Eventually this seal has to be superior in some way to be worth the talent point. Auto Crit on judgement under a stun condition just doesn't seem like that's it.
That autocrit provides more damage than your non-crit on stunned JoC right now. While I think it's all rosy and peachy to think of SoC as being nice because it's talented the seal itself is just plain bad for everything except PvP. Being able to take off >50% of someone's health with a stupid crit + stun (double double percentage modifiers) isn't balanced at all. It may be funny to watch in videos but I'm more concerned with the devs not nerfing our sustained because of a stupid PvP exploit (i.e. Vengeance nuke).
Scaling is always a nice thing but in this particular case Paladins will outscale Warrior health in the near-future. It may not be in Naxx, but a tier later because getting 2000 Stamina doesn't sound all that hard to me. Some Warriors already run around with 1400 Stamina unbuffed at level 70 so getting another 600 from 10 levels, higher ilvl gear and raid buffs doesn't sound unreasonable. As ugly as it may sound, why can't the talent give Paladins +1200 health and a +5% Stamina scaling (or whatever the equivalent is with the Warrior Vitality at release)? That would provide scaling and would prevent long term problems.
Isn't the difference 1200 health at level 70? Won't Warrior base health increase from 70 to 80 faster than Paladin base health? Or am I misunderstanding base health; I thought it was the equivalent of base mana (aka the HP you have naked - 10x(naked stamina)). Unless I greatly misunderstand, the difference at 80 will be more than 1200, and continue to get worse in the future. You'd have to change the talent with every level cap increase.
If the difference at 70 is less than 1200 and that's the 80 number, my apologies. Though that would seem to make your solution a bit "overpowered" (not really, but other Warriors may complain) from 70 to 79.
3) Protections: (yeah, i keep coming back to this spec whilst you're all on about Ret, but Prot is my spec)
New Sanctuary. It's exactly what we ordered, yet I'm still unhappy. Why?
a) Kings + Sanctuary. AArgh. Two talented blessings both in the same tree, Kings being the best buff in the game and Sanc will come a close third for tanks (after Fortitude etc).
b)Sanctuary will be 'required' for the cutting edge raids. Which means you must have a prot pally. Which goes against what Blizz is trying to do in terms of keeping raids available for all specs and classes.
Sanctuary should be tacked on to the prot pally's other blessing. That, and/or make kings baseline.
Also:
I've been reading this thread on the warrior WotLK forums.
They seem to be up in arms that Warriors are outclassed in every single way for tanking and they may as well quit now.
Whilst I disagree with most of what they're saying (it seems to be a lot of 'dey tuk ur jerbs!' and not understanding fully the changes) one point did stick out at me:
Paladins still have 16.6% stamina from talents. This was implemented because of the base HP difference between Warriors and Paladins which was multiplied by paladin's need to wear differently itemised gear. Come WOTLK however, base HP difference will be a much lower % of total, and we will be wearing fairly well the same gear. Paladins will be the tank with the highest HP - is that intended or just overlooked?
Agree wholeheartedly with this.
Sanctuary is now definitely a class-defining ability that raids cannot do without - though suspect 25man raids would usually always have had a prot paladin before, it may hurt prot warriors and druids chances to getting in. (given DK focus on magic tanking, always likely to now bring one, particularly given anti-magic shield)
I would expect to see our stamina bonus nerfed soon enough. Unless prot warriors become mitigation tanks, unlikely we'll make it to live with more stamina than them.
Isn't the difference 1200 health at level 70? Won't Warrior base health increase from 70 to 80 faster than Paladin base health? Or am I misunderstanding base health; I thought it was the equivalent of base mana (aka the HP you have naked - 10x(naked stamina)). Unless I greatly misunderstand, the difference at 80 will be more than 1200, and continue to get worse in the future. You'd have to change the talent with every level cap increase.
If the difference at 70 is less than 1200 and that's the 80 number, my apologies. Though that would seem to make your solution a bit "overpowered" (not really, but other Warriors may complain) from 70 to 79.
They could make the talent scale with level pretty easily. The Rogue talent Serrated Blades for example does exactly that right now, it would just require finding the function used to calculate the base health (which I'm sure the devs have handy) and adjusting the scaling value based on that.
Do we have concrete numbers for int -> Spell crit conversions at level 80? I've been curious about this since seeing that Replenishment is based on total mana. Considering it could provide almost as much mana return as mp5, coupled with the larger overall pool and spell power from Holy Guidance, I think we could see some pretty good returns from stacking int, depending on whether or not the amount of crit gained is significant.
Just give me all of the bacon and eggs you have. Wait, wait, I worry what you just heard was, “Give me a lot of bacon and eggs.” What I said was, “Give me ALL the bacon and eggs you have.” Do you understand?
I would expect to see our stamina bonus nerfed soon enough. Unless prot warriors become mitigation tanks, unlikely we'll make it to live with more stamina than them.
The only argument against nerfing the stamina bonus is that warriors effectively get an additional slot for a ranged weapon which can considerably increase their defensive bonuses.
That autocrit provides more damage than your non-crit on stunned JoC right now. While I think it's all rosy and peachy to think of SoC as being nice because it's talented the seal itself is just plain bad for everything except PvP. Being able to take off >50% of someone's health with a stupid crit + stun (double double percentage modifiers) isn't balanced at all. It may be funny to watch in videos but I'm more concerned with the devs not nerfing our sustained because of a stupid PvP exploit (i.e. Vengeance nuke).
totally agree on that.
On the gear I have today, a regular 3.0 JoC crit would not hit much lower than a 2.4.3 JoC crit on a stunned target. So yes, it is a very fair deal if we can cut the whining about our stupid burst and get back some essential dps and regen mechanic at the same time.
Edit : a little question about the new art of war - I don't think it has been answered, or i missed it :
How does it works if you don't have the three points in the talents ? Does it trigger the HoF cooldown and / or the GCD ?
Maybe it's naive from me, or silly or both, but if it didn't, then we could only take 1 point into the talent and smash the key until it works.
Isn't the difference 1200 health at level 70? Won't Warrior base health increase from 70 to 80 faster than Paladin base health? Or am I misunderstanding base health; I thought it was the equivalent of base mana (aka the HP you have naked - 10x(naked stamina)). Unless I greatly misunderstand, the difference at 80 will be more than 1200, and continue to get worse in the future. You'd have to change the talent with every level cap increase.
If the difference at 70 is less than 1200 and that's the 80 number, my apologies. Though that would seem to make your solution a bit "overpowered" (not really, but other Warriors may complain) from 70 to 79.
Untalented, unbuffed, and naked, a level 70 paladin has 1197 less health than a warrior, about 1000'ish of that comes from base health (4594 versus a paladin's 3527, both human btw) with the remaining coming from the 13 or so difference in stamina between the two classes (133 versus 120, don't count 18 stam towards health though as the game doesn't).
I believe talented and buffed with kings, the margin becomes:
Paladin: 3527 HP + (120*1.1*1.1*1.06*10) - 180 = 3527 + 153.912*10 - 180
Warrior: 4594 HP + (133*1.1*1.05*10) - 180 = 4594 + 153.615*10 - 180
So the difference between a talented protection paladin and warrior, buffed with BoK at level 70, is around 1000 (though it used to be 1200 before the talents).
I haven't seen any numbers posted on the level 80 stats of warriors and paladins yet though.
Originally Posted by Liar
Scaling is always a nice thing but in this particular case Paladins will outscale Warrior health in the near-future. It may not be in Naxx, but a tier later because getting 2000 Stamina doesn't sound all that hard to me. Some Warriors already run around with 1400 Stamina unbuffed at level 70 so getting another 600 from 10 levels, higher ilvl gear and raid buffs doesn't sound unreasonable. As ugly as it may sound, why can't the talent give Paladins +1200 health and a +5% Stamina scaling (or whatever the equivalent is with the Warrior Vitality at release)? That would provide scaling and would prevent long term problems.
Do you happen to know the base HP and stam for warriors at level 80 per chance? I haven't seen them posted yet, but I could have missed it. I think it might be premature to worry about the scaling until we can see the starting points. When paladins first got their 16.6% scaling, everyone was worried about them greatly out scaling warriors, but it really didn't happen to any noticeable degree. This was mainly due to the difference in base health and the ranged slot for extra stamina. The ranged slot still holds, but it will still mostly depend on the differences in base health whether the scaling will be a problem or not.
That autocrit provides more damage than your non-crit on stunned JoC right now. While I think it's all rosy and peachy to think of SoC as being nice because it's talented the seal itself is just plain bad for everything except PvP. Being able to take off >50% of someone's health with a stupid crit + stun (double double percentage modifiers) isn't balanced at all. It may be funny to watch in videos but I'm more concerned with the devs not nerfing our sustained because of a stupid PvP exploit (i.e. Vengeance nuke).
I think the only reason it's good for pvp is a combination of weird class mechanics and that the other seals blow for it. (One eyed man is king, so to speak.)
I don't disagree with that. I'm not saying the 4x damage makes any sense - I'm saying the seal needs more love than just tweaking the judgement. I don't want a 16 k judgement. I want a judgement system that is based on utility but still provides damage.
Too many seals trying to do the same thing annoy me. We're not talking about strikes and on demand abilities like Rogues, DK's, and Ferals get that replace other skills - because they're on demand and the old ones can be weaved in. The closest analogy is Shaman weapon buffs. There's pretty much a single one that makes sense in a given spec/itemization. That isn't likely to change.
If I'm going to spend a talent on an ability that is intended to replace other skills, it needs to be numerically superior, not just "I have to use this for the burst damage because only through random delivery of high burst damage do I have a chance of killing something".
If it's too high in the tree for what it needs to do - fine, then move it. But it NEEDS to be a replacement seal. These aren't abilities that we can alternate - it's a 2 minute self buff for 15% of our mana.
On the gear I have today, a regular 3.0 JoC crit would not hit much lower than a 2.4.3 JoC crit on a stunned target. So yes, it is a very fair deal if we can cut the whining about our stupid burst and get back some essential dps and regen mechanic at the same time.
Edit : a little question about the new art of war - I don't think it has been answered, or i missed it :
How does it works if you don't have the three points in the talents ? Does it trigger the HoF cooldown and / or the GCD ?
Maybe it's naive from me, or silly or both, but if it didn't, then we could only take 1 point into the talent and smash the key until it works.
HoF at the moment seembs to be castable while stunned.
So you cast HoF, if you have 3/3 in the talent, it dispels the stun, if not it will have a chance to dispel it, or nothing at all if you got 0/0.
Last edited by Worldie : 09/02/08 at 1:16 PM.
Reason: added quote
SoC is the numerically best seal for Ret PvP though because it addresses the problems the other seals have (SoR can't crit, SoV takes too long to ramp up and can't crit, SoB hurts you) while bringing a significant amount of the mechanic you do need in PvP (random massive burst to pressure healers).
Saying that it is only good because the other seals suck is a fallacy. SoC does the job it should be doing (PvP seal) very well. It does blow all the other seals out of the water in terms of burst. It isn't good in PvE, but as I see it we have 3 other seals that do very well to use there. What is the problem with having a PvP specific 1-point talent? Rogues, Warlocks, Priests and Warriors all have that as well. If you're hardcore PvE go ahead and drop it for another point in Benediction or something.
SoC is the numerically best seal for Ret PvP though because it addresses the problems the other seals have (SoR can't crit, SoV takes too long to ramp up and can't crit, SoB hurts you) while bringing a significant amount of the mechanic you do need in PvP (random massive burst to pressure healers).
Saying that it is only good because the other seals suck is a fallacy. SoC does the job it should be doing (PvP seal) very well. It does blow all the other seals out of the water in terms of burst. It isn't good in PvE, but as I see it we have 3 other seals that do very well to use there. What is the problem with having a PvP specific 1-point talent? Rogues, Warlocks, Priests and Warriors all have that as well. If you're hardcore PvE go ahead and drop it for another point in Benediction or something.
What you call fallacy I call inductive. Looking at the other seals, they are horribly designed for PVP (glaring issues were listed by you).
PVP is about control, precision, and timing. Burst, yes - balanced against some measure of control and timing. Maybe with the new talents HoW will fill the void of that control - but the ONLY time you see any dps class in pvp use lower dps abilities is for control or controlled burst. SoC IS lower dps, and it offers no control or controlled delivery.
Just curious - what seal would ret use for damage if he can't use blood due to encounter design?
As it is right now Vengeance. Of course right now Vengeance does more damage than Blood anyway, but I expect that to be polished up during the balance pushes.
Originally Posted by Khaelarys
What you call fallacy I call inductive. Looking at the other seals, they are horribly designed for PVP (glaring issues were listed by you).
PVP is about control, precision, and timing. Burst, yes - balanced against some measure of control and timing. Maybe with the new talents HoW will fill the void of that control - but the ONLY time you see any dps class in pvp use lower dps abilities is for control or controlled burst. SoC IS lower dps, and it offers no control or controlled delivery.
I look at PvPers and see every one of them choosing to play "lower DPS". A rogue speccing Shadowstep does lower DPS than a Combat rogue. A PvE Arms Warrior spec does a lot more controlled damage than a PvP Arms. Ever seen a Frost Mage try to raid high endgame? PvP is all about trading that DPS for more control/burst/survivability.
Seal of Command is the same thing. You trade the consistently higher DPS of Blood (disregarding the hurting portion) for better controlled (and random) burst. With the Crusader Strike Glyph and the change to Improved Hammer of Justice Ret Pallys can count on some very powerful controlled burst every 30ish seconds. That is exactly why SoC is so powerful right now and why it does the job it was designed for.
Umm I probably should've asked 'what would you like to use?' If they remove SoV scaling from sheath as well, does that put it below command? And would you like to use command just purely as a game mechanic?
All these seals are kind of the same anyway though, here's a buff you'll do damage with them. All the numbers were crunched so this is the one you should be using.
Shamanistic rage is comparable to SoW as a game mechanic at least, but they don't give up windfury weapon for it.
I had forgotten completely about the ranged weapon spot. That indeed should make up any differences between the two classes. I have a feeling that the end result is going to be that any starting health differences between the two classes will be very negligible.
Effective health will be a different concern...and I'm afraid I don't have any math handy for that at this point in time. But as a pally's health scales up, the value of AD will go up as well, and should be taken into account. Have warriors been given any similar talents to extend their effective health at all?
Umm I probably should've asked 'what would you like to use?' If they remove SoV scaling from sheath as well, does that put it below command? And would you like to use command just purely as a game mechanic?
All these seals are kind of the same anyway though, here's a buff you'll do damage with them. All the numbers were crunched so this is the one you should be using.
Ideally I think Righteousness should fit the bill. It runs under the same mechanics of SoB (proc every attack). If the scaling gets adjusted and changed so it can crit but still does a bit less damage than SoB you get a cool little effect of "SoR is your bread and butter at level 1, then at level 64/66 you get the "Improved" version that does more damage but costs a little extra (health)".
As for how to balance a nerf to Righteousness for Prot and Holy, tack on some "Increases Damage/Threat/Whatever done by your Seal/Judgement of Righteousness by x%" onto Judgements of the Pure and Judgements of the Just.
I really think SoC should be completely balanced around being the PvP seal to the extent that things like Wyvern Sting and Riposte are. It shouldn't be useless in PvE, but it shouldn't be balanced around when designing class mechanics or encounters either.
One interesting thing that has come out of the new S/J system is that the "utility" portion and the "damage" portion of the old system have been split up. I think there is a strong case to remove the Seals of Light, Wisdom and Justice and to remove any balance issues that would have arisen through their use. I think Seals should all relate to damage output while the three Judgements provide the utility. It seems like a well oiled system, which is odd given just how... interesting... the current system is. Justice at least I'm sure will get removed/heavily modified, they nuked Rogue and Warrior RNG stuns, I'm pretty sure ours in next.
Also, has anyone found it odd that Seals aren't physical yet? Given that Judgements are now on the GCD it will be very very difficult for a Holy Pally in PvP to keep a seal up to Judge for JotP and JoJ. They really should just either make Seals physical or just turn them into short-term weapon imbues so that specs other than deep ret aren't penalized (Sanctified Seals would have to be changed, but I can think of some fun additional effects it could have, such as: "Increases your chance to crit by 1/2/3%. In addition you take 20/40/60% less damage from your Seal/Judgement of Blood and your JoC deals 10/20/30% more damage on stunned targets" or something like that").
E: Missed that part about SoV and Sheath.
If they did remove the sheath scaling SoV will come out a couple DPS (from the numbers I'm using ~7 DPS total) above on the seal but comes out much lower (~400) on Judgement damage. Of course that isn't counting Seals of the Pure, which will tip things back in favor of straight SoV. Ideally they just need to tone down the seal a bit.
Last edited by flyingtoastr : 09/02/08 at 2:42 PM.
You know, nobody complains about stun-JoCs being overpowered on live because they don't actually do double damage. The base damage on the tooltip is doubled, but the scaling part remains the same.
Strangely, for WotLK they decided to double everything for a stun, including the AP and SP-scaling bits. A more straightforward carry-over of the current JoC would be to double the weapon-damage portion for a stun, but not the scaling part.
Originally Posted by Thorgred
One suggestion I have seen for an AOE heal was called 'prism of light' - which 'refracted' 20% of your heals on one target to the nearest 5 needy people - the same doubling of heal output (100% + 5x20%) but split evenly between 5 people, is an enormous difference in the viability of AOE healing.
Holy has always seemed a lackluster tree to me. Compared to the Shaman healing tree--- look at things like Ancestral Awakening or the amount of bonuses that directly increase the amount healed by a spell.
As someone pointed out, the HL glyph does exactly this, although at only 10%, and it's a really cool effect. Having a more powerful version on a click-to-use-for-20-seconds basis as the 51 point talent would work, and the phrase "Prism of Light" conjures up some really cool graphics ideas. Picture soft beams of light from the primary target shining on each of the secondary targets. Not like the solid lasers of chain heal, but slowly spreading cones of light, as though the primary target is illuminating the secondary targets.
Also:
I've been reading this thread on the warrior WotLK forums.
They seem to be up in arms that Warriors are outclassed in every single way for tanking and they may as well quit now.
Whilst I disagree with most of what they're saying (it seems to be a lot of 'dey tuk ur jerbs!' and not understanding fully the changes) one point did stick out at me:
Paladins still have 16.6% stamina from talents. This was implemented because of the base HP difference between Warriors and Paladins which was multiplied by paladin's need to wear differently itemised gear. Come WOTLK however, base HP difference will be a much lower % of total, and we will be wearing fairly well the same gear. Paladins will be the tank with the highest HP - is that intended or just overlooked?
At the moment I haven't seen anything definitive on what the base hp gap at 80 is. It was ~400 at 60 and ~1200 at 70, so something like 2k at 80 wouldn't surprise me at all. As toast said, they can always fix this by tweaking CE and Vitality. Fundamentally it's not a great idea to try to balance a static difference by changing a scaling factor, but as long as the gear progression doesn't cover too large a range it will work.
Regarding the question of whether level 80 tanks will reach 2k stamina, the answer is: yes, easily. But talking about those numbers is meaningless until someone figures out exactly what the level 80 health gap is.
Originally Posted by Joasuf
If you have a look at the Holy Light Glyph...If the range was 10-15 yards it would be much more useful.
From the very limited testing I've done of this in groups, the range really seems to be longer than 5 yards. That could just be my perception, but it really feels like it has a 10 yard range on the splash, if not more.
Last edited by Cathela : 09/02/08 at 2:40 PM.
My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.
As it is right now Vengeance. Of course right now Vengeance does more damage than Blood anyway, but I expect that to be polished up during the balance pushes.
Forgive my ignorance, but why would it matter if SoV was better than SoB for DPS? I remember reading the discussion on SoR, and I do think being a lower level seal, that SoR shouldn't be better DPS for ret, but both Blood and Vengeance are effectively the same level seal (horde gets blood earlier, and alliance gets vengeance earlier if I remember correctly). I think I must have missed part of the discussion there. It would seem like it shouldn't matter which does higher DPS as long as ret gets one of them as a viable DPS seal. Is it just because people are used to SoB being the better DPS seal (currently in live) or was there a different reason?
Forgive my ignorance, but why would it matter if SoV was better than SoB for DPS? I remember reading the discussion on SoR, and I do think being a lower level seal, that SoR shouldn't be better DPS for ret, but both Blood and Vengeance are effectively the same level seal (horde gets blood earlier, and alliance gets vengeance earlier if I remember correctly). I think I must have missed part of the discussion there. It would seem like it shouldn't matter which does higher DPS as long as ret gets one of them as a viable DPS seal. Is it just because people are used to SoB being the better DPS seal (currently in live) or was there a different reason?
I think it comes down to 4 things.
1) SoV is the tanking seal. It seems sort of odd that the best seal is the same between tanking and DPS given that they're supposed to be polar opposites (Prot wants to produce the highest TPS possible and doesn't care about DPS, Ret wants to produce the lowest TPS and wants maximized DPS).
2) SoV just doesn't feel like a ret spell. When you think "Ret Pally" you think of a big angry Dwarf swinging a massive hammer to smite some evil™. SoV is a slow constant stream of damage, which doesn't seem to fit that vision very well.
3) SoB becomes a useless seal. At least when SoC was replaced it got to keep a niche (PvP). If something does better DPS than SoB no one will ever touch that seal, and useless abilities (*coughdetectmagiccough*) are boring.
4) SoV is really boring. SoB is exciting for the massive criticals.
So in reality there is no "official theorycraft" reason SoV can't whoop some ass, but it just leaves a sour taste.
Sanctuary is now definitely a class-defining ability that raids cannot do without - though suspect 25man raids would usually always have had a prot paladin before, it may hurt prot warriors and druids chances to getting in. (given DK focus on magic tanking, always likely to now bring one, particularly given anti-magic shield)
Maybe I missed this but don't forget that Sanctuary doesnt stack with a similar priest move, Grace. Unfortunately this is only available to Discipline Priest healers and lasts for a total of 8 seconds after that priest heals you, so compared to Sanctuary its woefully limited. Still, its an alternative.
Maybe I missed this but don't forget that Sanctuary doesnt stack with a similar priest move, Grace. Unfortunately this is only available to Discipline Priest healers and lasts for a total of 8 seconds after that priest heals you, so compared to Sanctuary its woefully limited. Still, its an alternative.
They were referring to added effect on BoSanc:
In addition, when the target blocks, parries, or dodges a melee attack the target will gain 10 rage, 20 runic power, or 2% of maximum mana.
If you decide not to raid with a Protection Paladin, does this mean having a healer spec 50/21 just to get the buff? I don't think that would fit the design philosophy of not having imperative talents, or at least having multiple classes be able to cover it.
I heard Sigurd scored an infinity on Rock Band and ascended to heaven.
09/02/08, 12:10 PM
SoB is exciting for the massive criticals.
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