Blessings>Totems in Raids - Page 10

jubelio · 04/07/06, 9:30 AM

Originally Posted by Bullbrain,April 7th, 2006 @ 6:29AM

Yes, that's true. MTT does not scale at all while innervate does. But even in its present state I think MTT comes quite close to innervate. (Correct me if I'm wrong) I'm assuming innervate restores a total 6000-7000 mana over its duration every 6 minutes.

Another problem with MTT is that you have to subtract the effects of mana stream, and also assume that many fights require a different water totem to be out. MTT would be comparable to innervate if innervate made that person's group lose a decent part of the effect of mark of the wild for about a minute per innervate.

Jeht · 04/07/06, 9:33 AM

Hmm, these group set ups are interesting.

We usually split up the tanks into identical war/war/war/sha/lock or war/war/rogue/sha/lock groups, then all the rogues/sha in a group, all the hunters/sha in a group, and then shaman spread out intermittently as attendance allows.

Hmmmmmmmmmm, certainly gives me something to think about.

Kalman · 04/07/06, 10:19 AM

Originally Posted by Jeht,April 7th, 2006 @ 8:33AM

Hmm, these group set ups are interesting.

We usually split up the tanks into identical war/war/war/sha/lock or war/war/rogue/sha/lock groups, then all the rogues/sha in a group, all the hunters/sha in a group, and then shaman spread out intermittently as attendance allows.

Hmmmmmmmmmm, certainly gives me something to think about.

If you love your rogues.

If you really love them.

And you don't need a warrior to tank.

Give the rogues a warrior and make sure the warrior battleshouts.

When we're forming our groups, the very first thing I try to do is make sure our rogues get warriors to go with them.

Anglakel · 04/07/06, 10:48 AM

Originally Posted by phyra,April 7th, 2006 @ 3:59AM

Oh wow, I just checked out what Seal of Salvation looked like in Beta:

10 Mana, Instant cast, 15 second cooldown, 30 yard range
Places a Seal on the party member, reducing the amount of all threat generated by 50% for 30 seconds. Players may only have one Seal on them per Paladin at any one time.

This sort of thing is EXACTLY what I was thinking of. With this, paladins would become integral to the ACTIVE threat reduction of a raid, and not just some passive Alliance advantage. It might need some tuning, but the basic premise requires some interesting strategies in order to make best use of the blessings across the raid's top aggro-generators. What was so terrible about that more interactive blessing system in practice that made them systematically dismantle it into the passive buff system we have today, I wonder?

I played a paladin first in closed beta, moved to warrior, but one thing that I think you may also want to look up is "seal of fury", that would sure be fun nowadays to put on a main tank :-P

KwegiboHB · 04/07/06, 11:39 AM

Originally Posted by jubelio,April 7th, 2006 @ 7:07AM

Thats still less than 15% of a priest mana bar.

Of course that's not much of a priests mana bar, but how much is that of a hunters ? Will that mana gained for their shots out dps the passive bonus of 10-21 agi ?

Thank you Bullbrain for running the numbers on that trinket, that gets Really good with those talents!

Paging all hunters to this thread, I'm really curious which one is better for the 1 shaman 4 hunter group, so I can figure out my next respec.

♦ Praetorian · 04/07/06, 11:48 AM

You worry about your spec too much. As long as you have Nature's Swiftness you can do anything you want with the other 30 points and you'll be just fine.

jubelio · 04/07/06, 12:55 PM

Just remember that an untalented mana spring totem gives a group 300 mana over 12 seconds, which is incidentally the length of time you would need to have MTT out. It also costs 60 mana and stops your regen for 5 seconds. All told you and group mates are probably losing over 500 mana to use MTT or the enamored spirit.

edit: add 300 more mana lost for the enamored spirit

Hellmount · 04/07/06, 3:46 PM

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...mp=1#post491801

Looks like we'll know which direction they are going with this sooner rather then later.

phyra · 04/07/06, 6:42 PM

Originally Posted by Kalman,April 7th, 2006 @ 5:01AM

If Salvation still looked like that, I can tell you exactly what the first paladin's job would be.

"Pick highest DPS mage/warrior/warlock. Seal of Salv them. Pick 2nd highest. Hit them when cooldown is up. Repeat."

2nd paladin?

"Pick 3rd highest DPS mage/warrior/warlock. Seal of Salv them. Pick 4th highest. Hit them when cooldown is up."

And so forth. Other Seals would just be worked into the rotation of cooldowns, replacing Salv slots according to benefit/necessity, but it'd be the rare blessing/seal whose effect would be more valuable than keeping BWL bosses on the raid.

If balanced appropriately such a system could be effective. Imagine paladins switching back and forth between throwing down salvation and some sort of windfury-ish blessing. Carefully managing hate reduction against DPS boosts by throwing around a limited number of spot buffs. (a global blessing cooldown of 15 seconds would help with this.) And you can't just assume that the threat-reduction buff would automatically dominate 99% of the time, since if that was the case its effectiveness would simply be reduced relative to the strength of other blessingss.

Ok, time for another of my half-baked blessing ideas:

Blessing of Sacrifice
500 mana, 20 yd range, Instant cast, 2 min cooldown
Places a Blessing on the Party member, transferring 50% damage taken, up to 500 per hit, to the caster. Lasts 15 sec or until the caster drops below 20% health.

This is the kind of powerful, situational Sacrifice I imagine that would actually be appropriately scaled and worth using in the endgame for something other than breaking Polymorph in group PvP.

Kalman · 04/08/06, 8:45 AM

Originally Posted by phyra,April 7th, 2006 @ 5:42PM

Originally Posted by Kalman,April 7th, 2006 @ 5:01AM

If Salvation still looked like that, I can tell you exactly what the first paladin's job would be.

"Pick highest DPS mage/warrior/warlock. Seal of Salv them. Pick 2nd highest. Hit them when cooldown is up. Repeat."

2nd paladin?

"Pick 3rd highest DPS mage/warrior/warlock. Seal of Salv them. Pick 4th highest. Hit them when cooldown is up."

And so forth. Other Seals would just be worked into the rotation of cooldowns, replacing Salv slots according to benefit/necessity, but it'd be the rare blessing/seal whose effect would be more valuable than keeping BWL bosses on the raid.

If balanced appropriately such a system could be effective. Imagine paladins switching back and forth between throwing down salvation and some sort of windfury-ish blessing. Carefully managing hate reduction against DPS boosts by throwing around a limited number of spot buffs. (a global blessing cooldown of 15 seconds would help with this.) And you can't just assume that the threat-reduction buff would automatically dominate 99% of the time, since if that was the case its effectiveness would simply be reduced relative to the strength of other blessingss.

Ok, time for another of my half-baked blessing ideas:

Blessing of Sacrifice
500 mana, 20 yd range, Instant cast, 2 min cooldown
Places a Blessing on the Party member, transferring 50% damage taken, up to 500 per hit, to the caster. Lasts 15 sec or until the caster drops below 20% health.

This is the kind of powerful, situational Sacrifice I imagine that would actually be appropriately scaled and worth using in the endgame for something other than breaking Polymorph in group PvP.

You'd wind up with rotating paladins on the MT in order to reduce spike damage as much as possible. If this meant dedicating one raid member (or, more likely, writing a mod) to switching paladins into and out of the MT group, it'd probably be worth it.

I understand your point, I just don't feel Blizzard to be capable of implementing it into the game in a suitable fashion. Get too situational and paladins will complain most of their arsenal is unused. Stay too general and you'll wind up with the exact opposite of what you're looking for - the situation I described, where one blessing/seal is clearly dominant and keeping it up is the primary job of the paladins. I don't trust Blizzard to walk the wire between the two extremes, and I see no reason anyone else would.

Simply put, at this point the paladin role is that of a strong buff support class with excellent healing capability. I don't foresee that changing, no matter how much more fun it might make your gameplay.

Ater 1.9 made it clear there was no chance in hell of a change in raid functionality, our paladins basically either adapted to being buffers/healers/cleansers (and I'll note: most of them chose this route), or rerolled.