I posted this in the Paladin discord, but I’m reposing it here for visibility.
TL;DR: great changes, but the spec still has fundamental issues that needs to be addressed. Such as Holy Shock and spot healing in general being waaaay to weak, and that the spec is still overbloated with small passive / uncontrollable healing effects that eat into the power of the spells that should feel good to press.
My Thoughts on the Patch 11.1 PTR Notes
Avenging Crusader and Lightsmith
There are a lot of interesting changes to cover here. First and foremost is the nerf (or reversion of the unintended buff) to Blessed Assurance for Lightsmith. This nerf results in about 25% less healing from Avenging Crusader itself over a fight, assuming you had BA for every single CS. This is an overall ~4% nerf to the AC LS build.
On top of that Hammer and Anvil got a 20% nerf, which nerfs LS builds by another ~3%. It is obviously still very early, but AC LS is still likely to be viable on spread out fights such, as Broodtwister, where Herald sucks completely, so if you like the AC LS playstyle don’t despair just yet.
Holy Light, Flash of Light, and Infusion of Light
Secondly we have some changes to how Infusion of Light works for Holy Light and Flash of Light.
For Holy Light they are reducing its reliance on Infusion procs by increasing its base healing by 90%, but in turn reducing how much Infusion buffs it by. The end result is that it does about 10% more healing with Infusion procs than currently.
For Flash of Light they are making Infusion increase its healing instead of reducing its mana cost, but are instead reducing its base mana cost significantly. The result here is an 8% buff with Infusion procs.
I like that this is a small buff to our controlled spot healing and I really like that the spells can now be worth casting without Infusion procs, but Holy Light simply still has the fundamental problems of costing a ton of mana while also having a cast time of a million years, so even if you could cast it more, it is too often too slow for modern healing scenarios, meaning people often just die or are topped off before u actually finish the cast. I wish Infusions reduced its cast time instead of increasing its healing, especially now that it actually does fine healing without Infusion procs.
Flash of Light with its current tuning will still just be a weak filler Holy Power generator that still somehow actually heals more than an individual Holy Shock? Idk what’s up with that, but hopefully that gets addressed with future PTR builds as Holy Shock reaaally needs some serious love.
Other Changes
This is where we get to the best changes in my opinion.
- We (finally) get Unbound Freedom aka double Freedom. It is being put on a choice node with Echoing Blessings which lets us pick the one we want. So for a fight like Ansurek where Freedom is very strong you now have access to the same utility that Retribution and Protection do.
- “Light’s Conviction now additionally causes Holy Shock to refund half its mana cost when cast offensively.” This change is incredible in my opinion. It isn’t massively game changing, but It finally gives us a way to rotationally conserve / regen mana without having to AFK. I think this is step one in making our mana system a little more interesting.
- Lastly, Unending Light has been changed so WoG now buffs LoD instead of the other way around. I think this is a very good change which keeps us defaulting to WoG while giving LoD a better use case when the buff is stacked up.
Holy Shock???
I know it is early and there is still likely tuning coming, but one thing that concerns me alot is the weakness of Holy Shock and WoG/EF. The spells just don’t feel good, and with the loss of our 11.0 tier set, they are going to feel much worse. As things stand, without the 11.0 tier, Holy Shock will not be a spell you want to cast on cooldown but only used to proc Infusions. The spell unquestionably needs some massive buffs or the cohesion of the spec will fall apart (again). I really cannot overstate how important it is that Holy Shock gets buffed.
Tier Set
In Patch 11.1 all healers will have the same 2-set bonus, which simply gives a random chance to apply a HoT that gets consumed for some healing if the target falls below 40% health (Like the Highfathers trinket from Antorus).
The 4-set is more interesting as it gives 1 second CDR to Divine Toll when you spend Holy Power. We don’t know if this is 1 second for every single Holy Power you spend, or if it is for every Holy Power spender, but the former would probably be too good, so assuming it is the latter, you can expect to get Divine Toll down to 36 seconds when using Quickened Invocation give or take a few seconds. This sounds pretty decent, but it is obviously useless if there is nothing to heal on those timers, which is likely since big damage timers on bosses are most often some variation/combination of 30/45/60/90 seconds intervals.
As mentioned in the above, losing the 11.0 tier will hurt our spot healing a lot. This is an area where we already feel very weak so we need more than just compensatory buffs to WoG/EF and HS. But it should also be noted that losing the 11.0 tier set, hurts non-AC builds a lot more than it hurts AC builds, which means that while Blessed Assurance is being 
shanked, non-AC builds are also going taking a pretty big hit and the gap between the builds will likely still mean that both playstyles are viable.
Closing Thoughts
I like the changes, but I don’t think they go far enough in addressing Holy Paladins fundamental problems. The spec is still over bloated with a myriad of small, unimpactful, and uncontrollable healing effects that all eat in to power of the spells that should actually feel satisfying to cast. We need to have those boring single digit or less percent throughput effects pruned and have the power put directly in to Holy Shock and Holy Power spenders.