The mechanical life of the WoW Paladin has been fraught with messiness. The late release beta re-tooling never fit quite right, and we had to wait until the first expansion to even get a spammable (if you can call 6 then 10 then 6 second ability spammable) attack at all. I remember just sitting there watching TV while solo questing (literally during the fights semi-afk) in early release, what kind of class is that?
They are so close to having a package that makes sense, and is clean, neat and tidy. It is my opinion that they need to do some more culling and some tweaks to get things right. I think they should also continue the recent lack of fear of re-tooling major mechanics for 3.0 to get these done.
Some of these are essentially repeats from me, some are new.
Regarding, in particular, the seal system, this is how I would do it, or at least a starting point for iteration:
Seals need to be redesigned by role. Abilities without a purpose are irrational and complicate design. Abilities with similar purposes cause one to be depreciated for the other.
Seals would have NO mana cost and 1 hour duration. You have a seal up, like an self aura (this would of course be factored into how we fix JotW).
All my design thoughts include a JoTW with an effect similar to the original, some kind of % of damage back as mana. % to be determined from testing/math.
DPS PVP Seal - SoC (Big Fatty Proc chance and judgments that punish the stunned)
DPS PVE Seal - SoR (Constantly increased DPS and slightly bigger than normal judgments)
Tank Seal - SoV (Building up a dot stack and judgment adds increased pure hate)
Healer Seal - SoL (Radically new SoL, adds +Healing and judgments cause an aoe heal near the caster)
SoB/M are removed, as you don't need multiplte seals that basically just add dps. That's what we are talking about right with SoB now, its about dps, straight WWS scanable dps. Proposed SoR does this.
With the new Judgments and JotW, SoW is a mechanic that I would just kill. I never have liked having to make a major sacrifice to DPS for such a small gain, and its existence irks me.
Where is SoJ? JoC takes care of the kiting bit, and the designers have demonstrated a desire to kill mace spec, and I would run with that, instead outside the seal system I would add basically a kick clone on a longer cooldown.
Regardless of how, the seal system is never going to make sense until they give each role it's seal, and stop the overlapping.
Just as a note, a poster at maintankadin was able to test it with a warrior and it is only giving 1 rage per dodge/parry/block, not 10. Not sure if the tooltip or the implementation is bugged, but 1 sounds a lot more on scale than 10 did. They didn't test runic power that I saw:
It is baseline in the sense that they moved the % increase in threat from holy damage modifier into the baseline ability. The talented version simply provides the % mitigation. The reason that wasn't folded into the baseline version is fairly obvious... making plate wearing, non-pushback suffering healers even "tougher" for PvP is obviously not what they had in mind (nevermind the fact that everyone goes up protection as it is to grab improved HoJ). All that being said, I still don't really understand why we couldn't just get a flat 10% from it like protection warriors get in defensive stance.
It is baseline in the sense that they moved the % increase in threat from holy damage modifier into the baseline ability. The talented version simply provides the % mitigation. The reason that wasn't folded into the baseline version is fairly obvious... making plate wearing, non-pushback suffering healers even "tougher" for PvP is obviously not what they had in mind (nevermind the fact that everyone goes up protection as it is to grab improved HoJ). All that being said, I still don't really understand why we couldn't just get a flat 10% from it like protection warriors get in defensive stance.
I understand that - I'm glad they rolled in the threat. But this isn't about push backs. It's still going to be dispelled by more classes than not. It's still going to turn off ret's threat reduction. It's still only 6%. Admittedly, my main concern here is that we'll have less baseline mitigation and less baseline health than the other classes. Threat is no longer an issue, so SOME sort of damage soak needs to be baseline for the class. That's purely my opinion.
At least we don't have to worry about our threat generation being dispelled while tanking now. Only our damage soak.
At least we don't have to worry about our threat generation being dispelled while tanking now. Only our damage soak.
A Paladin tanking no matter the spec still needs normal Righteous Fury up, which could be dispelled, just the 6% less damage part requires talents.
Regarding all this doom and gloom regarding Ret Pallies, the developers have a lot of options, such as reducing Ret mana costs, buffing Benediction, buffing JotW, or buffing Seal of Wisdom.
I am sure they will pick one in a build or two for testing.
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.'
Now that people are level 80, what of the sacred shield spell, or does it not work at all?
I believe it currently consumes the buff after absorbing the first 500 damage.
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?
If you decide not to raid with a Protection Paladin, a healer will still have to spec into Kings.
He then can easily pick up BoS as well, because all the other good talents will be out of reach.
... and then someone else has to pick up BoK as well, or else BoS is useless. (Unless you plan to leave your raid tanks with 9% less stamina, which you won't.) This is just the kind of crappy situation you can expect when two talented blessings are placed in the same tree. The only reason it hasn't been an issue so far is that prior to WotLK, BoS has been useless 98% of the time.
EDIT: In a similar vein, I think Conviction should be moved to tier 1 of Ret. Here's why:
1) Prot now has a number of crittable high-threat abilities. A crit HotR is cool, and a crit ShR is really fucking cool. Warriors have long enjoyed Shield Slam crits, because Cruelty is on Tier 1 arms. I would really like to be able to do the same thing for my tanking builds. In fact, I could even tolerate having Deflection on Tier 2 if the 5 prerequisite points could be spent in Conviction. (I don't mind spending 10 points in Ret to tank per se; what pisses me off is that the first 5 go to waste.)
The argument, of course, would be that Cruelty only affects damage, whereas Conviction affects heals and damage. Is getting +5% spell crit going to make a Prot paladin OP? Of course not. So for Prot at least, that's not an issue.
2) Ret is going to get Conviction no matter where it is in the tree, so this changes nothing for Ret specs.
3) So that leaves Holy. Right now you can't get Conviction, BoK, and BoL in the same spec, whereas with a tier 1 Conviction, that would be possible. Would that be overpowered?
I don't think so, and in fact I think it leads to a better balance for Holy specs, especially if BoK is left as a talent. If you're a Holy paladin speccing for raiding, you'd prefer that someone else handle BoK so that you can pick up Conviction. This is going to lead to a lot of "Okay, our prot paladin can't make it tonight; we've got the tanking covered and we have a disc priest, but someone has to respec for BoK."
It's better, I think, if Holy paladins can get Conviction and BoK, to avoid this kind of respec-gymnastics. (Obviously baselining BoK is a better solution, but it's also something that should have happened a long time ago and hasn't, so it may just not be in the cards at all.)
Last edited by Cathela : 09/02/08 at 6:21 PM.
My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.
Cathela, I pretty much agree with what you're saying about Conviction there. I'm eager to see blizzard's solution to those issues, and that little switch would probably ease some of the concerns with off-tree specing for holy and prot. I think another part of the solution could be to give the bottom end of the protection tree some more holy appeal. Some talents to spice up some of the hand spells in addition to Guardian's Favor could be a welcome addition.
Some examples:
You could include talents that
Lower the CD on HoSac/HoSalv or both
Lower the damage transferred to the paladin through HoSac (like Pain and Suffering)
Absorbs the next hit taken by the HoSalv target (like intervene)
Extend the duration of HoSalv (bigger aggro drop), give it an initial aggro drop (like Fade), or simply lower the threat produced while under the effects of BoSalv (i.e. cast it on a warrior when he pops recklessness)
Some talents along those lines could make the point expenditure to get BoK a little more Holy-friendly, though it still wouldn't really solve the issue of having 2 talented blessings in the same tree. The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that it only really works to make BoK baseline (and Aura Mastery is pretty lackluster as well). I guess this is why I'm waiting for the next round of changes to be announced.
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 really feel Conviction should stay where it is if for no other reason than to promote having to make a choice. If we move everything we want in all trees to tier one, why bother having the trees at all?
Currently, Holy CAN get it if they really want. So can prot. Both will have to make sacrifices.
If a retri wanted, say.. Illumination, he would have to make similar sacrifices. "Illumination (Conviction) should be tier 1 holy (ret), since Holy (Retri) will take it anyway and this would make it easier for Prot and Ret (Holy) to get it" is a poor argument IMO.
Note that it's late and I might have mis-read your post, but that's what it sounded like to me.
I kind of agree with Selenia. You cite the warrior talent Cruelty, but every single Warrior build takes Cruelty. I think that's excessive. I don't think there should be a talent which every build takes.
Some talents along those lines could make the point expenditure to get BoK a little more Holy-friendly, though it still wouldn't really solve the issue of having 2 talented blessings in the same tree. The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that it only really works to make BoK baseline (and Aura Mastery is pretty lackluster as well). I guess this is why I'm waiting for the next round of changes to be announced.
Replace Aura Mastery with Bok.
Replace Bok with Aura Mastery.
Holy has way more interest for Prot (SotPure, Divine Intellect, Unyielding Faith are all talents which have utility for prot), than Prot does for Holy anyway.
I kind of agree with Selenia. You cite the warrior talent Cruelty, but every single Warrior build takes Cruelty. I think that's excessive. I don't think there should be a talent which every build takes.
They're continuing this trend in Wrath though. Every single Priest is going to be nabbing Twin Disciplines in Tier 1 Discipline. Every single Resto and Balance Druid is going to grab Genesis in Tier 1 balance, and most every Druid will drop the 2 points into Improved Mark or Furor in Tier 1 Resto. Death Knight tank specs have at least 5 in every tree. Warriors all take Cruelty. Rogues try their darndest to get Malice. In Wrath every Rogue will be putting points into Tier 1 Combat for Dual Wield Spec and in that blue post about upcoming Rogue changes we even saw the devs mentioning that they want to put some Tier 1 talents in every tree that everyone wants! It's a remarkable design shift from the past; they want people speccing a couple points into every tree rather than the 0/0/61 trees we see today.
Ret is marked by having two very subpar talents in Tier 1. Improved Might (especially with it's unstackyness with Battle Shout) is still a 5 point dump to improve one blessing (and given how things are going with Kings and Sanctuary ret pallys might not even be buffing it!) and Benediction's craptastic mana conservation has been discussed to death.
I think Conviction in Tier 1 Ret is a great idea. As was pointed out earlier, all three specs like extra crit now. It makes perfect sence given the treatment all the other classes are getting.
BoK needs to be available to prot pallies. Period. It is the best buff in the game and it affects tanks the MOST out of any role - tanks will gain in excess of 2000 HP from this single buff, not to mention avoidance (from Agi) mitigation (Str->BV) and threat (Str->AP)
Moving it into Holy is just going to cause anxiety in prot pallies.
Either Kings becomes baseline, or something needs to be done to make Sanctuary and Kings buffable on the same person in a standard raid without multiple pallies speccing into Kings. Or both.
I think a good idea would be to have Sanctuary as either an addition to the tankadin's blessings (ie, "in addition to their normal affects, your blessings reduce damage taken by the target by 3%") or as a clickable ability akin to Shouts ("all damage taken by party and raid members within 20 yards is reduced by 3% and chance to gain mana etc for 2 minutes.")
As such a class-defining and raid-necessary ability i'm really wondering why kings isn't baseline yet. If it's too powerful for all pallies to have at 10% (which it obviously isn't as all raids must be tuned for kings at 10%) it could be reduced to 5% for baseline and then improved to 10% by tacking the ability onto Toughness or Anticipation.
Other things still concerning me:
Holy still is lackluster on all levels compared to other classes healing trees and abilities.
There is really nothing special in Holy- apart from the new Infusion of Light and the nerfed Illumination, there are no 'extra additions' to spells. Looking at Shaman healing again: They get an armor bonus on crit heals, healing wave increasing its own effect in a stacking way, guaranteed crit heals for 20 seconds, earth shield, and idiot-proof raid-healing talent, a cast-reduction/healing increase, and new spirit link. Even the standard talent in Resto 'reduce mana costs by 5%' is just about as good as our 5% crit talent as it saves the same mana- but it's constant and doesn't require 5points in another talent for it to work.
It is amazing that all these talents can be given to a class that already has superior base healing abilities.
The upcoming glyphs seem to solve problems, yet we shouldn't have to rely on specific gear/enchants/glyphs to counteract core class issue. SoL/SoW improving healing should have been done long ago.
Seals:
As said before by many, the seals are all far too similar in design. They also cost too much mana considering they need to be buffed at least after every fight, if not during. If they're being changed to 'long' durations, Blizz should take what they learnt from 5-min blessings... make them 15, 30 or 1hr blessings with near 0 cost akin to shaman weapon imbues.
If we really are having 4 different DPS seals they need to be radically different in damage types and functionality. Whilst at the moment they are slightly different, its not even a noticeable after 30 seconds into a fight.
I propose a different mechanic added to each of the high-level seals.
Ie: SoC - in addition to its current affect, will return mana to you = 33% of damage dealt.
SoV - Reduce damage dealt by the target by 0.5% per application
SoB - something to increase damage slightly.
That way SoV becomes the Tank seal, SoB becomes the premier DPS seal. SoC is still very useful for PVP, and if running low on mana you switch to SOC for 2-3 hits, suffer a minor DPS loss but replenish your mana bar. SoR eventually gets phased out, except for quick trash tanking fights where you don't need extra damage reduction (which is its best use in game currently anyway)
I propose a different mechanic added to each of the high-level seals.
Ie: SoC - in addition to its current affect, will return mana to you = 33% of damage dealt.
SoV - Reduce damage dealt by the target by 0.5% per application
SoB - something to increase damage slightly.
That way SoV becomes the Tank seal, SoB becomes the premier DPS seal. SoC is still very useful for PVP, and if running low on mana you switch to SOC for 2-3 hits, suffer a minor DPS loss but replenish your mana bar. SoR eventually gets phased out, except for quick trash tanking fights where you don't need extra damage reduction (which is its best use in game currently anyway)
I like this idea. I don't feel comfortable with the old JotW, nor to people wanting regen attached to something "we already do." There must be a sacrifice, or the damage itself will be nerfed. Look at shadow priest dps on live for evidence of this. I do think regen should scale. Giving SoC a regen component and SoB a +damage component solves this nicely.
We're finally moving away from the "utility seal versus DPS seal" system with the axing of Crusader and the splitting of the Judgements. Our utility comes from Judgement, our damage comes from seals, and it not only flows nicer but it is so much easier to deal with (which is why I still feel SoL/W/J need to get dumped as well).
With that system PvE ret will have to spec for SoC and have to weave it's crappy DPS scaling into rotations. It will be like playing an Arcane Mage, you want to use your high DPS ability as much as possible (SoB/Arcane Blast) but because of silly mechanics (SoC regen/AB mana eating) you are forced to weave in lower DPS abilities to stay afloat (SoC/Frostbolt). It's taking 2 steps forward and 1.5 back.
Avitus made a spectacular post in the Ret thread about why the old JotW worked perfectly for ret without any imbalance that I would highly suggest reading if you feel it was "too powerful".
It suddenly struck me, that perhaps being able to Beacon multiple targets actually is intended behavoir, balanced by low duration and mana cost. It's still very paladin-y as a multi-target heal, and quite flexible. The dynamics actually change a bit: you beacon the off-targets you want healed, like a HoT, but perform the effect by MT-healing. I'm going to assume that the mana cost and duration could be balanced to make it viable in that role; my main concern would be that the proactiveness required to set up a beacon group is prohibitive, in time, mana, planning, and foresight. This idea makes it seem to me more like a Hand sort of spell, come to think of it.
Crazy idea: Beacon (or hand?) of Light sets off a small CoH-type AoE heal from the beacon rather than just a heal on the Beacon. Merging old and new ones, basically. Or heals on the Beacon go AoE, because that makes a little more sense, sort of like the "splashing" HL idea but as a Hand buff instead of a glyph.
If a retri wanted, say.. Illumination, he would have to make similar sacrifices. "Illumination (Conviction) should be tier 1 holy (ret), since Holy (Retri) will take it anyway and this would make it easier for Prot and Ret (Holy) to get it" is a poor argument IMO.
Note that it's late and I might have mis-read your post, but that's what it sounded like to me.
It's more than just "I want the good talents easily." It's more like "Give me good choices in tier 1 that are useful to any spec." The Illumination analogy doesn't hold for me because while Illumination is certainly a great talent that many people would love to be able to pick up easily, it isn't relevant to the primary role of any tree except Holy. Conviction, on the other hand, enhances the primary role of all three specs. (Admittedly it helps prot a bit less than the other two, but extra crit is still nice in that it produces more threat.)
Regarding the broader question of putting "obviously good for anyone" talents in Tier 1, I do in fact think it's a good idea, because it opens up a broader range of options. The more places you have to spend points in usefully, the more options you have. As you say, a Prot or Holy build can pick up conviction "if they really want" but "wanting" in this case means "being willing to spend 5+ points on talents that are largely useless to you."
Suppose for example you're a tank, but you want to pick up Healing Lights. You'd rather not take eight points away from tanking to pick it up, because that sacrifices a good bit of your tanking capability. But the great thing is that you don't have to take eight points away from tanking to get it; you can spend five points in Seals of the Pure, which is a useful tanking talent, and then you can pick up Healing Lights. Or Unyielding Faith if you'd like the fear reduction, etc. That's an example of good design: effectively it gives you access to the second tier of Holy without requiring you to waste points on something that won't help you. Now SotP may not be your first choice of a tanking talent if it's a choice between that and, say, 1hSpec, but it's useful. It gets you something. Whereas bad design would be if the first tier of Holy was Divine Intellect and Imp. BoW or something like that.
Basically, what I'm suggesting is that the first tier of every tree contain talents that are useful to everyone, and which will therefore give a much broader range of effective spec options.
My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.
I don't really think they are anywhere near finished with the Seal system. There are too many mechanical deadends and too many illogical spells floating about. I wouldn't put money on them keeping Seals in their current form at this point.
What if they change Illumination to return mana on every crit, regardless of which ability, and not just on FoL/HL/HS? Holy Paladins would probably not notice it very much, Prot can't reach it realistically but they have the new BoS for regen and Retri would lose out on the 15% Strength to go for a quite possible 15/0/56 or 15/x/5x.
Of course it would not be real regeneration again, just longevity, but it'd at least scale with crit.
What I've talked about the specs in our guild it's easiest if retri gets kings and holy imp. BoW and BoM. If I need to get Illumination we are denied any access to prot tree (even +str, hello?!). There's really nothing I want from holy tree (except Seals of the Pure, but I suspect mechanisms will be changed so I don't use SoV or SoR anymore) so going 15 points deep in there to get basic viability is NOT an option.
I agree with Hylo, any mana regen for retribution needs to be in the retribution tree, it would make no sense otherwise. Just as holy and prot have their own regen talents in their trees (Illumination and BoSanct).
Personally the more I look at holy raiding PvE builds in WotLK the more I wonder what all the talk back in TBC about us being the 'heal / tank' hybrid was about. One of the things that defined the holy paladin in TBC was the ability to be able to swap from full output healing to decent trash and offtanking abilities (with a gear change) using the same spec. The mechanics of Zul'Aman and Mount Hyjal made that a really attractive option and quite a few holy paladins dabbled in tanking. I am not sure that the new WotLK holy paladin (given talents and given gear changes) will have the same versatility, and that is a pretty big change in philosophy.
I think that Conviction / Sheath of Light are currently too strong a lure in Retribution. It strikes me that Imp Dev Aura and Divine Guardian could be extremely strong healing-type talents. Guardian's Favor, Kings, and Imp RF are all useful to pick up. It seems a shame that you have to sacrifice so many talent points to get at them right in the top of Prot. A strong tier 1 talent in protection that would appeal to both holy and ret would certainly help.
09/02/08, 3:45 PM
to increase damage slightly.
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