Blizzard
One topic that hasn't appeared in our posts about the PTR, but is worth briefly discussing: so far, we're not planning to heavily change
Glimmer of Light in 8.2.Outline of some relevant facts as we see them:
- The Glimmer build is a significant “flip” from the otherwise standard build. It changes talents (Holy Avenger, Crusader's Might, and no Avenging Crusader), as well as stat priorities.
- It is a fun and unique build to play, with a lot of player agency in manipulating Glimmer spread and timing.
- It is a bit rotationally “broken” but not completely. The biggest concern is that Radiant Onslaught has a very high priority, which makes mana much less important.
- Holy Paladin moved up in meters in high-skill contexts (Mythic) since the build became popular, but not drastically.
- There is a lot of pressure to obtain specific Azerite pieces because of widespread recommendations to play the build.
- A few minor concerns worth mentioning: It's unideal that Infusion-buffed Flash of Light is sometimes skipped, the high amount of Glimmer in the breakdown devalues Int, and the playstyle is more similar to other healers than it is to traditionalHoly Paladin.
Philosophically, when we add customizable systems and bonuses to the game, some player-discovered experience is exactly the sort of thing we're hoping will happen. Even when we didn't anticipate all the details of an optimized build—arguably
especially when we didn't anticipate all the details—it produces a chance for players to explore something cool and rewarding. Almost by definition, those situations are at least slightly imbalanced or slightly broken, which is acceptable as long as they're not too imbalanced or too broken.There's a balance where cutting off the exploration too early ruins the fun of discovering it, but letting it go on too long gets to a point where players are less excited by the novelty of the new build and more bothered by imbalances or rotational problems. We want to keep an eye on that, but the preliminary look for 8.2 is that this is still a lively setup that people are excited to play. Any change would likely be a small tweak that's not intended to change its status as a popular or recommended playstyle.In the longer term, if we wanted to preserve this mechanic in the class in some way, we would have to solve some of the above issues in the process, especially the very low mana demands. But that's something we can revisit later.
