Greetings,
I recognise there are already a lot of threads talking about this, which says something really, but here we are. We need these threads.
Before we get started, I want to be clear, I am not upset or angry and quite frankly it is a game. A game I love but a game all the same, if you’re not enjoying it just stop playing, please. You can always come back when the game is more to your liking and guess what, the community will have you back but being crude, cruel, rude or toxic? Nah that ain’t it. Season 3 has been a blast, being able to jump in after ignoring most of Dragonflight because it did not appeal to me has been such a pleasant surprise and the current raid has its flaws but I’ve been enjoying our mythic progress, I am not the best player by any means and never will be, despite hitting roadblocks and having issues getting a consistent group together for raid. The gearing has been a nice curve of acquisition, M+ feels more rewarding (and less so at the same time, that is a whole other forum thread though) and for the first time in my comparatively short WoW lifespan I am maintaining multiple characters without burning out.
Hell yeah.
So it is safe to say I like Season 3, I think Plunderstorm was a fumble but I respect the effort and I respect trying to maintain the surprise, again whole other thread but I want to impress upon you all that I am largely happy so I can ask that we keep the replies as… calm? As possible.
With all of that out of the way, Holy Paladin. What went wrong?
I genuinely do not understand why after such a successful rework, by all accounts (feel free to disagree just back it up with valid points please), the spec has been so thoroughly gutted especially with how healing feels right now. Healing does not feel like a rewarding role to learn, tanking and DPS have both been a lot of fun this season and I’ve played quite a few different classes and specs to about the same level (I am not the best, happy to admit it) yet my forays into healing have felt so unrewarding and frustrating… because of a reliance on one shot style mechanics. That’s a whole topic on its own much like Plunderstorm, or M+, so I shan’t dwell on it for any longer but it is not great for the health of the player base in my opinion.
Now, other healers I have spoken to on stronger specs are still largely content which I respect but every Holy Paladin enjoyer I know really does not enjoy the spec currently. Their reasons are as varied as they are valid but if we distil them down, and my own opinions, it largely comes down to severely underperforming in a competitive environment (as in, lots of specs who all offer something different and what makes Hpala unique is not enough to carry the poor throughput of the spec for more people) and the near complete destruction of the class fantasy of Holy Paladin.
So, I want to quickly start with Holy Power.
It is pointless, Blizzard I really hope you recognise the need to either change the way our spenders function or just do away with Holy Power, because right now Holy Power is almost purely detrimental and is rarely spent on anything without a specific buff at a specific time because EVERYTHING else in the toolkit is marginally stronger. Which isn’t saying much. Given the rework was a success this feels like someone made a mistake in balancing and nobody has been able to find a compromise to fix it, which either means the overall design of healing is broken beyond salvageability with the current ethos or Holy Paladin is a ghost spec. Ignored and abandoned.
Already we can see that by damaging the class fantasy so thoroughly Blizzard have also damaged the competitive viability of the spec.
No, throughput versus cooldowns.
Ok, if we are being honest for a moment Holy Paladin has to be a really difficult spec to balance. Blessing of Sacrifice is absolutely bonkers, aura mastery has been a staple of competitive play for as long as I’ve been playing even when other healers have had better throughput, so balancing that has got to be difficult… but here’s the thing. Holy Paladin isn’t just a mid tier spec when it comes to throughput, last time I checked it was pretty much the bottom of the barrel with everyone else outperforming it by quite a wide margin. So I do not know what the answer is, but I know it is not this. I know it is not being the worst healing spec by a wide enough margin that holy paladins are being benched or re-rolling, the holy shock gameplay loop is great and when it works it is super rewarding but somewhere along the way Blizzard you nerfed us through the floor into the basement then filled in the hole.
I am not a game designed but my gut says the solution is relatively simple, slightly lower baseline throughput on cast healers, higher baseline throughput on spenders (with our AOE spender being better than it is now but still not great, Hpala is a spot healer let others have their bonkers AOE healing), keep our cooldowns potent and PLEASE make sure when we say Wings is Up people know we’re about to blast. That’s our whole thing.
Now why am I posting on the forums?
I want to hear from other Holy Paladins, to pool ideas and discuss the best way forward in the hopes that Blizz are actually listening (They say they are) so they can take all of the feedback across all of these different threads to make Holy Paladin feel good to play. Because right now, they’re the least rewarding and clunkiest healer slotting into the least rewarding and most punishing role in the game currently.
Best of luck with all of your keys and raid nights,
Nov