The mana cost of Holy Shock is too high now that Glimmer of Light is gone

[Brionac-pozzo-delleternità]

I’ve read some criticism about Holy Paladin mana issues and I wanted to weight in with something that I think is fundamentally a leftover from past versions of Holy Paladin.

Holy Shock cost is 2,6% base mana regardless of it being a healing spell or a damage spell.

Now, this made sense back when Glimmer of Light was still in the game. In case anyone forgot, Glimmer of Light could be up to up to 8 targets at once, and it had a Spell Power scaling of around 110%. Back in Dragonflight, Glimmer of Light contributed significantly to the effective healing of the spec, and since it could be procced every time Holy Shock was hitting something, and considering how we can “cheat” multiple hits of Holy Shock with Divine Toll (and, back in Dragonflight, Daybreak), it made sense that Holy Shock needed to impact the mana pool whenever it was used. However, now that Glimmer of Light has been removed, I think it’s unnecessary for the spell to have a 2,6% mana cost.

I think this issue is further exacerbated by Holy Paladins lack of a zero cooldown filler: Crusader Strike and Judgement both have a cooldown. While the talent Reclamation partially reduces the mana cost of the spell, I think that the mana cost is too high even with a 10% reduced cost.

Since Holy Shock no longer generates free healing with Glimmer of Light, and is also already a gated resource due to its cooldown, I think the mana cost is no longer justified when it’s used as an offensive tool.

The only argument against it IMHO is that, since Holy Shock procs infusion of light, technically having Holy Shock being cheap if used for damage would be that even IoL procs would be more convienent to proc, but IMHO there is already an opportunity cost when you are using Holy Shock to damage rather than healing, so the downside is already there, there is no need to further punish the Paladin by having him commit to either deal no damage or compromise the mana reserve.
In my opinion Holy Shock should cost around the same as crusader strike or hammer of wrath, when used on an enemy.

I think this is a design issue rather than a balance issue, but I’d also add that other healers manage to still deal considerable damage while having their offensive spells almost free. While I don’t think damage generation is something that breaks or makes a healing specialization, that would only be more reason why reducing mana cost on an offensive tool (that no longer provies healing) shouldn’t be something that fundamentally compromise the status of Holy while making the spec more engaging to play.

[Killrogue-argent-dawn]

Let me tell you that holy shock from vanilla al the way to TWW costed alot of mana but back in vanilla to wrath we had mana regen if we crit which was a big compensating for it.

[Brionac-pozzo-delleternità]

Mana regen on crit is something that grows significantly stronger over the course of an expansion, because early on you really don’t have a lot of crit to reliable make use of it, but later on it’s almost always up.

Plus, Holy Shock used to be much more rigid since we had way less way to reset it, and it also interacted less with the rest of our kit.

Now it’s a fundamental part of the gameplay loop, I think that with the implicit nerf tied to Glimmer of Light removal it shouldn’t cost that much if it’s only dealing damage.

[Killrogue-argent-dawn]

Another thing to add which is not holy shock but.
Before legion beacon did not shared a global cds.

[Brionac-pozzo-delleternità]

I think it makes sense for Beacon to be on the global CD tbh.

It rewards more careful planning if you want to swap Beacons of Light/Faith, or when you decide to use Beacon of Virtue.