it is clear that right now holy paladin has not only performance problems but design problems.
It has no clearly defined role unlike the other healers who are now clearly identifiable as ramp healers, spot healers, or constant healers. I get that the goal is to make the paladin a constant healer, because the spot healing of the holy priest seems unmatched at the moment in terms of consistency and mana usage.
To make the holy pala a constant healer in my opinion there are two ways:
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Force (as is happening now) the build related to herald of the sun, but the option I see most reasonable is to reduce the wing cd to 1 minute and reduce its duration by 50 percent. In my opinion the current wing buff duration is too long and generally not maximizable especially when in combo with virtue. It would be more convenient to be able to have the healing of sun’s avatar more often so as to more easily cover the damage patterns that bosses tend to have in the recent past (and in the next tier as far as we have seen from the PTR). I know this proposal would bring the pala back to being a healer very dependent on borrowed powers, but in a sense hero talents are meant to stay so there should be no shadowlands-like scenarios with ashen hallow. This all stems from the fact that it is clear that at the moment you do not want to put too much power on holy shock, word of glory and light of dawn which continue to be basically useless spells and force paladins to play with beacon of virtue, generating tremendous complexity in mana management compared to other healers that also make better output with infinitely less complexity to manage.
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Give back some power in the build with avenging crusader, which at least already has a 1-minute cd and is more versatile even if it forces a gameplay completely unrelated from holy words and holy shock. I understand that at the spec’s feeling level it is a nonsense to see a 100% adoption of this build in late mythic, however at the moment it is much more enjoyable than the herald of the sun build, and much less punishing. The nerfs done are too high to allow this build to be evaluated with consistency in progress mythic and unwarranted compared to the general tuning of the healers.
It is honestly not clear to me why you would not want to make holy words and holy shock an equivalent in power of (for example) the holy priest heals . It seems to me that there is an unjustified disparity on a spec that already has a greater basic complexity than other healers given the utilty it has, the melee-oriented gameplay needed to generate the maximum holy power possible, and the absence of a true healing cd (this situation is shared with the disc priest but the difference in output is absurd, impossible to miss).
Why are you taking a holy Priest as an example?
Holy priest is the worst m+ healer, even worse than holy Pala. Holy priest has a good spot healing yeah, but it has to be stationary. And Holy priest has NOTHING else for m+.
You have a disc priest, who has roughly the same amount of spot healing as holy + cooldown free powerful aoe healing + unique spot and AoE mitigation for the group & more. Shaman, MW Monk are not as busted but still much more powerful than Holy Priest or Holy Paladin.
Leave the poor holy priests along, they have been messed up by blizzard since the launch of this expansion and are not getting fixed.
Lightsmith AC build is tricky to play, it can be powerful but it is still undertuned compared to other healers + RNG reliant. We need less RNG element (something you cannot afford as a healer) and numbers buffed. Instead we’re getting freaking nerfed in next patch prolly to point of being unviable.
I have not played Herald of the Sun yet, but from what I understand it first and foremost needs overall numbers buff, which did not occurr.
I will bring example I gave in another topic to demonstrate how terrible healing balance is right now (and it’s not changing in s2):
I have a 637 lvl holy pala, who has ability “Holy Light”, description:
“A powerful but expensive spell that heals an ally for 268k” (160k mana cost, 2 sec cast time)
I have a 635 lvl priest, in its disc spec it has a ability “Flash Heal”, description:
A fast spell that heals an ally for 605k" (90k mana cost, 1.5 sec cast time)
Holy priest is the worst m+ healer, even worse than holy Pala. Holy priest has a good spot healing yeah, but it has to be stationary
Also with hpala casts you have to be stationary, and atm the casted spells are the best in terms of st healing.
You have a disc priest, who has roughly the same amount of spot healing as holy + cooldown free powerful aoe healing + unique spot and AoE mitigation for the group & more. Shaman, MW Monk are not as busted but still much more powerful than Holy Priest or Holy Paladin.
Disc and MW are different type of healers compared to hpala cause they heal with ramps. It’s not a spot in which you compete as hpala in the current high end mythic comps. You can compete with constant healers or spot healers only given the current hpala design. You can argue that herald is kinda of a 2 min ramp healer but the hps that you get is not even close to disc and mw. I think that their idea of the herald build is to have a lot of constant healing with hp spenders but atm the tuning is a disaster.
Lightsmith AC build is tricky to play, it can be powerful but it is still undertuned compared to other healers + RNG reliant. We need less RNG element (something you cannot afford as a healer) and numbers buffed.
Having RNG healing is not necessarily bad. If you think of a comp with disc/mw (or disc2)/hpriest/hpala, the hpala that randomly heals every 1min is not that bad cause they can fit that role in a pretty good way. You can RNG healing because hpriest will take care of the spot healing while disc/mw will take care of full 20 ppl burst healing.