PSGarak

An interesting aside: a warlock talent is now listed as reducing the global cooldown by more than 0.5 seconds (0.7 seconds on Amplify Curse). I am curious if ret's FoL now has a 0.5s GCD.

So... BoK is now the Holydin's 5-point prot investment? It's still odd in the prot tree, since protadins will be using BoS. It's easier to for everyone else to snag it and still get important talents like iBoM+Benediction+Conviction or Divine Strength, but it's still a talent in the prot tree that's mostly for non-prot specs.

Protection also looks really sparse. It could stand a few non-essential fillers at this point.

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

 

Prinsesa

Protection:

* Improved Holy Shield removed: Holy Shield is now 8 charges baseline, although the damage on the tooltip does not indicate that the Improved talent's damage was rolled in.
* Combat Expertise trimmed: Now 3 points for 6 expertise, +6% STA and +6% crit chance (Old: 5 points for 5 expertise and +10% STA)
* Redoubt and Shield Spec merged: 3 points for +30% block value and 10% chance to chance to increase block chance by 30%
* Spell Warding and Guarded by the Light merged: 2 points for 6% spell damage reduction and 30% mana cost reduction on Holy Shield, Avenger's Shield and Shield of Righteousness (Old Spell Warding was 2 points for 4% spell damage reduction)

Retribution:

* Deflection moved to tier 1
* Benediction changed: Reduces mana cost of all instant cast spells by 10% at 5 points (Old: Reduces mana cost of Seals and Judgement by 15% at 5 points)
* Improved Blessing of Might changed: Now 2 points for +25% AP (Old: 5 points for +25% AP)
* Pursuit of Justice changed: Now reduces Disarm duration by 50% and increases movement speed by 15% at 2 points (Old: Increased chance to be missed by spells by 2% and increases movement speed by 15% at 2 points)
* Crusade changed: Increases all damage dealt by 3%, plus another 3% against Humanoids, Demons, Undead and Elementals at 3 points (Old: Increases damage dealt against Humanoids, Demons, Undead and Elementals by 3% at 3 points)
* Sanctified Seals moved to tier 4 (swapped places with Improved Retribution Aura)
* Divine Purpose changed: moved to tier 5 Ret and reduces chance to be hit by spells and ranged attacks by 4% and gives Hand of Freedom a 100% chance to remove stun effects at 2 points (Old: Reduces chance to be hit by spells and ranged attacks by 3% and reduces duration of movement imparing effects by 30% at 3 points)
* Vengeance changed: 3% bonus to Physical and Holy damage after a crit, stacks 3 times; 9% bonus when fully stacked. (Old: 5% bonus, stacks 2 times; 10% bonus when fully stacked)
* The Art of War changed: moved to tier 7 Ret and increases the critical strike damage of Judgement, Crusader Strike and Divine Storm by 20% and reduces the cast time of Flash of Light by 1.5 seconds when any of these abilities critically hit at 2 points (Old: reduces all damage taken by 3% and gives Hand of Freedom a 100% chance to remove stun effects at 3 points)
* Judgements of the Wise changed: In addition to granting the Replenishment effect to 10 party/raid members, also grants you 20% of your maximum mana after casting a Judgement.
* Sheath of Light moved to tier 9 ret (swapped places with Divine Purpose)
* Divine Storm changed: costs 12% of base mana (Old: costs 20% of base mana)

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

◊ Cathela

That' what the data mining on mmo-champion says too. If there's one thing I never would have thought needed a buff it was ShR, but it's getting a base damage buff and a larger talent bonus.

Old fully talented ShR: 230% of block value, 5.1% of base mana
New fully talented ShR: 312% of block value, 4.2% of base mana

That's not even factoring in the buff to 1-h spec or the new Benediction. I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, but holy crap.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

• Arikah

copy/paste from mmochamp:

Holy-

* Divine Plea changed so that you gain 25% of your total mana over 10 sec, but the amount healed by your spells is reduced by 50%
* Seal of Light - Unleashing this Seal's energy will deal [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 1 ] Holy damage to an enemy. (Damage reduced)
* Seal of Wisdom - Unleashing this Seal's energy will deal [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 1 ] Holy damage to an enemy. (Damage reduced)
* Seal of Righteouness - Fills the Paladin with holy spirit for 2 min, granting each melee attack [ 2.8% of MWS * AP + 5.5% of MWS * Spell Power ] additional Holy damage. (Damage reduced)

Talents

* Holy Guidance (Tier 8 ) now increases spell power by 4/8/12/16/20% of your intellect. (Previously was 7/14/21/28/35%)

 

Kroeger

anyone else concerned that the SoB glyph might end up being like the prot T6 set bonus? only gettin us effectively 11% mana back from heals?

 

SSWarder

another important change is divine plea now on 1 min cooldown! it's simply amazing from a ret/prot perspective, not so sure about holy since -50% healing output for 10 seconds is alot...

Divine Plea - Spell - World of Warcraft

edit: beaten :P

 

Noctivagant

Ok, here’s a rough, let me stress rough, 120 second (the life of a seal) mana accounting statement.

The idea here is to just see if we are water tight on mana, not sim a real fight.

Edited Corrections: I forgot about the new Benediction! I also am assuming base = max, YMMV for holy. I added in JoW debuff as well.

Note: I guessed that in most 2 minute spans, you aren't going to have that many HoW's maybe 3 as an upper bound? Again this is not a sim =)

Consumed:

15 JoX = 4.5 * 15 = 67.5%
20 CS = 7.2 * 20 = 144%
12 DS = 10.8 * 12 = 129.6%
1 seal = 12.6%
3 HoW = 32.4%
4 HoJ = 10.8%

396.9%

Gained:

15 JoX = 300%
Replenishment = 60%
2 Divine Plea = 50%
30 JoW debuff = 60%

470%

This is more than enough to have a perpetual motion machine when sticking to the main rotation, with some left over for various applications.

 

Nakari

Hammer of the Righteous seems to have it's one-handed weapon requirement removed, and the damage was increased to 120% weapon damage as holy damage (from 100%). Funny how it's superior to CS now...

Edit: Apparently, the skill description skill has the 1H-requirement, it's just the talent that doesn't show it.

 

• Arikah

this sounds excellent, thanks for math-nerding it for us ;p Did you remember to subtract the 10% from all spells because of benediction?

it is also exactly what we asked for; neutral mana (even slightly positive) while using normal rotations, with a mana loss during heavy rotations or healing.

 

Zaroua

You're not taking into account Judgement of Wisdom. The mana costs are based on your base mana. Mana gains are based on your total mana. Your post is extremely innacurate.

Edit: Not counting Benediction either.

Dogma also claims that God has a sense of humor and at times presents Him as a joker of sorts, thus again lowering Him to human level. While I am certain God has a "sense of humor" since He gave it to us, I find it most difficult to believe He finds humor in sin since He will cast the unforgiven sinner into the lake of fire for eternity. Not very funny at all.

 

flyingtoastr

Because Improved Ret Aura, Blessing of Kings and Improved Blessing of Might are much nicer to have for both offtanking and raid utility than 15% on the seals we won't be using.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?pala...00000000000000

The last 1 point can either be put into an incomplete PvP talent, Seal of Command, or whatever the Tier 3 single pointer Prot talent.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Noctivagant

First of all, you are right, and I am sorry for the inaccuracy. I am correcting it and doing what I can to get it closer.

Extremely is a bit harsh. I was in the middle of editing for Benediction when everyone responded =p

I did, however forget JoW debuff, and I assumed that base mana ~ max mana for a Ret, which may not be accurate, and is certainly not accurate for a person coming from Holy.

I was trying to just throw something out real quick to see where we were at, and we are clearly water tight on mana with a normal rotation. It demonstrates that clearly.

 

Rasputin

You missed Improved Hammer of Justice, which I would classify as one of if not the best pvp talent available. What I came up with in the new trees are:

PvP

PvE

 

◊ Cathela

The tooltip has always read the same, and it's always done 100% weapon damage on each target. So, absent any other information, assume 100% still.

Yes.

I really don't understand the logic behind making BoK a five-point T1 talent as opposed to just making it baseline. It's too powerful to be baseline, but it's just fine if it's a first-tier talent? I don't really think it's worth making a big deal over at this point, since the solution they've implemented pretty much fixes the problem, but it just seems silly.

As for Prot being sparse, I agree. It feels weird to be complaining about this after so much time spent bitching about the opposite problem, and there's no question that the new Prot tree is vastly better than the old. But right now, the way you make a raid tanking spec is like this:

1. Put five points in Deflection.
2. Put one point in Imp. Judgements, or maybe two if you want to do something other than a 6/9 rotation.
3. Put five points in Divine Strength.
4. Put five points in Anticipation.
5. Put five points in Toughness, and three in Improved RF.
6. Put two points in your choice of tier 4 talent. Optionally spend a third point if you'd like to max out Imp Devo/Imp HoJ.
7. Click repeatedly on every talent tier 5 and deeper in Prot until they all turn yellow.
8. Spend the remaining 7-8 points wherever you want; Benediction and SotP are always fun.

Basically we've gone from "fat, bloated tree with way too many mandatory talents" to "slim, tight, efficient tree that gives you everything cheap". Needless to say, the second situation is a vast improvement on the first. But it would be nice to have some "optional" talents in Prot to give some interesting choices. It doesn't have to be a lot; two talents with like five total points would be great. Just something interesting we can think about.

(This should not be taken in any way to diminish my immense pleasure with the new state of the Prot tree. Just to be clear I think it's really really really good now.)

Yeah, it's basically been that way since the beta trees were first unveiled. I was upset about it at first when I first discovered that it couldn't be used with a 2-h, but right now it seems like a Prot spec will do more damage with a shield equipped than it could ever do with a two-hander anyway.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

flyingtoastr

Instead of attacking other people's posts why don't you be constructive and help? ast time I checked one of the rules here was to post constructively about things, not just whine someone did math a little off.

Forget it, I will. 4100 base mana and 7600 fully buffed.

Base Costs
Divine Storm: 492
Judgement: 205
Seals: 574
Crusader Strike: 328

With Benediction
Divine Storm: 443
Judgement: 185
Seals: 517
Crusader Strike: 295

6/9/11 Cycle
Divine Storm: 40.27 /sec
Judgement: 20.56 /sec
Seals: 4.31 /sec
Crusader Strike: 49.17 /sec

Total Consumption: 114.31 mana/second

Regen
Replenishment: 38 /sec
JotW: 168.89 /sec
JoW: 38 /sec

Total Regen: 244.89 mana/second

Total increase: 130.58

Incidentally for PvE Consecration works out to be 112 mana/second, making it the perfect fit into our regen cycles, giving us just enough extra to throw in for Hands, Cleanses, AW, FoL's, etc. Very well designed.

On a side note, does anyone else find it strange that Art of War is a .75/1 second reduction? I would think it would be meant to be like the new Enhancement Shaman change to throw out some instant (yet small) heals in between cooldowns at a .75/1.5 second reduction. I'll have to wait and see I suppose.

EDIT: Improved Holy Shield was removed, forgot to mention that. HS now has a base 8 charges.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

GSH

Because under the old system, BoK effectively cost 11 points for Ret or Holy. Now it only costs 5. So even though it's an absolute increase in costs, it's now effectively cheaper for Ret or Holy builds.

The problem (density-wise) with Prot is it doesn't have any PvP talents at the high end, because you don't PvP as Prot. Traditionally, PvP talents are the talents that get skipped in PvE builds. So if we get a new talent that is at all useful for PvE, we hear the "bloated" cries once more.

 

Noctivagant

First of all thanks for the proper math =)

My scribblings were base, erm based for just quick and easy napkin math for Ret, but you have also shown, that with the gains being tied to max, there is really going to be noticeably more mana profit when buffed to the gills.

 

SSWarder

I belive you forgot divine plea in your calculations, if used on cooldown it's worth arround 31.6 /sec

 

Antmanton

Ugh. Holy Guidance gets nerfed, seal damage across the board takes a beating, and Beacon still sucks, only now you have nothing better to do with your points than to hold your nose and take it. So much for cross-tree synergy.

As I feared, the weakness in upper-tier Holy was "addressed" by filling up the early tiers of Ret and Prot with mostly crap. Kings as a five-point talent is terribly, horribly bad, and still doesn't fix the problem of two mutually exclusive talented blessings in the same tree. Tier 3 Prot basically doesn't exist anymore. Ret side is slightly better off; Benediction does have some benefit to Holy Shock, Cleanse, and Consecrate spam, Conviction still helps your crit, and Sanctified Seals adds still a little more. While 14% crit is doubtless very good (and probably due to be nerfed), it leaves a very bland feeling now that Sheath is firmly out of reach for Holy.

Additionally, based on GC's comments about Beacon somehow being "too good," I'm getting a very bad vibe that Holy is being considered as mostly done now. Unfortunately, if this is the case, and especially with the new raid buff stacking mechanics, I fail to see how Blizzard really addressed the underlying undesirablity of the healing paladin in top-end raids and arena PvP. Beacon is a bandaid over the lack of AoE heals, and while a buffed Holy Shock with Infusion of Light covers a multitude of sins regarding mobility, why would you want a healer relying on crits and gimmicks instead of bringing a druid to spam HoTs and Lifeblooms without worrying about a bad run of non-crits killing a tank during a movement phase?

At any rate, I find myself now a lot less excited about the expansion than I was yesterday.

 

Khaelarys

-- Deep Ret and deep Prot need 1 or 2 more cool talents. We'll carve out room by bundling or just swapping out some of the current talents.


Looks like we're still not quite complete yet, this is just the first push of our changes.

 

◊ Cathela

Concerned? I was basically assuming it would be.

The new glyphs are nice, but we still need a lot more work done on our glyph situation overall. For comparison, if you look at the warrior glyphs (at the bottom of this mmo-champion post) you can really appreciate the difference in quality and polish between the warrior glyphs and the current paladin glyphs. Right now, the only paladin glyph I really see as a "must have" for tanking is the RD glyph (which may or may not be obsoleted by gear depending on what the base resist chance is). Conversely, when I think about glyphs for my prot warrior alt, I see no less than twelve that look appealing in some way or other.

What's more, I see interesting synergies between talents and glyphs, and between glyphs and glyphs. Free Heroic Strike after a Revenge, and a rage gain if the HS crits, along with the Prot talent to increase HS crit chance. Shorter charge cooldown, longer charge range, and talent to charge while in combat and in any stance. Free sunder on a second target, and two sunders for each use of devastate (maybe this one won't stack that way, but still.)

I don't really see any of that with the paladin glyphs. I suspect (and hope) that this is because the warrior glyphs were the last ones to be done, and they've gotten better and more creative at glyphs as they've gone along, and they'll be redoing the glyphs for other classes as they continue to revise and finalize the talents.



And also, I just noticed there's a big gaping hole at 11 points in Prot. It's not just that we have no "special" 11-point talent, I mean literally if you look at the layout of the talents, there's a big empty space between Imp. RF and Toughness. There's no other talent tree that doesn't have some kind of special talent at 11/21/31/41/51, and there's no other tree (to my knowledge) where there's an actual gap between the talent boxes without an arrow going through it.

So hopefully this means we still have something extra coming. Personally I'd like to see a backup taunt; something analogous to mocking blow or challenging shout, for example. Except different and unique and cool, like everything should be.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

◊ Cathela

EDIT: Dammit, dammit, dammit. Sorry about the chain post.

Yeah, I see that BoK still costs 5 points; it just seems like an unnecessarily fine distinction to me.

Look at it this way: If they had another talent that would fit well in Tier 1 of Prot, do you think they'd even hesitate to just make BoK baseline?

Well, first of all the existing talents have been slimmed and consolidated to such a degree that there's a pretty large amount of slack. You can get the essential talents -- including Deflection, Imp. Judgement, and everything in T5-11 Prot -- and still have half a dozen points left over for extras. Adding a talent or two deep in Prot just gives you more options for those points.

Second, per my post on the last page, I'd actually be happy to see some interesting PvP talents in the deeper half of prot.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

flyingtoastr

Something I hadn't noticed before: Beacon of Light is now instant cast.

It gets the 10% off from Benediction dropping the cost down to ~1300 mana. In addition Holy Shock is reduced to ~665 (what it costs right now at 70). The thing I really want to know about is Holy Light though, specifically IoL Holy Lights. Would bene reduce the cost of IoL HL's down to 1070? Would that be enough to push crit back into a primary regen stat between illumination and cheaper heals?

Benediction has gone from "why would anyone ever put points in this POS" to an incredible talent. Major props.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

◊ Cathela

I just finished downloading the patch; server permitting I'm going to head back to IF and play with respecs and testing for a bit. I'll check out these things, and if anyone has other things they want me to test, post here and I'll see what I can do.

I'll test anything that can be tested at the trainer, and if necessary I may run outside and kill some wolves and boars and stuff in Dun Morogh for basic combat questions. Probably not going to be able to test anything that requires "real" combat though.

EDIT: ... and right now the realm selection list is empty, so no guarantees on anything.

EDIT AGAIN: Note on the beta general forum says realms went down at 2:45PM PST today for patching. Expected downtime was 6 hours and it's been 7 hours now, but it looks like they're still going at it.

Anyway, feel free to post testing questions and I'll get to them whenever I can (which will probably be tomorrow.)

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

Synbios

Cath, can you test out some of the following:

Does the Benediction mana cost reduction work on the instant HL's procced by Infusion?

Art of War: How much is it actually reducing FoL cast time?

Hammer of the Righteous: Is it normalized weapon dmg?

Is Holy Shield still scaling solely with spellpower?

Thanks