I have never seen a streamer ruin a spec like Ellesmere has for Hpal.
Let me get straight:
CS gets removed and Judge/HS CD’s get lowered such that button press frequency and builder/spender economy are effectively unchanged. The crude summary is that Hpals press Judge twice as often instead of pressing CS and Judge half as often.
This change goes a long way to making Hpal more enjoyable because its moment to moment gameplay is more fluid and the melee limitation on the spec is effectively gone.
A significant portion of the spec talent tree and power becomes Judgment talents but it works because we are now pressing it so often. The overall flow of the spec is also improved because playing around procs on Judge is far better when the CD is 4-5 seconds rather than 9-10 seconds. Not getting a proc doesn’t feel too bad because we can try again quickly and averages even out over shorter periods of time.
Then Ellesmere complains that Hpal lost its depth and that he’s falling asleep in keys. I don’t see how, as Hpal didn’t lose much at all. It still builds and spends Holy Power at similar rates. It still chooses between Faith and Virtue. It still utilizies procs as it gets them and it still heals predominately with Beacons, HS, Judge, WoG/LoD and some casted heals where appropriate. Hpals cooldowns are practically unchanged.
The major difference in gameplay is Hpals now press Judge where they would have pressed CS. If losing that pseudo choice made the spec boring then I guess Hpal is boring.
Then Blizzard decide to bring CS back at the 11th hour. To do this, HS and Judge go back to their longer CD’s to make space for CS as a builder. So now Hpals regain their clunky melee requirement, building Holy Power gains a tedious, trivial and meaningless choice between two buttons that do the same thing with different animations except that half the Hpal talent tree isn’t built around CS and CS also does no damage or healing.
So now Hpals are going into Midnight with knee-jerk and ill thought out changes that only look at giving Hpal another meaningless button to press but with zero thought about how to balance talents, procs and interactions for that button. All because the Hpal streamer didn’t like losing CS.
Maybe Ellesmere had nothing to do with it. Maybe Blizz had planned this out regardless of the very vocal feedback from the prominent minority. But these patch notes might as well read:
- Veneration half as good
- Empyrean Legacy half as good
- Crusaders Might nuked
- Divine Glimpse half as good
- Truth Prevails half as good
- Judgment damage halved
- Hammer and Anvil half as good
- Awakening half as good
- Reflection of Radiance half as good
- Divine Revelations mana return half as good (CS costs more mana btw)
All that and more to get CS back. It better be a damn good button to justify that or Hpal just went from good to absolutely awful. Spoilers: It’s not a good button (and Hpal is dumpster tier on beta already).
RIP Hpal. Likely worse than Pres now in beta and by far the most clunky/unfun healer until it gets yet another rework that may or may not work.
