Also...why was one-handed spec changed (which, while not great, was still not horrible) and Weapons Expertise (which is regarded useless by almost everyone) left untouched?
If the talent re-wording means anything, now 1h Weapon spec improves *all* damage done while wielding a 1H. Currently, it boosts damage seals and auto-attack by 10%, but not judgements, HS, etc. (As far as my testing with it on previous PTRs could tell)
Since I have 3 copies of my paladin on the PTR, I'll check it out sooner or later. (Probably later if I want to finish my school work this weekend. >_< )
And while I'm all for useful talents 'n whatnot, who has seriously tested the effects of weapon skill since TBC? I wouldn't consider the talent useless until we know what effect it has.
Presumably it has the same effects Defense skill has, except in reverse; that is, reduces the chance your attacks will miss, be dodged, blocked, or parried, and increases the chance you'll crit.
At 5/5 Weapon Expertise, assuming 0.04% for each point of weapon skill, and assuming bosses can block attacks as well, this is a total gain of 1.6% chance for an attack to not be avoided, as well as a 0.4% increased chance to crit.
Considering that A) It's in the Protection Tree, B) It's at Tier 8, and C) The talent is effectively outclassed by a 3-point talent at Tier 2, I'd say it's pretty far deep into "useless" territory.
At 5/5 Weapon Expertise, assuming 0.04% for each point of weapon skill, and assuming bosses can block attacks as well, this is a total gain of 1.6% chance for an attack to not be avoided, as well as a 0.4% increased chance to crit.
Actually, as one of the changes to weapon skill in TBC, each point of weapon skill above your level maximum (i.e., above 350) increases your crit chance by 0.1%. So five points in WepEx gives you +1% crit.
Not that this makes it any less useless.
My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.
I only tested it briefly on a couple of mobs but from what I saw going from 0/5 to 5/5 1hand spec didn't do anything to ret aura, consecration and blessing of sanctuary damage. Holy Shield doesn't seem to be affected either. Actually the only skill which showed an easily visible increase was seal of righteousness, no change on JoR in my case.
Even 5/10% would make a huge difference in ease of gearing to reach uncrushability.
My (probably too optimistic) guess is that they're "saving" the WepEx slot to implement some kind of further change/buff to paladin tanking down the road. I do hope that if they do that, they realize just how points-heavy Prot already is and slim down some of the earlier tiers a bit. The last thing we need right now is another mandatory 5-point talent.
A talent that I would like to see replace WE is some sort of an improved aura. Something like:
"Increases the effect of your aura on yourself by 200%" An extra 2500 armor from devotion aura would help close the stamina and mitigation gap between warriors and an extra 140 resist would allow for more flexible gearing for resistance fights. It would also mean you don't have to put points in holy to be uninterruptable which would help when we need to heal. a 2 point talent would be great, especially since they added another 2 points for imp holy shield.
A talent that I would like to see replace WE is some sort of an improved aura. Something like:
"Increases the effect of your aura on yourself by 200%" An extra 2500 armor from devotion aura would help close the stamina and mitigation gap between warriors and an extra 140 resist would allow for more flexible gearing for resistance fights. It would also mean you don't have to put points in holy to be uninterruptable which would help when we need to heal. a 2 point talent would be great, especially since they added another 2 points for imp holy shield.
Wow, I really like that idea.
A 78-point Ret Aura would probably be pretty badly imbalanced for soloing, and I don't think the devs would like the idea of Prot paladins moving 60% faster than everyone else on mounts, so it would probably have to have some language limiting it to defensive auras only. Or, to go a step further, the talent could improve each aura in a different way, like the Warlocks' Master Demonologist talent.
One of our big problems in justifying ourselves as tanks versus other classes has always been the fact that most of our buffs are transferrable. This talent would circumvent that very neatly.
My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.
A 78-point Ret Aura would probably be pretty badly imbalanced for soloing, and I don't think the devs would like the idea of Prot paladins moving 60% faster than everyone else on mounts, so it would probably have to have some language limiting it to defensive auras only. Or, to go a step further, the talent could improve each aura in a different way, like the Warlocks' Master Demonologist talent.
Well, to further think about it, if Blizzard would think it imbalanced for soloing, there's always ways around that as well. Something like:
"For each person affected by your aura it's effect is increased by 10/20%".
That way it's a (small) self-buff when you're solo, but gets pretty large as you're grouped.
A talent that I would like to see replace WE is some sort of an improved aura. Something like:
"Increases the effect of your aura on yourself by 200%" An extra 2500 armor from devotion aura would help close the stamina and mitigation gap between warriors and an extra 140 resist would allow for more flexible gearing for resistance fights. It would also mean you don't have to put points in holy to be uninterruptable which would help when we need to heal. a 2 point talent would be great, especially since they added another 2 points for imp holy shield.
Ditto what Cath said, that's really brilliant.
For that level of value it'd probably have to be fairly expensive (in terms of points), but we're littlerally talking about a point spread that compliments AND rivals toughness- and even gives value-added to imp Devo Aura (making the synergy between the two vastly powerful and forcing other tough choices).
Now I'm goin to be slightly bitter every time I happen to glance at WE...
Thanks for the positive feedback. Something like a Warlocks MD talent would be great. Each aura could have its own little self buff to help us out in different situations. Or you could just exclude Crusader Aura and Sanctity aura (possibly ret aura too)
So looks like they only reduced the effect of 1h Weapon Spec. Hrmph.
Oh, and since the tooltip for HS is changed by the imp. HS talent, it might not be scaling. Testing for scaling:
606 +dmg
R1 HS: 107~108
R4 HS: 222~223
606 +dmg, +210 JotC
R1 HS: 118
R4 HS: 232
816 +dmg, 5% added per block, gain of 40.8. R4 HS hits for 232, -> 191.2 without +dmg? Weird. No time to do much more calculations with this, but might wanna look into this some more.
Presumably it has the same effects Defense skill has, except in reverse; that is, reduces the chance your attacks will miss, be dodged, blocked, or parried, and increases the chance you'll crit.
See that bolded word there? You're not answering my question. I can do math with those assumptions too. But is that the complete effect of weapon skill vs. a higher level opponent?
If you're going to answer "yes", at least have something more than "presumably".
Considering that A) It's in the Protection Tree, B) It's at Tier 8, and C) The talent is effectively outclassed by a 3-point talent at Tier 2, I'd say it's pretty far deep into "useless" territory.
Unless of course, we don't have a full understanding of the weapon skill mechanic.
Originally Posted by Gestalt, from the official forums
From a bit of testing on PTR, here's how it seems to work:
1. SA provides mana as normal for all heals that have no overhealing.
2. Heals that were complete overheal (i.e. I was at 100%) provide no mana. 3. Heals that have a single point of overheal (I was 1k low, got healed for 1,001) do not provide any mana.
Can anybody confirm this? If this is true, we have a gigantic problem and I honestly have trouble seeing this patch as a whole as anything but a net nerf to paladin tanking.
Since people enjoyed my last suggestion I will amke nother suggestion here.
Sacred Duty currently decreases the cooldown of Divine shield by 30/60 seconds and stamina by 3/6%. I dont think anyone cares about the cooldown so why don't we change it to:
Sacred duty:
You take 5/10% less damage while under the effects of forbearance.
Also increases your total stamina by 3/6%
This leads to the interesting mechaic of trying to layer your cool downs to reduce incoming damage.
Can anybody confirm this? If this is true, we have a gigantic problem and I honestly have trouble seeing this patch as a whole as anything but a net nerf to paladin tanking.
I imagine it's an intentional bug. It's the M.O. of blizzard, to overnerf something to distract people from the real nerf and then buff it back to just a plain ole nerf on ptr.
I still stand by my estimation that 20-25% less incoming mana is going to break paladin tanking, or force us into our horrible tier gear while we pass on non-set purples from the same bosses that are superior pre-nerf.
Since people enjoyed my last suggestion I will amke nother suggestion here.
Sacred Duty currently decreases the cooldown of Divine shield by 30/60 seconds and stamina by 3/6%. I dont think anyone cares about the cooldown so why don't we change it to:
Sacred duty:
You take 5/10% less damage while under the effects of forbearance.
Also increases your total stamina by 3/6%
This leads to the interesting mechaic of trying to layer your cool downs to reduce incoming damage.
Interesting mechanic? All you'll end up doing is using AW, BoP, DS, AW, BoP to trigger forbearance whenever you can.
Oh, and you'll have BoP rotations on the paladin tank to fill in any gaps from his own CDs.
So looks like they only reduced the effect of 1h Weapon Spec. Hrmph.
Yes, but it's probably unintended when you couple it with the Imp. SoR fix. Since you could go to a 10/41/10 build and get better effect than Imp. 1H was giving us before the patch (+15% instead of +10%)
Also I read several claims that SoV +damage application has been fixed so now it works on all stacks, giving a significant increase in damage. That could make it the indisputed Tanking seal (which would be quite unfair towards BE palas).
Also I read several claims that SoV +damage application has been fixed so now it works on all stacks, giving a significant increase in damage. That could make it the indisputed Tanking seal (which would be quite unfair towards BE palas).
Except _they_ will always have mana because of the SA window.
By the way, I did some testing with a friendly druid and figured out all direct heals are not currently triggering SA, but all HoTs are functioning fully within the patch notes. Regrowth, for example, heals nothing initially then 1/10th the hot ticks, right to the poitn where I got to full HP, the last tick giving me mana to the proper proportion.
Just tested SoV on the PTR. It appears that +spelldamage gear stacks with each new application of SoV (I was doing 500+ damage per tick on a 5-stack), but the +damage from JotC is only applied once.
My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.
Except _they_ will always have mana because of the SA window.
I assume you mean by using Seal of Blood? Trouble with this is, Seal of Blood is designed to be used with a high dps weapon, rather than the spellpower weapons prefered by Tankadins. The problem then is that a high damage weapon will only boost our Seal of Blood, and not Consecration/Holy Shield (I know v low coefficient but hey)/Exorcism and anything else we're using to tank with.
I'd really hope Blizzard don't create any whacky imbalances by making SoV or SoB noticeably preferable either way for anything bar very specific and rare situations (I can deal with SoV being very situationally better than SoR currently, because the difference is so slim). I'd hate to have encounters balanced around a Seal I don't possess.
04/14/07, 4:48 AM
Building threat will be a major issue.
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