Contemplating the new changes.
After the release of the Paladin Class Preview, Blue Poster Nethaera put out some clarifications. These answered some of the questions that I had about the suggested changes, and brought up a few more questions. This post will deal mostly with the Healing aspect, and hope to put together another post about some of the Tanking and Ret changes as well.
First up, some clarification of the Flash of Light/Holy Light/Big ‘ol Holy Light change. According to the post.
Flash of Light remains a fast heal, but will be more expensive to justify the cast speed. Holy Light will be the go-to heal that has average efficiency and throughput. Beacon of Light needs to be changed so that its benefit is letting the paladin heal two targets at once, not letting the paladin get two heals for the mana cost of one. It’s intended to save GCDs and targeting time, not mana.
In addition we’re changing the paladin heal design to match that of the other healers. Holy Light is the middle heal. It’s very efficient, but not particularly fast and doesn’t have a lot of throughput. Flash of Light will be the faster heal that costs more mana. (Currently paladins sort of flip the model around by having a fast, efficient heal.) Holy paladins can talent into an additional heal tha tis like a giant Holy Light. It might take three of these big heals (or two crits) to get a tank from death’s door back to 100% health.
