Blessing of dawn is 20 yards and light of dawn is a radial up to 25 yards. I don’t think light bearer has a range either. I can still stand at 20yrds away and basically do everything. If I have to HoJ someone I can make believe I’m going into melee range just to stop short.
Every spec of paladin has a majority of their abilities usable at range. They’re not really a melee class anymore. At least in my opinion, the class fantasy is kind of sucking. All specs of paladin feel more like holy mages in heavy armor as opposed to melee combatants.
My holy pally rocking the silver hand 2h’er tmog won’t have a single skill that uses it to swing.
Let me try to be more nuanced because there is a lot said here that is fair to point out regarding the melee aspects of holy: I think the struggle in finding consensus largely derives from the difference between a “healer who has some melee attacks” and “MELEE HEALER”. A holy paladin indeed has always had some melee or short range attacks, and I am not advocating for it to necessarily lose all of that. They 1000% had abilities that made them pop in and out of melee, giving them a lot of incentive to roam the battlefield freely - it was one of my favorite things about them! But that does not make them a melee healer either! Holy Light is not melee. Flash of Light is not melee. Work of Glory is not melee. Holy Shock is not melee. Even Light of Dawn is not melee - short range, but not melee (especially if you had the talents or buffs to make it go further)!! The beacon distances themselves cap in value at about 10 yards too, not melee. The point is that the core mechanics of healing for this spec is ranged, not melee, so even if you can do some functions only in melee, that does not mean the whole spec is melee oriented.
In terms of the class fantasy, I have read the quote you referenced several times over the years, and I believe it is misunderstood. I say this because of what I mentioned about mistweavers in the same era. It would be borderline schizophrenic to write a whole blue post on why melee healing worked so badly when attempted on mistweaver (mana was too easy to maintain, too much dps while healing, too awful for most players to optimize, added conflict over space in melee during mechanics, etc.), but then claim melee healing is the class fantasy of holy paladin? No, I believe what they were leaning into is the class fantasy of the armored, tanky nature of paladin who had the “tools” to stand on the front lines. The only plate wearing healer who had many abilities to mitigate damage (which you are at higher risk of recieving when that close), literally sacrifice their own health to heal others, AND some short range (even a few melee) skills that required them to be able to position in all kinds of ways, both range and melee. The goal was essentially to make a paladin informally play like an evoker where you would be punished if you lived 40 yards away all day, but you didn’t actually need to be glued to melee either. Instead you could play as a mid-range with the flexibility to go in and out as needed. This was crystalized in their new mastery that was range oriented - you do more healing the closer you stand near your target. So, if the mage is in Narnia, what do you do? Stay in melee and do less healing, or walk closer and heal him for more? It is almost like they wanted you to roam!
Legion also wasn’t the start of “melee healer”. You can look at logs and see the crusader’s might talent only got 25% use on the last tier, and sub 5% in other raid tiers of the expansion. Every other talent was range, the rotation was still range spells, and your artifact weapon was entirely focused on your hard casts too. As I stated before, the first time that “melee healer” popped up for holy was 1 month into the BODA when glimmer was figured out. You can argue it was one tier before with Avenging Crusader builds, but that was when holy was doing so poorly in the rankings that it was sort of a meme build that got them by, but nobody took it seriously as a proper way to design the class then. AND you still clicked your hard heals between wings even in that build!
Ngl is always funny how people that love changes like this either have a non max lvl, or some random spec, meanwhile the people that hate it show their paladin on the forum post.
In my eyes, this IS a melee healer, while you should have the versatility to reposition as a fight demands it should be optimal for you to hang in melee range to use your toolkit to the fullest, and that is what I love so much about holy paladin, the worry about getting rid of crusader strike isn’t that hpal is going to feel bad to play, it’s that making our entire kit ranged focused is to make that side of it pointless when the position requirements are part of why so many people enjoy it.
I distinctly recall even prior to the shift towards crusader’s might that I was still playing Legion hpal in the melee to dps with crusader strike and consecrate, and to ensure my tank was in the range of my auras.
The frontline positioning that I consider melee is why I love playing hpaladin so much, and i’d rather play a priest if I’m going to be 100% ranged.
For me, pruning Crusader strike instead of making it feel more rewarding to use gives me the worry that it’s going to move away from that melee positioning, and that’s not what I want from hpal when we have priest and shaman to play more traditional ranged healing roles, whereas we have druid for the option of fluid positioning (but still plays primarily as a ranged for healing) and evoker for more of that mid-line feel.
Holy pally aura’s had like an 8-10yrd range on them right? I absolutely remember going around and hugging the tank in melee, staying out of range of the rest of the party solely to focus my aura on him. I was pretty much always in melee crusader striking and shifting my placement to whoever could benefit from my aura the most, since the more people you had in it, the less effective it was on each person.
I much more preferred that version of aura’s as well.
I think where you are losing me is that historically for about 15 years you did click holy light, flash of light, and holy shock rotationally 24/7, melee or not. You also have many expansions of logs with an absurd number of pulls by different players who demonstrate they did click the range spells, especially not in melee - I’m looking at them right now. That is not to say that, when you were bored, you couldn’t go in and smack the boss a few times for fun, but you were never glued to the boss in order to heal like you are now. I don’t want to be glued, it isn’t fun for me.
You arent glued too the boss too heal even now??
They are removing a gainer, how is that supposedly making it too where now u have no problems healing all of a sudden, but with a melee button you now NEED too be in melee?
If it was still there in midnight nothing is litterally stopping u from healing at range you can even doo it rn easily if u really wanted.
You dont need too be glued to a boss to heal, ngl either u are massively
exaggerating or you are barely playin the spec as is.
Looking at logs, in the current tier you are right that you have a hero build that does not require crusader strike, but you also have one that heavily requires it (the two piece even modifies crusader strike itself). So if I want to lightsmith, I have to melee. Furthermore, look at previous tiers in this expansion. You see a ton of use of crusader strike specifically for both hero trees. So very slight changes in tuning or a tier bonus can wildly swing how much I am going to have to spam a melee dps button to generate holy power to heal. I do not like that, thus removing that interaction is a plus in my mind. I just want to heal people and not look at the boss, worrying if I’m in reach of it 24/7 to generate holy power.
Again you dont NEED to, you are going off of logs where people are playing the spec and wanting too play as optimally as possible which involves pressing it.
You can easily play at any lvl you want even if not pressing it.
Wow player always act like they NEED too have the perfect setup from whatever to do at all well along with meta blah blah.
None of it is necessary too play at a high lvl, you could instead of pressing crusader strike rn use a flash of light or a holy light you are losing less then a second.
Rn theres an option too play differently whereas in midnight there willl be no option. Also you would still need to be in melee too use shield of righteousness anyway but i guess since they removed all dmg that does i guess it dosent matter.
As stated, my main concern is how it will work in practice. The only thing I don’t really want is to go back to standing at max distance and just casting. I could just be a priest if I wanted to do that. Class fantasy and all that.
Which I suppose won’t be the case because SotR is still our only damage finisher, but that could change.
Because they want hpal to be hpriest but plate.
I havent touched holy since the df debacle and I for sure wont now. Nothing will beat my favorite version of holy, the melee strong spender healer
I dont care about the primary heals being ranged becauss that’s a nessecity of healing to begin with. What I care about is hpaladin becoming fully ranged because it only has one or two abilities (that are almost optional at this rate) that have any sort of impact on your positioning.
What I want is for holy paladin to have a melee kit that rewards you for using it to augment your healing, i want it to be actually using its weapons and heavy armor and not just be a ranged priest with a big hunk of metal on its back. Regardless of how important it was or was not in the past the identity hpal currently has of being the frontline healer that cycles between its heals and melee attacks is a very unique one and I’d rather see blizzard work to improve it then give up on it.
Crusader strike is just one cog in the machine but it was an extra reason to be in the melee and I either want it to be more rewarding to use, or at least have its use be an option.
Mistweaver is getting a choice node to emphasize casting vs melee, why can’t hpal get the same? Something akin to:
‘Crusader Strike now grants 2 holy power and heals up to X targets for Y% split evenly among them.’ Vs ‘Holy Shock now does X% more healing and has a Y% faster cooldown, but now replaces Crusader Strike and talents that function with CS now function with HS’
Obviously that alone probably won’t work but the idea of it is what im after, the choice to either spec out of CS for a better HS or to spec into a stronger CS.
There’s always the potential for the new talent which converts HP spender healing to damage to make SotR obsolete as well. So, even more class fantasy out the window when it’s just heal spam at all times.
Mistweaver is an interesting topic in all this. I think, put simply, the devs 1.) figured out how to make the melee healer work better in that build , 2.) thematically they could more cleanly fit it in the talents (crane vs dragon), 3.) may want mistweaver to hold this melee healer space more exclusively to give it a better reason to exist, 4.) their raid buff fundamentally requires dps to work and 5.) crusader strike was a somewhat different problem from what mistweaver had when balancing.
While the first four points are pretty clear, the 5th I’d expand on and say that the issue becomes crusader strike generating holy power. I think the instant cast holy power generator that it was created a lot of tuning problems for years now. If it didn’t generate holy power, you couldn’t shield of the righteous; if it didn’t scale with haste, you’d have too much of a gap in rotation; if it wasn’t instant cast, you’d say it felt awful to click; and if you made it have a longer range, people would say it is too strong or not “melee” enough.
Honestly, I think they have wanted to delete it for a while, but couldn’t because there was too much of a hole then in holy dps, but now that problem is largely solved ironically by the more spammy nature of current holy shock and to some extent judgment.
The biggest problem is that while they seem fine with actually making a choice between MW melee and ranged healing, they’ve honestly made no such effort for hpal.
The really want Hpal to be doing both at the same and figure out ways to punish the spec if it leans too far into one direction over another.
