Beta Paladin Talents & Skills: High-five to Uther - Page 3

Kharzaljim · 08/25/06, 12:01 AM

Actually, the biggest upgrade to the prot tree, from my perspective, isn't actually in the prot tree. I think the new mana recovery skill is far more important than new talents in the prot tree. The current prot tree isn't particular lacking in quality, most of the talents in there are useful. What it's lacking is a purpose, especially at the raid/endgame level. With the addition of being actually able to tank things, and heal afterwards with leftover mana, then the prot tree gains the purpose it's currently lacking.

Kaubel · 08/25/06, 12:10 AM

Originally Posted by levk

This is my first post, hooza!

Read the forum rules, hooza!

Ngita · 08/25/06, 12:16 AM

Ideally they would balance Seal of blood against Seal of Command so that for a ret paladin Seal of command is the obvious choice but for a full holy or Protection Paladin might choose to use Seal of Blood instead. Having said that 20 retribution looks slightly better than 20 holy for a protecton build. Divine str+Divine Int+consencrate+Unyeilding faith vs Benedictiion+Parry+ SoC+(vindication/Eye for Eye/Imp ret aura).

As a Holy Paladin Light grace +divine illumination give some possibilities for trash fights and Small groups but in the main the new talents are about mana effiency.
I could easily see myself going 31 holy /30 ret and basically gauging based on the difficulty of the content if I need more holy or not. Going OOM and wiping to trash,spec deeper into holy, Otherwise I am fine. Improved sanctity aura could have some uses as well.

Group Management is going to be interesting. A restoration Druid to harmonize the healing between party members, A Protection paladin for resistance and reduction of elemental damage, A ret paladin for additional healing through Improved sanctity Aura, a warlock for the imp stamina buff, a shaman for Windfury and other totems.

Rhynic · 08/25/06, 12:41 AM

Empowered Judgment is kind of weird â€“ Ret Pallies arenâ€™t running out of mana that often â€“ but must be an attempt to make judgments more attractive.

Actually this is an amazing buff for paladins. This allows them to put less focus to intellect and more to strength, stamina, and agility to improve their damage. Also, most paladins working for damage are constantly judging and 'resealing,' as well as BoF and reblessing from time to time. Combine that with heals and it gets a bit heavy on the mana pool.

I'm a little disappointed by the 41 point teir, but retribution has a lot of focus on vengence, which seems like what the developers want - a 'combat passive' buff, meaning that it usually kicks on in combat at least 10 seconds in, and remains on for the duration of the fight. Combined with avenger's wrath, sanctity aura/2h spec, and vengence, my damage is boosted by 55% holy, 51% physical.

That's awesome.

I'm really surprised by all these changes, a ton of problems are being addressed in a very unique and surprising way. Blizzard still has it!

enshula · 08/25/06, 4:02 AM

i expect to have ~1200 +healing from gear at expansion time and around 350 int then, feel free to rerun with whatever setup you plan to run, spell crit rate has a linear effect so doesnt really matter

1322 +heal

1322 * .71 = 944
1322 * .43 = 566

944 + 400 + 372 = 1716
566 + 115 + 75 = 756
566 + 115 + 406 = 1087

1716 / 190 = 9.03
756 / 35 = 21.6
1087 / 140 = 7.764

20: crit version
1887.6 / 152 = 12.418
831.6 / 28 = 29.7
1195.7 / 112 = 10.675

(illumination is linear in hpm increase but results in a larger gap)

1887.6 / 2.5 = 755.04
1887.6 / 2 = 943.8 (slight advantage over numbers to HL due to lag)
831.6 / 1.5 = 554
1195.7 / 1.5 = 797.13

Lights Grace: Benefits HL only.
Holy Guidance: Benefits FoL over HL.
Divine Illumination: Benefits HL over FoL. Promote Burst mana dumping more than healing rotations as 6 paladin chains are unsustainable. 8.33% averaged mana cost reduction which can be improved by bursting, interisting if it causes LoH to lose only 50% mana though.

This renders FoL6 useless except for the 1.5 cast vs 2.0 cast when compared to HL4 but lower rank FoL is still viable. The question becomes whether FoL<6 spam interspersed with HL>4 casts or constant HL4 is preferable. HL4 also has an MPS advantage over FoL6.

New ranks of spells are also guaranteed and there is still the -.1 cast time on HL floating around which would need to be compared to whichever 3 pieces of gear you had to sacrifice against the increase in +healing scaling and regularity of healing.

Easar · 08/25/06, 7:20 AM

I think the purpose of non-healing talents that are not in the prot tree is to make paladins that are not prot specced still viable off tanks. If most paladins heal in the majority of the fights, then its better for most of them to be holy specced. But you'll probably need these Pallies for off tanking

The 41 ret talent is interesting, it might lead to one Pally alway holding JotC up, while 2 others with lasting judgement keep JoW and JoL up, which makes for the 3 paladin combination thats needed to get all the important blessings. The Empowered Judgement also improves this, as it increases the mana efficiency and makes chain judging SoC (as opposed to only when stunned) more vieable in PvP and PvE.

What I am missing though is burst healing, since Paladins should be mostly MT healers now ( smaller raids + shamans >fewer Pallies > no Blessing of Light on all raid members). Holy Shock doesn't really fill this role, as its too small a heal unfortunately. Also, 25 man raids make these changes way less powerfull than they would be in a 40 man environment since you may not have enough paladins to use all of them. Or it could make paladins the most wanted class you may still want to ake 5 on a raid.

Edit: Upon second thought, the 41 ret talent might or might not work out... If you have 15 DPS in a 25 man raid (lets ignore the damage from the tanks) and assuming that every DPS does the same damage, thats 30% Damage of a DPS Class thats added due to the judgement. A Paladin will have to do at least 70% of a DPS Classes damage ( a little less, if you factor in the damage from tanks) for him to cause an increase in the overall DPS of the raid if he is included instead of one more DPS class.

Edit 2: It should work out, if the relative DPS of a Pally pre-BC compared to the DPS classes doesn't get worse. Assuming the average DPSer does about 500 DPS (e.g. on patchwerk now at lvl 60), it's very much possible to get 300 to 350 DPS (60-70% of an average DPSer)on a Paladin and thus make it viable.

Edit 3: Another thing I just thought of: Improved Sanctity Aura may be very nice to have on the tanks of a raid...healing effects of the whole raid increased by 6% is actually quite nice. A talent that says: Healing effects of all healers in the raid increased by 6% is about as good as it gets. Looks like there's still hope for me to stay a retnoob =)

Zenyth · 08/25/06, 7:57 AM

Another thing to think about is that all of this is stacking for the Retribution paladin. Theres some interesting synergy going on.

First off, Sanctified Crusader is a 2% bonus to crit, which is always nice. Then you've got Fanaticism increasing your seal of commands crit% by up to 10. Now with blue gear alone, you can get around 15-17% crit chance. SoC goes off melee crit, so right there you've got almost a 30% chance for your seal of command to crit. Thats 1 in 3 procs critting, not to mention the judgements either. Now when you crit vengeance comes on, and that increases melee and holy damage by 15%, so you've got a 1 in 3 chance of JoC critting, a 1 in 5ish chance of your normal attack critting, and then all your damaging judgements can crit as well. Throw in Avenging Wrath and Sanctity aura and you should be happy as a pig eatting slop. Remember, this is alone, with current blue gear. Toss some epics in there and it just gets sicker and sicker.

Of course, the Protection tree is turning out quite nice as well. Spiritual attunement, Lasting Defense, and Judgement of Wisdom on the enemy for mana regen, Righteous Fury with Holy Shield, Consecrate, and Seal and Judgement of blood for threat, Holy shield, Redoubt, Ardent Defender, and an appropriate resist aura (We'll say you're fighting something fire based) for mitigation. The Paladin tank is suddenly looking quite beefy. Avenging Shield? Captain Alliance FTW!

Ive never been much of a healadin, so I cant really comment on Holy. I doubt id spec it, but for those that would mana efficiency, and more capabilities of being a real healer and not a "Spam the button for the 5 minute duration of the fight" is always a good thing. The cleanse reduction is nice, and the chance to always take half damage is pretty nice too.

All in all though, the thing that has me most excited about these changes is the possibilities of an all paladin raid. Geared right, the paladin can cover the Holy Trinity. Retribution will be decent DPS, Prot will be a damn fine tank, and Holy will be capable healers. Who needs the rest of the classes when you have perfection rolled up into one wonderful glowing bubble of Pwn?!

Easar · 08/25/06, 8:10 AM

Another thing that just hit me, that for PvE tanking, the Ret talent Divine Purpose may make it *impossible* for the Paladin to be crit in a a PvE environment. Looks like this is a killer tanking talent, as it also reduces the need of +defense items (I actually don't know how +defense interacts with crushing blows, anyone care to enlighten me?). The only thing that baffles me is that this talent is in the Ret tree, while Weapon Expertise, which would be a great talent for a Pally judging sanctified JotC is in the Protection tree....

Edit: typo

Zenyth · 08/25/06, 8:14 AM

Originally Posted by Easar

Another thing that just hit me, that for PvE tanking, the Ret talent Divine Purpose may make it *impossible* for the Paladin to be crit in a a PvE environment. Looks like this is a killer tanking talent, as it also reduces the need of +defense items (I actually don't know how +defense interacts with crushing blows, anyone care to enlighten me?). The only thing that baffles me is that this talent is in the Ret tree, while Weapon Expertise, which would be a great talent for a Pally judging sanctified JotC is in the Protection tree....

Edit: typo

Well...

Kings was originally in Ret...and Repentance was originally in Prot...

Who knows, this is a supposed alpha leak. It could be as simple as they're still tweaking things, and that they want each tree to still remain somewhat "hybrid". Thus Prot gets some damage, Ret gets some healing and tanking, and Holy gets some tanking. Other than that, who knows.

Easar · 08/25/06, 8:21 AM

You can be pretty sure that blizz is reading this thread...the purpose of that post was to start some discussion that might make them re-think the placement of those talents.
Btw, it took them a while from saying "paladins are working as intended" to completely changign our talent trees around, so a little help might be useful ;)

Zenyth · 08/25/06, 8:58 AM

Im all for discussion, but I see what they did thar...and to a degree I agree.

Specialization with hybridization. We should maintain an ability to do a bit of everything, but at the same time there are distinct differences in each tree. Ive never been a fan of the "We are hybrids, thus all trees should be the same." camp and I also understand that we cant specialize completely. Just takes moderation, two parts dps to one part healer and one part tank. Two parts tank to one part healer one part DPS. Or Two parts healer to one part tank and one part DPS. Paladins should be the ultimate multi-taskers. I like to think im a pretty good multi-tasker at least.

The -crit% talent while wonderful for ret paladins, would be just another "lol, prot sucks" blow. Anticipation is already a useless talent in the tree thanks to Redoubt and Reckoning being all about BEING crit. So another 5% bonus on top of that and you're looking at 30% shield block chance, and a free attack when crit just being flushed down the toilet. The ability HURTS the tanking paladin more than it helps. So unless theres some changes to how Redoubt and Reckoning work (I suggest having them work off Parry's) then it doesnt really need moving.

As for Weapon Specialization, it would be nice in Ret, ill admit it. But would it really matter that much? +10 to all weapons. I get +5 to swords and hammers just for being human. Ive got an OEB which gives me +8. Its good for helping hit things, but its also fairly rare on gear. From what I understand it would take a large ammount of +weapon for it to really make much of a difference. +10 is like .4crit/hit and -.4dodge/block/parry to your enemy. That aint really much at all when you think about it.

Easar · 08/25/06, 9:09 AM

Originally Posted by Zenyth

Im all for discussion, but I see what they did thar...and to a degree I agree.

The -crit% talent while wonderful for ret paladins, would be just another "lol, prot sucks" blow. Anticipation is already a useless talent in the tree thanks to Redoubt and Reckoning being all about BEING crit. So another 5% bonus on top of that and you're looking at 30% shield block chance, and a free attack when crit just being flushed down the toilet. The ability HURTS the tanking paladin more than it helps. So unless theres some changes to how Redoubt and Reckoning work (I suggest having them work off Parry's) then it doesnt really need moving.

Thats a good point, didn't think of that at first. Changing redoubt to parry would solve the PvE problem, since reckoning sucks in PvE anyway.

Originally Posted by Zenyth

As for Weapon Specialization, it would be nice in Ret, ill admit it. But would it really matter that much? +10 to all weapons. I get +5 to swords and hammers just for being human. Ive got an OEB which gives me +8. Its good for helping hit things, but its also fairly rare on gear. From what I understand it would take a large ammount of +weapon for it to really make much of a difference. +10 is like .4crit/hit and -.4dodge/block/parry to your enemy. That aint really much at all when you think about it.

I'm also human, but a lot of pallies won't be human, and I hope you won't be using that OEB in the expansion at level 70 ;P. Seeing how useful +weapons skill is for rogues in reducing glancing blows it's good for us too, since ~50% of our DPS will still be white damage. It's not the +crit + hit aspect that makes +weapon skill good, its more the glancing blow aspect against higher level mobs. For PvP that talent won't be very useful at all, I was just talking about PvE.

bellator · 08/25/06, 9:16 AM

Zenyth,

With regards +Weapon Skill, the times where it does matter a lot is against level 63 bosses. When hitting these, all white damage has a 40% chance of a glancing blow with a 30% damage reduction. With +10 weapon skill, the 30% damage reduction becomes 0%. +10 weapon skill would thus increase total damage by about 6% (assuming 50% of all damage is white).

Thus for any non-human paladins, or those not using OEB or wearing Edgemaster's Handguards, then this is a very nice skill indeed for both prot and retri paladins.

Zenyth · 08/25/06, 9:23 AM

Originally Posted by Easar

I'm also human, but a lot of pallies won't be human, and I hope you won't be using that OEB in the expansion at level 70 ;P. Seeing how useful +weapons skill is for rogues in reducing glancing blows it's good for us too, since ~50% of our DPS will still be white damage. It's not the +crit + hit aspect that makes +weapon skill good, its more the glancing blow aspect against higher level mobs. For PvP that talent won't be very useful at all, I was just talking about PvE.

A good point for you as well. One thing to remember though is that if our levels continue on like the normally would, we'd still be gaining +weapon on our own. Ill be honest that I dont know much about Rogues and +weapon, I dont play one, and havent talked to anyone who played one since I let my subscription run out in May. My main gripe here is that +weapon, seems alot like +defense. You only start to notice it getting really nice (The crit and hit/block, parry, and dodge) when you've got gobs and gobs of it. Sure its got a nice short term effect (Less glancing blows/less crits);but its not something you'd notice without looking directly at it. I remember when I was running Scholomance when I first ran, and MC wasnt really all that popular yet. When the warriors would pass on things like the Deathbone Chestplate because they wanted more stat plate and DPS gear. Now tanking warriors are absolutely required to have +defense if they plan on getting anywhere.

The talent would be nice wherever it landed, im just not sure if +10 weapon is really worth it that deep in either tree without knowledge of all the upgrades that I plan on finding for my OEB in the expansion (All these supposed leaks have gotten me interested in the game again...im such an addict). If theres more +weapon added then I could see it being nice. If gear sticks to having little dollops of +1-2% crit and hit, then theres really not much need for +weapon outside of its short-term bonus.

Anaram · 08/25/06, 9:26 AM

Originally Posted by Fiola

For burst damage purposes, it means the paladin has 20% more hp. If he has 1000 life, it takes 800 damage to take him to 20%, and 400 damage to take him from 20% to 0%.

How this talent works exactly is not quite clear. However, while 10% constant reduction would probably prove more effective for healer's mana, the 50% reduction under 20% option might sometimes be very good for offtanking. Restoration druid (according to currently leaked information) have a talent to gain back 100% of the base mana cost of their spells when healing a wounded target (assumably a target under 20%) with healing touch, regrowth or swiftmend (in effect healing a seriously wounded target can generate a bit of mana depending on spell used).

If the offtank is taking little enough damage that he can afford to go under 20% without being in immediate risk, then he can be healed for free. This seems like a high-risk-high-reward scenario to me.

On the other hand depending on how the talent works it's better for paladin to be at 19% than 21% if the enemy is a too hard hitter. If the enemy can just destroy the paladin right from 30% then his <20% ability doesn't get to kick in. Therefore this is mostly an ability for offtank who does not take very hard single hits.

Throw in druid's harmonize and you have a pretty strong combination of abilities. Still, we are currently playing alpha so speculating on that particular combination seems a bit premature.