I know its pretty bad for Holy but Holy Bulwark does work for Prot. I’m really enjoying it’s playstyle, as it really exemplifies that feeling of helping your group as a prot paladin. Anyone else feel this way?
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I’m afraid I’m just not feeling it, sadly. I don’t like that it flips between an offensive and a defensive buff every cast, and how the whole feel of the hero spec seems like it was intended as a support class that they changed their mind on last minute. A lot of it is for the same reason I still don’t really like Blessing of Seasons, with its rotating buffs.
Oracle Priest has a similar mechanic, but I feel like it has had a lot more thought put into it. Rotating buffs, but they’re all defensive (as befits the healing role) and they’re all highly impactful to the role of healing. They also give really good punchy feedback when you use them, because of how they change your mechanics.
I do think it would be fun to try Holy Lightsmith in a group with a Protection Lightsmith though. Just to see how it felt with double buffs going out constantly to the party.
I really wish I could have played Herald as prot. Dot damage, radiating heal / damage? Soooo fun as a tank.
Fits the fantasy better than either of the other 2 for prot IMO. But thats just me.
My personal opinion, Lightsmith - Holy Paladin doesn’t work, it’s hard enough to keep track on Blessing of Seasons and has received a lot of feedback on that skill alone, but then they decided to throw in another maintenance ability ontop!.
It’s just a little too much for me, thankfully Herald of the Sun seems to be doing really great, so I can enjoy my Paladin.
Now if Holy Armaments replaced Blessing of Seasons and got a little extra “oomph” to it I’d consider it.
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I’m one of those people who desperately wants Lightsmith to be good and fun to play as Holy however it’s currently missing the mark on both. I hope it’s one of the hero talents that gets another look because honestly it needs it.
I don’t know how well it works for Prot but Holy really didn’t need another fire and forget kind of button. It feels so awful to play with current gear levels, when everything feels like you’re walking through mud and then you have this extra boring AF button to press on CD.
I’ve been experimenting with macro’ing in Seasons casts to my other abilities, now that it’s not on the GCD, and all four seasons can reasonably just be cast on yourself without much worry. It definitely works a lot better than it used to, but there’s still the problem of Summer being impactful enough (more than the other three) that I don’t want to just cast it on cooldown every time, and would like to save it for high impact moments. I may just not worry about it and self-cast every blessing every time on cooldown with macros just to reduce the mental load. Even sub-optimal use is superior to Aura of Mercy (sadly).
And Armaments can also be used sub-optimally by macro’ing them to always cast on the tank (since the shield is most beneficial on the tank, and the sword is equally useless no matter who it is cast on).
But I agree that having two separate rotating buffs on a relatively short timer is just absurd to use optimally. And if the only way for 98% of players to use them is sub-optimally, they’re maybe more complex than they need to be.
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Every time I say it I get pushback, so I’m sure it will never happen, but I would have loved for Lightsmith to lean even more heavily into a support role. Even as is, it’s clearly undercooked compared to something like Oracle Priest.
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First, great idea, I honestly might do this, just macro it onto Crusader Strike to make Blessing of Seasons self cast on me.
But in all honesty, why don’t they just strip away Blessing of Seasons and just put that power into our baseline kit. A feedback i continually mentioned in Beta.
Or better yet, Holy Armaments replaces BoS and gives all 4 effects at reduced capacity, we essentially have Holy Armaments on us at all times when cast, due to Solidarity, really same cd with Valiance, why do they choose to over complicate everything.
Plus might make Lightsmith more appealing over Herald of the Sun which is far more fluid.