WotLK talent trees/abilities discussion - Page 101

Hylo · 08/05/08, 1:23 PM

Originally Posted by Gevlin

Min/maxing involves what the classes bring as a whole, and doesn't depend on one single spell. If someone was to min/max under your system on live, raids would have ZERO paladins, since our healing has scaled so poorly, but wait, what about Kings? Wisdom? Might? Even if druids have a "better" AoE HoT, a paladin AoE HoT will still be desireable along with everything else we'll be bringing.

If you read a bit up this was not about the raids spots. It was whether or not holy palas spec BoL. If BoL is inferior to, say, Flourish, then raids use Flourish to provide the AoE-healing they need. This means palas are free to skip BoL and spec Sheat (and flyingtoastr reasoned this is something Blizzard doesn't want).

We'll see palas in raids, I have no doubt about that

Gevlin · 08/05/08, 1:38 PM

Even if the druid AoE heal is superior, that's like saying prot paladins shouldn't pick up spell warding because improved defensive stance is better, or that priests shouldn't spec imp Gheal because HL is better. I find it very very hard for a paladin to forego Beacon of Light as it will be our ONLY method to AoE heal (unless you want to be a stickler and include JoL and Divine Storm). I can see a Sheath spec as being viable in a very specific encounter (similar to a priest skipping CoH and going to Pain Suppression), but as a general raid spec Beacon is going to be the way to go.

Torq · 08/05/08, 2:03 PM

I think the major issue with Sheath is that it has a scaling factor on par with, say, Demonic Sacrifice. There's a reason every lock goes 0/21/40; the 41-point talent in Destro sucks. Even for pvp it's pretty bad. The power of DS far, far outweighs putting that extra point in Destro for no gain.

I'm not saying Sheath is as powerful as DS, in terms of comparison, but it's looking close.

Take something like Tempered Saronite Breastplate.

Assuming Kings and Divine Strength, we get the following from it:

49 * 2 * 1.1 * 1.15 =~ 124 AP
90 * 1.06 * 1.1 * 1.1 = 115 stam

Looking at Seal of Righteousness, the coefficients for the seal are 5% AP and 10% SP, and for the judgement are 45% AP and 73% SP.

Without Sheath (and with TbtL), this item will net us a gain of .05(124) + .1(115*.3) = 6.2 + 3.45 = 9.65 damage per swing (18.335 threat) and .45(124) + .73(115*.3) = 55.8 + 25.185 = 80.985 damage per judgement (153.87 threat)

With Sheath (and still with TbtL), this item gain an additional .1(124*.3) = 3.72 damage per swing (13.37 total damage and 25.403 total threat) and an additional .73(124*.3) = 27.156 damage per judgement (108.141 total damage and 205.47 threat).

Neglecting other gains/losses, this is a overall gain of 38% more damage and threat per swing, and 34% more damage and threat per judgement.

So again, it boils down to how well the other abilities scale. Righteousness with Sheath gains an additional 3% more effect from your AP on the seal, and 22% on the judgement. Since the stam->SP conversion scales worse than the STR->SP one (which is the important conversion, not AP->SP) it might even be worth dropping TbtL if you need to pick up more mitigation and still maintain Sheath. In the example above, you still end with more damage/threat on SoR without TbtL if you keep SoL.

[E] Fixed link, a little late

Xequecal · 08/05/08, 2:09 PM

Originally Posted by Cathela

I think people are seriously underestimating what a tanking build will lose by stretching for Sheath.

Dropping Redoubt + Shield Spec costs you, at a minimum, a 30% bonus to your Shield of Righteousness threat. At, say 300 pre-ShieldSpec block value (easily achievable with level 70 raid gear), Shield Spec is accounting for an extra 57 tps even without Shield of the Templar, and even if we assume there is no extra threat multiplier. (And actually, I agree that this is probably the most efficient place to trim points out of Prot if you want to go for Sheath.)

Why would you need to drop Redoubt + Shield Spec to pick up Sheath of Light? I have it in my build that includes sheath.

Also, as far as Holy goes, remember that pretty much ALL the AP buffs are raidwide now. You'll have imp battleshout, Unleashed Rage, Trueshot Aura, imp Might, Strength of Earth, kings, etc. That's like 1200 AP with the level 70 versions of all these abilities, for an extra 400 spellpower. HL has a 160% coefficient, so when you put it in TBC terms with 71% HL it's essentially +900 healing. You're going to give up that much healing (remember it will scale up at 80) for a situational AE heal?

Unir · 08/05/08, 2:25 PM

I am somewhat surprised that there are not more raiding Holies who are concerned about the direction Holy in general and the top end of the Holy tree is taking. So many nice changes are being worked into prot and ret it seems like everyone is concerned only with how great those specs will be and number-crunching all of the possibilities.

I posted something about Holy and the Holy tree a few (like 20?) pages back and it got a very tepid response.

A beta tester recently summed up on the beta forums beautifully what I thought I was seeing coming in WotLK - do you guys have any thoughts about this? Or is it just assumed now that the 2 paladins coming to raid will be prot and ret? He posted as follows, and as a raider I completely agree:

I'm a gladiator and I've cleared sunwell countless times. I've seen the end game for paladins and it's less than impressive.

Prot and ret went from being both joke talent trees to being our strongest. I rolled a paladin to heal and I would love to continue to heal on my paladin, but first a couple things need to change.

Raiding concerns

1. Three paladins two blessings?

If sunwell is any indication of future raiding zones then a prot pally will be a necessity in every raid. Alliance ret paladins were always a trade off between utility and a loss of dps. However, the wotlk ret talents look amazing wanting every raid to bring one ret, one prot and one holy paladin.

As things are right now this would work out perfectly since almost every raid brings 3 paladins for might/wis, salv/light and kings. You removed salv/light and didn’t give us a new blessing to replace them with. Sanctuary isn’t worth buffing on any non-tanks. Dividing up the might/wis paladin to have one paladin buffing might on every one and one buffing wisdom on every one is far less then ideal. Great the warriors/rogues have wisdom and the casters have might.

We need a new 30 minute buff or we need at least blessing of light to be restored.

2. Divine Plea isn't the answer to our mana issues

The best return of any potion in the game has always been the dreamless sleep potions. The trade off to gaining more mana/hp is that you're taken out of the fight for the duration. There's a reason no healer in any raiding guild uses these potions. The risks far out weigh the benefits. If your assigned target dies from a lack of heals the mana you gained is useless.

There are of course quite a few difference between that and evocation/divine plea. It can be canceled and is shorter duration. Blizzard nicely put a trinket off muru in sunwell that's identical to divine plea to try the spell out and the trinket is terrible.

The only class that I've seen make use out of the muru trinket is druids. They put their hots up on a target and use the trinket. When a paladin uses Divine plea he stops healing and the tank dies.

We need some thing else especially with the potion change.

3. Judgements of the pure/enlightened judgements.

We spend 7 talent points, 14% of our base mana, and a gcd for 30 seconds of 10% spell haste? I really don’t understand the point of these talents. With the new judging system and the increased likelihood of a ret paladin in the raid; there’s no point for us to ever be judging after placing the initial debuff.

Was the intent of the talents for us to be adding to the raids dps through the combined JoR into the other judgements?

The increased range on judgement talents along with most of the other new talents they’ve added have just seemed like pvp only talents. Beacon of light isn’t the only reason holy paladins are considering dropping the 51 point talent in favor of sheath of light. The talents leading up to it are all very weak for raiding.

I really hate suggesting talents that are similar to other classes but ideally we want what you gave shamans. A reason for seal of wisdom to be up for a holy paladin. A passive mp5 on sow/ +healing on sol then having judgement give mana/health.

4. Beacon of light

The role paladins have been pigeonholed into filling is the main tank healer. The new 51 point talent is a raid healing spell. It’s great that blizzard wants us to be able to fill multiple roles. However, beacon light doesn’t allow us to become raid healers due to it’s horrible mana efficiency.

The catch of the spell is that it hits unlimited targets making it amazing if the raid ever clumped into a giant pile. This rarely ever happens because casters like to keep their passive threat reduction from being ranged and melee have to be next to a boss to dps. Tanks have to be on the opposite side of the group to keep the back to the melee dps.

Coh and chain heal both can be spammed to great effect because of their mana efficiency. Beacon of light can’t be spammed because not only does it have a high mana cost but also it can't crit so it can't take advantage of illumination. This spell is nothing more then a mana dump.

5. Ret tree for holy paladins.

Divine strength was moved to tier 1 prot to allow ret paladins easier access into the prot tree with out picking up worthless talents like imp devo/redoubt.

Two of the best healing talents in the game are in ret, conviction and sheath of light, but to get them we have to pick up filler that does nothing for us.

This is probably one of the least pressing of any of the issues I’ve brought up

Any thoughts? I thought he summed up the issues I was concerned about beautifully. Pew-pew-ing the boss every 30 seconds for lackluster haste, pew-pew-ing the boss in general, 30 yards, channeled mana regen, very high mana costs, potion sickness, no passive mana regen, lackluster 51-pt Holy talent, strangely-built quasi-NS on DF-Holy Shock (but with GCD from HS?), unreliable on-crit HS instant HL's ...

It's as if nobody is noticing the optimal level 80 raid healing makeup could very easily end up being 2 x holy priest, 3 x resto druid, 3 x resto shaman if something doesn't change.

Vasala · 08/05/08, 2:53 PM

As a holy paladin I am concerned but since I am not in beta I can't see how the changes are effecting things for holy. All I can do is read and hope that things come out fine. My biggest concerns are how mana will hold up with the one potion per fight limit. I also wonder if Illumination will go back to its original 100% return to help. Or if we will be able to cast spells without resetting the swing timer so we could be in melee range and getting JoW returns.

One change which I would really like to see for paladins in general would be Blessing of Kings made baseline. Most of the time you see people saying that the holy paladin should be the one to spend the points on BoK but if this does remain the way things go then that eliminates the holy paladin from providing improved BoW. If Kings was baseline then in a 3 paladin set up you could have improved BoW, improved BoM, and BoK on all the appropriate raid members. Plus or minus Blessing of Sanctuary on tanks or other raid members depending on what it looks like in the final Wrath build.

For Blessing of Sanctuary things I could see to make it more desirable would be a better overall damage reduction to it that could help the raid in fights with AoE damage flying around and / or having it improve the threat generation for all 4 tank types in some manner. Obviously it would have to have an effect beyond the damage after a block to make it useful to a druid or death knight tank.

Edit: fixed where I was calling sanctuary salvation.

Spiry · 08/05/08, 2:57 PM

I believe you mean "Sanctuary" and not "Salvation", else it would be rather confusing :P

flyingtoastr · 08/05/08, 2:59 PM

WoW Forums -> [suggestion] Beacon of Light

Please for the love of all that is holy (no pun intended) stop posting whines about BoL until we see the new version.

I don't see how he argues that 5% crit (Conviction) is worth more than 10% haste (Judgements of the Pure). Any person who has played a holy pally for more than... 30 seconds knows that haste is worth more than crit by a massive amount. He also wants Blessing of Light back so that our heals can once again be balanced around a blessing that isn't up on 90% of raid members?

And on the topic of Divine Plea... Divine Plea is 2 tics of 25% of your mana over 6 seconds (50% total). With our baseline 10% haste from JotP Divine Plea is a 5.45 second channel, or a tic every 2.725 seconds. So basically you can sacrifice 2 Flash of Light casts for 25% of your mana (or 4 for 50%). If you tank dies because you missed 2 Flashes chances are your tank fucked up or you used DP at a terrible time. Even better, you can sit on a crit Holy Shock while Pleaing (that is so not a word) so if your tank does take a spike you can dump a pretty massive set of heals onto him instantly, allowing you to get at least 1 tic off.

I dunno, but I seriously question how he's drawing some of these conclusions.

EDIT: He's also got a lot of facts wrong (he seems to think you need to reseal after Judging). Judgements are 5% of base mana, or 220 mana. That is half the cost of a Flash of Light. Come on people...

I really think he's looking at this like a TBC holy pally. "Sit in the back rolling my face over FoL and winning epix!!!". I think Blizzard wants to take holy pallys in an entirely different direction. We're going to be battle healers. We have a reason to give a bit of off DPS while healing; whether it's through judging a hefty Righteousness every 30 seconds or sitting on a crit Holy Shock to swing a couple times for JoW regen.

Dram · 08/05/08, 3:05 PM

Originally Posted by flyingtoastr

Pleaing (that is so not a word)

I dunno, but I seriously question how he's drawing some of these conclusions.

I believe the word you are looking for is pleading. As for some of the conclusion's he has drawn I also see some holes in his logic as well.

Unir · 08/05/08, 3:18 PM

Originally Posted by flyingtoastr

I don't see how he argues that 5% crit (Conviction) is worth more than 10% haste (Judgements of the Pure). Any person who has played a holy pally for more than... 30 seconds knows that haste is worth more than crit by a massive amount.

Obviously I cannot speak for him, but I suspect he would probably respond that 5% passive crit leading to a useful talent > 7 talent points, 14% of our base mana, and a gcd for 30 seconds of 10% spell haste leading to a currently bad talent.

Also that it doesn't fit. What exactly is the intent of making healers pew-pew the boss every 30 seconds to help themselves gain HPS, or every 10 seconds for mana return? Some healers want to actually heal and spend their top talent points in abilities / benefits to healing itself - not means / methods / reasons to pew-pew a boss, especially if you have a ret paladin there to refresh the debuff.

I don't necessarily agree with the blessings solution, but his point remains valid for raiding imo. Bring prot and ret for the 2 blessings - now why is it again that you bring a Holy paladin?

And on the topic of Divine Plea... Divine Plea is 2 tics of 25% of your mana over 6 seconds (50% total). With our baseline 10% haste from JotP Divine Plea is a 5.45 second channel, or a tic every 2.725 seconds. So basically you can sacrifice 2 Flash of Light casts for 25% of your mana (or 4 for 50%). If you tank dies because you missed 2 Flashes chances are your tank fucked up or you used DP at a terrible time. Even better, you can sit on a crit Holy Shock while Pleaing (that is so not a word) so if your tank does take a spike you can dump a pretty massive set of heals onto him instantly, allowing you to get at least 1 tic off.

Again I can't speak for this person, but are you really using flash of light on M'uru or Twins? It would difficult to find the time in Brutallus that I can channel for 5 seconds, particularly when you are first learning the encounter.

But again, look at what you are describing in the underlined as "even better": you could find a way to do this, and if something went wrong you could possibly do something in response that might work and get at least some regen. Why is it such a difficult concept to throw passive mana regen our way? Even something simple like Meditation, but make it be based off of our int or something similar - much less the obvious passive regen on Seal of Wisdom as a top-tier holy talent.

As for sitting on a crit HS = instant HL, you can do that for exactly 15 seconds - that's how long the current insta-HL buff lasts. Of course, the other odd issue with the insta-HL from HS-crit is that if you use HL much you are probably going to eat up the buff fairly often anyway - assuming you got a crit on HS when you wanted it?

I see the issues he is raising pretty easily, as do some of the other beta testers responding to him. The encounters in WotLK will be new, but the fundamentals of healing will remain somewhat constant as they have for a long time. A couple of notable quotes in response from beta forum:

I agree with most of what you said tho, I think the only raiding paladins in WoTLK are going to be retribution paladins and then I can only see most raids taking one paladin for blessing of kings.

Since downranking has been nerfed into oblivion Im forced to use high ranks of holy light because flash of light is scaling horribly so even in t6/sunwell gear im going oom after a single trash pack or boss.

Divine plea is a joke the only way ive been able to use it while in combat in a 5 man is to bubble and then cast it as it breaks the second you take damage even from aoe abilities or dots which means ive mostly been using it as a faster way of drinking between pulls.

With our efficiency still so low combined with the potion nerf and the major buffs to other classes tank healing and regen abilities I can't see a position for holy paladins in WoTLK outside of arenas.

and

Did they change the encounters so there are a lot of stacking fights? Unless there are more than 10 people in said stack it seems we'd be lucky if we got more than a tick or two of beacon off before flourish did the job. ticking higher at the start, for more, shorter time, instacast...

i like that we were built almost like a healing mage, without the aoe hehe just big crits and long cast times... so the evocation style mana regen of divine plea fits with the concept. However, it's just not practical the way they have us built.

As much as I like the haste buff, I also don't get why they keep saying holy pallies should be running around judging... t5 2pc springs to mind... if that's what they want us to do, then there are changes that need to be made on how we cast heals.

Edit: I've seen the "looking at it like a TBC paly" response a few times here and there and no offense intended, but I think you are letting hope cloud your ability to critically evaluate what you are seeing. Healing now is not so different from healing in BWL - the mechanics and approaches are still quite similar. The means and methods have changed over time, but it all still works similarly.

As for the idea of being a "battle healer" - I would suggest that is your speculation and nothing more. If Blizzard intends such a massive playstyle change to be required for Holy healers they have not indicated such. In fact the opposite is true - most everything we do is STILL at range.

Hitting the boss for JoW procs is something you can do now. DPS'ing the boss you can do now. "Battle healing" is what ret paladins are going to be doing, and s-priests, and so forth. Holy paladins do not do that now, and for a reason.

I really do not understand this line of reasoning at all, unless it is merely what you hope Blizzard intends to be the case.

Edit2: Condensed quotes into something more manageable.

Gevlin · 08/05/08, 3:28 PM

Well, the way auto attack is working right now, it seems that all cast spells don't reset, but instead only push back the next melee swing if it were to happen during the cast. For example, if you have a nice fast healing mace, you can put up SoV, and just heal as normal and get an autoattack instantly after every heal (assuming you are in melee range), regenning mana from JoW, and adding a marginal amount of damage without affecting your ability to heal at all. If the incoming raid dmg is predictable, you can also add in a judgement every 30s or so when everyone is comfortably topped off, only sacrificing a GCD.

I know thats complex for a lot of the two button players out there, but doing damage, and healing at the same time is the vision everyone has when they think of the classic paladin.

Theras · 08/05/08, 3:32 PM

Originally Posted by Unir

It would difficult to find the time in Brutallus that I can channel for 5 seconds, particularly when you are first learning the encounter.

This really isn't true. Brutallus healing strategies have to be built such that the raid can sustain a single tank healer being out of commission for 5+ seconds. Otherwise if a tank healer got Burn and had to run, you'd be hooped. As long as no other healers are in motion, it should be pretty simple to DF-Holy Shock to force a crit, use Divine Plea, and come out swinging with an instant Holy Light when it's over (or earlier if you have to).

Fiola · 08/05/08, 3:34 PM

I agree with flyingtoastr. That analysis also ignores that many of the changes are based on player requests (HoT, AE heal, reason for MELEE plate healer to be in melee range, active mana regen), or aimed at improving/adapting the game mechanics to be more fun.

1. The loss of BoL is offset by the buffs to baseline healing - it's a complete buff to paladins, and he wants to complain? The loss of BoSalv does suck, but it will not be a problem if the tanking game is rebalanced around it. (note how tank threat scaling will be much improved). More importantly, the reduction in "needed" blessings helps the new direction of "10 man raiding endgame". "needing" 3 blessings (from 3 different paladins) in a 10 man raid would lead to class imbalance, which is not desirable.

2. "The risks far out weigh the benefits." I agree that Dreamless sleep pots aren't that desirable to most due to the risk (cost) of 12 seconds of inactivity. On the other hand, Divine Plea has more benefit (50% of your mana pool) for less risk (6 seconds of inactivity, modified by haste). Can you try to mitigate the cost? Ask your other healers to step up, or activate it during a lull in damage, or ask your tank to activate shieldwall/trinkets? On top of that, it's going to be a very powerful ability in arena/5-mans/solo. That alone makes the ability worth having, even if no one ever touches it for raiding.

3. The talent is useful for solo/5-mans. It opens up new healing options. (max range to avoid AE? Dancing in and out of range? Stay in melee range?). It's not enough for him to say "this isn't useful for me" - he also needs to look at what the ability offers to others.

4 and 5 are moot with the promised change to BoL.

Basically, all the issues raised can be answered with "wait and see".

flyingtoastr · 08/05/08, 3:38 PM

Originally Posted by Unir

... he would probably respond that 5% passive crit leading to a useful talent > 7 talent points, 14% of our base mana, and a gcd for 30 seconds of 10% spell haste leading to a currently bad talent.

Also that it doesn't fit. What exactly is the intent of making healers pew-pew the boss every 30 seconds to help themselves gain HPS, or every 10 seconds for mana return? Some healers want to actually heal and spend their top talent points in abilities / benefits to healing itself - not means / methods / reasons to pew-pew a boss, especially if you have a ret paladin there to refresh the debuff.

We spend 7 talent points, 5% of our base mana (again, less than half of a max rank FoL, please look stuff up) and a partial GCD (that's right folks, with that 10% haste your GCD falls to 1.36 seconds, with Swift Retribution and Wrath of Air you're looking at a balmy 1.20 second GCD) to keep up 10% haste. Remember that haste then stacks with Wrath of Air (10%), Swift Retribution (3%) and any haste rating you have on gear to get you to some very sexy levels of throughput. Not only that but the Divine Plea he oh so loves to whine about falls to a 4.8 second channel time with only those 3 buffs, or 25% of your mana every 2.4 seconds.

No one is forcing you to judge. By all means, spec sheathbot and roll your face over the FoL key. But it is giving paladins a more dynamic healing role than what we have been stuck doing for the last 3 years. I don't see any harm whatsoever for getting to do something fun.

You're also discounting the power of a Holy Paladin with a reason to keep up Judgements in 5/10 mans without a ret pally.

Originally Posted by Unir

Again I can't speak for this person, but are you really using flash of light on M'uru or Twins? It would difficult to find the time in Brutallus that I can channel for 5 seconds, particularly when you are first learning the encounter.

But again, look at what you are describing in the underlined as "even better": you could find a way to do this, and if something went wrong you could possibly do something in response that might work and get at least some regen. Why is it such a difficult concept to throw passive mana regen our way? Even something simple like Meditation, but make it be based off of our int or something similar - much less the obvious passive regen on Seal of Wisdom as a top-tier holy talent.

As for sitting on a crit HS = instant HL, you can do that for exactly 15 seconds - that's how long the current insta-HL buff lasts. Of course, the other odd issue with the insta-HL from HS-crit is that if you use HL much you are probably going to eat up the buff fairly often anyway - assuming you got a crit on HS when you wanted it?

I do use FoL on M'uru when the tank has only 1 add on him. Incoming damage is usually pretty low during that time and he always seems to be eating jumps from Chain Heals on top of it. Yeah, our best so far is only low-30's on Entropius so I don't have as much experience as Mr. Drow, but meh. I also use it on Twins after the first twin dies. Keeping up a warlock with both light and 5 other healers on him doesn't exactly call for massive throughput™.

Passive regen is boring. Spamming FoL with unlimited mana is not inventive or exciting. Giving holy pallys something to do other than smashing 1 key is, in my humble opinion, always a good thing. Sure, passive regen talents would be nice, but I'd prefer to test my skill and inventiveness by twisting heals with downtime (much like how good holy priests abuse Clearcasting) than smash FoL for another 2 years.

Amera · 08/05/08, 3:42 PM

The issue in that post from the beta boards is interesting. With 25 slots and 10 classes, I don't think it is fair to "mandate" three of any one class into a raid. You should have 5 flex spots that can be filled by a variety of people. So that brings up the point - does every healing spec deserve a mandated raid spot? We've lived through 4 years of WoW where non-healing hybrid specs were often not required (especially until TBC). At present, Ret, Elemental, and Balance are nowhere close to required in any Sunwell raid. Is it really so bad if your default two paladins in every raid were Prot and Ret, with Holy sometimes being one of the "flex" spots when another healer couldn't' be online, or a fight required situational burst healing?

I've been a holy paladin 95% of the time, but I still don't necessarily see a problem with this. As long as a raid has two paladins of any spec, does it really matter what specs they are (assuming all 3 specs are viable at least some of the time)?