hey bodhi, glad to see you were still around. i had actually kinda been curious to know your thoughts on wotlk holy.
and i realize its more than one button... but 90% or more you're spamming one rank of one spell just keeping an eye out for that person that needs a cleanse or BoP etc. downranking is for mana efficiency and usually means using a lower rank HL unless max rank is really necessary. and that aspect of the game only has one more week anyway.
hopefully blizz makes some good changes to deep holy, but what are your general thoughts on holy in wotlk bodhi? i think you are probably the most experienced holy pally here on the alla forums. will you be staying holy or specc'ing 37/0/34 or even deeper into ret? maybe the 28/0/43 spec i'd suggested to get SoL?
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Epic O-Board Thread on Holy Paladins in WotLKFollow
Therenody wrote:
Um, no offense but have you been keeping up with what is going on with Holy Paladins? They have been nerfed to the point of being a liability in raids because they are over represented in 5vs5 arena.
Yes I've been keeping up, in fact I have even dropped my holy gear and went Retribution just because of the fact that I dont feel special anymore. This has nothing to do with nerfs or buffs, I just got bored with paladin healing as it stands. I forgot to mention though that I agree with the points made above.
What I was trying to say though is that you can't balance a game without keeping in mind the hardcore aspects (that concerns raids too). In my understanding Arena is the ultimate form of PvP, it combines skill and teamwork. And in order to keep it that way there should be balance, because if there isn't any balance, based on Arena, then some classes couldn't compete in PvP anymore. And I'm sure the developers at Blizzard know what they are doing, and won't see to it that a class can't compete in either PvE or PvP
On a side note: What do you mean by liability? As far as I see most guilds still run with Holy Paladins.
,Zignaestos
I don't have a clue what to think of that. He does make a lot of sense, and reading his post makes me want to go emodin. But some random counter arguments here also make some sense.
I have nothing to add to the Holy debate, but I'd just like to reply to this:
Hell ******* yes.
Ret until Lich King, Prot paladins back in vanilla. There's probably more in other classes, but I don't pay enough attention to them to sort through all the whining to find the actual issues.
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I mean has there ever been a class that couldn't compete in PvE because of a nerf?
Hell ******* yes.
Ret until Lich King, Prot paladins back in vanilla. There's probably more in other classes, but I don't pay enough attention to them to sort through all the whining to find the actual issues.
Galkaman wrote:
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I mean has there ever been a class that couldn't compete in PvE because of a nerf?
Hell @#%^ing yes.
At first, thanks for destroying my dream. :)
Just wondering, which nerfs were/are the cause of Ret DPS, and Prot Tanking being sucky?
I always thought those had never been viable and were buffed up so they could compete again.
Zignaestos wrote:
Galkaman wrote:
Quote:
I mean has there ever been a class that couldn't compete in PvE because of a nerf?
Hell @#%^ing yes.
At first, thanks for destroying my dream. :)
Just wondering, which nerfs were/are the cause of Ret DPS, and Prot Tanking being sucky?
I always thought those had never been viable and were buffed up so they could compete again.
i beleive what he was referring to was past nerfs that at different times made either prot or ret not viable. i was only holy in vanilla wow so i never paid attention to what wasn't viable in prot. ret was greatly limited in PVE because it was built around SoC and high burst damage. this was necessarily limited so that we couldn't one-shot people in pvp. giving us the ability to scale to compete at T6 level raiding with more consistent dps classes would make our pvp too good... hence the lolret and rarely if ever seeing rets in raids especially before 2.3/2.4. what we don't really want to see is the same thing happen to holy (or prot or ret again) in wotlk. understandably, this is tough to balance since our class can do everything except ranged dps. blizz has done well with prot and ret in my opinion and i'm hoping the next build or 2 will bring similar pvp and pve balance without destroying ret or prots balance. if blizz manages this i will be excited to have a class with not only 3 barely viable specs, but 3 desireable specs.
I'm not making any calls on wotlk pally healing until I see a t7 raid, and since I dont have a beta key I probably wont see one for a month or more.
I think it is important to keep perspective. Druids stack and roll lifebloom, have clutch heals in a pinch. Priests spam CoH and if they are good they use other spells. Shamans have chain heal and a clutch heal and lay totems down every 2 minutes. Paladins spam tanks, and keep their big heal ready for spike damage. On the surface we are all pretty simple in theory, but then again in theory Muru strat is simple and communism works. I push druids and shamans on heal meters on trash and boss fights where I can. On fights like Twins where I am given a simple job "keep warlock tank alive" I keep him alive and I might not be tops on the meters but I do the assigned job and we win phat lewtz. Same with Felmyst he says that Paladins get beaten by Spriests, I've seen that happen with other paladins but not me. Also important to note that during the transition to air phase when aggro with the skellies is tricky I am the guy handing out clutch heals that keep people alive when shamans and other healers cant afford to get aggro while Paladin tank does his thing.
To say that we have been marginalized in TBC is just the statement of someone with a grass is greener mentality who is not happy and looking for reasons to *****. Patch 2.4 with the spirit/int changes really helped Druids and Priests but not at the expense of pally healing. It is also fair to say that there is a lot of raid healing in SWP so it can seem like we aren't owning the meters like we did in Hyjal or BT but once again its not the case, but rather a person infatuation with meters that is skewing their view of how things are.
Would a third keybind to use on grid really add that much of a challenge, not really. Would 100% mana return off spellcrits when I have 40%+ holy light crit allow me to bomb heal a little more instead of use skill to top mana bars, probably. I think judgements effecting heals will be a nice start and once again help get ret pallies in the raid as well.
/shrug
I think it is important to keep perspective. Druids stack and roll lifebloom, have clutch heals in a pinch. Priests spam CoH and if they are good they use other spells. Shamans have chain heal and a clutch heal and lay totems down every 2 minutes. Paladins spam tanks, and keep their big heal ready for spike damage. On the surface we are all pretty simple in theory, but then again in theory Muru strat is simple and communism works. I push druids and shamans on heal meters on trash and boss fights where I can. On fights like Twins where I am given a simple job "keep warlock tank alive" I keep him alive and I might not be tops on the meters but I do the assigned job and we win phat lewtz. Same with Felmyst he says that Paladins get beaten by Spriests, I've seen that happen with other paladins but not me. Also important to note that during the transition to air phase when aggro with the skellies is tricky I am the guy handing out clutch heals that keep people alive when shamans and other healers cant afford to get aggro while Paladin tank does his thing.
To say that we have been marginalized in TBC is just the statement of someone with a grass is greener mentality who is not happy and looking for reasons to *****. Patch 2.4 with the spirit/int changes really helped Druids and Priests but not at the expense of pally healing. It is also fair to say that there is a lot of raid healing in SWP so it can seem like we aren't owning the meters like we did in Hyjal or BT but once again its not the case, but rather a person infatuation with meters that is skewing their view of how things are.
Would a third keybind to use on grid really add that much of a challenge, not really. Would 100% mana return off spellcrits when I have 40%+ holy light crit allow me to bomb heal a little more instead of use skill to top mana bars, probably. I think judgements effecting heals will be a nice start and once again help get ret pallies in the raid as well.
/shrug
Bode - 100 Holy Paladin - Lightbringer
There are several fights in normal dungeons I don't want to touch as a holy paladin because I simply can't heal through the damage. The final boss in Sethekk halls, The warlock boss with all of the blueberries that have to be kited in I think crypts. Then there's the giant eye monster that slows casting speed based on how close you get to him. Septhera in Mech is a pain to heal through as well but at least she can be skipped.
All of those fights wouldn't be nearly as hard for me if holy paladins had a HoT, AOE heal, or a mid lvl insta heal. As it is I refuse to do all of those instances except for Mech. And I'm seriously overgeared for those instances (shame I needed stuff for my prot spec ; ;). 1344+ heal, 120 mp5 while casting, I've main healed Karazhan boss fights with less trouble.
There's something screamingly wrong when a normal instance boss is harder for a class to heal through than a RAID boss.
All of those fights wouldn't be nearly as hard for me if holy paladins had a HoT, AOE heal, or a mid lvl insta heal. As it is I refuse to do all of those instances except for Mech. And I'm seriously overgeared for those instances (shame I needed stuff for my prot spec ; ;). 1344+ heal, 120 mp5 while casting, I've main healed Karazhan boss fights with less trouble.
There's something screamingly wrong when a normal instance boss is harder for a class to heal through than a RAID boss.
Therenody wrote:
There are several fights in normal dungeons I don't want to touch as a holy paladin because I simply can't heal through the damage.
They shouldn't change a class to compensate for skill. That isn't meant as a poke at you but honestly I did Sepethrea in blues back in March of last year on heroic and it was a joke fight and still is a joke fight if you have a modicum of situational awareness and the ability to position yourself. Same with Grandmaster Vorpil in SL. Also lets be brutally honest, Karazhan bosses are jokes, it is not a raid it is a raid tutorial. Blizzard has stated as much in saying that they wanted a smooth transition from 5 mans into raiding compared to the sharp break that existed in Vanilla WoW. Thus T4 was born.
Even if 5 mans present a little bit of a challenge in terms of positioning, anticipating spike damage and mana conservation while Kara (which has been trivial content since February 2007) is pretty much steamrolled by even the worst PUG at this point that in no ways accurately reflects the situation with Paladin healing as of right now. It would be like trying to make arguments about pvp class balance at the 1v1 level, which is laughable.
Bode - 100 Holy Paladin - Lightbringer
bodhisattva wrote:
Therenody wrote:
There are several fights in normal dungeons I don't want to touch as a holy paladin because I simply can't heal through the damage.
They shouldn't change a class to compensate for skill. That isn't meant as a poke at you but honestly I did Sepethrea in blues back in March of last year on heroic and it was a joke fight and still is a joke fight if you have a modicum of situational awareness and the ability to position yourself. Same with Grandmaster Vorpil in SL. Also lets be brutally honest, Karazhan bosses are jokes, it is not a raid it is a raid tutorial. Blizzard has stated as much in saying that they wanted a smooth transition from 5 mans into raiding compared to the sharp break that existed in Vanilla WoW. Thus T4 was born.
Even if 5 mans present a little bit of a challenge in terms of positioning, anticipating spike damage and mana conservation while Kara (which has been trivial content since February 2007) is pretty much steamrolled by even the worst PUG at this point that in no ways accurately reflects the situation with Paladin healing as of right now. It would be like trying to make arguments about pvp class balance at the 1v1 level, which is laughable.
while i agree that those aren't 5mans i'd say are difficult for a pally to heal, i still think MgT particularly plays to holy pally weaknesses. the first boss is a challenge but definitely doable with FoL's all around. the second boss is tougher, but not bad if you have some mages to take the charges and ice block (or a tank who can grab the first charge). not being a fan of arena's, the third boss isn't much fun for me, but its not the worst. kael in particular is close to impossible for me as a pally to heal though. maybe its the dps on the birds not kiting well, but healing them and the tank is a lot for me to keep up with. i've only managed to successfully heal through that fight once on regular and have no desire to try on heroic. with glyph of Holy Light and either BoL (if they fix deep holy enough for me to go that way) or the HoT's from SoL i may try it sometime. we'll see. i more likely will be shelving him till after my ret pally and hunter hit 80 though. so there's plenty of time to see how the changes in holy turn out.
in the end my cocomplaint about holy in wotlk isn't that we can't do anything, its that anything we do any other healer can do instead, and we still aren't any more flexible than before. putting a pally on group heals in place of a druid, shaman or priest isn't such a good idea.
Edited, Oct 5th 2008 12:51pm by toolofjesus
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/clip I might not be tops on the meters but I do the assigned job and we win phat lewtz.
great post Bohdi,
this is the truest of all statements and the end-all to QQ. this is the bottom line of ALL raiding. do your job and do it well.
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Therenody wrote:
There are several fights in normal dungeons I don't want to touch as a holy paladin because I simply can't heal through the damage.
They shouldn't change a class to compensate for skill.
There are several fights in normal dungeons I don't want to touch as a holy paladin because I simply can't heal through the damage.
They shouldn't change a class to compensate for skill.
i have main healed EVERY boss in EVERY 5-man(save H MgT) as Ret. your group's ability will play a more important part than your class or even your spec. healing the dmg is the healer's job...not taking dmg is EVERYONE's job.
also, you are still overlooking the innate abilities a pally has over other healers. such as the ability to stay alive! i cannot for the life of me successfully heal through Blackheart in H SL on my priest(holy or disc), yet i can on my Ret pally(WTF?).
Quote:
Just wondering, which nerfs were/are the cause of Ret DPS, and Prot Tanking being sucky?
I always thought those had never been viable and were buffed up so they could compete again.
I always thought those had never been viable and were buffed up so they could compete again.
ToJ explained most of it. i think the problem was not nerfs but rather the lack of attention to the entire class.
Ret and Prot in BC still suck. there are too many artificial buffs that dont address the real problem. if you search back a year and a half i QQ about changing the entire judgement system. that combined with the stat budgets and lack of necessary skills made these 2 specs less than competetive. it took Blizz that long to finally roll out a strategy to bring the entire pally class back to par(if it ever was).
IMO, i think pallies still need a little more love. in particular, a usable spell interrupt and the release of ALL aura's and Blessings from the talent trees. a buffing class should not need to fetch their buffs, talents are for improving. on second thought, they pretty much took care of this in WotLK. they left BoK, sanc, and aura mastery.
Some fights are challenging as a pally, there are also situations where shamans have a harder time, where druids have a harder time (anyone remember first hitting 70 pre 2.4 and how druids were ostracized for five man healing) and also priests. If you want I can go through 5 mans, 10 mans and even use 25 man examples from Gruul to Muru to illustrate my point. Heroic MGT was tough, since it has been nerfed its not that bad. But once again if you are just two button healing it fights like Kael and the one before him are going to kick you in the junk. We have abilities that you can drop that really help minimize the challenge of those fights and to overcome difficulties.
Once again it is also important to note the ebb and flow of class balance over time. Resto druids were so weak pre-2.4 they held up bottom of healing meters and only shined when things went bad. Post 2.4 with changes to spirit and haste they took lead on fights. Pallies had endless mana beginning of BC and could bomb heal like no others but changes were made and while still having insane mana efficiency we had to play smart with mana. Once again it also comes back to the fact that all healers have pretty simple spell rotations with the exception of priests (at least good priests). So going 'zomg 2 button healer' not only generalizes pally healing to the point that its not worth having an honest discussion on the subject but also neglects the fact that druid healing revolves around stacking lifeblooms.
How are we going to fare in Wotlk, who knows I want to see the content. I want to see how judgement bonuses play out with inscriptions, I want to see how copasetic we are with Ret pallies now. How tanks work post 3.0, how the other healers improve and the challenges they will face (coh spam bye bye) and how that affects us and about a dozen other things. I am not about to claim that the sky is falling when really the subject is so broad and has so many factors that trying to predict how it will all play out is conjecture at best.
Once again it is also important to note the ebb and flow of class balance over time. Resto druids were so weak pre-2.4 they held up bottom of healing meters and only shined when things went bad. Post 2.4 with changes to spirit and haste they took lead on fights. Pallies had endless mana beginning of BC and could bomb heal like no others but changes were made and while still having insane mana efficiency we had to play smart with mana. Once again it also comes back to the fact that all healers have pretty simple spell rotations with the exception of priests (at least good priests). So going 'zomg 2 button healer' not only generalizes pally healing to the point that its not worth having an honest discussion on the subject but also neglects the fact that druid healing revolves around stacking lifeblooms.
How are we going to fare in Wotlk, who knows I want to see the content. I want to see how judgement bonuses play out with inscriptions, I want to see how copasetic we are with Ret pallies now. How tanks work post 3.0, how the other healers improve and the challenges they will face (coh spam bye bye) and how that affects us and about a dozen other things. I am not about to claim that the sky is falling when really the subject is so broad and has so many factors that trying to predict how it will all play out is conjecture at best.
Bode - 100 Holy Paladin - Lightbringer
so, i got on the other day and decided to do some healing on my premade pally. i wanted to try the BoL spec first, and healing through Heroic nexux and VL i never had a lot of time with even AoE damage. perhaps this will be different with harder hitting raid bosses, but for 5 mans this spec should be fine. i did spec 28/0/43 and just looking at stats and throwing some heals on myself i observed that either spec will still spam FoL endlessly. no need for JotW to spam FoL. however, holy spec'd i could only cast HL for about 45 seconds before i was oom w/o any way to get more mana (except for a pot). SoL spec, i was casting endless HL through the duration of 2 seals and still was good on mana. only problem is 1.5 seconds of every 9 was judgement GCD (judge = 1.5, Holy Light x 3 = 7.5).
i personally think BoL will be the way to go for 5 mans, but SoL will definitely be the way to go for Raids. bigger heals, HoTs, and the endurance to last any fight. only downside is that endurance requires melee range... not a huge downside for me. i like that idea anyway.
i personally think BoL will be the way to go for 5 mans, but SoL will definitely be the way to go for Raids. bigger heals, HoTs, and the endurance to last any fight. only downside is that endurance requires melee range... not a huge downside for me. i like that idea anyway.
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however, holy spec'd i could only cast HL for about 45 seconds before i was oom w/o any way to get more mana (except for a pot). SoL spec, i was casting endless HL through the duration of 2 seals and still was good on mana. only problem is 1.5 seconds of every 9 was judgement GCD (judge = 1.5, Holy Light x 3 = 7.5).
I assume this is because of JotW. Is that so?
Sounds like SoL for MT healing, and BoL for raid healing. That's cool :)
Edited, Oct 8th 2008 9:29am by YJMark
yeah, the BoL spec only has illumination + MP5 for mana efficiency. the SoL spec has MP5 + Illumination + JotW + replenishment. and i agree, BoL spec for raid heals and SoL spec probably for MT heals althoug with HoT's an SoL spec could prolly handle either situation. i've also been reading that the SoL HoT stacks, so this could give a big enough HoT on the tank to definitely give you more time to heal the group too.
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i've also been reading that the SoL HoT stacks, so this could give a big enough HoT on the tank to definitely give you more time to heal the group too.
wha...wha...what??? That's awesome!!! Seriously, why isn't this a Holy talent? A very powerful healing talent deep in Ret...makes no sense.
Scholar
18 posts
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I read her response to the o-boards thread and it reeked of condensation.
Maybe...she put her post in the fridge, then took it out and let it sit on a warm day?
I think you were going for condescension.
I tend to aggree with tommyguns:
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the OP also contradicts himself by wanting more priest/shammy/druid-like abilities, YET wants pallies to be more distictive and "wanted".
I SAY: pallies serve(d) their role
I SAY: pallies serve(d) their role
And yeah...this:
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Last time i checked, you can see what spells a class can use before leveling. If you want to run around throwing hots, and group heals there are better classes.
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