Mists of Pandaria: All Specs - Page 5

Babathong · 11/23/11, 10:36 PM

Originally Posted by Jortong

It's from Prot. Ret: Radiates 1000 healing to allies within 10 yards for 12 sec.

Were aware that it says that, but I think the question at hand is whether or not it is correct.

Theck · 11/23/11, 11:22 PM

Originally Posted by Babathong

Were aware that it says that, but I think the question at hand is whether or not it is correct.

It's all speculation at this point, but I'd say it's a good bet that they're correct. Giving prot a free Divine Protection effect, ret a free mini-AW, and holy a free mini-Holy Radiance when they use Speed of Light would make it the only logical choice in that tier. All three specs would take it and use it for the spec-specific effect rather than the movement bonus, which is counter to the design philosophy they espoused at BlizzCon.

Rotating them around the way they did makes it a slightly more interesting choice. Ret can decide to use it as an AoE healing cooldown if they won't need it for movement, Holy can use it as a survivability cooldown if they won't need it, and Prot can use it as a DPS boost if they won't need it.

That said, Speed of Light was already one of (if not the) strongest choice in that tier, it didn't need the secondary effects tacked on at all.

Ronark · 11/24/11, 12:17 AM

Originally Posted by Malleus

With our being able to generate HP with Crusader Strike, Judgement and every fifth white swing (Exo), we will get about 8 HP every 18 seconds

Originally Posted by Exemplar

Having Excel at my fingertips here, if we could get off a CS and Judge on every (reduced) CD, as well as Exo (with 3.5 speed weapon) then at absolutely no haste you should get 44.6 finishers

Are you both accounting for Zeal of the Crusader? Even with only 1 "proc" per minute with a 3.5 weapon speed and no haste, you would have 1-2 additional white swings and an additional 0.4% chance to trigger Exorcism.

Originally Posted by Theck

Prot has no DPS sink for Holy Power

Shield of the Righteous still does damage, according to the tooltip in the calculator.

Theck · 11/24/11, 12:48 PM

Originally Posted by Ronark

Shield of the Righteous still does damage, according to the tooltip in the calculator.

I guess I should have been more careful with the phrasing on that thought. I guess SotR still qualifies as a DPS sink, since it does damage. What I meant was that we (probably) don't have a "use this ability to dump HP and deal massive damage" option anymore.

While we don't have numbers, of course, my understanding of the new design direction was that SotR was going to primarily give us a survivability benefit. In a system where we use HP for survivability benefits, it doesn't make sense to make SotR the cornerstone of our DPS rotation. So the damage it does is likely to be token damage, and weaker than our other abilities (J and AS especially, maybe it'll be on-par with CS).

So being able to spam SotR wouldn't necessarily be a DPS increase in the new system, because you'd still prioritize J and AS ahead of it for DPS. That said, it's all based on assumptions at this point; we'll have to see what the numbers look like at level 90.

Pasture · 11/24/11, 1:12 PM

Originally Posted by Malleus

But infinitely more over the course of a fight. Sanctified Wrath is more HP during AW, but that's only 20 seconds in every two minutes and we'd get no benefit from it during Execute phase when we can use Hammer of Wrath regardless.

Let's compare the three:

Crudely, Holy Avenger gives a flat 21 HP every 300 seconds, assuming GOAK is activated less than a second before TV is used for the first time and we spam HP abilities for the 10 seconds. It is automatically de-synced with GOAK stacks, but that's partially made up for by it guaranteeing we will have an ability to use in each of the first seven slots after popping - stacking will be slightly faster as a result. Also, it's 21 HP per whole or part of 300 seconds, so it's at its best in a 6-minute or 11-minute fight but suffers diminishing returns thereafter until the next breakpoint.

To beat Holy Avenger, Sanctified Wrath would need to allow 21 Hammer casts in 5 minutes. This is impossible, so Sanctified Wrath can be immediately discarded.

Divine Purpose generates 0.45HP for each HP ability we use. To beat Holy Avenger, we would need to use 47 HP abilities in the fight. DP procs will give another HP ability; at 15% chance to proc, we would on average get six procs from 41 abilities. With our being able to generate HP with Crusader Strike, Judgement and every fifth white swing (Exo), we will get about 8 HP every 18 seconds (I'm assuming HotR will share a CD with CS and be a DPS loss to use on a single target anyway). It will thus take 277 seconds to make enough HP for 41 HP abilities.

I don't have the tools at home to accurately graph y=(21x/277) against y=21*ROUNDUP(x/300), but I have more than a suspicion that the window in which DP beats Holy Avenger will not be wide enough to reliably hit.

I suspect once all is balanced that Divine Purpose will be the go to tank and spank highest dps option. Holy Avenger has the benefit of being a big burst option so needs to be less overall dps to prevent it being the go to choice.

We will alternate between the two on a fight by fight basis, Divine Purpose being the standard option and Holy Avenger being the fight specific option. Burst phases like Magmaw will surely favour the latter, and likewise burst AoE fights, though there are much fewer of these.

I have no doubt the numbers will be tweaked to ensure we will alternate spec choice depending on the fight.

Ronark · 11/24/11, 3:07 PM

Originally Posted by Theck

I guess I should have been more careful with the phrasing on that thought. I guess SotR still qualifies as a DPS sink, since it does damage. What I meant was that we (probably) don't have a "use this ability to dump HP and deal massive damage" option anymore.

While we don't have numbers, of course, my understanding of the new design direction was that SotR was going to primarily give us a survivability benefit. In a system where we use HP for survivability benefits, it doesn't make sense to make SotR the cornerstone of our DPS rotation. So the damage it does is likely to be token damage, and weaker than our other abilities (J and AS especially, maybe it'll be on-par with CS).

So being able to spam SotR wouldn't necessarily be a DPS increase in the new system, because you'd still prioritize J and AS ahead of it for DPS. That said, it's all based on assumptions at this point; we'll have to see what the numbers look like at level 90.

I think we can both agree upon ShoR being used as a mitigation tool and not as a DPS tool. The damage is there as a side benefit, and makes ShoR akin to a weaker version of Deathstrike with one major drawback-- We cannot 'sit' on our resource. DKs are able to use only 1 set of runes, saving the other as a backup for another Deathstrike. Skilled Warriors are able to anticipate when they will need Shield Block and can "rage dance" around the (tentative) 80 rage range. Depending on Prot's HP generation, Prot would need an ability to use only 1 or 2 charges of Holy Power, yet still be competitive damage wise with CS, Judge, and AS. From the changes, CS for Prot is still a 4.5 second spell.

Slight tangent-- Assuming that GAnK for Ret will still have the strength-stacking component, it would be best to use GAnK still 10-seconds prior to Lust/Hero/TW with the Holy Avenger talent. If we were able to get into a CS/Judge or Exorcism/CS/HP Dump rotation, one could get 8-9 TVs off, minus 1 Holy Power for an Inq refresh. What we will need to find out, is how Haste affects the GCD of CS and Judgement (and if it still affects Exorcism), as having 1 second GCD on CS and Judgement/Exorcism would be needed.

One additional thing on Holy Power resource size: There is a lot of potential waste for Holy spec if they have the Eternal Glory talent and either HA or DP talent. A limited 3 HP pool would see wasted HP if EG procs together with DP.

Malleus · 11/24/11, 7:12 PM

Originally Posted by Ronark

Are you both accounting for Zeal of the Crusader? Even with only 1 "proc" per minute with a 3.5 weapon speed and no haste, you would have 1-2 additional white swings and an additional 0.4% chance to trigger Exorcism.

I purposefully wasn't accounting for ZotC (and also assumed a 3.6 weapon and no haste). 8 HP in 18 seconds is a worst-case scenario that was also easier to calculate, and it's unlikely that our typical scenario will vary as high as 9 HP per 18 seconds. As a result Divine Purpose is slightly better than I painted it. However, the fight duration window in which it beats out Holy Avenger is still quite random. Gaming out a little on the old figures:

Returns per minute from HA at X minutes:
6 - 7
7 - 6
8 - 5.25
9 - 4.66
10 - 4.2
11 - 5.73
12 - 5.25
13 - 4.85
14 - 4.5
15 - 4.2
16 - 5.25

(I've ignored results for less than 5 minutes as that would mean either a gimmick fight or one so easy to beat that talent choice would have no impact.)

Assume we get 10 finishers per minute - that's about as high as we can realistically expect. At Exemplar's recursed 17.65% chance to proc, we would get a typical 5.3 HP per minute. So Holy Avenger is best at any fight duration from 5m10s to about 7m50s, DP wins from there up to 10m10s, then HA wins through to 11m50s before being beaten by DP thereafter.

Exemplar: why do you suggest refreshing Inquisition at 1 or 2 HP to get more DivPurp procs when in your post immediately prior you'd said that we'll be even closer to GCD-locked in Mists? Every Inq-1 or Inq-2 we did would be in place of a TV and delay the next TV if it didn't proc DivPurp. There's no way that wouldn't be a colossal DPS loss.

Exemplar · 11/25/11, 10:56 AM

Originally Posted by Malleus

Exemplar: why do you suggest refreshing Inquisition at 1 or 2 HP to get more DivPurp procs when in your post immediately prior you'd said that we'll be even closer to GCD-locked in Mists? Every Inq-1 or Inq-2 we did would be in place of a TV and delay the next TV if it didn't proc DivPurp. There's no way that wouldn't be a colossal DPS loss.

CS and HotR share CD - lots of free space, 1 or 2 HP Inq are possible.
CS and HotR do NOT share CD - GCD lockage. 3 HP finishers only, please.

I did not use ZotC, either. I went with 3.5 speed weapon, since I did Haste calcs and it would gain less benefit. Erring towards a sort of worst case scenario for the talent.

Can we agree Haste will only improve the DivPurp side of the equation? Faster autoattacks, thus more Exo procs. Shorter CS/Judge CD, thus more HP generation, while Finisher GCD does not reduce.

So, let's use a 3.6 speed weapon, no HotR usage (it's exclusive to CS), and no Haste at all.

So HP generation is CS, Judge, and the Exo procs. DivPurp is the 17.65% chance (the baked in recursion).
Repeating sequence of CS, Judge, Filler, CS, Filler, Filler. (Note this slights Judge, since we could slot it in the last filler with a longer sequence before repeat, but this is dirt simple for napkin math).

Every 9 seconds you get 2 CS, 1 Judge, and (9/3.6 = 2.5 melee. Take 2.5 melee * 20%) 0.5 Exo. Total of 3.5 HP.
60 seconds / 9 seconds = 6.67 cycles/min.
6.67 cycles/min * 3.5 HP/cycle = 23.33 HP/min.
23.33 HP/Min * 1 Finisher/3 HP = 7.78 Finisher/Min.
7.78 Finisher/Min * 17.65% DivPurp/Finisher = 1.37 DivPurp/Min

So, zero Haste, no ZotC we get an average of 1.37 DivPurp (full finishers) per minute.

Malleus, I do not understand your returns. One usage of GoAK grants 7 extra finishers. GoAK has a 5 min CD.
From my above numbers we get 7.78 Finisher/Min, which can be flopped to 7.71 seconds per finisher. Hit Inq, immediately start hammering finishers. Anything up to 307 seconds is your first CD. That calculated, let's ignore the 7 seconds so we have a nice clean 300 seconds (5 min) for napkin math.

300 seconds (or 5 min) grants 7 finishers at times 0, 1.5, 3, 4.5, 6, 7.5, 9.

7 finishers / 5 min = 1.4 Finisher/min
This drops until the 10min mark when you can re-use.

Minutes	Total HA Finishers	CS no HotR Total DivPurp Finishers
1	7	1.37
2	7	2.74
3	7	4.11
4	7	5.48
5	7	6.85
6	14	8.22
7	14	9.59
8	14	10.96
9	14	12.33
10	14	13.7

Holy Avenger wins every timeframe. You get a tie at about 5:06 if you delay GoAK by those 6 seconds. If we'd delayed that first 7.71 seconds, then there's about a 1-2 second window where DivPurp wins! Start throwing in Haste effects and both the tie-time and window for DivPurp to win will grow larger. This is the situation where cheesing some 1 HP Inq would get you some gain. I won't math that - based on the calculated HP generation, you'd probably clip Inq to perform it and could as easily lose more than you gain.

Now, let's go to an environment where you could use both CS and HotR. New rotation of: CS, Judge, HotR, Finisher. Depending on damage we either replace HotR with Exo when it procs, or replace Judge with Exo, then Judge replaces HotR - end result is none, we still get 3 HP and a finisher every cycle.

Every 6 seconds you get three HP, whether CS/Judge/HotR, CS/Judge/Exo, CS/Exo/Judge, or Exo/CS/Judge.
60 seconds / 6 seconds = 10 cycles/min.
10 cycles/min * 3 HP/cycle = 30 HP/min
30 HP/min * 1 Finisher/3 HP = 10 Finisher/Min.
10 Finisher/Min * 17.65% = 1.76 DivPurp/Min

On Napkin we pull ahead at 4 minutes, but that's not accounting that actually using the DivPurp pushes back your cycle - there were no free GCD! Not one! So every DivPurp finisher eats 1 HP by using a HP-generating attack's GCD. So let's apply recursion a few times.

1 DivPurp = -1 Finisher
10 Finisher/Min - 1.76 Finisher/Min = 8.24 Finisher/Min
8.24 Finisher/Min * 17.65% = 1.45 DivPurp/Min
Recalc:
10 Finisher/Min - 1.45 DivPurp/Min = 8.55 Finisher/Min
8.55 Finisher/Min * 17.65% = 1.51 DivPurp/Min
Recalc:
10 Finisher/Min - 1.51 DivPurp/Min = 8.49 Finisher/Min
8.55 Finisher/Min * 17.65% = 1.50 DivPurp/Min

Looks like further recursion will just narrow decimals. We'll call it 1.5 DivPurp/Min.

New table time.

Minutes	Total HA Finishers	CS+HotR Total DivPurp Finishers
1	7	1.5
2	7	3
3	7	4.5
4	7	6
5	7	7.5
6	14	9
7	14	10.5
8	14	12
9	14	13.5
10	14	15

DivPurp pulls ahead at about 4:40. So your window is 20 seconds (your new HA was at 5 min and 0.01 seconds). Delay your GoAK and the window expands a bit, but not much. Wait those first 6 seconds to put up a full Inq and we've got a 26 second window.

26 seconds / 300 seconds = 8.67% chance that DivPurp would pull ahead. Just going on averages (like the rest of the napkin math), that's pretty lousy.

Let's go so far as to maximize. 50% Haste drops our CS, HotR, and Judge GCD to 1 second, and their CD to 3, 3, and 4 respectively. Entire cycle becomes 4.5 seconds. This would jump us to 13.33 Finisher/Min. Playing with recursion we'll find it winds up more 11.33 Finisher/Min and 2 DivPurp/Min.

So, in this insane world where we had a finisher every 4.5 seconds, DivPurp could be ahead around the 4:00-5:00 window (it tied at 3:30). Even with a larger window, I think the drawback is the "winning" windows for DivPurp are the least likely timing for a fight to finish.

End results: Holy Avenger seems a clear winner. Additionally it has other benefits. If you need a specific burn phase, being able to hold GoAK and use at that time for the burst would hands down beat the utility your averagely distributed DivPurp. HO is not at the mercy of the RNG - statistically DivPurp will underperform the above numbers 50% of the time.

Barirn · 12/07/11, 7:08 PM

From what I have seen from the MoP talent tree, here are my picks for Prot Paladins specifically.

Lvl 15: Long Arm of the Law-Prot Paladins tend to open with Judgement, so getting to the boss just after opening with it will help us establish aggro faster and get into our job of tanking sooner.

Lvl 30: Fist of Justice-Extended range and shorter CD means better control for adds.

Lvl 45: Sacred Shield-A minute CD, along with a boost to healing received without having to worry about it is better for those "oh shit" moments

Lvl 60: Eternal Glory-the only talent on that level that doesnt focus on healing others. You shouldnt have to think about tanking and healing others at the same time

Lvl 75: Veneration-We are the only paladin spec who uses Consecration regularly, lets get a little more benefit from it.

Lvl 90: Holy Avenger-All we have that uses Holy Power in MoP will be Shield of the Righteous and Word of Glory. This talent is a personal pick, any of them will do.

Eskostar · 12/07/11, 7:58 PM

Latest changes:
Repentance - Mana cost increased to 10%, up from 9%.
Speed of Light - 3% Mana cost added.
Long Arm of the Law - Movement speed increase now for 3 seconds, up from 2 seconds.
Pursuit of Justice - Now also grants 10% increased movement speed at all times.
Holy Avenger - Now works on your next 5 abilities and lasts as long as Guardian of Ancient Kings.

These two just seem like typos:
Blessing of Might - Reworked to grant 5 Mastery.
Sacred Shield - Now absorbs 161 damage, down from 1703

Charybdis · 12/07/11, 10:45 PM

I'm pretty sure BoM isn't a typo there. 5 mastery is akin to 5% crit, so it's a good raid buff. As for Sacred Shield, the tooltip is likely going to scale with level and potentially gear. 161 shielding at 45+ is too pathetic for it to be anything else.

Barirn · 12/07/11, 11:09 PM

I think BoM is going to be a mixed bag, depending on who you are talking about, i.e. its good for prot pallies, but bad for sub rogues.

Ronark · 12/08/11, 1:55 AM

Originally Posted by Barirn

I think BoM is going to be a mixed bag, depending on who you are talking about, i.e. its good for prot pallies, but bad for sub rogues.

You could argue how bad the melee haste buff or 5% crit buffs are for X class. Rather than granting mp5 or AP, which was good for only some specs already and did nothing for others, it is now somewhat useful for everyone.

NoGoal · 12/08/11, 3:01 AM

2 more changes for Protection:

(40) Shield of the Righteous: Slam the target with your shield, causing 4170 Holy damage and blocking the next melee attack against you. In addition, increases the amount your shield blocks by an additional 25% for 6 sec. [Requires 3 Holy Power]
(42) Seal of Righteousness: Fills the Paladin with Holy Light, causing direct attacks to deal 16 additional Holy damage against all targets within melee range. [New for Protection]

Curulan · 12/08/11, 4:54 AM

5 Mastery (not Mastery rating) from a single buff is still quite a bit, regardless of what class you're looking at.

It's also possible that the number listed here is a level 1 value and would get scaled up at 81-90, or the value itself changes before release.

Afterthought: Or did you mean that you think it's a typo for 5% increase to Mastery? If so, I'd agree with you that it makes more sense than a flat 5.