Caligula

No, people aren't going to pick either class for that reason, that's true. Lets compare something similar. Why not give mages an "Improved Fireball" talent where after every crit it increases the damage done to the target by 20% for the next 4 sources of fire damage. See where I'm going with this? Each class should have it's own distinct play-style and gearing style (this is a gear based game).

Saying "Oh well just give Paladins and Shaman the same talents and mana regen abilities as Priests and Druids" is a slippery slope argument. Just as removing racials would be. MP/5 would be a "useless stat" much like Intellect mostly was before this new change. The only result is that there is less and less variety between classes and gear choices.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...s/Caligula.png

 

Tharia

seeing that Paladins have s***loads of support, noone is going to argue the normal raid lineup with 3 paladins even IF you are as bad a healer as you claim you will be in 2.4.

 

flyingtoastr

You're entirely right that having Salv and Kings are nearly mandated by the raiding standards today (I personally think Wisdom/Might are in the "nice to have" catagory and not terribly important in most situations, but I digress). However, I did raid back before patch 1.7, and I remember how it was when the sole purpose of a Paladin was to buff and spam Cleanse, and it is not a particularly rewarding waste of time. It is not fun to simply click your pallypower (back then it was BuffAhoy) and consider it your sole job in a raid. Especially now that prot and ret are coming into their own, using Blessings as the excuse for Paladin viability is a very weak argument.

Paladins aren't especially great healers as it is right now (not even looking at the 2.4 changes). One-trick pony healers who can't do anything effectively but spam on a single tank aren't in high demand when almost everything involves high raid damage.

 

• Playered

Paladins are *ok* but they have fallen from the #1 to #4 of the healers in terms of endurance to be fair, even more-so in 2.4.
They do not have "shitloads of support" they have blessings of which 2 are required and 3 is preferred and its not even a defining trait of being Holy so with the all favored Hybridism of TBC their benefit can be achieved without needing them as healers.
You also have Judgement of Wisdom which is actually lowering their potential healing to keep up and is actually more beneficial for a Hybrid version (as both melee) to do instead.

Their FoL tank spam can be replaced by a Resto Druid who can also do more while doing this.
Their HL anti-spike can be replaced by a GHeal (IDS) Priest who has far superior regeneration for doing this 'better'.


Fair enough they bring more to the raid than a Resto Druid in terms of group/raid benefit, but we can ultimately pump out far more HPS over a longer duration and their benefits can be aquired by an 'offspec' which yields slightly more synergy.


I doubt you will find any Priest, Druid, Shaman healer with a clue who will say Paladins are perfectly fine on the regeneration front.

 

Désespoir

I highly prefer having a paladin for healing on MT where damage burst can happen, 2s cast and zillions times more chance of critical heal just when it is really needed is a valuable argument for me.

The only situation where I would consider an IDS priest being exclusively on MT is when any upgrade of damage reduction is needed and trying to keep Inspiration on the MT as often as possible (and those days I think it is impossible due to heal duties that most of raids apply)

 

◊ Cathela

What sets holy paladins apart right now is simply the lack of versatility. A holy paladin has essentially two heals: the fast small one and the big slow one. There's no multi-target heal, no damage shield, no HoT, and no reactive heal (a la PoM/Earthshield). At one point, this was balanced by the large gap in longevity between paladins and other healers; in 2.0, paladins could last far longer than other healers. Since that time, Illumination has been nerfed and the other healing classes have all gotten substantial mana regeneration buffs.

Clearly the developers want the different healing classes to have a more uniform mana-endurance; which entails less longevity for paladins and more for other classes. Which is fine by itself, if that's part of their vision for healing in this game. But it leaves holy paladins substantially weaker than other healers; everyone has the same longevity, but the other classes have far more options. It's as though paladins are given a hammer while everyone else is given a toolbox with screwdrivers, saws, routers, etc. At one point at least the paladin hammer was better than the hammers other classes got, but now other classes are getting good hammers as well.

Paladins need another tool in the box if they're going to stay competitive. The changes to Holy Shock in 2.4 seem to be sort of a half-hearted effort to turn it into a legitimate and somewhat unique healing tool, but it's really not nearly strong enough to be useful in that way.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

Wednesday

Mages also have a similar talent in their arcane tree, so it's not that terribly unique.

You don't have to have exactly the same mechanic in order for spirit to be beneficial either. Before the 2.1 nerf to focus and illumination, elemental shaman and paladins could chain crits to get outside the 5sr, thus making spirit at least somewhat beneficial.

 

alkis

The way it is worded is different:

"After getting a critical effect from your Flash of Light, Holy Light, or Holy Shock heal spell, gives you a 100% chance to gain mana equal to 60% of the base cost of the spell."

The way you define Mana Regeneration makes Illumination entirely fit in it. What you want to separate here is passive regeneration, which gives you mana when you do nothing and active regeneration which gives you mana when you actually do something. Illumination is regeneration but not a passive one, that's all.

 

• Endahl

What you have to realize is to gain a critical effect on FoL, HL or Holy Shock to begin with, you have to spend 100% of the spell's mana cost. So you have to spend 100% of the cost for a chance to gain 60% back, making it a mana conservation mechanic, rather than actual regen -- effectively a discount on some of your casts. The only exception to this is when you activate Divine Illumination, causing spells to be discounted by 50% before Illumination is taken into account.

"Active regen" would be things like Shadowfiend, Evocation, Innervate, or white damage on a mob with JoW on it.

Call it semantics if you want, but the fact remains mp5 is a far more effective regen mechanic (i.e. actual regen, which will give you back mana you've spent instead of offsetting costs on mana you will spend), which means crit on paladins has absolutely nothing on the spi on priests and druids come 2.4.

 

levk

Illumination didn't put you outside 5sr. You still paid for the spell but then it was refunded. Regardless, outside of 5sr regen is pretty low due to absence of spirit on paladin gear.

 

Caligula

Without going in to too much detail, I think the latest version of Felmyst begs to differ. Also remember the other tools that Paladins bring too, BoP, and bubbles are quite unique and also give Paladins more survivability than any other healer.

Sure, they could do something like make Illumination scale based on the Paladins Intellect (and thereby making Int a huge stat for Pallys), but Spirit is so far removed from Paladin itemization and mechanics that basing their regen around it doesn't make sense at all.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...s/Caligula.png

 

Fleebenworth

This line of argument is largely over semantics and quite stupid. Basically if a pally sits around and does not cast they will not receive any mana from illumination, showing it's clearly not regen in the same vein as priest/druid spirit regen.

Also people forget to mention BoP, DS, judgements, etc. that pallies bring to the table.

 

Tyrian

Thats just bickering over semantics, they both accomplish the same thing: Let you cast for a longer period of time before running oom. Illumination can easily be justified as a (indirect) regen mechanic in this regard, it just depends on your POV.

Which goes against the idea behind Pally healing. This is a theoretical what-if thats just silly, as pally regen (from illumination) complements their class strength: spammable single target heals.

 

flyingtoastr

People are still ignoring the fact that an "offspec" paladin brings everything a full Holydin does outside of Improved Blessing of Wisdom. A ret paladin can keep up JoW easier than a holy pally, a prot paladin still has Blessing of Kings, and every pally can BoP that damn shadowpriest who pulls aggro every single Boodboil attempt. There is nothing especially unique from a Holy Pally other than an extra 9 Mp5 on your BoW. This is why you can't say "holy pallys bring lots of utility", because every pally brings the same (if not more) utility.

Illumination requires you to spend mana to get it back. It is not regen, it is cost reduction. They have the same effect, but they are not the same thing.

When I'm at OOM my Illumination does nothing. If I'm silenced my Illumination does nothing. I have to put in mana to get any out.

 

Fiola

Meditation only works if you put yourself in the 5SR, which means that you cast something that cost mana.


The difference between the two mechanics is that Illumination returns mana proportional to what you spent, and Meditation returns a set amount of mana regardless of spell cost.

 

levk

They should add unrelenting storm to that curse resist talent noone bothers with, but also, the toolbox has to be expanded; holy shock can be a part of it but it can't be the whole thing there has to be more. They painted themselves into a corner with illumination (how would it work with aoe heals or earthshield type stuff). They'd have to think of some new stuff. They should allow us to bubble, Divine Illumination and Avenging Wrath other people.

Huh? The guy before implied that you get outside 5sr with a string of crits when illumination was full 100%, I was just pointing out it wasn't correct.

 

tedv

On the subject of making Paladins an interesting and worthwhile class to bring to raids, I'll note that currently all four classes with healing are considered primarily healers, with damage / tank specs as the "off spec". There's no reason this needs to be the case. I feel like we're approaching a point where paladin healers a purely optional but still beneficial due to extra blessings, the same way elemental shaman are both optional and useful. In other words, the healing tree is becoming an "off spec". Ironically, the prot tree is useful in raids for offtanking, and the retribution tree gives reasonable (but not stellar) damage and a blessing without costing a healer slot.

I don't think there's any way to give Paladins a wider variety of heals without making them feel too much like one of the three good healing classes. So if you can't add heals, what about adding useful damage abilities? There isn't a class in the game that can effectively switch between heals and damage mid-fight, the same way feral druids can switch between tanking and damage, but it would be interesting to have such a class. You could start out doing damage, and then switch to healing during portions of spike damage, or if a healer dies. I really enjoy the few times on my shadow priest that I also need to do spot healing. Even though my healing is low in damage gear, I have fun with challenge of balancing healing and damage. (Generally this is just on Gurtogg for threat and Archimonde to save someone who absolutely cannot die.)

The best way to solve this problem would be giving paladins a talent deep in holy that increases their spell damage by a percent of their +healing, probably 30% when maxed. This means an item with X +healing would give a total of 63% X +damage (33% from the item and 30% from the talent). That's enough spell damage to be competitive, and enough of a bonus that paladins would still rather stack +healing gear than +damage. Then just rework holy shock or give them another talented nuke spell.

Anyway, it's all theoretical, but maybe adding more healing options isn't the solution.

 

Fiola

Sorry, was thinking about the overall Illumination vs. Meditation discussion when I read your post.


Illumination can be considered a "regen mechanic" like Meditation - it just scales differently.

You could look at Illumination as a cost reduction, too, but since mana costs are fixed, mana regen and cost reductions are fungible. With enough mana regen, you can cast an infinite number of spells. With enough cost reduction, you can cast an infinite number of spells. Different mechanics, same end goal.

 

Shelendil

Shamans have three viable raid specs. I don't think it's unreasonable for paladins to maintain this as well. I would liken elemental shamans to ret paladins. Both passable damage and bringing additional buffs.

This would be fun, but negate a lot of mechanics. Dark Barrage? Bubble. Encapsulate? Bubble. Heh heh.

 

Steveharris

Scales differently? Like, not at all? Meditation can scale by picking up gear with more spirit, Illumination can scale by training new ranks of heals. You can add more spirit, but you can't add new spell ranks. While what you say about enough regen and cost reduction is true, there is currently no way in game that you can attain such cost reduction/mana regen.

The difference, and the primary problem paladins have with this, is that you can go outside of the 5SR as a priest/druid and get a substantial amount of mana back. As a paladin, if you get an unlucky string of crits, you can kiss that mana you spent goodbye, because there's no spirit on paladin gear.

 

levk

I don't think it'd be all that huge; it's still a long cooldown and it 'drops' agro.

As far as trading damage for healing ability I'd have to resent those comments. It's this line of thinking that got us to this sorry state in the first place. Granted it's not like I play the game anymore; but a lot of people play the class to heal and trading healing ability for damage is just giving away healing.

 

Fiola

Increase your spell crit% or spell haste, and you will increase your Illumination returns. Increase your spirit (and in 2.4, Int), and you increase your Meditation returns.


They're scaling with different stats, but they're both scaling.** Is that not scaling differently?


**I'd like to point out that at least half of the healing plate out there is loaded with spell crit, which is kinda sad for us paladins without illumination

 

Tyrian

I think Paladins need an inspiration-type proc. It always seemed strange that the best single target healer is missing this glaringly huge buff. I prefer our first priest in the raid to be COH, the second being DS who can go on MT... and Shamans raid heal. At the very least, itd be nice if Paladins had the ability to extend/refresh the duration - even if its initial application was done by the shaman/priest.

 

Steveharris

No, because it still only returns 60% of the base mana, and is still based on the chance that your heals crit. Telling paladins to stack spell haste doesn't help much because there's really no haste gear available until BT/Hyjal, and even then you have to give up crit for the haste in a lot of cases. Anyway, we're debating in combat mana regen mechanics; maybe they're similar, maybe they scale the same, but if a paladin goes OOM, they might as well go mix another drink because their mana regen outside 5SR is laughable.

 

• sordee

Welcome to Holy Priest raiding in TBC? /troll

For the first X months of raiding, typical healer setup for was: 1IDS Priest, 1 Resto Druid, 1 Resto Shaman, and 3 Holy Paladin. Then add additional any spec healer to fill raid.
Since recent patches witch increases in mana regen for other classes, this is much more balanced (with having 2 Resto Shaman being nice, plus having a iDS + CoH priest).
Yes 2.4 this increases the trend.

But: All three trees are now viable, and you will still want the first Holy Pally in the raid for Improved Blessing of Wisdom.

So 2.4 = 1 Holy Pally, 1 IDS Priest, 1 Resto Druid, 1 Resto Shaman. Now add 2-4 any spec Healers as needed.


-Having said this, after all the improved regen for Priests/Druids (and prior Shaman), if Paladin's are truly lacking, you will see Divine Illumination tweaked up to say 70%.

Seriously, when is the last time in a PVE situation have you seen a Holy Pally oom and not been able to Pot. (PVP is a completely different situation)