I just watched yesterday the AWC 2024 finals. No holy paladins.
I watched last week the MDI 2024. No holy paladins at all.
Do we have a problem here ? Blizzard ? Are you still there ?
The class feels bad now. To AOE heal effectively for 40s I need to precast Tyr and Hand - bad design. I need holy power and also mana to cast spells … really ? Mages, warlocks and other classes don’t even use mana anymore. I didn’t see any of them OOM in any scenario (except for arcane, but nobody is playing the spec).
To do some DPS must be in melee range but if you’re too far away your healing is bad - mastery fail.
To have some decent crits you need to be 6000+ crit rate … so low haste and versa.
… and yes, since you need to manage like 10 spells to do some poor heals, and another 4-5 to do some damage, nobody wants to play holy paladin anymore.
Conclusion ? With the healing hell we’re in (yes, healing is the hardest thing in wow now), I have to wait on EU servers over 10 minutes to find a decent healer for M 20+ keys.
The class is a really bad shape now. Please think about it Blizzard and do something about it.
I did something about it, and to get your attention I cancelled my sub. Main hpal for the past 15 years here. No, I don’t want to reroll because Blizzard wants me to play something else. I’d rather stop playing and that’s it.
I also find hpal mobility to be quite on the lower end, since we cannot compare to monks, druids or dracthyr. Yet we have our pony …
For now I play ret on higher keys (not above M22-23 tho’) and hpal just to help boost my friends in keys up to 18. Above that I’m having difficulties keeping them alive, since my group isn’t pro and does mistakes pretty often. Max key as holy was Fall 20 about one month ago and I failed to complete the run, not being able to keep everyone alive. Since then I waited to see MDI and AWC to understand if I’m the problem.
My ilvl is 485 holy and 487 ret.
Again thank you for your kind replies and sorry for my bad English, I’m from Italy.
If you’re curious, my pally is Taiji on Zenedar EU and we’re a bunch of old guys close to 50 years old, playing casual.
WoW should be easy for the casual players too. I’m not a Chinese WoW playing robot …
I’ve been a healer main for the last two expansions. Holy Paladin was the first healer I dabbled in during Legion, and when Glimmer became a thing back in BfA is when I first started seriously playing it.
Since then I’ve played every other healer in the AOTC/+20 mythic dungeon range.
This current season I started off with Disc Priest and Mistweaver, because they were both specs I had never played before to that level. I just started catching my Paladin up, because I like Prot and Holy. But the difference in performance compared to Disc/MW is stark. Especially when it comes to mana.
With the current Disc set giving constant Mindbender uptime, mana isn’t an issue. Mistweaver gets Mana Tea, which gives them a built-in mana return during downtime or movement. Meanwhile my 475 hpal is stopping to drink 2-3x a dungeon in a +18. I know my ilvl is a bit behind, but +18s shouldn’t be so mana intensive to actually stop to drink. Heck even my sub-470 ilvl Resto Druid doesn’t touch mana in m+, without the need for mana return from Mindbender/Mana Tea (I realize Resto Druid has worse mana problems in raid, even compared to hpal).
Holy Paladin feels SO close to being excellent, though. If spenders hit harder and mana concerns were addressed (i.e., removing mana cost from damaging spells and/or adding some kind of mana-return mechanic to something like Judgement) the spec would feel pretty darn amazing. The upcoming Herald of the Sun hero tree seems to address the “spenders hitting harder” bit, but I don’t want to wait until the next expansion for that to happen…
Hpal is very easy to swap to and kill quickly for multiple reasons, its utility is removable via purge/mass dispel, its mobility is relatively limited, and DH has always been one of our better counters as we have nothing to go against magic damage and they have so much mobility they can train an hpal however long they want to and dh is insanely good right now. DH has purge for things like BoP/freedom and also reverse for HoJ.
On top of that, hpal healing is not as powerful as rdruid/rsham right now, not even as powerful as pres, and our damage is as bad as rdruid/rsham (and far worse than pres) because it was nerfed a ton since the rework and we have to trade healing to do damage by glimmering enemies and spending holy power on denounce if taken. Rdruid/Rsham also have a lot more control than we do via lightning lasso/static field totem/hex/etc and cyclone/root.
Lastly if hpal wants to conserve mana it has to do a decent amount of casting with IoL FoLs and that is just difficult to do consistently especially in the current ‘meta’. If DH wasn’t meta and it was just outlaw rogue blasting you may see hpal pulled out a bit more but as it stands right now its just too counterable and probably too weak.
I really feel this post… hpal seems to be better for PvE content. I feel like I cannot compete with monks in the PvP setting. It is honestly so frustrating and i dont want to reroll but feel as if I have too…
As someone who picked paladin up again, specifically holy, I’m going to try and hold out a good month or so into s4 to see if we get some love. I don’t really care where the tuning is at, but WoG heals like crap. Light of dawn heals like crap. Judgement absorb is negligible, it really feels like we have to blow CD’s just to do what other healers can without CD’s, and then they still have their CD’s.
Blizzard massively over nerfed hpallys in s2. Its incredibly unfortunate. And the fact we’ve gone all s3 without a look is bothering. Whatever rework they did was fine up until they broke us again same expansion. Its kinda crazy and feels like blizzard doesn’t have anyone playing holy paladin to begin with.
Current Hpal representation is about 5% of all healers.
Our representatives/content creators determined that the class was in such a bad place that long time Hpal players had to move on this season like Ellesmere, Syreal, Razhag among others. And now there’s basically not a single left.
You can tell the community perception us horrible when listening to our healer content creators when the spec is currently ranked at the bottom of every tier list without question and theres whole videos about how you should basically play whatever you find the most fun, but avoid this spec specifically.
And yet, Blizzard gave us a “relative buff” by nerfing 3-4 of the top healers. It’s a joke honestly. It’s so easy for them to patch fix the issues to hold us over until The War Within too.
As a good indicator of how this spec is being intentionally held back, Blizzard found a bug that Wings doesn’t buff Tyr’s healing and so they fixed it on the alpha and haven’t fixed it on live.
Like tell me that’s not intentional. They are petrified of this spec being evenly remotely good after the fiasco that was season 2.
Buff WoG by 20%.
Buff Holy shock by 20% and reduce its mana cost.
Both of these together are somewhere between 5-8% overall buff which the spec really needs either way, even ifnwe compare it to S4 healers after changes.
If its too much, dont touch Holy shock then. If its too much, Move power from Blessing of Dawn to baseline WoG and LoD.
Roll back Daybreak and/or Blessing of Winter mana nerfs.
There you have, band aid fix for S4 that wont solved all of Hpal issues, wont probably make it meta, but would make the class worth to play again. Thats probably all you gonna need for a couple of months.
Like one user said in reddit: “you cant nerf other healers to Hpal levels, because Hpal current gameplay loop is broken”
