WotLK talent trees/abilities discussion - Page 104

Fiola · 08/27/08, 7:02 PM

Originally Posted by flyingtoastr

When you're stuck in the odd situation that your guild needs an offhealer you typically throw on healing gear, right? The problem is that Holy Paladin gear is itemized heavily with spell crit. That crit is pretty much worthless to a ret or prot pally as they don't have Illumination. But with TbtL and SoL they do get something out of that crit, making it less of an "eww" stat.

It's bringing some hybriditty (yes that's not a word) back to the specs.

Another neat side effect is that "warrior" DPS gear would become Ret off-healing gear, since the Str will yield SP and a Ret paladin should have a 30+% crit rate from gear + talents.

Not so sure how the Prot SP talent will work out for tank gear, but it does look like crit will be more useful for threat generation in WotLK, so tank gear might have some.

pope master · 08/27/08, 7:47 PM

The big problem with wearing prot and ret gear to offheal is that none of those items have any int on them and you don't have any of the fancy holy mana helping talents so you're kind of SOL unless you throw on those holy items that have the int that you need.

• frmorrison · 08/27/08, 7:49 PM

I agree that while the new LoH is fine, the improved LoH ability is not that great. If it went sub-15 minutes or gave it a longer buff, then I would be interested in it.

• ZulazeeluIcecrown · 08/27/08, 7:56 PM

Originally Posted by s4dfish

What are folk looking at for potential builds in 3.0 but before WotLK? Prot seems to be wanting to take all but 5 of my points (well, all if redout proves useful). Something along the lines of: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I'm going to do something like this for 3.0, then switch to this for leveling (obviously I plan to tank leveling instances) when WotLK launches.

I also wanted to say something about ideas like "Get rid of all plate spellpower gear and have Holy scale off AP!" or "Why doesn't Holy have a Spellpower->AP talent?" Can you imagine, for a second, the reaction on the WoW General forums to an announcement that Holy Paladins would be able to do white damage hits nearly as large as a Ret Pally, while still having the ability to cast huge heals with a big mana pool? PvP is the reason those ideas are simply impossible.

Fiola · 08/27/08, 8:19 PM

Originally Posted by pope master

The big problem with wearing prot and ret gear to offheal is that none of those items have any int on them and you don't have any of the fancy holy mana helping talents so you're kind of SOL unless you throw on those holy items that have the int that you need.

It'll depend on the encounter design, but SoW/JoW is still an option for mana regen in Prot/Ret gear. If SoW/JoW are not usable, then yeah, pure healing gear would be preferable. Also, Illumination is available for the very dedicated offhealer specs.

levk · 08/27/08, 8:24 PM

Originally Posted by ZulazeeluIcecrown

I also wanted to say something about ideas like "Get rid of all plate spellpower gear and have Holy scale off AP!" or "Why doesn't Holy have a Spellpower->AP talent?" Can you imagine, for a second, the reaction on the WoW General forums to an announcement that Holy Paladins would be able to do white damage hits nearly as large as a Ret Pally, while still having the ability to cast huge heals with a big mana pool? PvP is the reason those ideas are simply impossible.

What prevents a holy/sheath spec in all warrior gear from making sense in pvp? It's missing things like vengeance, divine storm etc for the ret part to work and the paltry mana pool for the holy part. You'll be better off in holy gear or with a ret spec.

Spellpower to AP talent in holy - take seals of the pure for example, even with a very aggressive coefficient like 100% SP-> AP you'd need a ridiculous amount of spellpower to scale past seals of the pure. You'll see few holy builds taking that talent because it doesn't help healing. Sheath helps rets do damage.

• ZulazeeluIcecrown · 08/27/08, 8:44 PM

Originally Posted by levk

What prevents a holy/sheath spec in all warrior gear from making sense in pvp? It's missing things like vengeance, divine storm etc for the ret part to work and the paltry mana pool for the holy part. You'll be better off in holy gear or with a ret spec.

Spellpower to AP talent in holy - take seals of the pure for example, even with a very aggressive coefficient like 100% SP-> AP you'd need a ridiculous amount of spellpower to scale past seals of the pure. You'll see few holy builds taking that talent because it doesn't help healing. Sheath helps rets do damage.

I didn't mean to say it was actually a problem. I meant it was a public relations issue. I was mainly responding to the ideas that Holy should get heals that scale with AP ala Death Knight spells and a Strength->Intellect talent (so they could use Warrior gear for main healing and all Spellpower plate could be flat-out removed from the game). This would result in main healers who dealt out main DPS level white crits. This would result in ceaseless whining.

That's why it won't happen.

EDIT in response to post below this one: Read this post. The reason it will never happen is public outcry, simple as that. The reality is irrelevant. A Holy Spec Pally with a big mana pool, huge heals, and the same AP and melee crit as a Ret Pally? It'll never fly with the general public, no matter whether it might actually be balanced (though I suspect it would not be).

Fiola · 08/27/08, 8:50 PM

Originally Posted by ZulazeeluIcecrown

I also wanted to say something about ideas like "Get rid of all plate spellpower gear and have Holy scale off AP!" or "Why doesn't Holy have a Spellpower->AP talent?" Can you imagine, for a second, the reaction on the WoW General forums to an announcement that Holy Paladins would be able to do white damage hits nearly as large as a Ret Pally, while still having the ability to cast huge heals with a big mana pool? PvP is the reason those ideas are simply impossible.

I disagree that PvP makes it impossible. First off, a Holy paladins lacks many of the % damage modifiers a Ret paladin has. Add up the numbers, and the Holy paladin probably does around 60~70% of a Ret paladin's DPS. Though the burst might be similar, you still need DPS to reach the point where the burst is dangerous.

Second, other healing hybrids have dps caster specs that can do strong DPS while "having the ability to cast huge heals with a big mana pool". A Holy paladin doing 60~70% of a Ret paladin's DPS is less of a "dual-threat" than any of those.

Edit: I think it's only a matter of time before Holy paladins are switched over, because spellpower plate will become the new boomkin loot. Either it'll be too rare, making paladins grumble about the difficulty of gearing up; or it'll be too common and sharded often, making party/raids grumble about useless loot.

levk · 08/27/08, 9:14 PM

Originally Posted by Fiola

Edit: I think it's only a matter of time before Holy paladins are switched over, because spellpower plate will become the new boomkin loot. Either it'll be too rare, making paladins grumble about the difficulty of gearing up; or it'll be too common and sharded often, making party/raids grumble about useless loot.

Holy paladin loot will probably be just the tier sets and the exchange program like sunwell.

Hulabaloon · 08/27/08, 10:14 PM

Why not just change it so that it fills the target's health bar to 100%? That would bring it back to the great 'oh shit' heal it used to be.

Edit: Referring to the seemingly useless LoH now.

Malleus · 08/27/08, 10:27 PM

Originally Posted by bellator

I disagree on the imp LoH points. I do agree it should be used all the time, however when it comes to bosses, there are very few in the 16-20 minute range, which means in terms of CD the talent points give no benfit to any individual attempt.

Speaking in terms of existing content only, I would think that starting Brutallus's Stomp at maximum health and armour capped would not be a bad thing for a tank to have once in every three attempts.

Most bosses seem to come in around the 8-10 minute mark. Allowing time for raid recovery, you could conceivably have LoH up towards the end of a longer boss fight on every attempt with talents. Only when you get fights on farm will the talent be of no worth for purposes of repeat use - but of course, when the fights are on farm you no longer need repeat use.

Personally I think the Lay on Hands ability needs to be re-thought out. When it was first implemented:-

1) Paladins health was a much larger % of the tanks health than it is now
2) The size of the heal was far greater than could be obtained from holy light

Over time with levelling and gearing, paladins health as a % of the MT's has decreased, and holy light has scaled much more than the paladins health. I know the CD has been decreased, but its still a long CD, and at 80, it's an instant 12k heal for about 45% of the MT's health? With infusion of light and the top ranks holy lights, we will be seeing lots of instat 12k crits from Holy light.

A completely controllable instant 12k base heal is de facto better than an instant 12k crit heal that can't be used unless you first crit with another spell. That's ignoring the fact that LoH can also crit, or that Holy Paladin base health is likely to increase by more than 700 between 70 and 80.

bellator · 08/27/08, 11:46 PM

Originally Posted by Malleus

Speaking in terms of existing content only, I would think that starting Brutallus's Stomp at maximum health and armour capped would not be a bad thing for a tank to have once in every three attempts.

Most bosses seem to come in around the 8-10 minute mark. Allowing time for raid recovery, you could conceivably have LoH up towards the end of a longer boss fight on every attempt with talents. Only when you get fights on farm will the talent be of no worth for purposes of repeat use - but of course, when the fights are on farm you no longer need repeat use.

Agreed that on a fight if the boss timer + recovery time did manage to fit into the 16min mark but not the 20 min mark, then yes it gives the talent benefit, but this is very variable from encounter to encounter.

As for the use of Brutallus's stomp, yes, the buff would be of benefit to the tank on a stomp, but Brutallus stomps 10+ times per attempt. The 2-3 stomps you could LoH's on (depending on number of paladins in raids) would make it easier on the healers, but this still leaves 7+ stomps per attempts. Healers in general will not be able to cope or cope with stomps. If they can't cope with stomp, LoH won't be of use as they will fail at later stomps, if they can in general cope with stomps, then LoH is only of worth on the stomps where they make a mistake, and it's success rate is only 20-30% (ie whether LoH's was applied for that stomp).

Originally Posted by Malleus

A completely controllable instant 12k base heal is de facto better than an instant 12k crit heal that can't be used unless you first crit with another spell. That's ignoring the fact that LoH can also crit, or that Holy Paladin base health is likely to increase by more than 700 between 70 and 80.

I feel i'm repeating myself a little. I'm not saying, and never have that LoH's is bad or worse than Holy Light, it's not. An instant 12k heal which can crit is of course better than a 12k crit holy light dependant on infusion of light. However this is irrelevant, it's how it compares to our other abilities that's important. LoH used to heal a MT for 80% of their health, cast 2.5seconds faster than Holy Light and was a much bigger heal than a crit holy light. Now it only heals 45% of their total health, is only 0 to 2 seconds faster than a Holy Light and is no bigger than a crit holy light.

Jessie · 08/28/08, 1:41 AM

I've been messing around with the war-tools talent tree creator for a few days now and was looking at a couple different solutions for the Improved Lay on Hands talent, some of which have been suggested here. The one I personally settled on was this:

Improved Lay on Hands
Lowers the global cooldown for the Lay on Hands spell by [50|100]% and increases the amount healed by [25|50]% of your total mana. In addition, the cooldown of your Lay on Hands spell is reduced by [2|4] minutes.

It would let the heal scale a little better for holy paladins, and taking it off of the gcd feels pretty powerful to me without being over the top.

Here's my revised tree if anybody's interested in checking out the entire tree. It's mostly been focused on tweaking protection and beacon so far, but there's a lot of little changes in there.

Cathela · 08/28/08, 2:51 AM

Originally Posted by Chicken

Anyway I have a feeling the people seeing odd scaling effects on various ratings are actually being fooled by a bug in WotLK: Occasionally various pieces of gear will have their ratings apply twice. But if you then swap in or out another piece of gear, sometimes the bonus rating you got through this is lost (The bug doesn't happen to all gear though). I have no idea whether this is something that only applies on the client's side, or if the server treats you as having the extra rating too, I do know it always add up after a relog.

That would certainly explain things.

Originally Posted by bellator

Agreed that on a fight if the boss timer + recovery time did manage to fit into the 16min mark but not the 20 min mark, then yes it gives the talent benefit, but this is very variable from encounter to encounter.

As for the use of Brutallus's stomp, yes, the buff would be of benefit to the tank on a stomp, but Brutallus stomps 10+ times per attempt. The 2-3 stomps you could LoH's on (depending on number of paladins in raids) would make it easier on the healers, but this still leaves 7+ stomps per attempts. Healers in general will not be able to cope or cope with stomps. If they can't cope with stomp, LoH won't be of use as they will fail at later stomps, if they can in general cope with stomps, then LoH is only of worth on the stomps where they make a mistake, and it's success rate is only 20-30% (ie whether LoH's was applied for that stomp).

That's not really how it works.

As a tank, you basically need to pop a cooldown for every stomp: a trinket, a nightmare seed, or Last Stand for warriors. Clicky tanking trinkets have 2-3 minute cooldowns, nightmare seeds have a 3-minute cooldown, and Last Stand can be used once per attempt. Exactly how many stomps you take per attempt depends on your guild's tanking strategy, but it's often the case that you need to equip an extra clicky trinket solely so that you can use it for one stomp per attempt, and for obvious reasons that's frequently going to be your weakest trinket.

If you have an Imp. LoH available for an attempt, you can use it to replace that weakest trinket effect, and then have a trinket slot free to use a trinket with a much better passive effect (e.g., a stam trinket)

Aside from that, I can see Imp. LoH being useful for tanking an enraged Kalecgos, for getting a tank more comfortably through an enraged Illidan during the final phases of the fight (when you can't get him to the trap) or for handling a missed Shear (lag happens). Yes, these things can be handled without Imp. LoH, but nothing is certain, and if you can use Imp. LoH to navigate one "tough spot" easily, that reduces the number of events that can possibly wipe the raid by one.

In general, I think that's where I disagree with your "It won't be up every time" argument. Sure, it won't be up every time you might like to have it. But if you've got, say, 5 "critical" healing moments in a 10-minute fight, and Imp LoH can basically guarantee that you'll survive one of them per attempt, I think that's a hell of a lot of value for just 2 of your raid's 1,775 total talent points.

tarja · 08/28/08, 1:36 PM

Why is everyone talking about Lay on Hands as if it is so underpowered and needs to be buffed? Obviously as tanks' HP pools grew so much larger, LoH lost some of it's usefulness and it was seriously underpowered for a 1 hour cooldown that drained all of your mana to use. But I'm guessing that Blizzard realized this, and that's why they lowered the restrictions on it. I don't see why it MUST always heal the target to full to be useful, now that they removed the "drains all mana" portion of the spell.

The Lay on Hands spell itself is perfectly fine to me, although the Imp. LoH talent may be a bit weak with the armor buff only lasting 15 seconds. It seems like maybe they should lower the bonus armor % by a bit and increase the duration of the armor buff.

levk · 08/28/08, 1:59 PM

Originally Posted by tarja

Why is everyone talking about Lay on Hands as if it is so underpowered and needs to be buffed? Obviously as tanks' HP pools grew so much larger, LoH lost some of it's usefulness and it was seriously underpowered for a 1 hour cooldown that drained all of your mana to use. But I'm guessing that Blizzard realized this, and that's why they lowered the restrictions on it. I don't see why it MUST always heal the target to full to be useful, now that they removed the "drains all mana" portion of the spell.

The Lay on Hands spell itself is perfectly fine to me, although the Imp. LoH talent may be a bit weak with the armor buff only lasting 15 seconds. It seems like maybe they should lower the bonus armor % by a bit and increase the duration of the armor buff.

They do that and people will start bringing enough paladins to put up the buff around the clock on the next Patchwerk. Right now this is prevented with the mana loss. Situation Cathela described is reasonable though, specific encounter mechanic, viable alternatives exist. In other words it's nice, but optional.

• frmorrison · 08/28/08, 3:25 PM

Originally Posted by tarja

Why is everyone talking about Lay on Hands as if it is so underpowered and needs to be buffed?

LoH is fine, improved LoH in Wrath is not, mostly due to the duration of the buff. So it doesn't hurt to give suggestions.

Nhul · 08/28/08, 5:27 PM

Originally Posted by Fiola

Edit: I think it's only a matter of time before Holy paladins are switched over, because spellpower plate will become the new boomkin loot. Either it'll be too rare, making paladins grumble about the difficulty of gearing up; or it'll be too common and sharded often, making party/raids grumble about useless loot.

Holy Paladin and Resto shaman hit a point where their itemization outside of armor was fairly similar did it not?

Lightbringer Treads
Binds when picked upFeet Plate
1322 Armor
+21 Stamina
+30 Intellect
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +2 Spell Critical Strike Rating
Durability 75 / 75
Classes: Paladin
Requires Level 70
Equip: Improves spell critical strike rating by 30 (1.36% @ L70).
Equip: Improves spell haste rating by 17 (1.08% @ L70).
Equip: Increases healing done by up to 95 and damage done by up to 32 for all magical spells and effects.
Equip: Restores 9 mana per 5 sec.

Skyshatter Boots
Binds when picked upFeet Mail
740 Armor
+21 Stamina
+30 Intellect
Red Socket
Socket Bonus: 1 Mana per 5 sec.
Durability 70 / 70
Classes: Shaman
Requires Level 70
Equip: Improves spell critical strike rating by 16 (0.72% @ L70).
Equip: Improves spell haste rating by 24 (1.52% @ L70).
Equip: Increases healing done by up to 95 and damage done by up to 32 for all magical spells and effects.
Equip: Restores 12 mana per 5 sec.

Holy paladins outside of Teir sets and such will probably be 'fine' with the same gear shaman use unless Shaman healing is changing a great deal in the expansion.

Cathela · 08/28/08, 6:21 PM

Originally Posted by Nhul

Holy Paladin and Resto shaman hit a point where their itemization outside of armor was fairly similar did it not?

...

Holy paladins outside of Teir sets and such will probably be 'fine' with the same gear shaman use unless Shaman healing is changing a great deal in the expansion.

Except that it's not plate. Which may not matter particularly to you or me, but really don't see the developers saying "yeah, holy pallies... aside from the tier sets, you can just wear the shaman mail."

Nhul · 08/28/08, 6:38 PM

Originally Posted by Cathela

Except that it's not plate. Which may not matter particularly to you or me, but really don't see the developers saying "yeah, holy pallies... aside from the tier sets, you can just wear the shaman mail."

No, but if its a matter of leveling up and getting some gear to get you by until you are in a raid environment, or getting badges, it will do the job.

I dont know how else they could address it really unless they want to redo holy so that you can wear that plate dps item and still have a large mana pool. Its not a bad idea really something like the Season 1 scaled gladiator geared shockadins where doing somewhat well.

Fiola · 08/28/08, 6:46 PM

Originally Posted by Nhul

Holy Paladin and Resto shaman hit a point where their itemization outside of armor was fairly similar did it not?

...
Holy paladins outside of Teir sets and such will probably be 'fine' with the same gear shaman use unless Shaman healing is changing a great deal in the expansion.

That is no more a solution than Boomkins being able to use cloth. It didn't solve the problems associated with the existence and non-existence of boomkin leather. (raid boss dropping "shards" vs. "no raid loot for my spec")

Is healing plate going to exist? If it does not, then Holy paladins will be unhappy, even though they can become "cloth-adins", "leather-adins", and "mail-adins". If it will exist, then we're back to having "useless loot". In the short term, they can allow armor trade-ins and suffer random 5/10mans getting useless drops. In the long run*, they should just unify plate itemization, since they did it for other armor types and other classes.

*Long run will probably be way after WotLK release. Non-holy paladins can still technically use SP plate, and they've mostly solved the problem with mail/leather/cloth. I don't expect this to be a big issue in WotLK compared to TBC.