Threep

It looks like Shield of Righteousness's insane coefficient has been hotfixed away. Mine is doing 1059 damage right now - consistent with my 741 block * 1.3 * 1.1 as Prot. Can anyone else confirm it's down to a 100% coefficient?

 

◊ Cathela

Yeah, I was just coming on to post the same thing. As far as I can tell, it still has no inherent threat modifier as well.

It sucks, but we can't say we didn't see it coming.

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

 

Exewut

That's not really the case though for prot. As it stands right now a prot paladin's mitigation and hitpoint pool will be significandly smaller than that of a warrior. (You take about 10% more melee damage than an equally geared warrior, this is assuming you're using a similar weapon and a similar item in the ranged slot as well).

WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> Paladin Tanks - The "fat kid" of MTs

Posts like this are very wierd though. It's mathematically proven that warriors take ~10% less melee damage exactly because of critical block, the higher avoidance and the difference between RF and defencive stance, and last time I looked 16 didn't equal 12. So does this mean that they are undervalueing the effects of shieldblock, that shieldblock is bugged right now and that 25% uptime isn't intended, or that more paladin changes are coming? Or that they just haven't run the numbers?

 

jere

Did they give us a base damage to compensate at least?

 

◊ Cathela

No.

The reason why they haven't is because they want to stick with this concept where it only has one rank and just scales with gear as you level. And as many people have pointed out, that's not a model that works well, because slaving the power of the ability to scale in direct proportion to a stat on gear ties your hands as far as being able to balance it at different gear levels.

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

 

flyingtoastr

Couple of ret nerfs in the new build and a holy note that makes no bloody sense.

Holy

* Beacon of Light now lasts 1 minute.

Retribution

* Fanaticism critical strike chance of all Judgements capable of a critical hit reduced to 4/8/12/16/20% (Down from 5/10/15/20/25%).
* Two-Handed Weapon Specialization now increases your damage with 2H weapons by 1/2/3%. (Down from 2/4/6%)

 

Suicidal Zebra

So 2-h Weapon Spec is now 3% damage with weapon only in Tier 5, and yet Crusade in Tier 4 increases all damage by at least 3% for the same number of talent points?

Bonkers.

I'd also note that the equivalent Warrior talent in Arms is still 2/4/6% and a part of Tier 4, though it seems that comparing two analogous talents from different classes is moot right now.

Shame about the nerf to Fanaticism, ideally I'd like to see it moved down to 3pts for a similar net benefit. I wonder how much of it is an attempt to reign in Art Of War without simply putting a cooldown on the ability. Whatever the motivation, the effect is likely to be minor.

I suppose that it's worth pointing out that this patch was as much to un-break the DK starter area quests, and so the changes may not be what they run with come 3.0.

 

• frmorrison

BoL is buff that allows your heals to heal the Beacon. Making it last for 1 minute makes it easier to use, so makes sense to me.

Warriors and DKs have similar talents, however Arms Warriors and DKs are not doing Ret damage. Beta is still balancing damage among classes, and right now Paladins are 3 shotting people, so that is a big developer concern.

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

 

Fridmarr

I'm sure they are using a different build for their tests, so there's no telling what differences they have because of skill and talent changes.

 

Rasputin

Then why aren't they modifying our burst damage?

3% damage is not what's 3-shotting people. 5% crit chance on Judgements is similarly not what is 3-shotting people. The combination of the two is still not what's 3-shotting people. I wish I could understand the direction they were going with us, but I'm left scratching my head after each round of changes, trying to puzzle it out. We have various talents which are mediocre at best for PvE sustained damage but significant increases to burst damage(Righteous Vengeance BEGS to be addressed here), but they remain the same. I'm trying to not to come off whiny, because I really don't think this set of changes breaks the class at all. I'm just perplexed by the changes, because I don't see them addressing any issue that has come up about Ret Paladins.

 

Fiola

They nerfed the DK version of Vengeance to match our Vengeance nerf, and they changed the warrior 2h weapon talent to match ours... I think they are trying to match certain talents across classes, so it's a valid comparison.


That said, the change is pretty stupid. 2h weapon spec doesn't affect all damage types; Crusade does. Crusade also increases crit damage and is a lower tier talent. Crusade is flat out better in every way.

 

SanSul

Well, they got quite a bit to do, and they have specifically said that they are not concerned at the moment about the numbers, and are focusing on getting the talents and new skills working for all classes. Retribution will gets its balancing pass in due time.

Also, there is a very good chance some balancing issues won't even be addressed in the beta, and will be implemented on Nov 13ish. Also, lots of things went unbalanced for many weeks after TBC release, and were addressed in 2.1, which had some pretty huge changes for certain classes (druids come to mind)

Just enjoy the euphoria of a new beta patch every week and all the theorycraft and number crunching and beta reporters, don't concern yourself with stuff that hasn't happened yet.

 

Rasputin

I'm in the beta; it's my responsibility to be concerned with the changes and how they affect the class. It's not just there to nerdgasm and enjoy the game before it's released, it's there to be tested. I do submit feedback ingame and on the beta boards, but I like to discuss things on these boards as well, because these boards contain a large number of the most dedicated and intelligent players I've seen. And say what they might, they're making balancing changes, so I like to look at them and consider them and how they affect the class and spec.

 

flyingtoastr

Remember though that what we got in 2.0 pretty much set the stage for how things were for the remainder of the expansion.

-Ret sucked. Sorry, there is not beating around the bush here. Ret was so weak during the first 3 content patches of TBC that people still have problems being taken seriously because of the stigma involved with the spec.
-Holy was the powerhouse spec. Couldn't run out of mana, great PVP utility when everyone had zero resilliance (and thus plate was a large boon) and people couldn't figure out what that Mana Burn button in their spell book did. Holy got thusly nerfed to hell and back and (in GC's own words) "we introduced a lot more fights with AE damage and movement [to penalize holy and reward the other healers]". Thus holy became the weakest healer in the game, but if you ask anyone on the WoWboards you get a slew of "zomg holy dosnt run oom nerf u".

Meanwhile look at Enhancement Shamans. They were the bastard child spec in Vanillia, almost equivalent to the "lolret" for alliance. They got buffed accordingly to be incredibly raid viable and look at it today; how many raiding guilds run without at least one Enhancement Shaman?

I'd rather not have that happen again.

 

Synbios

The change to Shield of the Righteous is frustrating... I realize they haven't done a balance pass, but with how far ahead Warriors are right now in most respects (pure damage mitigation, health, threat) I'm disappointed that our shield slam copy is not nearly as competitive.

Now, don't get me wrong, 240% was over the top. But Warriors are sporting 100% plus a base modifier plus a dispel effect. And they're both baseline abilities.

I is a sad panda.

 

• frmorrison

A Prot Pally could kill a Ret Pally and Prot had tons of threat, so they want to test different values for SotR.

If it turns out 100% is too small (I think so), then it will be increased. It is a Beta, relax.

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

 

Khaelarys

Changing two handed specialization directly affects our biggest burst though - crusade affects everything across the board. I don't think it's sexy, in fact just reading it it's very meh - but 3% off our white, CS, and DS (especially with the crit modifiers) does actually directly affect some of our burst - but not sure how much.

 

kharen

Now, this is just a gut feeling, i've not run the numbers, but i'm going to go out on a limb and say that it's going to be right around 3%.

 

Arthaal

SotR - obviously this ability had received a lot of press with all the 12-14k AW/trinket crits screenshots floating around. Obviously those numbers couldn't be left as is, but I hope to the warrior ability undergoes similar scrutiny since I've witnessed 10k Shield Slam crits on mobs in the WOTLK starter zones at 70. The mechanics are there in the warrior trees to provide dangerously stacking multipliers the same as in ours (in particular the 2x guranteed 200% BV Shield Slams every time Shield Block goes up).

The ret changes are perplexing because, as mentioned, they really don't address our perceived issue in PvP: burst. I write "perceived" because at 74 today, I fought a balance/resto druid after having been attacked, and ended up following him through most of the zone with him cooly healing my damage with instants/HoTs/Bearform and me not running anywhere near out of mana (though DS missing due to latency issues with both of us running is gonna make me hate that ability). It could have continued on seemingly forever. So for all that burst, I still can't kill a good druid.

The argument of burst also always leaves me perplexed. It's true, any strike + melee + seal damage on both of those can be a lot of damage when everything crits. But it's not really that different than what a balance druid can deliver in 1 GCD with a cycloned/starfire windup to wrath/moonfire.

Either the Devs are happy with seals proccing off strikes and our damage is what it is. Or they are not, and we end up far below everyone else... with our current combat system I simply can't see an easy way to add DPS while not increasing burst. Each GCD for a ret paladin you either have 1 strike + 1 melee + 2 seal effects hitting (best case) or 1 strike + seal or 1 auto-attack + seal (worst case) with an open active ability (FoL/HoJ/Turn Evil/Consec/Hands etc.) So if you chose to add any damage along the way: 1) is already too much burst 2) creates a new 1 3) creates a new 1. Here's hoping they're cleverer than I.

 

Crossbones

Ret changes are strange. I don't think fanaticism will even be part of a PvP build and I figure you'd just get crusade instead of 2h spec if you weren't already.

(assuming you wanted to go 0/(10)20/51 like I think most PvP paladins will)

 

Blutelf

+hit rating supposedly increases miss chance in the newest build.

Any news on whether parry/dodge have been fixed? I cannot imagine there is much successful raiding going on at the moment.

EDIT: Beacon of Light no longer doubles heals on the Beacon's target.

 

bellator

I'm worried about the ramifications about this SotR nerf.

Having done a number of heroics and a naxx run, I must say I was happy with the pala tank. The one thing I was most happy with was that whilst being able to tank i was also able to do some good dps. Not dps class dps, but perhaps 80% of it. With blizzards statement in the prot warrior tree that prot should do 80-85% dps of a pure dps class, and feral druids able to turn cat and do effective dps, prot palas also need to be able to either dps or heal well when not MT'ing.

Now with this change as an obvious direct result of pvp imbalance it brings some problems. Druids have to go cat form and lose defensive capabilities to be able to dps. Prot warriors have to lose def stance and shield to be able to dps. Prot palas lose a far smaller amount of their defensive capabilities whilst still (previously) doing this dps. They can nerf the burst, but if they do replace is with sustained dps instead so that we are inline with other tanks dps, then there will always be an imbalance in pvp. If they thus decide (as i'm worries they will) that pvp balance is essenetial this will leave us with less dps than ferals/prot warriors/dk's. In a min maxing situation prot warriors still have the upper hand in terms of single target tanking, thus if we are not MT'ing our dps would put us bottom of the pack as the 2nd/3rd tank in a raid group as why bring a low dps tank when you can have a high dps tank.

 

Shalcker

The way paladin system works, you're pretty much guaranteed to have burst if you do respectable dps in position where your reflective damage cannot be used... simply because there is just not enough abilities to spread damage around, and cooldowns are not that long (so if you add inferior ability dps-wise it will just get skipped).

They can always overpower Seal of Vengeance though if they really want to nerf prot burst... like "Your Seal of Vengeance ticks deal 100% extra damage for X seconds after Hotr/Judgement/ShoR".

 

JettJaguar

I don't know that they really can modify burst damage and keep us PvE competitive. We swing so infrequently that if the hits aren't huge, we aren't going to keep up. The only thing that might help them to actually lower the size of hits (and therefore mitigate burst) would be some sort of holy "bleed" or some such. I just don't know, though. We don't have enough sources of damage on short enough CDs with short enough GCDs to not inherently have hella burst.

 

rozetta

Another prot report from the 3.0 PTR.

I logged in early this morning when there were very few players on and low lag. It's really not a good representation of how things work when instants take 3 seconds to cast. Anyway, I specced prot for some more tests.

First test, I went to AV and WSG to see how prot fares in PvP now. Given that prot warriors now have some presence in PvP, I was hoping that instant AS, instant HoW@35% and HotR might make a difference. I can say that prot PvPs slightly better than it does on live, but we're still in no way a class to fear. This is apart from rogues who we beat even easier now, due mostly to the increased damage on ret aura. I PvP'd in full tanking gear and I've never seen my 15k HP drop so fast. Ret paladins really are a bit good right now - Divine Storm was the problem, to be honest, since it's unmitigatable damage. I used to have a decent chance against ret paladins on live, but I got completely stomped on the PTR. Mages were also putting out unbelievable damage. HotR didn't make a difference - mine hits for under 600. I think the biggest favourable change was HoW opening at 35%. I actually got #2 on killing blows in WSG despite putting out pitiful pitiful damage, mostly due to being able to use HoW so much. However, I feel that prot's survivability in PvP has really gone down compared to live and there's almost zero reason to even participate in WSG as a flag carrier or AB as a node defender. Armor means even less now than it ever has, and all the mitigation talents didn't mean squat.

The next thing I tried was some solo PvE. I zoned into Mana Tombs normal mode to see how I'd fare against those first few melee mobs. I was pleasantly surprised. With SoL up and judging wisdom, I was ending fights on full health and mana. I cleared the room where the first boss is and proceeded to solo him down. The new pushback mechanics allowed me to heal when needed and in combination with the new BoSanc, SoW and JoW, I had no mana problems. I continued in, only really finding the healers a problem there - I couldn't interrupt their healing and basically had to spend 10-15 minutes fighting them until their mana ran out. I didn't continue much further in for this reason. However, even the 4-pull in the room after the first boss posed no problems.

I have to say that prot does feel better than on live, but only slightly. My judgements and consecration do less damage, but I have added survivability in solo situations due to the improvements on Seal/Judgement of Wisdom/Light. BoSanc is obviously much better. I didn't find myself using Devotion aura at all, and I didn't spec for the improved version. HotR's ability to proc seals was excellent. HoW activiating at 35% is excellent. Instant speed AS is excellent (I'd love to see a lower cooldown on this spell, I think it would solve a lot of problems).

I was missing an awful lot due to the loss of precision, even against the level 64/65 mobs in Mana Tombs. I don't really have anything on my gear to make up for the loss in +hit, and I feel this will be a problem.

One more thing - HoJ. What I believe blizzard should do is make the spell 30sec cooldown base, put a deep prot talent in to reduce it to 10 seconds and change the 4-piece PvP set bonus to something new. This would give prot some viability in PvP in a similar way to how warriors are working. If we're mean't to tickle people do death in PvP, at least give us a way of keeping them in melee range. If the cooldown on AS were reduced to 15 seconds also, I can imagine we'd actually be something people need to think about in PvP and not simply ignore. Saying that, our magic damage mitigation is really low and a buff to that would be really needed for PvP. Additionally, making ret aura also do reflective damage on spell hits and dot ticks (perhaps also as a deep prot talent) would help.