WotLK talent trees/abilities discussion - Page 145

HamSlammer · 09/18/08, 5:54 AM

New set bonuses for Tier 7! (According to wowhead)

Protection:
(2) Set: Increases the damage dealt by your Hammer of the Righteous by 10%.
(4) Set: Increases the duration of your Divine Shield and Divine Protection by 3 seconds.

Holy:
(2) Set: Your Holy Shock gains an additional 10% chance to critically strike.
(4) Set: The cost of your Holy Light is reduced by 5%.

Retribution:
(2) Set: Increases the damage dealt by your Divine Storm by 10%.
(4) Set: Reduces the cooldown of your Judgment of Light, Judgment of Wisdom, and Judgment of Justice by 1 second.

All of em look pretty strong. Yay for decent setup bonuses!

Prinsesa · 09/18/08, 5:56 AM

Originally Posted by Altirias

Ok so basically in 3.0, Libram of Souls redeemed = Blessed book of nagrand ?

How Cool.

To be precise, 10 more spell power than Blessed Book of Nagrand, but yes.

Malleus · 09/18/08, 6:59 AM

Originally Posted by Prinsesa

To be precise, 10 more spell power than Blessed Book of Nagrand, but yes.

I wonder why they've removed the boost to Holy Light from LoSR? If the number of Librams we've seen in the past is anything to go by, Paladins wanting a boost to HL will be grinding normal Botanica for an item that won't be replaced before Naxx-25.

Thorgred · 09/18/08, 7:38 AM

Threat scaling values for prot threat stats:

From a spreadsheet that i believe is mostly correct, given a spec with Seals of the Pure but not reckoning: (something like this)
Note that the first stat (TPS) is before buffs, and the 2nd stat (TPS per iPoint) = after kings/divine strength and shows the threat per relative value of the stat.
(This doesn't include crit or resist rates as i assumed they would be the same for both sor/sov)

Both Seals:
1 Weapon DPS = 2.1 TPS
1 BV = 1.41 TPS = 2.56 TPS per iPoint
Using SOR:
1 AP = 0.45 TPS = 0.9 TPS per iPoint
1 SP = 0.4 TPS = 0.47 TPS per iPoint
1 Str = 1.49 TPS = 1.88 TPS per iPoint.
1 Sta = 0.133 TPS = 0.225 TPS per iPoint
1 Sec weapon speed = 44 TPS (slower = more threat, due to SOR procs on HotR and SotR)

Using SOV:
1 AP = 0.5 TPS = 1 TPS per iPoint
1 SP = .38 TPS = 0.44 TPS per iPoint
1 Str = 1.66 TPS = 2.1 TPS per iPoint
1 Sta = 0.114 TPS = 0.21 TPS per iPoint
1 Sec weapon speed = 3 TPS

Using SOV and an epic spellpower weapon:
1 DPS = 2.1 TPS as melee weapon
1 Sac DPS = (7*0.38 ) = 2.66 TPS as a spellpower weapon.
Which puts spellpower on a weapon as the best scaling stat, followed by block value and strength from other sources.

And as a starting point, for a paladin with stats (after buffs) of 2500 AP, 600 SP, 700 BV:
with the Titansteel Guardian: =3113 TPS with Vengeance
with Titansteel Bonecrusher: = 3128 TPS with Vengeance
-- the Bonecrusher comes out ahead due to the 140 AP on the weapon - without this AP, bonecrusher is at 3062 TPS.

• Chicken · 09/18/08, 8:00 AM

Shield of Righteousness doesn't proc seals actually, only Hammer of the Righteous does, so that might change some of your values slightly, especially the weapon speed value should be affected by that.

Thorgred · 09/18/08, 8:38 AM

Woops didn't know that.

Basically that will result in a small TPS decrease across the board for SOR - not worth recalculating considering that SoV scales better in all situations.

Valerys · 09/18/08, 9:53 AM

Have they changed Libram of Zeal (and its pre-TBC counterpart, Libram of Fervor yet? Those are the retribution leveling librams 60-70, but are completely nonfunctional with the removal of SotC.

◊ Cathela · 09/18/08, 11:56 AM

Originally Posted by DarKNecross

I said something above, but only added it as an edit, so it may have been missed.
The old version of the spell - WeaponDamage * 1.2 - can be rewritten as WeaponDPS * WeaponSpd * 1.2.
The new version is essentially using a 'normalized' weapon speed of 2.5 - WeaponDPS * 2.5 * 1.2 = WeaponDPS * 3, which is the new version we're seeing. So it's a buff to weapons faster than 2.5s.
Assuming they previously used paper-doll Weapon Damage for HotR, I'm guessing they will use paper-doll WeaponDPS now, which includes AP. Of course, this is speculation, but it makes sense!

It used "full" weapon damage in the previous push, so as far as I can tell this is just a tooltip update to match the current mechanics. Basically it's "pretend you have a 2.5-speed weapon at the same dps, then multiply weapon damage by 120%."

I dislike the philosophy behind this change (wanting paladins to tank with "normal" tanking weapons), but I won't repeat my rant about it again. Given that this is the idea they're going with, for better or for worse, this is a good change that's needed to make it work.

Also someone needs to check and see how this affects seals. If I have SoR up and I use HotR with my 1.6-speed weapon, do I get 1.6 seconds worth of SoR damage, or 2.5 seconds worth?

* Libram of Reciprocation: Your Judgement of Command spell has a chance to grant 173 haste rating for 10 sec.

This is the point where I wish it was okay to insert that ASCII-art of the facepalm guy.

Rasczak · 09/18/08, 12:33 PM

Originally Posted by flyingtoastr

New Librams!

* Libram of Obstruction: Your Judgement ability also increases your shield block value by 186 for 5 sec.

Could someone with beta point out to blizzard that this has the same effect and value as the libram off mother despite being iLvl 200.

Fiola · 09/18/08, 12:54 PM

Originally Posted by Cathela

Also someone needs to check and see how this affects seals. If I have SoR up and I use HotR with my 1.6-speed weapon, do I get 1.6 seconds worth of SoR damage, or 2.5 seconds worth?

Just hopped onto PTR and tried it. It'll be 1.6 seconds. So our overall scaling still favors slow weapons, unless they revamp our Seal system.

HotR is also still 1H only. (mmo-champion talent tree left out that important piece of information)

flyingtoastr · 09/18/08, 12:56 PM

Art of War heals are resetting the swing timer. I'll make a post on the beta boards to get it changed.

DarKNecross · 09/18/08, 1:05 PM

Originally Posted by Blutelf

I am not sure whether you are trolling or being sarcastic, but I don't think what you have said fits any of the post-BC changes at all, or is a sentiment shared by many others.

Many talents in the healing trees have been reworked to affect all spells or at least a whole spell school. The 33% of healing power to spell power change made it extremely obvious that healers were no longer expected to respec or change gear when doing daily quests, of which 2.4 brought us a plethora. Even those were mainly designed not around killing 30 Flayers in some overfarmed cave, but around moving about and collecting/doing something. In addition to this all mobs on the Isle of Quel'Danas have exceptionally low HP.

It should also be fairly obvious that all classes except for the Paladin are in possession of spammable baseline offensive abilities. Every other class starts with one such ability at level 1 and gains additional abilities as the levels go by. Paladins start with (now a instead of the) Judgement spell and SoR. HoW is added sometime later.

Until their 40th level both Holy and Protection paladins never gain anything else, and even this only if they spent all talent points in one tree. Both Protection and Retribution then continue to receive a new talented ability in their trees at the 41 and 51 talent point mark.

Holy is still casting JoR all the way from level 1 and HS from level 40 to level 80. HS was buffed, JoR was decreased in power, a new baseline ability was given to us at level 75. And JoTP now affecting melee haste is, once again, an obvious try to buff Holy DPS a fair bit, and again a sign that the developers are aware of the problem.

The Healing->Spell Damage change wasn't made to make healers up to par with the other classes when solo, but soften the blow of not having any damage when farming. You're right that classes don't have to respec or change gear when doing daily quests, and I'm not sure I actually disagreed with you there. I mentioned that, for leveling, it would probably be faster to spec Protection, and for farming, you would probably do more damage as Protection. I think Antmanton was the one who said Holy paladins needed to respec in order to solo, but I merely said they would have an easier time if they respec, which holds true for all the other classes as well.

Paladins are the only mana using class that have no damage abilities based on cast bar. If course, you could give us an instant cast ability without a cooldown, but who wants to do with another guy spamming Moonfire or Arcane Explosion? For leveling, I think you're echoing some of the points I made in a previous post, which is ironic since you're using those arguments against me. Holy Paladins do play similarly to Protection from 1-40, which is why I suggested Protection to be the spec most closely related to the Holy Paladin if they wanted to do damage/farm and weren't happy with Holy's performance.

Holy Shock's buff means a lot more for Paladins that use it for heals than it does for doing damage, but that's the duality of the spell. All Paladins have Shield of Righteousness, which doesn't mean the new ability was being facilitated for Holy Paladins (mainly because it scales with Block Value, which isn't a stat they have), and JoTP is a strong Healing talent, the Melee haste is extra. However, don't think these constitute them trying to buff Holy's damage significantly.

Again, I don't think Holy should be designed around having comparable damage to the other specs (or Protection even) because unlike the others, a Holy Paladin could turn around and throw heals at full potency in the same gear. It's fine if their damage is still good enough for questing and general farming or dailies, which I think it will be. The original post I was replying to was concerned that Holy would have gaping shortcomings in leveling and solo play. I merely reaffirmed that he could try Protection, which does have more talents centered around damage.

◊ Cathela · 09/18/08, 1:07 PM

Originally Posted by Rasczak

Could someone with beta point out to blizzard that this has the same effect and value as the libram off mother despite being iLvl 200.

Will do, although it wouldn't surprise me if they decided to nerf the Mother libram. 186 block value is a lot more powerful when the class gains SotR.

Originally Posted by Fiola

Just hopped onto PTR and tried it. It'll be 1.6 seconds. So our overall scaling still favors slow weapons, unless they revamp our Seal system.

HotR is also still 1H only. (mmo-champion talent tree left out that important piece of information)

The MMOC talent trees have always left that out; I assume it's an effect of their data-mining system.

I'm going to agitate on the beta forum for a change to HotR's "weapon speed" as applied to seals.

EDIT: Also, I posted a somewhat longer version of this in the paladin threat, but after some testing it appears that Righteous Fury now has Blessing of Salvation "baked in" to its effect. So the threat multiplier on Holy damage is actually 190%/70% = 271.4%, or a 171.4% threat bonus (even though the tooltip still uses the old +90% figure.)

Tilted · 09/18/08, 1:12 PM

Originally Posted by Thorgred

Threat scaling values for prot threat stats:

(snip)

Which puts spellpower on a weapon as the best scaling stat, followed by block value and strength from other sources.

Thanks for the work, and it confirms something I've suspected since the latest change to ShoR. Block Value is one of our most beneficial stats to stack when building a threat set, despite the fact that it only affects ONE of our moves. I honestly think the 240% BV scaling will be nerfed prior to WotLK endgame raiding. It simply scales too well, and massively outpaces the warrior equivalent it was "copied" from -- both in base damage and the fact that it deals Holy damage so it ignores armor reduction.

◊ zeidrich · 09/18/08, 1:37 PM

In regards to holy's solo viability:

Considering SoV is now a viable seal, and used over Righteousness in a raid scenario. It would not IMO be a bad idea to completely remove the AP scaling of SoR, and greatly boost the Spell Power scaling. Removal of the AP scaling would keep it from going overboard for Ret with sheath of light, and having it scale well with spell damage would throw Holy a bone when they're wearing 0 AP spell damage gear and trying to solo.

Vangalius · 09/18/08, 1:46 PM

Well, I certainly hope it's a bug, but today on the PTR my Judgements when Seal of Command is up are doing at most 1k damage on a crit against other players - that's down a whole lot from yesterday. That's with fully talented Art of War and Righteous Vengeance.

• frmorrison · 09/18/08, 1:46 PM

Originally Posted by DarKNecross

Paladins are the only mana using class that have no damage abilities based on cast bar.

Holy Shock's buff means a lot more for Paladins that use it for heals than it does for doing damage, but that's the duality of the spell. All Paladins have Shield of Righteousness, which doesn't mean the new ability was being facilitated for Holy Paladins (mainly because it scales with Block Value, which isn't a stat they have), and JoTP is a strong Healing talent, the Melee haste is extra. However, don't think these constitute them trying to buff Holy's damage significantly.

Pre-3.0, Holy Wrath has a cast time (note it isn't used much outside of Hyjal).

Holy Shock gets a 12% increase in damage from the Healing talent. SotR would not scale on a Holy Pally outside of Libram or a new Shield, however it still is a large damage increase, mostly due to not having anything else to use.

Fiola · 09/18/08, 1:52 PM

Originally Posted by Cathela

This is the point where I wish it was okay to insert that ASCII-art of the facepalm guy.

About that... I did a more comprehensive SoC Haste test. Seems SoC scales with haste on the PTR.

Using 374 haste rating (23.72% haste + 3% from ret aura) with a 3.8 AS weapon (hasted to 2.98) on a servant mob in Blasted Lands. Overall test was about 10 minutes.

(I used a servant because dummies are now L80, so you miss 50% of the time; I would have had more haste if I had access to the epic haste gems as I originally planned)

205 white swings
160 SoC
87 CS
55 DS

Screenshot of recount:
ImageShack - Hosting :: sochastexd1.jpg

I got 160 SoC procs over 347 hits, for a 46.1% proc chance. At 7 PPM, we'd expect SoC to have 44.3% proc chance with a 3.8 AS weapon.

Using the SD analysis from the previous SoC haste discussions:
SD = Sqrt(swings * % chance to proc * % chance to not proc) [bolded term was added]
Expected = swings * % chance to proc

In the following table, it shows the predicted range of SoC procs if it were to scale with haste or not. Using the 68-95-99.7 rule , 95% of results should be within 2 SDs.

Scen.	Scales	!Scale
%chance	44.33%	34.77%
SD	9.25	8.87
+2 SD	172.3	138.4
Expect	153.8	120.6
-2 SD	135.3	102.9

At 160 SoC procs, it is within the range of scaling, but not in the range of non-scaling. That suggests that SoC does scale with haste. (On PTR, anyways. I need to waste 150+ badges if I want to test this on live)

EDIT: Fixed the SD equation.

DarKNecross · 09/18/08, 2:05 PM

An interesting note on that, if we assume SoC does scale with haste, and we assume the SoC Glyph increases the PPM to 8.4, that gives us roughly 50.4% chance to proc Seal of Command with a 3.6s weapon, which puts it in line with Seal of Blood.
I could really go for that ASCII Facepalm right about now.

Prinsesa · 09/18/08, 2:15 PM

Could someone with beta point out to blizzard that this has the same effect and value as the libram off mother despite being iLvl 200.

All of Librams used to be like this - with the Tome of the Lightbringer stats as a sort of placeholder. This may still be a placeholder in spite of the other Librams getting changed.

Art of War heals are resetting the swing timer. I'll make a post on the beta boards to get it changed.

Note that spells with a cast time are still supposed to reset the swing timer: as in Nature's Swiftness + Healing Wave. 2 famous exceptions to this rule are Slam and Maelstrom Weapon (?), but there's nothing to indicate that AOW should (or shouldn't) be another exception.

Janraea · 09/18/08, 2:36 PM

Originally Posted by Prinsesa

Note that spells with a cast time are still supposed to reset the swing timer: as in Nature's Swiftness + Healing Wave. 2 famous exceptions to this rule are Slam and Maelstrom Weapon (?), but there's nothing to indicate that AOW should (or shouldn't) be another exception.

The main problem with it resetting the swing timer is that there's no way to tell that it does so unless you do research. Unlike the NS-HW example you mention, this will be going on *constantly*, and will create a sizeable gap in damage when it does. In general, abilities that perform oddly due to awkward mechanics are being changed. AoW in particular is harsh on new players/modless players because the damage can be minimized by timing the cast with your swing.

While I wouldn't mind skill being (even) more of a factor in net dps, punishing a player for not knowing something that they'd have to log into a theory-crafting forum to know is bad form.

Blutelf · 09/18/08, 2:38 PM

Regarding the JoC change, someone posted on the beta forums that it was caused by JoC only scaling off weapon dps instead of that + spellpower + AP which was apparently tested by variation of talent points spent in Sheath of Light and weapon changing.

Originally Posted by DarKNecross

It's fine if their damage is still good enough for questing and general farming or dailies, which I think it will be.

That is really all I am concerned about and as long as that is being taken care of one way or the other, it's fine. PVP is far from being balanced at the moment, and no doubt many other changes will take place.

EDIT:

While I wouldn't mind skill being (even) more of a factor in net dps, punishing a player for not knowing something that they'd have to log into a theory-crafting forum to know is bad form.

To be fair, you do tend to notice it fairly immediately whilst grinding. Players are not that stupid.

Janraea · 09/18/08, 2:47 PM

Originally Posted by Blutelf

To be fair, you do tend to notice it fairly immediately whilst grinding. Players are not that stupid.

I think that you're giving the typical player too much credit. To someone that thinks in terms of a swing timer it may be obvious. If you don't know about the concept, it feels like there's just a second or two of lag on the combat text (or the graphics).

I certainly didn't know there even was a swing timer to be interrupted until I started reading theory forums (for specific classes), and I'm fairly detail oriented.

Fiola · 09/18/08, 3:00 PM

Did another SoC Haste test on live with 248 haste rating. 3.8 hasted to 3.28 AS.

400 Melee
153 SoC

Haste	Scales	!Scales
%chance	44.33%	38.31%
SD	9.94	9.72
+2 SD	197.2	172.7
Expected	177.3	153.2
-2 SD	157.5	133.8

So SoC scaling with haste is a WotLK thing. It does make the haste on the LK raid DPS gear look more sensible.

(Thanks to Sigurd for pointing out the [table] tag)

Khaelarys · 09/18/08, 3:04 PM

In my mind the argument is simple - if it doesn't reset for the closest analog, Maelstrom, then it shouldn't reset for us.

I really like timing my AoW with Sacred Shield up, but it's not up long - I'm okay with having to time this with a global cooldown and the Shield, but adding in a swing timer constraint seems completely opposed to the flavor of this talent - which is to give us a bit of shareable survivability while DPSing.