PSA: Hand of Sacrifice should be used as a last resort in Legion, if at all

[dyeus]

It will be interesting to see how many top world guilds bring in a Holy Paladin for Legion progression. I think with the martyr style of healing with no mobility, and no good raid/tank CD's (beside devo) is going to hurt us in progression. Its almost a guarantee that a holy paladin will die casting Sac in a Legion progression fight. Who wants to waste a rez on that when there are better alternatives in heavy progression fights if your competing for world/Countries/Realm 1 first titles.

I agree that it'll be interesting. As it stands, I don't see any reason to bring a holy paladin over a resto druid/shaman, but hopefully I'll feel differently at level 110 (funnily enough, a shaman's biggest weakness used to be spread out raids which now we're saddled with and they've overcome, plus they have good cooldowns). But it's not like we're alone in this boat, and IMO has more to do with Blizzard's new direction: moving away from providing synergy between classes. I can see a day on the horizon where it might make sense to just stack the top DPS, bring 15 mages, and that's a progression boss just because that's the top class DPS at the time. But that's just me heralding the end of time...

I don't believe Holy Paladins are in a doom and gloom state like everyone on the forums makes us out to be. We are strong tank healers, and the numbers are there. We do need some TLC with our patched up tool kit. Everything I stated above will hurt paladins in top end raiding.

Me neither. Change is scary, just banking on the fact that it's been awhile since any class has been nonviable in progression raiding, and have faith that they will actively take steps to prevent it from happening again. The Sac nerf hurt us, the Mastery nerf hurt us, but we'll see how it all unfolds at level 110.

It's nice to have multiple holy paladins in a guild, so I don't have to talk to myself quite as much!

[Akaina]

Speaking from the perspective of the class who had the "weakest" CD up till pre-patch, I wouldn't worry too much about it. There is no way around the fact that that change seriously hurt but it also opens up opportunities. Because Mythic bosses hit so hard, Cocoon wasn't really a spell that was often sought after by tanks. After the flat damage amount was absorbed, it was just gone. There were times where it could be used as a tank CD but not often and never in favor of another healer's CD. If you aren't being called on for a specific time in every fight, that opens you up to use it for emergencies when you need it.

The long and short of it is, you don't actually have to use it just on the tanks anymore. In the past it was too strong not to use it on a tank but if you are not set up to use it in a specific fight, feel free to save a dps or healer with it. I have saved a lot of people with life cocoon who would have been dead otherwise. The spells do, of course, work differently but if a raid wide AOE is about to go off and a fellow healer is not within a cd's worth of your healing margin of survival, toss your BoS on them and have faith that your fellow healers see the same problem you do.

Something I've learned over the years is just because people say something is terrible, doesn't usually mean that it is. It just turns out to be situational. I find it a fun challenge to prove them wrong ^_^

Happy healing, Pallies. Awesome discussion!

[Medx]

If I remember correctly the Holy Pally artifact weapon has a slot that reduces the damage taken to the paladin using BoS. Not sure if its been changed or how much of a reduction it is but I know it existed

[dyeus]

If I remember correctly the Holy Pally artifact weapon has a slot that reduces the damage taken to the paladin using BoS. Not sure if its been changed or how much of a reduction it is but I know it existed

Unfortunately, that's a trap.

At max level, it will reduce the damage transfer by 30%. My initial though too was that meant the paladin would be taking no damage (30% damage transfer - 30% reduced damage = 0% damage, right?). Nope! It's multiplicative. 30% original damage transfer * 30% reduction = 21% new damage transfer.

It won't make a meaningful impact on the amount of damage taken by the paladin.