Holy Paladin Feedback -- Build 21531 -- 21-Apr

Please feel free to reply to this thread with feedback you have on this specialization in the most recent version of the Legion Alpha.

You'll find class designer notes on this build here.

This thread and subforum are for class feedback. We may not be attentive to other threads on this subject. Please confine discussion in this thread to issues related to this spec only.

Thank you!

There are some additional upcoming changes to Holy Paladin talents that did not make it into this build. Next build, we will be trying out 3 new talents, with the intention of giving more options to increase average complexity on Holy, and allowing for certain gameplay elements the class has had in the past (such as timing multiple independent cooldowns).

1) Holy Bolt talent replaced with:
Bestow Faith: Instant, 12s cooldown, costs 6% mana.  After 5 seconds, your target is healed for 450%*SP.

2) Sanctified Wrath moved to level 90 to replace Daybreak. Sanctified Wrath’s old slot on level 75 replaced with:
Holy Avenger: Instant, 90s cooldown. Increases your Haste and Holy Shock healing by 30%, for 20sec.

3) Stoicism replaced with:
Fervent Martyr: Passive. Casting Holy Light or Flash of Light on your Beacon of Light reduces the mana cost of your next Light of the Martyr by 35%, stacking up to 3 times.

Thanks!

We discussed both versions of Fervent Martyr (reduces health cost and reduces mana cost). The health cost version is more comforting in a way--you get to ignore the obvious visible downside of Light of the Martyr. That's why we decided we liked it less. Removing LotM's mana cost makes it a very strong and efficient cast to add to your rotation, but you still have to engage with the distinctive mechanic of the spell. If you want to avoid dealing with the downside of LotM, this talent doesn't help you, but if you want to improve its value and potential, it does.

We don't want Bestow Faith to be no-cooldown because that would give Holy a second no-cooldown spammable instant (we explicitly don't want gameplay akin to Rejuv here). A shorter cooldown might be an option for more flexibility and to not be so similar to Holy Shock's cadence, with mana being a more relevant limiter. But this version lets the efficiency and impact be higher when it's used well.

I can see a valid problem with Fervent Martyr being that HL/FoL on Beacon is too infrequent of a trigger (which would be an issue regardless of what the reward was). But, it is okay if the strength of the talent comes out in dungeons or heavy tank healing situations, as SW and JoL are are both solid in normal raid healing. The talent is ultimately similarly tuned whether the cost is health or mana (they're roughly equally important parts of the cost). The mana cost of LotM, while low, is high enough that reclaiming 1/3 of it on each HL/FoL is a significant refund. For example, it effectively reduces the cost of HL-on-tank by 30% and an FoL-on-tank by 22%--very substantial efficiency gains in scenarios where you bare healing a tank often. Reducing the health cost would be a more viscerally felt and easily visible reward, to be sure, but we felt keeping the inherent tradeoff of LotM intact was worth setting up the talent primarily as an efficiency reward for people who use it.

With old Stoicism out, we are also going to try a lower health cost on LotM next build.

04/22/2016 12:17 PMPosted by Bjoerg

Have you considered a %current health for a LotM cost? I really would like to not kill myself when I accidentally crit which could happen frequently given how much we value crit.

When LotM's self-damage did not depend on the healing done, that wound up making the strength of the spell rely too much on crit/mastery scaling. And, the damage from each LotM cast is a small % of total health--if the possibility of a crit means you must avoid using the spell below 20% health even if you want to, that's totally fine. You should feel like it's a risk, that you probably want to avoid, to cast it when you're that low.

It's also likely that Paladins aren't very constrained by mana right now compared to everyone else, but we haven't gone through and made more tuning changes yet.

But, yes, we agree--you'd probably never cast LotM when you're below 20% health (you probably wouldn't do that regardless of the crit situation), and that's how it should be. But if you're at 100% and have a tank getting burst, or want to move while some raid members are low, it can easily be chosen over Flash or Light.

04/22/2016 03:16 PMPosted by Pelinal

The other option for mana is to simply keep Flash of Light being our mana dump, which I am personally fine with. Increase the base healing of Flash of Light and the mana cost a bit to differentiate it from Holy Light.

This is something that's a definite possibility as we look at tuning more--we understand the differentiation between these two may be too low.

Tuning is still early and right now is drifting around a lot, as unrelated changes happen without necessarily being compensated for in terms of tuning. Looks like H Pal DPS is somewhat lower than other healers in this build (possibly largely due to the loss of Holy Bolt); we'll bring it up next build so it's in the ballpark before more detailed tuning happens.