I am not a frequent forum poster, though i often read them both official and unofficial ones concerning my class. I decided to post to see how the rest of the pve paladin holy community feels about the upcoming suggested changes and express my concerns.
(as a side note - i play on a semi hardcore 10 man guild having finished progression West 66)
Divine Plea: no longer reduces the amount of healing done by 50%. : Very welcome change , saving us also from a situational glyph slot. Was it needed ? Cant say . Having to plan the downtime on the encounter to use it was a challenge imo and now its pretty much faceroll on cd.I assume the reason was the fact that our reg mechanic doesnt scale with gear compared to other healing classes.(rapture from spirit , tea from crit etc) so they felt like paladin needed to be able to fit more DP usage.
Eternal Flame: Initial heal down 30 % . A direct throughout nerf . Probably to bring the paladin down to the desirable output. Not much of a concern imo healing meter was never the point anyway.
Sacred Shield (New) : Holy: When the Paladin or their Beacon of Light target falls below 30% health, that target gains a Sacred Shield absorbing damage equal to 30% of their maximum health. Sacred Shield can only occur once every 2 minutes. A very weak pve cd , assuming that many tank deaths caused directly from higher % (reminds me of the old AD prot auto proc which was many times ignored) Nothing special , might prevent a tank death by generally imo very pvp oriented.
Sanctified Wrath : Holy: Now also increases the critical strike chance of Holy Shock by 20% A very interesting and clever change imo . Such mechanic wise changes i love and welcome .Redesigning SW talent made it desirable since HS has almost a guaranteed crit (>90% ) , thus giving constant Infusion procs, thus making the talent a strong choice and giving a good sunergy between SW and the new 2 set bonus.A sunergy and utility that is good enough to give up an extra cd like Holy Avenger and dont simultaneously use AW and DF as 1 cd most of the time since none was good enough to stand alone.If you increase amount of mastery given from the new 4 set (to like 3.5k mastery like the priest) people will have a choice between speccing SW with 4 set and having 2 cds meing AW and DF or speccing HA and having 3 cds AW ,DF , HA (prolly 2 since most of the times first 2 need to be used to gether to feel the difference) or speccing DP if you enjoy random procs . In any case this change along with the new tier made the whole talent tier viable.
Mastery: Illuminated Healing no longer activates from periodic healing effects. Testing on the ptr showed : No mastery shield from EF, No mastery shield from Light's Hammer.Overall the entire changes account to 30-35% nerf to Holy Paladin Healing. I would even go higher to 40 % assuming that on 10 man environment EF usage compared to LoD was way more frequent.(thanks to Aladya from Method for the numbers)
So , here are my 3 concerns :
1) Are you planning to switch the gameplay of the holy paladin back to the tbc playstyle when paladin was there just to endlessly spam tank frames having insane amount of overheal ? Are we going back to that braindead model , spam the tank -> assist a low % raider -> spam the tank -> use a hand -> spam the tank etc ? I m asking because i personally like the ''something between druid and disco model'' ( as GW named it) that we have now , requires thinking before and while acting.Cant understand why we would go back to a primitive healing model.
2)Was it wise to remove our blanket tool and a huge component of our healing while constantly moving part ? (absorb from EF) Having already seen more or equally hardcore paced 10 man guilds replacing Holy Paladins on Lei Shen progress ( for mainly overall dps requirements -only monks and priests could do that now also druids + for the intense and constant raid healing requirements on last phase ) Are we going to see more holy paladins being benched / swapped with alts on 10 man environment during progression coming from guild that are completely outside of the world first race and concider themselves semi hardcore?
3)Will the 30-35 % output overall healing nerf cause holy paladins to tremble about being replaced by other healing classes assuming that there s no compansation for it. Dont get me wrong i hate meters . I ve found myself below paladin tank many times this tier and constantly way below our discipline priest and that doesnt really bother me . However there s an output minimum limit below which you feel as being a burden to your team, as another class would perform so much better that would even allow to lower the number of healers..Taking into account that paladin has no raid healing tools ( has plenty tools and mitigation tools but no healing ones eg like shaman) i wouldnt like to feel im heading below that minimum limit.
Suggestions: Nerf the output of the class like you did last patch if you feel that its overperforming. (though i can already think of another absorb spec that is way more insane and highly required mechanic wise to progress that needs the nerf first - a class that gets 2 times the mastery from new 4set + haste compared to paladin but i dont wont to go the discussion in that direction) Come with more clever and challenging changes instead of kripling a class and sending its playstyle back to stone age.
Sincerelly, Cvl Ravencrest EU
|
|