Mimir

Shield Specialization definitely still affects actual block value in beta.

I did some very sketchy testing of Hammer of Righteousness (10 minutes casting on level 74 wolves, me being level 75) and didn't see a single block/dodge/parry or judgment/seal proc in that time. I did see several partial resists.

All the known tanking gear in WotLK (not that there's much of it yet, if the drop pattern is similar to TBC it'll be a few bits and pieces until the end game gearing instances) is strength/stamina/defense rating/dodge rating. It'll be interesting to see whether there are token drops like T4/5/6 which allow epics to be tailored to the particular tanking classes (e.g. for paladins, even with no additional threat multiplier, Shield of Righteousness makes block value scale extremely well for single target TPS while adding mitigation, especially given its price in the itemization formula) or they stay as one-size-fits-all drops. If the latter, it's going to make all the gear very similar since there aren't many additional stats they can add that are efficient for all the plate tanking classes.

 

◊ Oggie

Shield of Righteousness, Hammer of the Righteous, as well as all previous effects, are holy school spells, and can be silence-locked out of, as well as are holy school so a counterspell/interrupt school lock disables them. THere is no inherent magic-buff removal attached to RF/HS/Seals, either.

So we're still completely shut down by silence, mana burn, spell lockout, and dispelling encounter design.

I will keep an eye on this, and if it changes in coming pushes I'll comment here.

 

Hobs

I guess I am at a loss here. I realize that tanking stats will more then likely change for all classes. In the mid-60s, the stats seen there for tanking gear were about the same as we are seeing in the mid-70s.

My problem is this: in WotLK, we will have roughly 6 "moves" to do that cause threat. 5 of them are(or at least were) based upon spell damage. Our "shield slam" is based on block value, but is still holy based. Hammer of Righteousness is based upon weapon dmg, then converted into holy again. Strength increases your block value, but that's it... Why are the WoW pally forums, and somewhat here as well, calling for selling our soul (holy dmg) for strength? All current tanking gear has NO strength on it. It is a wasted stat allocation. If you want block value, get something with block value. Everything we do is based upon Holy dmg, why take that and throw it out the window for one out of six abilities? I don't see the reasoning. Up one move's threat, but lowering 5? Not me, no way.

If I am missing something, please help me see it. I'm not a total nub, may be behind the times compared to the rest of you guys. We're half way through BT right now.

 

Prinsesa

Touched by the Light.

If that talent went live RIGHT NOW, I could wear 0 spell damage on my tank gear and still come out ahead on spell power. That's big, and is probably more than enough to power the Pally threat train all the way to Arthas, caster weapons be damned.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

◊ Oggie

Hammer of the Righteous ignores CCed targets of any type (a la avenger's shield). So it's a very CC-friendly multitarget threat ability to get initial threat before we can move our cons.

 

Hobs

I fully realize the stam to dmg conversion. That was put into the game to counter the removal of salv. If warriors get a major threat boost from just being in D stance, that is our equal. Why keep your same threat level if they are giving us a ton more? This arguement does not hold water with me.

 

Anedris

Warriors do not get a boost in their threat generation from defensive stance. The talent to increase it by 15% has simply been rolled into the base ability.

Warriors are assumed to be gaining TPS due to increased AP scaling (and some speculation that tanking gear will have strength on it somewhat regularly).

I would agree that paladin threat needs are a little all over the place right now. We have a use for block value (and by extension strength), weapon damage, and spellpower (plus hit and expertise of course). This will be nothing more than an interesting itemization puzzle unless it actually stops our threat from scaling to keep up with the warriors and bears, however.

 

Prinsesa

Actually, I forgot to throw this in:

Given that Seal of Righteousness and Vengeance scale with AP come WOTLK, STR is actually going to be a significant part of our threat, beyond just Shield of Righteousness and Hammer of the Righteous.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

• Chicken

In addition there's also another factor to consider. Gear homogenization is being applied to take away the feel of "Oh damn, not another [lowly played spec] item". This doesn't really apply to the set item system though, which is most likely not going to change. Set items are, in other words, still going to be tailored for specific specs of each class.

In other words, while we're going to not be seeing many random items drop which stats which are specifically useful for Prot Paladins, the new sets can contain various stats that wouldn't appear on the random items.

Though as I've said previously, I heavily prefer us just scaling our threat using the same methods as other tanks will do. Especially with the new rate at which strength converts to block value.

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

 

thedopefishlives

Our equal to defensive stance is Righteous Fury. Just as Imp Defensive Stance was folded into the base ability, so the increased threat gen of Imp Righteous Fury was folded into the base spell. The stamina->spelldamage conversion was put into the game for the purpose of homogenizing our gear with warriors - letting us wear their high-stamina plate and still get the spell damage we need to power Consecration and Exorcism (which look, so far, to be about the only two of our abilities that do NOT scale with attack power). Not to mention that all our other abilities seen so far appear to scale by both AP _and_ SP, which gives us a double bonus for stacking both strength and stamina. I will certainly be challenging my aggro-whore boomkin to a test of firepower come Lich King.

 

• frmorrison

Actually, as has been said in this thread a few times, the stam -> spell power talent is there so that a Prot Pally and Prot Warrior will use the same gear, since tank gear always has a lot of stamina.

If a Prot Pally rather have straight spell power, they can use enchants.

 

◊ Cathela

Most of us are assuming that the developers want to make gearing for strength better than gearing for spelldamage, and that things will be tuned/tweak to work out that way. But the bottom line at this point is that we don't know how it's going to shake out. It depends on how gear is itemized, what the threat multipliers on the new shield and hammer are, and other factors.

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

 

thedopefishlives

Random question of the moment, and I'm quoting this because it's somewhat related to this comment. If the devs really are looking to get us addicted to strength as a valuable stat, does anyone have any idea where we'd give up the 5 talent points to take Divine Strength? I'm having a hard time parting with anything in any tree in order to get that.

 

Strom

I also think this is a common theme among most (if not all?) classes/specs in Wrath from what I have seen. Blizzard wants us making hard choices between extra threat, survivability, and out-of-spec perks when selecting our talents. It appears they have done a good job so far, but is it too much? I guess time will tell. They have already started trimming the Ret tree. Maybe we will be next.

 

• frmorrison

Removing Redoubt as a requirement for Shield spec and unlinking BoSac from Holy Shield would free up 6 points.

In addition, they could trim some talents.

The devs have a lot of options.

 

Tilted

Don't forget that the new talents/spells are designed around level 80 itemization that we haven't even seen yet. It's entirely likely that WotLK endgame tank gear will be covered with strength bonuses. Like others have said, the new design seems to move away from saying "that's a prot pally item" and more toward "that's a plate tank item." And with the revamp of BoSalv, the entire threat system for every tank class is being re-evaluated.

Also, folding JotC into base abilities is a substantial threat gain in and of itself. It's pretty clear that the devs want to break our reliance on spelldmg gear entirely, and it seems like they're well on their way to making that happen.

 

◊ Cathela

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, moving Deflection from tier 2 of Ret to tier 1 (i.e., so we'd be in the same situation as warriors having it on T1 Arms) would be enormously helpful.

EDIT: And if I'm going to bitch and moan about this, I should at least give the devs credit for fixing my two other pet peeves: Spiritual Focus being too deep in Holy, and the Shield Block lag-gap thing. Nice to see those.

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

 

• Theras

I know, somebody should blog about it or something.

I still maintain that the biggest problem right now with Protection is that we have required filler talents that don't actually do anything meaningful as a tank. Take a look at the Warrior Protection tree (and associated low-hanging fruit in the Arms and Fury trees) and ask yourself, "Which required talents don't add anything to the build?" and I guarantee you're going to come up empty handed. Instead you see hard choices like picking between useful (but not necessarily required) talents like Improved Heroic Strike, Incide, Improved Revenge, Improved Disarm, Safeguard, and Critical Block.

Over in my blog I broke down our Protection relevant talents into four categories: survival, threat, survival/threat hybrid, and crap. Of those talents, 49 relate in some way to our Survival (including threat hybrids) and 11 are total garbage prerequisites to get to those talents. Paladins have to invest 60 talent points into just maxing out their survival. Then take a look at the Warrior Protection tree, where you have to invest only 42 talent points and zero points of trashy filler to max out your survival, and you can see why the WotLK trees are so upsetting to a lot of us. It's not that we'll necessarily be second string tanks tanks again (though I'm still only cautiously optimistic), but that Paladin tanks are forced to make some very hard choices in their talent selection (like choosing between Ardent Defender, Deflection, Seals of the Pure, Divine Strength, and Anticipation), and Warriors aren't. Though I won't go into the same level of detail, the Feral tree also seems to be fairly tightly tuned to ensure that all required talents are attainable without any extraneous prerequisites (though that's nothing new).

I guess it bears mentioning that Death Knight talent trees seem to have some of these same tanking trade-offs that we're seeing here, though. What that means for us as tanks I really can't say.

 

Denogran

I'm not sure I mind this to be honest. I kinda like the idea of having to make tough choices about talents, and have some motivation to try out different stuff to see what best fits my playstyle over time. It's kinda boring to just go to a site like EJ, find the Tankadin post, and click in the talents according to the agreed upon main spec (49/12 anyone?). Especially if we end up getting the ability to switch on the fly, you might find yourself as the main tank having a threat setup and a mitigation setup that you can swap between. Or the off-tank having a healing setup and a threat setup.

I'd say that right now, warriors and ferals are _too_ streamlined.

 

• frmorrison

Doh, you found out I copied from your blog .


I thought most people don't read those, so I put your suggestions here.

 

Marcos

Therein is the problem. If you're the only one who is always forced to gimp yourself in one way or another compared to someone who can fill the same role as you without gimping themselves, then min-maxing just eliminates you. The problem is that filler talents really don't do anything other than add frustration. It's not like you have a tough choice to make. It's more like you have no choice at all. I rather have to pick amongst several good options than be forced to pick a filler just to get to the good options.

 

Denogran

What filler talents? The only two I'm not thrilled about are Redoubt, which may or may not end up being ok, and Blessing Of Sanct, which they do need to make worthwhile.

And it's not even that those are filler talents (or that the protection warrior tree has less of them: see Incite, Improved Bloodrage, Improved Disarm[ almost certainly won't work on raid bosses] ), it's that they're linked to useful talents.

 

Tilted

That seems to be the common complaint though. Would you ever actually spend a talent point on Blessing of Sanctuary if it wasn't tied to a required tanking talent? 11 points of "decent but not great" filler talents is quite a bit if you're only grabbing the talents to get to something you actually want.

 

Nobbynob Littlun

Hopping back to the itemization discussions: now that the bonus healing on items has been taken out and tied into healing spell coefficients, I would expect that items that have been geared specifically for prot paladins (stamina,spellpower,etc) would still be available, as these items can now do double duty as Holy gear as well. Perhaps not the best there is for a healing set, but reasonably well. The changes we are discussing, I think, simply makes this true for warrior gear as well, in that it can do double duty between protection and retribution.

If this is true, and I hope it is, then it would simply be up to the player to decide what they are specced when not prot - holy or ret - and choose between str and spellpower accordingly.

But as has been said, we just don't know how things are going to shake down! :|

 

• Theras

Benediction or Improved Blessing of Might are the other five required filler points. And yes, the entire problem is that we're required to dump 11 talent points into total crap to pick up mission-critical tanking talents. The existence of talents that aren't 100% main tanking-oriented is a-okay in my books, it only becomes a problem when we have to take them in a serious tanking build. Warriors don't have to take Improved Bloodrage or Disarm if they don't want to; we certainly aren't afforded that luxury with our fillers.