priests with wanting to dps for atonement. Getting the space to damage is very difficult in PvP unless you are already winning and that is on top of the Holy Power cost that needs to be invested in casting the spell. When compared to instant cast holy fires, or pres evokers getting disintegrate on a different school of magic, it’s quite a sad offensive option and I’ve really only found it to be very useful (and admittedly, powerful) in 2v2.
Crowd Control kit: This is a minor issue (that mainly affects solo shuffle), but the problem with Holy Paladin CC outside of HoJ (Rep/Blind) is that it breaks instantly on damage and also removes DoTs. Other healers tend to have CCs that can withstand a little damage before breaking and/or won’t consume DoTs which is invaluable as micro CC has become a core part of PvP in DF.
Mana and Divine Plea: Holy Paladins that are not playing Divine Plea are the worst healer when it comes to mana after Resto Druid. For longer games, you are almost forced into plea which cuts into the throughput of the spec and it is tied to your CD that you want to use when you need healing most. When playing plea, the mana is one of the best in the game, but, Divine Plea can be dispelled giving it another big weakness as well as lacking throughput to go later into dampening.
Potential Fixes
Despite all of it’s issues, Holy Paladin does have great strengths. I’m not suggesting that every weakness be addressed and the class be made ToTaLlY OP, but wanted to bring to light how the above issues could be addressed so that Holy Paladins can remain competitive with other healers.
Bring back cast protection tied to Divine Favor. In addition, replace one of the two now useless PvP talents (Darkest Before Dawn/Avenging Light) with either a cast protection or reduced cast time for Tyr’s Deliverance.
Make Blessing of Sacrifice damage nearly guarantee CC break.
I have no clear suggestions here. It would simply be nice to have easier access to Denounce as well as a lower cost, lower impact spammable damage button sort of like smite, disintegrate or lightning bolt to be able to contribute to a kill when pushing for a win.
I don’t have a suggestion here, but it is a glaring weakness compared to other healers. Perhaps some sort of serious rework for Paladin CC in general could be implemented. Maybe making rep resilient to damage and removing 1s from it’s CC time in PvP?
I think slightly reducing mana cost or increasing mana gain on generators could help Holy Paladins outside of playing Divine Plea. When it comes to Divine Plea, I do not think there should be any sort of penalty, since there is already a glaring weakness in the fact that it can be dispelled. I foresee Nelf paladin eventually becoming available which would give access to shadowmeld for an easy drink every 2 min which would also help.
Baseline BoSacrifice needs some sort of “reward” to it’s current implementation, a lot of H Pal abilities do.
But, and this is more apparent in SS, BoSacrifice by itself is actually a pretty bad talent compared to a lot of other classes’ due to the nature of transferring damage instead of preventing or absorbing it.
Shaman puts down an Earthern and the totem takes the damage.
Druid cast Ironbark and the target’s damage is just simply reduced by 20%
etc…
The idea of High Risk = High Reward exists with Ultimate Sacrifice because that grants 100% immunity to the target. That’s the payout. Regular Sacrifice, is just no longer a good external cooldown in 2024 WoW.
There’s also the issue that offensive spells aren’t separated form healing spells for Paladins due to Holy Power.
So for example, on paper Judgement = SW:Pain (or whatever offensive spell)
Judgment costs 7,000 Mana
SW:Pain (or w/e) costs 500 Mana.
If you are just trying to do damage, say playing with a heavy CC comp, you have more mana being expended to simply DPS-- with little to no return.
Paladins need the Reclamation Talent baked into their abilities baseline. A lot of abilities also feel tuned mana wise under the assumption that you talent into their heal effects. HoW and Veneration for example.
As would a snare or root.
Most healers have a freedom and bubble type effect now, and all healers have a root or snare. Judgement of Justice, Consecrated Ground, or Burden of Guilt should be in the class tree and not a Ret/Prot only talent.
Also, Paladins need a new unique synergy. With mobility going through the roof in TWW, the Paladin toolkit is becoming more obsolete. DKs and Warriors who used to be reliant on Freedom, now have plenty of their own. This just further hurts Hpal.
You might be onto something although I don’t feel like this is a big issue for paladin. Blessing of Sac is extremely powerful and fits the class fantasy well. I think I would rather see Holy Paladin gain more defensive options to compensate for the fact that we are squishy during or even outside of Sacrific (mostly due to the hard casting nature of the class).
This is an extremely good point. The mana cost of judgement is insane and gaining a baseline reclamation could fix the mana issues we currently see outside of Divine of Plea.
This is also a very good point. The power creep has been crazy and Holy paladins aren’t keeping up. Something I strongly dislike is how clunky it is to get yourself out of trouble with the need to Blessing of Freedom into Divione Steed. 2 globals and you’ve wasted a freedom which could be crucial elsewhere. Perhaps tying a short freedom to steed or allowing the talent that double freedoms which exists for Prot/Ret could help.
In regards to outdatedness, it’s wild to me that most of our most powerful defensives are all dispellable in some way (BoP/bubble) and are tied to forbearance. In solo shuffle, retribution is one of if not the most popular DPS spec. The antisynergy of forbearance is greater than any other class stacking that exists in the game and results in an immediate disadvantage which can usually sway the typical healer 3-3 into a 2-4 and loss of cr/mmr. I think this needs to be SERIOUSLY considered moving forward by either shortening forbearance time, making unique forbearances or just redesigning these defensives in general.
Can be dicey trying to get a cast of Tyr’s off in arena. I often end up having to blow aura mastery and/or bubble.
Yeah I don’t get why they turned fear into a mini-stun now.
Offense is lacking but sometimes you can get some nice denouces off.
CC is pretty good. A long stun followed a long rep is a lot of time taking someone out. Sometimes it doesn’t work out but that’s the way it goes.
I gave up on divine plea since it kills your throughput. You just have hope to win before you run out of mana. This is shuffle, I don’t know about 3vs3 or 2vs2 though.
I also find myself having to bubble to force a Tyr’s often and it’s why I hope we get some support on that front
Everything is a mini stun now. I just want to be able to sac to avoid CC again
Can’t disagree there. Denounce is probably not one of the biggest problems Hpal faces and the recent 70% buff was quite an improvement.
The only problem I have is that rep/blind break too easily compared to other healers who can throw out CC that is less easily broken, either as an intended CC or as micro CC. This is mostly applicable to solo shuffle where things are less coordinated
Yeah I never play Plea in shuffle, only 3s and 2s. If you need mana in shuffle, it’s an Illumination/Reclamation angle imo.
tyrs is just a bad button IMO. Like its so borring. hardly fits Hpal’s style. has 2/3 uptime so it can’t be a good cooldown and is basically merciful aura’s but slightly better.
It’s got cool class fantasy but it’s just kind of clunky (even in PvE). In PvP, it feels like we are only keeping up with A and S tiers when its up. Hope to see it get support or see other talents/playstyles emerge.
I mean I guess it fits thematically as a paladin is so infused with light that it radiates out and bestows what we know as aura’s. But the aoe heal in an area around you that’s always up is already covered by merciful. I’d rather see vanq hammer get separated from infusion and get put there or even ashen hallow or really just anything that interacts. But a 10000% preference on vanquishers for all specs.
I find it so incredibly strange that any time Hpal has been half decent in recent times that the devs gut their mana regen. It feels so bad to never be able to press any damaging abilities because you’ll just go oom, essentially making them unplayable in 2s.
That is on top of just passively losing due to mana anyway in all brackets.
I miss Vanq and was disappointed when I saw we got Seasons and not Vanq in DF
Paladin and mana has been a huge balancing issue for PvP. Most of my complaints were pertinent to S3 DF. In S2, you were able to run Divine Plea (to solve the mana issue) just about every game while still having enough throughput to make up for it. I also think players were not as aware or adamant on stealing the buff as they were in S3 and now. We’ll see what happens with the return of our best pvp tier set but I’m not very optimistic unless some of the above problems get addressed.
