Sick of Being Designed Around Gimmicks: Cata

#0 - Oct. 6, 2010, 11:40 a.m.

On the 18th of June 2009 this post was made:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=17899801470&sid=1&pageNo=1

Over one year later Holy Paladins are still in a very similar place, still discussing the same issues.

Now to be fair, we have received two new spells in Cataclysm, two AoE heals. But once again i find myself saying "im sick of being designed around gimmicks". 'Light of Dawn' and 'Holy Radiance' have some very serious limitations and restrictions compared to other healers AoE heals, why must there always be a catch?

Recently GC said:

Q u o t e:
I could see (someday) giving paladins a heal that hit 3-5 targets but otherwise worked exactly like Word of Glory.

When GC suggested that '3-5 target heal' people immediately jumped on it, people want that new heal now, before Cataclysm go's live. The problem is, although we have received two new AoE heals, they don’t even come close to comparing to all the other AoE heals other classes have, yet all our single target healing has been nerfed WORSE then all the other healers now.

If you continue to read that post some of the most respected Holy Paladins warned the community that if Holy Paladins received AoE heals it would create a huge mess, or to quote Odes "raid healing capabilities would #@*@ this class up".

He was right. Holy Paladins in Cataclysm = Jack of all Trades, Master of None. No reason to bring one to a raid.

The second part of that quote from GC:

Q u o t e:
But since we gave paladins 4 new heals already, as well as reasons to use both Flash and Holy Light, let's see if we can get the current model feeling good first.

The problem is, for each "new" heal we received another spell was taken away, or these "new" heals are just spells we use to have disguised under a new name.

Word of Glory = Instant Cast Flash of Lights from the Infusion of Light Talent (removed)
Divine Light = Another rank of Holy Light with a new name.

Also GC said:

Q u o t e:
If you don’t count the FoL hot as a heal then yes you only have one. I guess if you didn’t count the Holy Shock heal as a heal, you’d have none. Many of these responses are similar. “I don’t count the hot from FoL as healing. I don’t count the ability to overheal and still make Beacon work as healing. I don’t count the HL AE as healing.” Well, okay....

This suggests that GC saw the Flash of Light HoT as a separate unique heal, along with Beacon and Glyph of Holy Light.

Flash of Light HoT = Removed
Beacon of Light = Nerfed (no compensation)
Glyph of Holy Light = Removed (effect merged with Guardian of Ancient Kings, 5min cooldown, 5 heals)
Sacred Shield = Removed
Judgment of Light = Removed

GC, you act as if Holy Paladins toolbox of heals is amazingly new, the truth is... its much worse, you cant just rearrange things, rename some things, throw in two unreliable raid heals (that in no way compete with other raid heals) and then call us finished.

Beta is nearly over, major class changes are done, yet for Holy Paladins to finally receive what we have been asking for years now, 2-3 new heals will need to be introduced.

New heals that arnt gimmicks.
New heals that don’t replace old ones.
New heals that will stay around longer than one expansion.
New heals that are reliable, that fill the huge holes we are missing, and that balance us with other healers.

The 3-5 target heal would be a good start, then giving us Hand of Purity, the single target PoM type spell that we were tolled we would get in Wrath Alpha.

Anyone else feel like we have just gotten worse since this post was originally made?

Ghostcrawler

#30 - Oct. 6, 2010, 8:14 p.m.

Q u o t e:
All Paladin single target heals heal for less than the equivalent heals of the other classes. If you want math just wander into some other threads on this forum. Why is this?

Because we're not done? :)

Believe is right. I was running Halls of Lightning with a paladin healer at the time, and he had no trouble keeping us alive and even emailed me that he couldn't understand why so many paladins were having trouble with it. Holy Radiance should solve a similar situation should it every come up again.

We're not swayed by the arguments that essentially say "DPS are stupid and won't listen, so I have to be able to keep them alive anyway." We are making some adjustments to heroics so that standing in the fire is often so deadly that it's harder to blame the healer (though no doubt many will still try).

Q u o t e:
My point, and maybe it was said a little too tersely, is that Pallies are BY DESIGN supposed to have slightly weaker AoE heals than everyone else, with the counter-balance that their single-target (tank) healing is slighly stronger than everyone else. If you don't like that, then you will be much happier in the longer term rerolling a different healer, since Blizz does not seem like they are budging on this viewpoint.

It's not that we want paladins to be single target healers. It's that we felt like we had to give the healers very similar single target spells (a decision that many healers object to, I should point out) so we are loathe to just give paladins Chain Heal or Circle of Healing. Yes, Holy Radiance and Light of Dawn (and even Beacon) are pretty unusual spells. That doesn't mean they have to be terrible by definition. We understand that it's pretty common for the community, upon finding something wanting in their class, to look across the aisle at another class and say "Ooh, I want that!" It's a challenge to keep the 5 healing specs unique, but it's also very important to us. The OP calls those gimmicks. We call it trying to avoid homogenization.

Ghostcrawler

#36 - Oct. 6, 2010, 8:33 p.m.

Q u o t e:
So you changed Light of Dawn's name too?

Oops. In my defense, we went back and forth between both names for some time.

Ghostcrawler

#55 - Oct. 6, 2010, 9:44 p.m.

Q u o t e:
how is this ok in your mind?

I literally said (or so I thought) that because we felt like we had to cave on having so many unique mana and throughput differences among the base heals that it is really important to us to protect what differences remain. Maybe I'll be back here in a year or two explaining that we gave every healer an instant area heal, a chain heal, a hot, Beacon, Hand of Sacrifice, Power Word:Shield, Swiftmend, Innervate, Earth Shield and a Prayer of Mending clone, but I sure hope not. :(