Linnet

Healing/dps can be made to work well enough although +hit is an issue. But I don't see how it is possible to do a solid conversion between tanking gear and healing or dps. Even if you could convert avoidance into a damage stat, tanking gear has/needs lots of stamina and that might have some PvP implications too.

Druid: Peace

 

RunsWithScissors

I can understand why blizzard would not want feral or resto druids to have roots indoors. So why not simply make the ability to use roots anywhere part of a deep balance talent? Tack it on to force of nature or even something further down the tree.

That would give moonkins the cc they need to not be shunned for 5 mans and not make feral or resto any more powerful then they currently are

 

Balancemoon

It isn't like that at all, when did having roots ever make druid healers more popular for Zul'farak, Zul'Gurub, Zul'Aman, CoT ?? It never did, because roots is not like polymorph or shackle or hibernate even. This is one of many reasons why it cause no imbalances at all even if resto druids and feral druids had it, it won't affect their popularity, it is balance druid's in 5-mans it really helps as we all agree is definitely needed. My point being that as a resto or feral druid, I'd almost seldom use it. I never do for outdoor instances currently anyway. Can you imagine having to shapeshift out of ToL all the time or bear? it's not practical. The reason Priests were quite popular as healers in Strat/Scholo classic WoW days was because ALL the mob types were undead and are CC'able in an idiot proof polymorph fashion. In those days however I did many a strat/scholo without a priest as i was healing. Also, in those days Priests were head and shoulders above any class for healing, not surprising they were a must have.

No I can't understand why blizzard would not want feral or resto druids to have roots indoors, and blizzard have shown that they do want feral and resto druids to have roots indoors because they've realised like the vast majority has, that it makes fiddlesticks of a difference to feral or resto druids, who almost never use it anyway in outdoor instances currently because the application of their roles and the need to shapeshift to do so coupled with the fact it's only relevant to melee mobs and needs constant re-application makes it only worthwhile and feasible for a balance druid to use. It would help restos in PvE solo also, but it's all about balance viability, no point making it a talent, at least feral druids would see some use of nature's grasp indoors now, but it would not favour feral druid tanks/meleers over any other..infact feral druid as melee needs a bit of love, but being able to tank is good enough. So no probs there.

 

Bogeyman

But with all of the new threat scaling with AP mechanics that have been added, it does seem more likely that tanks will be sharing a lot more generic plate gear with DPS. With the change of anticipation to dodge and removal of crushings & shieldblock change, perhaps they want to converge tank & DPs plate itemisation.

As others have already pointed out a flat AP>spelldamage conversion would cut out the need for healing plate and all plate users would be looking at a similar gear pool. I can only see this as a good thing as having loot tables bloated with dps , tank and healing plate and having the same amount of spelldamage cloth seems a bit strange.

 

Balancemoon

Can't they do something like stick a paladin talent deep down in Holy, that converts attack power to spell power, seeing that there will only be crit now that would work for both melee and spell.

Currently the itemization is vast:
Plate:
AP/hit/str/agi
AP/crit/str focused
Def/block/parry/sta focused

+heal/crit/mp5 focused

With Death Knight coming into the picture, you can see why the need to do something has arisen. The question will they do the obvious fix for itemization or mess it up even more.

 

Ja7us

We've already seen from many of the new/revised warrior abilities that they're looking to make AP a much more significant part of warrior threat.

 

flyingtoastr

It shouldn't be deep holy, it should be class baseline.

If it was only a deep holy talent that converted stats for healing it would mean that (as a ret pally) I would either have to spec holy whenever I wanted to heal or start taking Shaman/Priest/Druid crap for my off-spec. Neither of those are particularly kind options.


Aside from the fact that shockadins have never been viable at anything that is just putting ret back into the place that we were pre-2.3. We are a melee class. We shouldn't have to require on caster stats unless Blizzard wants to give us a controlled nuke spellcast (a la Lightning Bolt for out totemy brothers). Either they need to change our combat system so that everything scales off spell damage (including white attacks if they don't give us a nuke) or everything scales off Attack Power (looking at the DK abilities it seems perfectly reasonable that they can design and code "spells" that scale on melee stats). If nothing is changed pallys will still be having the trouble we're having now.

As for how to balance it: its quite simple. Throw out the idea of pally's being the efficient healer. Make our heals hit hard and fast but cost a ton of mana. Make Seal of Wisdom a passive ability (our mana regens as we smack things). Now you have a reason to have pallys in combat (no more Priests hiding in a corner with 19k armor).

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

bv728

When I was looking over some of the changes, my Wacky Theory is that they leave Spell Damage Plate in, but drop pure tanking plate; you have Spell DPS/Healing and Physical DPS/Tanking plate. Defence, if they're planning on using it in the expansion, goes on Neck/Back/Ringx2/Trinketx2/Shield, along with massive quantities of Sta, and Pally Tanks get an AP->Spelldamage talent. Thus the signifigant AP scaling in Prot.

Thus, we have room in the loot table for 2 items from each armour type, and Leather/Chain/Plate gets 1x Physical DPS/1xSpell DPS, plus we get plenty of Weapons, Trinkets, Rings, Necks and Cloaks which, assited by Inscriptions and Gemming, customize your gear set for your class.

 

Hildegard

One major problem with respeccing, changing geams, talents, inscriptions and stuff like this is still that it forces one to spend a lot of time doing completly boring and repetitive stuff like doing daily quests. A bit more flexibility would be nice. Currently I have three mixed gear sets (two PVP Mutilate/Shs), one PVE also resistance gear. This needs to be gemmed, enchanted and everything.

Now with inscription coming along it would just hate it if I had to destroy my inscription for PVE progress or arena and buy new ones. I love the process of selecting and fine tuning and playing with the little pieces, but I seriously hate the time I have to spend for doing this.

An inscription system working a bit like the rune system, where you would choose certain inscriptions before entering combat or arena with something like a 15 second cast would be much better. Question is where the game tends to go. If WotLK still forces more repetitive downtime I would seriously hate this. Ideas like monthly incomes from factions like the Consortium come to mind.

Blizzard seriously should implement ways to use skill instead of time to reduce these issues.

Hildegard Sprigglespruxx - Wissenschaftlerin am Institut für Pfuschkunde

http://forscherliga.wikia.com/wiki/Hildegard

 

Bogeyman

I can see plate itemisation working very easily with holy palllies dps wars/pallys/DKs all using the same items if there is an AP > spelldamage conversion

Generic Plate vest

20 Sta
20 Str (40 Ap or converted 40 Spelldamage)
20 Crit Rating (works as spellcrit for holy pallies)

The only thing I can't see is how this would at all relate to tank itemisation, perhaps up the str > block ratio and include Block% as well as value or an avoidance conversion in the same vein as the spelldamage one? That, or as seems more likely, keep the itemisation separate as they are with mail melee/spellcasting etc.

 

thedopefishlives

As a paladin tank, I like this idea even more than the current Spiritual Attunement mechanism. Sure, on progression fights, it's nice to get tons of mana from big nuke heals landing every half-second or so, but farm content poses a serious drinking problem. This would effectively give us a "blue rage bar" we could use even in situations where we're not getting our faces punched in, which is the shortcoming I always see when I tank beside one of our big furry friends (alas, we lost our only warrior MT). Not to mention that combined with an AP->SD conversion, paladin healers would be able to put out some _serious_ DPS, which would make DPS race fights that much easier.

 

Cube

This would also make pally healers much more viable(and playable) than they are currently-they're pretty much buffbots at the moment.

If nothing else, it would also fill a hole in the current healer lineup: a high-output reactive single-target healer.

 

Freelier

Obviously, we don't know what their goals are for Inscription. However, they have stated several times in the past that they like forcing people to specialize into a role. They also want that specialization to be somewhat sticky. Here's a good, bur old description of their thoughts:

WoW BlueTracker: Blue--Give Cheaper or Free Respecs Please

Here's another old post on the same subject:

WoW BlueTracker: Please explain why respec'ing is so expensive

There's several things worth noting about those posts. First, I couldn't find any more recent complaints about talent costs. This could easily be because the costs are extremely low now compared to where they were. It could also be because they're changing their mind. Second, they used to feel strongly that you should have to feel as though you've put some investment into your specialization. The fact that talent costs didn't go up with the last expansion indicates that they didn't feel all that strongly about it a year ago.

I actually agree with the second point. I don't want to have to change what my character is capable of all that often. I want to feel as though, yes, I'm a mage who can knock people off bridges with my fireballs. I don't want to be able to swap in that inscription right before I see someone on a bridge that I could knock off. At that point, all mages could do it and it wouldn't be as interesting.

 

Fiola

Aren't many warrior tanking abilities getting AP scaling on the Alpha?

If Str becomes useful for threat on warriors, and paladins gets some sort of Str/AP coefficient on tanking abilities (Str->SD works, or a straight up AP coefficient works too), that would help homogenize tank stat requirements for all 3 plate classes.

 

Oneiros

With the paladin chatter, I think something along the lines of this would do a lot to make shared gear successful:

-Give a baseline ability (a la Spiritual Attunement) that gives, for example, 20% of attack power as +damage/healing
-Put a talent in all three trees (would have to be fairly deep so that someone couldn't "double dip") that gives the following:
**** These are just numbers I'm pulling out of a hat ***
-Retribution: Increases Attack power by 15% of Strength, Increases spell damage and healing by 25% of strength
-Protection: Increases Stamina by 10% of Strength, Increases spell damage and healing by 45% of strength
-Holy: Increases Intellect by 50% of Strength, Increases spell damage and healing by 75% of strength

I haven't played my paladin in quite some time, so obviously these numbers are pretty messed up. Just off the top of my head I think a geared 70 Ret Paladin would probably have 500 strength at least, so these numbers probably actually need to be higher, but the general point is made. If something like this happened, there would really be only two types of plate needed: Plate with tanking stats and Plate with high crit/AP.

EDIT: Also, there would need to be a baseline Strength-->Mana Pool/Intellect , and Ret/Prot would need a Mana Pool/Intellect conversion boost. Also, anywhere I say strength, you could insert AP as well.

 

rhea

It's a nice idea (the very powerful instant reactive healer) but pretty much renders holy-tree completely different or useless. Also if you go 51 points in there, it's hard to imagine putting out retri-level dps and healing somewhat. It would be like shadow priest specing 110% for VE and losing most of the efficiency defining a spriest. Sure, Blizzard might pull off that too...

As for gear. I'm fine with 2-3 people competing for 1 piece of gear but add in a 4th? For every piece? As it is retri, dps warrior and DK gear is very similiar already; Crit, STR. They would all be rolling for the very same pieces, and if it doesn't drop that often unless the item has very much higher drop rate... thus getting DEd. Or you could add more bosses dropping the same gear...

 

flyingtoastr

If Blizzard does intend to change paladins this drastically it would mean the Holy and (to a lesser extent) Protection trees as they are now would be completely scrapped. I wouldn't really consider it a bad thing. Right now the Holy tree is a bit too lean (why you see almost every holy pally with >15 points dumped into ret or prot) and the prot tree is way too bloated with a couple abilities that should be baseline (for a "tanking hybrid" class we're remarkably terrible at unspecced tanking, making Holy Shield baseline would be incredible, especially now that Warriors are getting Shield Slam as so) and a lack of other abilities that are desperately needed (single target threat anyone?).

There are all sorts of things they could do with the class. The devs could even take it to the extreme and give us Warcraft III level Holy Light- massive single target heal for massive mana cost and a coldown. Make Holy Light have an 6 second cooldown that can be talented down to 3 seconds in the Holy tree, put in all sorts of fun utility abilities (Improved Blessing of Sacrifice, some sort of Divine Kapow that heals party members when you smack stuff, make Divine Intervention an ability that reduces damage caused to the target on a smallish cooldown, etc). They could make paladins the main utility healer with strong prevenative damage abilities instead of balancing us around massive singe-target throughput.

Of course, this all seems to go against the class design, so I really doubt we'll be seeing any of this.

Hm, no real different than cloth will be. You'll have Priests, Mages and Warlocks competing for the same gear and in most raids there seems to be a lot more clothies than plateys (is that right?). Who knows though, things might change.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

orcsgotbooty

Warlocks, Spriests, and mages for dps cloth, Ret - Arms/Fury - Deathknight for dps plate, adding the prot pally/war and holy paladin would be waaaay too many for one piece of gear. It's pretty mute though because we all know the leather pieces are going to be better dps in the long run anyways as usual >_<

 

flyingtoastr

If the last 2 pages are correct all caster gear will be homogenized, meaning Holy Priests, Shadow Priests, Warlocks and Mages will all be going for the same gear (who knows, with Bliz's itemization team boomkin and elemental shamans might be too).

So if plate followed we'd see Holy Pallys, Ret Pallys, DPS Warriors and DPS Death Knights sharing, while Prot Pallys, Warriors and DK's take their gear. Perfectly even.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Mordekhuul

This kind of global re-working of the class would be wonderful. Could be, anyway. Distinctive game play, particularly between hybrids and pure classes, would be a lot of fun and groups could be very interesting.

 

Brohm

I don't like the idea of a totally homogenized item shared by all users of a armor type.

I do like the idea of a homogenized tanking plate. This is easily done with with AP->Threat talents for warriors and AP-->Spell Damage. A fully homogenized system would somehow include DPS warriors, retribution paladins, and holy paladins in there too.

You also have to think about homogenization from an art standpoint. Should a paladin's holy healing plate look like a warrior's tanking plate. No. In the same regards, a warlock should not graphically be sharing something with a holy priest. That would just be dumb.

 

Zzbzq

They don't need to make tanking gear for main slots at all, as long as they stick to that plan. They could just keep tanking stats as item enchantment/gem/jewellery/cape. As long as extra tank-specific stats don't exist for anybody (i.e. ferals don't get gear with specific tanking stats like extra stam) and provided there aren't pieces of equipment that are exceptions to the rule then all is fine. Assuming important milestones like uncrittable are obtainable by just the jewellery and enchants, which is just a simple matter of making it so. Now. you're thinking, "but tanks will inevitably gravitate toward the gear with the best tanking stats such as emphasis on stamina, even if bliz limits extreme itemization so that it's only a few extra stam per slot!" But that's fine, if it's an issue of stat quantity and not quality. There's already going to be so much more space in the loot tables that everything is going to have like 186 side-grades. It is foolish to think that stat consolidation leads to all specs wanting the same gear. What it does accomplish, is to allow people to use any of that gear, even if it is only 95% optimal.

After that it's no big deal to have physical and spell sets for plate. That's only 2 types and there's 3 classes. Leather and mail will need 2 stat types for 2 classes each. So even if they do 2.5 or 3 types of plate stats they're still as efficient as mail and leather.

 

flyingtoastr

Yes, it is a big deal. There is ONE spec out of 3 plate classes that uses healing and ZERO that use spell damage (assuming prot pallys get a conversion). Plate wearing classes have no spell nuke, spell damage is largely useless to us. Mail wearing classes have 2 specs out of 6 that use spell damage, same with leather workers. That is why it is not the same.

The entire point of this is to cut down worthless drops, how is having an entire set of gear that only works for one spec out of 9 good?

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Wednesday

One possibility when looking at the recent tree changes for the Death Knights is that they would use spell damage plate for their Ice & Unholy specs, leaving attack power/strength plate for their blood tree.

 

bv728

This Assumes:
+Healing goes away in general as a stat, and healing is reworked for +Effect.
They somehow manage to make generic +Effect plate that works for DPS, Tanking, and Healing, across two specs with mana, and two specs without mana.

Blizz is currently experimenting to reduce the amount of itemization needed; the first set of changes dumped +Effect from everything but cloth, and the second set is dumping +Healing entirely. Neither is really sufficent; Holy Pally itemization is too distinct from Prot Pally to put them on the same gear right now.

Given everything, I'd love to see Pally healing completely reworked. I can't exactly say I enjoy spamming FoL (although, it's nice when I'm tired to only have to spam FoL on a tank). I do think Pallys can do well with a few new tools, though. Also, it would be nice if they got rid of tank plate and I got to say I was a psychic.