Negg

hmm, if I read beacon of Light I get a completely different idea about how it works.

You apply Beacon to one target and then that target will also receive all healing you do to anyone within 40 yard of him, basically doubling your healing output.

Very good for encounters with multiple tanks.

 

Prinsesa

The tooltip on their calculator reads "Increases all damage you deal when a one-handed melee weapon is equipped by 2/4/6/8/10%".

Someone just goofed on the patch notes; 1HWS still applies to all damage dealt, and is in fact a buff from Live's 1/2/3/4/5% bonus.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Blutelf

Ghostcrawler has been quite active on the forums, and she mentioned that many talents are currentlyin the process of being adjusted budget-wise across all classes in an iteration-type process. Subsequent balancing then ensues.

It still remains to be seen whether we will get a throrough polish pass though. I suspect that just with regards to the method they use we might end up with good trees on their own, but also with some balancing issues when spending 61 talent points and gearing up.

EDIT: That is true as of now. Antmanton was talking about a possible change to Beacon.

 

• Avitus

Just tested this, you're correct. I guess it keeps the balance this way a bit for pvp so you're not smashing faces and healing at the same time.


I've also experienced 14k Shield of Righteousness, I'm assuming "inc nerf" here, no way this can be justified.

 

tayedaen

Prot tree looks very good so far.

One thing I do not like is the lack of convincing talents in tier 4.
To advance further in the tree we need to put at least 2 points in talents we do not really want for a tanking build.
This could be either BoK in tier 1 or Improved Devotion Aura.

A possible solution would be to move Ardent Defender from tier 7 down to tier 4.
I do not think that Ardent Defender would be overpowered for a tier 4 anyway.

 

Arthaal

While protection spec certainly finds ret aura appealing for the extra threat, improved devo remains a better mitigation tool and:

1) A Tank's first responsibility is to survive
2) 3% extra healing taken is huge (assuming no tree druid, say in 5/10 man settings)
3) 50% extra armor bonus is still 600 armor for a total 1800 at max rank... not stellar but still helpful.

I suppose the gripe is justified if all you do is 25-man or a tight 10-man crew with a tree druid every raid. Otherwise the increased healing granted by the aura makes those points well spent.

Moving AD to tier 4 puts it well within reach of both ret and holy builds, particularly for PvP... which will never be allowed to happen. The talent is simply too good.

 

tayedaen

While I disagree with the importance of imp. devotion aura, you have a valid point with AD beeing too poverfull in PvP for tier 4.
I still think tier 4 nedds some developer love.

Btw:
Why didn't they simply make Bok a 5 point talent, with 2%/ per point ?

 

Thorgred

with regards to the new changes:
1) Holy:
From my perspective, I'd be more inclined to spec 37/0/34.
Losses: 20% int->spellpower (150 SP? 200 max?)
Divine Illumination (compare to JotW)
Beacon (still doesn't look that appealing)
Gains: 8% crit
Mucho Damage via talents (vengeance, crusade etc)
1/2 Art of War for half time FOL's
20% mana regen every 8 seconds.

Obviously this will be changing soon. Seals of the Pure still needs changing (7 talent points for one GCD every 30 seconds.... woot) And there needs to be more LIFE and ACTIVITY in holy... its just boring to me atm. beacon still seems too inflexible as a real mulit-target heal. i understand it's trying to be different, but its a little too different.

I fully expect JotW to be changed to 'base mana' instead of 'max mana' quickly... no downside for Ret, but makes holy the Healing tree again.


2) Prot:
Coming from a 5-10 man tanking background, i'm still not happy with the Kings solution. In 10 man i'll probably be the only paladin, and kings i think would be generally a better buff than sanctuary, for most situations. My theoretical prot build gets kings but misses out on Benediction. Unfortunate but basic theory crafting doesn't seem to indicate any mana issues.
Still confounded by Touched By the Light: it seems that the two halves encourage opposing gearsets: the stamina part encourages prot gearing whilst the crit part encourages holy gearing. (compared to sheath, in which the crit section also favours ret gear)
There seems to have been an overall trend of damage increase to Prot, so it makes me wonder why SoR/SoV damage was reduced as well in this patch?


3) Ret: Seems in good shape again. Never played so i won't comment much.


A few other things:
Righteous Defense no longer costs mana, global cooldown removed, cooldown reduced to 10 sec.
When did this one pop up? i didn't see it mentioned but its a welcome change.
Prot 14k Shields: the best fix i think for this would be so that ShotR can't crit.
Hammer of the Righteous: about 6x better than crusader strike - higher damage. holy damage, hits 3 targets, procs seals. Woot.

 

fredshino

Playing around with the new protection talent tree, I came up with this:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?pala...13251533312321

What do you guys think? Has anyone ran any theorycraft comparing 5 points in Seals of the Pure vs 5 points in Divine Strength?

In case Seals of the Pure is better, how about moving those 3 points in Reckoning to Divine Strength?

 

Palados

That is fine. As it was mentioned a few times already, it will make prot pala in holy gear (with a lot of crit) more viable offhealer than now.

 

Palados

Isn't strength one of the main stats for tankadins now? So you want it always maxed.

 

Palados

Well, assuming that closer to the end of the WotLK we will have around 30k mana (1.5 of first raid tier values sounds viable looking at TBC and vanilla wow) divine plea is :

3750 mp5 and -50% healing for 10 sec each min. Very good even for holy. It's not that you can't heal at all. And if double healing from beacon on the same targets stays as it is, I don't see any problem to use it every CD. It is like eating the double mana pot EACH min.

Also, look at it from this PoV: If you are oom now you can't heal at all, if you are oom in WotLK you could get a quarter of your mana pool just in 10 sec.

 

Suicidal Zebra

If wonder if given a high +Threat Coeff on Righteous Fury, no more crushing blows and the new Mana-replenishing JotW, Ret Paladins will be able to fulfill the role of secondary/off-tank in Wrath. Specifically thinking of 10-man raids with encounters that use mechanics similar to Gruul's Hurtful Strike.

 

Valerys

Our avoidance will still be significantly lower than a protadin's, since we lack all their talents. From what people have said, ret (and dps war specs) will be fine tanks in normal leveling instances, maybe even heroics with enough gear, but in raids I suspect important offtank roles will be given to actual tanks.

 

Smurrf

Then too, unless the MT is wildly overgeared for the run, then most likely you'll need a second full-out tank just for trash purposes. I highly doubt that WoW will ever go to a 1 tank, 7 DPS, 2 healer model as progression raiding, with just requiring someone that's beefy enough to take Hurtful Strike stuff. In addition, with the added utility that's being tossed into all the tanking trees (and the whole class of DK's), it won't be an impediment to having that 2nd tank in fights that require only one tank now. DK's are being designed from the ground up to be viable at tanking and DPS in any tree (just going off of statements by blues, not me looking at the class...if I'm wrong, and that's changed, I apologize), Druids have always been viable in an ODPS roll, Warriors have already gotten some nifty stuff to use while not tanking, and now Prot is being given the mana while not tanking through Divine Plea and cost reductions to be viable ODPS as well.

Bottom line, take two true tanks, any flavor, and you'll be fine.

(Clarification: While I'm not saying that Ret and other specs won't be able to do it, I think that just due to various mechanics, it might require a higher order of gear in order to do the job adequately. I could see being required to have most of the gear from that level of the raid in order to come back and help OT it on a later run, just to make sure that off-specs aren't a real detriment to the raid.)

 

Crossbones

I'm a big fan of divine guardian for ret PvP since you need to go that deep for imp. HoJ anyway.

Unless you really want the 1% crit, 2/3 sanctified seals + stoicism is 96% dispel resistance, which is better than 100% since it wastes dispels and allows you to use a talent point elsewhere.

Not sure on auras. There's not enough pts to fully buff up ret aura. Would it still be worth using with just sanctified retribution? That's something I'd need to play around with.

Also not sure on BoK vs. DS. Especially since freedom no longer overwrites normal blessings.

I think I'd try something like this. 2 pts in righteous vengeance could become 2 pts in E4E if I felt I was being attacked often enough.

 

Chrix

with the new art of war (specifically FoL instant cast) everyone seems to be talking about hybridity but in all honestly this does nothing for the PvE raiding ret paladin because it does nothing for dps which is the slot in a raid a ret paladin would fill. While an instant FoL could save a raid from a wipe theoretically; realistically it probably won't (get better healers).

 

Valerys

The instant FoL is more likely to be used to save yourself from death while healers are busy keeping the tank up, in a situation where there's lots of raid damage flying around (e.g. Kalecgos). Just a little added personal security.

 

Blackthought

Dont these changes mean that a so-called "shockadin" build is now sustainable. I was thinking that something like Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft should put out decent damage with infinite sustainability, CC and decent healing. Looks like it could be a fun leveling spec.

 

flyingtoastr

Old, but it needs to be pointed out.

Critical Strike Damage Bonus talents are multiplicative. 1.2 * 1.25 = 1.5.

Judgement and Divine Storm crit at a whopping 250%.

EDIT: 25-man tier sets are mined:
Holy
Ret
Prot

Check MMOC for all of them.

 

Shuror

I have a hard time to imagine that. That would be like a set bonus for for example prot warriors which was: increases rage generation by 100%. And if they did intend to change it to an additive effect, why didn't they do it afterwards?
In live, the Mage talents Spell Power and Ice Shards, both crit damage bonus increase talents, actually stack additively with eachother. There is no evidence to suggest that this case would be different.

 

thedopefishlives

My raid-MT spec of choice is actually this: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?pala...10251533312321 The two points in Benediction are just something I threw around after getting Imp Devo; I also had the thought of 5/5 Reckoning and dropping the Benediction and Imp Devo. I have to admit that I'm quite pleased by what they did with the Prot tree, but I'm also hoping that they give us a couple more choices, maybe in deep Prot where we're already pretty much forced to take every single point because they're so GOOD.

 

Khaelarys

I don't know dude - I run 2/3 SS now too, because a) I want the protection and b) I don't really care most of the time if my seal gets dumped. I'm not at all convinced I'm willing to let my 16% mana cost seal get janked off, only to find I can't judge for my mana regen anymore.

 

flyingtoastr

I had to look it up but it does seem Crit Bonus is still additive. Pretty stupid and I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see that change given that every single other percentage multiplier (which crit is) is multiplicative.

And bumping SA up to 20% is not the same as giving warriors double rage. Warriors and Druids already have infinante rage on boss fights. One attack and they jump up to 100%. Paladins on the other hand still run into mana problems, even while tanking. I know our prot pally still chain-chugs when he's tanking.

As for why not change it: see Ret T6 4-piece. They clearly haven't changed any of the craptastic bonuses.

 

levk

They're balancing it against PoJ for holy, which isn't something I'm liking personally. True that full BoK opens GF but whatever. I wish they moved conviction a tier shallower, that tier just isn't appealing anymore. Or just make kings a total 3 point investment - 2 points for improved.

For holy itself I'm just assuming changes are coming. With prot getting buffed damage on core abilities and base bread and butter holy farming stuff reduced in damage they're probably going to attach damage to upper holy tiers. Most likely move imp SoR (whatever it's called now) much deeper and attach the penalty removal on divine plea. 10 seconds out of a minute for 50% is a lot for a healer while ret and prot don't get affected at all for their roles. Probably put aura mastery in its place if it's oh-so powerful to be baseline. Fiddle some more with the top of the tree and call it a day.

I still strongly believe JotW is still going to be base mana before it goes live. Assuming 30k mana for holy, 6k per 8 seconds is a metric asston. And since you'll get undispellable seals on the way this would be the required arena healing spec. And it still easily beats divine plea without any penalties. If you consider melee range a penalty you don't even have to be in melee range, just run in and judge once in a while.

Overall I'm bummed about sheath, but I'll reserve judgment until I see holy changes in the flesh.