From an Eyonix blue post:


Holy

We like that Holy paladins have a niche as single-target healers. The problem is we think this niche is a little too narrow at the moment. Furthermore, paladins don’t have a wide arsenal of healing spells so it’s important that all of them are being used.

First, we are changing Flash of Light so that it places a heal-over-time effect on any target with Sacred Shield on them (the effect will be similar to Sheathe of Light). This should make Flash see a little more use.

Second, and more importantly, we are changing the way Beacon of Light works. Currently, it does not count over-healing on the target. We are changing that. In other words, if you place Holy Light on a rogue who is already at full health, it will still have the full effect on a tank with Beacon of Light on them. This is a huge buff, particularly when you consider the Holy Light glyph which allows for a small amount of “splash” healing. This effect isn’t common when you use Holy Light on a tank because the tank is often standing alone. But if you heal the melee, you are likely to get a lot more total healing from this effect (while still healing the tank through Beacon of Light). We are also going to try to allow a target to have more than one beacon (i.e. from different paladins) on them.

Many players may surmise that this change would make paladins far and away the best healers in the game. This is partially because paladin mana regeneration is so potent. That isn’t an issue when the paladin can generally only heal the tank. With the Beacon of Light change, the paladin can provide a lot more raid or party healing. To adjust for this, we are going to reduce the amount of mana returned by Illumination. If you use Holy Light too recklessly (such as on targets who don’t require that much healing) you do risk burning out of mana too quickly. Of course, they will still have Divine Plea and other mana regeneration mechanics.

As a footnote, we are also likely to slightly adjust Replenishment and buff the amount of MP5 on gear.

These changes should lead to healing as Holy being more dynamic – you are going to be targeting a lot more group members than just the tank, while still providing massive healing on the tank. However, you won’t be able to just constantly spam your biggest heals, at least not on the more challenging encounters. There is an opportunity here for skilled players to really do some outstanding healing as paladins, but it’s going to take a little more effort. This is something a lot of players have been asking for so we hope that it delivers without completely changing what some paladins enjoy about their healing style.

Dynamic? I don't know that me healing pretty much anyone in the raid provided they are grouped (aside: are we going to start setting up grouped melee DPS just to maximize HPS output on the tank?) over me healing the tank directly is what I would call more dynamic.

The FoL changes are interesting, but would have been a whole lot moreso with the old multi-target SS. As it is, I just see it as another thing to maintain on a tank - SS, BoL every minute, FoL every 15s or whatever, spam HL.

It's really going to come down to how tightly they can tune mana regen.

I really have to wonder how they're going to address the healing multiplier issue if they keep with the proposed BoL changes. Extra 20% throughput on the tank for healing the full health warlock? I suppose they could make it account for that somehow, but it seems like that would probably make certain healing buff mechanics in encounters difficult or impossible to implement easily. And weird situations like multiple MS effects...seems like there'll be a loophole in there somewhere without a lot of special cases.

I'm curious what they mean by the FoL HoT being similar to Sheathe of Light. Do they just mean it'll be a HoT effect based on the strength of the original heal, or will the HoTs actually roll? That'd be a very interesting mechanic, if you could 'build up' FoL HoT strength gradually. That would really help address the issue of paladins not doing anything but overhealing during the lulls between tank spikes - build up the HoT while the tank isn't spiking hard, HL to address the spike.

Edit: I think the example with BoL + Glyph of HL is a bit misleading - as far as I know, Glyph HL splash heals don't transfer through BoL (though again that could change). I'm assuming they just mean that we can use the Glyph HL splash effect without losing throughput on the tank (not gaining throughput on the tank, just getting more use out of the HL splash).

The 3.2 Holy rotation, casting SS every 30s (or 60s with Prot), BoL every minute (or 1.5 minutes with glyph), FoL every time the HoT is gone, otherwise spam HL is much more interesting to me.

Plus we can finally have a true AoE heal.


Mp5 gear is going to be buffed and Illumination nerfed, so stop dusting that mp5 gear!

An interesting question is whether the Flash of Light HoT requires *your* Sacred Shield or if any Paladin's Sacred Shield will suffice. Similarly, another interesting question is whether the Flash of Light HoT will also heal the Beacon if it appears on another target.

If any Sacred Shield suffices, and if the Flash of Light HoT's ticks will transfer to the beacon, we are presented with some interesting possibilities for guilds with more than one Paladin healer. How practical they end up being is another story.

The obvious example would be a Patch-like encounter with multiple tanks under the gun. If Paladin A Beacons and Shields Tank A, and Paladin B Beacons and Shields Tank B, they could each keep the flash of light HoT going on both tanks, getting a third HoT "free" on each tank because of Beacon.

A quick glance at the possible changes does not excite me at all.

It seems our mana regen in the form of Illumination will be nerfed, while Mp5 is being forced upon us to make up the difference. Imo this just becomes a wash for Paladins in regards to regen (with a straight loss in haste/crit) but a buff for every other healing class. If Mp5 becomes too good, why do I even need to bother with Illumination?? Oh yeah, because its mandatory to get HS and there are almost no choices in the Holy Tree.

None of this seems to address our need to stack intellect.

FoL - The HOT can't be too powerful, because then it is OP in PvP. So, it won't really address our need to continually spam heal in fights where the tank is taking 25k+ hits. And again, why would I use FoL when I could cast HL in conjuction with BoL? I guess if they nerf our regeneration enough we will be forced to use a suboptimal FoL or risk running out of mana. Wow, that sounds like a lot of fun to me.

I can't see the BoL change making it through the PTR. It just seems way too good. If you run with two holy paladins noone ever has to cast a spell on the MT to actually keep them full. This creates much more available raid healing, and really reduces the healers needed in general.

Hopefully I'm just pessimistic and these changes will make our healing so much more enjoyable.

I don't think the FoL HoT need be weak for several reasons. A) FoL spam will likely prevent the HoT from ticking. B) It requires Sacred Shield to be present on the target to proc. The latter is far more important in PvP, where the Paladin is likely the only provider of Sacred Shield and as such the HoT is limited to a single target. Sacred Shield is dispellable anyway, and the HoT isn't likely to be different.

Am I getting this backwards or does this just seem like yet more tank healing albeit a bit differently? I mean the only difference raid-heal-wise is that I now get the full heal on the tank (or my beacon of choice) as well, regardless of my target. However, if they're sorting out our admittedly silly regen we might be looking at flashing the raid (i.e. no ss) thus lessening the impact of the new and improved bacon (mmm tasty bacon). I guess we theoretically could provide a constant 3k HPS on our beacons with flashing the raid nonstop(with capped out haste), but that's without any math to back up my claim. Thoughts?

On the other hand this means HL gives beacon 150% of the output provided all targets hit are light's beacon'd. Basically we could drop upwards of 20k in one heal.

Would it be same to assume that the reduction to illumination's power means that now i'll regen half of the mana I used to get from it?

Ok, so they are nerfing our mana regen. That's fine.

However, they are doing absolutely nothing to address the fact that we pretty much HAVE to spam Holy Light on certain encounters to keep the tank up. Examples being: Thorim's Hard mode and Iron Council's Hard mode. In a sense, these changes will definitely allow paladins with more skill than others to shine and stick out because we will have to be much more careful on how we use our mana and spell selection will matter a lot. However, I'm still worried about those particular encounters because past a certain point, you are pretty much forced to spam HL which is a huge mana hog.

Other than that, I see the changes as something very positive as we will be able to contribute much more to the raid other than main tank healing. It looks like the standard way to approach most encounters will be to Bacon and SS the tank while making sure there's always a FOL HOT rolling on him, and then go to town raid healing with a combination of FOL and HL, saving HS for emergencies or spikes in damage.

No. This patch appears to be implementing a new play style into the paladin healing mechanic. Currently, we stack int and spam HL, where illumination/crit refunding 60% of the crits results in a substantial mana return.

With changes to illumination, beacon, FoL, and mp5, Blizzard appears to be pushing us away from the HL spam. This means that we won't have as many HL's that crit-> mana return. This is not an attempt to just nerf our mana regen, it is a push to change the way we play as healers. But with any PTR, don't make any changes until it is officially released. Blizzard will be tweaking several of these variables, so just sit back, save your mp5 gear, continue to stack int/crit/haste and make changes when they happen.

Unless it ticks every second and stacks, fol hot is pretty much irrelevant for tank healing.

Meh, should refresh before posting.

Am I honestly the only one here annoyed by the fact that this is a very large nerf in our ability to tank heal strongly for an a dodgy fix to our ability to raid heal when required?

Everyone is hung up on the fact that our Beacon is going to provide the full raw heal to our Bacon target but the fact still stands that we're tank healers and FoL's 3k HPS is not strong enough for any hardmode therefore you'd still need to use Holy Light excessively. Combine this requirement with a large nerf to our illumination which I do agree was needed, a 5% intellect nerf, and another nerf to replenishment (in the magnitude of about 80mp5 to most paladins). And I feel that perhaps a disc priest looks stronger again for a lot of the hardmodes (Thorim and Hodir come to mind) due to the changes with inspiration.

Please don't misread this as being a simple QQ post, I'm trying to be objective in all this and see where we're actually gaining something worthwhile because personally I see this as an all out attack on our niche as the strongest tank healer. But things change and perhaps this isn't all that's in store.

*Edit*

I believe that works out for me personally to be approximately a 50mp5 increase, it wont even cover out the nerf to replenishment.

*Edit2*

Make that a 40mp5 increase, pathetic really.

While I agree with you that the FOL HOT is pretty irrelevant, what else are we going to use it for? SS is more than likely going to be on the tank anyway, so might as well toss it up there.

That's the first thing that came to my mind when I read the changes. Encounters like Thorim's hard mode (especially after he gets 6 or so stacks) and Iron Council's hard mode (when you are on the 3rd and 4th tanks) pretty much REQUIRE Holy Light spam. I'm also used to solo healing the tank on Hodir's hard mode since we only run 3 healers for that one, and Holy Light spam is pretty much a necessity. Not to mention FOL is not enough to keep the raid up on certain AoE damage situations where HL shines, such as XT's Tantrum during Hard mode and Phase 2 Mimiron Hard mode.

They are essentially gutting our MT healing niche in favor of better raid healing.

These encounters exist because of your healing arrangement in addition to fight mechanics. It's very rare that very hard hitting bosses come with very ridiculous amounts of global raid damage, regardless there are comp answers to that too.

It makes a little more sense that now you can take the job two normal raid healers (probably your shamans) and replace them with holy paladins who are dual purposing as tank healers. Now that your holy Paladins are raid healing, you backfill your tank healers with an appropriate amount (probably a shaman/disc, all depending). Where you had two tank healers, you now effectively have three-four due to overlapping beacon usage while maintaining very effective raid healing for some encounters. You will very likely be able to drop a tank healer entirely in this specific circumstance and leave it to a disc priest to fill the gaps, while adding another raid healer to your composition to shore up the raid healing gaps.

It's a very good change all around. From the viewpoint of a raid leader, you will probably always have your Paladins on strict raid healing duty unless there's a pervasive raid-wide damage aura in effect. In which case, you could probably still cope a bit due to the mechanics of Glyph of Holy Light. If mana really becomes a predominant issue, I will not be surprised to see innervates going to your Paladins or a resurgence of tide groups.

Also the other changes with respect to block value and a few other tanking mechanics may skew some of the survivability in a positive direction. Keep in mind that the LoH change also gives you yet another external CD for tanks as well.

Thanks, but I think you misunderstood me, I was just wondering if it means a 50% reduction in the mana I usually regain from Illumination in an average encounter, thus making int and mp5 more valuable. Overall im rather happy with the changes, and look forward to a new healing playstyle.

Thoughts on why the changes are most likely not very well thought out at this stage:

- any effort to stop the HL spam is futile without a nerf to SoW. Paladins can fill their mana bars in 15 seconds with DP + SoW. Clever players can maintain a close to full mana bar with SoW + mouseover in most encounters, or find the breaks to do so.
- a successful effort to make mana costs meaningful would warrant even more intellect stacking which they are obviously trying to push Paladins away from
- the Beacon change results in more mindless "preventive" spam and more overhealing, except the target won't be the MT this time. Doesn't address Paladin weaknesses in the most challenging encounters, with waves of unpredictable raid damage where the whole raid needs to be picked up quickly, and Paladins are swapped out for Priests. The strategic aspect of BoL, trying not to overheal, is removed.
- the FoL change doesn't make sense unless it is a purely small group / arena oriented change. In raids you would want to cast heals on anyone but the MT with this Beacon change, and SS is on the MT most likely

I don't know where you guys got the idea that they wanted to change the entire playstyle. If anything, they wanted to maintain the playstyle since it's in the original mission statement for Paladins. Their goal was to break up the niche of "only bring paladins to tank heal", I think they're on the road to doing that.

Now it's more of a question of, why would you ever want your Paladin to "only" tank heal? The BoL change is that good.

Also you won't get swapped out for your priest other than Holy Nova gimmicks, don't be crazy. If anything, bringing two holy paladins lets you remove one tank healer from the entire equation while still retaining very similar levels of tank healing and raid healing. You add a priest on top of that to smooth things out.

I'll re-state my earlier post in more specific way: most encounters use a 2 tank healer / 4 raid healer configuration. Now you'll be using a 1 dedicated tank healer / 5 raid healers because two of your raid healers will be a functional conduit to the tank directly. Extrapolate the numbers for any type of configuration that you want.

SoW does indeed need to be fixed, it's a little silly that it's lasted this long for no apparent reason.

I felt much the same. I am trying to not overreact since things on the PTR can and do change before going live.

Illumination is, by far, the largest current source of mana regen we have. I use DP as little as a I can. Fights like IC hard mode, where I am assigned to Steelbreaker tanks, make it tricky to use DP too much. The nerf to Illum will make it so I have to use DP more than I'd like on encounters like that. It's not impossible but seeing as how we have balanced playstyles and gear based around our current regen system it's going to take some getting used to. Forcing us to take MP5 gear like this is extremely frustrating.

The only thing I can see that will be positive is it will allow nuances in healing that we haven't had as paladin healers. I'm frankly very interested to test this new style.

The HoT effect on FoL is not very exciting as it only applies to the target with SS. I'm assuming FoL spam will refresh it and basically allow it not to tick. It just doesn't seem like a very good mechanic in PVE. In PvP its going to cause quite a lot of QQ I'm sure.

While using mp5 gear may be not be satisfying to you, the developers are likely really dissatisfied that not enough people are using their mp5 Ulduar plate.

Perhaps Flash will work with any SS on the target, it wasn't clear to me if it was specifically that Paladin's SS. However, if you Flash someone with HoT already up, it will refresh it and slow the tics.

Ideally the HoT won't push back ticks while rolling something like sheathe. If it doesn't, the change is almost entirely pvp-centric with very little overall benefit to tank healing, since it won't function especially well while using repeated FoLs in your rotation.
I don't think this needs to be explained in an Us Vs Them light like that. It's moreover that, as it stands, while crit is not functionally monstrous compared to mp5 on a pure regeneration level, it offers both sides of the coin in a somewhat functional manner. After the change you are given the choice between pure HPS stats and in turn mana regeneration stats with a slightly different set of flavours. Crit/INT mixing so well as both HPS and HPM stats is a little bit wonky from a design perspective. I do find it extremely odd that the devs are unhappy with people stacking int, since it is primarily as a regeneration stat, but there's no figuring out odd biases like that.

As it stands the list of changes when taken together look painfully unfinished and highly self-contradicting. It seems absurd to assume we've even seen half what they have in store, and moreover, looks like a warning shot to think about your gearing over the next six months. I don't think 3.2 is supposed to be out next month though, so not worth getting worried just yet.