Darian_TruBlade

The biggest problem DPS Shockadins face in BC is mana. They burn through it like crazy even with a Shadow Priest. Unless running with an overgeared group that can keep already short fights even shorter, their already questionable DPS simply vanishes once their mana does.

Losing SoL is a notable loss for Shockadins, but being able to JotW not only adds some utility but also goes a long way to solving the Shockadin's mana problems.

If you're talking about healing as a Shockadin that's a different story, but I always thought the point of the Shockadin build was its role as a novelty DPS build.

 

Phayne2355

It may have been mentioned already, but does the additional crit from sanctified seals work with healing spells?

 

Antmanton

Taking these points in reverse order, the point of the Shockadin was hybridity; ie competent spell damage with the option to switch instantly to a healing role as the situation required. Where the concept broke from reality was actually not in any one particular problem, but a combination of issues. True, mana efficiency was a significant problem for the shockadin, but moreso I think was the lack of gear. Even with stealing all the non-set Elemental shaman mail that came along, nothing really fit your gear requirements (specifically, no melee haste, which boosted Seal DPS significantly). Threat was also a big problem, since you lack any sort of innate threat reduction and are always in melee range, losing the 20% buffer a shaman would have (And yes, I was actually crazy enough to try this in SSC a few times. Almost invariably, I would find myself critting a shock and judgement back-to-back, pulling aggro, and instantly getting pulped by the boss. Hilariously fun.)

As far as Wrath goes, though, the consolidation of melee, ranged, and spell ratings means you DO have melee haste to support better Seal DPS, though it remains to be seen how good that damage is after the last patch; my math is showing something like a 40% drop in SoR hits, although I freely admit I may be doing it wrong. As far as mana goes, though, the new Benediction and Divine Plea are actually quite good for spamming expensive spells, I'd expect to be at least workable mana-wise even without picking up JotW. Also, the massive amount of crit (both spell and melee) with a fast caster one-hander should equate to near permanent Vengeance uptime, which is an advantage over the situation on Live.

 

Aquaman7

Let's take a more explained approch.

Biggest problems of Holy Paladin:

1. Mana and mana regen - Druids and Priests have better regen then Holy Paladins, they were buffed in TBC while illumination was nerfed. The only thing that makes Paladins still good healers is that they spam super mana potions in Sunwell, that was nerfed to 1 for fight in WOTLK. Also only Priests could do good single target healing in TBC besides Paladins, and that is going to change in WOTLK also, Druids and Shamans are getting good single target heals.

Divine Plea was the way of the Paladin to regain mana, but now every time we use it, we have 10 seconds of self "Mortal Strike". If it was in TBC healing Brutallus, and 2 Paladins healing the Tank, it would be very hard to not let him die.

If we aren't Tank Healers anymore, what will we heal? Raid? Without HOT's or Groups Heals?

2. - Healing Spells - 2 Spells to heal in TBC, both with cast time, 1.5sec and 2sec after doing 1 previous spell. Instant heal on long cooldown or forever cooldown and no mana to continue. No group heals or hot's.

Instant heals are much better on WOTLK but still no group heals or hots, because Beacon is changing every week, and nobody knows what it will do. Glyphs also rework some spells but tit seems to weak compared to other healers.

On the other hand, Druids and Shamans are getting powerfull single target heals.

So Druids and Shamans can replace Paladins in Tank healing in WOTLK, while Priests are already the best TANK healers in TBC.

What do we need Holy Paladins for?

 

Prinsesa

Yes. It's therefore possible to go 18 points deep into Ret and get something like 19% crit on Holy Light and Holy Shock before any gear.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Deaus

The main issue Holy has at the moment is that the entire tree past Lights Grace could be gutted out for PvE and no one would notice the difference. Until those talents get looked at and improved, people are going to continue to spec deep ret for lack of better options. Blizzard seems to believe that people were skipping Beacon and going for Sheath because Sheath was overpoweringly good for Holy, hence the reason for moving Sheath farther down the tree. The power of Sheath was only a small fraction of the larger issue of end tree Holy just not being attractive, at all.

Look at the abilities individually. Holy Guidance is still nice, but just took a solid nerf of almost 50%.

Holy Shock/IoL is a semi-interesting mechanic but with a 10s duration and a 6s CD on HS you can never count on it being up. Its PvE usefulness is limited at best. Increase the duration to 30s and add some PvP mechanic such as "Your next Holy Light will have its cast time reduced by 2.5 seconds and may be cast while under the effects of silence/interrupt mechanics." Still very balanced PvE and gives some much needed PvP counter to the CC train that happens to Paladins in live PvP.

Enlightened Judgments/Judgments of the Pure is 7 points combined, and lets you judge from much closer than heal range to save yourself 1 GCD every 30 seconds. For starters, the only Judgment worth having up in is Wisdom in PvE now. And that will be covered by any Ret/Prot paladin in your raid anyways. The solution is JoL needs a buff, and a strong one. Have one of the talents above mimic the mechanic of JotW when judged, except with a scaling smart heal. Paladins need, and deserve a raid heal and this could stand to be it. Increase the cost of JoL so that it is inline with Circle of Healing on its 6s CD, have it tag the 5 lowest raid members and there you go. You've solved 2 lack luster Paladin talents and the lack of a Paladin AoE heal in one shot.

Sacred Cleansing doesn't address the fact that we still lose the battle of GCDs due to trash debuffs, to say nothing of 2 people stacking the same school of debuff or that it prevents us from healing while we do it. Honestly, I dont know how to change the mechanic to make this better. But I do know that a 30% chance to give a 30% chance to resist for an extreme short duration, and its purgable, still isnt much worth the time lost healing in arenas. Bump up one or both chances.

DI is probably the one I'd miss the most from past the Lights Grace portion of the tree, as its prevented more than a few wipes for me. That can stay as is.

Beacon could still use some love, it still feels lack luster at the moment. When Blizzard fixes JotW to base instead of max mana and everyone gets over the "holy smokes thats 8kmp/5!" and people start planning on going back to a mostly holy build for healing begrudgingly, we are going to need a stronger 51 pointer than this or there will be a lot of belly aching come live. Clearly its meant to be on the tank, lets work with that. Give it some kind of "Any time your Beacon of Light Block/Dodge/Parries an attack you gain X" where X can be anything from some haste, spell power, etc. Thats pretty generic and I'd like to see something more interesting. How about stealing a note from the Mage playbook. Anytime your Beacon Block/Dodge/Parries an attack you gain a stacking 5% critical chance. This stacks up to 20 times, and lasts until you critical. Once you critical, it resets back to 0. Interesting mechanic, makes Beacon much more attractive and increases the usefulness of the much bemoaned Illumination.

Those are just some thoughts. My main concern is that without bumping the upper tiers of holy people will continue to spec ret for healing till Blizzard nerfs it, hard. Given that Ret is looking the most competitive it ever has, I know I dont want to see that. Buffing Holy is the answer to Blizzards problem, not Ret nerfs.

 

flyingtoastr

Misinformation. Because heals gain roughly double the coefficient from Spell Power than from +Healing Holy Guidance is actually providing more HPS in the "nerfed" beta version than currently on live.

Blood when you get it. Between the self healing from Divine Storm and being able to throw those insta-FoL's while running to the next mob it's great.

So far I'm incredibly impressed with the changes. Ret is really really fun to play. Once (if) the lag dies down I'll check out some of the other stuff too.

Some people's minds are like cement: all mixed up and permanently set.

 

Redcape

All right, it is time for prot pally dps! So, using ->this<- build (bear with me, I know) and using the stats on my spreadsheet

Ret_Prot_dpsv1-8926.xls - FileFront.com

you will see a protection specced paladin delivering over 3k dps in level 80 blue/naxx 10 quality gear! If you remove the points in the prot talents and add them into the ret talents you will discover that the ret paladin only does about 200 more dps than prot. Now, that build is pretty much set up to dps as protection, while being a very decent tank. You don't have every tanking talent, but you are really close to maxed out.

However, if you just change it up a bit and make a more rational build like ->this<- then you are a first class tank but you still deliver 90% of the dps of a retadin in the same gear.

Shield of the Righteous and Hammer of the Righteous are so much of a pimp sacking that they allow you to do very good dps with a sword and board. For those who have talked about Maximus in Gladiator beating down on people with a shield lately, you are in for a treat, you can now do exactly that.

Given this, is really seems like prot is shaping up like a feral build. You can be a slightly under spec dpser and a slightly under spec tank at the same time (and you really are close to par in both) or you can be a 100% tank and still a very respectable dpser when you need to be.

Blizzard, my hat is off.

I was planning on being a ret paladin for Wrath, but this sure is tempting me to try out protection again.

Edit: And before anyone asks, the gear is pure dps gear. This isn't modeling prot dps while tanking at all, though that certainly looks good from where I am sitting.

 

Herzak

I don't think this has been asked before, but I was wondering do I need 3/3 Judgement of the Wise to get 100% chance of instant mana return? or can I just put 1 point in JotW and get 33% chance for replenishment buff and 100% instant mana return?

 

Prinsesa

If we look at the tooltip wording:

"Your Judgement spells have a 33/66/100% chance to grant the Replenishment effect <snip>, and to immediately grant you 20% of your maximum mana."

The 20% total mana return is also tied to the percentage chance, so you still need all three points in JOTW even if it's just for your personal mana return.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Ivriniel

As prot paladin my main concern at the moment is, that all our seal scaling got nerfed (Thank you very much Sheath!).

For me it's a blatant fuck up on blizzards part, they saw seals scaling to well for Ret (duh hi overpowered talent called Sheath) now instead of fixing Sheath to be Healing spellpower only or removing it, they decided to move it up the tree and nerf the base scaling for prot and holy too. At least ret's SoC is almost as good as Sor

So Shield of Righteousness and HotR are the best scaling threat abilities we have. It seems it will all come down to stacking block value, depending on what other talents we get, i see a time in gear progression when Touched by the Light will be meaningless because it just doesn't provide enough TPS boost anymore.

Holy Shield really could do with a revamp now, scale it with AP or BV instead of or with spelldamage. At this point it should also be taken of GCD and made a physical spell (to allow its usage while silenced).


Our ability to tank casters is a bit better now with instant cast AS, but it'd still like to see some changed spellreflect or interrupt ability to make it a bit easier. Would a E4aE be overpowered if it would reflect 5-10% of any spelldmg done to us (passive)?
Or what about holyshield using a charge and damaging anyone who casts a spell on us?



Does anyone have Stamina numbers for all 4 naked tanks at lvl80? I just realized we lost 4% stamina from talents too. That seems to have gone missing in the ret discussion here.

 

◊ Cathela

Very nice work on the spreadsheet. I'll probably play around with it a bit tomorrow.

Questions for now:

1) The "Delay" column I assume represents the time between casts for the various abilities. CS, DS, and Judgement seem to have unusual cooldowns -- is this something to do with GCD collisions for a Ret dps cycle?

2) Is it possible to turn abilities on or off? e.g., turn Exo on or off depending on mob type? What I'm thinking of here is that Consectration might be too expensive for a Prot pure-dps cycle. I suppose this could be kluged by setting these to extremely high cooldowns, but I'm wondering if there's just a way to turn them off completely.

3) You've got a "5" next to Crusade, which is a three-point talent?

4) Any way to add Avenger's Shield? The AS glyph (double damage to one target)?

5) Judgement Glyph? (+10% judgement damage)

6) I like the "partial derivatives" section where you give the dps returns per 100 points of each stat. Can you add a section that gives the returns for 100 itemization points of each stat? The cost of each stat in itemization points is:

Str = Agi = any "rating" = 1.0
Sta = 2/3
AP = 0.50
SP = 6/7
Block value = 0.65
ArPen = 1/7
Weapon DPS = N/A

What I'm seeing is that Block Value gives the best scaling per itemization point (slightly better than strength).

It wasn't Sheath. Even without Sheath SoR still outscaled SoB and SoC. (I did the math way way way back if you really want to dig it up.) It took a bit longer to get to the crossover point, but it was still well within the normal range of itemization. SoR and SoV were just scaling too well, and it had to be addressed directly.

We got compensated by the buffs to ShR and HotR. Unfortunately we have to wait for level 75 to take advantage of ShR, but that's how it goes. Holy hasn't been compensated yet; hopefully we'll see something by the end of next week.

Also, I don't see why gear progression would render TbtL obsolete. Sure, block value will go up, but so will stamina. You'll get more threat from blockvalue increases, but you have more threat from ShR than from anything else to begin with anyway. I could see your argument if spellpower was a large chunk of our WotLK threat generation, but it's not. It's a nice extra that boosts stuff like Cons and Exo and buffs healing a bit, but right from the start it's definitely a secondary threat stat.

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

 

Amera

It's an interesting idea, but I really don't think you'll be seeing that as the default ret build. Giving up a consistent, predictable instant attack in favor of an ability that only works when you are targeted, and even then only only a low proc, is just not going to be effective. At best it would be interesting in AV (maybe wintergrasp) where the laws of intelligent combat largely go out the window.


These have to be some of the worst posts yet in this thread, and that is an accomplishment. Stop whining and add something to the discussion, please.

 

Blutelf

Apparently, Holy levelling got a major hit this patch with the Judgement changes. Does anyone have more information? Has SoR Judgement damage been made physical again?

 

Ivriniel

Spellpower being so weak for us now is exactly my point tough. A talent that converts stam (which will always be a main stat ofc) is nice and all, but it's tps boost is so little with the nerfed coeffs on SoV and SoR.
So depending on what other talents come, stuff like sanctified seals, reckoning etc might at some point in gear be better.

Point being with abilities that scale badly with spellpower (and i insist that ret having so much spellpower from sheath plays a huge part in the nerf) a talent that gives prot spellpower loses power.
Holy shield only scales with spellpower atm, but all other abilities scales with both now?

I'll see if i can steal that spreadsheet and change some numbers to see if i got a point or not. But basically AP scales better than spelldmg, thus making spelldmg talents rather weak.

 

Prinsesa

I think the idea is that with a build like this, there isn't anything you can spend the remaining points on that would give better returns than the 3 into TBTL.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Ivriniel

At some point 3% dmg or 3% crit or 9% more seal dmg, is more than 30% of your stam as spellpower.
That's basically my argument, but maybe my possible builds are just bad

(In a fresh lvl80 spec i'd obviously include it, but later on i can see other stuff being better)

 

Redcape

1. Delays: Those numbers were derived using a 'hit the first ability to come off cooldown' cycle. I just ran it over 100 seconds and averaged the number of times I could hit the ability to come up with a ballpark. You can tinker with it by changing the delays on the abilities if you have a different cycle, but this one seems pretty strong to me.

The delays on Consecrate, Exorcism and HoW don't end up doing anything to the dps numbers on the right. I have not integrated them into that yet since I really don't have enough information based on mana consumption, GCDs, etc. to be sure what is sensible. There is a section at the bottom where you can see how much dps you would do with each of those abilities in case you want to set a delay on them and get some ideas for what that does for you.

2. Because of mana considerations, those 3 abilities aren't in the summed calculations. No need to muck with the cooldowns to get a sense of what you are doing. The dps totals only account for Judgement, DS, CS, Hammer and Shield.

3. Thing is, Crusade now gives 3% damage, 3% damage to mob type and 3% more critical damage to mob type. I chose to model this by allowing the user to just input the total damage increase expected from Crusade. I guessed that on average 5% more damage would be accurate, but it might easily be a lot more. It has a minimum of 3 if you have all your points into it (if you are fighting a mob type Crusade does not work against) and a cap of roughly 7 against mobs crusade works against. You can just put in whatever you think makes sense for the dungeons you are going into.

4. Adding in Avenger's Shield is easy, but since it doesn't have particularly decent damage and has a huge cooldown it actually doesn't do a ton for the numbers, especially since its mana cost is high. If you have infinite mana it is worth considering though. I will add it in to the optional moves section with Exorcism, HoW and Consecrate so people can see what it does.

5. Not having the Judgement Glyph in there is just a fat ol' oversight on my part. I will correct that asap.

6. Block value is the best dps stat to itemize for due to its costing, yes. Str is just a bit behind and everything else lags WAY behind. I have not implemented a proper armor formula yet because of a lack of information about boss armor at 80 on my part, if anyone has boss armor numbers I would love to have them. ArPen is so shockingly horrible for a paladin at this point that any piece that has it is almost certainly inferior for you so working on that is a low priority for me, but a regular mob armor function would be nice.

I could easily just put in a converter to show the returns on various stats based on itemization. I don't know how useful it is except to create wishlists though, so it will be a low priority for the moment.

 

• frmorrison

Protection is doing jaw-dropping damage even with nerfed Seals. Remember each class is supposed to reach a certain dps number, and the former Seals were too powerful to reach the number. Holy is still doing fair dps, since the new Holy Shock is so good. One could level as Holy without too much of an issue, but certainly would not reach Prot or Ret numbers.


E4E would be too good for a 10% spell damage reflection. At least the Beta version is better than Live one.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Shalcker

On topic of possible 11pt prot talents... wouldn't it be fun to have something that "consumes" judgements?

After all, we have three debuffing judgements now, and while their power is pretty good as is, having an option to "swiftmend" them for instant secondary effect would certainly be fun.

Speaking about "dream solutions", how about something like "Judgement Call" (10s cd, 20y range)
"Consumes judgement on your target, producing following effects:
Judgement of Justice: Roots your target in place for 5 seconds. (snare)
Judgement of Wisdom: Interrupts spells and prevents spellcasting for 5 seconds. (kick)
Judgement of Light: Reduces healing done to target by 50% (ms)"

Or, in slightly less overpowering version:
Consuming Judgement of Wisdom: Returns 5-10% of your total mana.
Consuming Judgement of Light: Returns 5-10% of your total health.

Obviously numbers and effects can be different.

 

Khaelarys

Righteous Vengeance. This talent provides a 25% critical damage bonus for two special abilities. Many consider this to be a bit lackluster for 5 points in a tier-10 talent. The Impale talent in the Warrior Arms tree, for example, is a much shallower talent that gives a 20% bonus to critical damage from all special attacks for only two talent points.

Have you guys done a breakdown on damage % by source in the future expansion?

In Live I'm around 20% CS, 20% Seal, 10% Judge, and 50% white. That's just a rough estimate.

Just wondering if any of you beta folks or math folks have an idea of what we're looking at. Reason I'm asking, I'm curious as to what % of our damage an increase of 25% to crit damage on Judgement (which is going to be pushing what, 70% chance or so?) and 25% to crit damage on our AoE ability might actually be. They say they try to budget around 1% dps increase per point - I wonder exactly how average this ability is.

 

◊ Cathela

Just the nerfs to SoR scaling and judgement scaling in general really. Basically it seems like they made the changes they needed to make to bring seal scaling in line for Ret. They've compensated for the loss to Prot dps by ramping up ShR damage, but Holy's changes are still in the works so yeah, leveling holy is going to be a bit gimpy until they implement those (hopefully next week).

But I still don't see how that happens. Your damage goes up as you gear up, but your stamina goes up as well. 3% damage becomes more valuable, but so does 30% stam->SP.

I know I do more threat now in T6 gear than I did when I was starting Kara in blues, but I've also got a good 50% more stamina now as well. So if I had TbtL now, that would be scaling up along with everything else.

Thanks, Redcape.

I see what's going on here; I'm sort of looking at this as a "What's my dps on this specific fight against mob X?" tool, and you're designing it more as a "What's my overall dps for an entire raid if X% of the mobs are covered by Crusade, etc?" tool. That's what was driving a lot of my questions.

And yeah, you're right that a cost-normalized itemization breakdown is probably more trouble than it's worth.

I'll probably play around with this more a bit later. Thanks again!

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

 

Spenda

It seems to me that prot DPS would have serious mana problems without taking hits and getting mana back from blessing of sanctuary. Did you consider time to OOM when not in a tanking role? I presume we'd need plenty of mp5, but we probably wouldn't find it on items with the strength and block value we need to keep our DPS high.

 

• frmorrison

Once Holy gets another pass, they do need to address the Holy dps issue, since every spec is supposed to be about to do passable dps.

Scale only the spell damage added to SoR, but not too much that Ret would use SoR + Seals of the Wise over SoB/SoC
Add the damage part of Holy Shock to Illumination, so you regen a bit of mana
Lower the level requirement of SotR to 72

There is a good start.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

levk

SotR will suck for holy, there's no strength.