OK, so we got some cool new stuff in LK. BUT we have a ton of trouble with group damage - gimping us for 5 mans - and worse creating a trend toward avoiding grouping with Holy pallies. Nobody seems to be thinking we fail at single target tank healing. We certainly don't have a perception problem in the community at large so e'll always have a raid slot to heal the tank(s)

Many of us want a group or AoE heal. However, Blizz's vision for the paladin seems to be to try to be more creative than further homogenizing classes by just giving us that straightforward solution.

If I could try to connect some dots...this seems to be the Blizzard Way for Holy paladins...

1 - Niche in larger groups is best single target healer - meaning we will need both high mana efficiency and very large single target heals
2 - Solution to 5 man AoE healing is Beacon. Idea is to allow us to heal others with beacon keeping the tank up.
3- Group or AoE heal is not allowed, probably at least in part given #1

Now this is a bit of a problem, because it does not quite work well enough. Even with Beacon making the tank "safe", trying to carry 3 dpsers through AoE with our one at a time heal spam is not always possible. Also if a dpser pops a cookie or a pot at an inopportune moment it can steal a heal from the tank.

So, trying to stay in Blizz's target zone, maybe some of the following ideas might work...

Overheal Storage Talent - Maybe have a talent that lets us overheal our targets for X health which is held for Y period of time, and then applied when said target reaches full minus X...or Z% health, or some threshold. Maybe even 5%.

Talented spell that temporarily removes the cooldown from Holy Shock. Would probably need to have this spellon a short cooldown - as short as a typical bosses time between AoE attacks. If this seems OP there maybe could be a penalty like no chance of crit while in effect - something that makes it good for group healing without putting us too far over the top on single target throughput. So we still have to "serial single target" heal, but at least we can do it fast enough to be effective.

Allow beacon to include overheal within a certain time window - e.g. transfers effective healing that would have been done vs. target's lowest health in last 2s - or even better based on their health when the cast was started instead of finished.

My point really is that maybe there might be some ways to solve our problems that are neither OP, nor overly homogenizing. There are some quick ideas, there must be many other approaches that could be considered that would work.

What if Beacon simply allowed overheal to transfer?

You could simply make Holy Light (and maybe FoL) overheals splash to other players equally, and in a decent sized radius. These would not be large heals, but these smaller heals combined with any JoL effects could add up to take a LOT of stress off the Pally in AoE situations.

This would really help the Pally in 5-mans and yet not take away any raid healing spots/roles in raids. For example, say the tank has 6K damage, and I do a 10K Holy Light crit heal. In a 5-man,
the other 4K of healing would go to the other 4 people in the group for 1K of healing each. Useful. Not superpowered, but useful. In a 25-man, the 24 other people would get about 167 healing each. Not so useful.

In the more extreme case of the tank with 0 dmg and a 10K crit heal, the other 4 would get 2500 healing each. In a 25 man the other 24 would get about 417 healing each. Again, Pallies are helped in 5-mans and are not too much threat to steal raid-healing spots from others, though they could actually be used in that role if really needed.

To balance this you would have to reduce some of the mana efficiency of Paladins. You could also tie this to Beacon of Light, whereby heals on the Beacon splash to other players.

You could simply learn to play your paladin better....

I have no trouble in 5 man heroics at all...I don't understand why paladins are complaining so damn much.

I top the healing meters on nearly every encounter in 25 naxx. I don't know what you're doing wrong =/

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Q u o t e:
You could simply learn to play your paladin better....

I have no trouble in 5 man heroics at all...I don't understand why paladins are complaining so damn much.

I top the healing meters on nearly every encounter in 25 naxx. I don't know what you're doing wrong =/

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Actually the biggest issues is that we're starting to get a bad rap. Just like Ret used to be - "mediocre melee dps with no CC". The fact that there were skilled and well geared Ret Paladins doing good dps and using their more sublt e utility talents around did not make it easy for even a good ret Paladin to get a 5 man group.

Holy paladin is now seen as "No group heals". People are simple. This could become a real problem very easily.

And topping the healing meters in a Raid is absolutely completely irrelevant to this.

I think beacon including overheals would be OP for PvP and maybe just OP everywhere basically doubling healing throughput under all circumstances. e.g. in PvP hide behind a Pillar and spam heal self.

The splash heal idea, if it did enough to make a difference, sounds like an AoE heal tacked onto Holy Light. Yes it could solve the problem, but they don't seem keen on giving us a "one heal multi target" ability beyond BoL.

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Q u o t e:
You could simply learn to play your paladin better....

I have no trouble in 5 man heroics at all...I don't understand why paladins are complaining so damn much.

I top the healing meters on nearly every encounter in 25 naxx. I don't know what you're doing wrong =/

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I suspect it's because people are running them in far lesser gear and/or with worse groups than you are. If you're running Naxx25 then I'd bet you aren't pugging too many heroics with undergeared, underskilled players who don't have either a mic or an attention span.

Non-Pallies are doing that do, but they aren't having as much trouble.

How many Pallies do you think have around 1800 sp and 18000 mana like you do right now? I'd bet most of them are running heroics with significantly less than that, and with similarly leasser-geared tanks and DPS.

People rather have me in 5 mans than shaman...that is saying something...

You have more survivability as a paladin and you can keep people alive a lot easier...

You need to use holy shock more...so many paladins got used to not using holy shock. It is by far the greatest heal you have right now.

When it crits it hits for around 8kish. And when it crits (which is almost all the time) you either get an instant flash of light (another 4-5k non crit heal) or a 1 sec holy light cast.

I'm sorry but if you are having 5 man troubles there is no way you'll be able to heal a patchwerk tank.

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Q u o t e:


I suspect it's because people are running them in far lesser gear and/or with worse groups than you are. If you're running Naxx25 then I'd bet you aren't pugging too many heroics with undergeared, underskilled players who don't have either a mic or an attention span.

Non-Pallies are doing that do, but they aren't having as much trouble.

How many Pallies do you think have around 1800 sp and 18000 mana like you do right now? I'd bet most of them are running heroics with significantly less than that, and with similarly leasser-geared tanks and DPS.

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I started heroics with 1.1k +healing and a 14k mana pool, in quest blues/kara gear.

You just have to get used to using holy shock.

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Q u o t e:
People rather have me in 5 mans than shaman...that is saying something...

You have more survivability as a paladin and you can keep people alive a lot easier...

You need to use holy shock more...so many paladins got used to not using holy shock. It is by far the greatest heal you have right now.

When it crits it hits for around 8kish. And when it crits (which is almost all the time) you either get an instant flash of light (another 4-5k non crit heal) or a 1 sec holy light cast.

I'm sorry but if you are having 5 man troubles there is no way you'll be able to heal a patchwerk tank.

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Do I have to keep healing 5K on 5 people at the same time on Patchwerk? That's the problem in 5-mans: too many people taking damage at the same time. Avoidable or not, they take it. At least on my Priest I have a decent way of dealing with that. I can't Holy Shock to heal everyone at once--at best it means I get a mid-sized and a small heal in quickly.

Running with good (and geared) players vs running with not so good players is probably a much bigger difference than a Pally who is good and vs one who needs to "l2p", IMO. Even a good Pally will struggle when people stand in the fire, or take the Cleave, or don't stop attacking when the reflection shield is up.

1.Change aura mastery to do what glyph of holy light does already.

2.Change glyph of holy light to increase the range by 10 yards.

3.Add a new glyph or deep holy talent that increases the healing done by the hl aoe by like 1/2/3%.

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Q u o t e:


Do I have to keep healing 5K on 5 people at the same time on Patchwerk? That's the problem in 5-mans: too many people taking damage at the same time. Avoidable or not, they take it. At least on my Priest I have a decent way of dealing with that. I can't Holy Shock to heal everyone at once--at best it means I get a mid-sized and a small heal in quickly.

Running with good (and geared) players vs running with not so good players is probably a much bigger difference than a Pally who is good and vs one who needs to "l2p", IMO. Even a good Pally will struggle when people stand in the fire, or take the Cleave, or don't stop attacking when the reflection shield is up.

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Then that is why you get good groups together...you should bring idiots in the group with you. I'm just saying, if you group is semi-competent you will have an easier time healing them.

Thank you for not balancing the game around the perceptions of bad players, GC.

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Q u o t e:
Thank you for not balancing the game around the perceptions of bad players, GC.

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Amen.

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Q u o t e:
Personally, I have run every heroic with a paladin healing but I realize antecdotal data only goes so far.

There are certainly situations where paladins have to work a bit more. But I haven't encountered anything where I wished we had a priest, druid or shaman healing us instead.

The same is true of nearly every class. Mages are better at CC in a lot of dungeons than other classes. Paladins are still probably better AE tanks than death knights. But that doesn't mean that only the best death knights can handle those dungeons.

Now here's an extreme example. Before druids had an out-of-combat rez, many players did believe it was a liability to bring a druid healer, especially whenever they were going to be faced with a respawn situation. We don't think paladin limited AE healing is anywhere close to this degree of problem, but I'd certainly be interested in hearing more.

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Did you count the number of wipes while the paladin healed versus the amount of wipes while a druid, shaman or priest healed? Just curious, not trying to push any buttons.

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Q u o t e:
Then that is why you get good groups together...you should bring idiots in the group with you. I'm just saying, if you group is semi-competent you will have an easier time healing them.

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There is, of course, the fact that those who have to pug are usually dealing with people who think holy pallies are unappealing, and can't necessarily pick and choose their group. Some of us are lucky enough to have friends and guildies who are good, and who recognize that we are good, some don't enjoy that luxury.

Grats on clearing half of herioc Naxx. You truly must be as amazing as your sig claims.

I'm not sure how helpful that would be...I don't know about you super-pros, but in my experience it isn't always how good the healer is that causes a wipe.

I healed every dungeon on normal as I was leveling up and have healed every heroic multiple times, and I find I am able to handle all of the situations acceptably. The only time I have actually felt gimped by my lack of a HoT or AoE heal is 10 man Malygos on the vortex where I can heal 3 people max out of a full raid taking damage (Beacon first player, HS second, FoL third if HS crits, which it will every other vortex due to DF). Sometimes in Heroics I want better AoE or mobility healing or whatever, but I do not feel like I need them, and there are certainly Heroic Bosses where I would want better single target if I was not a Paladin.

Give us the tools to better handle 10 man Malygos and I will be happy.

Maybe, maybe not - the other healers have the tools to brute force heal through mistakes that would be wipes with a holy paladin.

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Q u o t e:
I healed every dungeon on normal as I was leveling up and have healed every heroic multiple times, and I find I am able to handle all of the situations acceptably. The only time I have actually felt gimped by my lack of a HoT or AoE heal is 10 man Malygos on the vortex where I can heal 3 people max out of a full raid taking damage (Beacon first player, HS second, FoL third if HS crits, which it will every other vortex due to DF). Sometimes in Heroics I want better AoE or mobility healing or whatever, but I do not feel like I need them, and there are certainly Heroic Bosses where I would want better single target if I was not a Paladin.

Give us the tools to better handle 10 man Malygos and I will be happy.

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We cheat and take a pally, druid, priest, and a shadow priest...makes that vortex a lot easier, at least for a pally. ;)