Beta Paladin Talents & Skills: High-five to Uther - Page 4

Easar · 08/25/06, 9:44 AM

Zenyth,
I meant to make a point that the +10 weapon skill is good for de 41 Ret Pala that keeps up JotC for the 2% crit in a raid. For leveling or non-raid dungeons that talent is pretty "meh", but its very useful when fighting raid mobs a couple of levels above you, as bellator explained in his post. And a talent that gives a ~6% total damage increase in raids is worth it for the JotC bitch imho.

Zenyth · 08/25/06, 10:02 AM

Originally Posted by Anaram

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.

Im not too sure many druids or paladins would be too hot on the idea of being the "purple club tank". The whole point to tanking is staying alive so the big nasty doesnt look at your casters and go "You gots a purdy mouth" *Cues the Deliverance banjoes*. Im honestly leaning towards it being the paladins version of Defensive stance. I honestly think Blizzard is trying to push for parity between Warriors, Paladins, and Bear Druids. Taking a look at the supposed leaks for each groups talents you're going to see abilities that are mirrored in some way in another.

Warriors get Defensive out of the box, and then in the leaked Warrior tree they get improved which reduces spell damage by up to 6%. Warrior mit - 16% spell, 10% melee

Now switch over to paladins a moment and in THEIR tree we see a talent that gives them 6% spell damage mit when using a Resistance aura...not to mention Ardent Defender being their "defensive stance". Paladin Mit - 16% spell (With aura), 10% melee

Take the next hop to the Druids, and you've got Scent of the Pack, which gives THEM a mit bonus as long as everyone in range has a Mark or Gift on them. Druid Mit - 10% for 25 people in raid. Not as nice as the other two, but their bear gets an executish ability while in tanking form or something like that.

All three look like they're going to be capable tanks come the expansion, which is good. The game doesn't need any one class dominating entirely.

Originally Posted by Easar

I meant to make a point that the +10 weapon skill is good for de 41 Ret Pala that keeps up JotC for the 2% crit in a raid. For leveling or non-raid dungeons that talent is pretty "meh", but its very useful when fighting raid mobs a couple of levels above you, as bellator explained in his post. And a talent that gives a ~6% total damage increase in raids is worth it for the JotC bitch imho.

If it moved I'd take it anyways, so no point arguing against it really. I just see it as filler fluff, guess im not much of a min-maxer.

enshula · 08/25/06, 10:06 AM

+10 defence vs 5% less crit

10 defence is .4% more to block dodge parry crit miss. Block is variable.

So roughly 1.6% +abit over 107.5% damage migation. Call it 1.6% to make life easy. While 5% less crit is slightly under 5% with some lost due to wated +defence in pve.

Both that and +10 weapon skill are incredible for levelling though. +10 weapon skill translates into ~3.2% more damage without taking into account glancing blows. I havnt levelled for ages but i used to notice a huge dropoff between +3 and +4 levels in dps so that could make a large differance.

+10 defence allows constant +2 level farming without crushing blows for example.

Ardent defender is interisting but the concept of needing to have say two identical shields one with 2% block and one with +7 stamina so you can deliberately be bellow 100% is a little annoying. Making one very difficult to kill under 20% is very interisting but again a magnitude less practical for tanking. I think i noticed more damage reduction in the druid writeup so i cant imagine paladins will be able to compete at the very highest level of protection where encounters are tuned around max stamina to reduce burst damage.

For example in BWL the other week on the first drake a tank had 6600 hp in 315 FR gear and took a 4200 shadowflame with a 2400 crit simultaneously and got one shotted. I would be disapointed if paladins were tuned out of a level of content until being overgeared by mistake. If only off tanking is deliberate fine, but if not 10% damage reduction only while not at 100% creates significant tuning differances.

I would be very interisted with something unspiking damage, converting a portion of spike into DoT for example or plain deferrment. Something along the lines of if a hit would kill you it will be deffered for x seconds instead. Thats assuming a need to differentiate classes since warriors have a flat 10%, druids have the scaling with people in range up to 10% max in a 25 man raid i believe. So maybe this strange version of the paladin one is merely a stopgap differential measure rather than something people are particularly attached to.

Judia · 08/25/06, 1:17 PM

Im unimpressed with Holy and Prot.
Holy gives you marginal increases in healing power, and an increase to our healing efficiency which really doesnt help at all given the current state of "I havent taken a mana pot in 6 months and that was because I used LoH". There are some nice touches but I cant see the last 10 points being as popular as the first 31.

Protection missed the point.
The major issues for paladin tanking are: Itemization, Threat.
Itemization is not somthing that can be adressed through talents but even so my faith in Blizzard with regards to itemizing for paladin is pretty low. It doesnt matter what toys Blizzard give us if the warriors have 9/9 dreadnaught and we are wearing the equivalent of Might. Secondly none of these changes really adress the issue of threat generation. If you require your offtank to simply hold an add for a while and beat healing threat then that is no problem, but a new rank of SoR is simply not going to allow a paladin to hold aggro off a level 70 dps class. There are not enough fast aggro building abilities for the paladin to pick up adds and hold them if that mob is going to be killed quickly. If it is a matter of holding the last of 7 adds to be kileld and you have 2 minutes to build aggro then you are fine, otherwise nothing here really mitigates the problem. The new base ability will give longevity to our tanking ability, but without giving us ways to use that mana quickly (like infinate heroic strike spam) we wont be able to build aggro fast enough. On top of all this weapons expertize is completely pointless because paldain threat is based on holy damage which cannot suffer glancing blows (instead being subject to the partial resists mechanic).
The extra mitigation talents are fun, but the best 41 point talent would have been holy strike.

Retribution:
Brilliant, Improved SoCru will give a real boon to any paladin wanting to focus on his melee dps while throging out spot heals or blessings. It will be very hard for any raid to not use this seal, I think the real issue will be how to decide which paladin gets to "have fun". A very elegent solution to the problem of paladins "in the back", along with the improved sanctity aura so that the paladin can run this aura without too much abuse.

Binks-Hyjal · 08/25/06, 4:50 PM

I find the more I look at the alpha talents of other classes the more disgusted I become at this point with what we're seeing Paladin-wise.

Digo · 08/25/06, 5:46 PM

Which is why you are re-rolling a shaman for us, yes?

Out of curiosity, how many paladins here are contemplating rerolling as a shaman?

saramin · 08/25/06, 6:35 PM

My largest issues with the revamp have nothing to do with how solid the talents are or how workable tanking is. In all, they added a taunt you get to use sometimes, seal of rightousness markII, blessing of protection markII, and a whole bunch of passives. If you spec 41 points into a tree, you might get to use another non-subtle ability every 30s. You're still hitting more or less the exact same buttons in more or less the exact same places.

It simply fails to add depth to a class that sorely needs it.

Judia · 08/25/06, 7:03 PM

The depth of a paldin class is in timing.
If you get your kicks from rogue tpe classess where its all about button bashing and "combos" it wont work for you, but played in a 5-10 man group the paladin class is as interactive as any simply because it requires a massive awareness of surroundings. In group pvp there is no class more interactive and demanding of an individual that the paladin if you want to play the calss to its full the finesse is in doing the right thing at the right time while putting yourself in the right place. We also gained controlled damage as base abilities, which is what the retnoobs have been crying over since day 1.

If you dont like the class now you are unliekly to ever play the class, not even at level 100. These changes would increase viability as a tank and as a pve dps class, or even the hybrid type roles of a little bit of everything. I just feel the tanking changes do not go far enough in themselves without the supporting itemization and the addition of more controlled holy damage sources that sclae with +str instead of +spell.

saramin · 08/25/06, 7:13 PM

Originally Posted by Judia

The depth of a paldin class is in timing.

Not really. The depth of a more 'traditional' healer class is in timing. You need to know what opportunity cost will manifest itself where and you need to make immediate decisions based on mana usage, spell usage and a whole host of other things. And you need to do it fast.

The depth of a paladin class is in reaction timing. If a squishie is under attack you need to be fast enough to taunt. If somebody is whacked you need to be fast enough to heal with one of your two spells. If a mob is loose you spam whatever instant holy ability you have not on cooldown and hope for the best (or more frequently, hope for a proc). It's very much a binary, if->then statement class. Which is fine and characterizes pretty much every dps/tanking role out there, but for a class supposedly modelled almost entirely on reactive/passive abilities one would hope for something more.

Anyway, apologies for the psuedo-derail. I'm not trying to grind a class to suit my particular vision and I'm sure there are plenty of people who enjoy the current iteration. I just think the new abilities and talents lack a certain refined elegance, for lack of a better phrase.

Copernic · 08/25/06, 7:37 PM

I think you're seeing Paladin Depth in a way that few Paladins would.

As someone else noted, you are not meant to have depth on a one-on-one sense with mobs, like a DPS class does. They require depth there because that's pretty much all DPS classes do, plus some utility moves. Tanking and Healing depth comes out of activities I would describe as little mini-games. With tanking, it's building hate on multiple mobs. With Priests, it's the mana conservation/healing power dichotomy.

Paladin depth comes out of their surroundings, as well as out of their changing, shifting role within groups. As a Paladin, I can expect to be an off-tank, off-healer, decurser, or even DPS -- Just within a given encounter! The depth comes out of maintaining an awareness of the surroundings, and shifting smoothly between roles to help the rest of the party out. That entails a certain 'reactive' component because it requires the mobs or fellow players to act first, but it's no less in-depth for it.

For example, we pull two Ogres and a banishable Demon. Warlock banishes the Demon, Warrior heads in and gets hate from both mobs. Now I'm DPS. I jump in, judge the Skull mob with something good, and whack away. The Demon breaks Banish and the Warlock loses his head. I smack him with the stun, blow some cooldowns, and gain hate. Now I'm off-tanking. One ogre gets away, I throw BoP on the Priest. Lets say the Demon gets rebanished, I head over to the free ogre, build hate on him. The tank gets aggro back, but is taking too much damage now, so I back off and start channeling FOL.

Now, what has the Rogue been doing the entire time? Attack, attack, attack the first ogre. Other classes have similar limitations, excepting their own utility moves.

Granted, that kind of versatility usually comes up only in A) Shitty groups where people mess up, and B) PVP (minus tanking). So maybe I just love my Pally because I play in a lot of PuGs. Hopefully BC will add C) Really hard encounters.

DIGO: Why would any Pally play a Shaman? It's like.. the same class only with buffing people made into a huge pain in the ass. And no tanking.

saramin · 08/25/06, 7:50 PM

Meh. I can't think of a way to respond that doesn't involve rephrasing what I already said, so let's just let it lie. You might be right and I might just be jaded.

Granted, that kind of versatility usually comes up only in A) Shitty groups where people mess up, and cool PVP (minus tanking). So maybe I just love my Pally because I play in a lot of PuGs. Hopefully BC will add C) Really hard encounters.

Having primarily played a druid/paladin/priest in competent groups, you have no idea how much I long for an "insta-gib tank, drop party IQ by 40, clear threat list, unleash hell" button.

Edit: On reflection, make it have a 5min cooldown so it's balanced. People might start getting their high in weird ways.

• frmorrison · 08/25/06, 7:55 PM

Originally Posted by Copernic

Why would any Pally play a Shaman? It's like.. the same class only with buffing people made into a huge pain in the ass. And no tanking.

Not with the new talents. Even now, a Shaman can do more melee dps, tons more spell dps, and heal better than a Pally. Now that power is at the expense of weaker buffs, less mana efficiency and less armor, and the fact that you can only spec into one of the those areas to be better than a Pally.

Yes, Shaman aren't great tanks. but they can do the job with extra heals.

All that said, Pallys have the best buffs, huge mana efficiency, and are very hard to kill. So people perfer one over the other.

Judia · 08/25/06, 8:04 PM

Simple example, 5v5 Pvp; Paladin, Mage, Druid, Warrior, Warlock.

Soemone frostnovas the party, do you :
a) BoF the warrior
b) Start clensing frostnova fromteh whole party
c) Start healing the mage on 50% health
d) BoP the mae because their warrior is moving in
e) Shield yourself so you dont need healing while you do any of the above
f) Stun the opposition mage int he middle of his nova.

There is no "right answer", the paladin can do many things and therefore in a pvp situation where he has to make decisions on which one is the priority there is much mroe depth than say for a warriors whose options are:

1) Intercept someone
2) Hit MS/bloodthirst/ww

Or as a priest
1) Heal someone
2) Fear

Even simple things like do you clense a debuff or use BoF add more depth to the class than many appreciate. Timing is everything, the right thing at the right time. PvP healing is about mashing your best fast heal and hoping to beat the assist train.

Sherm · 08/25/06, 10:41 PM

I think my biggest issue with the patch is somewhat related to what saramin said up there. I think my biggest problem is that they gave us quite a bit of talents to make us more mana efficient, yet very few new ways to actually use that mana. Yea my mana pool will last forever, but if I ever wanted to waste a ton of mana on a selection of spells I'm pretty limited as to what I can do. As far as dps I'm pretty much limited to casting a seal, judging, and recasting every 8 seconds to maximize my dps. At the most I can cast a consecration and holy shock if I'm holy but if I actually want to dps then typically I should be retribution, or at least that is what blizzard 'wants' me to be.

Retribution has little other choice than to seal, judge, seal to do dps so while they increased the dps afforded a retribution spec paladin, they didn't give them any new ways to choose when to do this dps other than that 30% dmg skill and perhaps judging a jotc instead of judging sor or something else off the bat. It's still the same action however, simply replaced by a different name. Same cooldown, etc.

I think the problem comes in the inherit 8-10 second cooldown on these spells that limit our dps but also limit our choices. You're locked out of options every 8-10 seconds you judge and basically your choice then goes to sit and hit crap or heal in the meantime while you wait to either refresh the judgement or judge again. Meanwhile look at other casters and you see several direct damage spells with no cooldown at all giving them choices where the paladin has none in this aspect of the game.

side note: I think protection talents are a start though the 41 pointer confuses me a little as to its placement and utility. It's at the deepest part of a protection/pve tree and yet a chain lightning spell doesn't have a whole lot of utility in pve. One aoe bomb and the agro will be right off you. If someone really knows what this is for other than to appease the substantial crowd of paladins looking for some more ranged options please tell me your take on it. It's a nice talent and I like it alot, but I just think its placement could be better and I inevitably see the backlash on forums of being along the lines of 'shaman have this as a base skill yet we have it as a 41 pointer.'

I'm not rerolling yet. Good changes overall and it's just alpha so hopefully they can overhaul far more.

horo · 08/25/06, 10:41 PM

Originally Posted by Judia

Or as a priest
1) Heal someone
2) Fear

over simplify much? there's a lot more than 2 things priests, or any class for that matter, can do in pvp.

edit: but RE the paladin changes (protection, specifically) the mitigation/mana return talents are interesting, but I still see threat as a major problem with paladin tanking.