• Chicken

I'd recommend heavily against using 40/21 on Brutallus. You will definitely not be needing the extra threat on the encounter, so any extra survivability you can get your hands on is better. Because Brutallus is an extremely fast attacking demon with a low miss rate your threat will already be high enough without the ~10% extra from Sanctity Aura. A much bigger problem on the encounter is how much damage you can take.

Ardent Defender might not be too good on the encounter, but it's still a whole lot better than extra threat you don't need.

I'd really recommend saving any experimentation with a 40/21 spec for other encounters. Felmyst or Kalecgos are much better targets for trying it out (Though on Kalecgos Ardent Defender is actually pretty hot).

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

Denogran

Ya, Brutallus just hits harder than anything I've ever seen before. And if you're saved by Ardent Defender on an off-hand hit even once every 20 attempts then it's still worth it.

As for Kalecgos and Felmyst, I wouldn't drop AD for either of those fights either. For Kalecgos, your threat really just is basically inconsequential. I generally rock around 250 spell damage for that fight, using a [Cleaver of the Unforgiving] enchanted with mongoose for the additional avoidance. For Felmyst, if you're not MTing, then you won't need mad amounts of threat anyway, and even if you are MTing, a lot of damage will come from multiple smaller hits( 600-1k on me) from the skellies, a situation where AD really tends to shine.

I suppose if you were to MT and be on skellie duty for Felmyst, a higher threat spec could certainly be useful as that fight is certainly more about raid damage than tank damage.

I have been toying around with the idea of dropping points in Anticipation and scattering them in the Ret tree, as I seem to be constantly sitting at around 520 defense. I think I'm going to wait till we have Brutallus a bit more on farm though.

 

◊ Cathela

Between Exorcism, Reckoning (which is better than 1-h spec for Brutallus since it's up extremely often and there's no parry-haste downside), and the dual-wield attacks chewing through Holy Shield charges, it should be easily possible to generate a crapton of threat on Brutallus without needing tricks like Sanctity Aura.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

• Snowy

Just as empirical evidence, here's what you will see out of Brutallus in the 10 second period between Holy Shield refeshes, lifted from me tanking him this last week:

He attacks with both weapons ~every 1.2 sec. He's fairly likely to chew through all the charges, and to quote Cathela, that's a crapton of threat. This isn't poo poo'ing the 0/40/21 spec, just I don't think this is the fight to be using it on.

 

◊ Cathela

Pondering threat rotations for WotLK:

1) Since judging doesn't expend the current seal, you'll only need to re-seal once every thirty seconds.

2) The change to HS cooldown makes rotations much easier to manage since you can use anything between 8 and 10 seconds effectively.

Assuming the shield and hammer are worth doing every CD (6 seconds for each) and mana isn't an issue, the skeletal tanking cycle would look like:

HotR, ____, ShR, ____, (repeat)

Using ShR as an abbreviation for Shield of Righteousness to avoid confusion with Seal of Righteousness, and the blank spaces are empty GCDs.

Holy Shield can be neatly weaved in every 9 seconds:

HotR, HS, ShR, ____, HotR, ____, ShR, HS, HotR, ____, ShR, ____, (repeat)

That leaves you with 4 GCDs every 18 seconds for other abilities. You can use two for consecration, and you'll want at least one for a seal refresh. If seal twisting Vengeance/Corruption with Righteousness becomes viable, you could use two GCDs every 18 seconds to switch seals and maintain the stack. So, that threat cycle would look something like:

HotR, HS, ShR, SoR, HotR, Cons, ShR, HS, HotR, SoV, ShR, Cons, (repeat)

That gives you alternating SoR and SoV with 9 seconds for each. If you have two points in Imp, Judgement you could time it to always get two judgements in on each SoV.

Looks like we'll be hitting a lot more buttons in WotLK.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

• Chicken

A great change in my opinion. We're currently in an odd state where we basically have too many abilities to use half the time, and too few abilities to use the other half of the time. The current changes look like they'll fix this up nicely, and there's a couple of other advantages in the new system as well. I'm definitely looking forward to being able to always have Judgement of Wisdom up without worrying about it hurting my threat.

I'm also happy that Blizzard appears to be experimenting with making some Paladin spells scale with both spell damage and attack power based on some posts I saw in the beta forum. Being able to use Warrior gear becomes all the better if we actually have more use for it.

Has there been any testing done yet whether the wording change on Seal of Vengeance is just a wording change or that it really is a guaranteed proc on every swing now? Are Hammer of the Righteous and Shield of Righteousness melee or spell based? If they're melee based, can they be dodged and parried?

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

Nobbynob Littlun

I'm always hesitant to talk about a game that isn't released yet, but I'm too fascinated by the glimpses we're getting to stay silent

I'm hoping that Hammer of the Righteous will skip over CC'd targets. I'm guessing it will. It'd certainly help with that whole no-consecration-or-no-CC dilemma. The other void that it fills really nicely is with staying 2nd on aggro on a boss - whip out a two-handed weapon and pop Seal of Blood, and you're good to go! I'm not sure what an alliance paladin can do instead, maybe with that new Seals of the Pure at the top of the holy tree your Seal of Vengeance/Corruption would be do the trick, or perhaps sticking a point into Seal of Command is in order.

From what I'm seeing in changes they're making to itemization, I think this sort of thing will be a great deal more viable, but a discussion on itemization is way too speculative at the moment for my taste.

 

◊ Oggie

Allow me to share an answer or two. *grin*

2h is not functional with the 51 pointer. It hits quite hard (300+ in full tank gear, no str, using Decap). I have not been able to test with CC yet, but I hope to later today/tomorrow.

Alliance gets SoB, horde gets SoV. The names are different (Corruption == Vengeance, Martyrdom == Blood), but the functionality is identical. You WANT to use SoV now, as every swing refreshes the stack, meaning twisting between SoR and SoV is a very valid aggro mechanic, since SoR hits considerably harder (also, my prot gear clocks me in at 1k +dam) but the judgement of SoV is better, and you can keep both going. It's quite cool.

 

• Chicken

Ah, Oggie. Good to hear you're in the alpha/beta. I actually have a few things I'd love answered.

Is Hammer of the Righteous capable of being dodged or parried, or does it only suffer from misses like Hammer of Wrath and Avenger's Shield do? Does it crit for double damage or for one and a half times damage? I'm also curious about the same things for Shield of Righteousness, but I'll assume you haven't had the time to get up to level 75 yet.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

bellator

Oggie,

If you are able to get any coefficient numbers of all the abilities for SP/AP, it would be great. Can start working some things out

 

◊ Oggie

Heh, glad to be able to help some.

Chicken:
Hammer of Righteous is ONLY affected by AP/weapon damage, so far. It seems to use the range hit table, and crit for 2x, but obviously I don't have nearly enough test data to confirm that in a 'hard' manner. Shield of Righteousness you are correct on, I haven't gotten around to leveling (been playing on my feral). I will have the answer shortly.

Bellator:
Can you give specifics as to what you'd like tested, and suggest how? Not being a smartass, I'd actually like a way to help you out but I need info on how/why.

 

Antarius

Interesting that Hammer of Righteousness only scales with AP/Weapon Damage. I'm assuming the best weapon for it would be a very slow 1hander, but every single "tanking" 1hander is 1.6-1.8 speed.

I'm curious as to what the difference in overall threat would be between using a slow 1hander (Decapitator?) Versus a fast spell damage weapon (such as a S2 Spell dmg mace).

 

bellator

Oggie,

There's a shit load of stuff i'd like to test out. Will list some of the stuff I hope to do if I get onto the beta. theres a lot here, but if you get a chance to find any of this out, will be of use.

Healing

1) Spec Holy to get holy shock, but to make things easy, avoid things such as healing light and holy guidance.
2) get nekkid, so you have 0 Spell Power
3) For HL11, FoL7 and HS5, cast them until you get bored and get an average (ignoring crits)
4) Put on as much Spell Power gear as you can, then repeat 3) to get new average
5) The difference in average as Spell power will give us the new coefficients
6) If you get the time, record your current character level, and repeat steps 3&4 but with HL7, FoL4 and HS1. This data will allow us to see if the downranking penalty has changed

Tanking

1) Spec Prot to get Holy Shield Hammer of Righteousness, but avoid str/sp/dam modifiers. Something stupid like:-
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
2) Get nekkid except for a weapon and shied (ideally one without str/ap/spdam on it). Spell Power should be 0. Record your AP, weapon damage range and weapon speed
3) Find a mob and get average values for SoR,JoR,Consecration, Shield of Righteousness, Hammer of Righteousness, Holy Shield
4) Cast BoM on yourself and repeat 3) so that we can find out if any of these abilties has an AP modifier
5) Put on your spell damage gear (dont worry if it has Str/AP on it), and record you new AP/SP.
6) Repeat 3) to get a new set of averages which we can then use to find the SP coefficient
7) Ideally for SoR you would want to repeat 2-6 with a weapon with a different speed as well to see if the coefficients are fixed or based on weapon speed.


Edit: I see you have done some Hammer of Righteousness testing already. What % of weapon damage does it hit each target with?

 

◊ Oggie

I have not done significant data tests to see if it's normalized, but my initial perception is that it IS normalized. +dam weapons, while useful, are less overwhelming since you get so much +dam from stamina. It's quite possible that the +dam scaling exists (though I swapped from a 41 dps weapon and changed one seal to get a 70/attack to get 320/attack with a 92 dps weapon and BoM), just not sure how much/from what source.

Bellator, can I possibly just do a lot of that testing and send you a log? I'm not a good one for compiling data, I see something shiny and get distracted. That's a lot of testing, I'll do some of it as possible.

 

bellator

Oggie, yeah i know it's a lot. It's just all the things i was going to test if i got a chance. Pick and choose as you feel if you have time.

And yeah fell free to send me the logs and i'll do the calculations. If you can let me know you talent spec and info like spdam/AP at the different points in the log (as they wont be recorded), then i should be able to extract all the coefficients etc.

 

Eanin

I tested Deathfrost again this weekend, and it is definitely proccing off of consecration. I stood in Terokkar being hit by a wolf and a spider, spamming rank 1 consecration with only devo aura up, and it was proccing on both, regardless of which one I was targetting and even when I was targetting neither.

It also procs off of PLG poison ticks...

I think this may be a change, but Worldie on maintankadin noticed something similar. Maintankadin :: View topic - Deathfrost enchant

 

Mimir

I can answer one of these, Shield of Righteousness crits for double damage. Has anybody seen any datamining/testing data to explain what "high amount of threat" means in this case? It's an exceptionally nice threat ability even with no multiplier at the moment, although this is partially an artifact of having a lot of block value on TBC gear which probably won't exist for WotLK tanking stuff.

 

◊ Cathela

With a 2:1 ratio for strength to block value in WotLK (before talents) I don't think picking up block value will be an issue.

As for the threat value, I would assume that's all calculated server-side (I don't see any reason why the client would need to know threat values/multipliers), which would mean it can't be mined.



Oggie: Hammer uses the ranged hit table, you say? As in, no dodge/parry/block? That's interesting; I wonder if it's intentional or not.

Does Hammer proc seals?

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

◊ Oggie

Yeah, I'm curious why this ability really needs a multiplier. With 2:1 str:sbv (or thereabouts), I think shield block value will be high enough to hit pretty comically hard. As a proof of concept, using what I had lying about, I managed to get myself up to within range to crit for over 7k (using such toys as the auto-blocker), which is a pretty scary amount of threat just with the 1.9x modifier. Hitting a 2.5k seems reliably repeatable without using cooldowns (noncrit), and for such little mana.

edit:
Actually I seem to have gotten a parry. I'm having some computer issues right now (major heat problems), so it's hard for me to test this. I will get on it soon.

 

Left

It strikes me that between Shield of Righteousness and Hammer of the Righteous, coupled with the STR->BV ratio change and the STA->Spell Damage talent, there should be little to no reason for a paladin to explicitly use spell damage gear any longer. Shield of Righteousness and Hammer of the Righteous will both scale well with STR (BV/AP), while the Stam thing should give enough basic spell damage for consecration and seals to hit hard enough. Warrior and Paladin gear with therefore look almost identical now, which is a welcome change in my opinion. Thoughts?

 

• frmorrison

You got it.

However, at the start of Wrath your spell damage gear will be still useful (most abilities still scale with it), but may want to start replacing it with dungeon blues.

 

thedopefishlives

I do think, however, it will be worthwhile keeping a high-spell-damage caster weapon around for AoE tanking, because the returns from using a warrior weapon diminish sharply once you get past Hammer of the Righteous range.

 

Eradorn

Any beta able to check if the Shield Specialization talent affects Block Value or is calculated seperately?

With that new spell 30% BV increase will be great, but perhaps not such a great point sink (since you need the 5 in Redoubt) if not.

 

◊ Cathela

If you mean "does Shield Spec increase your Shield of the Righteous damage" then the answer is almost certainly yes. Warrior Shield Mastery affects their Shield Slam damage, so I'd be surprised if that didn't apply to our version as well.

Also, with the intent to make tanking plate usable by Warriors/Paladins/DKs, I don't think we're likely to be seeing a lot of block rating on taking plate. Redoubt could end up being quite a bit more useful even for single-target tanking.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

• Chicken

Shield Specialization already currently affects your actual Block Value, I have my doubts that's changed in beta. Definitely makes Shield Specialization all the better though, since Shield of Righteousness is directly related to your Block Value (Unlike Shield Slam where there's a base damage value and it scales with Block Value).

Redoubt will also be a bit more valuable yes, as it's probably going to fill up the remaining bit of the combat table if you have no block rating at all, meaning you'll get slightly more Holy Shield procs while Redoubt is up (Edit: And of course slightly extra damage reduction through these blocks). It's still doubtful it'd be worth the 5 points if it weren't a prerequisite for Shield Specialization though, I'd rather save those 5 points on Redoubt and pick up Reckoning instead.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of