Helot

We are already taken for our buffs. Every class is, and it's not like their trying to make every single buff multi-class.

I think at some time or another everyone has thought the same thing : "Damn, i wish i had kings". Usually because the people who do have kings aren't in the raid, and this turns into "Go respec kings plex".

Should one buff be so important that NOT having it requires a respec from a raider? Especially an 11-pointer?

Divine Spirit, from priests, is the only other spec'd buff that comes to mind that's remotely similar. People always want an Imp-DS Disc priest, and if there's more than one healing priest in the raid you can bet one of them is Imp DS. Given that Paladins are turning into such a diverse and multi-funtional class, setting a Key Blessing to a baseline ability at lvl 20 would be a logical step.

If you want to keep Prot's 'feel' in terms of owning kings, allow them to talent it for 1-2% more stats. Which is still significant, but not nearly as bad as 10%.


Regarding Retribution:
I love what they look like thier doing with Ret. I hate what they have done to it so far.

Don't get me wrong, i think it's a step in the right direction. But we're still tied down to cooldowns. We have no 'instant' attack because we are a mana-based class, and it's *damn* hard to work that into damage components. And as much as I wish we had something like DK's (runic power generating/consuming attacks) I don't think pallies will get that baseline. Perhaps as a deep ret talent (Turn DS into a mana-free attack, w/ 5% damage-to-mana?) that allows damage and mana-regen.

May I just say though, that other classes piss me off?
"What are you talking about? Ret's getting buffed!" Uh.. no, it's not.
"Your the most OP class on beta. QQ less" Sure, we *used* to be. Now our grind is a pain-bringing, mind-numbing, blue-bar watching trek.
"You won't lose your DPS slot in a raid" And.. what unique buffs do we bring again? Nope, sorry.. that's been covered. Oh, and Imp Might? covered by healers/tanks. CS? doesn't refresh judgements. so, you were saying?

Why do people try and convince me that my class is fine, will be fine, and has been fine? Oh right. They don't know Ret mechanics.

Chaith logs on
<zyl> Actually, I do like my paladin. He's fun to play, but don't tell Chaith.
<chaith> Looks like i logged in at the right time
<zyl> ....
<zyl> I pressed enter half a second after you logged on.

 

Spenda

Your point is well taken. My feeling is that a raid wide buff to stamina of 10% is a massive advantage that no raid would want to be without if it was an option. If it were not available, the three remaining Paladin blessings would still all be desirable, but none of them would feel required.

 

Myrdin

A combat res or soulstone is in the end a buffer against human error, which is bound to occur, but if you execute the fight as it is intended with no mistakes it is not needed. Kings however is different, as it affects the tanks health the healers MP5 (in the case of priests and druids) and the overall effectiveness of the raid, which means the fights have to be balanced around these buffs. If the option of Kings was not available however the Devs could easily balance encounters without that in mind and therefore three paladins will not be required.

In the end Kings is too powerful a buff to both balance fights without and make encounters a challenge with.

 

Tilted

I do have one bone to pick with the new BoSanc. It's so good that it's borderline required in 25-man settings, especially in fights with heavy raid damage. Most of us who tank for a living see the dodge/block/parry return and cheer at being able to tank stuff we outgear. But 3% reduced damage taken for the entire raid if you choose is a substantial reduction to the point where it will impact raid makeup. We already have kings/might/wis to buff, and with the addition as-is your raid leader pretty much needs to bring 4 paladins for the raid as a whole to be optimal. When each class gets "2.5 slots" in a 25-man raid, this is a problem.

Removing BoK would fix this, as would lumping in the 3% reduction into other blessings as mentioned earlier. And Battle Shout overriding BoM might as well, but the bottom line is Blizzard needs to avoid a situation where class stacking becomes prevalent again (Heroism spam, anyone?).

 

Khaelarys

I'm not trying to be argumentative - I know, mostly likely, it will be removed. I'm not even really trying to compare it with other abilities as much as I'm just trying to find the line where it isn't fair.

We all agree it is powerful. But the ability to return a dead healer back into play is better than 30 mana per five in certain circumstances. The ability to bring up a tank in a two tank fight is, VERY literally, the difference between a wipe and not. The mana regen on Innervate for a priest is ridiculously higher than the mana regen from kings. It's nice, but it's still just a stat buff.

I'm just trying to find at what point it isn't okay. I need something more than the leap from "that's too powerful" and "that's some unique flavor". Is it 5%? Is it 10% but not Stam? If there was a totem would it be cool?

Sanctuary and Kings are looking like required buffs. By my count, that's two still two paladins.

 

Myrdin

I think that returning a tank or a healer to a fight is a very powerful buff, but is should be balanced against our blessings and our judgements. As all three specs are going to be bringing the same judgment to the raid (as it seems it no longer scales). The 4% total mana every 4 seconds (not sure on the cooldown give a beta key please!). These are very powerful buffs and one that shouldn't be overlooked, especially as they cannot be replaced by any other class.

In the end those abilities are class abilities and not spec abilities and as blizzard are aiming for the magic 2.5 of each class (not sure about this but it seems about right) per raid and I think this is viable*. In the end if you need more than 5 combat resses // soulstones then you are doing something wrong. The same goes for blessings, no raid should need more than 3 blessings and should be able to make do with one or two.

*note that this is my opinion on how it should be in wrath and not how it is going to be.

 

Prinsesa

There isn't anything necessarily wrong with Sanctuary being a necessary buff.

Blessing of Might and Battle Shout share the same buff slot, while Sanctuary and Grace (Disc Priests) share the same buff slot. Even if we consider Disc Priests as raid unviable (although I certainly hope not), that's still just three Paladins for Kings, Sanc and Wisdom, because the Warriors will be taking Battle Shout*.

Again, the only real problem I see with Sanctuary is that Prot is the only spec that can reach Kings, but now Prot will want to buff Sanctuary for itself.

*Prot and Ret will definitely pick up Benediction in tier 1 Ret. It sucks, but mana is mana. Holy MIGHT pick up Improved BoM, but compare that to any Warrior who will absolutely have nothing to spend in Fury tier 3 except in Commanding Presence.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

kharen

Noticed a blue post in the Hunter beta forums that may offer some insight into how they end up handling Ret's mana issues:

Most likely the old incarnation of JotW had the same "bad scaling issues" (i guess in that it actually would scale, while mana consumption doesn't), and we'll get a replacement that restores a % of base mana.

edit: then again, taking that idea to it's logical conclusion would result in rage generation for warriors that was completely normalized, based on weapon speed modified for dw/2h/1h and not taking the damage done into account at all...

 

Milou

With 10% spell power from blessing of might, you'll very much want that over battleshout. If ret is not buffing improved might my personal immersion will be ruined! (lol).

But really that glyph means everyone except war/rogue/dk/feral will want kings, wisdom and might. With this new sanc, we're in a situation where there's 4 blessings that everyone really wants. Only kings and maybe sanc are /needed/ but that's still a glaring contradiction to 2.5 of each class per raid.

 

Prinsesa

Remember that Warrior Glyphs aren't in yet, so an equivalent spell power Glyph for Battle Shout remains a possibility.

To be honest, I don't know they didn't put Blessing of Wisdom and Mana Spring Totem within the same stacking category. That would have certainly helped cut down on mandatory Blessings.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Khaelarys

I honestly believe it's more a case of "they haven't yet".

 

Thorgred

As i dont have a beta forum access i thought i'd post my fun/not fun ideas here and see what other people think:
btw my background is primarily as a 5-10man tank, so that might make a few differences.


Prot:

The talent tree I'm looking at looks like this:
MANDATORY TALENTS
Seals of the Pure, Benediction, Deflection, 1/2 Imp Judgement.
Divine Strength, Anticipation, Toughness, Imp Righteous Fury, Sacred Duty, 1H Spec, Combat Expertise, TbtL, HotR, JotJ, Holy Shield, Avenger's Shield

And I still wish I had another 12points to spend in prot on Reckoning, Imp Holy Shield, Spell Warding...


TALENTS THAT ARE FUN:
FUN talents: Reckoning, Ardent Defender, Avenger's Shield, HotR, Holy Shield
Why? Because they do something other than a % increase to stats.

TALENTS THAT ARE OPTIONAL:
There is a little leeway for 7 more points to spend somewhere if I dont take the bloat that is Redoubt/Shield Spec - those points would go to reckoning and Imp Holy Shield. Even then i cant get 5/5 and 2/2 Reck/Imp HS because of the sparsity of talents low in the tree.

BLOATED AREAS:
Everything from tier 3 downwards is fairly good for tanking. I'd be happy investing into any of those talents, if we weren't so short on points. (i'd go imp HoJ but only because i rarely raid)
Everything from tier 6 down is mandatory (Guarded by the Light is a slight exception - its good but not fantastic).
To get everything we need in the lower tree we must skip some very good talents such as reckoning and shield spec, as well as some other fairly good talents (Imp Devo)

TALENTS I'D NEVER GET:
Spell Warding, Stoicism, Guardian's Favor, Imp HoJ.
Spell Warding and Imp HoJ could even be alright talents-- they just suck compared to everything else.

TALENTS THAT DON'T FUNCTION WELL:
Sanctuary has, at long last, been fixed. However there is now the problem that it is so good and only a prot pally can provide it. Similarly, the prot pally has to also provide Kings. There are 3 solutions to the problem:
1) Remove kings entirely.
2) Make Kings a baseline ability
3) Change Sanctuary again so that it is either a passive buff (combined with Aura or Righteous Fury say) or applies to all the Prot pally's blessings.

Reckoning and Redoubt: Scale backwards with avoidance. Change these talents to "on block/parry/dodge/resist" rather than "on damage".

Guarded by the Light - this was so much better in its previous incarnation - now i'm glad that it is so bad that i dont have to take it. I think there needs to be ONE mana reduction talents in a 2-3pt talent.

Touched by the Light - what is the point to this spell? To give threat whilst tanking, or to be able to heal in tank gear, or heal in heal gear whilst tank spec?
I'd say that if it is either of the first two options, the second part of the spell could be reworked. Similarly, if its the third option, we're not going to have huge amounts of stam in heal gear. Compared to Sheath in the ret tree, which allows ret to heal very effectively whilst in melee gear (considering they'll have high crit and haste rates and twice as much SP as us after the conversion).
This could perhaps be reworked as the mana reduction talent: 33% chance on casting any spell that the mana cost of your next spell is reduced by 50%.

Tier 1 Ret: make it more appealing please? Both the talents are fairly lackluster to any Prot or Holy paladin.


SEAL SYSTEM:
Why are seals on a 2 min timer with such a high mana cost? I dont think there would be many classes in the game that have 25%+ of their damage on an expensive 2 min timer. Can't this be a free cost or a 30/60 min duration?
MANA ISSUES
By the time a tankadin has made the pull he will have cast: Seal (14%) Holy Shield (10%) Consecrate (22%) Avenger's Shield (26%) Shield otR (6%) Hammer otR (6%) = 84% mana used within the first rotation. Something has to change there.

 

Smurrf

Good points on the mana issues. While I'd seen numbers posted for Ret's cycle, and lots of talk about that, I hadn't seen something similar for the first round of a primary tank's rotation. However, if the tank is using ALL of that, then that implies he's getting main aggro, meaning that either through SA and/or BoS, he's getting a fair amount of mana back, right? Question is, is it enough?

 

PSGarak

Spellpower from BoM may not stack with Demonic Pact (and various other things that do not stack with Demonic Pact). My gut is that, like glyph of blessing of wisdom, it's a self-buff solo-grinding buff for retadins, and possibly a demonic-pact wannabe in 5/10-mans.

You often see a battle rez or innervate on a progression fight, but do you often run through 2-3 and find yourself wishing you had another? We're not talking about having a normal number of druids, we're talking about dropping your paladins for stacking druids, which means you're comparing it to your 4th or 5th battle rez. Not nearly as useful. Granted, the first time my guild killed Magmadar the main tank died literally 6 times, but in general your second or third death is the beginning of a wipe, not a single-person slip.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Thorgred

Hmm.
The current theoretical rotation uses Judgement, Holy Shield and Consecrate every 9 secs, ShieldOTR and HammerOTR every 6, and reseal every 2 mins.
thats 6.25% base mana every second used, starting at a deficit of between 26-40% of base mana used on Seal+AS.
Factor in JoW @ 4% mana every 4-8 seconds (lets say it returns 0.66% mana every sec) and replenisment (0.5% mana every sec)
that means a paladin would need to generate 5.1% mana every sec: given a mana pool of 4500 (?) that is 2175 incoming damage per second (after mitigation) required to sustain a full rotation.

Hmm, not too bad actually-if maintanking anything lv80+ you should be taking that much damage. I think the main problem is the mana consumption of Avenger's Shield.Seal. 26% is huge on an ability that is only used every other pull. Guarded by the Light is still 2 points that i dont have...
Avenger's Shield - 6% base mana plox
And resealing costs are still enormous.

 

zenos

Regarding the "Kings should be removed from the game" sentiment. I couldn't disagree more. For 25 mans I follow the reasoning but for 5 man, 10 man and small scale pvp Kings is a great addition to a paladins toolset. Making it baseline is the likely fix, removing it from the game is just throwing your hands up at the issue.

The new BoSanc will be mandatory in progression raiding. The existing grace talent is poorly implemented and doesn't offer the additional resource generation. Kings should be made baseline and BoSanc should be unlinked from Holy Shield and moved to a Tier 2 talent.

While 25 mans may be balanced around Kings, 2v2 PVP isn't nor 3v3 nor 10 mans.

 

• Avitus

I'd like to add to the whole blessings (and specifically BoK) discussion.

Here's how I imagine blessings would go:

-Holy paladin: Imp BoW

-Prot paladin: Considering how powerful BoSanc is now, I'm going to assume any raid that runs a prot paladin will buff it. Which means someone else has to buff Kings.


Problem 1:

Who blesses BoK?

-Holy? I don't think so. No other spec can reach imp BoW. Additionally going 15 points up the ret tree (regardless whether going for sheath or not) grants Holy paladins 5% crit to spells (through Conviction). There's no choice anymore in going holy/prot for trash tanking since any hardcore holy paladin will have to go holy/ret for those 5% spell crit to optimize. In contrast going holy/prot gives a holy paladin nothing at all to healing, their "main purpose/role".

-Prot? As established, they will want to bless BoSanc. If they have to do Kings, you're just sacrificing one good buff for the other (and that won't fly with heavily optimizing raid groups).

-Ret: Ret will be forced to spec for kings, there's no way around it. There's no "choice" here and unfortunately it also means wasting 5 talent points in prot on talents that are useless for raiding (stoicism, guardian's favor).

It feels like they want to go back to ancient times where BoK was a 31 point Ret talent, only this time everyone has to pay in useless talents or lose useful alternatives (holy losing conviction) in order to get it.



Problem 2:

Assuming you want "max buffs" (you do), a warrior will be doing Battle shout instead of Ret doing BoM (which will become a buff only useful when soloing or in small parties when not teamed up with a warrior).

Which means, Tier 1 of the Ret tree has become worthless for every spec. It's a choice between improving a blessing that won't be used and a completely worthless talent (hint: Benediction has to go).



Suggested solutions:

For problem 1:

-Move BoK down one tier in Prot, from T3 to T2. Ret won't have any problem taking it without wasting 5 talents and holy can grab it along with 4/5 conviction in holy.

or

-"The obvious one": Make BoK baseline.

or

-Move BoK anywhere else where it's easily accessible, T1 prot, T1-T2 ret, no spec would mind putting points there actually (every spec will at least want to go as high up as T2 in ret anyway).


For problem 2:

In general I think the ret tree needs some major reshuffling.

-Delete the Ret T1 talents.

-Stick Conviction in ret T1 (same as most classes having 5% crit somewhere in T1 in one of their trees).

-Create a new Imp BoM talent to take the place of Conviction in T3, however have it have some sort of additional (personal) benefit, now that it's a T3 talent. Something comparable to the warrior 5 point talent Commanding Presence in T3 which gives +25% to Battle Shout as well as Commanding Shout so taking it doesn't feel like a forced necessity to continue up the tree.

or

Kill two birds with one stone by creating a new 5 point talent instead of "imp BoM" and call it "Improved Assault Blessings":

"Unlocks Blessing of Kings and increases the attack power bonus of your Blessing of Might by 5/10/15/20/25%"

 

flyingtoastr

Is that counting the cost reductions from Benediction (*twitch*), Guarded by the Light and Shield of the Templar? Assuming mana cost reductions are still multiplicative you'd be looking at 15% off Seals, Judgements, Holy Shield and Shield of Righteousness, 30% off Consecration and 40.5% off Avenger's Shield.

Assuming a base mana pool of 4100 the costs (modified by the talents) would be:
Seals: 488
Judgements: 174
Holy Shield: 349
Shield of Righteousness: 209
Consecration: 631
Avenger's Shield: 634
Hammer of the Righteous: 246

So a given rotation is just over 208 mana/second plus a one time pulling cost of just over 600 (I included the seal cost in the rotation). Given that Replenishment is 20.5 mana/second at a base mana pool (pathetic isn't it?) and JoW is, with that rotation, about 20.3 mana per second (a prot pally's effective JoW cooldown with a 2.3 autoswing is 4.039 seconds, that's damn good!) you're looking at a defecit of just over 167 Mana/second. Taking 1670 damage/second isn't too terrible actually. And with BoW and Mana Spring you jump back into the positive (assuming they remain stacking) and the extra regen from BoS, while not terribly large, is quite nice as well.

More regen would be useful for offtanking though.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Rasczak

Whats mana consumption like solo as prot? Adding SotR and HotR as well as the changes to stacking str means we should be able to kill things reasonably fast, but at 5.6% mana use per second (5.1% + .5% from not having replenishment) means we would go dry in about 18 seconds. Dropping consecrate and HS cuts it to 1.6% of base per second which still means we will go oom in about a minute which means drinking every other mob or so which is pretty fucking annoying.

Edit: flyingtoastr replied while I was typing so it looks like we might be near mana stable dropping consecrate and HS with BoM up which isn't great but is alright, especially if we can actually kill things in a timely manner.

Is HotR 1h only or could you swap out for a 2h for farming and still use it? Would that actually improve our dps over SotR?

 

Prinsesa

HotR currently requires one-handed weapons.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

PSGarak

In any place where BoK is assumed, removing it is functionally equivalent to making it baseline, except for easing up the composition logistics. In 5-mans, some 10-mans, and arena, you have to justify *why* paladins need/deserve/are balanced around that part of their toolkit. You make a good point that removing the talent is not symmetric in how it affects 5-mans, however I would argue that the presence, rather than the absence, of kings is the abberent case. I could see, perhaps, making it a buff that doesn't stack with Commanding Shout/Blood Pact (or, alternatively, PW:F), since the stamina is really the unbalancing part of the buff. But the amplificatin of a character, especially in serious 10-man raids, borders on the sort of "required" that the buff-revamp was supposed to eliminate, and therefore puts BoK squarely on the chopping block.

Personally, I think holy shield should be moved up to 21 points because it's very much at the core of paladin threat and mitigation, and an (eg) 40/21/0 healer could be a viable trash tank without respecing. Whether Holy Shield remains the crux of prot tanking depends on what they do with block mechanics, and holy shield may get scrapped and re-envisionsed like shield block did.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

DarKNecross

In reply to Avitus:

Your argument falls apart when the Holy Paladin buffs the raid with Improved Blessing of Might and Improved Blessing of Wisdom. Since Holy Paladins aren't going to be buffing Kings, there's nothing else in the Protection tree worth getting (except Divine Guardian, which is a 17pt talent sink). Obviously, regardless of being Beacon of Light or Sheath, they're going to pick up Conviction, and Imp BoM is on the way.
With 3 Paladins (1 Holy, 1 Prot, 1 Ret), only 3 groups won't get every buff. Hunters, Ret Paladins, and Enh Shaman won't get Blessing of Sanctuary. Everyone else will be covered.

I think people are overvaluing Blessing of Sanctuary's potency. The new BoSanc is amazing - for tanks. 3% damage reduction on a 9k hit means taking 8,730 damage: 270 less damage. I'd hardly call that mandatory. With the changes to downranking, I'm expecting to see frequent overheals as well.

http://crimson-guild.com

 

• Avitus

What's Imp BoM have to do with my argument?

BoM isn't even a consideration, a warrior can do that. The problem is ret being forced into wasting 5 points in useless talents to get BoK (or Holy sacrificing conviction). Both are unacceptable.

??

 

• Chicken

Based on actual experience it's not all that bad, I spent a lot of time swapping my gear around though before eventually settling on about half healing gear (For mana regeneration mostly) and half tanking/dps gear. I didn't settle on that until after I got Shield of Righteousness though, which with [Tome of the Lightbringer] results in a rather bursty style of damage, meaning that I could swap out more of my "dps" gear for healing gear and still keep the same approximate killing speed (Difference of 1 or 2 seconds for normal mobs at most, which was easily made up for by being able to keep going endlessly).

This was before some of the recent changes though, but with that gear setup the new JoW is actually ~100 more mana per proc than I got from it before, and it's also without benefitting from the new Blessing of Sanctuary (I was using Blessing of Might instead for more damage and a stronger JoW). The change to make every thing scale on base mana % shouldn't change much either, the only spell I used for grinding that would be affected by it would be Holy Shield, and the level 75 rank of Holy Shield actually got cheaper compared to what it used to be.

Edit: You'd also have to try really hard to only kill two mobs in a minute now. I kill normal mobs in ~12 seconds in my above mentioned gear combination. Even some of the 3-man elites with ~150k health takes less than four minutes to kill.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

Blutelf

Holy Tree Feedback thread just opened.

Let's try to make the Holy Tree a bit more shiny.