Why delete AC? Just don’t take it. Works fine for easy content.
I loved the AC in raid. I don’t get why people hate it. you can stop just spamming shock in your wings. that was pretty cool using the rest of your abilities.
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I despise Glimmer. It reminds me too much of MoP Mistweaver’s Renewing Mist+Uplift. I don’t like any mechanic where I feel forced to waste casts on players with full health for the sake of setting up for later damage. Leave the blanket healing to Druids and Priests IMO.
I think we could have a great melee build if they just took a lot of talents from Ret and tailored them around healing.
- Replace Shield of the Righteous with Divine Storm. Have Lightforged Blessing heal for 4% of max health.
- Change Light of Dawn to a healing version of Wake of Ashes.
- Give Holy Crusading Strikes. Buff Crusader’s Reprieve to 4% of max health.
- Give Holy Blade of Justice and Consecrated Blade. Buff Golden Path by 200%.
- Give Holy Blessed Champion causing Crusader Strike and Judgment to heal up to 4 nearby allies.
- Let Holy choose between an additional charge of Judgment or having Judgment grant an additional Holy Power.
- Then buff Light of the Martyr by 50%. Change Untempered Dedication to allow LotM to always gain the full benefit of your mastery regardless of distance to the target. Add LotM to Crusder’s Might, causing it to reduce the cd of Holy Shock by .5 seconds.
- Consider bringing back Aura of Sacrifice, transferring damage that would be dealt to your allies to you and empowering Crusader’s Reprieve by 50%.
- Rename Crusader’s Reprieve to Seal of Light.
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I’d really say battle healer just needs three things.
- Make Avenging Crusader be a 5 holy power spender, no cooldown.
- Give a talent node for Crusader Strike to be converted into Blessed Hammer (prevent range issues).
- Buff Light of the Martyr like the previous poster mentioned.
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Coming from POV of someone who pugged over 3300 in Mythic+…
- Biggest issue is mana, full stop. Our spells need to be less expensive across the board, word of glory in particular should be free mana wise considering how little healing it does and it already costs 3 holy power.
- Damage is still bad.
- Beacon and bubble need to be off the global cooldown.
- Holy shock could use a healing buff.
- Light of Dawn is hot garbage, I don’t even use this spell.
Those 5 changes would help tremendously.
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We don’t play like that though. Casting holy shock on full HP targets for glimmer hasn’t been a thing since Eternal Palace, where glimmer was uncapped. The objective has never been to spread your glimmers as much as possible. You should always heal someone who needs healing, regardless of whether they have glimmer or not.
Glimmer is, however, an objectively strong talent.
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Also please buff WoG as well. Its insane how weak that spell is in comparison to how other healers equivalents and S1/S2 WoG.
They nerfed too many things, in too many areas, too many times its crazy how the spec is like 40 ilvls below other healers in terms of raw power. And no, ‘utility’ doesnt make up for it as it is right now.
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I said delete AC so actual melee oriented healing talents can replace it which I gave some examples of. Not the only thing that would be deleted either, can read the whole thing if you want but I was discussing a potential rework that focused on melee and glimmer hpal, which focused on doing damage to heal as well. I gave suggestions that I personally think would be better than AC, as AC leads itself to gameplay where you just spam the same abilities over and over during the CD but my suggestions would actually integrate doing damage to heal into hpals actual melee abilities outside of AC, and then make it even stronger during regular wings while also working with glimmer too. Not saying you have to like what I said or anything, just saying I don’t think AC is fun or good but I do think doing damage to heal can be integrated into melee hpal in such a good way.
It’s time for Blizzard to lock in Holy Paladin into a mechanic, and currently the only thing that unites the gameplay is Glimmer of Light, Divine Toll and newly added Daybreak.
Infusion of Light should probably become a talent for Ranged H-Pally with it reducing Holy Shock, while for Melee Paladin Crusader Strike resets were far more enjoyable with Season 1 in Mind than manaless FoLs. Perhaps bake in into the Hero Talents so players are forced into a playstyle and solve blizzard’s struggle with balancing both types.
I’d like to see them look at Avenging Crusader and Tyr’s Deliverance as both serve a similar role in adding to healing during other playstyles, but Tyr’s Deliverance is far too powerful with Holy Shocks.
For the remainder of Dragonflight a small list of fixes:
- Holy DPS is weak if paladins have to cast to heal, so bring back Blessing of Summer damage to 30%
- Holy Shock being used to DPS shouldn’t cost the same mana as healing with it, same treatment as Living Flame for Preservation
- Buff Light of Dawn by 20% (just calling a number here, can be adjusted to see if its enough/too much, blanket aoe healing should be promoted as a mana inefficient playstyle, if every other healing has these tools)
- Nerf Word of Glory Mana Cost (don’t punish people for spot healing)
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People are going to vociferously disagree with me here, probably, but I personally think that Blessed Focus is a perfectly viable talent to take in most content, now that it gives you more total glimmer healing than even 8 normal glimmers being out on targets. Plus it simplifies the glimmer gameplay immensely, and makes it almost impossible to mess up its use. Eight-glimmer spec has a higher skill cap and a couple valuable synergies (especially in mythic raiding), but one-glimmer spec is simple, effective, and has a 1-GCD ramp time instead of the huge buildup with eight shocks.
Hmm.
Seems like I would miss the glimmer on other allies. But I’ll have to try this.
You might, but listen to my TED talk here. I’ve got my own opinion, but I’ll try to also be factual:
A) Drawbacks of Blessed Focus vs Illumination
- Daybreak grants 2000 mana per Glimmer it eats. If you have 8 Glimmers out, this returns 16,000 mana. If you have one Glimmer out, it returns only 2000 mana total. I don’t find this to be an issue in M+, or in heroic raiding. Mythic raiding might be another story, and it’s worth considering the much lower mana return if you ever find yourself running low in the content you do.
- Glorious Dawn synergizes better with Illumination. It gives you a 10% chance to refund a Holy Shock charge when cast, increasing by 1.5% per active Glimmer. So under ideal conditions, you will only have a maximum 11.5% chance to refund Holy Shock when specced into Blessed Focus, but a maximum 22% chance to refund with Illumination, once you have 8 glimmers out.
- Illumination is much better for AOE healing over time, such as in a raid environment, where a single Glimmer is in danger of constantly overhealing if cast on random targets with little damage. The overhealing shield from Overflowing Light is also probably wasted on a single target in raids most of the time, unless you are just constantly shocking the tank (more on that) but Holy Shock isn’t really meant as a tank-saving tool.
- If used offensively (such as in M+) you will intermittently completely lose the damage reduction bonus from Light’s Protection, as having only one glimmer available means sometimes it will be on an enemy and not on any allies.
B) Benefits of Blessed Focus vs Illumination
- Blessed focus increases the power of Glimmer by a flat 40%, all the time, from the first cast. I don’t know for sure how it’s calculated, but I assume it goes up to 44% once a Glimmer is already applied, since each Glimmer increases power by 4%. Illumination, meanwhile, gets no special bonus, and relies on stacking up all 8 Glimmers for maximum bonus (8x4%=32% bonus). These bonuses can both be increased a further 10% with Glorious Dawn, bringing BF Glimmer up to 54% maximum bonus, and Illumination Glimmer up to 42% maximum bonus. In terms of raw numbers, BF Glimmer has a higher power potential, and reaches that potential instantly, without having to stack up 8 Glimmers. That, plus having all your Glimmer healing constantly on one target, makes Holy Shock significantly powerful as a fast heal, since the Glimmer component will heal for more than the Holy Shock itself on one target.
- BF Glimmer makes Light’s Protection very powerful as an intermittent minor DR, as whichever ally has your single Glimmer gets a flat 10% undivided damage reduction constantly. That, plus the overhealing shield from Overflowing Light makes Holy Shock + Glimmer very powerfully bursty in smaller group content like M+
- If you do want to play more offensively, such as in M+, and don’t need the healing, Blessed Focus Glimmer lets you PUMP damage (for a healing spec) since the one Glimmer on an enemy will be doing max damage constantly without having to build stacks.
- If you’re a dumb-dumb like me, having one Glimmer lets you basically forget about managing it or upkeeping it on everybody. You know that your shock/glimmer combo is always there if you need a little burst of healing on a priority target.
edit: This ignores the skill cap issue as well. If you get Illumination just to have 5 Glimmers up on your party (in a dungeon environment), but neglect to go all-out and get three more up on enemies as well to hit the maximum 8 stacks, you’re leaving a lot of Illumination’s power on the table anyway. I feel like all but the really good players are only taking advantage of half of the talent’s power unless they mix offense/defense literally the whole dungeon, and are very good at getting all those 8 stacks up and running immediately with little ramp and little downtime in the Daybreak/Divine Toll cycle. It’s just a huge amount to focus on. Meanwhile, if you take Blessed Focus, you get 100% of the talent’s power 100% of the time, with zero thought or effort. I do think Illumination is better for pure healing in raids, but I would never go back to Illumination in M+
A lot of the reason holy is terrible is that blizz nerfed based on the S2 tier set. They never reevaluated the nerfs with the S3 tier. Luckily we get the S2 tier set back next season. I expect holy pally will be back on top
I’m not going to lie I’m intrigued. I’ve tried many talent combos but never tried focus. I will give a go tonight…
Just to add onto what you mentioned about the pros and cons of Blessed Focus vs Illumination.
There are some general usability things to keep in mind too.
With this talent Glimmer does far more healing than Holy Shock itself
This is already the case with Illumination, however it’s an important aspect about how this talent choice plays out.
When you Holy Shock a target, the target you last Holy Shocked is healed/damaged for more than the Holy Shock itself. On the surface that seems really weird.
So, for example, if you Holy Shock a dps, then Holy Shock the tank, the DPS will be healed for 45k (Glimmer) + the reverb but the tank will be healed for like 26k.
Where this can start to be good though is if you keep Holy Shocking the same target. If for example someone has a nasty dot, if you keep Holy Shocking them the Glimmer and reverbs will really focus the healing on the person you want to heal.
So, the point here is that Holy Shock generally feels really weak with Illumination because Glimmer is spread out a lot and that’s where most of Holy Shocks healing comes from - the Glimmers. With this talent, Holy Shock starts to feel a lot better but only after you Holy Shock the same target twice. Every other scenario is just weird because it plays like Priest’s Trail of Light except it heals/damages your last target by like double.
Divine Toll & Daybreak
When you Divine Toll all 5 targets get Holy Shocked as normal however 1 target gets 1 Holy Shock and 1 Glimmer. For some reason all 5 Holy Shocks from Divine Toll don’t trigger each Glimmer. Note this is the case with Blessed Focus or Illumination.
Illumination Divine Toll → HS, HS, HS, HS, HS, Glimmer * 5 (5.7k each).
Blessed Focused Divine Toll → HS, HS, HS, HS, HS, Glimmer * 1 (34k).
This means Divine Toll with Blessed Focus or Illumination total healing is about the same the final Glimmer is either on 1 target or spread across 5.
Daybreak is a lot weaker upfront unless you only need to heal the 1 person who happens to have the Glimmer on them. I don’t know if Daybreak is bugged with Blessed focus though because the numbers don’t seem to add up to me.
IDK, at the end of the day I think Blessed Focus has its pros and its cons, I just wish there was a way for Blizzard to give it a mana component acknowledging that Daybreak is a mandatory talent but is nowhere near as good with Blessed Focus and there’s not a lot of opportunities to put that talent point somewhere else.
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This. If you keep rotating targets it plays out kind of like priests’ trail of light, except with holy shock. If you keep casting holy shock on the same target, though, it’s basically doing the equivalent of like 230% healing (because it’s triggering glimmer on that target) compared to just a normal holy shock. That, plus the glimmer is still shielding the target and reducing damage they take by 10% for as long as glimmer is on them. Blessing of Sacrifice is already super powerful, add another 10% DR from a glimmer on that target and tanks can survive tankbusters without using any cooldowns at all.
Agreed, it seems silly that it works the way it does. Also, would be kiiiind of nice to be able to have one offensive and one defensive glimmer up at the same time, since if I choose to use it offensively I miss out on the DR from other talents. But maybe that’s intentional.
Our mana was nerfed going into S3, on top of aura nerfs to everything except flash of light and holy light (which were buffed slightly). In S4 we lose our 45-second daybreak, therefore resulting in less mana regen throughout an encounter.
Holy paladin (as a whole) will perform horribly unless they buff the spec going into S4, which looks like they aren’t.
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The real giveaway that we have a problem: WoG wouldn’t feel good even if it was 100% mana free.
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That’s very true mana will be more of an issue. I hadn’t actually thought about that…
Oh that sounds like it’s gonna be fun.
EDIT: It just hit me that Season 4 starts at the end of the month and we’ve yet to see any balance changes for anything. So either they are going to squeeze them in this week or next week which…ain’t great lol.