Avenging crusader is single greatest spell on a healer. Really fun.I hope they don't push glimmer meta and make avenging crusader unworthy.
Sad to see only one way of playing holy Paladin got covered. All I am asking for is for the healing guides to be written as well as the tank ones. Made by people who actually play the class and know it inside and out. Not someone who dabbles in everything. This way you’re not helping the community. Someone who is looking to become a healer or pick a different class for SL is met with unhelpful information that lacks objectivity.
I have the feeling they push back Pala heal to the spot it should do well: be the healer who is responsible for the tank and nice single target spot healing. Glimmer made fun but it felt like being pushed on the rank to the other large group healers - in my opinion - pala should not be responsible for. I think the whole Glimmer playstyle pushed back the importance of handling the Infusion and the cast and perhaps they aim for too.
From what I've seen so far in the way of raid and M+ mechanics I'm unsure glimmer will remain top because there so many encounters unfriendly to melee which will undoubtedly cuck the building of holy power. However I cant stand the caster build its so slow and boring and again fight mechanics are built to be raid wide and fast paced now, things aren't like in Vanilla where 1-2 individuals and the tanks are taking a beating. So I'm currently in the dark with how to feel about Holy Paladin state.
So blizzard took one look at Warcraft Logs for both Mythic+ and Raid and saw that Holy Paladins were top in both .. so they wanted to kill the class for an expansion so others can maybe be the new kings. They just did that with these changes. Taking a look at the legendary's (specifically holy) confirms they wanted this spec DEAD this expansion. Congrats devs .. didn't know how to properly NERF them because you OBVIOUSLY don't play the class ... so you just utterly destroy them. GGz.
For the love of Uther and all that is holy. nobody asked for combo point healing, yet we got it... for once I would like to be proven wrong and Blizzard would actually listen to it's community... some of these changes make me wish they brought back Devine Plea and mana pool scaling off INT, yes it was broken AF but it was way more fun to play rather than combo point healing with crap spells this time around, Light of Dawn is still utter garbage, Light of the Martyr is still in our spellbooks for some weird god damn reason, the Mastery needed a revamp, unless you're into spamming CS like a mad-man, at it's current state it has to be the worst compared to anything that can have a healing spell in this damn game, Mastery is so niche at this point is a "who gives a hoot" stat as it's purely encounter based even if you're melee "healing". We got auras back, "huzzah?", we got the same utility we always had under a different form "huzzah again!". To recap, Caster doesn't quite measure up to what it's supposed to do, and the other alternative is overcrowding the melee, way to go!
There are no 'non-melee' healing in shadowlands. You have cast crusader strike to generate HoPo. Bestow faith is 12 seconds CD, so the only option to generate HoPo is casting FoL or HL on beacon or Holy Shock. FoL and HL take you OOM so fast, so it's not really viable option and you can't rely on HS only. So you'll always want to get into melee range for CS and cast HS as many as possible, just like we did in BfA.The problem of Hpal now is that most of the conduits and legends are not really helping melee healing. All the leggos are just not good enough(Maybe maraad one is okay). Conduits give advantage to IoL, HL, LotM and non of them are critical spells for hpal.Another problem is with HoPo. The problem of HoPo is equivalent to the problem of LoD. All the HoPo generated will eventually end up in WoG because LoD is just too small and weak. It changes into okay spell with dawnbreaker, but it's just ineffective in m+ and only good when you can hit 5+ injured characters. If LoD was meaningful spell, spending HoPo would have been a fun decision. But you know it isn't.Caster Hpal would be viable only when mana cost of FoL and casting speed of HL is mitigated, and generation of HoPo is easier.Melee Hpal does not have meaningful choice because of LoD being too weak. And WoG results in too much overheals in m+.
As others have noted, the mastery really does shoehorn the spec into melee, standing near to the tank. It's poorly explained and nigh invisible, and it feels like you really get behind if mastery isn't up. Comparing Flash of Light to Regrowth the druid gets 40% spellpower as a HoT, whereas the Paladin has to make up the difference with mastery alone. Even more laughable is comparing FoL to Healing Surge which gets a whole 100% more spellpower! I hate Lightbringer, and I really wish the absorb shield mastery came back. I miss the days of Divine Plea and Illumination where Paladins were economical mana management healers, but I guess that's something I'll never see again outside of Classic TBC or a WOTLK private server.If there was something I could suggest to make Lightbringer better, it would be to have it add its bonus healing as an absorb shield so it's more visible and more proactive, allowing them more time to move around and position properly. But overall, if I wanted to have the positioning gameplay, I'd rather play prot and position predictable AI mobs, rather than mess around with predicting where the players are going to be and have that be something like 20% of my throughput capability. It's not like Efflo or healing rain where you can compensate for your party not being inside, Lightbringer mastery craps on *every* heal you do if people (you or the party) are out of position. Anyway, that's my /rant over.Edit: And I also second draecana on HoPo. it's like herding bloody cats, there's way too much to notice and attend to already with positioning, and I don't at all like the idea of reacting to finishers. The count I want to react to is player health, not my "combo points". It's just far too overwhelming to react to. I think I'm going to swap to another class.