Protection and you! - Page 140

Zegai · 09/11/08, 9:48 AM

Originally Posted by pope master

I want my god damn 4% stamina bonus back.

We effectively have one less equipment slot and something like 1,200 health less than warriors. 2% bonus probably won't cover that the same way 6% would have.

It still is 6%, warriors have +6%, paladins +12%. I'm not sure how it holds up exactly, but I think 6% is probably enough for the difference.

They could always add librams with stam, increase base health and reduce the bonus (making it scale the same), though, I guess.

Smurrf · 09/11/08, 10:00 AM

Originally Posted by Worldie

The reckoning change... it's useless.

Not really. In addition to being a leveling talent like you just stated, it's an outstanding AoE farming talent, especially if you're using Light to keep your health up. It's also more damage each time you hit, regardless of the Seal/Judgement you're using; specifically with SoV, every time you hit and it's maxed, there's white damage (which is boosted from being able to use higher DPS weaponry) as well as a proc for more damage from SoV itself...which is all more threat.

In addition, it now does NOT inversely scale with gear, which was the biggest gripe about the original form. In fact, with it being able to proc from blocked hits, it actually scales up with your gear and the amount of BV you have. So, not useless, and I'll be taking it.

Worldie · 09/11/08, 10:17 AM

Yes you got a point there, but from a talent relatively deep in a tanking tree, i'd expect it being useful for tanking.

It's not like prot paladins with the current build are anywhere close to having troubles to farm, BoS is extremely good now.

Smurrf · 09/11/08, 11:35 AM

I just posted this line over in the lock thread, but I think it bears repeating here.

"Also, remember that not every single bit of every talent or spell is designed for full raiding efficiency."

Remember, dev's have gone and said that they want to give us fun stuff to use. Not all the time are we going to be in groups with all kinds of support thrown in; this helps the old 'porcupine' style of farming. Besides, the change does eliminate the old argument that past a certain point, it's not worth taking. Also, it encourage players to make a shift to Prot at a much lower level than they might otherwise, which of course, allows them to start figuring out their tools at an earlier point in time.

It was a good talent to begin with, and it's only been made better. I fail to see how it's not useful.

Worldie · 09/11/08, 11:41 AM

I didn't say it's not useful, i said it's not useful for tanking at 80, actually it's not useful for tanking past level 64/66 depending on faction.

pope master · 09/11/08, 11:44 AM

Originally Posted by Zegai

It still is 6%, warriors have +6%, paladins +12%. I'm not sure how it holds up exactly, but I think 6% is probably enough for the difference.

They could always add librams with stam, increase base health and reduce the bonus (making it scale the same), though, I guess.

Oh really, I didn't realize that they reduced the Warrior stam bonus as well. Guess I'm still happy then

Zegai · 09/11/08, 11:51 AM

On the contrary, they increased.

Our stamina bonus in BC is 5%. Vitality used to be, 5/5, 5% stam and 10% str. Now it is 3/3 6% str, stam and 6 expertise.

But with this nerf I think things become a bit more balanced, at least on upper tiers. If someone had the base stats for paladins and warriors we could calc lower-tier health, I guess.

Cathela · 09/11/08, 12:07 PM

Perhaps I'm missing something, but the Reckoning change seems fairly trivial to me, since blocked attacks do damage anyway as long as they're not fully blocked. I suppose this makes it easier to farm/tank trivial content where your block value is greater than the incoming damage, and that might happen a bit more often with the overall buffs to block value, but it still seems to me like an edge case.

I've never really had an issue with it myself, but my understanding is that the complaints about Reckoning anti-scaling with gear were about full avoidance (m/d/p), which this change really doesn't do anything about (although I think the various avoidance nerfs will.)

Originally Posted by Worldie

Look better, Shield Spec has been folded into redoubt. I got 1300 block value with Redoubt (the passive part, which is the old Shield Spec)

Sorry, I'm not understanding you. How is that different from what I said?

EDIT:

Originally Posted by Zegai

But with this nerf I think things become a bit more balanced, at least on upper tiers. If someone had the base stats for paladins and warriors we could calc lower-tier health, I guess.

Yeah, before we try to make a big deal out the scaling change it'd be nice to have some actual numbers for hp and stam and such at level 80.

Keep in mind also that back when we were hurting from the hp-gap (i.e., pre-Combat Expertise), most of us were also at the point where we were having to wear all kinds of weird gear to become uncrushable, whereas warriors could prance around with double stamina-trinkets if they felt like it. That's not going to be a concern this time around.

EDIT AGAIN: It also appears that we'll be blocking a good deal more often than warriors, and our anti-magic damage talent is both stronger and much easier to get now.

Redcape · 09/11/08, 12:22 PM

I am working on a new prot paladin dps spreadsheet. My napkin math suggested that prot might actually end up being very good at dpsing, and in particular I am going to try to build a dpsprotadin, making all talent choices with the aim of maximizing sword and board raid dps. I don't think at first glance that we will be able to get ahead of ret paladins, but it might be pretty close, and that prot build would still have boatloads of tanking talents and as such could act a lot like a feral druid, delivering good tanking and good dps but not perfect in either. Anyway, I hope to have that made and up later today, will see how much extra work it takes to modify my ret sheet.

Kaylee · 09/11/08, 12:23 PM

Well, looks like I won't be taking Blessing of Kings anymore. Spending five points on a blessing when there's already a perfectly good one I have to take later in the tree? That doesn't make sense to me at all. I really wish they'd kept Blessing of Kings as the Protection tree blessing and moved the new Blessing of Sanctuary effect over to Improved Devotion Aura... but oh well.

As an aside, have Blizzard finally fixed (de)buff tooltips to reflect talent points spent? Not knowing at a glance if we've been buffed with full Improved Blessing of Kings or not will be annoying, though I suppose no worse than Improved Divine Spirit or Improved Power Word: Fortitude.

And I'm not sure I like being forced to put points in Reckoning, unless I take Improved Blessing of Kings or one of the PvP talents. I'll be taking 5/5 anyway because I adore the talent, but it does cause more parries and it does kind of suck when you use it with Seal of Vengeance. Since we won't be using Seal of Righteousness anymore when raid boss tanking, Judgement of Wisdom firing more often is really left as the only benefit.

Originally Posted by Russta

Finally, can anyone explain why BoK is a 1 point talent with a 4 point follow on instead of just being a flat 5 point talent?

It's just like similar talents that grant new spells - Holy Shield, Divine Spirit, Vampiric Embrace, Leader of the Pack, the old Nature's Grasp and a lot more I can't think of right now. Either it's a conscious design decision, or the limitations of Blizzard's tech means that an ability can only be placed in the player's spellbook via a single point talent.

Worldie · 09/11/08, 12:27 PM

Originally Posted by Cathela

Sorry, I'm not understanding you. How is that different from what I said?

Aww, now i see the error, yes you are right.

Well, i'm not 80 yet and there's more STR and BV on level 80 gear, and Naxx tanks have anyway 1300ish BV, so i'd guess the math still works

Qalor · 09/11/08, 1:16 PM

If I remember correctly, SoR wasn't that far behind SoV before. With the nerfs to seal damage, and the upgrade to Reckoning, has anyone taken a serious look at how close the 2 are now? We might want to tank with SoR again. (No I'm not volunteering...way too much math for my tastes).

ZulazeeluIcecrown · 09/11/08, 1:47 PM

Originally Posted by Cathela

Perhaps I'm missing something, but the Reckoning change seems fairly trivial to me, since blocked attacks do damage anyway as long as they're not fully blocked. I suppose this makes it easier to farm/tank trivial content where your block value is greater than the incoming damage, and that might happen a bit more often with the overall buffs to block value, but it still seems to me like an edge case.

And this is what I've been thinking: I don't entirely trust MMO-Champion's interpretations. As Cathela points out, Reckoning procs off partially blocked hits on live, right now. Given past misunderstandings by MMO-C, I think it's highly likely Reckoning hasn't been changed in any way, shape, or form and still only procs off attacks that actually do damage (as the tooltip still says, even on MMO-C).

Has anyone on beta actually confirmed it will proc on fully-blocked attacks? And even if so, it's still just as useless for tanking instances as it ever was. Heroic/raid trash on live hit for more than your block value, and thus blocks can proc Reckoning right now on live. But Reckoning is still considered useless. So I fail to see how anything changes even if it does proc off full blocks, outside of being even better for farming.

Cathela · 09/11/08, 3:23 PM

Originally Posted by Worldie

Aww, now i see the error, yes you are right.

Well, i'm not 80 yet and there's more STR and BV on level 80 gear, and Naxx tanks have anyway 1300ish BV, so i'd guess the math still works

Yeah, it's still pretty clearly overpowered even if it's ~20% less than the numbers you were using.

Even 200% still has the potential to get out of hand given high-level WotLK gear -- we're definitely going to see block values in excess of 2k at some point, which would give 4k base ShR damage in the old version. I wouldn't be surprised to see ShR changed to something more like Shield Slam: A decent static base damage plus 100% of blockvalue, or something like that.

Originally Posted by Kaylee

As an aside, have Blizzard finally fixed (de)buff tooltips to reflect talent points spent? Not knowing at a glance if we've been buffed with full Improved Blessing of Kings or not will be annoying, though I suppose no worse than Improved Divine Spirit or Improved Power Word: Fortitude.

And I'm not sure I like being forced to put points in Reckoning, unless I take Improved Blessing of Kings or one of the PvP talents. I'll be taking 5/5 anyway because I adore the talent, but it does cause more parries and it does kind of suck when you use it with Seal of Vengeance. Since we won't be using Seal of Righteousness anymore when raid boss tanking, Judgement of Wisdom firing more often is really left as the only benefit.

To my knowledge, the tooltips are still the way they've always been, and since they've been that way for four years I don't think we can expect it to change. I think we can assume though that any reasonably clueful person who picks up BoK will be filling up Imp. BoK.

As for Reckoning, there's still some seal-twisting potential with SoR and SoV that I wouldn't rule out. In a standard 6/9 rotation, you can replace consecration with a seal switch every 9 seconds, to keep SoV going full time and SoR going half the time. It probably won't be as much threat as Cons, but it'll be cheaper. And I still want to look into the possibilities of using haste to open up some space in the rotation through GCD reduction. (Yeah, Qalor: it's an interesting question and I'll probably get around to the math at some point if nobody else does.)

The parry effects don't bother me too much; for one thing, warriors do just fine even though they're spamming a parryable special attack every GCD. Expertise mitigates the risk, and it's something you'll want for threat anyway. And the devs have a habit of turning off parry-hasting on bosses where it could really hurt (dual-tank boses such as Shahraz/Naloraak/Halazzi, and Brutallus who was destroying tanks when Sunwell was on the PTR.)

Originally Posted by ZulazeeluIcecrown

And this is what I've been thinking: I don't entirely trust MMO-Champion's interpretations. As Cathela points out, Reckoning procs off partially blocked hits on live, right now. Given past misunderstandings by MMO-C, I think it's highly likely Reckoning hasn't been changed in any way, shape, or form and still only procs off attacks that actually do damage (as the tooltip still says, even on MMO-C).

The in-game tooltip actually has changed (strange that the MMOC one hasn't, since I thought that was based on data-mining, but whatever.) I haven't tested full-block Reckoning procs yet. I think it's probably a real change, but you're right, it certainly could be just a cosmetic change with no actual functional difference at all.

Tilted · 09/11/08, 4:32 PM

The Kings change concerns me. As many have already noticed, prot pallies will be buffing BoSanc 99% of the time anyway, so there's no reason to pick up the talent. Holy builds are now going to be using the ret tree to flesh out their talent picks since they can get another 8% spellcrit, so it's not exactly likely they'll want to dump another 5 in prot to pick up this talent. That pretty much leaves ret builds to pick it up, but they already want 5/5 Divine Strength to begin with, which again makes it that much harder to find another 5 points for Kings. I fear that one of the greatest buffs in the game might get lost if something doesn't change before 3.0 goes live.

I know that the trees still aren't finished, so I have my fingers crossed.