Paladin Q&A with GCFollow

Who was asking the questions? It seemed like they were just asking themselves the questions. And really, at least for Holy, there wasn't anything new in there. A bit dull.

I'm hoping you meant "parity". :p

parody- a feeble or ridiculous imitation.
parity- the quality or state of being equal or equivalent.

Or maybe I'm just parroting to hear myself squawk! 8^D

I also agree it was pretty bland. The most interesting part to me was on dispel mechanics which, as was pointed out, was on a more general level rather than strictly Paladin related.

I was also concerned with this part:



So, they're going to take Paladins way back to where we can't kill anyone at all, and then give us something: please tell me I didn't read that right. I'm not in the habit of many complainers where everything they read is taken way too far, but this one, at least to me, seems pretty obvious =/

Yeah, it's Blizzard talking to Blizzard. It's hard to imagine that the "team" drafts questions that GC then answers, as opposed to GC sitting down and drafting both questions and answers. As dumb as that may sound.

You can see this illustrated in the opening sentence by the "team":

"In this segment, we will be talking with Greg Street about the paladin class and discussing where this class started and where we feel they are going"

Apparently the first "we" refers to the "team" and the second "we" refers to Blizzard overall. Kind of dumb if you ask me.


I haven't kept up with Shammy changes, but one of the Shammies in the raid last night remarked "well, after the next patch we'll be finally be able to tank heal as well as anyone" and another agreed with that. So, is Blizzard self-deluding deluding itself that it is avoiding homogenization of the classes by only homogenizing three of the four healing classes?


I have a question for those of you doing hard modes. My guild is not doing them yet.

My WWS parses show that I throw around 80% Holy Light. GC says I'm not having fun because I'm stacking Int and healing with Holy Light only, and no decisions are involved. He has said in the past that illumination and mp5 need to be changed so that other stats become more important to me than Int.

So, if I'm back to BC healing and casting 80% Flash of Light, how exactly does that change anything? I'm not going to be using Lay on Hands any more than I do now, and I don't see myself using Holy Shock much more, so that leaves FoL. What am I missing?

I ask the folks doing hard mode because I'm thinking that's what I'm missing? That this will only affect me once I get to that point where mana becomes a real issue? Yet, it seems to me that things are going in the wrong direction if that's the case, how does Flash of Light keep a tank up when it's taking that much damage? For f'ck's sake, I have to spam HL on Steelbreaker normal mode!

I promise, this isn't a QQ; I really am a bit confused by what I see coming out of GC's mouth. In the end, I love playing my Pally and I love healing, so I'll adjust unless they completely break the class.



EDIT: edited for clarity, if that's possible.

EDIT: self-deluding itself? Wha?

Edited, Jul 10th 2009 12:14pm by cynyck

Edited, Jul 10th 2009 6:33pm by cynyck

The hope is that they will rescale encounters, or at least balance T9 with the assumption that we won't be spamming 10-22k hl. Which is touched upon in this thread on the alla wow general forums.


Basically what it boils down to is that we will hitting the tank every 1.2 seconds (more or less depending on haste) with a 4-6k fol. Unless spike damage is cut in half we will not be able to keep targets up. They say hard modes are supposed to be hard, but even speccing into Holy/Prot, putting more focus on SP etc the math doesn't add up. Even with a 1 second cast time, 5k fol and random HL use tanks would still get obliterated. It is also fair to point that Paladins weren't solo healing the tanks with HL spam either on hard modes, it would often take 2 pallies, or a pally with another dedicated healer to keep the tank alive.

At times it seems like Blizzard is running on the assumption that beacon change will allow pally to raid heal which will free up another healer to help with the tank, which is quaint but it doesn't work like that when the spike damage is 25-35k per swing, consistently, not just on cd's like 3 drake Sarth. Unless spike damage is cut in half we will not be able to keep targets up. So the hope is that the changes to tanking stats foreshadows a move to more consistent small damage versus rng large damage spikes that currently exist.

If that doesn't happen we have lost our niche for a raid functionality that mediocre at best and just as uninteresting. In which case I am paying a homeless man to take a dump in a box and mailing it to blizzard.

Edited, Jul 10th 2009 6:52pm by bodhisattva

Still odd reading the forums.

You are going to still gem Int, get 600-700 haste to hit cap, and then mp5/crit where you can get it on gear. We are definitely being reduced to FOL spam bots, and FOL won't keep a tank alive. So we have lost that niche and are more a raid healer that gives a passive 4-6k hot that ticks once per second on the tank. With limited HL spam to deal with spikes.


FoL+SS HoT is generally regarded as trash, though if it stays 100% of the FoL then if you get an 8k fol crit thats 2k every three seconds for 4 ticks which isn't bad but it will be a fraction of a % of healing so is it worth the wasted mana and effort both in keeping the shield up and casting fol on it. So its a feature that is ignorable and will not improve or make our healing more dynamic.


Basically the defining part of the patch is this. We are having our role as the best single target healer in the game stripped of us. What we are getting in return isn't all that exciting. A mediocre passive tank healer that will heal off tanks, or spike damage with constant fol spam and 20-30% (or less) HL usage. We are still a two button healer, and 2 of those buttons have been nerfed since they relied heavily on Illumination in order to be mana efficient enough to use. A druid or priest can heal a crap load of people at once, a paladin can heal two. Hurray, but our ability to heal spike damage on the raid outstrips druids hots.

GC keeps going on about how people were happy with paladin healing and the forums demanded a change from blizzard the thing he is missing right now is that there are a LOT of really well written, articulate posts (and even more bad ones) which explain why these changes suck and how they aren't really making paladin healing any better just nerfing it so designers can have easier times designing content.