WotLK talent trees/abilities discussion - Page 109

Unir · 08/06/08, 2:57 PM

I agree - HL spam is basically our "niche" for late-game raiding as it stands. For those situations where you can get away with just FoL spam you are already past a situation of difficult healing. I am somewhat surprised that the changes to the top of Holy are not direct benefits to healing, but instead are so situational.

They appear to be out of line with the changes made to the other healing classes' top-end healing talents as well, from a design standpoint. Compare haste-on-judge, instant-HL on crit HS, and Beacon with Grace, Gift of the Earthmother, Tidal Waves, Flourish, Nourish, Test of Faith, Divine Providence, Ancestral Awakening, etc., and you can see it. Those talents add direct benefits to the healing task itself and require little additional action, the only chance involved is typically whether or not you crit and the "chance" that gets triggered shores up a shortcoming of what you were doing (i.e. Ancestral Spirit - critting with a single-target heal also heals a second target of lowest health, ostensibly easing the pain of not using a chain heal). I am fairly impressed with the creativity of Ancestral Awakening, Spirit Link, and Guardian Spirit in particular.

The top of the Holy tree as it stands now provides a benefit that requires chance with a spell you may or may not be able to afford to use (crit on HS), something other than healing (judging), or takes additional time away from healing (judging GCD), not to mention issues which may be present for raiding with Divine Plea and Beacon. The design intent appears to be somewhat unclear to me, unless they just want us "doing more stuff" - which isn't really a benefit to healing in raids.

flyingtoastr · 08/06/08, 3:07 PM

Originally Posted by levk

Let's break it down then.

10% haste is neither here nor there to me as you lose the gcd. More useful for HL spam I suppose. Situational. Certainly far more situational than mana return from judgment of wise whose only limiting factor is the judgment cooldown as far as mechanics are concerned. You don't get extra haste from judging more with judgment of pure, but you get more mana from judgment of wise. It's not yet determined how "small" mana restore effect will be from judging something like SoR + JoJ because they are likely to tweak SoR.
14% int to healing from holy guidance. They're surely to work on this talent but if it's the same thing as shaman get then it's roughly the same state as now. Regardless, long way to sheath ap coefficient.
Kings. I expect ret to pick up kings as it's far closer for him than me anyway. He's not losing much. Prot obviously takes it.
6% less damage taken by me from imp righteous fury. I actually had to turn this off in earlier raiding because of threat concerns. Either way, I shouldn't be taking anymore damage than the tree druid next to me. Is it useful? Sort of. Still a waste of talent points. Pvpwise talent is moot, RF is purge fodder.
3% raid healing from imp devo - I think my opinions are clear on this one.
Guardian's favor is strictly a pvp talent I don't think I've ever thought it useful for any boss encounter.
Raidwide pain suppression every 5 minutes from divine guardian. An actual tool. Extremely situational. About as useful as current LoH at the cost of talent points instead of the mana dump.
Beacon. An actual tool. Situational. I have no doubt there'll be times when I'll have to have this. Other than that meh.
Imp might. I don't know what ret sustainability is like, they might like benediction better. Probably overlap with ret. Otherwise a crucial talent.
3% raid crit from heart of crusader. Overlap with ret. Otherwise crucial talent.
5% spell crit from conviction. Dough.
Faster movement from pursuit of justice. This is very very nice. Double the increase from boot enchant. Kicks the crap out of imp RF.
Ret aura damage and 2% raid damage from improved ret aura and sanctified retribution. I actually took crusade instead of ret aura damage. For judgments of wise and shits and giggles I guess. 2% raid damage overlap with ret, otherwise crucial talent.
Sheath. HoT is nice to have but probably not terribly useful in raids unless you have very tight healing assignments in a min/maxed raids. Ap to spellpower coefficient easily outstrips what you'd lose in holy guidance (after they change it.)
Mana return from judgments of wise. They'll fiddle with this I don't have doubt about that. I for one don't think this should be any less for holy/sheath with SoR/SoV than what ret paladin gets with SoC/SoB. It's an excellent farming and daily addition - holy/sheath will eat far more mana with holy shock and healing than ret with crusader strike and divine storm.

To me the 43/0/28 toolset is easily tastier than 51/20/0 toolset. Now 60/11/0 is a completely different toolset which I also like, but it doesn't include imp devo either. If there was ever a talent worth of moving up and rolling in with something else imp devo is it. Roll it in with touched by light or something.

-10% haste is 10% haste. It stacks with Swift Retribution and Wrath of Air. It also lowers your GCD for everything including Cleanse and Holy Shock, even more useful for high damage fights when you need to dump HS/HL as quickly as possible. It helps negate a lot of the downtime caused by Divine Plea. 10% haste is a very very good talent.
-14% INT > Healing isn't a huge amount but as it is it at least scales upwards as your gear progresses. You get absolutely zero extra attack power on holy gear from tier 4 to tier 6.5, expect the same in Wrath.
-Blessing of Kings is amazing, and because it isn't baseline you should have as many pallys speccing into it at once. What happens if your ret pally doesn't show up one night, "oh sorry raid, I just fucked us over for shits and giggles"?
-If your tanks can't keep aggro over improved Righteous Fury on a holy pally (meaning your heals cause 95% threat) get some new tanks. Sorry, but there really is no nicer way to say that.
-Improved Devo is both extra effective health to everyone in the raid in addition to a very nice additional healing for everyone. Priests are literally going crazy over the power of Grace (which does the same thing) and we get the same thing for free for turning on an aura.
-Divine Guardian is situational, but it is still an incredible talent. Since you don't play WoW I would assume you've seen nothing of sunwell, but as I see it any time you pop that thing you're getting a lot of raid mitigation regardless of whether it is ideal or not, and in certain instances (encaps on felmyst for example or stomps on brut for example) it could be considered borderline broken.
-5% from Conviction is flat worse than the 10% haste from JotP.
-I've made it abundantly clear how worthless Sheath's HoT is in most situations. The AP > SP is nice but doesn't scale at all, you will be getting your 300 SP from that from Tier 7 to Tier 9000. The HoT scales inversely with tanking gear and because of how often it tics is often useless due to your own heals landing exactly before it.
-Judgements of the Wise is nice but not especially powerful. With 1500 AP and 1500 SP using JoR you're looking at returning ~350 mana to 3 people per judgement (Judgement itself costs 220, so in reality you're not looking at much gain). In addition you have to actively use Judgement, which you cited as a reason why JotP sucks. So make up your mind, is judging for 10% haste so much worse than Judging for 44 Mp5 for 2 friends and 16 Mp5 for yourself?
-Ret (and most likely prot) will be taking Improved Might. Benediction is a marginal gain of less than 20Mp5, no one in their right mind will take that POS.

And one more time since still people still can't read:

Beacon is being reworked in the next push. Stop whining about it.

There was a reason I didn't even bring Beacon up when I listed the changes.

Originally Posted by Antmanton

No one really disagrees with the above statements of opinion, so we can move on to the following conclusion:

I disagree. Sheath brings no additional utility if you have a ret pally. In addition because of the loss of Holy Guidance you're looking at Sheath giving a maximum of maybe 300 additional Spell Power. That's it. Sheath is not a better spec.

levk · 08/06/08, 3:24 PM

Originally Posted by flyingtoastr

Judgements of the Wise is nice but not especially powerful. With 1500 AP and 1500 SP using JoR you're looking at returning ~350 mana to 3 people per judgement (Judgement itself costs 220, so in reality you're not looking at much gain). In addition you have to actively use Judgement, which you cited as a reason why JotP sucks. So make up your mind, is judging for 10% haste so much worse than Judging for 44 Mp5 for 2 friends and 16 Mp5 for yourself?

If stay far away and don't swing at it you also proc JoW every judge. It's a net gain for you not to mention the two other people. Haste and wasting the gcd just work against each other. It just feels backwards if I need haste I don't have time to waste to get it. Regen on the other hand means it's a sustainability situation meaning I have time to do this.

You're right I haven't seen sunwell. By the looks of it I'd hardly want any paladins at all there.

EDIT:

Unir, holy shock is the most efficient heal in WotLK, you'll use it every cooldown.

Oh and what I said about beacon, I meant the concept not the current state. Concept being a useful aoe hot that I need to spec into.

EDIT2:

Wait a minute, can you not proc JoW on a judgment? If there's a JoW put up there by someone else? Judgment does damage it should proc this stuff.

Antmanton · 08/06/08, 3:31 PM

Originally Posted by flyingtoastr

I disagree. Sheath brings no additional utility if you have a ret pally. In addition because of the loss of Holy Guidance you're looking at Sheath giving a maximum of maybe 300 additional Spell Power. That's it. Sheath is not a better spec.

(Link) What loss of Holy Guidance? OK, you don't get JotP with this build and you need someone with Improved Concentration Aura to make up for the point out of Spiritual Focus (or steal it back from SotP if you can't guarantee you'll have that). Yes, a full Retribution build does step on your toes. If that's consistently going to be the case, either suck it up or respec around it (to the extent that's possible). If nothing else, two paladins with JotW is still better than one, and you still get stronger Judgement debuffs than a pure 51/20/0 Holy build. Stating "no utility" is a bit of an overstatement in this case.

Torq · 08/06/08, 3:31 PM

Originally Posted by levk

10% haste is neither here nor there to me as you lose the gcd. More useful for HL spam I suppose. Situational.

Yes and no. a 10% haste buff for 30 seconds gives you 33 seconds of effective casting time. So you spend a GCD to gain a GCD every 30 seconds.

Originally Posted by flyingtoastr

I disagree. Sheath brings no additional utility if you have a ret pally. In addition because of the loss of Holy Guidance you're looking at Sheath giving a maximum of maybe 300 additional Spell Power. That's it. Sheath is not a better spec.

There are other specs (48/0/23) that still provide Holy Guidance and also get Sheath. There isn't just one Sheath spec.

[E] Beaten to it!

flyingtoastr · 08/06/08, 3:36 PM

Originally Posted by levk

If stay far away and don't swing at it you also proc JoW every judge. It's a net gain for you not to mention the two other people. Haste and wasting the gcd just work against each other. It just feels backwards if I need haste I don't have time to waste to get it. Regen on the other hand means it's a sustainability situation meaning I have time to do this.

For JotW you're using a Judgement every 8 seconds, or nearly 4 full GCD's every 30 seconds. For SotP you're looking at 1 shortened GCD every 30 seconds.

Lets have a looksee.

Without any haste you're looking at being able to cast 20 FoL/Holy Shock/Cleanse/Instant Holy Lights in 30 seconds. Not too bad. 10% haste reduces your GCD, 1.5's and instants to 1.36 seconds. That means you can now fit in just over 22 spells in 30 seconds. 1 of those is your Judgement, so you're looking at 21 effective heals cast (still a gain).

Now we have our Sheathbot judging every 8 seconds in an attempt to pretend he is a shadow priest. With no haste he gets 20 casts per 30 seconds, but (assuming the first Judgement was at t=0) he is spending 4 of those GCD's Judging. So he is only getting 16 effective healing casts every 30 seconds.

16...

21...

Yeah... Better hope that HoT is keeping the tank up, amirite?

Originally Posted by Torq

There are other specs (48/0/23) that still provide Holy Guidance and also get Sheath. There isn't just one Sheath spec.!

I'm aware of it, but our discussion right now is about a JotW swinging shadow-preist wannabe spec.

Gevlin · 08/06/08, 3:41 PM

I don't think its the number of GCDs you gain with the haste, but the usefulness of haste over that 30s, in terms of situational heal output, reactive healing, and possibly mana saving cast cancelling due to the availability of the aforementioned uses of haste. You can theorycraft the gains during spam casting all you want, but the fact of the matter is that with the huge nerfs to downranking, and the huge increases to max rank costs, spam casting figures are going to be a thing of the past.

Torq · 08/06/08, 3:44 PM

Originally Posted by flyingtoastr

For JotW you're using a Judgement every 8 seconds, or nearly 4 full GCD's every 30 seconds. For SotP you're looking at 1 shortened GCD every 30 seconds.

That's why Sheathbot is an ineffective build. I'm not sure why you'd spec into JotW as Holy anyway. If you want mana gain, just autoattack whatever has JoW up, and make the Ret pally be the one to keep it up. If you don't have a Ret pally, you can keep it up yourself, as you'll be refreshing it every 30 sec for your haste buff. Even with Sheath, you can pick up 6% haste, which still earns you back your GCD that you spend judging.

I would understand getting JotW if you could synergize it with JotP, but since you can't, what's the point? As you state, it's a waste of GCDs, and a waste of healing. Autoattacking between heals with a JoW up will give you more mana back than JotW every cooldown, especially since it's not necessarily guaranteed to give that mana to you.

flyingtoastr · 08/06/08, 3:47 PM

Originally Posted by Gevlin

I don't think its the number of GCDs you gain with the haste, but the usefulness of haste over that 30s, in terms of situational heal output, reactive healing, and possibly mana saving cast cancelling due to the availability of the aforementioned uses of haste. You can theorycraft the gains during spam casting all you want, but the fact of the matter is that with the huge nerfs to downranking, and the huge increases to max rank costs, spam casting figures are going to be a thing of the past.

Until we have concrete numbers for the amount of SP/Crit/Regen/Haste we'll have at 80 though it's too difficult to theorycraft effective HPS/Mp5 gains from JotP versus JotW.

You are right though, that additional haste (for example) allows you to hit that Crit HS/Insta HL faster, cleanse and start your next heal quicker, throw a HoS on some silly warlock and get back to healing the tank quicker, etc... There is a reason Haste > pretty much everything once your gear can support it.

Cathela · 08/06/08, 3:47 PM

Toast, you've got some fairly strong arguments (believe it or not I'm getting more skeptical about sheath healing builds the more I think about it), but please:

Originally Posted by flyingtoastr

-Blessing of Kings is amazing, and because it isn't baseline you should have as many pallys speccing into it at once. What happens if your ret pally doesn't show up one night, "oh sorry raid, I just fucked us over for shits and giggles"?

You go respec? I mean, come on.

And as a nitpick, Holy Guidance is 36-40 Holy. Call it 38-42 under the assumption that nobody's dumb enough to pass up Infusion of Light, so there's still plenty of room for it to coexist with Sheath in the same build.

levk · 08/06/08, 3:48 PM

Umm, I don't have to judge every 8 seconds. If there's something else for me to do I'll do that, what I meant is if you're in a sustainability situation, you'll likely have time to judge and get the mana. Mana battery is not your job but it's a perk. If you're in a throughput situation where haste is good wasting the gcd to get that haste is backwards to me. If they added a reduce to gcd caused by judgment 0.3 seconds per talent point at least it would make sense.

flyingtoastr · 08/06/08, 3:57 PM

Originally Posted by Cathela

You go respec? I mean, come on.

Really I think it's a good time to bring up the whole "why the hell isn't kings baseline yet?" argument, but I digress.

Originally Posted by levk

Umm, I don't have to judge every 8 seconds. If there's something else for me to do I'll do that, what I meant is if you're in a sustainability situation, you'll likely have time to judge and get the mana. Mana battery is not your job but it's a perk. If you're in a throughput situation where haste is good wasting the gcd to get that haste is backwards to me. If they added a reduce to gcd caused by judgment 0.3 seconds per talent point at least it would make sense.

Right, but in a sustainability situation would it be a better use of that GCD to have SoW on yourself and smack the mob once or twice for SoW/JoW procs? It wouldn't return mana to your pals but it would most likely return a ton more to you.

Another plus for JotP, faster melee swings means less pushback from healing spells, making it even easier to twist in extra melee attacks while healing.

levk · 08/06/08, 4:00 PM

Originally Posted by Torq

If you want mana gain, just autoattack whatever has JoW up, and make the Ret pally be the one to keep it up.

This doesn't work in practice, casted spells reset swing timer. Gevlin keeps saying it doesn't but he's the only one and I haven't seen any proof. By the way instant holy lights off infusion of light most surely reset the swing timer as well since nature swiftnessed stuff and talented ghostwolf certainly do. You can do it on cleanse situations and the last time that was actually worth it was at Chromaggus.

EDIT: before I get the flames, "last time that was actually worth it was at Chromaggus" for a holy paladin.

• frmorrison · 08/06/08, 4:01 PM

Originally Posted by levk

If they added a reduce to gcd caused by judgment 0.3 seconds per talent point at least it would make sense.

The point of the talent is to give a 30 second reward in exchange for a GCD, not to make Judgement not have a GCD.

What is does it start to add more skillful play to Paladins, such as knowing when to use the GCD.

Judgement of the Wise is bad because of the new Seal of Wisdom. If you really need mana and you used your potion and Divine Plea, that will be the way to get it.

Antmanton · 08/06/08, 4:03 PM

Just to echo what was already said, Sheathbots can judge every eight seconds, but by no means do they need to do so. You can still throw your 40 FoLs/Shocks/instant HLs/Cleanses per minute if you need to. And honestly, if the encounter is such that you need to hit your tank with more than 40 heals or Cleanses per tank healer per minute, either you need to add more healers or get a better tank (or the encounter is fucked and needs retuning). The 10% haste probably won't make the difference between success and failure there.