PvP Prot/Holy Paladins Going Away
Ghostcrawler made a post today about the future of prot paladins healing with Spell Power gear in PvP, saying that in the future (Season 7) they will not be able to heal for more than a paladin in the Holy tree.
I’ve seriously considered switching to full prot for PvP, but I’ve always held off. I just love the feel of the Holy tree and it feels wrong to heal with the Prot tree. I also love Holy Shock and ranged judgements. I find when I play I usually naturally try to follow Blizzard’s intentions with the game. For example, from everything I read I knew it wasn’t Blizzard’s vision for us to stack just one stat (Intellect) and spam one spell while using Beacon on myself and never caring about environment damage. So I never did that. And in the end, Blizzard fixed it.
The same is true here, even though I experienced the power of prot first hand many times in the arena. They truly are very difficult to beat. But, it didn’t feel right to heal better as Prot than I do as Holy and so I never switched. I didn’t know whether or not Blizzard would fix it, but I wanted to get Holy to work, either way, and so I stuck with it.
Now, it looks like Blizzard has decided to swing the nerf bat at the pvp prot pallies. I guess I’m happy with the change, only because it will make those prot pallies a little easier to face. I have a feeling though that the people who were really good at Prot are also going to be really good at Holy, so all this change really means is a shift toward a more logical design. So make sure you seek out a new spec before Season 7 if you’re currently healing with prot in PvP.
You can see Ghostcrawler’s quotes on the subject below:
We are going to fix the specific scenario where a PvP paladin with a Prot build but spell power gear can heal for more than a Holy build in the same gear. We want to do this without messing up the Prot paladin trying to tank in PvE.
We will probably not make this change before the end of the current Arena season, but you can be thinking about your teams for season 7 with this change in mind.
Touched by the Light helps to solve a specific problem which is that paladins do both physical and magical damage and Prot paladins need both for threat (and damage). It works fine when the paladin is in tanking gear, and in fact was designed so that paladins wouldn’t need to mix tanking gear with caster gear as they did in the past.
It is not balanced for a Prot paladin who decides to wear spell power gear. At that point you’re double-dipping.
We have no problem with Prot paladins in PvP, but they need to be there because their survivability is an asset, not because they can out-heal an entire tree dedicated to healing.
There is a fine line between creative use of game mechanics and something that goes against our vision for the game. It’s always going to be subjective. If the Retribution tree ended up being better at tanking than the Protection tree, or the Shadow priest was a better healer than the Disc tree, or the Marks hunter had a more powerful pet than the BM hunter, we’d take similar action.
My suggestions for the nerf:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=10453497299&sid=1
both of the changes you have suggested are affecting PvE….
btw I dont think prot speced pvp healer can outheal deep holy. the difference is that its much more funny and has much more utility and survivability than holy.
holy is just a pilar jumping, running crap and its survivability is lower then disc priest or druid… not mentioning that holy pvp paly is unable to put oposing team under the pressure except HoJ on a long CD. holy tree is plain boring and PvP talents there are just a bunch of crap.
I’d honestly say the easiest way to fix it would be to give the talent some sort of diminishing returns, once you get above a certain spell power value.
Since in PvE prot paladin’s don’t use spellpower they’d never hit the diminishing return value (let’s say DR at 10~20x Level). However, placing the DR value at the right place will lower a healing prot paladin’s effectiveness to below a holy paladin’s.
I enjoy running Wintergrasp and even the occasional battleground (except that Alliance in my BattleGroup never ever seems to win). I always solo as Ret (wearing mostly Holy PVP gear) but always go Holy in PVP.
But why do I get the idea that every single class-balancing issue these days is determined by something I have not the slightest interest in, Arena?
From the quotes, sounds like they are going to hit the prot tree and screw up PvE, regardless of what they would like to do. Let’s go outside the box: they’ve shown with dual specs it’s possible to have more than one build on character. I’m no programer, but it seems to me, if you can have 2 specs, it wouldn’t take much more to have 3. Have a 3rd spec that activates only when you are in a battleground or the arena, and make whatever tree change they need to make on the PvP spec only.
So sad…
I was about to try Prot for PvE-healing because since 3.2, I find Holy to be… boring.
- Beacon has been oversimplyfied (less to keep in mind when using it).
- I feel a bit gimped for tankhealing but still not really a goot raidhealer. How long does it take for me to heal let’s say 10 melees? At least 10 to 15 Seconds, and then I healed each of them for a meager FoL 4K to 6K.
- The mechanics are clunky. Beacon on the tank but heal the raid, except for the occasional FoL to the tank because of the shield he also received so he gets a HoT, which will (potentially) double my healoutput on the tank but since he’s also beaconed, it’s no extra healing at all…
- Reactive haling is way too restrictive. With huge spikes of damage coming in, reactive healing has had its place and time, but they were then and there not here and now. Tanks gets hit with the big stick in fast succession. Shields that mitigate would be the perfect answer to this, buying time and keeping alive where healing for the same amount would hit a dead body. but shields are for prot?
Maybe I felt it before already, but with 3.2, I’ve almost lost interest in raiding with my holy paly. My tankequipment is not good enough for my guild to accept me for progression-raiding and I have no alt at 80 (so far). The only reason I’m still playing holy is that there’s currently no alternative for me. Although I cancelled a raid today so I can play my latest alt, a lvl 28 Druid-tank.
i played holy pvp and tank (with holy gear) pvp. and i must say that tank with holy is much more fun then holy
few weeks ago some blizz official said the “playing def with holy gear in pvp” is nothing to complain about but just using the game mechanics in an other way they ever thought about. but he also said that there is no reason to chance any things.
and now after enough “nerf them” calls blizz is again throwing the nerf hammer at us. i’m disapointed..
I think it boils down to the fact that a prot paladin in holy gear, not only had more survivability; but also happened to have a greater healing capacity…
I don’t think they should completely kill the prot pvp healing; but in the same breath… a prot paladin shouldn’t be able to out heal the tree dedicated to healing.
I’m sure blizzard would hit Holy with a Nerf bat if we suddenly became a better tank then Prot, if we put on tanking gear.
There is a difference between viable at something and excelling at something.
a prot paladin with holy gear has greater healing capacity because of only one reasen: he can defend himself against players who come too close (20sec HoJ, avengers revenge 30sec, far better block chance, better parry, better avoid). a holy paladin has what? o yes, HoJ every 1 minute
- but that’s all.
i think in a scenario where no one would be attacking the paladin, the holy paladin would outperform the prot paladin in healing capacities. but this will be not the case in any battleground you visit. you see a healer, you go for the healer
ok, patch 3.2.2 is coming:
Touched by the Light: This talent now provides 20/40/60% of the paladin’s strength as spell power instead of 10/20/30% of the paladin’s stamina.
this new patch change doesnt nerf the spec. it just completely destroy it.
I have tried 33/38/0 in BG´s (and in somewhat extent Arena). Have a lot of survivabilty.
Healing less yes but survive also much much longer.
And the Prot/holy nerf will not touch the, in my humble opinion, exiting Prot/retri specc(0/52/19) in retri gear.
Havnt done the mats but if it gives even more damage I am starting to get nervous the nerftrain at forums will start focus on this setup instead.
I play this spec in my arena’s and i don’t believe this nerf is justified. bunch of people say that just cuz i don’t wanna be nerfed but with no instant casts no way to heal both or more people at the same time really makes it a tough spec to play (easier than holy cuz it sucks).
Also they say we have infinite mana ya at a cost (50% healing nerf= quite substantial cost for more mana). and the buff to innervate wtf? pretty much just free mana. a priest just mana burns it to nothing and with his rogue partner nuking heals in half also, you only hit for 25% of your heals= healing? lol
And aron im sry but i don’t know what your talking about prot healing in pve it would be useless beyond all reason in pve. try a full 1.5 second cast again not doubled by beacon and with that slow cast holy could easily pump out more heals than the measly buff you’d get from stam on pve gear. I top charts constantly using flash shock and holy lights if necessary. just adapt, we 2 pally heal ulduar just fine so we got a buff on raid and tank healing. and the shield wtf? thats a disc priest, or we could just make all healers the same sound good?
Fuck WoW. I quit.
Prot paladins are NOT ment for healing, and they are currently destroying what ever arena balance there is, as they are not able to be killed in 2v2. How is it logic to enable a class spec the way that they get insane mana regen (no use manadraining), 1.5 sec heals (hard to cc if not possible at all for some classes), high amount of armor and hp, small stunns with no seeming DR what so ever + hammer, AND alot more bubble action.. It’s just a total pisstake tbh.. it realy is. period. Hope they fix this soon, it’s more of an exploit then anything else.