Blackthought

Does Bacon still work this way? I thought that was a bug.

 

flyingtoastr

It was fixed. It doesn't double heal anymore, and as it still only works on effective healing it's a tough sell to dump 1300 mana every minute for a very small gain.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

• Avitus

I really hope that due to some weird misunderstanding of what people are writing the Devs don't go ahead and nerf Ret to bits.

Holy needs desirability. The other two trees are fine as they are.



What strikes me most is the double nerf to Divine Plea. Iirc it was introduced as a channeled 6 sec cast (= no healing during that time) that returns 50% of your total mana, 2 min cd.

This wasn't working for Ret/Prot due to the channeling, so it was moved to a self buff. How did we go from that to a 15 second silence for 25% mana?


If they want to maintain the 100% healing reduction then it needs to be a much much shorter effect, the original 6 seconds sounds about right. Or they can always remove the healing reduction and just make the effect weaker, say 30% base mana.

 

Mordekhuul

You are probably right. I have most closely followed the protection changes and am only really concerned about holy for my friends that play the spec and for our raids in Wrath, where I'd like to have one healadin for Imp BoW and/or kings.

EDIT-Corrected even as I typed this. BoL does not double-heal anymore.

I can't imagine who would go deep enough in holy for it now.

 

Fiola

People are overreacting. That's understandable as far as a "this change is stupid" gut reaction, but it should be toned down for the theorycraft analysis. As noted by Avitus above, DS is a craptastic "AoE heal". Claiming that it's better than deep Holy is ridiculous.


A build that goes as far as Sheath of Light for the "HoT" gives up Light's Grace (+25% HPS on HL), Infusion of Light, 10% haste from JotP, 20% Int -> SP, and the (situational) double healing output of Beacon of Light. I'd expect a Sheath to be a solid healer, but not a better healer than a BoL build, whether in terms of HPS, HPM, or versatility. The HoT added by SoL is severely over-rated - it's passive, randomly applied, and dependent on the size of the initial heal. It's nothing like Renew or lifebloom, which offer a dependable amount of healing done for a set mana cost.



As far as raid healing goes, the only "ack" change to Holy was Infusion, and even then it's not that bad. Due to the GCD, the infused HL and the instant HL offer the same amount of HPS - the only real loss there is the mobility from instant casting.

The DP changes are not fun, but it's a 1 minute CD ability. Evocation returns 60% mana over 5 minutes for mages; DP gives you 25% mana every 1 minute, or 125% of your mana over 5 minutes. There is higher lost cast time, but that's something healers can generally afford. Activating DP would be just like a Priest sitting around for a few seconds for spirit regen, and can be canceled in the same way.

 

Pyre

For what it's worth, the thread on the official beta forums has had at least one from each other healing class post saying, "Well, yeah, we have problems, but nothing like this..."

With the 3.0 patch apparently going live Oct 14 based on posts concerning the end of arena Season 4, there's really very little time left. If it goes live in this state, it'll be harder to get people to consider going back to it at a later date when and if it actually is improved.

 

Mordekhuul

Aren't you being a bit overly generous towards DP in saying it is comparable to Priests snagging a tick of outside the five second rule regen here and there through cancel casting and other tricks? A priest doing so is certainly much less risky and more easily done than trying to squeeze every ounce of regen out of DP once a minute, where you can't even cancel-cast to make sure you are ready for a big heal to pop off because you'll need to have a macro that cancels DP triggered as you start casting.

 

Corronach

People are reacting to two things, 1) Infusion of Light was the only new holy ability I thought was fun. Sacred Shield and all the upper talents are lame. 2) The overall fact that they think paladins are not just fine but awesome. I don't want to beat a dead horse, so I'll just link an awesome post on the forums by Fortch.

WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> Educating Blizzard About Holy Paladins

Absolutely none of the issues that made us awful in PVP, and very weak in PVE were addressed. You might bring 1 Holy Paladin, but they are no where near as interchangeable as other healers.

 

Mode

It depends. I'd need to run the fight in appropriate gear before I'd talk about it in that detail. In TBC, there was generally a lot of slack on how much healing you actually needed to keep a tank up. I'm sure your guild has scored its fair share of boss kills with a few dead healers, we all have. On any fight where the healers have to periodically get out of the fire, holy paladins certainly had to stop healing for a couple seconds (other than maybe a holy shock) and move like everyone else.

In conclusion, that the change is explainable doesn't mean it's good. It's still a bullshit nerf to a spec that didn't need it.

 

flyingtoastr

You can't compare DP to Evocation. If a Mage takes 10 seconds out of your rotation nothing happens. If a healer drops out for 25% of the time you wipe. Compare it to the other activated regen for healers. What's the downside to Innervate? With the massive avoidance buffs to Shadowfiends where is the problem there? How is Mana-Tide and Water Shield crippling your healing throughput? Divine Plea is not fine.

Clearly you know nothing about Priest healing if you think that they just "sit around for a few seconds spirit regening". They sit on Clearcasts. Clearcasting pops up and they just cast-cancel GHeals until the tank absolutely needs it. As soon as the first heal goes off they blow Inner Focus and do the same thing. They continually have heals queued up, they just don't use them to get 900 Mp5 until it's needed.

DP requires you to either
a) have a /cancelaura macro and hope to god those 2 DP tics can keep you going when you have to cancel it and dump all that mana you gained for a Holy Light.
b) tell your other healers to handle the tank while doing their original jobs (they'll love that).
c) say "fuck it" and spec ret to be useful.

----------

I'm honestly curious how GC continues to say that "holy pallys are wonderful" when people from other classes are visiting our beta boards to tell her she's wrong. Are they using a spreadsheet instead of real testing to determine healing effectiveness?

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

◊ Cathela

Well no, the priest can still be starting and canceling heals while still getting the regen; a paladin running DP can't really do that. IoL used to be the workaround for that; sit on your IoL proc while DP runs and just pop out your instant heal when you need to. Now, not so much.

As I said earlier, regardless of whether the current DP is properly balanced or not, it's still poorly implemented because proper use of it as a healer requires some extra macro'ing in order to remove it when you need to heal. A much better implementation would be "Restores 25% of your total mana over 15 seconds. Any healing spell you cast ends the effect." It wouldn't be exactly the same, because for example you'd be able to bandage yourself while it was up, but I don't really think that's a crucial balance point.

--

Regarding the reasons for the IoL nerf: Is it because the old form of IoL was overpowered in general, or because the 37/0/34 spec was overpowered? If it's the latter case, then a much better solution would have been to simply move IoL one or two tiers deeper in the tree. To me it always seemed like a pretty powerful talent for that point in the tree anyway.

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

 

Fiola

It used to have a zero coefficient. That's good news, as we just gained a second instant cast heal. Is the mana cost still 35 mana (or some other really tiny amount)?



Considering how everyone has already ripped DP to shreds, my generosity balances out.

The priest in the 5SR has less risk, but also has less reward. Taking my mediumly geared (kara + badge) priest in spirit gear, she regenerates 600 MP5 in the 5SR, or 1800 mana in 15 seconds. That's 18% of her 10k mana bar. A similarly well geared paladin with the same size mana pool will get 2500 mana in the same time frame, or 1800 mana in 11 seconds, modified by haste. With 10% JotP and say 20% from gear, it takes 8 seconds to regenerate the 1800 mana my priest gains in 15 seconds.


If it was a paladin's only source of mana regen, I'd agree that the DP implementation sucks, but it's not our only mana regen - it's an additional option. (which beats the mana regen lost from mana pots when used maximally)

 

flyingtoastr

It was nerfed because it allowed Holy Paladins to heal while moving and not be chain-interrupted (like a Druid) in PvP.

Make of it what you will.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Palados

To be honest, if they want to nerf PvP let them make IoL working for FoL. Since now I don't see why I should get it. It won't improve my thoughoutput greatly because of the fact that it is not reducing GCD and it is quite random. Maybe over a 6min fight I'll win 3 extra sec of healing. Is the talent worth it? Imho instant FoL would be more usefull, since it would increase our mobility.

 

• Avitus

Not that I disagree with you, but considering we have a whopping total of 2 heals, you can easily create 2 macros with /cancelaura Divine Plea /cast <Heal>

Not sure how effective such a macro would be with Holy Shock, but it could be rigged with a cast sequence or some such, I'd have to experiment

 

Fiola

That's 25% downtime only if you never click it off, and you choose to use it on burst healing phases. With the downranking nerfs, 100% healing time isn't going to be sustainable. As far as current fights which require a constant stream of 100% uptime healing - you'd be using 70 content to evaluate 80 mechanics. That's the same argument to justify Ret nerfs for being "OP". Is that the standard you want to use?


As for the comparable mana regen options for other classes, they all have high cooldowns. Manatide is 24% mana over 12 seconds every 5 minutes. Compared to 25% over 15 seconds every minute? I'm not arguing that DP is perfect as is - just that it's usable and can be balanced like this.

Finally, I may be a nub-priest, but I did not claim that priest healing is ONLY "sit around for a few seconds spirit regenning", It is an option that they have that's very similar to the concept of DP. Certainly DP would be a crappy new ability if the realistic use was, "Spam heal, click DP, continue spam heal" - they might as well just nerf all mana costs for the same overall effect on endurance.

 

flyingtoastr

You would actually need 3 macros.

/cast Holy Light
/stopcasting

/cast Flash of Light
/stopcasting

/cancelaura Divine Plea

If you're going to cast-cancel you need to have the heals already casting while DP is up then remove DP in the middle of the cast through the third macro. Using your method would cancel DP at the beginning of a cast, so if you then canceled that cast you'd still be SoL.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Kigale

The new IoL brings HL below the GCD, so it is not a throughput nerf. It is 100% a mobility nerf. It is a pvp nerf. Why would they nerf holy pvp? All their stats show holy is an under represented spec in arena. Do they know something we don't?

 

Fqubed

 

teeny

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Lk new Holy gameplay revolves (or should I say used to revolve ) around using Holy Shock as often as possible to get instant HL, providing us single target burst heal (our basic job) and finally fixing the mobility problem (both usefull in Pve and Pvp).
If you nerf one the two linked abilities (6 sec HS and IoL ) that make the core gameplay mechanics work, the whole thing falls apart.
Plan B could have been: let's get back to the traditionnal BC healing method, but with the end of downranking, it's impossible.
About DP, I dont see how a MT healer can afford to stop healing for 15 seconds, its so damn obvious there's nothing to theorycraft about.

 

GSH

We're overreacting to a degree. It's mostly the unexpectedness of the IoL nerf. IoL was the one talent that Holy paladins were looking forward to. It had the potential to change how we play, with lots of little tricks that a skilled paladin could try in order to maximize it. Heck, on this thread Cathela proposed melee-healing with HS + IoL, using SoW to fuel the healing. I had my doubts that would have worked, but it was an interesting possibility.

The current incarnation of Holy on Live is terribly boring, and IoL added spice. If you look at the Holy feedback thread on the Beta forums, you'll see that IoL was pretty much universally praised. "Hit a home run", "awesome", and similar sentiments were expressed.

The change to IoL returns Holy to the old playstyle of simply spamming heals from a static position. No real tricks, no spice to mix things up. I think that is why we paladins are reacting so negatively.

 

Blutelf

Probably more the fact that none of our Holy feedback mattered. 1 min JoTP? I have the feeling that someone just implemented this change without thinking.

The thread linked a page back, "Explaining Holy Paladins", is a very good read, if people are still confused as to why Holy Paladins feel very much misrepresented.

EDIT: For someone who asked, apparently Sheath is the only of the three spellpower talents not to increase Sacred Shield. Touched by the Light and Holy Guidance seem to do so.

 

• Avitus

Now you're just nitpicking over specifics

The "point" is that "oh noes it doesn't cancel when I throw a heal" is easily fixable through a macro. How you do it exactly is down to your own finesse/style of play and/or waiting 2 weeks into wow 3.0 as everyone presents their macro achievements.

A 2 macro solution could have a modifier button. Press is normal heal, ctrl +press adds cancelaura.

And since we're nitpicking, you don't even need /stopcasting macros in your example you can just as well use 1 single macro for /cancelaura and normal heal buttons + sidestepping.

 

Palados

This is our future - On other hand I wouldn't mind current situation if they make 0 encounters that require movement. But it won't be the case of course.

 

ZulazeeluIcecrown

OK, here is my theory (and it's only a theory): The above is what Blizzard is looking at that the rest of you aren't. I'm not in the beta (and I'm Prot 100% of the time anyway), so I have no personal experience with Sacred Shield. However, it seems 99% of the posts here more or less ignore it's existence. I think Blizzard is not ignoring it.

For example, earlier in the thread it was mentioned that the -100% healing from DP does not affect Sacred Shield. Logically, then, what Blizzard expects is that you'll use Sacred Shield to cover some of the healing you lose regenning mana. This is obviously also the answer to the fight in Naxx: Sacred Shield doesn't count as a heal, so you put that on the raid when you can't heal.

It really seems to me that Blizzard, for good or for bad, thinks Sacred Shield is a lot better than most of the people here do. And all I'm saying is... maybe they're right?