Spenda

That is only if a ret paladin's performance is only based on their DPS. What if ret healing was good enough that it justified bringing one less healer to a raid in certain situations? I think we are getting to a point where off healing as ret would be viable in certain encounters and situations, and that adds to the value of the spec rather than detracting from it. That said, if a ret paladin is supposed to be doing pure DPS in a certain encounter, it makes no sense to ask them to use their AoW procs.

Update: Anedris beat me to the punch, and stated what I meant to get across much more elegantly. I apologize for not checking for updates before I posted.

 

• Arikah

Well to be fair, I think AoW procs resetting the swing timer is a bug, since the shaman's Maelstorm weapon was also resetting their swing timers and that was confirmed to be a bug (still isn't fixed yet btw). I rather like the idea of having the option to toss a small instant heal to someone in a raid during a spare gcd; that is part of what playing a hybrid should be about, having options open to you. You can always say screw it, and just use those extra gcd's to drop consecrates and exorcisms where applicable; from my experience you only get a free gcd once every rotation (timespan of about 2-3s, every 10s). How you choose to use that gcd will differ from scenario to scenario - heavy dps burn needed on patchwerk, vs an emergency heal needed on someone during sapphiron for example.

 

Sozar

It occurred to me that Blizzard was adding a lot of "random" proc type talents to make rotations more dynamic (Lock and Load, Maelstrom Weapon, Pain and Suffering, Hot Streak, etc), so that players that are aware of their procs and squeeze more damage out and not just face roll 2. Ret and Prot seem to be missing anything along these lines. Do you think this is intentional? We have a lot of cooldowns to watch, maybe they figure that's dynamic enough.

 

Rasputin

In a kinder, gentler World of Warcraft this might be true. In the actual raiding scene, every person is brought to fulfill their personal role the best of their class and spec's ability. If we're contributing 3% of the raid healing while doing 60% of the dps every other DPSer does because we are being required to use every AoW proc, that is a problem, not of design, but of use. I agree that it is a player-made problem. However, player-made problems exist and are powerful detriments to a class. Perception of a specs utility and power absolutely determine the playstyle of many, many players. I am not in any way requesting that AoW be nerfed or removed. What I am doing is trying to bring awareness of the fact that this type of utility can be abused by raid leaders and raiders who are underinformed, causing a drop in ret paladin dps performance which is not mitigated by ret paladin healing performance. If you bring a ret paladin to offheal and dps simultaneously, chances are you're better off bringing someone to actually dps or actually heal, because you will be ineffective at both roles. Hybrid playstyle of this type has never been useful or powerful in raids.

Now to be perfectly clear: I am not at all against throwing an emergency AoW proc FoL to someone, preventing their death or allowing the healers to catch up. What I am concerned about is that the talent may come to be perceived as something that makes ret paladins in ret gear DPSing useful healers, such that they will be expected or forced to use AoW all the time, rather than when appropriate. This is indeed a person problem, and I don't believe I implied otherwise.

 

Fiola

If it's a player problem, then it's up to Ret paladins to inform their raid leaders about the tradeoffs involved.

I have zero problem with doing "3% total raid healing and 60% DPS" as long as I'm being effective - you can't measure the effectiveness of that 3% healing by comparing it to the total healing done. If a few AoW heals made the difference between a kill and a wipe, I'd gladly trade 40% of my DPS for that result.


I don't see AoW becoming indispensable for raids, though. Holy Shock can do the same amount of healing on a more reliable basis, and other healers have plenty of instant "Oh crap!" buttons of their own.

 

Corronach

One might be able to make a focus target macro for your main tank to help out if he ever spikes too low, but something else to consider is we have the mana to cast some holy lights and get it right back. One example would be Obsidian Sanctum, when my guild was fighting the dragon boss I'd toss out heals to help with the players who got the burn and then when back to dpsing. We really do feel like a decent .5 healer now.

 

GSH

The basic Ret cycle has 4-5 open GCDs every 20s or so. What are you going to do with those GCDs?

Exorcism uses 1. Hammer of Wrath will use 3. Consecration uses 2. These are all situational, and can easily be used for Art of War FoLs.

You're not going to be a real healer, but I can see tossing 1 or 2 FoLs every 20s.

 

Rasputin

I would much rather use FoL as an emergency measure than when it's convenient. That's when I will use it. I doubt I'll be calmly waiting for my open GCD to use FoL, because in those situations it won't be needed. Rather, I'll be interrupting my swing timer and pushing back my dps cycle with one when it's necessary and helpful to the raid. If they change the talent so that it doesn't push back the swing timer, so much the better. If not, oh well. What I don't plan on doing is using the spell indiscriminately just because it's there, which is what using it only when you have open GCDs seems to be to me.

 

Feanor73

Emphasis mine.

We all know on this forum how this type of hybridity collapsed the first day a hybrid put a foot in MC, as the poster 2 posts above me wrote it brilliantly at the time.

Obviously we are very far from this situation now, but thanks to this experience I think we should be very aware of the potential dangers of player-made expectations.

Edited for clarification

 

• Avitus

Personally I'm planning to make a lot of use of it on trash. For boss fights it'll be reduced to an emergency measure if death is the only alternative or for movement type fights (think felmyst).

That's pretty much the extent of it, as others have said, it's just an extra tool for emergency heals rather than a "new hybrid play style". Don't think you have anything to worry about

 

◊ Cathela

This.

I think there's much better hybrid potential in WotLK than there was in TBC (the SD/healing -> SP conversion is a huge systematic buff to offspec healing) but these things always seem to work out better in theory than in practice. I know that two years ago I was seeing a lot of hybrid potential in TBC talents/abilities that unfortunately failed to materialize.

My real concern at this point is that with a set release date in slightly less than two months, the development/tuning work is going to get cut short and the developers will end up cutting corners and leaving issues unresolved in order to make the release date. In my opinion the job they've done so far on our talents has been just short of brilliant; I'd hate to see things left in a half-finished state for the sake of meeting a deadline. (And there are other classes in a far less complete state than paladins.)

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

 

• frmorrison

That old post is still correct. The libram does nothing in Beta, however all +healing librams were changed to +spell power.

I can see if there was a post about it in the Beta forums and if not make a post.

Edit: I made a post in the Holy Feedback thread.

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

 

Tuftears

I didn't change the shield out - there was no 'attack power' shield - so it should have been the same shield through both tests, but you are right that there should have been a difference.

I respec'd 51 prot/20 ret to compare:

Spellpower gear:
Shield of Righteousness 1315 avg, 2629 crit

Melee gear:
Shield of Righteousness 2602 avg, 5359 crit

These are the original 37 holy/34 ret shockadin numbers:

Spellpower: 1349 avg, 2787 crit
Melee: 1345 avg, 2786 crit

Is it possible that this is the effect of paladin PVP gear having attack power and not strength? Attack power clearly doesn't buff shield block value at all.

upstart feline miscreant (47 feral/14 resto)

 

Tilted

OK, that's messed up. I think we need to see more stats to understand what's going on. The difference in prot numbers makes some sense, but I'd expect to see a similar result with the shockadin spec. What were your block value, AP, and SP numbers with in the two gearsets with the two specs?

 

Spenda

I wasn't aware that the PVP gear had straight AP rather than strength. That indeed would solve the mystery. If your block value in each set was the same, then the similar numbers are exactly as they should be. I apologize for wasting your time, but I thought the following items were the AP PvP set the premades have:

LK Arena - Paladin Melee Set
LK Honor - Plate DPS Belt / Bracers / Boots

All of those had strength on them at the time mmo-champion listed them.

 

• frmorrison

The 80 Pre-mades have that blue set (I don't recall if it has the epic non-set, but it has strength on them) and 2 epic rings with strength and an attack power trinket and two weapons enchanted with 90 AP.

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

 

Andrast

If you got onto Murmur quickly enough you could purchase some of the "Season 5" Hateful epic gear from the plate vendor in Dalaran. You also get a variety of necks/trinkets/cloaks. Coincidentally the cloaks have an enchant that isn't active since it required 400 enchanting.

I really wished they'd provided us with some pve gear to facilitate better testing. It is VERY difficult to compare pallies with a 2-hander who are potentially less dependant on hit to enhance shaman to rogues to mages all when barely anyone has any hit available on their pvp sets.

 

Tuftears

Here are the 51 prot/20 ret stats, self-buffed with BoKings

Spellpower:
1853 spellpower
38 hit rating
18.70% spell crit
128.5 dps melee (1.6 attack speed)
586 attack power
19.92% melee crit
6 expertise (-1.5% dodge)
370 block value
202 str, 1387 sta

Melee:
596 spellpower
54 hit rating
24.68% crit
348.7 dps melee (2.6 attack speed)
2618 attack power
29.11% melee crit
6 expertise (-1.5% dodge)
758 block value
778 str, 1823 sta

So there's a clear strength difference.

I think I may have misquoted the Shield of Righteousness stats from the shockadin version. It should have been:

Spellpower: Shield of Righteousness (739 avg, 1477 crit)
Melee: Shield of Righteousness (1349 avg, 2787 crit)

Sorry for the error!

upstart feline miscreant (47 feral/14 resto)

 

Tuftears

To atone for my error, I stripped except for shield. Still 51 prot/20 ret spec'd.

Naked:
192 str, 255 sta
604 AP, +126 damage (from sta and shield), 12.80% crit
Block of 377.

Shield of Righteousness: avg 1176, crit 2353

AP-gear only:
192 str, 690 sta
1272 AP, +257 damage (from sta and shield), 17.57% crit
Block of 377.

Shield of Righteousness: avg 1294, crit 2587

Switched to enough strength gear to equal the AP from above:
484 str, 803 sta
1280 AP, +290 damage (from sta and shield), 18.78% crit
Block of 567.

Shield of Righteousness: avg 1679, crit 3xxx

-- dangit. World server crashed again before I could get that last number.

upstart feline miscreant (47 feral/14 resto)

 

Spenda

Thank you for all your work on this. Something still seems out of place here. In both your Naked and AP-gear only you show an identical 377 block value, and yet the damage done is different. If you are sure they were both at 377, then that seems to indicate that Shield of Righteousness may scale with AP and/or SP as well as block value. I was not aware of that. Can anyone else confirm this?

 

bellator

Think you've missed something here. The damage difference is exactly 10%. In the naked test he had no sword, and in the AP test he had a sword equipped which would trigger thr 10% bonus from 1H Weapon Spec, accounting for the difference

 

flyingtoastr

So in the next push they're giving Death Knights "rewards for the selfless buffer".

Here's to hoping they do the same for such lackluster talents as the ret utilities.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Davenrothz

I wish I checked here first as someone created a very nice one, however I don't think it was done for all items of gear, just for weapons.

Here is the one I've been working on:
http://www.careerprofessionals.info/...ion_Values.xls

I created it because I wanted to know with the gear I have now, what values will it turn into if you include the 15% str, etc. I also wanted to know my TPS with these new values, when you add in spell hit, melee hit, etc (I believe that Inspiring & Heroic Presence still affect one or the other).

It would've been nice to include tons of gear, but I figured I'm lazy ... and I'd just figure out the difference myself with a calculator, plug the number in, and see the results. I've also included drop down boxes to indicate what buffs you'll have during the raid.

Also, I've only included this for level 70 gear because my brain hurt too much to think about level 80 gear.

It helped me find out that I'd rather stay with my Amani Punisher rather than the healing mace that turns DPS with 3.0.2 because of the spell hit affecting SoV & Shield of Righteousness so much.

Also, the new forumlae for SoV SUCKS in WoWHead. With my current gear I get about ~1k non crit when I judge with 5 applications, but it looks to be 40% less than that after patch. I'm quite confused because a lot of my gear that didn't give me threat before because of lack of Spl Damage, and with all this newly found threat, I get less DPS? HUH?

I hope those forumlae are tweaked back to their original values, or inbetween.

SoV Application --> Right now:
(0.019*SP + 0.039*AP)*6
Old:
(0.034*SP + 0.070*AP)*6

SoV Judgement --> Right now:
(1+0.32*SP + 0.20*AP)*1.1^5 [or is it 1.1^4?)
Old:
(1+0.58*SP + 0.36*AP)*1.1^5 [or is it 1.1^4?)

Consecration & Shield of Righteousness didn't get forumla nerfed, just SoV. I didn't pay attention to SoRighteousness tho... perhaps I should check on that Seal now that it got nerfed.

**EDIT**: I tried to post on the Maintankadin site, but it asked me for some authentication code, which I thought I put the right name in, but didn't work out that way and locked... but I was able to host it on my site noted above.

 

Blutelf

Posters on both beta and PTR forums claim that there currently is a bug with Sanctified Wrath and damage absorption shields, possibly similar to the Sudden Death bug that would let Warriors deal six-figure hits, but not as extreme. The theory is that the damage is actually doubled or something.

Has anyone been able to reproduce this, or is it just another rumor? There have been quite a few sources claiming this.

 

Tuftears

Thanks for reminding me of that, I was wondering too! My next run was going to be to see if spellpower had any effect on Shield of Righteousness... But this seems like a much more likely explanation, sparing me the work.

Thought: Shield of Righteousness should maybe be on same cooldown as Holy Shock and Crusader Strike? Buff some other damage source to make up for it, perhaps, but it feels wrong to be treating it as a damage source for holy specs.

upstart feline miscreant (47 feral/14 resto)