I won’t debate opinions cause everyone’s are equally valid.
My frustration comes that Paladin is Paladin because it has BoP. Paladin is Paladin because it has off-healing.
As skill levels rise, what makes a Paladin a Paladin is sidelined. You will not be BoP’ing someone who is going to stand in a telegraphed charge - they are going to sidestep every time
Comparison Example:
What makes a Death Knight a Death Knight gets more use as a skilled group rises. “Hey we are going to chain these pulls, grip this caster mob then AMZ the AoE”
Basically, as a dungeon designer, you can’t make anything that would require the use of BoP to clear it.
Because doing so would mean you have to get a paladin no matter what in 5-man groups.
These powerful 1 man blessing cannot be designed around because it would antagonize every other classes who don’t have access to the tool to clear the content.
And then the trick is to have utilities that are generic enough as to come off as nice things to have without being overly advantageous where as to be required to clear the content.
Death Grip is a great example of exactly this, you’re not doing anything amazing by death gripping, you just displaced a mob.
It’s generic yet always finds a use.
BoP is very strong and the one person on whom it could be generally good to use on a regular basis is also the one who needs to keep threat.
The lack of visual clarity around what BoP does and doesn’t protect against is also a problem.
But think about if it didn’t drop threat…
Being on a long CD means that tanks couldn’t just rely on it but every once in a while it might let them make a pull they wouldn’t normally do because of the additional help.
Keeping the general usefulness whilst retaining the non required aspect.
And whilst the threat dropping mechanic can be seen as helpful in itself, it doesn’t outshine (IMO) the potential utility of using it as a defensive CD for your tank on a regular basis.
If it’s too strong, they could make it a choice where you have the option of forgoing the immunity for a strong physical DR coupled with retaining the threat.
Beside Augvoker, there’s not really a spec that has the niche of helping the tanks.
In fact, in most high content, they are expected to be mostly self-reliant.
Like I said earlier, It could be a nice niche to explore for Ret as to give them this “thing” they bring that Prot and Holy don’t.
Edit:
Looking at “healing as utility” from this point of view seems like, at first look, it fits well within the confines of being generically helpful whilst not mandatory.
The problem then becomes that if its potent and available on many classes, then you risk antagonizing a whole role instead.
As we saw in previous seasons where some teams found ways to minimize damage received and maximize the healing of hybrid to make relatively high keys without healers.
And while those are marginal edge cases, you have to be mindful of keeping them as such.
I am of the personal opinion that “No-Healer Keys” are emergent gameplay and while they should not be encouraged they should be allowed
WoG and Healing Hands could hypothetically allow a group to skip a Healer if damage was minimized, Harmful Dispells were handled (somehow), and any “Healing Checks” were cheesed or skipped. (If the boss has a Healing Check, like the crystals on Stonevault Skarmorak, you don’t do that key).
If they increased the mana cost of WoG/HH but kept the other target functionality, Blizz could still have high-skill groups go “Healerless” but not create a damaging number of “Healerless” keys.
By both increasing the mana cost and removing the ally target functionality, they completely remove even the chance of running the key that way.
I categorically disagree with this sentiment, but Blizz makes the calls, not I
If Ret cannot be a “Healer” for extremely high skill groups, its niche will instead be “Off-Healer” for low skill groups. I do not believe this is healthy.
I would much rather see Ret transition to an Augvoker-lite role with pre shielding or external thorns than have the niche remain as something that is designed to be “risen above” as group skill increases.
I agree, I just want to “have my cake and eat it too”, I think.
Aside though. A group with 4-5 members having a Taunt and enough Externals with no Tank would take god-like levels of planning and coordination…
But it would be a spectacle to beat out world first races.
Taunt swapping and kiting, invis strats and LoS breaks, CD management to kill adds fast enough, terrain breaks and aggro manipulation.
If this was pulled off it would be so so so
Cool
The way I can get so jazzed just thinking about why a Tankless run could be cool is partly why I think a Healerless run could be cool, but I don’t want anyone to think I would rather the Tank/Heal role not exist.