Redcape

I think one big reason this whole levelling thing is an issue is our lack of base damage on seals. Right now paladin dps scaling is through the roof, and that is largely due to abilities that have no base damage. They need substantially higher coefficients to make sure paladins will do reasonable damage at level 80 than they would otherwise, which creates a problem at both low and high gear levels. With current implementation seals/judgements are really crap at low levels, reasonable at 80, and are going to make paladins juggernauts later on in progression because our scaling is completely out of whack with other classes.

We scale at something like 1.5 DPS per str. Casters don't even approach this number, largely because they are balanced around having a base damage amount on their spells. In order to make paladin low level play reasonable and to prevent us scaling far and above other classes in dps (specced ret or prot, holy doesn't scale well at all for dps) they need to readd ranks for judgements and seals. Maintain the static cost just like any other spell, lower the coefficients and give us base amounts.

 

flyingtoastr

OR, like a normal person, you can spec as a DPS spec if you want to grind quickly. Having ranks of seals doesn't especially help us right now, what would it change at all in wrath? Not only that but you're then nerfing ret and prot endgame (nonscaling numbers are bad for DPS) just so holy pallys can kill things faster. Don't hold me to it, but that doesn't sound like such a good idea.

If they want to make paladin leveling fun they need to just give us a baseline strike. Problem solved.

 

Redcape

I am not suggesting that holy levelling needs to be awesome. I am suggesting that levelling as any spec is terrible when abilities scale off stat only and have no base value. Check what your SoR/JoR does right now at any low level and then do the calculations again with the new coefficients and no base value. You will find you are much worse off.

Where did you get the idea that I thought we should remove scaling from? You seem to have pulled it out of thin air. I said we need to reduce scaling so that ret and prot don't scale completely out of line from the other classes, which they WILL given current mechanics. You may like paladins who just wreck everyone, I don't. I intend to play (and always have played as a main) my paladin. I want paladins to scale sensibly though, and having base values + coefficients works better for that.

Just look at warlocks. Having base values for Shadowbolt does not make shadowbolt suck for raiding. It DOES make it a rational source of dps at low levels though. If seals/judgements had a base damage and scaled with SP/AP they would be better for levelling (For all specs) and would prevent paladins just dominating at high gear levels.

 

flyingtoastr

Uhhh... the part where you said "Maintain the static cost just like any other spell, lower the coefficients and give us base amounts." Judgement of Command has a scaling factor on live. It is simply so small it is completely worthless. I'd like not to return to that, mmk?

Again, all they have to do is put in a baseline strike that shares a cooldown with HotR and CS. It could be something as stupid as "Holy Strike- Instantly deals 50% weapon damage as holy damage". Volia, Holy gets a solo tool, low levels get decent damage, Ret and Prot don't get screwed over because some level 5 is complaining that it takes to long to kill things.

EDIT: Oh yeah, don't compare our attack system to a caster. The reason spells do so much more base damage is because they don't have an autoattack.

 

Redcape

I can hardly see how suggesting lowering coefficients by an unspecified amount is tantamount to suggesting that all our spells should only scale with a stat we don't get on gear and is terrible for us. Please. You act like I suggested lowering Judgement coefficients to 10% of spirit and nothing else. Rather I suggest some rational lowering of coefficients (Say, 30%, on Judgement and SoR/SoV) and adding in substantial base amounts to compensate for that. Our scaling overall would be much more in line and our levelling would be better. Hardly the situation Judgement of Command is in now.

Suggesting a change to ret that lowers scaling is not the same as suggesting that ret should not scale, nor is it the same as suggesting that ret should suck again.

 

Ivriniel

I think one could address some of issues with scaling.
Higher SP coefficient on SoV but lower AP coefficient.
Higher AP coefficient but lower SP coefficient on other seals.

Convert Sheath of Light to an Offhealer ability by making it healing spellpower only.

TPS for Retribution specced Paladins that want to Offtank would of course suffer from it, but they got all their nice dps talents so that they should still be viable enough and not to far behind protection.

If done with the proper numbers this change leaves Retribution dps at it's current level, but scaling from AP alone.
Holy Paladins now have a Seal that scales with their spellpower.
Protection doesn't really see any change from this, SoV should still be the TPS Seal of choice (scaling via Touched by the Light).

 

Valerys

I think that the "standard buffs" such as Fortitude, AI, MotW, and blessings should either be permanent until canceled, dispelled, or removed via death. Or at least take a cue from AoC and give them 24 hours duration. There really is no reason to force people to rebuff them regularly, it's not like it's a noticeable mana hit (you almost always rebuff out of combat and drink afterwards), the only thing it causes is tedium.

 

Blutelf

Blizzard does intend to make the game more accessible in general. Deathknights starting at 55, Recruit-a-Friend and Account Bound items show that levelling up an alt, or indeed, one's first character, should not be difficult and time-consuming. There is no reason why a new or untwinked player should not be able to level as well as Ret or Prot when skilled Holy, and just because Blizzard does weird things to Judgement/Seal scaling at the moment, I would not be afraid for high-end Ret or Prot. I am woried about low-level Holy because I would very much like more people to play paladins in general and more people to play Holy paladins, and I do not want someone to accidentally set the JoR damage too low whilst focussing on level 70 - 80 numbers and gear.

I realize that no-one has posted any current build low-level SoR/JoR data so far, so maybe the problem does not even exist.

 

Dine

I don't know if it has been already discussed,

I checked out a Beacon of Light specc and I do not think that it`s working as intended.

If u put it on a target and heal this one, the beacon will grant an additional
heal on the target. this way you can acutally double the heal output on a
single target. although i do not really see a correct math on the heal a
beaconed targets get if you heal another one and put half heal in overheal.

sometimes it seemed to me, the beacon doesnt heal anything, sometimes
it heals larger amounts than on the basicly healed target.

anyone got the same experiences?

 

Blutelf

It has been discussed here. The beacon of light heal can also crit off the amount of your crits, which is probably why you are seeing increased numbers. Also, beacon sometimes refuses to refresh when recast, and does not work raidwide.

 

Dine

and the fact that beacon heals beaconed target if u heal him directly ;-)

the tooltip says nothing against this mechanic, but i dont think that it is the way it was meant to be.

 

• Avitus

You haven't been paying attention have you? I point you back up to where the distinction is made between "holy grinding" and "1-39 low level holy DPS". No one is arguing against the prior (or for it) since it's fine.

And please, if your going to stereotype, at least get the talent name right.

 

Blutelf

Personally, I am not sure whether we will receive the current BoL. Since Spirit Link and Heroic Leap have been very recently removed due to general bugs, there is a theoretical possibility that the spell will be changed again.

 

Prinsesa

I made a post on the Paladin forums regarding Fiola's discovery of SOC scaling with haste and came across this post which posits that SOC has an internal cooldown, preventing two back-to-back procs by timing your CS or DS to coincide with your melee attack.

I'm no expert on statistics, and this probably won't change anything for "Top DPS Seal" considerations, but it's certainly an interesting read if true.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Fqubed

The test seems fairly well done and the conclusion looks solid. Its a bit of an insult to do this to SoC seeing as it's the subpar dps seal. If you want to burst with auto-CS-DS for a triple hit with SoB you can do it at a small cost of life, healed in part by DS and by following a JoL.

 

◊ Cathela

EDIT: Glyph suggestions removed; it was pointed out to me that suggesting new abilities violates the forum rules. I've posted them here on the official beta forums; if anyone wants to contribute more, feel free to post in that thread, or PM yours to me and I'll post them myself.

Enhancement shamans use a mod to track the internal cooldown on WF, and sometimes delay Stormstrike by a second or two to avoid colliding with the internal CD. I imagine when this goes live Ret paladins will be doing something similar.

Got more details on this? I've always seen JotP as the make-or-break talent for the current version of Holy.

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

 

Pyre

What does "fine" mean? My paladin is currently holy, and is expected to be holy in the expansion as well. I have a full set of t6 in both holy and prot. Unfortunately, I've had little time to level my paladin in the beta, but from the numbers I'm seeing, it'd be rather stupid for me to level as holy when prot is available to me. It seems rather broken that I basically need to abandon my main spec in order to level in a much more efficient manner. How exactly is that "fine"?

 

• frmorrison

Via doing instance leveling?

While that is not available to some people, I know some guilds plan to have leveling groups, were you just keep running an instance to level up instead of doing quests.

Holy may be doing decent dps with the now working 45 pointer (10% spell and melee haste), since that means more SoR and faster GCD on spells.

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

 

• Phara

How would that differ from speccing optimal for DPS/Tank/Heal in raids? Some specs are simply better than others because that's the nature of their spec. When you think about it, why should holy be as effictive as a DPS spec, when the holy talents main priority isn't doing damage, but healing?

 

Hylo

The problem is that not only is holy far below dps/tank specs, but it's also far below other healing specs (priests, shamen, druids) due to not having a spammable spell nuke that gets full benefit of the spell power in healing gear.

 

Solyna-Terenas

This seems to fit with the other hybrirds and really I don't think it's much of a problem. It's much easier to level a druid as feral and a shaman as enhancement that either of those as resto if you're mostly soloing. If you want to level as a healer, this works great in small groups or even duos but by yourself it is much more efficient to level as a different spec.

 

• Avitus

If you bothered to actually read "the numbers that you are seeing", you'd notice that it's just the average damage for each ability that has gone down, while the overall DPS has gone up (mainly due to HS cd)!

You are going to be killing things faster as a holy spec than you are doing right now on live (and much more so as soon as you hit level 75) that's what I mean with "fine". Please learn to read.

 

Ivriniel

That's it exactly, and it's the reason there has to be a single Seal or holy ability that scales better.
Saying other classes are not better of is hardly true from my experience. (I have seen restoration Shamans do considerable amounts of damage on live, using their tier6 elemental gear.)

Restoration Shamans do considerably more dps even in their healing gear, not to mention when they picked up t6 elemental gear.
Restoration Druids can use their balance spells which will scale nicely with their spellpower.
Priests have base spells like SW:P, SW:D, Smite and are Spirit based so they should maintain a nice killing speed without to much downtime.

The table a page back suggest the only thing for holy that has improved is HS, as I don't have decent holy gear it's hard to judge how much my down time would be reduced by having better gear, but I doubt it'll change much.

Saying holy Paladins are fine to level is not exactly true when you compare it to any other healing spec.

Disclaimer: This is meant for level 50+ where gear actually improves.

 

Blutelf

Do you seriously argue that Holy Paladins should have to respec to kill some Northrend Boars? There is absolutely no plausible reason to make solo PVE content that much harder for healers. This may have been the case at release, but is certainly out of place four years later, and I am very glad that the game seems to move away from this mindset.

As far as PVP balance goes, Holy Paladins are not exactly well-known for their massive damage in 2v2.

EDIT: Priests have very recently received a 2 sec base cast Holy Fire, so this further strengthens the argument that the developers want healers to be able to kill things with their healing spec.

EDIT 2:
It would be helpful if someone posted some low-level JoR data to confirm this, though, as this is what started the discussion in the first place.

 

• Avitus

The argument that holy paladins will be doing less DPS than they are doing now is simply incorrect.

The argument that holy paladins might be doing less damage than other healer specs, fine, that's something that could be debated and I agree if there's a large discrepancy then something is not right.

Still, I'd love to see a DPS comparison between a resto druid in resto gear or a holy priest in holy gear and a holy paladin in holy gear and then again at level 75. Somehow I feel it's going to turn out very differently than most people seem to expect.