Let me start off by saying that I rolled a Holy Paladin at the beginning of Burning Crusade simply because I wanted a healer, and I was tired of my rogue. I've always enjoyed healing as a Holy Paladin, but always wished for a little added complexity, especially after being able to play other healing classes throughout my time in World of Warcraft.

I have killed Heroic Lich King 12 times. I just killed him again as a 4.01 Paladin last night. While it's certainly possible to do this as a Holy Paladin, we are basically being carried by Disc Priests, Resto Druids, and Resto Shamans. At no point in the fight did I actually feel that if I had died they would not have been able to continue. That fight used to revolve around good Holy Paladins, and now we're basically there for support.

Well we certainly got some complexity to us, but I don't believe it was added in the correct way. So here goes my list of problems:

Word of Glory: While I like the whole "Heal without using mana" this creates many problems. Word of Glory is now basically essential to our healing because without it we are guaranteed to go OOM quite quickly.

Holy Shock: This is where the main problem with holy power arises. Holy Shock generating Holy Power means that we are compelled to use this spell on CD. Which means that all of the utility that Holy Shock used to have is now gone. It went from being an "Oh sh*t" heal to being a "Nobody needs healing but I still get Holy Power so whatever" heal. Holy Shock was essential to Holy Paladins on high damage / high movement fights. Without it, we never would have been able to move, and whenever we did move Holy Shock would be the first button we hit. Using this spell on CD means that much of the time that we have to move Holy Shock is on CD, and if we don't have 3 Holy Power to cast Word of Glory then this could cause some serious issues.

Another problem arises when you make an instant cast heal the basis of a healer. While it's great in some situations... If you were to throw a Holy Shock, and it hit mere milliseconds before the tank took a big hit... (Assuming you don't have enough Holy Power for a WoG, which you probably don't) you would then have to wait for Holy Shock's GCD to finish, then cast either Holy Light, Divine Light or Flash of Light. It could take up to 3 Seconds to get your next heal off, and people can die in that amount of time. For those of you that say this is going to change in Cataclysm, you obviously haven't played the beta.

Holy Power: The main problem with this is that it forces us into a sort of Healing "rotation."
Holy Shock > Holy Light > (Divine Light/Flash of Light/Holy Light)x2-3 > Holy Shock > Holy Light > (Divine Light/Flash of Light/Holy Light)x2-3 > Holy Shock > Word of Glory(before Holy Shock comes off CD)

While procs and such change this rotation a little, it doesn't change it any more than a proc would change a mages. I feel like I'm playing a DPS class with a different colored target rying to move the bar in the opposite direction. This isn't how a healer is supposed to feel.

Light of Dawn: This is one of the few things I see as having potential for Holy Paladins, although it is not perfect by any manner. It's very situational, and the long CD only increases the "situationalness."

Divine Light: As soon as it's changed to work with Infusion of Light on live servers I will have little to no issues with this.

Flash of Light: I don't like having a spell with a cast time as our new "Oh sh*t" button. This should have it's cast time increased a little, and have it's mana cost and amount healed reduced.

Holy Light: This spell shouldn't exist the way it is now because the only thing Holy Paladins use it for currently is for a button to hit in between Holy Shock and Word of Glory when nobody is taking much damage. The healing is more than mediocre and the cast time is abysmal.

Divine Plea: This still kills me. I understand reducing the amount of mana gained from Divine Plea, and I even understand increasing the cooldown, but after both of those things Divine Plea retains it's 50% healing reduction. Healing reductions in this game have taken on the term "Mortal Strike Effect." Well, Mortal Strike, the first of it's kind, doesn't even have a 50% healing reduction anymore, yet we retain our 50% self healing reduction from a mana regen ability. This forces Holy Paladins to use abilities like Divine Favor and Avenging Wrath to counteract the healing reduction rather than to use those abilities when they should actually be needed.

Beacon of Light : The fact that this is now 50% of our healing, and that our tank healing in general has been nerfed is rather ridiculous in my opinion. I already can't keep a tank up alone without receiving several innervates throughout Heroic Lich King because of 4.01, but now I can't even keep half of the other tank up. If Beacon was going to be nerfed, it should have been prior to 4.01, and buffed back in 4.01.Not the other way around.


Let me finish this by quoting Ghostcrawler.

"I was running Halls of Lightning with a paladin healer at the time, and he had no trouble keeping us alive and even emailed me that he couldn't understand why so many paladins were having trouble with it."

I've run Heroic Halls of Lightning as ret with 4 other melee dps and managed to keep everyone alive with an occasional Flash of Light. Does that mean that I can go in and raid heal as ret?