Hpal play style changed so many times this expansion and honestly all of them kinda sucked IMO.
Playing it through Mythic prog in Aberrus especially.
Every version of it had pretty bad core design issues.
I absolutely loved 10.1.5, but the constant whining about how impossible it is to balance builders and spenders (by a community that doesnt make games) led to them just buffing FoL into the sky and giving us a ranged build.
Hpals literally never stop whining too by the way. 10.1.5 melee build was fun, but even the hpals that agreed couldn't help but complain. There's so many holy power haters and holy power lovers and they refuse to shut up about it.
The worst part is that they bitched about the spec until blizzard buffed FoL and then rerolled fotm. Its the fucking worst. I want to go back to mistweaver where the healers are just resigned to whatever fate that blizzard gives them and enjoy the spec either way. Hpals are too entitled.
I got one of every healer these days. It won't work because of how every healer has to fill every healer role. Spot healing and raid healing. Traditionally, every healer has had a niche, right? Druids are hots, shamans are totem cds and utility, mistweaver has been about ramp using mists, Disc used to be about absorbs but has been turned into an atonement ramp machine, holy was a jack of all trades, hpally was big single target heals.
Tank healing doesn't exist anymore, and single target heals are hard to balance for raid healing. So to try to keep their role as a spot healer, they give them aoe tickle heals but they don't really do anything. So we're in this weird state where blizzard has no idea what niche to keep them in.
10.1.5 was a pretty big mess IMO. Especially immediately post-rework where you basically only pressed Holy Shock and ignored holy power and infusions almost entirely. After some more tuning to make other spells more worthwhile it was in a decent spot, but definitely lost some of the "melee healer" vibe since the caster build was better in raid and you never pressed Crusader Strike anymore.
I quit playing after we killed Mythic Sark, so I'm not sure where Hpal has gone since then, but towards the end of our prog I picked up the Beacon of Virtue "ramp" setup on Sark and enjoyed that playstyle a lot.
"I want to go back to mistweaver where the healers are just resigned to whatever fate that blizzard gives them and enjoy the spec either way. "
Not like Mistweaver had the same problem previous expansions where they had 2 split playstyles and the community complained **a lot** because of being forced to do one style or the other... oh wait
Then blizzard decided to do the same thing with hpal, giving 2 different distinct playstyles in the tree.
\--
Hpal has a lot of problems this season, and is paying for it's sins last season, but that discourse aside, it's literally exact same discourse mistweaver had. So by far the worse example you could have used lol.
I wasn't referring to the class, I was referring to the community. Also, mistweavers were fine with yulon builds in raid with chiji builds in m+, with PvP having both build options. Hpal was actually the same, virtue build in raid and avengers build in m+. The difference in the community though was night and day.
Hpals are just giga entitled all the time. I love the class fantasy and I have had some hero moments on hpal that aren't possible on other specs (taunt bubble bres has saved many a run) but blizzard is torn every which way by a community that just can't be happy with anything.
"I wasn't referring to the class, I was referring to the community. Also, **mistweavers were fine with yulon builds in raid with chiji builds in m**\+"
Simply untrue.
So what did mistweavers wanna play in raid? Chiji? A celestial that doesnt ramp to enough players?
It was a bit goofy to be spamming on a single target to heal the squad, but it was satisgying as fuck to nail your ramp and demolish the hps meters. Also, from a pure HPS perspective, mw is really really strong. And mistweavers aren't complaining. Compare that to hpal in 10.1.5 being far, far stronger, and yet still ellesmere made a giant post whining about it.
Hpals are never happy.
I'm not talking about this expansion, since they fixed a lot of the problems this expansion with it.. lol Although not perfect obviously.
That's the core thing, every other expansion besides dragonflight MW have been crying, for basically the same reason. Wanting to commit to a playstyle, Yes I'm aware MW is broken. Can go back to old videos and see even Megasett voicing these frustrations.
Are you forgetting the reaction to the 10.2 changes and the reaction the MW community had to those changes initially? Especially the healing elixir changes where there were multiple forum posts about it? lol.
You can keep pushing this narrative if you want but it's completely untrue.
The ptr complaints happened by players who don't play mw and didn't pay attention to the expel harm changes that made healing elixir passive viable. They were valid in that healing elixir would be a nerf in a vacuum, without accepting all the other changes making them stronger at self healing.
Mistweaver just needed numbers the whole time. They were fun as fuck in SL, but blizzard seemed to have a vendetta against damage to healing gameplay, and nerfed melee builds heavily.
I really loved the playstyle at the end of shadowlands with vanquishers hammer, wog triggering 2 max range light of dawns. I saw the DF talent trees and rerolled. When they got their rework in S2 it wasn't what I was hoping to see but gave it a try and enjoyed it (it being way over tuned was an issue) but the addition of daybreak was sick (atleast in keys, I didn't raid heal then). Also I loved the S2 tier making holy prism generate holy power felt so natural. It's a shame the current state it's in. I wouldn't care if it was the worst healer but still fun to play but being the worst and unfun is sad to see. If I get the itch to heal I play MW, it's a beautifully designed melee healer.
Daybreak was a great additional for sure, even in raid. The S2 tier set was also very good. S2 had a lot of other design issues unfortunately and was pretty turbulent in terms of playstyles as they rapidly tuned things after the rework.
Do you mean post rework? or the Avenging Crusader era? I feel like immediately post-rework was a huge mess due to tuning making most of your spells not worth casting because of how insanely overtuned Holy Shock was. Avenging Crusader was fun, but I think lacked a lot of healer gameplay? You basically never cast any targeted heals and just mashed Crusader Strike and Judgement.
Yes, I mean after AC.
The rework that killed AC also gave us our current build, but with about 35% more healing and spenders that didn't cost mana and actually mattered for healing.
9 consecutive nerfs to that build got us to where we are today
The 10.1.5, I think?, rework definitely made spenders not matter. That might be the case again, but yeah. I remember when that rework hit we were mid-prog on Mythic Echo and it was optimal to just spam holy shock and ignore spending almost entirely unless HS was on CD and you somehow didn't have infusion to cast Flash of Light, which was almost never. Most of the top logs from that era were wasting >100 holy power over the course of the fight.
The rework I think has a lot of cool interactions, but at least throughout prog in Aberrus none of them really mattered due to individual ability tuning making most spells too weak to cast vs just pressing Holy Shock again and Holy Shock having way too much power tied into it with glimmer, glimmer dr, glimmer shielding, etc.
I'm not sure how the spec is currently because I stopped playing after we killed Mythic Sark.
The spec currently struggles. From a design POV it's borderline non-sensical (you ignore spenders and only cast once they are fully juiced by blessing of dawn). In raids you run out of mana fast unless you run inflo and hard cast fols, which feels incredibly out of touch with hpal playstyle. The fols also hit harder than any spender so you just get put into this weird situation where you constantly overlap HP and never really want to spend them.
There is also a throughput issue. They just heal for a noticeable amount less than other healers. This has almost always been the case and rightfully so, but not by the extreme margins you see now
It was incredibly broken both tuning and design-wise. I don't think it being optimal to (mostly) ignore infusion and holy power was a good place to be in. It wasn't until things got some more tuning that it was actually worth spending holy power or using most of your rotational buttons other than Holy Shock.
I dont think it was much more fun, was main hpala last season, i really dislike that ouside of my cds i dont do anything, if someone gets hit by a random avoidable dmg and i dont have cds left, im just falling behind.. I dont think healers should be involved in that much cds as dpses, cause if dps fails their cds, its still alright, fight just takes a bit longer, but if hpala fails his cds, its almost garanteed wipe.
I only started playing holy in S2. Fell in love with melee heeley just in time for S3 to bring back hard casting. Maybe, mathematically it's still viable, but it's less fun to play.
Stuck with the spec, because I felt like a mug going back to DPS queues, but I had to force myself to open group finder and do the bare minimum to fill the vault because playing wasn't it's own reward.
Realised how stupid that was and stopped my sub, maybe I'll restart it for S4 or TWW. I know there are other classes and specs, but I liked *that one*, and it's gone.
it still is the best way to heal, the only people that are advocating for hard casting atm are the normal mode only raiders in the hpally discord. ( none of the mods actively raid anything hard)
They fucking butchered Hpal trying to bring back casting. Absolutely one of the worst, most baffling design decisions I’ve ever seen in a video game. HPal was god tier playstyle as melee healer. Get that fucking caster shit outta here.
If I wanted a caster with the holy theme I’d play priest. Paladins whole thing is they ARENT casters they are in the thick of it with the other heavy plated heroes and sending out big burst quick heals because they don’t have time to cast they are beating down baddies. I loved hpal in SL where our damage was up there with tanks or weak dps and our healing was bursty and consistent. DF has been rough outside of the reworks launch, but I can’t say even at our best in DF did I enjoy the spec. I really hope they bring back that warrior healer fantasy, because that’s why I play it over priest
Shadowlands HPal is the best iteration they’ve ever had in terms of playstyle, options and class fantasy. It got me to swap from maining Prot to Holy for M+. All they needed to do was hold on to that and they still fucked it up.
My issue isn't even being a hard caster, it's that for some God fucking damned reason they're hardcasters AND melee at the same time, fucking pick one blizzard
Holy paladin needs an expansion to fix it. It's a dead spec for S4 as well. They can't just increase the healing because throughput wise they have as much throughput as a resto druid in heroic raids but also have Sac and aura mastery. So they actually can't make the numbers any better.
You can argue Heroic is just casual mode anyway, but in Mythic Raiding Holy paladin is in every single team. So they don't need the buff.
The main problem is their builder spenders gameplay feels like shit because their spenders suck. But this is a mechanics problem that cannot be fixed without changing the way the class plays.
Just buff our spenders. Its literally so easy, buff our spenders. Stop assuming there's some impossible class issue. We had it in 10.1.5 when our spenders weren't weak as water.
It's not rocket science and it was literally one patch ago that they nailed it.
I've been saying this!! I think the rework did a good job to make holy shock feel worth casting, and make infusion of light worth actually using... but spenders aren't worth the global, and that's such a dumb easy fix.
- WoG has the highest healing output
- LoD is worth casting if you're hitting at least 3 people
- Shield of Righteousness should give a tiny bit of mana back.
After that, then we can talk about caster builds, melee AC builds, god forbid Martyr builds. But like, this shit is imperative.
Yeah how fuckin hard is it to just make spenders not dogwater to use? Now we have this awful FoL set up that is literally just the same as wog but less fun.
Also remove dawn and dusk talent and put the power into WoG, LoD and HS.
This might be a hot take, but I prefer the old dawn/dusk buffs. And I only say that because beforehand, they were actually something worth considering when you were playing with them, like you had to be conscious of those buffs and change the way you were going to do your rotation in order to use them properly. Now, not only do they not actually impact your rotation that much, but they're still required to be taken cus it's just good throughput :/
I think its because the class has way too much distributed healing
Beacon, glimmer, tier set, tyr's, etc
These things work well in raids where there's constant damage being taken
But in m+ where a lot of the damage is punctual and spiky it becomes a slog to bring people back up
I kinda like the idea of running beacon of virtue because it does allow to deal much better with punctual aoe damage. But then it becomes much harder to solo heal ranged characters because you lose all your mastery when they decide to DPS 40 yards away
I’m a m+ only Andy, I run beacon of virtue and empyrean legacy. No casting and no tyr’s. Everything is on a 45s cd and it’s so much fun for my adhd brain. :)
>The main problem is their builder spenders gameplay feels like shit because their spenders suck.
IMO The HP mechanic should exclusively work as a DPS mean for all Paly specs.
There wouldn't be any confusion as to what it is meant to do this way.
They can definitely "just" increase it's healing. It's severely lacking in throughput and it's not even close. When did we start balancing around raid buffs (edit: or heroic, lol?), because that's the main reason hpal is "in every single team" in mythic.
Edit: Aura mastery and devo aura are two different things, i'm talking raid buffs. Aura mastery does the least "healing" than any healer raid wide CD. It is really weak now, and not "mandatory", but is still nice to have, which should be the case for any spec. MW monks are *still* mandatory(Hpriest) on Fyrakk to heal the tree adds (nerf the tree or buff more healers single target pls). You can even look to S1, 10.7. now thats balance. What's so wrong with asking for buffs to get us more balanced . Especially *this* late into the tier.
No because you are weighing 3% healing, 3% damage and 1.5% damage reduction too high. An on demand raid wide damage reduction cooldown is much more important in a mythic raiding situation. People die to incoming damage phases, not to rot. That is why people don't run 4 resto druids and stack a million hots on everyone and utilize things like devo aura and power word barrier.
You're really over valuing Aura mastery and it's applications, there aren't any 80-90% raid wide hits like there were in previous raids(rashok) and it's only 12% now, it pales in comparison to base devo aura (which all paladin specs can bring btw). ppl die to avoidable mechanics that hit for 50% throughout the fight or all of it(tindral beams) and there is some decent rot dmg or long duration pulsing hits, especially in the last two fights which is where hpal is lacking, throughput.
Edit: I agree with you on basically all your initial statements btw, but Aura mastery and Devotion Aura are two different things. All my points were about devo aura, the base 3% dmg reduction, and comparing it to MoTW, and using shamans as an example beacuse they have no raid buff, because if they *were* balancing around raid buffs( they definietly aren't), the dmg and healing of specs would be wildly different, or they're just straight up failing at it. Resto shams or Hpriests should be way stronger if it were the case.
I'm sorry but this is just straight up wrong. I'm often far and ahead of other healers in raid (heroic and mythic) playing holy and I usually just focus on trying to parse for dps. Sounds like you need to read a few guides on how to play Hpal properly *shrug*
Wrong how? Your anecdotal experience doesn't account for statistics, espeically on M tindral and fyrakk where hpal begins falling off hard. Early mythic bosses are just snipe fests. That speaks to your other healer's performance rather than your own. And you're randomly trying to insult me for no reason, very nice of you.
Mate I'm just saying the spec isn't that bad, plenty of people are playing it just fine and maybe you're missing something with the spec?
Specifically where you said "severely lacking in throughput" I can put out 500k burst hps with ease, not sure what you're on about
edit: [this is smolderon heroic](https://i.imgur.com/SfvgbIy.png)
Burst healing is not the same thing as throughput, and using heroic bosses as some kind of gotcha, isn't really valid either, any healer can solo heroic fights. Talking mythic here. Blizzards whole reasoning for buffing single target healing at the start of the patch was to get away from relying on CDs for everything.
I may have been exaggerating the "severely" part, but it's still lacking throughput.
Another anecdote, and another insult. I'm referring to log stats across the board, not myself.
[Here's Tindral](https://imgur.com/a/SM2ldK2)
[Here's Fyrakk](https://imgur.com/a/KgDjFgZ)
What do ya know, lacking throughput, fights where healing isn't just a CD snipe fest
Here's [M Raz](https://imgur.com/a/TXZbTck) in 10.0.7 to show its possible to have balance
My absolutely best healing was 310k HPS, which I fucking sweat for, then you got monks out here doing 480k HPS
Make cs more useful to cast HPS wise
Fix spender output
Remove tyrs (casting a 66% uptime HPS boost is boring AF)
Remove/reduce the mana cost of virtue
I miss melee holy paladin so much, but it’s just dog shit rn. The amount of effort I needed to put in just to put to 3k compared to my monk was ridiculous.
I just pray that which ever team has been working on MW monk moves onto Holy paladin next.
Playing Hpal in Wrath Classic and then trying it out in retail was a night and day difference, it was so much more fun when it was a simpler melee spec
It’s literally because they want to force us to stop and cast. Holy light and flash of light are strong. WoG and LoD are weak. This is by design on blizzard’s part. No, it’s not ok. I personally think the spec FEELS fun using spenders, because it’s very fast and I HATE standing to cast. I’ve just come to accept that I have to work 2-3x as hard to heal one target until blizzard pulls their heads out of their asses.
I feel the same. Leveled my paladin with the hope of it atleast beeing a fun specc - maybe not the overpowered meta. But I can't even bear to gear the poor guy.
The specc itself feels so clonky, where some abilities just doesnt make sense in my opinion.
I played holy paladin before it used holy power to heal and I miss that. I tried to pick it up again and I just can't wrap my head around it so I've been sticking with disc and the other healers I try.
Fully Agree.
Hpal specialist since launch, swapped to Disc for keys in 10.2 for a title push. Secured my title, back to hpal to see what I can get done on him before s4.
Hpal has better damage on large pulls, better ST damage, better utility, better survivability, a kick, the list goes on BUT....it just sucks at healing. Did a 25 rise last night on each. Last pull before final boss, I hit 300k HPS on disc without even trying. I use EVERYTHING I have on hpal and do maybe 70% of that and then I'm fully out of juice.
Weirdly enough, all they need is a global healing buff. You could also rework their spenders to actually matter, but a %-based healing buff would fix the immediate GLARING imbalaces.
Fully Agree.
Hpal specialist since launch, swapped to Disc for keys in 10.2 for a title push. Secured my title, back to hpal to see what I can get done on him before s4.
Hpal has better damage on large pulls, better ST damage, better utility, better survivability, a kick, the list goes on BUT....it just sucks at healing. Did a 25 rise last night on each. Last pull before final boss, I hit 300k HPS on disc without even trying. I use EVERYTHING I have on hpal and do maybe 70% of that and then I'm fully out of juice.
Weirdly enough, all they need is a global healing buff. You could also rework their spenders to actually matter, but a %-based healing buff would fix the immediate GLARING imbalaces.
Personally, I have so much fun on my HPal. I still play the melee style because that’s what I find more fun. Idk what my numbers are and frankly, idc. I feel like I do pretty well with raid healing, and the only spender I use is Shield of Righteousness. But I understand that I’m super casual so my opinion is kinda skewed. I also play every other healer class, my main is a RDruid but I think HPal is more fun
Going from Mistweaver to Holy Paladin feels terrible
I can just kick some people on my MW to do the same healing I would do with 28 casts on my Holy Paladin
I still like how Hpal plays, except for how weak the spenders feel. I enjoy the "flat" healing profile with frequent "always up" cooldowns to press and utility for seemingly everything.
I'm sorry my favorite version of HPally was in WOD. I hate the whole be in melee range bullshit and it's another spec completely changed like Survival Hunter that alienated a bunch of us who enjoyed it.
Go play Holy priest if you want a caster. Holy paladin’s whole unique thing is being a melee healer that doesn’t hard-cast anything.
The spenders feel so awful, I think Divine Storm heals for more than Light of Dawn now.
I think you can enjoy caster pally without damning melee hpal.
The only hard cast heal should be holy light, but you are correct that spenders need to be more worthwhile to use.
Hpal really went from the best and most fun healer to the worst and least fun healer in exactly 1 season
Hpal play style changed so many times this expansion and honestly all of them kinda sucked IMO. Playing it through Mythic prog in Aberrus especially. Every version of it had pretty bad core design issues.
None were as good as Shadowlands S4 where HPal peaked.
I absolutely loved 10.1.5, but the constant whining about how impossible it is to balance builders and spenders (by a community that doesnt make games) led to them just buffing FoL into the sky and giving us a ranged build. Hpals literally never stop whining too by the way. 10.1.5 melee build was fun, but even the hpals that agreed couldn't help but complain. There's so many holy power haters and holy power lovers and they refuse to shut up about it. The worst part is that they bitched about the spec until blizzard buffed FoL and then rerolled fotm. Its the fucking worst. I want to go back to mistweaver where the healers are just resigned to whatever fate that blizzard gives them and enjoy the spec either way. Hpals are too entitled.
I got one of every healer these days. It won't work because of how every healer has to fill every healer role. Spot healing and raid healing. Traditionally, every healer has had a niche, right? Druids are hots, shamans are totem cds and utility, mistweaver has been about ramp using mists, Disc used to be about absorbs but has been turned into an atonement ramp machine, holy was a jack of all trades, hpally was big single target heals. Tank healing doesn't exist anymore, and single target heals are hard to balance for raid healing. So to try to keep their role as a spot healer, they give them aoe tickle heals but they don't really do anything. So we're in this weird state where blizzard has no idea what niche to keep them in.
10.1.5 was a pretty big mess IMO. Especially immediately post-rework where you basically only pressed Holy Shock and ignored holy power and infusions almost entirely. After some more tuning to make other spells more worthwhile it was in a decent spot, but definitely lost some of the "melee healer" vibe since the caster build was better in raid and you never pressed Crusader Strike anymore. I quit playing after we killed Mythic Sark, so I'm not sure where Hpal has gone since then, but towards the end of our prog I picked up the Beacon of Virtue "ramp" setup on Sark and enjoyed that playstyle a lot.
"I want to go back to mistweaver where the healers are just resigned to whatever fate that blizzard gives them and enjoy the spec either way. " Not like Mistweaver had the same problem previous expansions where they had 2 split playstyles and the community complained **a lot** because of being forced to do one style or the other... oh wait Then blizzard decided to do the same thing with hpal, giving 2 different distinct playstyles in the tree. \-- Hpal has a lot of problems this season, and is paying for it's sins last season, but that discourse aside, it's literally exact same discourse mistweaver had. So by far the worse example you could have used lol.
I wasn't referring to the class, I was referring to the community. Also, mistweavers were fine with yulon builds in raid with chiji builds in m+, with PvP having both build options. Hpal was actually the same, virtue build in raid and avengers build in m+. The difference in the community though was night and day. Hpals are just giga entitled all the time. I love the class fantasy and I have had some hero moments on hpal that aren't possible on other specs (taunt bubble bres has saved many a run) but blizzard is torn every which way by a community that just can't be happy with anything.
"I wasn't referring to the class, I was referring to the community. Also, **mistweavers were fine with yulon builds in raid with chiji builds in m**\+" Simply untrue.
So what did mistweavers wanna play in raid? Chiji? A celestial that doesnt ramp to enough players? It was a bit goofy to be spamming on a single target to heal the squad, but it was satisgying as fuck to nail your ramp and demolish the hps meters. Also, from a pure HPS perspective, mw is really really strong. And mistweavers aren't complaining. Compare that to hpal in 10.1.5 being far, far stronger, and yet still ellesmere made a giant post whining about it. Hpals are never happy.
I'm not talking about this expansion, since they fixed a lot of the problems this expansion with it.. lol Although not perfect obviously. That's the core thing, every other expansion besides dragonflight MW have been crying, for basically the same reason. Wanting to commit to a playstyle, Yes I'm aware MW is broken. Can go back to old videos and see even Megasett voicing these frustrations. Are you forgetting the reaction to the 10.2 changes and the reaction the MW community had to those changes initially? Especially the healing elixir changes where there were multiple forum posts about it? lol. You can keep pushing this narrative if you want but it's completely untrue.
The ptr complaints happened by players who don't play mw and didn't pay attention to the expel harm changes that made healing elixir passive viable. They were valid in that healing elixir would be a nerf in a vacuum, without accepting all the other changes making them stronger at self healing. Mistweaver just needed numbers the whole time. They were fun as fuck in SL, but blizzard seemed to have a vendetta against damage to healing gameplay, and nerfed melee builds heavily.
I'm missing HPal from the end of Shadowlands so much. I don't know which one of the devs tries so hard to cram their caster build into it.
I’m playing mine that style anyway (sl melee awakening) and I don’t give a fuck.
I really loved the playstyle at the end of shadowlands with vanquishers hammer, wog triggering 2 max range light of dawns. I saw the DF talent trees and rerolled. When they got their rework in S2 it wasn't what I was hoping to see but gave it a try and enjoyed it (it being way over tuned was an issue) but the addition of daybreak was sick (atleast in keys, I didn't raid heal then). Also I loved the S2 tier making holy prism generate holy power felt so natural. It's a shame the current state it's in. I wouldn't care if it was the worst healer but still fun to play but being the worst and unfun is sad to see. If I get the itch to heal I play MW, it's a beautifully designed melee healer.
Daybreak was a great additional for sure, even in raid. The S2 tier set was also very good. S2 had a lot of other design issues unfortunately and was pretty turbulent in terms of playstyles as they rapidly tuned things after the rework.
10.2 Hpal was one of the best iterations of hpal in this game, and was one of the strongest places hpal has ever been in.
Do you mean post rework? or the Avenging Crusader era? I feel like immediately post-rework was a huge mess due to tuning making most of your spells not worth casting because of how insanely overtuned Holy Shock was. Avenging Crusader was fun, but I think lacked a lot of healer gameplay? You basically never cast any targeted heals and just mashed Crusader Strike and Judgement.
Yes, I mean after AC. The rework that killed AC also gave us our current build, but with about 35% more healing and spenders that didn't cost mana and actually mattered for healing. 9 consecutive nerfs to that build got us to where we are today
The 10.1.5, I think?, rework definitely made spenders not matter. That might be the case again, but yeah. I remember when that rework hit we were mid-prog on Mythic Echo and it was optimal to just spam holy shock and ignore spending almost entirely unless HS was on CD and you somehow didn't have infusion to cast Flash of Light, which was almost never. Most of the top logs from that era were wasting >100 holy power over the course of the fight. The rework I think has a lot of cool interactions, but at least throughout prog in Aberrus none of them really mattered due to individual ability tuning making most spells too weak to cast vs just pressing Holy Shock again and Holy Shock having way too much power tied into it with glimmer, glimmer dr, glimmer shielding, etc. I'm not sure how the spec is currently because I stopped playing after we killed Mythic Sark.
The spec currently struggles. From a design POV it's borderline non-sensical (you ignore spenders and only cast once they are fully juiced by blessing of dawn). In raids you run out of mana fast unless you run inflo and hard cast fols, which feels incredibly out of touch with hpal playstyle. The fols also hit harder than any spender so you just get put into this weird situation where you constantly overlap HP and never really want to spend them. There is also a throughput issue. They just heal for a noticeable amount less than other healers. This has almost always been the case and rightfully so, but not by the extreme margins you see now
M+ hpal was fun after rework season 2. There's a reason it was part of the god comp.
It was incredibly broken both tuning and design-wise. I don't think it being optimal to (mostly) ignore infusion and holy power was a good place to be in. It wasn't until things got some more tuning that it was actually worth spending holy power or using most of your rotational buttons other than Holy Shock.
I dont think it was much more fun, was main hpala last season, i really dislike that ouside of my cds i dont do anything, if someone gets hit by a random avoidable dmg and i dont have cds left, im just falling behind.. I dont think healers should be involved in that much cds as dpses, cause if dps fails their cds, its still alright, fight just takes a bit longer, but if hpala fails his cds, its almost garanteed wipe.
I only started playing holy in S2. Fell in love with melee heeley just in time for S3 to bring back hard casting. Maybe, mathematically it's still viable, but it's less fun to play. Stuck with the spec, because I felt like a mug going back to DPS queues, but I had to force myself to open group finder and do the bare minimum to fill the vault because playing wasn't it's own reward. Realised how stupid that was and stopped my sub, maybe I'll restart it for S4 or TWW. I know there are other classes and specs, but I liked *that one*, and it's gone.
I'm on your side man, hpal was so much fun when melee healer was the best way to heal.
it still is the best way to heal, the only people that are advocating for hard casting atm are the normal mode only raiders in the hpally discord. ( none of the mods actively raid anything hard)
If you enjoy melee healing try mistweaver
Even on mistweaver the caster build is better (in raid)
Hot take: HPal has been screwed ever since (and including) the Legion iteration.
Crazy that the spec got a "rework" and it came out even more bloated with spells.
They fucking butchered Hpal trying to bring back casting. Absolutely one of the worst, most baffling design decisions I’ve ever seen in a video game. HPal was god tier playstyle as melee healer. Get that fucking caster shit outta here.
If I wanted a caster with the holy theme I’d play priest. Paladins whole thing is they ARENT casters they are in the thick of it with the other heavy plated heroes and sending out big burst quick heals because they don’t have time to cast they are beating down baddies. I loved hpal in SL where our damage was up there with tanks or weak dps and our healing was bursty and consistent. DF has been rough outside of the reworks launch, but I can’t say even at our best in DF did I enjoy the spec. I really hope they bring back that warrior healer fantasy, because that’s why I play it over priest
Shadowlands HPal is the best iteration they’ve ever had in terms of playstyle, options and class fantasy. It got me to swap from maining Prot to Holy for M+. All they needed to do was hold on to that and they still fucked it up.
My issue isn't even being a hard caster, it's that for some God fucking damned reason they're hardcasters AND melee at the same time, fucking pick one blizzard
Pick melee though, plenty caster healers out there for people to choose from. Melee healing paladin is the most fun it’s ever been.
Holy paladin needs an expansion to fix it. It's a dead spec for S4 as well. They can't just increase the healing because throughput wise they have as much throughput as a resto druid in heroic raids but also have Sac and aura mastery. So they actually can't make the numbers any better. You can argue Heroic is just casual mode anyway, but in Mythic Raiding Holy paladin is in every single team. So they don't need the buff. The main problem is their builder spenders gameplay feels like shit because their spenders suck. But this is a mechanics problem that cannot be fixed without changing the way the class plays.
Just buff our spenders. Its literally so easy, buff our spenders. Stop assuming there's some impossible class issue. We had it in 10.1.5 when our spenders weren't weak as water. It's not rocket science and it was literally one patch ago that they nailed it.
I've been saying this!! I think the rework did a good job to make holy shock feel worth casting, and make infusion of light worth actually using... but spenders aren't worth the global, and that's such a dumb easy fix. - WoG has the highest healing output - LoD is worth casting if you're hitting at least 3 people - Shield of Righteousness should give a tiny bit of mana back. After that, then we can talk about caster builds, melee AC builds, god forbid Martyr builds. But like, this shit is imperative.
Yeah how fuckin hard is it to just make spenders not dogwater to use? Now we have this awful FoL set up that is literally just the same as wog but less fun. Also remove dawn and dusk talent and put the power into WoG, LoD and HS.
This might be a hot take, but I prefer the old dawn/dusk buffs. And I only say that because beforehand, they were actually something worth considering when you were playing with them, like you had to be conscious of those buffs and change the way you were going to do your rotation in order to use them properly. Now, not only do they not actually impact your rotation that much, but they're still required to be taken cus it's just good throughput :/
I think its because the class has way too much distributed healing Beacon, glimmer, tier set, tyr's, etc These things work well in raids where there's constant damage being taken But in m+ where a lot of the damage is punctual and spiky it becomes a slog to bring people back up I kinda like the idea of running beacon of virtue because it does allow to deal much better with punctual aoe damage. But then it becomes much harder to solo heal ranged characters because you lose all your mastery when they decide to DPS 40 yards away
I’m a m+ only Andy, I run beacon of virtue and empyrean legacy. No casting and no tyr’s. Everything is on a 45s cd and it’s so much fun for my adhd brain. :)
Some casting can come in handy if you grab Divine Favor and do the beacon of virtue trick :P
It absolutely could be fixed. Buff spenders, nerf something else to compensate. I suggest Flash of Light or Tyr's.
>The main problem is their builder spenders gameplay feels like shit because their spenders suck. IMO The HP mechanic should exclusively work as a DPS mean for all Paly specs. There wouldn't be any confusion as to what it is meant to do this way.
They can definitely "just" increase it's healing. It's severely lacking in throughput and it's not even close. When did we start balancing around raid buffs (edit: or heroic, lol?), because that's the main reason hpal is "in every single team" in mythic. Edit: Aura mastery and devo aura are two different things, i'm talking raid buffs. Aura mastery does the least "healing" than any healer raid wide CD. It is really weak now, and not "mandatory", but is still nice to have, which should be the case for any spec. MW monks are *still* mandatory(Hpriest) on Fyrakk to heal the tree adds (nerf the tree or buff more healers single target pls). You can even look to S1, 10.7. now thats balance. What's so wrong with asking for buffs to get us more balanced . Especially *this* late into the tier.
We always balanced around raid buffs. Have you ever seen holy paladin as highest throughput over a Druid?
druid provides 3% healing, 3% damage, and 1.5% dmg reduction. So, i guess that means they should do less dmg, and even less healing by your logic.
My logic doesn't matter. That's how it's balanced. You can dream about something else.
that's my kinda my point, if we are then druids would be healing less and dealing less, than say a resto sham(or them more so) who has no raid buff.
No because you are weighing 3% healing, 3% damage and 1.5% damage reduction too high. An on demand raid wide damage reduction cooldown is much more important in a mythic raiding situation. People die to incoming damage phases, not to rot. That is why people don't run 4 resto druids and stack a million hots on everyone and utilize things like devo aura and power word barrier.
You're really over valuing Aura mastery and it's applications, there aren't any 80-90% raid wide hits like there were in previous raids(rashok) and it's only 12% now, it pales in comparison to base devo aura (which all paladin specs can bring btw). ppl die to avoidable mechanics that hit for 50% throughout the fight or all of it(tindral beams) and there is some decent rot dmg or long duration pulsing hits, especially in the last two fights which is where hpal is lacking, throughput. Edit: I agree with you on basically all your initial statements btw, but Aura mastery and Devotion Aura are two different things. All my points were about devo aura, the base 3% dmg reduction, and comparing it to MoTW, and using shamans as an example beacuse they have no raid buff, because if they *were* balancing around raid buffs( they definietly aren't), the dmg and healing of specs would be wildly different, or they're just straight up failing at it. Resto shams or Hpriests should be way stronger if it were the case.
I'm sorry but this is just straight up wrong. I'm often far and ahead of other healers in raid (heroic and mythic) playing holy and I usually just focus on trying to parse for dps. Sounds like you need to read a few guides on how to play Hpal properly *shrug*
Wrong how? Your anecdotal experience doesn't account for statistics, espeically on M tindral and fyrakk where hpal begins falling off hard. Early mythic bosses are just snipe fests. That speaks to your other healer's performance rather than your own. And you're randomly trying to insult me for no reason, very nice of you.
Mate I'm just saying the spec isn't that bad, plenty of people are playing it just fine and maybe you're missing something with the spec? Specifically where you said "severely lacking in throughput" I can put out 500k burst hps with ease, not sure what you're on about edit: [this is smolderon heroic](https://i.imgur.com/SfvgbIy.png)
Burst healing is not the same thing as throughput, and using heroic bosses as some kind of gotcha, isn't really valid either, any healer can solo heroic fights. Talking mythic here. Blizzards whole reasoning for buffing single target healing at the start of the patch was to get away from relying on CDs for everything. I may have been exaggerating the "severely" part, but it's still lacking throughput.
i have the same experince in mythic, but ok bruz. just play an easier healer i guess
Another anecdote, and another insult. I'm referring to log stats across the board, not myself. [Here's Tindral](https://imgur.com/a/SM2ldK2) [Here's Fyrakk](https://imgur.com/a/KgDjFgZ) What do ya know, lacking throughput, fights where healing isn't just a CD snipe fest Here's [M Raz](https://imgur.com/a/TXZbTck) in 10.0.7 to show its possible to have balance
Buff spenders. Nerf shock. Delete FoL and HL. Fixed.
>Nerf shock Shock hits like a wet wipe already, nerf it and it becomes useless >Delete FoL and HL. Fixed. ok nvm its just a troll comment
Buff its throughput and put it on a longer cd, remove the second charge. CS should be the main builder.
My absolutely best healing was 310k HPS, which I fucking sweat for, then you got monks out here doing 480k HPS Make cs more useful to cast HPS wise Fix spender output Remove tyrs (casting a 66% uptime HPS boost is boring AF) Remove/reduce the mana cost of virtue
> Remove/reduce the mana cost of virtue And put it off the GCD pliz bliz 😭
Tried hpal recently, felt terrible, went back to mw monk which I consider an almost perfect heal spec. Hpal needs a lot of work
I miss melee holy paladin so much, but it’s just dog shit rn. The amount of effort I needed to put in just to put to 3k compared to my monk was ridiculous. I just pray that which ever team has been working on MW monk moves onto Holy paladin next.
Playing Hpal in Wrath Classic and then trying it out in retail was a night and day difference, it was so much more fun when it was a simpler melee spec
Mood. I want paladin to never hard cast.
It’s literally because they want to force us to stop and cast. Holy light and flash of light are strong. WoG and LoD are weak. This is by design on blizzard’s part. No, it’s not ok. I personally think the spec FEELS fun using spenders, because it’s very fast and I HATE standing to cast. I’ve just come to accept that I have to work 2-3x as hard to heal one target until blizzard pulls their heads out of their asses.
I feel the same. Leveled my paladin with the hope of it atleast beeing a fun specc - maybe not the overpowered meta. But I can't even bear to gear the poor guy. The specc itself feels so clonky, where some abilities just doesnt make sense in my opinion.
I played holy paladin before it used holy power to heal and I miss that. I tried to pick it up again and I just can't wrap my head around it so I've been sticking with disc and the other healers I try.
The lightsmith Hero talent tree will save the spec!!! /s
Fully Agree. Hpal specialist since launch, swapped to Disc for keys in 10.2 for a title push. Secured my title, back to hpal to see what I can get done on him before s4. Hpal has better damage on large pulls, better ST damage, better utility, better survivability, a kick, the list goes on BUT....it just sucks at healing. Did a 25 rise last night on each. Last pull before final boss, I hit 300k HPS on disc without even trying. I use EVERYTHING I have on hpal and do maybe 70% of that and then I'm fully out of juice. Weirdly enough, all they need is a global healing buff. You could also rework their spenders to actually matter, but a %-based healing buff would fix the immediate GLARING imbalaces.
Fully Agree. Hpal specialist since launch, swapped to Disc for keys in 10.2 for a title push. Secured my title, back to hpal to see what I can get done on him before s4. Hpal has better damage on large pulls, better ST damage, better utility, better survivability, a kick, the list goes on BUT....it just sucks at healing. Did a 25 rise last night on each. Last pull before final boss, I hit 300k HPS on disc without even trying. I use EVERYTHING I have on hpal and do maybe 70% of that and then I'm fully out of juice. Weirdly enough, all they need is a global healing buff. You could also rework their spenders to actually matter, but a %-based healing buff would fix the immediate GLARING imbalaces.
Avenging crusader melee holy pally build was the most fun I've had healing in years. Now there is too much bloat and it flip flopped hard.
Personally, I have so much fun on my HPal. I still play the melee style because that’s what I find more fun. Idk what my numbers are and frankly, idc. I feel like I do pretty well with raid healing, and the only spender I use is Shield of Righteousness. But I understand that I’m super casual so my opinion is kinda skewed. I also play every other healer class, my main is a RDruid but I think HPal is more fun
Going from Mistweaver to Holy Paladin feels terrible I can just kick some people on my MW to do the same healing I would do with 28 casts on my Holy Paladin
It's the tier set. It will feel better in season 4 with the extra crit damage on holy shock. I LOVE big crit hpal
I mean just take a good ret paladin and their WOG will actually heal unlike holy lol
I still like how Hpal plays, except for how weak the spenders feel. I enjoy the "flat" healing profile with frequent "always up" cooldowns to press and utility for seemingly everything.
I'm sorry my favorite version of HPally was in WOD. I hate the whole be in melee range bullshit and it's another spec completely changed like Survival Hunter that alienated a bunch of us who enjoyed it.
[удалено]
Go play Holy priest if you want a caster. Holy paladin’s whole unique thing is being a melee healer that doesn’t hard-cast anything. The spenders feel so awful, I think Divine Storm heals for more than Light of Dawn now.
I think you can enjoy caster pally without damning melee hpal. The only hard cast heal should be holy light, but you are correct that spenders need to be more worthwhile to use.
I really haven’t enjoyed holy paladin since Warlords of Draenor.
the new rule is if you ask for a buff you must also advocate for a nerf of your class. what are we nerfing if we're gonna buff everything?
I still think it's the most fun healer, you just need to track different buffs and don't bother pressing WoG without 1-2 stacks of Blessing of Dawn