TWW Hpal's Button Bloat and CDs/spells simplification

Classes Paladin
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This was also discussed in the TWW Holy Paladin tree redesign post, which is also another revelant post regarding one (of many) issues for Hpal at the moment.

But since this has been brought up recently in a lot different places , feel like it needs its own post.

Just like Disc Priest and Holy Priest got their gameplay reworked, some of their abilities combined and prunned, Hpal is currently in a heavy need of a rotational and CDs rework as well.

This issue indirectly created a lot of the problems with the spec seen in S3/S4 after the 10.1.5 rework nerfs, with Hpal eventually having the most CDs of any healer, but a low rotational troughput to compensate (which in turn also killed our healing spenders), made the spec unfun to play and to feel comparatively weak out of CD windows to ALL the other healers, on top of being harder to balance.

Some of the suggestions are the following:

  1. Barrier of Faith needs to go or replaced by a passive like Shock Barrier, just like Westly proposed in (TWW Holy Paladin tree redesign).
  2. Hand of Divinity + Tyrs need to be blended into a single ability.
  3. Divine Toll and Daybreak could be 1 button as well. Press one for DT, a second time to remove glimmers/ trigger Rising Sunlight. The timer for each runs separately.
  4. Remove Blessing of Seasons and replace it by a passive ability/another talent instead.
  5. Holy Light and Flash Heal needs to be one button.
  6. Light’s Hammer and Holy Prism. These abilities serve no purpose once we lost our current tier set and are disjointed from the rest of Hpal’s gameplay/kit.
  7. Avenging Crusader is another button that should be either replaced or reworked.

**Would like to clarify that we already have a lot of passive healing through beacons and glimmers, so adding more passive healing abilities if some of these are eventually removed, will only contribute to one of our core issues at the moment, which is lacking good reactive spot healing, a.k.a moving health bars fast enough, which is a core issue Hpal has been having since S3 started.

With TWW on the horizon adding more buttons, this issue is only going to be worst soon.

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Personally speaking, I feel we don’t need to remove Flash of Light or Holy Light. Aside from them being a staple, they could have proper niches in our kit, but have been ignored in favor of just being fluff in between our HP Spenders…which are now awful.

Like if Holy Light was a proper, non HP AOE heal, it’d at least have a purpose in a kit dominated by Holy Shock and glimmer, for example.

Avenging Crusader is in fact, not even a button to press, since it’s already a choice node with Avenging Wrath: Might, and it’s absolutely terrible. What they actually need to do is buff it properly so it actually has a use again.

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Sorry, but as a long time, multi-content Holy Paladin, I can’t actually agree. Here are my thoughts (Alannera-Stormrage / Balinda-Gallywix):

(1) Barrier of Faith is a a talent for Single Target. It has not been useful in M+ and Raids due to lack of fights with a hecking single target DoT (for instance), but is great for PvP.

(2) Hand of Divinity is a choice with Divine Favor, so you can’t really discuss removing any of them w/o doing something with the other I guess. Tyr is already a powerful ability, and the long-cast, low immediate impact is kind the reason it can be tunned to be stronger over time.

(3) Daybreak has the mini-game of mana regen, so there is a choice between using it before Divine Toll (to capitalize on eating extra Glimmers) or after (to proc them multiple times). I’d say Divine Toll now is a non-flashy piece, that gives some versatility to Holy Paladin playstyle (you can also use one for healing and the other to damage etc.).

Ps.: I’d love if Daybreak gets greyed out if no Glimmers are available to eat.

(4) Blessing of Seasons is mostly used for extra damage (Summer) and mana (Winter). They can feel uninspired in M+ and Raids, but in other forms of content, all Blessing feel too important to be removed without a partial retunning of the spec.

PS.: Blessing of Spring (+Healing Done / +Healing Received) feels great in small PvP fights, or when you can use it on another healer or character with self-healing based survivability (like the 5x5 Arenas).

(5) I don’t feel Holy Light and Flash of Light should be merged — but rather, they should be made more distinctive of each other. The “cheap / expensive” heal is a backbone for WoW healing, but I just feel HL and FoL lose more relevancy than the other healers options (because our spec has those, but is really focused around Holy Shock).

(6) Light’s Hammer is being removed in TWW. Holy Prism and Barrier of Faith now share a choice node and interact with one of the Hero Talents build.

(7) Avenging Crusader is great, but needs suport to work and could probably NOT be a PvE Talent. Any changes to it need to adress the following points:

  • Crusader Strikes only having 1 Charge makes we lose a lot of value during Wings. The extra damage and Holy Power doesn’t make up for that, since I remember the healing being just enough to keep everyone alive.
  • Melee Wings weaved melee hits and Words of Glory between downtime. Now, WoG heals so little and costs too much mana to fill that gap.
  • Melee Wings’ CD was increased from 45s to 60s.
  • [PvP] We also lost the extra wings from Aura of Reckoning, in favor of Wings every 12 Holy Power spenders used (but they have a high mana cost and are ineffective),
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Sooome of this is already being addressed. All of this is from a strictly PvE perspective.
First, my disagreements:

  1. Light’s Hammer is being removed, and its place on the choice node is going to Barrier of Faith. Barrier/Prism are going to activate our hero class synergies for Herald of the Sun. I do believe that Prism is also being made more powerful baseline, to make it useful without the set bonus.

  2. I do think there is currently some issue with our spenders feeling unimpactful, but this is also the price we paid in order to make our baseline healing better. Additionally, spenders are going to have more interaction with both hpal hero specs, giving them a function outside of pure throughput on their own.

  3. I don’t think we’ll ever get a very powerful shielding capability again. Shock Barrier might be tunable to be balanced, but I’m pretty sure blizz is on record somewhere saying they hated how some healers shielded so much. Paladins’ old Illuminated Healing mastery and Discipline Priests generally around the MoP/WoD time period are good examples. They intentionally moved both classes away from that.

Agreements:

  1. I think we probably have too many short-cooldown throughput abilities. Every paladin, of every spec, takes Divine Toll no matter what. Daybreak is too powerful not to take. Tyr’s is a beast. I’d almost like to see Tyr’s Deliverance on an endcap choice node with one of the other abilities, like Daybreak. One could better facilitate the hard-caster style of the tree, and the other the instant-caster side.
  2. They changed Blessing of Summer already in the alpha, but I haven’t figured out of Seasons was changed to ALWAYS be the new Summer, or if it still rotates through them. If it rotates through them, then I will once again never select it. It’s just not dependable to have the ability you need when you need it. It was the worst covenant ability in terms of quality of life, it just adds headaches, and the only value it ever had was casting Summer on a combusting fire mage during bloodlust when he was being PI’d by the priest and buffed by the aug evoker. That degenerate gameplay is going away, but the ability is still horrible.
  3. Holy Light is worthless outside of particular synergies (hand of divinity) and those synergies feel bad. I don’t mind slow heals being used for efficiency reasons, but hpals can heal efficiently without casting HL (especially with overpowered 2 charges of free Flash of Light through Inflorescence). Hand of Divinity should be reworked to just affect Flash, make it hit like a truck, and turn HoD into a PvP talent.
  4. Avenging Crusader needs SOMETHING. It doesn’t have to be removed, since it already replaces normal wings when we talent it. I feel like it could be turned into a passive that gets rid of normal wings, but affects us in a way similar to mistweaver monks using Ancient Teachings or their other fistweaving talents. Our melee healing build is gone, and though we are still a “melee” class, we do not have the sort of kit a fistweaver has, and many hpals would still like that kit.
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Not to mention, if you talent into Awakening, the free wings proc doesn’t occur at full charges until you use Judgment… which will then be on cooldown as soon as you enter Avenging Crusader.

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All these suggestions dont need to happen at the same time, they are just ideas to remove some buttons/CDs from the class, that is undeniably facing a Button Bloat issue. Some can stay, some can remain.

I must say that I love having all these abilties: Tyr’s, Barrier, Daybreak, Holy Prism, for example are some of my favorite spells for Hpal, however, the fact that the class has soo many tools/CDs its arguably what its keeping it in its current state, which is less than ideal.

At least for PVE, there’s basically not a lot of reasons to cast HoL over FoL, pretty much ever. In M+ the only times you ever EVER cast HoL is pairing it with HoD.

This could be one option to make the spell better in some way, but just as you mentioned, it would probably compete with glimmer, or our beacons and other AOE CDs. It could be an option for caster builds that dont focus that much on Holy Shock/Glimmer healing it that ever becomes a thing.

I’m not against keeping Barrier of Faith. In fact, I’m a fan of the spell. However, if some prunning needs to be done, Barrier would surely be on the list, since it has not been seen a lot of real use. However, this was only my PVE PoV, so thanks for the PVP feedback!

I do think being a node the Prism instead of reclamation is great though.

HoD is only ever used with Tyr’s (or should be). A suggestion was to made Tyr’s a caster centric talent once again, instead of being a staple of any Hpal build as it currently is (remove again the holy shock buff, since we need stronger holy shocks outside of CDs).

These two are, in my opinion, probably the main offenders of the whole “Hpal has too many CDs so it needs to have low rotational throughput” discussion. Whatever should replace Divine Favor, or the choice node for the matter, is up for the devs if this ever happens.

Fair enough, and since the order you use either of those two abilities first do matter, this would probably be my least favorite option as well.

Thats exactly what I’m suggesting. A retunning of the spec. Remove CDs, put the power once again in our rotation and spenders. Blessing of Spring gives us throughput, Blessing of Winter gives us Mana. Retune our throughput and our mana management, since both are in a less than ideal state at the moment.

A good suggestion, but what I’m looking for here is two things:

  • Reduce Hpal current button bloat issues

  • Reduce our amount of CDs so our rotational throughput can be re-tunned and scaled back.

Right now, the latter is a core issue in the spec, and its still an issue so far in TWW. As we are right now in DF as well, we rely too much on our 6-7 CDs and all our out of CD healing feels unimpactful. At the same time, HoL is currently a dead button, and like I stated above, we have a lot of different AOE healing options. Unless they separate Glimmers and Casts builds, and again, do some button prunning, this would not help to solve the current issues with the spec.

Totally in agreement.

Still rotates between them!

It needs something. This could (and probably has been, multiple times in fact) a whole post on its own. The ability either needs a rework or to be removed, since its been dead for more than two seasons now.

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Get rid of holy power and various passive heals. Prune the cooldowns. Make whatever is left after that really strong.

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Decisions for changes to spells and talents should be based on a fundamental expectation of the playstyle they intend to introduce.

Talents and targets for AOE healing vs single target healing, as well as mitigation and utility

Everyone has a million suggestions but I notice they ultimately lack an engaging decision.

DPS generally have AOE vs single target. Id love for healers to have a meaningful decision like that.

Sure one option might provide higher HPS, but allowing for talents that are a viable choice under varying conditions, is what we lack.

In my experience decisions for what talents I take are based on how hard I need to manage my mana, and not more enjoyable engaging decisions like AOE vs single target choice , ect.

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I agree. Whenever I suggest anything, it’s with intent of moving us more towards modern Mistweavers, with viable caster/fistweaver styles. I feel Avenging Crusader was flawed because, when it was meta for a short while, it was a cooldown that turned us into melee-healing gods, but it was up so often it almost didn’t count as a cooldown. This is very different from the more balanced and on-demand melee healing of monks’ Ancient Teachings, etc. I also think we should have fewer healing cooldowns by turning some of them into choices to facilitate specific melee/caster playstyles, rather than all paladins just selecting all healing cooldown talents because they can.

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I would this is not even a decision anymore. It’s been forced unto us. No other healer in S3/S4 has this issue and no other healer wants to be drinking every 3 pulls in a m+ environment. We are taking caster talents due to how badly our mana management is and its not even funny.

However, I’m in total agreement, decisions should be made around other things, be it DPS, AOE vs Single Target, or whatever they want to focus on, but definitely not Mana, at least not for almost every build be it M+ or Raid. We now have a lack of decisions in our tree, and on the CDs we want to take.

We always take Daybreak and Rising Sunlight, because our rotational abilities and spot healing is obviously not enough. Much less our mana regen.

We always take Tyr’s because its a lot of passive healing, and buffs our spot healing, including Holy Shock, which even with 80% extra crit of S2 2pc, still barely moves bars.

Since we take Tyr’s most of the time we also take HoD.

And we come back to the same issue once again.

As the player Daiza said in the other TWW tree spec thread: " everything being tuned so bad and feel so impactless that you need to dance around various cooldowns to break even compared to other healers" is spot on. We have at least 2-3 more CDs than everyone else, and most of them are paired together when bad stuff happens, the only exception being Divine Toll and Daybreak insome cases, and all of this just to break even.

Edit: also totally forgot about this one, but should LoD be removed as well? This has been another dead spell for 2 seasons now.

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Herald of the Sun has hero talents that specifically buff and synergize with LoD, so I don’t think Blizzard has any plans to do away with it. However, personally, I have stopped using it entirely, even in raid. Two talent points to increase its range to something useable is just too much. I just take the SotR talents and get a (slightly) weaker AOE heal without the range restrictions, which also does moderate damage and costs no mana. I rarely even cast WoG, almost all of my holy power goes into Shield of the Righteous, just because of the balance of healing/damage and free mana cost.

That might even be why I haven’t had any mana issues through M+10 dungeons, though I’ve heard other paladins complaining about mana management. I just keep freecasting SotR

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I encountered these problems above the +10 key range, when doing 12s.13s,14s.

When fights drags for more than 3-4 minutes, and there’s a lot of damage, you have to lean heavily into the free FoL (which its awful and unfun) to not run oom. One example I vividly remember is tyrannical Deios. If you watch videos from Holypudding, in a 15,16 Tyrannical Deios we goes OOM or close to in that fight, and thats one of the best Hpals (that are still playing the class atleast) using its infusions and mana regen tools almost optimally, so its not an issue of ‘skill’ either.

Ellesmere stated that Hpal its fine until you start hitting 13,14s range, and at that point, other healers just do easily and better what Hpal starts to struggle so much to achieve, like mana management and just raw HPS numbers.

The mana issue also starts happening when tanks starts chain pulling fast enough dangerous packs after dangerous packs, and theres a lot of spot healing required, which happens in high keys often.

Also you need to be really careful about dpsing using holy shock, since you would also go oom if not careful. Which feels bad, since Holy shock its supposed to be our main spam ability. If you are just using SotR,consecration, HoW and CS to DPS you probably wont ran out of mana, but your DPS is gonna be around half of all the other healers. This is why its a problem.

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I agree, I’m not a fan of Inflorescence of the Sunwell as it currently is. Having two free FoL’s is too good, and every paladin, regardless of gameplay preference, is forced to take it.

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I’d need to see what Herald of the Sun does to LoD, but my personal dream would have been to have LoD cast and proc glimmers on targets. That way it’d have a use in both melee range and ranged (assuming anyone takes that bloody 40 yrd talent) and be a HP spender that ya know…actually properly heals so we aren’t spamming our damage spender. Note, I say this assuming LoD would still cost mana when SotR does not so…

Though I’m also aware how glimmers spread damage/healing across targets. To which, personally I’d ask…why?

While I get it adds a bit of flavor and skill expression, it seems to me like a balancing nightmare and a design one.

You want to have as many glimmers up as possible to heal the group, but not too many glimmers because then it splits the healing done to them, but we can also build it so we only want 1 glimmer at a time to really pump.

I think Ancient Teachings is designed in the same way, but its significantly easier to apply and doesn’t come with weird drawbacks.

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Short answer, yes.

Longer answer, LoD has been a deadweight spell for much longer than 2 seasons. It’s been a terrible button to press for a long, long time. There were some odd builds with I believe Necrolord covenant and specific SL legendaries, but even then, Holy Paladin had better options in Divine Toll and Ashen Hallow in SL.

Beacon of Virtue should be the 12-15 second AoE heal Holy Paladins use. It plays into the spec fantasy with Beacon usage. Most healers have an AoE heal CD that fills this niche, such as Temporal Anomaly, Wild Growth and Radiance.

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Remove Holy Prism and Blessing of the Seasons.

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Blessing of seasons is good because in raid you need the mana and in mythic Plus you benefit most from the DMG (the cooldowns and mana are still nice too)

Holy prism is reasonable aoe (maintenance) heal, that is more impactful paired with BoV

Lights hammer does add a lot of HPS in raid when used well. It does require decent placement and slight consideration of when it’s placed as well. If you place before toll and day break, the extra shocks can make it come back faster. -while dropping a ground heal isn’t my favorite, I value the added decision making in the play style that increases its value.

Daybreak and divine toll should not be a single button. There are reasons why you would press one before the other or separately altogether. Those considerations and the benefit of those options should not be watered down by combining them into a single spell.

Tyrs and divinity is probably the only spell combo that’s cast together so much so that it would justify making it a single button.

If the goal is to reduce button mode then we should not simultaneously reduce the characteristics of our playstyle that make it engaging

Some ways we could reduce button bloat:

  • Remove concecration and make judgment apply it on the target you hit (I don’t see a reason why you would want to apply those separately)

  • perhaps there is some way to combine bubble and BoP, maybe two charges of bubble that you could apply on yourself or others. Honestly you could make a macro for the two current spells

  • we don’t need flash AND holy light, maybe combine into one with a choice node to make it work like one or the other

  • divine protection and blessing of sacrifice could be a single spell - DR for yourself or sac if cast on another person (maybe two charges since they can be paired, to use on yourself and other person at the same time)

There are ways to reduce button bloat without losing spells and the niche decision making they allow for, just because you don’t find them useful enough

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I think you are misinterpreting me. As an Hpal, I love my 30+ buttons. I love having all these tools Aura Mastery, Barrier of Faith, BoP, BoS, Tyr’s, DT, Dayberak, LoH,Blessings etc.

But we gotta recognize the issues of having this many CDs and support abilities.

You may said that blessing is good because it increase our DPS, our HPS or our mana regen, but how neccesary its the spell really? For healing buff we got either Wings or Tyr’s. For mana regen we have infusions and Daybreak. So, how badly do we really need the spell? Would it be better to just re-tune our mana regen and our current mana consumptions/other mana tools and our rotational throughput instead ?

There’s a lot of spells that buffs us during a certain window, blessings being one, Tyr’s, Wings, or even the dawn stacks for single spenders. We dont need this many buffs, instead, some of this power should be baked in our rotation to balance it out.

The issue with Hpal is that have twice the amount of tools of every other healer, but our CDs are more, and also are niche or weak compared to others, and even then, we need them to even catch up to other healers rotational throughput just because they are head and shoulders above us in just plain numbers, both in DPS and HPS (for 5 man content atleast).

The button bloat issue is one of the modern problems of Hpal, but also indirectly creates the whole balance crisis the spec has been facing since the nerfs from late S2 and the flawed rework we got. Right now not only its hard to balance our throughput out of CDs vs in CDs, but also in Raid vs M+.

We can’t have all these abilities be impactful because if they are, we just outclass the other healers in their niches as well, while having a lot more tools in our disposal. I would rather take some prunning and have our spenders buffed, even if they cost us some CDs or spells, so our spells feel meaningful to press once again.

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light of dawn , fix it or remove it .

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It’s broken?