As a person who has been playing as a holy paladin for more than a decade in multiple different (mostly classic) expansions, i would like to give my feedback about the current iteration of this spec because it feels so atrocious to play. It feels like there are so many problems going on with this spec and it is so agonizing to play as a holy paladin currently. I have categorized the ongoing problems with this SoD iteration of holy paladins because it feels like there are so many issues that needs to be talked about and i want to keep it as simple as possible.
1- Poor match of holy paladin class design and the raid mechanics of Gnomeregan
Holy paladins in vanilla has clearly been designed as a single target, immobile healer in mind. And it worked fine for the entirety of classic vanilla because the aoe damage wasnt that frenquent and the mechanics which forced your character to move around were very few (with notable exceptions being Firemaw and Sapphiron). But the current Gnomeregan raid feels so out of touch with the rest of the encounter design in vanilla. Every single encounter in this raid has a mechanic which frequently forces yourself to move your character. It completely paralyses holy paladins in this raid and feels absolutely terrible to play. On top of that, literally every single encounter has significant aoe damage. And often times, those big aoe healing checks happens during the mechanics where you have to reposition your character. Which completely converts holy paladins into a dead weight. It feels like you have to deal with the retail-like mechanics with the limited classic toolkit. Holy paladins in this raid feels absolutely terrible to play currently and it has never been this bad in any other classic expansion. In context, by the time the movement intensive encounters has been added to the game (such as the Mimiron or Algalon fights during wrath), we had some abilities to soften up our movement and aoe weaknessses. We had a powerful version of Holy Shock which only had 6 seconds cooldown, healed for a ton, costed low mana, had 40 yard range and had an instant Flash of Light proc effect. We had an aoe splash healing on our Holy Light which also helped us quite a bit in aoe healing situations. But currently, we have none of these toolkits to handle the current mechanics and we are being slapped upon. And i afraid that this might became a norm if Blizzard plans to keep this kind of encounter design format in their raids. Holy paladins class design quickly feels outdated in this design format.
2-Our abilities are fighting against each other
When playing as a holy paladin in SoD, it feels like the abilities that we have are fighting against each other and some things doesnt really makes sense. For example:
a) Blessing of Light and Beacon of Light interaction: As you may know, in vanilla, we have an ability called Blessing of Light which mainly was supposed to be kept up on tanks to increase their healing taken by the holy paladin. So we are able to do more healing to that target by healing him directly. However in wrath, they removed this ability and gave us Beacon of Light. Which was supposed to be kept up on the tank. So when we heal other people, our healing were to be mirrored to the tank. In SoD, we have both of the abilities at the same time and they make each other useless for their main purpose. If we heal the tank directly to get the benefit from extra healing of Blessing of Light, then Beacon of Light doesnt work in this instance. And if we heal any other target to make the Beacon of Light work, then the Blessing of Light on the tank becomes completely useless since we dont heal the tank directly. There should absolutely be a change where the mirrored healing from Beacon of Light is modified by the Blessing of Light if the target has the both of these buffs (even if the original target that we casted our heal doesnt have the blessing of light). There are already significiant modifiers in place on Beacon of Light to consider the buffs and debuffs of the mirrored targets. I think a similar modifier can be given in case of Blessing of Light as well.
b) Blessing of Freedom and Protection does override the regular blessings: When you use BoF or BoP on a target which already has a blessing, it just removes it and you have to reapply the regular blessing once this effect is over. This is such a weird interaction and oddly enough, it doesnt happen in the case of Horn of Lordaeron since its not technically considered as a blessing. This was an issue that existed in vanilla and havent been fixed until Wrath when they renamed some abilities as “Hand” instead of blessing. I think this issue can be fixed in SoD relatively easily without changing the name of the abilities. (Just making BoP and BoF to not override the regular blessings would be sufficient)
c) The problem with Guarded by the Light: The mana restoration effect that also gives 50% healing reduction to you, which is called “Guarded by the Light” cant be removed by a cancelaura macro. But for some reason, it can be removed by right clicking the buff. This creates a weird gameplay mechanic as a holy paladin where you need to right click this debuff in the middle of the boss fights to meet the HPS checks in encounters. This is probably a bug and should absolutely be fixed asap.
3- We have dead abilities which are (almost) completely useless
a) Holy Shock: This ability is simply too bad to be used and it has been buffed significantly in every single classic expansion to make it somewhat usable. In vanilla, this ability heals so little, has a huge mana cost, has a long 30 seconds cooldown, and only has a 20 yard range which completely kills the usability of this ability. The rework for this ability is a must at this point with the current encounter design. Especially since its our only ability where we can cast while moving.
b) Divine Sacrifice: This is an ability which was originally added in wrath and it had two effects with the proper talents. 1- It transferred 30% of the damage taken in your group members to you. 2- It granted 20% damage reduction to the entire raid. The first effect from this ability was literally a suicide and everyone in wrath had a macro to remove its first effect and to only keep the second damage reduction effect going. The first damage transfer effect was only used with a Divine Shield so you could actually survive and not die within a second due to the damage transfer. However in SoD, it has been prevented to use this ability with a Divine Shield, which made this ability impossible to use. On top of that, the second raidwide damage reduction effect has been removed. This completely killed the ability altogether and i am curious why this ability still exists.
c) Lay on Hands: To be fair, this ability can be useful in extremely rare situations, but the 60 minutes cooldown and the drawback for using this ability is way too much in the case of holy paladins. The fact that it drains your entire mana pool to heal someone to full health often has fatal consequences. Other healers have powerful emergency abilities such as Nature’s Swiftness, which practically does the same thing as LoH but costs no mana and only has 2 minute cooldown. I think this ability needs some significant rework to at least not to drain your entire mana pool. (keep in mind that this problem was also fixed in wrath)
Please consider these for any future changes that might happen on the spec.