Greetings fellow plate wearing priests!
As a class, paladin has some problems now and the state of our class forum clearly shows that, with every few posts being about -for example- how ret paladins have lost their charm.
In this post I want to talk about some problems regarding holy paladin and a few suggestions for their mastery and overall rotation.
I am a protection paladin main that have recently played a few dozen matches of holy paladin in the lower pvp rated brackets, both in 2v2s(1700) and 3v3s(1300). A week after that I went for +9s and +10s with guildies as holy.
During this time I noticed problems with our healer specialisation. You can break it down to merely two things but these have an incredibly large impact on our gameplay and practically make us “broken” as healers.
The first problem is our mastery, at least in PvP. It is directly detrimental to our gameplay, as we do not heal as effectively as other healers without putting ourselves at risk by standing as close as possible to our dps. Usually this means not being able to break LoS for potential enemy polys/cyclones/hexes or immediately getting cc:ed by any melee trailing our dps. Worst yet, holy paladins have the lowest healing over time of all healers. More specifically, without azerite traits we don’t have healing over time. This means that we are the most susceptible to interrupts, as that leaves our dps without any healing for the duration of our holy lock.
We can get around that with preemptive BoS to break incapacitates and popping aura mastery preemptively. Both of those are, however, on long cooldowns. Another option is using BoP, another 3 minute cooldown. Even if we do have two charges of those, that means the enemy only have to cc-chain twice in dampening and we have lost the match. For the interrupts, we can fake heals as much as any healer can. But that isn’t the problem. We have to expose ourselves far more than other healers. In practice, this means that our mastery comes with far more risks than a mastery does for other healers, with the same or even less benefits.
The second problem is relevant both in PvP and PvE and it lies with the fact that our healing output is dependant on critting with our Holy Shock. It is our only efficient(flash of light is not efficient) burst healing and it is based on whether we critically heal/strike or not. Yes, Holy Shock does have 30% increased crit chance. A well geared holy paladin has a 45-55% chance to crit with it right now. That doesn’t change the fact that it is based on chance, making it unreliable compared to other healers. And we’re supposed to be the kings of reliable, efficient single target healing.
Shamans have more reliable heals the lower health their target has, even though their forté is utility and AoE healing. Not to say that it is unbalanced, but paladins are unreliable in their best area no matter what their targets health is. No amount of cooldowns will change that. Holy priests -our beloved comrades- have reliable heals whose cooldowns are longer than ours, but at least they can lower their cooldowns through a good rotation. Disc priests are not meant to have good burst healing, but shadow-mend is very effective should they need it. Druids have always had mana problems, which does make up for their more than sufficient heals. However, what good does mana do for a healer if they can’t reliably heal with it? That is the problem which Holy paladins are facing.
Now for some suggestions regarding class changes:
I believe that our current mastery needs a complete rework.
The current mastery is meant to reinforce the fantasy of a melee healer. Problem is that -except for 2 talents- it is the only thing in the baseline kit that does so. Nothing else in our kit rewards engagement in melee combat. And, let’s be honest, how is simply standing closer to our allies while healing exciting? Scrapping it would also make more space in our talent rows since “lawbringer” would have to be removed. Our mastery could instead be used to solve our unreliable healing. Back in Wrath we had a talent called “Holy Guidance”. It simply increased our spell power based on a % of our total intellect. I’m bringing it up because the name is fitting for a new mastery;
Holy Guidance: For every second that Holy Shock does not critically heal/strike, gain 1 stack of Holy Guidance. Each stack gives (1 * (1 + x) ) critical chance for Holy Shock, up to a maximum of (x)%.
“x” is then our amount of mastery in procent. For the amount of crit gained per second, “x” is converted to decimals. As an example, a paladin healer with 30% mastery would gain 1,3% critical chance to Holy Shock every second, up to a maximum of 30% extra crit chance. In this case, it would take 23 seconds to reach 30%. Since it is Holy Shock, the crit chance is increased by 30%. In practice this would mean that a hpala with 20% crit chance and 30% mastery would have 60% crit chance on holy shock after around 8 seconds. This is because it starts at 50% - since it’s Holy Shock- and you have gained 10% crit chance after a little less than 8 seconds. After 23 seconds of waiting that same person would instead have 80% crit chance for Holy Shock. Keep in mind that only holy shock would benefit from this mastery. The numbers on other healing abilities would have to be tuned up a bit to make up for the % healing lost from not having the retail mastery.
This mastery would do a multitude of things for Hpala.
First of all, it would increase the stability of a Hpaladin’s burst heal, since our chance to effectively heal steadily increases when, for example, casting other abilities instead of Holy Shock for a certain amount of time and when we really need the burst heal, it will be effective.
Second of all it would give us as healers more choice in our playstyle; “Do I holy shock now to top off the tank in preparation for a big chunk of damage even though it’s not guaranteed to crit, or do I wait to guarantee that I can quickly heal him up again?”
Third of all, it would make it so that paladins actually have to think about what bonus stats they want and how much of each. Do they want more crit chance for a higher base chance to crit, or do they want more mastery to properly max out possible amount of crit chance given for waiting plus the increased amount of crit chance given each second? They would have to figure out the amount of crit chance and mastery that they are comfortable at.
I do understand that at some point, bonus stats are going to much higher than they are now. At that point, holy shock is way more reliable than right now. Certainly, this mastery would be rather worthless then. This is nothing more than a band-aid solution. Yet it is still much better for the class currently. We can reinforce the class fantasy of a melee healer in other ways. How about giving Crusader Strike and Judgement on hit effects;
When you hit an enemy with Crusader Strike, your next heal on your Beacon of Light heals for 20% more for 10 seconds.
Or,
When you hit an enemy with Crusader Strike, Beacon of light duplicates 20% more healing for 5 seconds.
When you hit an enemy with Judgement, gain 3% of your total mana.
How about making consecration actually useful for a holy paladin? Maybe making it apply an AoE heal but increase it’s cooldown so it’s not spammable. It’d make positioning more important and increase the skill ceiling for holy paladins. Or it could give a small AoE buff to attack power.
Edit: Changed some numbers as I was completely wrong about Holy Shock having double the crit chance - it has a flat 30% extra crit chance.