#1 - Aug. 17, 2012, 4:10 p.m.
Now, it's probably safe to assume that CS has been used extensively in raid testing (and probably in 5-man instances too). This means that all current tuning -- and subsequent conclusions that holy paladins are "fine", "competitive", "properly tuned" or whatever label you choose here -- was based on a playstyle that's no longer viable.
Don't get me wrong: I am all for removing CS as a requirement. Melee range alone is a unpleasant (and probably a major balance headache as well), not to mention having to weave a very short cooldown into an already full rotation. So, good riddance.
Here's the thing, though. Are we going to have another holy paladin tuning pass before the end of beta? It makes sense because of how important CS was to our mana efficiency (and, by extension, to our throughput). I am afraid of the situation where we are declared "properly tuned" even if we aren't anymore -- with an inevitable hotfix after release when it turns out that, you know... we did need another tuning pass after all.
Any blues want to comment?