WotLK talent trees/abilities discussion - Page 134

Smurrf · 09/11/08, 11:59 AM

Wouldn't surprise me at all to see a Glyph of Divine Plea that reduces the hit that healing takes, in exchange for a longer CD. It does seem really odd to make a Holy spell that has any detriment at all for Holy Pallies (much less what it does have now), and is exactly optimized for Prot and Ret.

Spiry · 09/11/08, 12:22 PM

Tier3 of Prot is looking rather sparse after the removal of Kings, surely they'll have to come up with an 11pointer?

Smurrf · 09/11/08, 12:51 PM

Perhaps I missed this somewhere, if I did I apologize. I was under the impression that a big downfall of Beacon of Light was that it healed the Beacon for only the effective healing of the actual healing target. Has that changed? Reason I ask is that WoWInsider has a screenshot where that's decidedly not the case in one of its latest posts: Ask a Beta Tester: Of Paladins and Primals - WOW Insider

Could that be checked and verified? If it can heal the Beacon'd target for full amount, regardless of how much healing went to the primary target, it's much more useful now.

Redcape · 09/11/08, 1:16 PM

Numbers time.

I redid my ret dps spreadsheet to account for the changes to the seals and the tree mixup in Prot and Ret. One thing to note is that the dps decrease in Judgements and SoR and SoV that the patch talked about were implemented prior, they are just now acknowledging their previous nerfs.

SoB/SoV/SoR end up very tight on my sheet, minimal differences. You do need 5 points in Seals of the Pure to achieve this parity though, which is impactful. I tend to think that for raiding you would be better off using SoV/SoR anyway to avoid the damage recoil (since our mana situation is now entirely sustainable ++) but it will depend on how JoL, IlotP, etc. shake out compared to our self damage, we may not need any outside healing at all. Anyway, here is the sheet:

Spreadsheet

I think I have made every correction for the new build, but if you see anything I have missed please do point it out.

Also, with our new massive mana surplus it might be time to try to model SoV/So?? twisting again. We should have the GCDs to do so and it would increase damage substantially I think.

Thorgred · 09/11/08, 1:25 PM

Two things i'm wondering about possible prot rotations:

1) the +2 secs on Consecrate glyph. Interesting for mana saving... possible to change the rotation to fit?

2) Seal twisting. Whilst SoV is higher DPS generally than SoR, on certain situations it could be useful to build a SoV stack on the mob(s) and then alternate some Hammer/Shield of the Righteousess with resealing: gain on autoattacks, reckoning and procs off Hammer/Shield. I just have no idea how to model that sort of wierd switching.

Selenia · 09/11/08, 1:27 PM

Originally Posted by Smurrf

Perhaps I missed this somewhere, if I did I apologize. I was under the impression that a big downfall of Beacon of Light was that it healed the Beacon for only the effective healing of the actual healing target. Has that changed? Reason I ask is that WoWInsider has a screenshot where that's decidedly not the case in one of its latest posts: Ask a Beta Tester: Of Paladins and Primals - WOW Insider

Could that be checked and verified? If it can heal the Beacon'd target for full amount, regardless of how much healing went to the primary target, it's much more useful now.

Looks to me like the Beacon heal just crit.

◊ Cathela · 09/11/08, 2:07 PM

Originally Posted by Khaelarys

Admittedly, I see things slowly - but I'm just not seeing the point of moving Improved Ret Aura.

Me neither. It's the best soloing and leveling aura, and it seems like exactly the kind of talent that would be well placed on a low tier for people to pick up early in their leveling builds.

Really, the only people who are going to take this talent are (a) leveling Ret paladins, and (b) raiding Ret paladins after their tanks ask/force them to take it.

Originally Posted by flyingtoastr

Something to test if you get really bored:

How is Crusade behaving against Humanoid/Elemental/Undead/Demon mobs? Is it counting as a single 6% percentage modifier or two separate 3% damage modifiers (6.09%)? Given the incredibly small variance it will take hundreds of hours of testing and logging to determine, but it is worth knowing for theorycraft purposes.

The only thing sadder than the fact that you care is the fact that I'm probably going to actually go test this.

Originally Posted by Rugrud

One thing that worries me in the mmo-champion notes:
"One-Handed Weapon Specialization (Tier 6) now increases damage you deal with one handed weapons by 2/4/6/8/10%."

Can someone please check that it's still +10% to all domage while wearing a 1h, and has not been nerfed to +10% to domage dealt with 1h? do you get +10% to consecrate, SoR, holy shield?

As mentioned by others, the tooltip in game still has the old language. I'll go check it just for the hell of it while I do the Crusade testing.

Originally Posted by Arthaal

This situation is only aggravated by the fact that it isn't included in the increased scaling of Righteous Vengeance, which remains a terrible talent (comparable net DPS increase to Fanaticism, 2 tiers lower when Judgement DPS = DS DPS - I'm fudging numbers a bit because they obviously differ in effective cooldown by 1 sec and one is physical while the other is holy damage, so their DPS on any given target is likely to vary wildly).

I'm really confused as to what's intended by this talent. From a damage perspective, it's much worse than Impale in the warrior arms tree (shallower tier, more bonus per point, affects all specials).

The only rationale I could think of is that Judgement and DS were the two abilities that gave scaling mana and health regen. Even with the original JotW it was a weak argument, and the fact that JotW doesn't scale anymore gives this talent no real benefit aside from the actual damage.

Originally Posted by 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.

There's a very obvious hole in tier 3 that has to be filled by something. It's not over yet.

Originally Posted by tayedaen

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

They just "don't do it that way". Talents that give new abilities are always separate one-pointers, and "improved" versions are separate talents. I don't know if it's a limitation in the software, or just an aesthetic thing, but that's the way they do it. See, e.g., Nature's Balance in the (live) druid trees.

Originally Posted by 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.

I think the ideal situation balance-wise is for 10-man content to be doable with a Ret offtank (or Arms, Fury, cat-focused Feral, non-tanky DK) even if a true tank spec is a "safer" OT. Especially as you progress and gear up through farming,
Ret should become more and more attractive as an OT.

Originally Posted by flyingtoastr

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.

Laziness works pretty well as an explanation for unfixed old shitty bonuses, I think.

I hope it's 20%, because if it's 11% then frankly that's terrible for a glyph. Not all glyphs have to be game-changers; there can be some that just give good solid bonuses. But it needs to be a talent-level bonus, like a lot of the warrior glyphs are. If 20% mana return for SoB+SA would be overpowered somehow, then they really need to just scrap that idea and come up with a different glyph entirely.

And they need to come up with more and better glyphs for us anyway. What we're really missing are the glyphs that make you sit up and go "wow, that's gonna be so cool!" The warrior glyphs do that; right now, most of ours don't. The HL glyph is really the only one that makes me think about how many different situations it could be useful in.

Blutelf · 09/11/08, 2:08 PM

Originally Posted by Smurrf

Perhaps I missed this somewhere, if I did I apologize. I was under the impression that a big downfall of Beacon of Light was that it healed the Beacon for only the effective healing of the actual healing target. Has that changed? Reason I ask is that WoWInsider has a screenshot where that's decidedly not the case in one of its latest posts: Ask a Beta Tester: Of Paladins and Primals - WOW Insider

Could that be checked and verified? If it can heal the Beacon'd target for full amount, regardless of how much healing went to the primary target, it's much more useful now.

The original WoWInsider post Paladin changes in Beta build 8885 where that picture was first used also confirms that it is just a crit based off the already critting FoL.

EDIT: beaten

zenos · 09/11/08, 2:11 PM

I haven't seen this discussed but according to several posts double damage on JoC with stunned targets is gone. I think we all saw that coming, and in fact many of us asked for it.

Here is a post claiming that judgement crit chance is 100% on stunned targets but it doesn't look like a very rigorous test was done.

* Thank you for the formatting info Cath

◊ Cathela · 09/11/08, 2:13 PM

Originally Posted by Thorgred

Two things i'm wondering about possible prot rotations:

1) the +2 secs on Consecrate glyph. Interesting for mana saving... possible to change the rotation to fit?

The problem with the Cons glyph from a tanking perspective is that it screws up a 6/9 rotation. The only way to use it would be to revert to a 10-second rotation like we have currently, but that screws up your HotR/ShR rotation so badly that it ends up costing you way more thank you could possibly gain.

Of course this is all part of the greater issue of Prot being far too GCD-locked right now. If they removed the GCD from Holy Shield, it would be an improvement, although I still doubt it would open things up enough to make a 10-second Cons work.

Here is a post claiming that crit chance is 100% on stunned targets but it doesn't look like a very rigorous test was done.

I'm about to do some testing, so I'll try to investigate this.

EDIT: And you can hyperlink on the forum with {url=http://whatever.com/etc} {/url}, replacing the curly braces with square brackets of course.

Derp · 09/11/08, 2:18 PM

Is anyone liking 27/44 for pvp in wotlk? I like the idea of proc'ing rekoning and the possibility of landing 6-9 attacks almost consecutively (2-3normal strikes, 2 crusader strikes, seal of command procs).

- Semi-nub Retadin

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

With the latest changes to the talent trees, I think this just helps the build that much more. 20%mana(huge)/3%crit to target on judge & then what ever judgement you use.

Khaelarys · 09/11/08, 2:34 PM

Most of the classes got their changes in phases, and I suspect the same will happen for us. The things that seem a little off to me are... (a lot of this other people have keyed on also)

1. E4aE still isn't compelling, I wonder if they know how many people actually use that in their standard builds. Maybe it will be at 80 - it's a decent spell reflect type ability against damage casters.
2. Still have three talents that affect the same Skill - which is kind of wonky. I understand their value of talent points, etc. But 2% damage and 3% haste doesn't need to take up two different talent slots, when it applies to the same base skill.
3. Two talents that do something very similar in the same tree - AoW (crit %) and RV. I find plenty of crit modifiers in other trees, but I don't see one in any other class there that effects the same abilities. However, what it does do is take the place of the JoC stun damage.

As for the comment about JotW not being max mana - as it is now, it takes the place of Illumination for a ret build that needs to heal an instance, or needs to heal a specific encounter. I don't want to see it changed. I think it's plenty deep enough to be expensive for holy (too expensive imo) to get, but it still has the ability to fill a void in an off heal situation.

tarja · 09/11/08, 2:46 PM

Originally Posted by 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%.

Am I reading the tooltips too literally or is it actually even much better than that? Say your normal hit should be for 1000. Righteous Vengeance makes the crit damage bonus +125%, so you'd crit for 2250. Then Art of War (reading it literally) would increase the damage of that crit by 20%, to 2700. And then a relentless meta would increase that damage by 3%, to 2780.

So all in all, crits would be 278% damage?

◊ Cathela · 09/11/08, 2:52 PM

Crusade testing done. TLDR: Bonuses stack multiplicatively, and there also seems to be some other effect.

I started with a heavy Prot build to basically maximize static ShR damage and then added Crusade. Did all my tests on the Frostmane trolls (level ~7) in Dun Morogh.

Results:

Non-crit ShRs without Crusade: min 2917, mean 2917.3, max 2918
Non-crit ShRs with Crusade: min 3094, mean 3094.9, max 3095

The means show a ratio of 1.0609, which is exactly what you'd expect from multiplicative stacking, and the precision is close enough to rule out additive stacking (which would give you 1.0600).

But now here's the weird thing. Look at the crits:

Crit ShRs without Crusade: min 5834, mean 5834.2, max 5835.
Crit ShRs with Crusade: min 6375, mean 6375.8, max 6376

The non-Crusade crits are clearly doing 200% damage, as expected. But once Crusade is added, the crits do 206% damage! A quick test on some beasts shows only 200% crits.

So what this means is: In addition to increasing raw damage, Crusade also further increases crit damage against its specific target types by 3%. (Probably by 1% per point.)

I don't know if this is intended but not reflected in the tooltip, or if it's a bug. The Hunter targets Monster Slaying and Humanoid Slaying (on live) both have this effect. So this could be an intended effect, or a case of sloppy code reuse. But regardless, it's very interesting.

So, thanks to Toast for prompting me to do research on an utterly trivial question that actually turned up something interesting.

Khaelarys · 09/11/08, 2:54 PM

I think the double dipping of Crusader happens on live already. I remember hearing it compared to the hunter talents - but this was months ago.

SanSul · 09/11/08, 2:56 PM

Originally Posted by Khaelarys

Most of the classes got their changes in phases, and I suspect the same will happen for us. The things that seem a little off to me are... (a lot of this other people have keyed on also)

1. E4aE still isn't compelling, I wonder if they know how many people actually use that in their standard builds. Maybe it will be at 80 - it's a decent spell reflect type ability against damage casters.
2. Still have three talents that affect the same Skill - which is kind of wonky. I understand their value of talent points, etc. But 2% damage and 3% haste doesn't need to take up two different talent slots, when it applies to the same base skill.
3. Two talents that do something very similar in the same tree - AoW (crit %) and RV. I find plenty of crit modifiers in other trees, but I don't see one in any other class there that effects the same abilities. However, what it does do is take the place of the JoC stun damage.

As for the comment about JotW not being max mana - as it is now, it takes the place of Illumination for a ret build that needs to heal an instance, or needs to heal a specific encounter. I don't want to see it changed. I think it's plenty deep enough to be expensive for holy (too expensive imo) to get, but it still has the ability to fill a void in an off heal situation.

Well, Eye for Eye tooltip indicates that it affects all damaging critical attacks against you, not just spells. For 2 talent points, it doesn't seem all that bad.

As for 3% haste, I fail to see how that is in anyway superior then 2% damage, cause its inferior for Ret paladins themselves and is way up in the tree for 3 talent points and 2% damage is only one talent point. They say they have talent point budgets, but this one seems way out of whack. Many ret paladin attacks recieve no benefit from haste except lower global cooldowns, such as Seal of Command, Divine Storm, Crusader strike, Judgements.

And for critical strike bonus damage, again we have another issue of talent budget not being represented. 5 Talent points for Righteous Vengeance gets you a lot less effect then Art of War, which affects Crusader strike as well, and makes Flash of Lights instant! for only 2 talent points.

This is a trend in both Ret and Holy talent trees, where as you continue going down the tree, the talents become more mediocre, or require heavy investment for less return per talent point then lower in the tree.

◊ Cathela · 09/11/08, 3:07 PM

Originally Posted by Khaelarys

I think the double dipping of Crusader happens on live already. I remember hearing it compared to the hunter talents - but this was months ago.

Interesting; I didn't know that. Regardless it's undocumented so I'll write it up in the OP. (Update coming today I hope.)

As for JoC:

I've done 11 JoCs on stunned level 77 mobs and every single one has crit. (That's in addition to going 4/4 on lowbie mobs in Dun Morogh before I decided it'd be better to go back to Northrend to be sure I wasn't just seeing a high crit rate due to level difference.) I'm using a build that's fairly high in crit (CE+Conviction) but it's not that high.

So yes, JoC now appears to have a 100% crit rate on stunned targets (but with no doubling of base damage).

Xterminate · 09/11/08, 4:04 PM

Retribution paladins will be able to gain 96% (!) resistance to dispelling effects on their seals through having 3 points in Stoicism (30%) and 2 points in Sanctified Seals (66%). If someone tries to dispel the ret paladin, they might, due to RNG, try to dispel the seal which will likely fail. This is a quite strong mechanic.

A holy paladin healing arenas can do the same except he would be forced to drop Beacon for that, although it is uncertain exactly how good beacon will be in wrath. A holy paladin can do with something like this (or customized for preference) and find that people trying to dispel him will likely fail.

This is also on top of the Hand spells having 60% dispel resistance, which is quite strong as well. Coupled with Sacred Cleansing and Enlightened Judgements, I foresee paladin healers being quite strong in arenas (or at least impossible to dispel =P), together with retribution paladins.

Redcape · 09/11/08, 4:10 PM

Does anyone have a comprehensive list of which abilities increase crit additive damage by x% and which increase crit overall damage by x%?

What I mean is by Cathela's tests above, Crusade is increasing the overall damage of the crit by 3%, but most crit increasing talents that increase critical damage by 100% raise crits from 1.5 to 2.0 instead of 3.0. Blizzard can word things:

"Increases the critical strike bonus damage by 100%"

or

"Increases the critical strike damage by 100%"

and these could have massively different meanings. Thing is, I don't trust talent calculator wording enough to be sure that some bonuses aren't being implemented in ways that are contrary to what the talent actually says. Is there anyone in the beta who is willing to test for me:

Relentless Earthstorm Diamond (I have it modeled as 2.03 atm, as does Bellator)
Righteous Vengeance (Modeled as 2.25)
The Art of War (Modeled as 2.20)

Checking to see if they are multiplicative would be great too. I doubt very much that they are, but it should be extremely quick and easy to test with AoW and RV because the numbers are quite large.

Thanks!

Edit: fixed numbers

Shuror · 09/11/08, 4:25 PM

Personally I think testing how RV and AoW interact with eachother is pretty meaningless.

As mentioned earlier in this thread, blue posters have stated that Prot/Ret are due to get some "cool talents" in the deep part of their trees.

As Righteous Vengeance has been very, very underwhelming all from the first paladin talent iteration and especially in its current implementation, I am quite sure that it will be changed. Art of War has basically been given its effects.

Saltycracker · 09/11/08, 4:27 PM

The new build kind of puts a damper on Shockadins as they now cant get to Holy Shock and Sheath of Light. Not a big deal but it was kinda cool to mess around with.

Redcape · 09/11/08, 4:33 PM

Originally Posted by Shuror

Personally I think testing how RV and AoW interact with eachother is pretty meaningless.

As mentioned earlier in this thread, blue posters have stated that Prot/Ret are due to get some "cool talents" in the deep part of their trees.

As Righteous Vengeance has been very, very underwhelming all from the first paladin talent iteration and especially in its current implementation, I am quite sure that it will be changed. Art of War has basically been given its effects.

While that is likely, I like to keep my spreadsheet up to date. Also, knowing which effects operate in which ways helps us evaluate choices much more accurately. I want to know what my abilities do, and I want to be able to write a spreadsheet as accurately as possible.

One more question for anyone using HotR: What are it's miss mechanics? Spell resist is what I have based my numbers off of, but if anyone has been getting parried or dodged, I would love to know. Same goes for ShoR.

Vhex · 09/11/08, 4:36 PM

Originally Posted by Khaelarys

As for the comment about JotW not being max mana - as it is now, it takes the place of Illumination for a ret build that needs to heal an instance, or needs to heal a specific encounter. I don't want to see it changed. I think it's plenty deep enough to be expensive for holy (too expensive imo) to get, but it still has the ability to fill a void in an off heal situation.

For PvE holy, you could put JotW as the 51 point ret talent and healadins would still get it. There is nothing compelling past spiritual focus I wouldn't give up. Especially when you get a metric ton of new abilities going down ret.

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

Is pretty much the ideal pve healer spec with 5 points left over. MIght pick up kings or illumination depending on what our retadin will do or whatever but yeah.

What are you giving up honestly?

The only thing you're giving up is 11% crit but when you can spam max rank holy lights till your blue in the face who cares? The loss of lights grace/judgements of the pure can be made up for by just gemming all your sets with haste gems since sheath of light will more then make up for the lost spellpower gems/gearing.

You also gain a stun cure on a 30 second cooldown, a 1 minute CC and whenever you crit your judgement (which should be sitting at around a 50% chance easy) you get an instant flash of light which more then makes up for the situational usefulness of holy shock.

They'll need to do more then just buff beacon to convince me to go that deep into holy without serious nerfs to ret right now. Ideally they'd just get rid of mana entirely and put paladins on their own unique power source and rebalance based off that.

Khaelarys · 09/11/08, 4:47 PM

I'm not really sure what to say to that. I think maybe you value SoL and JotW more than I do.

I don't think a judgement / Sheathe / AOW-Flash based healing rotation would be worth giving up the Infusion of Light / Holy Shock / Light's Grace crit based rotation.

That does look like a very interesting pvp build, and it's most of what I find interesting about trying to main heal as an off spec in Ret.

Vhex · 09/11/08, 4:54 PM

Well for pvp you'd want infusion, but for pve you don't need any of that. With enough haste/gems you can get sub 2.0 holy lights anyways, sheath will be giving you a good 400 spell power at least to make up for the loss of divine guidance and then some.

So you give up 11% crit for infinite mana. Not that hard a choice.