Changes in Cata and Tank Damage for Pally

#0 - July 10, 2010, 6:28 p.m.

Since the idea is that Tanks won't die in two swings in rapid succession does this mean we won't see any more fights that require little to no raid healing and massive spam on the tank?

This to me seems like a grand idea, but I worry it starts to ruin the Niche Paladins as healers have,

In a world where there are no Festerguts who can pump out large amounts of damage in relatively low amounts of time, where is the tank healing paladin?

I realize we are getting an AOE heal, and a very nice one, but it still looks like the Paladin is built to heal the tanks - the things with 100k HP - but when Tanks are taking less damage, is there a way for paladins to heal the others quickly and efficiently?

The way I see it each Healer has a niche

Shamans - These guys keep the raid up through burst AOE damage
Druids - These guys keep the raid up through sustained AOE
Priest (disc) - Sustained Mitigation to give more reaction time to other heals
Priest (holy) - Situational Reactivity
Paladin - Tank healing Massive amounts of Burst Healing

In cataclysm the Shaman and Druid have the best ways to deal with damage being distributed to more people, where as paladins even though they have the new AOE I worry will not be able to keep up on healing the multiple people required when the damage is redistributed. With Beacon of Light changed to not work on Flash of light, we can't even begin to heal multiple targets scattered throughout the room,

I just want to make sure that the need or want for Holy Pally's doesn't go the way of the Dodo in that Tanks can settle for the heals of everyother class because they can withstand the amount of time it takes the other classes to heal them up...

What do you guys think?

Red Text:

Changed priest to reflect new knowledge

PS. For the love of all that is holy (C wut I did thar?) no more festergut fights... Please : /

Ghostcrawler

#3 - July 10, 2010, 9:53 p.m.

Q u o t e:
This to me seems like a grand idea, but I worry it starts to ruin the Niche Paladins as healers have,

I'm exaggerating slightly here, but our LK model for Holy paladins was that they could only do one thing well so they might as well be overpowered at it. We could essentially just balance incoming tank damage around outgoing paladin healing. The paladin niche was very small, so if they weren't good at single target and mostly tank healing, they'd be replaced. Yet because it was small, there wasn't much risk of overstacking them as healers.

That model worked okay but it ultimately wasn't what we wanted, so we're going to change it in Cataclysm as much as we can without all of the healers playing identically. You should feel more comfortable having a paladin heal the raid and a druid heal the tank than most groups typically do now.

Ghostcrawler

#35 - July 13, 2010, 6:25 a.m.

Q u o t e:
I've already run into a situation where this toolbox is missing something - there are trash mobs in Throne of the Tides that bounce you around towards them, and drop you into a channeled funk. While I'm bouncing around, my tank is getting the minimal benefit of my tiny HoT, and one lucky person gets my Holy Shock. Afterwards, everybody's health is dipping into the red zone, I'm trying to top people off...and the second mob does its thing. Splat. Beacon didn't even help, because - I love this part - it no longer works on all of our heals, and the one that it doesn't work with is the fast emergency one! The location-HoT is irrelevant, because I can't train it yet and most folks in that instance won't be high enough level to have it.

Holy paladins are changing in Cataclysm probably more than you realize.