LoH NerfFollow

Went from being a PvP nerf to a PvE heal nerf. The original nerf was going to be "can only be cast on friendly targets" but the uproar on the forums meant it never made it to the ptr. As a tank I'd rather a healer not use LoH on me now as it would mean no bubble wall.

I think this in its current form will be a bigger deal for raiding than it will be for PvP, not that I would use it myself tanking (usually I get that big heal just before clicking on it so its wasted for me lol) very often but its usefulness as a clutch oh $hit heal is now probably dead.

I have to agree, this is ****-poor design. Did you see this blue post about it as well? From MMO-Champ:



If LoH was really such a huge issue, why did they never do anything but BUFF it before now?? Seriously, I think all the changes they made to it were just to give them excuses so that they COULD nerf it in the future (ie, now) ...

Maul, what COMPLETE ****** was that Blue? Who was he so I can remember to spit on his name every time I pass it by. What the hell does an instant full heal have to do with 50k damage as a Prot"especially" it would be like a Prot being able to use Rage INSTANTLY to restore HP 1 rage to 1% every 15min.

No one would care. That Blizz poster is a complete moron and has no business speaking.

Edited, Nov 4th 2009 8:37am by SarionBelmont

Yet another case where they "fix" a PvP "problem". Then when it's pointed out that it will have potentially a bigger effect on PvE they say that not only did they anticipate it all along, but it fixes a longstanding imbalance between the PvE specs...

This won't have much effect on me as Holy (I don't LoH myself for mana, and even if I did, the need to bubble in conjunction with DS/DG is going away). As others have mentioned, it takes LoH almost completely away from raiding tankadins - and puts me in the position of having to consider the class of my target along with the situation when deciding if LoH is appropriate.

They need to decide if LoH is an iconic ability or if it isn't. If it is, no spec should have a disincentive to use it /in ordinary circumstances/. For an iconic ability, you might have to consider the situation, but it should be a 90%-99% thing, not a 10% thing. If it isn't, as others have said, make it talented for Holy and give us all something else that's baseline.

Hopefully something that won't "unbalance" PvP again, since that always seems to lead to a PvE nerf...

LoH is not that important of a spell. I would go as far to say that most people only use it while soloing. The raiding aspect of the "nerf" wont matter unless you are healing a prot pally (or are tanking as a prot pally yourself). So healing on 3 of the 4 tank classes, nothing changes. 90% of the time i just LoH a caster that gets battlerezzed to give them a little boost in mana. Its a great spell, but its usefullness is way overrated.

If you are a prot pally, then its a significant nerf for you. But you generally are not blowing your shield wall back to back. You have designated times when the ability is going to be called for on most fights. I really dont see this changing anything pve wise. MAYBE you might have to think about all the aspects of a fight beforehand, before you go LoHing anything you want. But its not that big of a deal.

Ghostcrawler stated this was not a response to Ret Paladins being OP in 1v1 PvP but I disagree. This is the only situation where you wouldn't want to be opposing a Paladin. Being forced to effectively kill a Paladin three times in 1v1 during a BG or even in a duel is the only time this ability becomes overpowered.

A beter solution to this would have been to put a 5 second cast on the spell and have a deep Holy tree talent to reduce the cast time to zero. Effectively kills the spell off for Ret outside of when a he/she bubbles (where it would be easier to just holy light spam back to full hp) and makes it unusable for Prot during a raid fight.

Another stupid idea. LoH is a MAJOR tool for Prot. Even as Ret, I use it nearly every Raid at LEAST once because there are times **** goes bad. You can get get Poison (pop Bubble so you can continue to DPS burn) then next get Bile THEN Sweep'd into a poison circle. Without LoH, you're dead. Period.


As Prot, it is the single most important spell we have. I'd take LoH over Bubble(you cannot DShield in a Raid anyhow, only DProtection) but in fights like Beasts in GC, the best strat is to let Pally get like 7 stacks at end (so other tank has 0) then just bubble out for Worms. Then you have to worry about no LoH though?

Blizzard, again, proves they have no clue how the game works or how classes are used. Maybe they should start hiring people from top 100 raid guilds, not people who play once a week and kill bunnies. Seriously.

Actually in any fight where you are tanking a single boss (no adds) it is possible to use Divine Shield without dropping aggro. Make yourself a macro with HoR (taunt) and Divine Shield, /cancelaura Divine Shield and see for yourself. As long as HoR hits the boss they will stay on you even though you are bubbled.

Looks like they heard you:

Holy
Sanctified Light: This talent now also has a 33/66/100% chance to prevent Lay on Hands from causing Forbearance when Lay on Hands is used on others.

Why not just put it back where it was, Heals for the full amount of health but drains ALL your mana. Stick it on a 30min cooldown again. There was nothing wrong with it before they started messing with it in WotLK and to take it away from tankadins is horrible. It's been a clutch spell tanks have used forever, warriors get shield wall and last stand, paladins get shield wall and a full heal. If they are taking away Lay on Hands effectivness then please nerf last stand.

TBH I'm finally starting to get a bit sick of Blizz CONSTANTLY changing the game mechanics. It's like every single patch you have to learn a new style of play or adapt how you used key abilities. Stop nerfing raid abilities cause you want to blance PvP. They really need to just split PvP off completely, maybe make a 'PvP' tree or something that they can balance for PvP and stop changing raid abilities every single patch!!!! arrggghhhhh!

I'm having a hard time believing that this is a PvP nerf. LoH isn't even available for use in arena, and I've never seen any of the devs so rabid about balancing for BGs much less 1v1 duels.

Right now, pally tanks are still regarded as the strongest tank class in the game in a number of categories. We're the "ez-mode" tank class when it comes to AoE threat, we're still the only tank class that can be block capped 100% of the time without having to bend over backwards to gear for it, and our threat generation is still very strong. Ardent Defender is borderline OP (even though there are times when I'd take a passive health boost for a set duration over a one-shot "self rez").

I still, however, dislike the Forbearance aspect of it. It functionally eliminates LoH as a tanking cooldown. Encounters will be tuned around the idea that tanks are going to have an on-demand DR available at some point. I'm sure there will be times when a LoH could avert a wipe, but then what happens if you need the DR? Oh...your guild says ***** it...let the warrior/DK/bear tank it.

Learning that Blizzard's approach to WotLK was to include the goal of making all 4 tank classes viable in all encounters was what had me pick up my paladin and level to the cap. If Blizzard isn't very careful about what they do with the class as a whole to address ret performance in PvP, we're going to be back to trash tanks and add duty on boss encounters. This nerf is trivial to ret in PvP because it's a change to an ability on such a long cooldown. It's a major nerf to tanks, and I'm not convinced that we needed a nerf of this magnitude.

My sense from the way the conversation is going is the GC and the rest of the devs don't feel that prot pallies losing LoH as a tanking cooldown is that big of an issue. The DR component of Ardent Defender is something that other tank classes don't have that I'm aware of. Perhaps in the minds of the devs, that's comparable to the self heals of other tank classes (it's not like hititng Enraged/Frenzied regen a split second before you get gibbed is going to do enough to prevent a death). I'm not necessarily saying I agree with that, but I could also understand if that's their position.