Melnor

Not really seeing anythign that's going to change the meta game for pallies in 2s and 3s.. AKA what's going to stop me from getting mana drained to nothing in 30 seconds?

 

flyingtoastr

Yeah, except for the instant heals, reactive heals and HoT's that allow us to continually pillar hump to avoid them...

What did you want, some talent that says "lulz you can't be burned"?

Save Atlantis!

 

Corronach

That would involve them admitting pillar humping isn't exactly cool, or fun. We are very bad against hunters and priests in 2's and 3's, and that's because our mana regen is going to be balanced around us having Blessing of Wisdom which those two classes can dispel instantly. So perhaps rather then something that prevents drains more then resilience, they could protect Blessing of Wisdom like Mage and Lock Armor? Or perhaps give paladin's more incentive to actual wear their PVP sets?

But yeah, after seeing the talents, new skills, and other changes overall I'm pretty excited now. The only thing I see that they haven't addressed is 2's and 3's Arena in a large enough way. i.e. Getting chain cc'd, and mana drains. I feel that the chain cc portion is us paying for having divine shield, but mana efficiency is something they might address by better itemization on Holy Paladin arena gear.

 

Charsi

A thought: Holy Paladins have a deep tree spec to increase the range of their judgements and grant haste upon successful judgement. It stands to reason that to keep the haste buff rolling the Paladin will want to judge every 30 sec. The question is, what to judge? Initially Wisdom/Light as needed, but once the Ret Paladin is in there with Crusader Strike you don't need to rejudge those, so a damaging seal makes sense (possibly a rank 1 of something, or nothing at all to conserve mana at the expense of haste).

If SoV is made a reliable proc, then it may be plausible that a Ret Paladin could twist a 5 stack SoV alongside SoB (or the Alliance counterpart, Martyr). This would see a 5 stack Holy Vengeance up on the mob at all times for the Holy Paladins (who are all rocking spellpower and spellcrit) to all judge against. Hmm.

It's far more likely that the intent of those talents is PvP oriented, eg. now your 5's healer can tag somebody with a judgement *and* haste themselves as a helpful side effect.

 

Pyralissa

Both WoWhead and MMOchampion are not showing Precision in the Protection tree. Now the irony is I would like to be able to splash into the Holy tree, but need to "waste" 5 point into Protection for Divine Strength!

 

Pleochism

*edit* Bleh.

 

flyingtoastr

They could always tack something interesting onto Improved Blessing of Wisdom that punishes people for dispelling it ("When your Blessing of Wisdom is dispelled you instantly regain 10% of your total mana") or something like that. I see no reason to give pallys some super burn resistance though, pillar humping might not be fun but it is an important skill.

Then of course I'm holding out that one of our trainable abilities will be Evocation, as all three specs in every aspect of the game could use some sort of activated heavy regen.

It's still 60% like before according to both WoWhead and MMOC.

Save Atlantis!

 

Kaincael

It could also see very good use in 5 and 10-mans. In raid healing is where it might suffer, however.

 

Kaincael

It's not, you misread it.

 

atheira

Divine Guardian looks interesting. It would be very nice to see how this could play out in a raid environment.

Would this be chain used through Paladins, like a relay or damage channeling, or would there be some sort of debuff placed that "cannot take damage from other Paladins under Divine Guardian"?

EDIT: I could see something very interesting involving 3 pallys, Beacon of Light and mitigating damage during intensive encounters via Divine Guardian.

 

zenos

Quoting myself here, my apologies, but I also realize that resilience is a "damage reduction effect". So popping wings would conceivably mean your target is struck as if you had 50% armor pen and 50% resilience pen. This could be very interesting.

 

Strom

What I find interesting about Divine Guardian, is that they state the paladin will take the 30% damage from the raid. We all know that a bubbled paladin will not take any damage, so why not state that the raid will simple take 30% less damage and not even mention that the paladin is getting the damage instead?

Something is amiss there, either its worded incorrectly, or there was possible changes to Divine Shield in the works that we do not know about. Maybe they are considering turing Divine Shield into a damage reducing ability, instead of an immune bubble, thus making it viable while tanking?

 

• Aeverius

While I agree that the wording is strange, the bold is a terrible terrible thing that should never come to pass. Unless, if course, I get some new kind of fear break/debuff clear/spell reflect stand-in. The bubble is an awkward tool, in its way, but you damn sure can do a lot with it. Nothing they could give me in a damage reduction ability would make up for it without being so overpowered as to be broken.

Improved Lay on Hands is really fucking good:

 

jaxdahl

There's a possibility the damage taken would go through the bubble -- there's precedent for this to occur (Four Horsemen marks is the first one that comes to mind).

 

Tharia

Then in every encounter with much ae, you would instagib yourself by activating bubble. doesn't seem likely.

 

Pyralissa

A "damage reduction effect" could also include glancing blows and level based resists. Quite a nice talent.

 

Darian_TruBlade

If I recall, you can take damage from Seal of Blood while using Divine Shield. I'd suspect a similar setup would be the case here.

 

Jessie

The protection tree is definitely bloated. It's quite possible to put together a very nice tanking build, but you're left with very little room for all the extra perks they've added.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft or some variation of that spec does pick up all the essential tanking talents, but trusts that you'll have others to apply the 20% melee slow. I see guarded by the light as something that's most suited for 5-mans and solo farming, so I wouldn't miss that too much.

I think it's workable as-is, but just a few tweaks would go a long way. Theras's suggestion of splitting up the effects of stoicism and wrapping them into some of the other talents would probably be the best one to go with.

 

bellator

There was a blue post somewhere indicating that the downranking penalty is getting harsher in wrath. Will try to dig it out.

The Wowhead descriptions from live and beta would also indicate it to be a guarenteed proc also. Looks like this is shaping up to be the no1 tanking seal and possibilities for twisting (though i personally hat twisting)

All the damaging seals need to be sealed first to be judged. The non damaging ones can just be judged not wasting a GCD, so i think people will stick to those.

Whilst there are plenty of examples of damage going through the bubble, the fact that blessing of sacrifice is damaged is mitigated by shield would be the closet example. Plus if divine shield didnt neutralise the damage a lot of uses of the ability would be made void due to the raid damage sent to the paladin instgibbing him

 

Strom

Then again, the fact that we have Divine Protection sitting in our spell book looking pretty (not so pretty?) for no reason at level 70/80 doesnt make much sense either lol

But I agree, too much of our PvP survivability has counted on that bubble. The wording just seems odd to me.

A smart move would be to make Divine Protection a tanking spell that absords either X amount of damage, or reduces X amount of damage, then have IT work with Divine Guardian. This would leave Divine Shield untouched. But then they would need to go back and have Divine Shield trainable at lower levels with a watered down effect like the old Divine Protection.

 

atheira

The description reminds me a lot of Blessing of Sacrifice except raid wide, on a 5 min cd, and only to those within 30 yards. That being said, I could see Holy Paladins in a raid spec'ing in this and if there isn't a debuff applied of some sort, moving in a group to help out raid healers a bit by mitigating damage of a greater sort into three centric players. My next question in this would armor have any effect on the damage mitigated from the raid, or would it be a _static_ 30% damage?

And tanks using this would be utter suicide to the raid. Yes it saves raid damage but Divine Shield alone makes you immune to melee and spell damage, the boss or mob you're tanking would just jump to the next one on the threat list, and in situations where there isn't a OT, that would be a warlock or someone higher on the threat list.

If the damage can be relayed/channeled through multiple paladins then personally I think it would ideal for a Holy Paladin to be able to "save the squishies" so to say. Hell we can do it already via Imp RF, why not add another way that wouldn't necessarily cut back from our ability to heal (gcd from the Divine Shield being the only cutback).

Situation 1: A is 30 yards away from caster DPS, they take damage, he bubbles, Paladins B and C are 31-40 yards away from the area of effect, bubble and take the damage that A is taking ((Damage*.3)*.3))
Situation 2: Caster/Ranged is stacked up on each other, three Paladins positioned in a triangle around them (All three being 31-40 yards away from each other, but within 30 yards of the area of effect), raid damage begins, paladins bubble (((Damage/3)*.3)) and that area is only taking ~10% of the damage? [Might have to work this idea out a bit more, triangulation is the key, though]

 

bellator

Those are some interesting situaitions atheira.

But really need to drop this divine guardian discussion. There is no way that the damage will go through the shield. Otherwise you have:-

ouch this damage is going to kill me....bubbles....ah crap i respecced divine guardian....splat

 

Strom