Mordekhuul

Thanks for posting this, but what does "1 Sac DPS" mean? I'm just missing some obvious word that "Sac" abbreviates, I believe.

Thanks.

 

Suicidal Zebra

You've probably noticed that weapons with high +Spell Damage, such as the Continuum Blade for example, have a lower DPS than other weapons of a similar ilvl. This is because a certain amount of weapon DPS is sacrificed (hence 'Sac') for Spell Power, at a rate of 1 DPS = 7 Spellpower.

Hence his value for Threat per second: 1 Sacrificed DPS = (7 Spell damage * 0.38 Threat per Spell Damage for SoV) = 2.66 Threat Per Second.

Hope that explains it.

 

• Avitus

This is going to be a somewhat lengthy post (apologies in advance) to match the latest information flood:


-Holy leveling DPS (for low levels 1-70): I'm amazed so many posts are wasted on an issue like this. Make sure you understand the distinction here:

I fully acknowledge "high level" Holy should have a good way to grind and solo and we're getting just that at levels 71 (divine plea) and 75 (shor). You'll have Holy Shock on a 6 sec cd, ShoR on a 6 sec cd, Judgement every 8/10 seconds and then add white swings, seal procs, potentially consecration every 8 seconds. You have a clicky ability almost every second and no matter how low they are tuned, it will all add up. To top it all off, you can regen 25% of your massive mana pool every 1 min. I see no problems here and I hope this is something most agree on.

However, arguments about low level holy DPS? What? I don't understand why people are wasting time on this. 3 years into the game, with leveling made significantly easier (lower XP requirements per level, higher XP returns from quests) if someone should decide to level a paladin alt and stubbornly decide to go all the way as holy for some inexplicable reason, there should be no reason to complain. People have been doing it for 3 years, I don't understand why such an incredibly irrelevant, specialized issue demands such a huge amount of back and forth. Feel free to enlighten me if you think I'm off here.


-The new Alchemist's Stones: MMO link

The alchemy perk (1.5x flask/elixir effect) is only useful while using a flask/elixir (worthless for pvp/arena/solo grinding/questing/any instance or raid you don't flask for) in contrast to all other professions having "always on" perks.

I've been stubbornly trying to find a reason to keep alchemy, but I just can't see it, especially with additions such as these trinkets. I'm surprised they kept the potion bonus despite the new mechanic of using only one potion per fight. Previously you'd get Alchemy just for this bonus alone (especially as holy/ret), however now it's almost worthless. Good bye Alchemy, hello anything else.


-Oracles vs Frenzyheart Tribe rep: At some point while questing in WotLK you'll have to make a choice between two rep factions, somewhat similar to Aldor vs. Scryer in TBC, though with (so far) not as huge consequences. (Those who've leveled to 80 on beta or are in their high 70s in Shalozar Basin should know what I'm talking about.)

According to MMO-C, besides a bunch of blue stuff, each faction gives an epic trinket at exalted. Though already there have been better trinkets data mined, I assume these might be of interest as level 80 starter gear you can get on your own:

The Oracles: http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...62/to_3_07.jpg

Frenzyheart Tribe: http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...2/ft_04_01.jpg

At first glance, I'd say the Frenzyheart trinket is definitely the one "with a future" (worth taking for PvE raiding) vs. The Oracles one which has reduced usefulness and is only of interest for solo grinding. The incredibly vague equip bonus is somewhat annoying, but I'm hoping we'll be able to estimate its worth soon enough (proc chance, proc power, internal cooldown).

Just thought this is worth mentioning when you actually get the choice between the two reps while leveling (the choice comes up during an event and doesn't really give you much room to think about it).

-Unless ret/prot get mana nerfed again, I feel the SA Glyph is just fluff that no one will really use.

-Turn Evil glyph is interesting, though I'm dreading the thought of such ultra specialized Glyphs ("very situational, rarely used ability") requiring you to keep a stock of Glyphs for each fight to switch around, while making sure you make more in advance since you destroy glyphs when you replace them.

-Glyph of Avenging Wrath: Very interesting. This basically doubles the already obscene HoW DPS for 20 seconds, but it remains to be seen what you'll have to sacrifice to equip this. Might have some use complications, you need to make sure you have AW lined up when the boss mob hits 35% while estimating whether staggering AW for that is worth it or if using it every CD is better. Tricky.

At first glance, looks like Libram of Radiance will be the new standard issue Libram gained through PvE. I'm somewhat confused with the PvP librams, are those for Seasons 5-7? Are some of them via arena (LK) and some via honor (savage, hateful, deadly)? Anyone know more concrete information about this?

Also would be useful or the spreadsheet people to compare these.

Obligatory SoC libram comment: Someone really has no clue what they're doing... again. I'm interested to see if Fiola's tests yield further results (maybe with a higher hit count), however as someone already commented, it still doesn't seem like SoC will overtake SoB even if it scales with haste.


It's somewhat embarrassing to have a class almost completely dependent on a 3rd party mod for buffing (PallyPower) for the purpose of buffing because of how badly the game assists the players in this (not at all). Having to bless a raid on beta with different blessings with no pallypower for the first time in years really felt like a chore.

Reducing the 5 buff casts per hour to 1 cast for priests/druids/mages, while we have to do 10 casts every 30 minutes of more often than not different blessings feels unnecessarily tedious. I'm hoping for something to be done in this area.

All 2 set bonuses look very strong. Though I've yet to compare it with other class bonuses, the 4 set ret bonus looks almost too good (are they making up for something? ).

 

Janraea

Edit: My solution is to just have blessings (all types) remain indefinitely while in an instance with the caster. Possibly even through death.

 

• frmorrison

Alchemy still has the trinkets (80 trinkets NYI), so if nothing else you can use the Endless potions for free mana or health and get a 40% bonus to their effects.

For dps less useful but still pretty nice.

Buffing is annoying, but I can't see a better solution, other than increasing the durations 30 min/1 hour.

The bonuses are all good except for the Protection one (better if it was 10% to SotR), and the Ret one is really nice.

Gambling: The sure way of getting nothing for something.

 

flyingtoastr

I just did a UK and Nexus as deep holy (51/5/6).

First things off:
-Beacon is having a refresh bug at the moment.
-Judgements of the Pure is finally working (and is sextastic to boot).
-The SoW glyph applies to BoL, the cost was less than 900 per cast with Bene.
-BoL heals crit independently from the initial heal but take the total effective value of the heal regardless of crit or not. This leads to some really crazy stuff (9k crit Holy Light followed by a 14k BoL crit).

I must say that I really enjoyed it. Holy has a lot more buttons to play with on beta than live. Mana wasn't really an issue (though my gear is a *little* over the top for these instances) and throughput was great. Other than the little BoL refresh glitch it was smooth and a lot more fun and interactive than on live. So regardless of how "awesome" JotW is I expect deep holy will find a decent amount of use.

 

Arthaal

I think you're probably right that it will be tuned down, but I doubt the reason will be that it out damages the warrior ability since:

- in PvE, most mobs have trivial amounts of armor and stacking debuffs usually reduce that even further (add armor pen and most people in T6 were attacking mobs with effectively 0 armor). Holy damage offers few advantages in this case.

- the warrior ability's damage doesn't scale nearly as well since it has a base value instead of a flat multiplier like ours. As such, at lvl80 [756-794 base + (BV*ShieldSpec)]*1HS --> damage ignoring armor evens out at 436BV (my math is rusty, so someone else could check this ) a low value to be certain.

However 2 slams out of 7 (28.6% - assuming slam at 0 and 6 seconds into activating shield block and improved shield block to reduce the cooldown to 40s - this would slip if you're mashing shield slam on cooldown throughout, but I'm unfamiliar with the effective cooldown on warrior abilities while tanking, so it's the best I can do) are using double BV from Shield Block. The equivalence point now becomes 1527BV - which I've heard of in BV gear, but may or may not be a standard BV amount on boss tanking gear... that remains to be seen I suppose.)

Conclusion is that at 1000BV:

warrior: {[794 + (1000 * 1.3)] * 1.10} * 72% + {[794 + (1000 * 1.3)*2] * 1.10} * 28% = (2303.4 * 0.72) + (3733.4 * 0.28) = 2704 (450TPS)

paladin: 1000 * 1.3 *2.4 *1.1 = 3432 (572TPS)

Or a 122TPS difference, which may or may not be balanced out by other abilities in the rotation and amounts to about 4% of the TPS we've been seeing from Naxx tanks so far.

- if anything, will be nerfed due to PvP, where armor ignoring damage and big numbers are srs bzness!

 

• Avitus

There will be a ShoR nerf (or "change" to how the multipliers work) coming. 15k crits no matter how people try to argument for it, cannot be justified, not even if it was from a DPS spec.

I hope it still remains very potent (3000 hits and 6k crits is nothing to shake a stick at) with a bit of tuning to the obscene (8k+).

With potion sickness it's not nice, it's worthless. On a long 16 min boss fight we've been reduced to making use of this effect once instead of 8 times.

Unless you're arguing about grinding in which case we're talking about two completely different issues. I don't pick a profession to grind more efficiently if there's something that can offer superior optimization where it counts (raid bosses).

I know these aren't the level 80 versions, however seeing as they've already shown us they're re-using this bonus I expect - as the trend usually goes - they'll probably just have higher stats with the same equip bonus. I don't have high expectations here.



I had a very similar experience/conclusion a while ago, though it was still with the old "AoE BoL". It was actually a lot of fun to heal an instance and felt very interactive with all the instant heals. Good to know that it's still the same.

 

Redcape

I think the point here is that Alchemy has two kinds of buffs. One is for when you are potted up (raiding) and one when you are not.

Any time you are potted up the Alchemy Mixology buff is nice. It is easy enough to tune it to be just as good as any other raid buff from a tradeskill.

Any time you aren't potted up a endless potion is useful. It isn't blowing anybody's mind, but it does mean that in 5 mans, arena, BGs, dailies, etc. that alchemy has something to offer you. Your ring enchants, special crafted gear, JC gems, etc. don't go away when your flask isn't being used, and now alchemy benefits don't either. Endless potions aren't super powered, but I think they are a very appropriate partner to Mixology.

Whether or not the currently implemented Mixology is good enough is another thing entirely, but the ease with which they can adjust it to match other professions suggests to me that we shouldn't worry about it.

 

• Avitus

The currently implemented Mixology seems good enough (the value of it), trinket effects (with or without endless potions) are pathetically useless any way you cut it (opinion) since if you're getting out of combat what's the point of potions?

I can "maybe" see a niche for it in arenas for healers, but in general it feels to me like they're giving you a bunch of small things in hopes of making it worthwhile overall. I'd much rather have a static stats buff that lasts with me all the time regardless of conditions.

I'm not saying Alchemy is worthless, but there are definitely a lot more optimal professions out there for paladins in general. Anyway, don't want to deviate too much with this from the main topic, so I'll conclude here.

 

Tilted

Removal of reagents for greater blessings would be quite a boon as well. I know most raiding pallies burn 2-4 bag slots per raid just to have enough for a given night.

As for the bonuses, don't forget that this is just the first tier of raiding, and more sets are soon to follow. +10% ShoR would borderline break the set as it's too good a bonus to lose in order to "upgrade" your gear down the road. I wouldn't mind it on T9, though.

 

Amera

I understand where you are coming from, but I'm pretty sure alchemy will be as close to mandatory as possible for healing in arena in its current form. A several thousand mana difference between alchemists and non- is just amazing.

Outside of that, I agree. Having to constantly spend money to have your bonus "on" is pretty annoying.

 

Spenda

Since it seems Blizzard has an interest in making the tedious aspects of the game less tedious I'd love to see a solution to the problem of needing to give a different blessing to different party/raid members of the same class. The idea of making greater blessings apply to all members of the same class only makes sense for pure classes. When I'm in a situation where I need to split buffs, the 10 minute duration on normal blessings is a real pain.

I'd suggest they either:
a) Make greater blessing group by spec (Using the same logic they use to determine it on the armory)
b) Increase the duration of a normal blessing to the same length as greater blessings.

When I'm the only paladin in a 10-man or 5-man watching 10 minute timers while tanking is one of the most annoying aspects of the class.

Paladins already take forever to hand out all their blessings (especially if they have to split buffs), so with the changes to all the other buff classes in the last patch we are really going to look like slow pokes now. Perhaps a reduction in the GCD after casting a blessing could help ease this process? The whole raid has to wait for us to buff, so we aren't the only ones who would benefit.

 

• Avitus

That would be true if it wasn't for the fact that this is the Arena mana potion: [Endless Mana Potion]

Yea you're reading this correctly. That's an average 500 mana every 3 minutes at level 80 (if you leave combat) or 700 mana every 3 minutes with trinket effect.

 

Antmanton

Well, since you asked for it... I think you're off there. I realize this is apparently not a popular viewpoint around here, but effectively closing off an entire tree for the first half of a character's career due to completely unsupportable combat mechanics is both a good way to chase people away from ever going Holy, and is just plain poor design, most notably when you chase away an in-demand healing spec now that low-level dungeon runs are so rare and valuable for those without high-level guildies to pester for walkthroughs. While no one's arguing to make BFD and SFK serious business or anything, you only get one chance to make a good first impression, and to the casual player, that impression is pretty bad. Let me run some quick math to illustrate the point. Assume level 70 spell ranks, a 1.8 speed 41.3 dps caster weapon, 420 AP and 1000 SP without talents or other buffs:

Spell	Old Damage	New Damage	% Delta
Seal of Righteousness	210.01	120.17	-42.78%
Judgement of Righteousness	932.29	505.00	-45.83%
Holy Shock	1,178.57	1,369.57	+16.21%
Consecration	1,464.40	1,030.40	-30.00%
Total (30 sec. average)	14,145.68	14,229.68	+00.59%

Holy Shock deserves special mention here, as it is actually far better than its table entry suggests thanks to the vastly reduced cooldown (which is reflected in the 30 second rotation). Nevertheless, this table illustrates what's actually happening to holy paladin damage - it's all taking a rather significant hit except for Holy Shock, which is acting to make up the slack; to be precise, a staggering 48.41% of a paladin's total damage output. Putting so much of a spec's essential offense so deep in the tree is not only highly off-putting to most people, it is not really indicative of a well-balanced and well-planned talent tree. My concern, which may or may not be shared at large, is that the new or casual sub-40 player will take one look at these numbers in practice and hit two things in rapid succession: 1) the wall, 2) the nearest class trainer to respec. I believe it would be much better to fix seal and judgement scaling to give useful numbers even without massive quantities of AP to avoid turning people off of Holy before they hit 40 and finally get to play with some damage.

 

• Avitus

I really think they're going to have to get their hands a bit dirty and add something like a more powerful version of an ingame/server side supported pallypower:

-Set blessings via blizz interface + press 1 button to instantly buff everyone in the raid. Same effort as Fort/AI/GotW, same mana costs, but applies different buffs depending on your initial setting. Also make all blessings last for 1 hour.


I was going to say, that table is pointless unless you convert it to DPS. As you correctly mentioned, holy paladins are actually doing more damage past level 40 (once they gain access to Holy Shock).

So what we have now is: Holy grinding from 40-80 = better than it was.

Your argument is reduced to level 1-39. Now I really have to wonder, is leveling as prot or ret those 39 levels so much different? From a talent tree point of view I don't see any major boosts there. Did you include Seals of the Pure in your table? And more importantly: Does it even matter at level 1-39 what spec you are to heal an instance as a paladin? It's not like it's required to spend 30/30 of your first points exclusively in holy so you can be part of the "healer experience".

Sorry this argument seems incredibly weak to me. I really don't think it's worth them changing all the mechanics yet again putting everything at endgame yet again at risk, for the 2 people that decide to level as holy purists the first 39 levels (which take about 1-2 days /played at incredibly relaxed pace).

 

Spenda

But there is no reason why ret or prot can't be completely effective at healing those instances when at the appropriate level. I just don't understand why someone would level as a healer. I've never understood it. Why should design time be dedicated to that?

 

levk

First impression matters, people might've liked healing but if they're discouraged from that they won't. That said;

Shallow holy is actually very effective now, almost as effective as pre-1.09. And back then that was all the healing you could spec. So you can certainly heal everything upto Outlands with that. 8 points now get you same as 8 points back then - SF and healing light. 15 points get you full illumination, you got DF on top of that at 14 back then but it's close. It's the same as before you're expected to cross spec until 40 at least and probably all the way to max level. I don't think they should really worry about the leveling with shallow talents like that.

 

Amera

Either those were nerfed or I was heavily misinformed. :P In any case, that is pretty pitiful.


As for blessings, I've always hated the notion of a class being balanced around a few button presses every 15, 30, or 60 minutes. It doesn't take any skill to maintain those buffs; it is just tedious to rebuff people who died and make sure you recast them periodically. The best option would be to just remove stuff like this altogether, but the more likely solution is to just make it as easy as possible. Sixty minute blessings, no reagents, raid interface to buff everyone in the raid once an hour - done.

Buffing would be far more entertaining if it worked like the Paragon in Guild Wars or even bard in Everquest where you actually had to maintain a buff cycle, and your skill actually mattered in how effective your buffing is. This model is so much better than just "being in the raid" and providing said bonuses.

 

Antmanton

Is your argument that Ret and Prot can heal as well as Holy can? If not, I apologize for misunderstanding you, but if so, then indeed, why even have a Holy tree at all? The discussion so far has revolved around maintaining balance between specs, specifically ensuring that everyone has some role in both groups and solo (where one more-or-less has to fill all roles) that: 1) meaningfully needs filling (generally tanking/CC, healing, and/or DPS), and 2) that the spec is qualified to fill.

To put what I'm saying into perspective, imagine running a heroic Shattered Halls with two Prot warriors in tanking gear, plus a tree, a CoH priest, and a Resto shaman, all in healing gear. Would you expect this group make-up to succeed? Sure, but only through attrition, over the course of a couple hours. Would the experience be fun? Only to a masochist. Now throw that group into a blender and condense it down to one character on his own: you basically have a shockless Holy paladin. You're an OK tank and a good healer, but you feel you can only win fights when the mob gives up and dies of old age. Now compare that to a Ret paladin: Still an OK tank, now merely an OK healer, but now has vastly improved DPS. Which character feels more complete? Which do you suppose would be more successful solo? Shouldn't it be desirable to let all characters succeed without having to either rely on someone else or try to become something they aren't?

I've given my answers already. If that's not enough, then I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree.

[e] To respond to Avitus's edit:
Holy grinding from 40-80 is about that same as it was (~3 DPS more until ShotR at 75), but this includes no talents, outside buffs, or equip bonuses (except obviously for Holy Shock itself) for simplicity's sake. If you want a full workup of actual builds, I would expect the numbers to change significantly. As far as healing while off-spec, I will refer you to my comments above, and reiterate that if the spec is unnecessary early, that's all the more that is broken about it, even if you can work around the issue by speccing Ret or Prot.

 

Nezralix

Why doesn't Blizzard modify their paladin damage system to use *either* AP *or* spell damage, depending upon which would yield a greater result? It sounds like, because of the way Ret and Prot paladins are "doubling up" on spell damage and AP, they're getting disproportionately high damage output on their skills, while Holy paladins aren't getting this benefit at all. The goal seems to be offering paladins a reasonable scaling mechanism whether they're using spell damage gear or melee gear, but I don't see any reason why this implies a need to scale simultaneously with both stats.

If Ret-oriented spells no longer scaled with spell damage, would the spell damage conversion talent still be desirable for the improved healing? Would the additional spell damage from stamina still be useful for Prot paladins?

 

Spenda

No. My argument is that pre-heroic instances are tuned to allow non-tanking spec warriors/druids/paladins to tank, and non-healing spec priests/paladins/shamans/druids to heal. This is because Blizzard does not want to require people to level as tanks or healers or to respec just to run an instance. That said, of course someone speced for the role will certainly be more proficient in it, but by that same token someone speced for leveling will be better at that as well.

I'm still not understanding why someone would want to level as holy. It isn't built for leveling, but that is something someone should be aware of going into it, and if they choose it anyway then more power to them. Perhaps Blizzard should simply add some tooltips for novice players when they get their first talent point to give them a feel for the general direction of each tree?

Agreed.

 

Palados

@ Antmanton and Nexralix

There is close to 0 pala healing gear (even healing gear at all) till lvl 50 or so. I don't see, how leveling holy in available gear is different from retri till the level 50 when you get CS (seal of the pure makes up for all low-retri talents for low lvl gear). So, unless they introduce healing gear with no AP/str till lvl 50, there is no need to worry about different lvl speed for different specs.

 

Andrast

I agree.

My Paladin was my first toon and I distinctly remember that I picked up significant amounts of strength gear because to me, as a new player, It seemed obvious that since I spent most of my time hitting stuff with my mace/sword then strength was the obvious "best" stat. Despite this I put lots of points in holy because I wanted to heal dungeons.

My point is that assuming my experience wasn't atypical then for a new player the changes to the various seals will make solo play better. It wasn't until much later (in fact until I was clearing BWL) that I realised that spelldamage would probably help me better.

Having said that I'm very concerned about holy paladins in solo play for the expansion.

 

Arthaal

I think the over-arching conclusion here is that grinding for any spec is gonna be awful before level 40. As you correctly point out, whether you spec ret/prot/holy early on does not significanty effect your method for killing mobs. As such, if righteousness is suffering so for damage, leveling as a paladin (any spec) becomes extremely tedious (from experience, moreso than in TBC). That doesn't seem like a Good Idea(tm).

I LOVE your idea for an in-game pallypower though. That the blessing system in its current incarnation nearly requires a mod to function correctly should be embarrassing for Blizzard and the appearance of an in game threat meter earlier on in the BETA suggests they may actually want to do something about these types of situations.