I'd love to see those changes go through, but then Repentance might need to be changed a bit as well, being a 41 point talent it should be a bit more powerful. Even just lower CD+longer duration.
Well first, what Shuror said: it's pretty damn good as it is. Second, I don't really subscribe to the theory that deeper always has to mean better; it's about the sum total of what you get from the tree and how much it costs you relative to other options. Third, if you're going to be consistent in this approach, you'd have to ask for a nerf to CS at the same time, which I don't think it needs.
But it does occur to me that a 31/0/31+9 build would have a truckload of 6-second damage cooldowns: you could just spam shock, shield, and CS in rotation (okay, one-handed CS, but still.) So maybe that's a reason why they wouldn't want CS at 31. (Although they could always go the route they did with warriors and link the cooldowns for CS and shock.)
Originally Posted by Noules
In order for it to make sense for paladin healers to do something other than heal, there must be some cutoff in the conversion from time efficiency to mana efficiency.
Yeah, I guess you're right. What I'd prefer to see is more of "positive" solution to the problem: adding something else for holy paladins to do that actually helps the raid more than continuing to spam FoL. But I keep hoping for that kind of breakthrough every design/redesign cycle and it doesn't happen. So maybe the answer is to actively discourage FoL spam. Making the glyph baseline would actually help with that.
EDIT: Well here's something interesting. Spellpower gained from Sheath of Light doesn't affect Seal of Righteousness. It does change the value on the SoR tooltip, but the actual damage done only counts AP and spellpower from gear. I'm going to test out TbtL and HG.
EDIT: TbtL and HG both work just fine.
Last edited by Cathela : 08/23/08 at 11:14 PM.
My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.
Ok maybe I am missing something (it is a long thread and it is early in the morning) but with all the new Hand of ... elements, aren't we missing something quite basic?
The thing that bugs at me is that we are losing some 'essential' Greater Blessings i.e. Salvation in order to go to an individual buff, that has a relatively short duration compared to a GB, and has a shift from a static mana cost to a negatively scaling % of base mana cost. The example I have in mind is a 25 man raid. Let's say there are 5 tanks (to make the math easier) a pally will have to cast at least one buff on all other 20 raid members every 2 mins at a cost of 6% of base mana. This simple math would have the pally consuming 120% of base mana every two minutes just to keep the buffs up and still having the raid exposed i.e. not covered by buff, for nearly 90% of that time. If you ask me, this is a major nerf that will affect the fluidity of play for all classes rather than benefit them.
Further, I think Blizz are losing overall perspective in this change. I take for example the changes to Blessing of Sacrifice and its use in the Maiden fight. Yes, most reading this have done that fight and will never be seeing it again, however, what about the up and comers? Are Blizz assuming that no one else will ever roll up a new toon once WotLK is released, or are they assuming that no one will be interested in Kara anymore, or are we expecting to see significant changes to existing fights to accomodate the changes to the fundamentals of the classes?
Like I said at the beginning, I may have missed something in the threads. Overall, I think the changes to the pally are pretty good. IMO I think they just went a little to far on some elements.
First of all - hand of salvation isn't spammable ability afaik. Also tanks get their threat greatly buffed. It means that we probably throw one or two hands in a fight, but not more.
Secondly - why do you think that maiden requires BoSacr? I have done it loads of time without (when I was tanking it). HoTs are just fine.
The thing that bugs at me is that we are losing some 'essential' Greater Blessings i.e. Salvation in order to go to an individual buff, that has a relatively short duration compared to a GB, and has a shift from a static mana cost to a negatively scaling % of base mana cost. The example I have in mind is a 25 man raid. Let's say there are 5 tanks (to make the math easier) a pally will have to cast at least one buff on all other 20 raid members every 2 mins at a cost of 6% of base mana. This simple math would have the pally consuming 120% of base mana every two minutes just to keep the buffs up and still having the raid exposed i.e. not covered by buff, for nearly 90% of that time. If you ask me, this is a major nerf that will affect the fluidity of play for all classes rather than benefit them.
Further, I think Blizz are losing overall perspective in this change. I take for example the changes to Blessing of Sacrifice and its use in the Maiden fight. Yes, most reading this have done that fight and will never be seeing it again, however, what about the up and comers? Are Blizz assuming that no one else will ever roll up a new toon once WotLK is released, or are they assuming that no one will be interested in Kara anymore, or are we expecting to see significant changes to existing fights to accommodate the changes to the fundamentals of the classes?
Everything you're missing is in the OP, including how Hand of Salvation works. It's a 10 second ability, on a 2 minute cooldown. There's no "rebuffing the entire raid every two minutes" going on at all. You'll use it reactively, or maybe not at all, but not proactively. It's a fantastic change.
I have no idea why you think Sacrifice is needed for Maiden. It's not. There's no need to change the encounter, and so they probably won't change the encounter. Hand of Sacrifice will play a bit differently than the Blessing did, but that's fine. It won't be the mana regen tool it was before, but other changes to the class will mean that we shouldn't need it to be. We'll find the best ways to use it in WotLK, and that will be fine.
Improved Lay on Hands is really fucking good:
Originally Posted by Malleus
Unless there's a reason to save it for a specific point in the fight, someone should be getting laid every single time it's up.
I guess what I find weird is that there's no way to make a piece of gear that turns the tables and puts points into a stat that's great for DKs, but useless for paladins and warriors. So there will be gear that's good for all three classes, and gear that's good for the shield-users but not so good for DKs, but there won't be any gear that's good for DKs but not so hot for paladins and warriors.
It seems like kinda of a silly thing to be worried about. Paladin healers can wear mail, leather, or cloth healing gear, but the classes that primarily wear mail or leather or cloth can't wear the paladin plate healing gear. It's unfair! Yet it's not really seen as a big problem.
Even more similar to what you are talking about, look at current tank plate itemization. Almost all the "warrior" gear is still nice and usable for paladins, while the paladin tank gear is terrible for warriors because the warrior doesn't get anything out of the spell damage, spell hit, or intellect. Is this seen as a problem? I haven't heard of any complaints about it.
1) Still no way to deal with spellcasters.
2) Blessing of Sanctuary still sucks ass.
3) Guarded by the Light - 30% recuded mana on consecration, which is actually now one of the lowest TPS moves we have on single fights.
4) The secondary effect on Touched by the Light is very poor for a Prot healer in Prot gear.
Looking at the official WotLK forums and the previous posts here, there are a few suggestions I really like:
CASTERS
1) Implement a low-level "Divine Shock" spell on a medium cooldown (say 30-45 seconds), which does damage approx 1/2 of judgement damage, and locks that spell school for 2 seconds.. This shock would activate the cooldowns as Holy Shock, Hammer of the Righteous and Crusader Strike.
....=> This suggestion I think is really good. Paladin levelling now looks set to be relatively boring. Unless you spec Retribution, your only damaging moves are SoR, Judgement and Consecrate until lv40.
This would add in a great level of interactivity to all paladin specs for all levels, whilst providing a small respite to casters in PVP as a ret pally can't follow this up with a crusader strike.
OR
2) Add a silence effect onto Avenger's Shield.
....=> An enemy who is casting a spell on you isn't hitting you in melee for pushbacks, so this would work well if silence was to remain a tank-only ability.
BLESSING OF SANCTUARY:
Basically, this spell is never going to be used as a blessing, unless it is somehow made better than kings. As kings is considered one of, if not the best buff in the game, this is unlikely to happen ever.
1) Change this to a Hand spell, and make it a spell-damage absorption shield - the fabled 'Blessing of Spell Warding'
2) Change this to a clickable ability 'Sanctuary' which reduces incoming damage based upon a % of your Sta/Str/BV for X seconds.
3) Change this to a HOT type spell triggered upon taking damage.
4) Change to an Intervene-type spell
....=> Basically something to make this not a waste of a talent point.
GUARDED BY THE LIGHT:
This affects 3 spells which were picked seemingly at random: Avenger's Shield is used possibly every 2 mins in a 5-man instance. There are rarely any situations where Holy Wrath is useful. And Consecrate- well, yes, that is used every 9 seconds. Is 250 mana every rotation worth 2 talent points? Suggestions:
1) Change this to an increased mana regen from Spiritual attunement.
2) Change the affected abilities - to Consecrate and Judgement
3) Change to 'regain mana on block/parry'
....=> Keeping the mana regen aspect in a passive way, but making it apply to more widely used sources
4) Change to an active mana regen/saving talent: "whenever one of your attacks misses, is dodged or parried, your next Consecrate spell costs 0 mana"
5) Add a secondary effect ie 'reduces cooldown on Righteous Defense by 2-4 seconds'
6) Do nothing, it's fine.
....=> I'm a fan of numbers 4/5 personally.
TOUCHED BY THE LIGHT:
Ignoring the fact that prot paladins gain so much more spellpower from Sheath:
1) Change this to a 'your Flash of Light spells have a 16/33/50% chance to reduce the mana cost of your next spell by 50%' or similar active healing ability.
2) Change this to 'reduces the mana cost of your heals by 10/20/30%' or similar mana reduction
3) Change this to 'increases mp5 by X% of your stamina' or similar regen talent
....=> I think #3 would be great: TbtL is a threat talent, threat comes from mana. This would allow greater flexibility for tanking when not taking large amounts of damage.
I know that many think that posting wished changes is silly, but it seemed to work for Warriors and Hunters, so we may as well be hopeful.
As for Holy paladins using some other type of (melee plate) gear: think about the competition on plate gear then. DPS would be competing directly with healers AND tanks for certain gear drops.
Whilst it is unfortunate that ONLY paladins use healing plate, i think that's just going to have to be an aspect of the game forever, unless holy suddenly gets a heap of Str->Int, Hit->Mp5 stat conversions that just make the spec too complicated.
As it is, a sheath-specced Holydin would actually get a fairly large bonus out of DPS plate- With AP->SP, haste and Crit on it, dps plate would still provide quite a boost.
Ok maybe I am missing something (it is a long thread and it is early in the morning) but with all the new Hand of ... elements, aren't we missing something quite basic?
The thing that bugs at me is that we are losing some 'essential' Greater Blessings i.e. Salvation in order to go to an individual buff, that has a relatively short duration compared to a GB, and has a shift from a static mana cost to a negatively scaling % of base mana cost. The example I have in mind is a 25 man raid. Let's say there are 5 tanks (to make the math easier) a pally will have to cast at least one buff on all other 20 raid members every 2 mins at a cost of 6% of base mana. This simple math would have the pally consuming 120% of base mana every two minutes just to keep the buffs up and still having the raid exposed i.e. not covered by buff, for nearly 90% of that time. If you ask me, this is a major nerf that will affect the fluidity of play for all classes rather than benefit them.
Further, I think Blizz are losing overall perspective in this change. I take for example the changes to Blessing of Sacrifice and its use in the Maiden fight. Yes, most reading this have done that fight and will never be seeing it again, however, what about the up and comers? Are Blizz assuming that no one else will ever roll up a new toon once WotLK is released, or are they assuming that no one will be interested in Kara anymore, or are we expecting to see significant changes to existing fights to accomodate the changes to the fundamentals of the classes?
Like I said at the beginning, I may have missed something in the threads. Overall, I think the changes to the pally are pretty good. IMO I think they just went a little to far on some elements.
There are no buffs you can keep up that need to be recast on 20 raid members every 2 minutes. Hand of Salvation is entirely different in mechanics from what Blessing of Salvation used to be, as would be pretty obvious if you'd taken the time to check out the ability on WoWHead: Hand of Salvation - Spell - World of Warcraft
If you're worried about the removal of Salvation, don't be. It's part of a new rebalancing where a crutch like 30% less threat on your entire raid from a buff won't be required.
buff /bÊŒf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of
Well here's something interesting. Spellpower gained from Sheath of Light doesn't affect Seal of Righteousness. It does change the value on the SoR tooltip, but the actual damage done only counts AP and spellpower from gear. I'm going to test out TbtL and HG.
EDIT: TbtL and HG both work just fine.
Well this is sort of what I suggested they should do - exclude SoR from deep ret scaling. Sheath is still within reach of holy though I'd rather they had done it deeper.
Ok maybe I am missing something (it is a long thread and it is early in the morning)
Man, do you have morning twice a day? Your questions were answered in this very page already.
I personally find moving some of our blessings into hands quite usefull. For example - how often do you cast BoSacr nowdays? No one wants to rewrite existing blessing. And while idea of BoSacr isn't bad, this spell is not used. BoF/BoP are used more, but not that often as you could.
Well this is sort of what I suggested they should do - exclude SoR from deep ret scaling. Sheath is still within reach of holy though I'd rather they had done it deeper.
Yeah, it occurred to me last night that this might be deliberate. Seems like kind of a ham-fisted approach to me, but it does solve the problem.
As far as sheath being within reach of holy, that's one of the things I think would be solved by making an AP->SP conversion baseline and then balancing the class around that: it eliminates all of the "double dipping" concerns by simply removing all the extra places to dip.
Originally Posted by Thorgred
(good suggestions snipped to avoid excessive quote-splitting)
Interesting ideas.
- Regarding "Divine Shock" interrupt: If you're going to link it to other damage cooldowns, I think it's far easier to just make it a fourth Judgement, which will automatically share a CD with other judgements (while also having its own, longer CD for balance reasons), like:
Judgement of Whatever
5% of base mana, 10 yard range
Instant cast, 30 second cooldown Unleashes the energy of a Seal spell to judge an enemy, doing only 50% of normal damage but interrupting spellcasting and preventing any spell in that school from being cast for 4 seconds.
I'm not saying that I think the class needs an interrupt (I'm pretty agnostic on that subject since I only PvP very casually) but if you're going to add one this seems to me like the way to go, since it also synergizes with existing judgement talents. Obviously all numbers can be changed to balance.
- Switching the snare on AS for a silence (shorter than 10 seconds) would be an excellent effect for a glyph.
Originally Posted by kysta
Even more similar to what you are talking about, look at current tank plate itemization. Almost all the "warrior" gear is still nice and usable for paladins, while the paladin tank gear is terrible for warriors because the warrior doesn't get anything out of the spell damage, spell hit, or intellect. Is this seen as a problem?
Actually yes, it is seen as a problem. It's been stated multiple times by developers that their goal is to maximize the cross-class usability of gear as much as possible.
Perhaps they just aren't taking at as far as "no block stats on plate gear". I don't know.
My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.
Perhaps they just aren't taking at as far as "no block stats on plate gear". I don't know.
The devs can fix the problem (2 out of 3 plate tanking classes wanting block stats) by adding a talent or base-line ability to DKs that converts block rating into parry rating.
DKs want parry because of the Blood talent that helps with magic damage and because parring with a 2H is a decent threat increase as well.
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
The devs can fix the problem (2 out of 3 plate tanking classes wanting block stats) by adding a talent or base-line ability to DKs that converts block rating into parry rating.
DKs want parry because of the Blood talent that helps with magic damage and because parring with a 2H is a decent threat increase as well.
The parry talent for Arms warriors should also justify parry-tanking gear dropping in raids, since 2 classes will be able to use it well. (Arms warriors will get rage each parry, and their revenge is on a 2 second CD.)
- Regarding "Divine Shock" interrupt: If you're going to link it to other damage cooldowns, I think it's far easier to just make it a fourth Judgement, which will automatically share a CD with other judgements (while also having its own, longer CD for balance reasons), like:
Judgement of Whatever
5% of base mana, 10 yard range
Instant cast, 30 second cooldown Unleashes the energy of a Seal spell to judge an enemy, doing only 50% of normal damage but interrupting spellcasting and preventing any spell in that school from being cast for 4 seconds.
- Switching the snare on AS for a silence (shorter than 10 seconds) would be an excellent effect for a glyph.
Whilst I don't PVP at all, it seems to be a glaring flaw with paladin tanking that there is no way to counter spellcasters.
The reason I was thinking an entirely new spell not linked to judgement, was to increase player interactivity for low level players. With the changes to the judgement system, as other people have said, from level 1-40 a player simply waits for Judgement cooldowns (and consecrate cooldowns on lv22-40). Ret paladins don't get a new damage spell until lv50.
However, for balance reasons, you are probably right and an interrupt could be added to a new judgement, or as a glyph to existing judgement. Perhaps the new silence on exorcism glyph will work on all creature types?
The parry talent for Arms warriors should also justify parry-tanking gear dropping in raids, since 2 classes will be able to use it well. (Arms warriors will get rage each parry, and their revenge is on a 2 second CD.)
Actually parry is usefull for paladins too, because of the diminishing returns on avoidance. So there'll be a point where parry and it's horrible avoidance <-> itembudget ratio will provide more avoidance than the same itembudget in dodge. This is if the diminishing returns are based on your total of one stat, if it's based on total avoidance then parry will still be worthless for pallies.
Thorgred, to be honest, we can't analyse prot paladin tanking just yet. We can make claims about the percieved utility of our new spells and talents (or the lack of which seems to be more the case for some of the talents :p), but all of it is just pure speculation. We don't know what role blizzard has in store for paladins. Are we to be expected to take a position next to warriors? Or should we become a tank/healer hybrid just like DK's and ferals are tank/dps hybrids? The talents don't really seem to point either way, the only thing we have to go by is a quote from ghostcrab wherein he seems to allude that paladins are being expected to be maintanks just like warriors.
I think it's best if we wait for the newer version of the talents, and then discuss them more in detail.
To clarify, there's nothing wrong with parry rating on paladin tank gear as long the item also has an equal or greater amount of dodge rating. Parry rating alone is strictly inferior to dodge rating alone for us but the combination of the two is superior to pure dodge rating due to how the item budgets work (as Exewut is saying).
To clarify, there's nothing wrong with parry rating on paladin tank gear as long the item also has an equal or greater amount of dodge rating. Parry rating alone is strictly inferior to dodge rating alone for us but the combination of the two is superior to pure dodge rating due to how the item budgets work (as Exewut is saying).
That too, but I am mainly refering to the new diminishing returns on stacking avoidance (10 dodge rating gives x dodge% if you have 20% dodge, that same 10 dodge rating gives y dodge% if you have 30% dodge, where y is smaller than x).
That too, but I am mainly refering to the new diminishing returns on stacking avoidance (10 dodge rating gives x dodge% if you have 20% dodge, that same 10 dodge rating gives y dodge% if you have 30% dodge, where y is smaller than x).
Could you link details on this? I haven't heard anything about it.
That too, but I am mainly refering to the new diminishing returns on stacking avoidance (10 dodge rating gives x dodge% if you have 20% dodge, that same 10 dodge rating gives y dodge% if you have 30% dodge, where y is smaller than x).
Diminishing returns on avoidance? Is there a link to the new rating conversions/formulas somewhere?
That could make things very interesting for tank gearing and makes the new anticipation much more attractive
That too, but I am mainly refering to the new diminishing returns on stacking avoidance (10 dodge rating gives x dodge% if you have 20% dodge, that same 10 dodge rating gives y dodge% if you have 30% dodge, where y is smaller than x).
This would be a massive change and I would have expected quite a furor over it, but I have seen nothing to this effect. Are you sure this is not just a rumor?
All the discussion of this has been in the Benefactor's Bar (as far as I can tell), so I can't link posts, but here are a few quotes:
I log in, without pants or trinket equipped. I equip [Praetorian's Legguards] and my parry increases smoothly at about 0.041% per Parry Rating. I equip [Ancient Aqir Artifact] as well, and from both unequipped I get closer to a 0.038 per Parry Rating, or a 0.035 from trinket not equipped->equipped.
Its just dodge and parry rating, no diminish on defense or dodge from agility. It has been like this since it went to beta at least by the way.
Those are from two different users.
Improved Lay on Hands is really fucking good:
Originally Posted by Malleus
Unless there's a reason to save it for a specific point in the fight, someone should be getting laid every single time it's up.
As for Holy paladins using some other type of (melee plate) gear: think about the competition on plate gear then. DPS would be competing directly with healers AND tanks for certain gear drops.
Whilst it is unfortunate that ONLY paladins use healing plate, i think that's just going to have to be an aspect of the game forever, unless holy suddenly gets a heap of Str->Int, Hit->Mp5 stat conversions that just make the spec too complicated.
As it is, a sheath-specced Holydin would actually get a fairly large bonus out of DPS plate- With AP->SP, haste and Crit on it, dps plate would still provide quite a boost.
Would this really be so terrible? Assuming a balanced loot-distribution scheme, everyone should still be getting upgrades on a regular basis. Granted, everyone's individual progression will be slowed down some, but isn't that better than sharding unwanted loot five resets in a row thanks to RNG fuckery? Now, I'm not saying that we can't itemize loot better for some classes or specs, but I do think its an admirable design goal to come up with items that are at least useful to multiple specs, even if they aren't best-in-slot for anybody.
As a note on parry conversions and general desirablity, keep in mind that DKs might well be tanking with a big slow 2-hander. A ton of parry rating means an equal ton of hasted high-damage attacks, which in PvE can quickly throw threat generation out of whack. In PvP, this means anyone stupid enough to melee a DK from the front is going to die, which causes balance problems if you don't have a lot of range available.
A diminishing returns on parry and dodge ratings would be a terrible change because every time you got a new piece of gear you would have to get a spreadsheet to work out how much it would change the contribution of your parry and dodge rating. Unless every item had equal parry and dodge rating for every upgrade you can take.
The main reason I can think that blizzard might be doing this is to stop people from stacking enough avoidance to achieve near melee immunity. It also makes things like pocket watch less powerful near the end of the content cycle. The 15.85% dodge is more powerful when you are at 70% avoidance, compared to 50% avoidance.
08/23/08, 6:42 PM
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