The Holy Pally Dilemma - Blue Tracker

#0 - June 20, 2009, 6:17 p.m.

Numerous threads have cropped up about holy pallies, obviously. I think that only a few posts really express the dilemma we're facing with 3.2, and many are hidden in longer threads. This thread is my attempt to express it. TL;DR will follow, don't worry.

Before I begin, I should state that this comes from someone who is looking at it from two sides of the fence: I also have a resto druid, both of which are working on hard modes--I'm not in an Algalon-level guild, but I am seeing some more difficult content.

What the problem isn't.
Many non-pallies seem to think that pallies have obscene regen, and that because we have obscene regen, we are able to spam HL with no regard for mana efficiency or overheal. This is wrong. It confuses the chicken for the egg. We spam HL because we have to; in order to support this, we are forced to stack nothing but int for regen just to stay competitive.

Fight dynamics force HL use for tank healing.
Tanks take big hits. This is not a surprise to anyone. Further, when tanks take hits - outside of rarer timed mechanics like Mimiron P1 - comes down purely to RNG. It is not uncommon for tanks to take 3-5 hits for 15-20k each over the course of 2.5-5 seconds, and it takes a far less extreme example to kill a tank if he doesn't get enough healing. This dynamic exceptionally unlikely to change given how broad the implications would be for how this game is played.

Pallies are good because they can keep a tank up through this. We can't do it alone, but we can do it. To do that, we have to use HL, though. FoL cannot keep up. (I'll spare you the math, but the short version is that FoL in pretty good gear and gemming for spellpower alone will hit for ~4k, or 6k on a crit.) HL is sustainable because we gem and gear primarily for int, in order to support it.

The problem is that if you are casting FoL, the tank dies. Why, you say, don't you just switch to HL immediately when he takes a hit, or HS and then HL? We do. It isn't enough. If that HL isn't partway through its cast sequence already, it's a big problem; we take a risk every time we use a GCD for anything other than HL. Is it anecdotal to say something like this? Sure. But we're talking RNG here, not a consistent, predictable source of damage--it is not possible to give anything but anecdotal evidence. When those giving you the anecdotal evidence are pallies working on hard modes or better, it is foolish to pass this off entirely. My experience supports this, with Thorim hard, XT hard, and IC hard being just three examples.

Think of it this way: If you start with FoL, every heal afterward you're playing catch-up. Bosses hit harder than the 10-16k that HL can heal for. When - not if, when - the RNG causes the tank to take hits at a rate equal to or faster than your HL cast time (plus an additional margin depending on how much harder the boss is hitting), you will never catch up.

Pallies do not have as "endless" of mana pools as people seem to think.
In hard modes, those same pallies are all saying that they either A) actively have mana problems, or B) are stretched thin. You need the person healing the tank to be able to keep going, or the raid wipes. DP is great for regen, but you can't always count on it because we do often need to use that /cancelaura macro when things start going south. Our regen is "enough," yes. But if you reduce it from where it is, we cannot keep up HL; and without keeping up HL, we cannot do our job.

Changes proposed in 3.2, as currently presented, leave us with nothing that would make a raid leader want to bring us.
With the patch, mp5 increases partially compensate for regen loss. But they don't go the whole way. Healers of other classes are often saying "great, your regen was stronger than ours, now you have to think about it more!" That's all well and good, except that our essential function is to keep going with big heals. We do not have the 4-6 actively usable heals that other classes have; and if we use our smaller heals, the tank dies. Period. Let's take a quick look at the possible healing roles in a raid, and how the pally will do in each come 3.2:

[to be continuedâ€¦]

#150 - June 24, 2009, 7:33 a.m.

Okay, since so many posters seem to feel that this summarizes paladin concerns in a nutshell, I will share our concerns.

The argument seems to be:

1) Our mana regen has to be extremely high.
2) Why? Because we have to spam Holy Light.
3) Why? Because if we don't, the tank will die.

That is the problem. Right there.

First off, no other class can get the HPS that a paladin can out of HL. They might not even be able to get the HPM when you consider the Illumination return on mana. Your druids may have great numbers on the meters. Are they going to keep a tank up with just Rejuv, Lifebloom and Nourish spam? Probably not. They are most likely topping off the tank in between HL blasts. We are completely balancing MT survival around HL spam.

But really the more important point is you're saying "The content will be too hard." The content (assuming you're talking about hard modes) is supposed to be hard. Tanks not dying makes the content too easy. Spamming HL to keep the tank alive with a very large if not infinite mana pool to back it up isn't fun, and it's not fun for the tank either because we then have to resort to enormous hits to ever have a chance of killing the tank, because we're certainly not going to run the healers out of mana. So then tanking becomes a game of cooldowns -- can you get Guardian Spirit up? Can you use Pain Suppression? Does the tank have IBF or Shield Wall ready for that next big hit?

But if we just nerf HL and mana regen, then what are Holy paladins supposed to do? Well, now they can Beacon someone and heal two players at once. Yes, I know you could always do that before, but you just got done telling me that you don't dare stop spamming HL on the tank or she'll die. Now you can heal the tank and someone else, or just heal two someone elses. Yes, I know that CoH and WG look really good on the meters. But topping off 5 people isn't nearly as useful as saving the life of one person. You can still target players and heal them. Players do it all the time. PvE healing does not rest entirely on smart, AE heals (though they might look really good on the meters).

We'd be in a much better place if the steps above read like this:

1) We have reasonable mana regen.
2) Why? Because then every problem doesn't look like a job for HL spam.
3) Why? Because we can keep the tank up with the tools we're given, unless we're in a hard mode, in which case we better be at the absolute top of our game, fully flasked, with the best gear available and a raid that has practiced, practiced, practiced.

Don't worry about the "not invited to raids" part. All the healers are getting invited to raids now even if the shamans are slightly underpowered and paladins can only do one job really well. We think with those two problems addressed, things will be in even better shape in 3.2, and if not we will continue to tweak the numbers until they are.

The best thing you can do is get on the PTR and try out the changes and see what it feels like. We'll put a lot more stock in that than we will guessing (even guessing with math) what the changes will bring. (Which is not to say feedback is irrelevant unless you're on the PTR -- but PTR feedback is really good.) Some druids predicted the world was ending with the Lifebloom nerf in 3.1. They are doing just fine.