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From launch until Cataclysm, holy paladins survived on just a handful of heals. We traded healing complexity for unique utility, gaining Aura Mastery instead of Wild Growth or using Hand of Freedom instead of Prayer of Mending. Holy paladin healing was so simple for so many years, as we tended to gravitate toward a single spell like Flash of Light or Holy Light in each expansion. While any other healing class could have complained that their class had become stagnant, holy paladins had literally been playing the same game of whack-a-mole for years. And he always bring us many happy moments of gaining wow gold. See what happened this time.
Cataclysm's massive retooling of paladins and introduction of the three-heal model helped breathe new life into playing holy. Holy power gave us a unique mechanic to manage and gave us additional choices to make when healing. The three-heal model ensures that we're forced to choose between throughput and efficiency, and now we're challenged with managing our mana as well as our healing. Even though these changes drastically shifted the way we play our paladins, we were still relying on the same single-target heals we had always been. Healing Hands, now known as Holy Radiance, was the spell designed to upset the status quo.
Now that it's dead, I'll come out and say it: Holy Radiance's original design was lazy and we deserved better. Instead of taking the risk of breaking holy paladins in order to give us a true AOE heal, we were simply told to pop an instant heal every 30 seconds and we'd heal everyone in range of us. Once Holy Radiance was activated, a holy paladin's AOE rotation was no different from his normal healing protocol. There were no decisions to make; there was no choice involved at all. You simply popped HR whenever you wanted to heal the raid, and then went about your business as usual. Once again, holy paladins were stuck using their single-target heals to cover raid-wide incoming damage.
Holy Radiance's initial incarnation, Healing Hands, was the same HR of today but with a shorter duration and shorter cooldown. Holy Radiance's design has been flawed since its inception. Using one instant-cast spell every 15, 30, or 60 seconds doesn't make holy paladin AOE healing interesting or different. Every other healer in the game has different healing strategies for their different roles, and holy paladins deserve the same complexity. Holy Radiance's one job was to liven up our AOE capabilities, and while it did give us more potency, it failed to give us new choices to make. Whether this change is beneficial for wow players or not is uncertain. It depends on the amount of wow gold we get in the same time, and on if we enjoy better on this game.
Source: www.wowruler.com |