Thursday, March 26, 2009

Spell suggestions for holy paladins

There has been some talk about holy paladins and their lack of fun the last few days. A result from Infusion of Light and Sacred Shield getting changed no doubt. With these changes holy paladins are almost back in the Burning Crusade when it comes gameplay. They are still spamming one healing spell over and over. The change is that they are forced to judge, and I'm calling it "forced" since the rate in which you have to do it is annoying, and that Beacon of Light can be used once in a while. The lowered cooldown on Holy Shock also made holy paladins better at mobility and PvP.

So, what needs to be done? At the very least holy paladins must have a good incentive to use all of their healing spells, since they have so few. Right now there's Holy Light that is the bread and butter healing spell. Flash of Light can be weaved in to the rotation (when the tank is near full health) to save mana and it can be used together with a IoL proc to increase mobility. That isn't enough to be honest. Mainly because it's really boring. As for Holy Shock, I'm not sure it's potent enough to save the day in PvE, but it's boost to mobility alone make people use it. So making people use FoL, without abandoning HL, would be a good start.

Other than that...what can be done to make holy paladin healing more fun? How about a proc with a duration that change the way the paladin heal for a few seconds? How about a judgement that actually help the holy paladin with healing (so that you can gain something from judging often)? How about a new healing spell?


I'll try to create some suggestions:

Nurturing Light (18% of base mana, instant cast, 40 yd range)
Infuses the target with a healing light for 5 sec. When Nurturing Light completes its duration or is dispelled, the target and 4 nearby party or raid members are healed for x to y. Your Flash of Light spells landing on the target will increase the duration for 4 sec up to a maximum of 15 sec and the healing effect will increase over time up to a maximum of 400% after 15 sec uptime. You can only have one Nurturing Light active at a time.

It's mana efficiency is great if the FoLs doesn't overheal, and decent if they only overheal. By juggling FoL you can make Nurturing Light go off when it really matters, with decent precision.

This suggestion would give holy paladins a new spell, which is a unique AoE empowered by direct heals. This would give an incentive to use FoL, both to empower the AoE and to trigger it's effect at the right moment inbetween using HL.

Improved Judgement of Light
Your Judgement of Light effect scale 50%/100%/150% better from spell power, but scale 33%/66%/100% worse from attack power. In addition your Judgement of Light spell will heal 3 nearby targets for x - y / x*2 - y*2 / x*3 - y*3.

This suggestion will give holy paladins a unique AoE, restricted by proximity to the hostile target that get judged, and thus get another tool. It will give holy paladins the choice of judging often, as opposed to now that you want to judge as seldom as possible. It should give the paladin more to do while allowing her to babysit JotP a little less. The spell should also scale in favor of the holy paladin now, so that ret paladins can judge wisdom as it should be. Glyph of Holy Light can be scrapped and redone.

Might edit the post if I can think of a fun proc. But for now, ta-ta.

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