wow Significant Holy Paladin Changes Coming in Patch 10.1.5: Fractures in Time

[Staff 949]

Blizzard have now also detailed the changes coming to Paladins, with a focus on Holy in particular.

Paladins (Source)

Greetings Holy Paladins!

Significant changes are being made to the Holy Paladin specialization tree in Fractures in Time and we’d like to go over our goals and plans for these changes.

Meaningful Choices

The previous tree layout and talent nodes did not offer as much choice between content as we’d like. A main goal of this update is to encourage diversity between talent builds so gameplay feels varied between content and encounter types.

To achieve this goal, we’re taking a hard look at the tuning and integration of underrepresented talents to ensure they are both competitive and can fit within multiple builds. Too many talents felt like they worked for one playstyle, but not another. This is generally fine in moderation but was rampant throughout the Holy Paladin tree.

We’re aiming to have more talents that have functionality for multiple builds as to encourage experimentation throughout the tree. This will all come along with new additions to the tree intended to support new playstyles.

Rotational Updates

There are a few core rotational changes that we’re implementing to slow down the expenditure of generators that do not heal. Holy Paladin felt like too many globals were being spent on damage abilities purely to generate Holy Power, which did not feel right for a healer specialization. We’re considering removing Radiant Onslaught to address this but are going to wait for more testing before deciding on that change.

We also think a few abilities that seemed core were not completely integrated into the kit, such as Judgment and Shield of the Righteous. These abilities see significant use but often felt separated from the regular rotational flow. Addressing this will be a key goal of the update.

Reducing the time Holy Paladins spend dealing damage without healing allows for a steadier stream of healing and more time to focus on triaging. Overall, we’d like Holy Paladin to be more focused on when/where/if their healing should be used than they are now.

Infusion of Light

Infusion of Light’s high uptime and low use rate has been concerning for us. We’d like to make this more spendable, but also appear less often as to be a real moment of empowerment that feels good to capitalize on. We’re hoping the redesign of Greater Judgment and addition of Judgment to the spells that can consume Infusion helps this proc feel more impactful for every build.

Mastery

We have heard feedback that Holy Paladin’s Mastery can feel restrictive and more of a loss of power than gain. We’re returning Beacon of the Lightbringer to help address this concern. We’re hoping this allows for clever Beacon of Light placement and positioning to allow for more freedom of movement around the battlefield.

Mana Expenditure

The nature of Holy Power being a Mana free resource is that the spenders must carry the Mana weight, but Holy Paladin must constantly be generating to heal efficiently. This can lead to gameplay feeling punishing with only a few abilities costing most of your mana, and there not being ways to avoid that being the case.

To remedy this, we’re looking at adding ways to regenerate Mana through active play or for there to be mana refunds in some situations. Alongside this, we’re also investigating attaching a slight Mana-cost to Holy Power spenders and decreasing the cost of generators to even out the rate of expenditure. We’d love to hear feedback on this topic!

Damage Toolkit

As mentioned before, Shield of the Righteous and Judgment have not felt fully integrated into Holy Paladin playstyle. We’re looking to address this through a few new talent additions and redesigns that can contribute damage effectively in multiple encounter profiles.

Our hope is that Holy Paladins will have an easier time deciding if Shield of the Righteous is a worthy way to spend their Holy Power as they currently often are giving up more than we’d like to actively contribute offensively.

More on the Way

There are more changes and iteration to come as we move towards Fractures in Time release – we’re excited to hear your thoughts and will share more as PTR progresses. Thank you for your continued feedback!