Kings being 6/7/8/9/10% would be more reasonable I think.

Well, for organized guilds it's easy to say "Holy pallies draw straws, loser is the kings bitch tonight." It's the PuG and semi-PuG scene where it'll get annoying.

As I said, the difference between baseline Kings and 5-points-in-Prot Kings seems really ticky-tack to me.

The real question will be if BoK is better then 5% spell crit. How much crit do you get per intellect point at level 80? And I guess also per agility point even tho you'll only have base agility in holy gear.

For a guild that have 3 dedicated Paladins with 3 different specs, BoK won't be an issue because the retadin will buff it while the holy one will do BoW/BoM and the prot one will do BoS, but that seems to a be a bit too ideal to actually be happening 100% of the time. I guess what it comes down to is that some other class needs to get a buff like BoK to even things out. A BoK like shout would be extremely useful for that you can get your BoK and BoSanc while not actually buffing yourself with BoK.

Paladins get 6% and -15% mana cost of 3 spells, warriors get 6% and +10% increased all damage, both for 2 points. Warrior talent is definitely better. Furthermore, Def.Stance is 10% damage reduction, while IRF is still 6%. With druids getting 12% reduction, paladins will again be the "OOM tank" using Ghostcrawler's terminology.

Concerning stamina talents, health gap at 80 is (7584-5624) ~1950 HP. With 6% better scaling, Paladins will catch up at 1950/.6 = 3250 stamina. This means that from Naxx to Icecrown warriors will have higher health, and somewhere right before Arthas paladins will close the gap and become equal. In TBC my pally had higher health somewhere mid-BT. Which situation with health gap is intended - TBC or WotLK beta?

It doesn't matter if Reckoning will proc from full block - with Vengeance becoming the tanking seal, all that Reckoning will do is increase white damage from your (caster) weapon. Actually, Blizzard really should increase incentives to melee the enemy for prot pallies. I often notice that I don't autoattack at all while AOE tanking during Felmyst p2 and Muru p1 - just refreshing Consecrate and HS. Also, what can be done for Paladins to prefer fast melee "tank" weapons? You can see many of them itemized in the Beta, and exactly zero slow weapons with defensive stats, Caster weapons may add flavor for some, but I personally don't feel like a melee with all abilities being spells, seal being a refreshable DoT, and white crits for 200.

And to add to the melee question, Paladins need to scale with Bloodlust and other haste effects. Currently all I can see is trying to insert Avenger's Shield / Hammer of Wrath into BL'ed 6/9 rotation, but new Windfury looks nearly useless.

HotR now does the same damage regardless of the speed of the weapon (dependent on DPS only, as far as people can tell).

Proof can be found here:

Maintankadin :: View topic - Intriguing numbers with Hammer of the Righteous

Also, with HOTR dealing 120% weapon damage, isn't that a big enough chunk of TPS to encourage the use of actual physical weapons as opposed to spell power ones?

About blocking: I ran some napkin math a couple of weeks and figured out that it was still possible to gear for unhittable with Holy Shield up. Cath (and other beta Tankadins), what's your avoidance? I never really published my numbers so I never got them verified, but now I'm genuinely curious if you guys are close.

About tanking weapons: While I agree with you that the "Warriors fast, Paladins slow" dynamic was a great piece of flavor, I always knew that homogenization would never be complete. Blizzard is fine with letting Holy Paladins have healing plate as an outlier, they're fine with Feral AP weapons as an outlier, and most importantly, they're fine with creating outlier items for categories that are otherwise supposed to be completely homogenized.

Case-in-point: A pair of plate boots with Shield Block Rating. It's not a tier token, it's not crafted and it's not a shield. By all accounts, this item should not exist, because it violates homogenization with regards to Death Knights, but Blizzard keeps making them anyway.

Yeah, I see what you mean about outliers. It just seemed like this was a blindingly obvious place to get rid of one class of outliers. Instead, they're going to leave this class of outliers in, mangle the mechanics of HotR to force it to fit, and then either:

1. create a new set of outlier tanking two-handers for DKs.
2. force them to dual-wield tank and get horribly parry-gibbed, not to mention gimping their own threat gains from parries.
3. balance them for tanking with regular old dps two-handers, which is a great and perfectly workable idea... so why don't they just do the same thing for us?

It's really just baffling to me why they're going this route.

Anyway, I logged in and tested, and yes, HotR is operating completely independent of weapon speed. It's basically pretending you're using a 2.5-speed weapon with no damage variation at all at the same dps. So e.g., if your white dps is 200, you'll do exactly 200x2.5x1.2 = 600 points of damage for every HotR. If they really do go this route, at least they're doing it with a fairly slow speed. I still hate the idea though.

As far as my avoidance goes, I don't recall the numbers offhand (just logged off so I can't check them now) but they're quite low; I'm still wearing mostly my T6/SW gear along with some of the blue crafted tanking pieces. I think around 13-14% each for b/d/p. On top of that I'm still at least 5 points below the max innate defense for level 80. Actually I think even once I finish leveling up defense, I'll still have a lower total defense skill at 80 than I did in the same gear at 70. How's that for stat decay?

Are you accounting for the new diminishing returns on avoidance? I forget who did the work, but someone posted a maintankadin link awhile back showing the testing he'd done. Basically there's a diminishing return whereby every 100 points of (parry|dodge|block) rating is 5% less effective than the previous 100 points. Presumably this is intended to prevent the massive avoidance levels of Sunwell tanks from happening again.

I see normalizing of HotR only as a good thing. I was strong proponent (post 1, post 2, post 3) of normalization when HotR first came out and I haven't changed my view about it.

This will help us to get our tanking weapons easier. There is already high demand for slow 1h's in dps camp; no need to make those rogues cry when paladin "steals" them their weapon. Fast 1h weapons with stats most suitable for tanking have traditionally been used by warriors and warriors only. I can't see much of a problem if we join that itemization niche.

About DKs, who said they have to tank with a 2h? They have option to dual wield too. Actually I remember blue post stating that they don't want to marginalize DW DKs. (It would actually be cool if tanking with one spec would be slightly better with 2x 1h and another slightly better with a 2h).

I don't mind the complete normalization situation. I would also have preferred that tanking weapons be done away with completely and everyone simply use dps weapons, but given that they have decided to keep them in it makes sense that at least we can use the same weapons as warriors.

I do wish that spellpower weapons weren't our best choice still though. At the moment because we get no extra threat on white damage there really can't be any competition and we should be using 2.0 speed caster weapons ideally. The faster a weapon is the better it is for Seal of Vengeance, but any faster than 2.0 and we lose reckoning uptime, so a 2.0 speed caster mace is the new tankadin ideal weapon for threat.

That's actually only an issue right now because in WotLK caster weapons are scaling upwards in their DPS as well as their spell power, which in turn means we're double dipping in the stat bonuses since both benefit.

For equal item level weapons at level 70, like say the Hammer of Judgement and The Brutalizer, the physical DPS weapon is actually slightly better than the spell damage weapon due to the combination of extra white damage, and the extra Hammer of the Righteous damage this gives. As we get higher level in WotLK though, the caster weapons get both higher physical DPS and they scale their spell power up at the same rate too, and since we still benefit from both of these aspects, we end up with caster weapons being better after a certain point.

"New"? Heh, that's not new, that's exactly the case on live. And I think that's a good thing, personally, as I've said before I don't really want to play a Holy Warrior in identical gear to a not-so-Holy Warrior. I think it's awesome (and likely intentional) that caster weapons are still the best threat weapons for Prot Paladins. If nothing else, the consolidation on Spellpower eliminates the GCD wasted switching to a healing weapon if necessary (though really it doesn't help because ideally you'd swap in a healing shield and Libram... oh well I can dream).

I don't mind caster weapons being favored by prot paladins at all, except that there aren't any tanking caster weapons. If there was a reasonable way (IE not cluttering up loot tables terribly) way for us to use spellpower weapons with tanking stats that would be great, but I don't see it. Right now on beta we are pretty much looking at using suboptimal weapon types if we actually want to have tank stats on our weapons, and that isn't ideal.

I would much prefer either tanking weapons get removed or we actually get set up to want melee weapons so we can properly share weapon types with warriors.

Also, by 'new' tankadin standard I mean new for the beta. For awhile it looked like either a 2.8 speed melee weapon or a 2.8 speed spell weapon was the ideal, but now the sweet spot has certainly shifted to 2.0.

Faster weapons get the initial stack of Vengeance up more quickly, and that is a big benefit. They have no benefit after that, but obviously quick aggro is better so having a quicker weapon is advantageous so long as it doesn't cost you reckoning uptime.

Also, does anyone else think that given reckoning mechanics the 4 charge limitation really should go? I can't see any point to it.

I agree. This is exactly the change that I posted on maintankadin. The reason being that at 6%, I would still grab it for 1 pt in my prot spec for those cases where it would be better than anything else I could give them. It wouldn't be specced for in a 25 man raid, because I imagine you'll have a ret paladin casting it, but for general use I think a 6% version would be a nice option.

Edit: 2.0 weapon speed being better for taking advantage of reckoning is a fallacy due to the proc time vs the swing timer. You'll average just as much damage with a 2.0 speed weapon as with a 2.6 speed weapon. In either case, reckoning is terrible right now due to SoV being that much better than SoR, and probably shouldn't even be considered in a weapon discussion.

Here is just one example: Maintankadin :: View topic - Preliminary threat thoughts

The important part being: Reck -- 1.1% threat boost (white damage only), .37% per talent point, the lowest of any threat talent.

Unless I'm forgetting something here, tanking with Vengeance means that for every swing after the stack is capped, not only is there white damage, but there's also a nice chunk of holy damage from hitting at capped. That was put in place several patches ago on Live, if I'm not mistaken, specifically to answer 'why keep Vengeance up?' It's also why I don't see a problem with Reckoning as it exists...it will indeed do more damage than just white damage for every proc.

Due to the nature of our various seals, I don't think the limitation on 4 charges will be removed. It's a balancing mechanic. You have the timer capped at 8 secs so you don't get a benefit from too many extra attacks from big, slow speed weapons, and you have it capped at 4 charges to neutralize the extra attacks from having an insanely fast weapon.

I don't have the exact numbers...but a "nice chunk" is not where it's at. It was less than 1% of damage in that parse, and I think it was hitting for something like 40 holy damage on every swing (it was less than 10% of the white damage from that swing). This will hardly change the numbers on reckoning, and its why it wasn't even factored in.

I have a couple questions regarding Prot, both in Live and in WotLK.

1. When in the trash-tank/off-tank role, is there anything better than T6 tanking gear? Given that in a trash-tank role, spell-damage becomes greater in importance than when you're a main-tank, is there anything out there I should be wearing besides T6?

2. In Wrath, with the changes to Lay on Hands and Divine Protection, as well as our 51-pt Prot talent, are we now the equivalent of warriors in single-target tanking, and in the main-tank role? It was my understanding that in Live, they had more emergency buttons than us, and a bit more mitigation.

If Prot Paladins are indeed equal to warriors in single-target tanking in WotLK, then I have an observation that I don't know if anyone else has made: Improved Expose Armor.

A Rogue's Improved Expose Armor provides significantly more dps than a Warriors Sunder Armor. In WotLK, Mutilate looks to be a perfectly viable, maybe even the best, raid spec for a Rogue. If a particular guild has a Paladin MT instead of a Warrior, that Rogue is free to then use Expose Armor and provide a huge increase to the raid's dps.

My mistake then, I was under the impression that it was for far more than that. I don't typically tank with SoV currently; I've always found it drops off way too much to be reliable, but I'd thought the increased damage was there as a bonus for capping it out. (Given the changes (100% on hit, plus HotR putting it on multiple targets) in Beta, that will likely not be the case come 3.0.)


Edit:
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t16934-healadin_thread/ for current Live conditions for Holy Pallies
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t28560-p...es_discussion/ for WotLK concerns.

I use SoV for fights like Magtheridon and Maulgar, where I'm going to be standing there for a long time building aggro before anybody even bothers to hit my target. Typical SoV hit is ~30 damage for me, depending on which gear set I'm wearing at the time. I believe they made it so ridiculously low so as to balance its threat against that of SoR, so that people would actually use both. Obviously, in 3.0 SoV is going to win hands-down, especially with the glyph.

That's a pretty good point about SoV stacking actually. The Reckoning issue is really my main concern from a balance/viability standpoint. Not that we're teetering on the edge of viability and gimping Reckoning will destroy us, but it's annoying to have this disconnect between what our talents want and what the itemization gives us.

I seem to be in the minority on this, so I'm probably just going to have to swallow my reservations and deal with it, and you guys are making good points that it won't matter much as far as end results go. I guess my main objection is just kind of aesthetic or psychological or whatever you want to call it: We have an instant weapon strike as a core tanking ability, and instant strikes favor slow heavy weapons. The developers have said they want tanking to be more fun, and deal more damage, and I agree, and I like that. Well part of that, to me, involves choosing your weapon based on its damage ability and picking something that "fits" the abilities of your class. Picking a slow weapon with high dps stats just feels better in that sense than taking a fast tanking weapon. All of this IMHO, of course.

If they removed or increased the swing-limit on Reckoning I guess I could live with it, though.

Well, GC did say at one point they envisioned DKs pretty much always tanking with a two-hander, because it helps them with parries in both directions -- they get parried a lot less with a 2h, and their own parries generate more damage and threat. And offhand, it's hard for me to see how they would overcome that to make DW tanking viable by comparison. But I really haven't followed DK abilities and trees at all, so there might be a perfect answer to that already that I just don't know about.

As far as the weapon selection thing, yeah, it seems more appealing for the rogue on the surface, but it actually ends up being worse for him. Suppose, as an abstraction, that you have a boss that drops three weapons, a tank weapon, a slow dps weapon, and a fast dps weapon (but only one per kill). Rogues want a slow MH and a fast OH, and tanks want a tank weapon. If you balance drops for equal numbers of rogues and tanks, the "balanced" drop rate is 33% for each of the three weapons.

Now suppose you have the same situation, but tanks don't get their own weapon. Half the tanks want a fast weapon, half want a slow weapon, and they use the same weapons the rogues want. Now the balanced drop rate is 50% for the fast weapon and 50% for the slow weapon.

Now the question: Which situation is better for a rogue who needs a new MH, if the tanks in the raid all have their weapons already? The second, because his chances of seeing the MH drop are better. The fact is that if all classes and specs can be satisfied by fewer total weapons, it's better for everyone because it reduces loot wasted, even though on the surface it looks like this raises all kinds of "loot stealing" issues.

Basically, having separate tank weapons is more "politically" appealing, but I still think my way is ultimately better for everyone.

I think last time I checked the full-stack extra damage amounted to a few percent of AP/SP worth of dps. Not nothing, but not a lot. I really think SoV/SoR twisting will end up being the highest threat in an infinite-mana situation, provided there's room in the rotation to do it. (Which depends on how much haste we can grab, and how many things stay on the GCD.)

Yeah, the interaction of Imp. EA and Sunder is a perfect example of the sort of redundant buffs/debuffs the devs are implementing.

Gear: Well, if you hadn't caught it, T6 in WotLK gets retrofitted with the spellpower removed and converted into strength. Since Consecration scales with AP as well as SP, this doesn't hurt trash tanking much; all you really lose is the scaling of HS with spellpower -- and I'd bet dollars to donuts that HS will be scaling with block value when all is said and done. Also keep in mind that for huge AoE situations, you can still switch to a spellpower weapon.

LoH/DP/survivability/"equal tanking": We'll see how it all shakes out. I believe the intent of the devs is to smooth out a lot of the "hard" distinctions between classes: warriors are getting more AoE threat and a reactive damage-shield ability, we're getting better single-target and OT threat plus an attack-slowing debuff, etc. In the end, I think we'll still be better AoE tanks and warriors will still be better single-target tanks, but the differences will be a lot smaller than they are now.

We also still have a new 11-point Prot talent coming our way, I assume.

EDIT: Beaten to the punch by Cathela.... Sort of.

Don't forget that with SoV fully stacked, we still have the option to juggle it with SoR for an added threat boost. I know that both spell costs have increased substantially, but then again so has our mana gain. The biggest problem appears to be finding a GCD to use to swtich between the two, but some napkin math should be enough to show if it's worthwhile or not. I know on live I do this a ton. Bloodboil comes to mind, as we just killed him last night. SoR during phase 1, then when he fel rages someone switch to SoV. When he goes back to phase 1 judge and switch back to SoR for a double-dipping of seal damage for the duration. After 8 seconds or so I switch back to SoV to (hopefully) refresh the stack and switch back to SoR to start it over again. If threat generation is a primary concern and mana is ample, this tactic should still work in WotLK, and it will actually be easier to do now that SoV has a 100% proc rate.

Bear in mind that tunnel vision in the form of "tanking = SoV" could prove to be a bit harmful, even if it's not as big a deal as it is today. SoV still needs to be stacked to 5 to compete with SoR in most cases, and even with a 2.0s weapon you're looking at around 10 seconds to fill out the stack. Even if the SoV DoT outpaces SoR damage, you still need to make up for the lost damage for those first 10 seconds. On bosses it's a no-brainer to go with SoV, but on trash you might still want SoR handy for burst threat situations.

Holy Shield apparently scales with Attack Power as well as SP as of the last build.

Maintankadin :: View topic - [?] New Spell Coefficients

Page 3 & 4 have some testing done on that.