I can't do it anymore! I dislike Holy...bring back Shockadins please!

Classes Paladin
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Anyone whom played a Holy Paladin from MoP up until Legion will remember Denounce, that ranged ability which sent streams of glittering holy light into a target and debuffed them, taking away their critical effect chances.

Even if that debuff was removed and it simply did damage, I’d be fine with that. I really miss using that spell…it may be too similar to a priest’s “Smite” (Hell, I’d even be fine if Smite’s animations were changed to Denounce’s) but damn that spell had glorious animations.

I feel like over time the game has been cheapening and quickening the effects of spells. Playing a warlock on TBC, Incinerate’s animation of it slowly sliding forward as a wave of flames looks so cool compared to the splashy, fast version in Shadowlands. Hammer of Wrath in retail barely has an animation at all, but in TBC the affected target gets blasted with a thrall of light upon collision. Maybe that’s just me, but back to paladins.

I’m not too much of a fan of the current Holy Paladin playstyle. Right now, it feels like I’m playing a less-damage, clunkier Retribution paladin…I don’t know, at first I liked the idea of “class fantasy”, but I think that they should bring back a few of Holy’s aspects from before. It felt so smooth before:

When our mastery was Illuminated Healing, I didn’t always need to worry about running to a target in BGS to make sure they got the full benefit of my heal. The shield absorb was a nice aspect. With poor mobility without using Divine Steed (Cavalier), this is a little clunky in my opinion.

Our damage rotation feels like a combination of Retribution and Protection with nothing really unique to us besides Holy Shock. I think that’s fine - because it is sort of bringing us in line with being “hybrids” as we were in earlier expansions. But it’d be nice to have more tools, like Exorcism, Holy Wrath, Denounce, Word of Glory (Harsh Words glyph that made it do damage)…shockadins were a force man! I think it’d be nicer to bring back Denounce at least, to have a filler spell outside of our rotation or when we can’t be in melee range which every other healer seems to have but us. (Disc & Holy Priest Smite, Mistweaver Monk has Crackling Jade Lightning, Resto Druids have Wrath & Starfire, Resto Shamans have Lightning Bolt and more)

And it was spammable - you can just imagine your character cleansing the taint of evil from Scourge and Demons with this ability!

Also, the new Holy as far as healing goes…isn’t bad. In fact, I think we’re in some of the best states as ever. Glimmer of Light last expansion was unstoppable, though it has been drastically nerfed.

We still are without a way to heal multiple allies reliably. We have Light of Dawn… :D…

Holy Radiance was our AoE heal when we had Shockadins - and that animation was beautiful too. I would love for it to make a comeback someday…but I understand that we’re more focused on single-target healing. Though I would prefer it over some of our other options. Beacon of Virtue kind of fills this concern, but it does add more complicated features to the healing rotation.

I don’t know if anyone else really agrees with me on this but I hope there are some. Certain holy talents feel bad to use…Holy Prism for one, I can’t stand that one. Maybe they can replace one of our talents with Denounce.

Or maybe they can give us more flexibility in choosing to do a more ranged dps over melee dps, like with certain talent builds. I’d really like that.

Does anyone else miss Denounce, Exorcism, Holy Radiance, Holy Wrath, and other spells?

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I miss that little healing aura they had around them. It wasn’t great but it was nice when sitting with the back group and it will trickle in some healing so you don’t have to spend mana to heal every little cut and scrape.

EDIT: Honestly it was the only thing that made me bother making a paladin. Ret and Prot are so boring… Now holy is so boring so I can’t even bother to pick it up. I was leveling a Dark Iron Pali so I could get their armor but I’m SO BORED playing it I think I’m just gonna level as another class.

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Legion had some nice parts, but the changes to Holy Mastery was a step backwards.

I personally am happy with the design, that Paladin isn’t just Priest in Plate. That said, I would like Holy Paladin to be a bit more of a heavy-hitter on the front lines.

I think every Paladin can agree though that Crusader Strike is just not fun to press.
(What if Holy received Templar’s Verdict with solid damage to decide between WoG or TV?)

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I mostly want holy Paladin mastery reworked so light of dawn was easier to cast and hit ranged players with.

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The absolute best and most enjoyable time holy was for me was during 6.2 and 6.3 WoD playing 2s shockadin build.

Popping wings have never felt so satisfying as it was then firing off holy shocks like an m16

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I feel like a lot of the issues Priests and Paladins have would be solved if they gave Paladins Denounce back, made it akin to an Atonement mechanic, and then wiped Discipline Priest out and remade it as a badly overdue and needed Holy Ranged DPS spec.

There’s really no good reason Priests should have 2 heal trees instead of 2 dps trees like every other class. Why do I say that? Because a lot of people are still very angry that Shadow was changed to Insanity from Shadow Orbs, and a smaller group is likewise angry that Voidform was changed from it’s Legion version.

But this all skirts the real issue. The real problem here, is that if a Priest wants to dps they are pigeonholed into that spec, and has no alternatives when the Devs screw the pooch and mess the playstyle of a class up, unlike every other class.

Because of that, I think it’s time Paladins and Priests got a solid solution and are enabled to properly were able to perform on both of these fronts. Holy for Priest should be a codeword for DPS.

Holy for Paladin should mean “Beat you senseless and heal the soul.” Priest’s current (and best) healing tree, should be named more appropriately as “Restoration”, sharing the name with Shaman and Druid so it’s understood that this is the healing tree.

So really, I’m in agreement with the OP to an extent. I think that Denounce should return for Paladins as an Atonement styled spell is the way to start doing it. A talent that turns Denounce into Crusader Strike and likewise does the same, would be ideal.

With this Heal / Damage combo now where it belongs, in Paladins skillset, there would be nothing to stop the Developers from turning Discipline into a long overdue Holy DPS tree that evokes the Inquisitor Whitemane vibe. Why do I feel this way? Because absorb / shield gameplay is always hard to balance and Discipline has always been either absurdly OP or marginal at best.

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Yep, I hate Holy as it is right now. Remove melee requirement, Holy Power, and the stupid range-based Mastery and I might give it a shot again.

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We shouldn’t talk about Legion voidform. I’m pretty sure the sub 1 second Void Bolts have given me irreversible damage in my left hand. Not to mention, you didn’t do damage until after the second VE was done ramping during BFA. It was such a bad design.

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Holy pally is objectively the worst raid healer right now based on through put. They are only taken in raids for the raid DR. Still doing ok in M+ though. As far as fun goes…I can’t stand playing it. Switched to monk for healing.

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What about Paladins, monks, and demon hunters? They all also only have one DPS spec. Although, having a tank spec is better for open world content than having another healing spec.

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MoP/WoD holy was peak holy.

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Remove Holy Power. Never liked it and feels clunky to have a builder/spender setup as a healer. Do that 1 thing and Holy will feel much better.

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Interested to see how tier feels

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Cata-WoD was my favorite Holy time. Sacred Shield, Eternal Flame, Selfless Healer, Judgements of the Wise, Denounce, Divine Plea, & Seals! Just to name a few things. Maybe Holy was just a “priest in plate” but they were still very different. Paladins had a ton of CDs that kept individuals alive whereas priests had more multiperson healing. I personally liked being a single target healer but I can understand how some wouldn’t. I also miss the days of FoL spam too. And for the love all that is Holy, can we please take Infusion of Light back to fast HL and bigger FoL or even reduced mana FoL!

There used to be a reason to cast Judgement before either to proc haste buffs or apply seals. Nothing felt better than being able to keep justice on a druid or sham. Yeah, they could dispel it but it did force them out of form. Seal of Light for a little extra healing or SoWisdom for some mana.

Speaking of mana. I sure miss Divine Plea. Popping it while you were cleansing or using sac or most anything just to get the mana and avoid the drawback. It felt good to me. I was so happy when we finally got a mana mechanic like the other healers. Do you guys remember actually being the class that got mana back on crits!? Yeah shamans ended up with that just like they did Infusion of Light. Weird to me how Tidal Waves gives fast HW and better HS. Oh, and Tidal Waves doesn’t even rely on a crit to proc. As if they weren’t good enough already but I digress. I’m not here to bash shams.

I also wouldn’t mind if dispels went back to their former days. Probably an unpopular opinion but I did like it more then.

Harsh Words was cool but I loved using Eternal Flame on WoG. That hot was so valuable, especially with beacon.

I hate the current state of Holy and it was my main up until Legion but every expac I level it up just in case they decide to give us the ranged option again.

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I feel bad playing my Holy Pal in M+. I can heal, sure, but otherwise I’m useless. No Hero, no Brez, and no DPS – and what little DPS I can do is melee, which is always less desirable than ranged.

I’m an Engineer, so that helps slightly.

I’m approaching +20 keys on my main and when we need to pug a healer we always try for shaman or druid. They bring too much to the table over the other healers. We never take a paladin or monk.

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Now you are like every other healer except holy Paladin for the entirety of shadowlands before this patch.

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Yeah glimmer was amazing, and I enjoy the melee playstyle over range heal spam. However, the amount of fun I’ve had with the spec from BFA was much higher then than it is now.

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To be honest, I didn’t read this wall of text, however, Blizzard needs to revisit healer damage, which is PAINFULLY low. Like yeah, we don’t need to be topping the charts but the idea is that if we CHOOSE to prioritize DPS over healing in some situations, we should be able to do semi-respectable dps! Like maybe 66%-75% of what specialized DPS could do.

But noooo, Blizzard is insistent on all healers playing like crap outside of raid/dungeon content. Like, you really expect me to switch specs just to do world quests and etc? Holy is my identity, and it was FUN to do damage with it!

Holy Shock, Judgement, and Denounce are super satisfying spells to cast! Add in a bit of melee with Crusader Strike, AoE with Consecration + Shield of the Righteous, and we had a nice little mini-spec going for us.

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Oh my god yes!!! WOD was THE GOLDEN AGE for Shockadins! I had a blast with it. Even uploaded a few videos on YouTube that I look back on every now and then. BFA was pretty good too, and Season 1 of SL was decent. It’s all been downhill from here though.

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Honestly…I feel like every healer except Paladin has pretty much never had it better in terms of damage while soloing.

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