Redcape

Truth.

The developers are really trying to make healing specs do more damage (see spellpower on their gear) and have stated that they want to do the same for tanks. From the talent calculator playing I have done (admittedly not on beta) DKs seem like they should be able to run at something like 80% effectiveness in a tank spec and ferals should be more like 90%. There simply isn't a compelling reason to NOT make paladins sit at 80%. We won't be taken for a pure dps role, but we will be able to do something when not tanking and be fairly effective and be able to farm (or join a random 5 man as a dps) without being awful.

Allowing a lack of threat mitigation to be our ceiling rather than gear/skill is a unpleasant limit. If a prot paladin comes to your raid and happens to be stupid awesome at playing and have monster gear, he should be able to keep up with mediocre dpsers in worse gear. As it is he will run flat into the threat wall at 70% of their dps regardless, and that isn't a fun or compelling game mechanic.

 

caleel

there was a recent blue post that stated they wanted warrior tanks to be the top dps tank spots. not sure if they are going to give prot pal tanks the love like is being discussed here. my guess is we are destined to be aoe tanks and remain lowest on the totem pole in dps.

 

Redcape

Source? Druids and DKs have similar threat multipliers to warriors, unless they decide to make warriors simply make more threat than every other class (which would be idiotic) they can't really scale substantially above those other 2 in dps. Given that protadins have a much higher threat multiplier they could scale well above us though.

 

◊ Cathela

Er... more than ferals? Because the whole switch-from-tank-to-dps thing is the quintessential feral shtick. I understand they're trying to place some "choose between tanking and dps" talents in the feral tree now, but even so I'd expect they want ferals to still be on top.

The problem is that you can't make an apples-to-apples comparison here, because dps output can vary greatly depending on whether you're tanking or not. A prot warrior in a pure dps mode will be dual-wielding, for example.

Also, if you're dps'ing as a prot paladin, do you want to be low-threat? Wouldn't you rather be just behind the tank on threat, so that if the tank should die you have a chance of picking up the mob and tanking it?

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

 

Redcape

I made the assumption that he was talking about the dps delivering during tanking, rather than dps delivered when you aren't needed to tank. I guess his original post was unclear though as to whether he means dps done while tanking or dps done while geared and attempting to dps.

If I am dpsing as a prot paladin and I have dps gear on, me picking up threat isn't useful. I will be crittable, my avoid will be sitting at 15-25% less than normal, and I will have 60% of the hitpoints at best. I would get smeared all over the wall just like any other dpser in that situation. I would rather have low threat since in full dps gear there is nothing I can do to tank a real boss.

If I was in tank gear just doing damage after my mob died, I would try to be second on threat but I would have RF on and my dps would be pretty terrible considering I was in tank gear anyway.

 

Lunkhedd

I think it's an interesting idea to give Protection secondary utility as dps rather than as a healer, but I think the healing alternative would work better for three reasons: it would help keep Protection paladins distinct from other tanks, it would give Holy paladins more reason to invest in the Protection tree as a secondary tree rather than (or in addition to) Retribution, and it's much easier to modify the existing tree for healing than for effective dps. In particular, I think there's a lot of room in the Protection tree to add healing-oriented secondary attributes to current talents. For example:

• Anticipation could also reduce the GCD of healing, Cleanse, and Hand spells.
• Redoubt could also provide immunity to spell pushback, like priest Martyrdom.
• Improved Righteous Fury could also increase mana regeneration by some percentage of intellect while Righteous Fury is active, like druid Dreamstate.
• One-handed Weapon Specialization could be changed from damage to damage and healing.
• Leftover Holy Shield charges could return mana when the spell expires. The mana gain when not getting hit could be balanced by the extra GCDs used.
• Ardent Defender could also increase target armor on healing crits, like priest Inspiration.
• Combat Expertise could also reduce the duration of interrupt and silence effects.
• Guarded By The Light could also affect Holy Light and Flash of Light.
• Shield of the Templar could also affect Sacred Shield.

That said, I suspect Blizzard would feel obligated to come up with a completely different list if they were to go this route.

Moving Kings baseline and Sanctuary back to its original spot where Kings is now would also make Sanctuary more accessible for use on non-paladin tanks in 5 and 10 man instances. It'd also open up the 21-point slot for a more active ability; needless to say, there are many options for one (spell interrupt, spell intercept, snare, cooldown reset/forbearance remover, CC break, mana burn counter/recovery, Conversion (Diablo 2 paladin mind control), tanking version of Divine Favor, etc.).

There would still be an issue with maintaining mana while healing in tank gear. I like the idea that I think someone suggested here of eliminating the mana cost of seals and having SoW return a percentage of maximum mana per hit, presumably modified by weapon speed.

I don't think that offspec utility is the main issue with the Protection tree, though. The most annoying problem to me is the ten points of filler (in Redoubt and the first tier of Ret), which is far more than any other spec I can think of and is really what makes Protection seem so bloated. Second to that is the virtual lock-in of Deflection, which is still the strongest avoidance talent available to paladins. With Deflection being where it is, it pretty much eliminates Protection builds with more than 5 points in Holy (which, in particular, means the inability to get Improved Lay on Hands). I'd like to see comparable options in both other trees up to about 15 points. The cleanest place to cut points in the Protection tree itself, aside from reducing filler, to get a reasonable looking 51 point base seems to me to move Ardent Defender to 3 points.

 

Dippyskoodlez

I don't see how that's "easily modifying", in comparison to simply allowing us a method to deal damage? Modifying our prot tree to allow healing would be a significant bit more of work, especially given how poor our holy tree is for a lot of situations currently. It would be reworking our already broken healing mechanics, and ignoring our damage talents that are now becoming abundant. I think we'll have to see how they end up trimming the fat out of protection before we start to look at adding and reworking current talents.

 

◊ Cathela

New beta build up. The list of documented changes is fairly small so far, but in the brief periods I've been able to stay online, I've found:

- My T6 (and non-set) tanking gear no longer has spellpower on it, but has strength. Not sure if anything else has been changed.

- Shield Spec seems to work... better, at least. By my math I should have gone from 626 blockval to 814 when I specced into 3/3 Shield Spec, but I only came out with 805. So something's still a little off, but it's a lot closer now.

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

 

• Theras

I went ahead and took screenshots of all the epic Protection items I could find with updated stats. Notable items that remain unchanged include [Belt of the Guardian] and [Boots of the Protector], as well as the entire Righteous Armor set, but other than those everything I looked up had all of its spell power and intellect converted into Strength.

Attached Thumbnails

   

   

 

Worldie

Shield spec definitively now works on Block Value from Strenght, finally.

New stats are quite amusing, my paladin with the gear it had when copied (mainly BT-MH T6) now shows 1300 unbuffed AP and almost 1100 Block Value.
Looking from the gear from Naxxramas, seembs Block Value/Rating being the focus of both Paladin and Warrior tanking set for now.
I'm looking forward for some even bigger crits with Shield of Righteousness. This trend seemb confirming they want ShoR being the #1 threat skill for Paladins.

 

◊ Cathela

Thanks for capturing all those, Theras. It looks like they've taken all the intellect and spellpower and split it up among strength and other avoidance stats. They aren't nearly as blockvalue-heavy as the new Naxx sets (which is fine, because we won't have ShR at 70.)

Indeed. I'm concerned about where this is going to leave us in 3.0, though. How much are we going to need ShR as the "equalizer" for losing salv?

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

 

Prinsesa

We wouldn't need to. Defensive Stance (and I assume by extension the three other tanking "forms") produce an additional 30% threat to make up for the loss of Salv.

Mind you, this is separate from and on-top of making the talented threat increases as part of the baseline ability.

EDIT: If someone could indulge me, I'd like to know if the Badge tanking gear and Engineering Goggles also received the STR conversion treatment.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Lunkhedd

Well, I don't understand how one could "simply" give Prot a way to deal competitive damage, so the healing version looks easier to me. Others have already mentioned the aggro pulling issue and the lack of a sustainable mana pool, but there's also the problem that (almost) every extra damage ability is also an additional threat ability when tanking, which implies that more damage would make balancing tanking threat against other classes harder, especially if the tank classes are all supposed to feel different. Healing abilities don't have any of these downsides.

I agree that the Holy tree has some problems. It's certainly the odd one out in that it's the only tree where there's no real incentive to spend more than 51 points. However, I think that's a separate issue from Prot off-role healing, at least so long as the Prot paladin doesn't risk displacing the Holy paladin as a healer as well as tank.

 

• Theras

Yes, I noticed that Warrior tanking gear has also been converted (including the goggles), as has our badge gear. I didn't take pictures though.

I found it interesting, though, that any Warrior tanking gear that previously had Agility had it has also had that converted into Strength (like for example, the [Onslaught Chestguard] has 37 Strength on it now). Warrior gear that didn't have any other generating stats on it had a cut taken out of its avoidance stats to give it Strength (example: [Crown of Dath'Remar] lost 18 dodge for 36 Strength).

Edit: The initial badge tanking gear wasn't changed, strangely enough. So the [Faceguard of Determination] and [Farstrider Defender's Cloak] are still the same.

 

◊ Cathela

How sure are we about that? I think I saw the GC quote you're referring to, and it didn't seem all that clear to me exactly what he was referring to.

And how exactly are we producing 30% more threat outside of the baselining of the Imp. RF threat buff? We don't have a bear form or a defensive stance or a frost thingy (whatever it's called). They can't just give us a raw threat buff innate to the class without screwing Ret over. I mean, it could be something like "30% more threat when you have a shield equipped" or something like that, but I haven't seen any evidence of such a thing, and I would think somebody in the community would have picked up on it.

But look, even if we've already gotten some kind of hidden threat buff, ShR is still a huge amount of threat once you get it. It's literally the same amount of threat as a fully used 8-charge holy shield, and it's on a faster cooldown. Take the tps you normally get from HS, double it, and that's about the amount of extra threat that ShR is going to add. It's an enormous difference, and it's kind of hard for me to see how it's not going to cause a balance issue somewhere, because our threat is going to be massively higher at 75 than at 74. Obviously they'll balance and tune for level 80, but it seems likely to me that that's going to leave us a little lacking for threat at 70.

EDIT: Oh yeah, also noticed my Kaz'Rogal shield now has strength on it, so they seem to be trying to hit just about everything.

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

 

Worldie

Badge gear (both tankadin and warrior type) received similar rework. All non tiered items (except necks-cloacks-rings-trinkets-weapons) as well.

I'll tell you about the Engineering helm when the world server stops crashing and remains up enough time to get to the bank /sigh.

 

• Theras

Here are all the epic shields that got a reworking. As far as I can tell, no rings, necks, cloaks, or trinkets have been altered at all. And not that it matters in the context of this thread, but the [Libram of Souls Redeemed] still doesn't do anything.

Also, the stats on the goggles are attached, since you asked.

Attached Thumbnails

   

 

◊ Oggie

What the...hell?

They lowered the SBV of my shield (Sword Breaker's Bulwark), overall. That's so bizzare. They gave it str, and made it have total block value a lot lower.

 

Smurrf

Take a look at the STR => BLV that will be in place. If my math is right, then the BLV of the new form of the shield will actually be 40.5...you lost 6.5 BLV, in return for all the other gains you get from having STR as an added stat (higher DPS/TPS.) Is that lost BLV worth having that 21 STR as a stat?

 

◊ Oggie

Oh yeah, and with Kings it's actually more like 5 lost. It just seems very odd to lose SBV there.

Edit:
Appologies if that came off as whining, just seemed very strange, and I didn't see similar behavior on anything else.

 

Dippyskoodlez

You're right healing doesn't have any of those downsides, except 1: mana regen. Instead, it has the downsides of the fact that we have 0 int on all of our tanking gear now, 0 critical bonus, no illumination, no lights grace, and most importantly, no holy shock which seems to be the new "awesome" heal for paladins. Yeah we'll have like 1500-1600 spell damage, but even if you were to use that much today in holy gear, your flash of light will still remain a joke, and without a mana pool or a regeneration talent to sustain it, you will be an Oom-adin very quickly, then you're beyond useless, you're now going to leech other healers mana if you're getting hit.

Our ability to offheal would NEED to be balanced around the ability to do it in mostly tanking gear. Swapping a whole set of gear might be a legitimate reason for not letting holy or ret be able to tank, simply because the avoidance reasons are obvious. Forcing a prot paladin to maintain a completely seperate "healing" set, might as well just go respec for the fight and become a true holy paladin. If you're needed to tank in a fight, the current tankign gear in no way shape or form is even close to being healing friendly.

Right now ret has the ability to toss on a shield, sword and some prot gear and actually do very well tanking, since they have the strength of a prot paladin. A holy paladin will probably have a hard time as they do in live currently, but I never really see healers/holy paladins tank unless its stupid gimmick BT trash that hits for about 10.

 

Prinsesa

I thought the answer would be obvious: Righteous Fury is more than +90% Holy threat. He clarified that this is exactly what's happening with Defensive Stance: WoW Forums -> Ghost: When does Warrior tanking get easier?

To quote that post:
P.S. Thanks to everyone who answered my itemization question

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

◊ Oggie

Thank you Prinsesa, I knew I saw that post but I failed miserably and completely to locate it. Do you have a link to the blue trackers or something, I could use it to yell at my warrior guildie who was getting emo.

 

ZulazeeluIcecrown

OK, several people are talking a lot about increasing Prot DPS for times we aren't tanking. I just wanted to weigh in and say, very emphatically, I pray to God and all that's Holy that Blizzard does NOT listen to you. I do not want to be identical to every other tank. I want to be different, or else what's the point? I actually don't like the switch to Strength. I'm extremely happy that at the moment it still looks like Spellpower weapons are viable. Flavor is very important, and to me part of the flavor of a Prot Paladin is low DPS. I want to heal when I'm not tanking. I specifically rolled a Paladin tank to be the tank/healing hybrid. I'd have leveled a Warrior or Druid if I wanted to do DPS when not tanking. I don't really care how difficult it seems it would be, healing is the direction the Protection tree should point when your tank target is dead or when you are not the MT.

 

◊ Cathela

Unless something else was said to clarify this, I don't see how you can go from "equivalents for [non-warrior] tanks" to "Righteous Fury is getting a hidden buff not reflected in the tooltip." There's a lot of things that could be meant by "equivalents". We're getting two major new single-target threat generation abilities, for example, compared to none really for warriors -- that could easily be meant to give paladins the same threat increase as a hidden buff to defensive stance for warriors.

If something else more specific has been said, or if someone's done actual testing with numbers, I'd be interested to see that.

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