Thundaar

Thats interesting.

As happy as I am to get seal of blood, the recoil has me worried.
I haven't raided in WotLK yet, but the amount of aoe flying around in t6 content makes me hope we can use SoC without hurting too much dps.

 

Mordekhuul

I regularly see our shadowpriests' health drop by over 3k a pop, presumably from SW-D, and it isn't really a concern in BT, where we are working on Illidan lately, so presumably with increased stamina levels taking hits from JoB wouldn't be too bad, or are the recoil hits much larger than 3k?

 

Dekkar

It's not usually a problem, coming from a Shadowpriest perspective. However, the reason for that is because we can control when it happens. I don't mind critting myself for 4.7k if I was just healed up after a boss AoE (and it's unlikely that he'll do it again immediately). You'll have to do something similar with the judgement (as the melee swings don't really contribute a lot of burst self-damage).

There's always a slight delay after hitting SW: D in the blowback, which can present a problem on fights like Illidari Council where you get hit with AoE just as your blowback is striking you. I don't think paladins (with their larger health pools and not taking full damage back) will have real problems with the blowback. You all already know that it's advantageous for regening mana.

 

Thundaar

I should have said t6+ I guess. Thinking more of sunwell, though some BT fights would also be affected, like RoS and Naj'entus.

 

◊ Cathela

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, Discipline isn't also a dps spec.

If you're making the case that paladins could, in some kind of theoretically abstract way, have two healing trees, then sure, they could. But if you're making the case that Ret can be a raid-quality dps tree and a raid-quality healing tree at the same time, then... well, you're not going to get many people signing off on that idea.

Sure, but having JotW be part of that isn't going to work.

Consider Prot. Any way you slice it, in the current build a Prot paladin's healing ability will be way less than a Ret paladin's. You can draw a rough equivalence between TbtL and SoL, but there's nothing in Prot analogous to JotW. So, if JotW as it is right now is necessary for a Ret paladin to be able to offheal as well as he should, what's going to bring a Prot paladin up to that level?

Now you might say that JotW needs to stay the way it is, and Prot needs to get some kind of new mana regen to use when healing. And okay, sure, that's consistent. But then at that point isn't it better to just give the whole class some kind of baseline healing buff?

Ahem.

Really, changing JotW from X% of total mana to Y% of base mana seems like the best solution to me. The immediate counter-argument will be "But that doesn't scale with gear!" and it's true that it doesn't. But let's call a spade a spade: A pre-raid Ret paladin will have exactly the same mana pool as a T9 Ret paladin (hell, the devs are encouraging this now with the one-size-fits-all gear) so for all practical purposes the talent doesn't scale with gear right now, when used for its primary purpose.

Now if this leaves Ret unable to heal well enough, then that's a problem, but in that case it's also a problem that affects Prot, so it makes sense to address it through some kind of baseline change: cheaper heals, a reduction of the DP healing penalty, whatever. But it's a mistake to design around JotW being part of anyone's healing ability.

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

 

Dekkar

I spam SW: D every cooldown on Naj'entus unless it's immediately after a bubble pop, and I never die from it.

RoS is a different story. You just don't use the ability there, period (possibility of blowback hitting for more than your max HP, or hitting during phase 1 where no healing is possible). In your case, you'll have to change seals for a gimmick fight here or there. I don't see a large problem surfacing from this, do you?

 

Spenda

Perhaps one of the strengths of such a healer would be a greater DPS contribution while healing. For JotW to be used a paladin would have to be in Melee range anyway, so there is no reason a ret/holy build paladin in healing plate couldn't be judging light/wisdom and sealing righteousness to up DPS some what between healing casts. With the mana throughput, consecrate would also be a boon in AoE situations.

With regards to ret not being conceived of as a healing tree, does it really matter what they intended? Having an unintended second healing build is not broken unless it supersedes the intended healing build in all or most cases.

Is it really a problem if a ret paladin in healing plate can do some healing tasks better than a holy paladin in healing plate if there are other things a holy paladin can do better? Does a healing paladin really HAVE to be holy? In my eyes, the more important choices will be in gearing, and the spec will be chosen to support a given play style.

With regards to the dreamstate healing druids, it was popular before BC as a means to sustain healing touch spam. It is not currently a reasonable alternative to a deep resto build for PvE healing in BC.

 

Thundaar

That's exactly the point I wanted to make. If there isn't a large dps difference between the two seals, then there is no problem switching between them depending on the mechanics of the encounter.

 

Spenda

I'm not suggesting that at all. As most people have realized, the early tiers of ret have great synergy with a paladin speced for healing. If going a bit deeper provides a path to a healer that has higher mana regen at the expense of healing utility I think that adds diversity to the class, and it isn't a problem that necessarily needs to be fixed. I'm not suggesting that deep ret should be reworked to provide a viable alternative to holy for a healing paladin. In addition, those who put the points to get JotW should not be wearing the kind of gear that would provide raid-quality dps if they want to be providing raid-quality healing.

I'd liken it more to the BC raid healing priest builds that sacrifice deep holy for divine spirit. It ends up being a hybrid build that doesn't replace deep holy, but offers an alternative build that has its own strengths and weaknesses.

My motivation for these posts is a response to the general back and forth about Deep Holy vs JotW. In general it seems as though the supporters of either side believe there can be only one healing build, and if JotW is left as is no one will heal with Deep Holy. My point is that there is no reason we couldn't end up in situation where BOTH builds are viable depending on the situation and encounter. Sometimes mana longevity is more important that healing throughput, and sometimes it isn't. Why not allow specs that can focus on specialization in one area or the other?

In my eyes the fix isn't a change to JotW, its a buff to Deep Holy to ensure that the healing throughput of such a build is a viable alternative to massive mana regen.

 

Anauel

Yes, there is a problem. Cathela mentioned it earlier:

Having a good enough healer that's a good enough dps doesn't fit what the developers are going for. That's why you don't see Holy Priests, Resto Shamans or Resto Druids contributing significantly to DPS. In the same pattern you don't see Enhancement shamans, Feral Druids or Retribution Paladins having a significant amount of healing. Hybridity is fine as long as you can't do more than 2 roles optimally. If you could, what would be the point of talents?

So yes, a Paladin must be holy if s/he wants to be a raid-quality healer.

--

EDIT:

On your next post:

You're talking about two different types of synergy for the same thing. Priests can go holy/disc and have alternate healing builds because they get 2 talent trees for healing. The purpose of Holy is to heal proactively (via heals), while the purpose of Disc is to heal reactively (via shielding). It would be the same to argue that warriors can spec arms/fury for different types of dps. You only see these setups because both trees serve the same purpose.

The purpose of ret is to provide a damage tree, while the purpose of holy is to provide healing. They serve completely different purposes. The purpose of JotW is not to provide a different healing spec. Paladins shouldn't be having two different healing builds. At least that's my opinion.

 

Fiola

200% throughput can certainly be as good as 3k MP5. Toss a JotW-healing spec into a fight like Vael. Is it better? How about on some short fight where the depth of your mana pool doesn't matter?

Or let's go in the opposite direction - would you halve the maximum throughput of all your healing spells for infinite mana? If your answer is that it's situational - so is JotW. All it takes is handful of fights that stresses your max healing speed/reaction over max endurance, and the JotW spec will look less attractive.

[edit]
No, the purpose of Ret is to make you a better paladin. Paladins are healers. (as well as tank and DPS - it's a hybrid). Having 2 healing specs is not a problem, any more than a "resto-kin" is a problem. (A healer that went down the spell damage tree!)

Do you have a problem with the low level talents in Ret giving healing synergy, too? Conviction and Sanct. Crusader increase the returns for various Holy "on-crit" talents!
[/edit]


Yes, it seems to scale with haste. I made a post about that earlier: http://elitistjerks.com/899750-post3618.html

I also made a followup test on the PTR after I noticed that Judgements proc'd SoC.
World of Warcraft (English) Forums -> Seal of Command scales with Haste in WOTLK (Quoted here so you don't have to read the official forums)
I'd also like to confirm that the Glyph of SoC increases SoC to 8.4 PPM. (The alternative would have been overpowered, but it's good to know for sure)

 

flyingtoastr

Base Costs

Divine Storm: 12%
Crusader Strike: 8%
Judgement: 5%
Seals: 14%

With Benediction:
Divine Storm: 10.8%
Crusader Strike: 7.2%
Judgement: 4.5%
Seals: 12.6%

Doing a DS > CS > J cycle gives you a 20 second cycle with effective cooldowns of 6.67/10/10 and a reseal at 1:57-ish. At those cooldowns you have the following consumption:

Divine Storm: 1.08%/sec
Crusader Strike: 1.08%/sec
Judgement: .45%/sec
Seals: .11%/sec

Aggragate total of 2.72% of base mana consumed per second. With a 10 second effective cooldown on Judgement JotW would have to give ~27.2% of base mana per Judgement. To compare a raid buffed ret pally (~7600 mana) gets around 34.6% of base mana from the current JotW. A PvP ret pally (~5500 mana) only gets 25% of base mana.

That is an absolute minimum cycle. Have to throw a Salv on a retard Priest? Lost mana. Have to throw a Blessing on a brezed hunter? You're in the negatives. Hammer of Wrath? Take it off your bars. Exorcism? Hope they don't balance us around it because god knows you sure as hell aren't using it!

Getting a small mana surplus is not a bad thing. We still are a buffing class and Art of War gives us the utility to act as a melee health battery as well as keeping ourselves up from the recoil on SoB. If they're going to do it with base mana it needs to be more than just the bare minimum or we're better off just rolling a warrior.

EDIT: Yes I didn't include Replenishment. Whoopdiedo.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Spenda

I contend that a ret/holy paladin in healing plate would not be doing "good enough" dps.

To paraphrase you, you state that a paladin must be holy to heal, and that there should not be two healing builds. I personally think it would make the game more interesting but you are of course entitled to your opinion. I do find the idea of talents pretty boring if there is one healing build, one tanking build, and one dps build. Why even have talents? Just click holy, prot, or ret once and get your cookie cutter.

Again, the only reason I'm posting at all is to counteract the push to nerf this potential second healing build into oblivion on the mere assertion that there can be only one. I again ask why having a two potential healing builds for paladins is a bad thing? Obviously this question is not directed towards you Anauel, as you have made your opinion clear that you simply do no like the idea.

 

zenos

Not that this hasn't been an understood here for some time but here's an explicit statement from GC regarding the target for ret pallys as regards relative dps.


After a few pages she elaborates a tad.


It's possible she revealed here the target dps mark they are balancing around.(2500) Consider future comments based on that assumption and we may have a benchmark for nerfs and buffs they are considering.


**edit, on second thought 2500 would be a nerf for several end game dps classes so I'm likely off base with that last remark.

 

Blutelf

In a raid setting there could also be gains from JoW, Spiritual Attunement, Mana Spring or Wisdom. A mana potion maybe. And you do not need to gain enough mana to offset the loss, just to slow it down over 10 minutes, maybe 15 at the most. Enough for a boss fight.

The devs do know that Ret DPS is heavily dependent on mana though, and they probably will not remove JoTW or decrease its effective mana gain for Ret. Also, you probably would not want to reroll to a Warrior right now. Fury talents are horrible.

EDIT: Actually, which potions does one chug now as Ret? I suppose Haste is really not worth the one potion per fight we are allowed to. Guess Mana it is, then.

 

Khaelarys

Interesting points - The problem I see has always been too many dps (very versatile for pvp grinding, farming, questing, dailies etc) and not enough skill slots. Moving one of the skill slots to another skill slot will fix a very small % of thee issues, especially when you consider the sheer number of times that GC has commented that tanks are hard to find in general across the realms.

To alleviate this, hybrid classes are getting tools to do either (healing synergy in dps trees, threat normalization at a class level not a talent level) of the other roles. To argue it's inconsistent is totally fair... but consistency is a nice accomplishment, and clearly less of a hard rule.

There's too much pure survivability in the prot tree to allow good healing in it for pvp reasons. In live, if you're not tanking in a particular encounter you'll either be sat or you'll throw on healing gear and "help out". Instead, in Wrath it makes more sense to dps in those cases.

YMMV. In reality the current setup of the paladin fills very neatly my view of the class and how I need it to work. I'm not sure how to decouple that from my assessment... but it seems alright to me.

 

GSH

I think Blizzard is trying to move potions to more of an "emergency button". So we'll probably carry a couple different types, and use the potion that is most needed. Or maybe not even use a potion at all.

 

Arthaal

There is no contradiction here. If extra mana allows more throughput, but such throughput is not necessary to effectively complete an encounter then the extra mana loses its appeal.

For example, if you can theoretically keep up a tank with FoL spam (a ridiculous example, but bear with me), and have JotW allowing you to nearly sustain HL spam... why bother? The regen ceases to be an incentive in this case. Similarly, in late T6 and Sunwell, I started gearing for more and more haste, even gemming for it, because my regen, with my alch. stone/chain potting combo was sufficient to sustain me in most any casting scenario. Mana regen ceased to be a limiting factor, so it lost its appeal. I think the issue with JotW is that taking the alternative and talenting into deep holy grants such a disproportionately small advantage.

As holy paladins, with limited spell choices, we end up either gearing for regen (mp5), throughput (HPS) or efficiency (a combination of both: +spell power and, to a lesser extent, crit rating).

Say I drop 7 points into JotP/enlightened Judegements, I gain 10% haste. To me, that seems like a heavy investment for a relatively small gain: 2 points gets me 40% chance at instant HL after HS (essentially a 30-40% chance at 1.5s HL or 40% haste), 3 points gets me 20% haste on HLs for example.

Measured by another metric, assuming I skip deep holy in favor of JotW: I lose DI, 10% haste, 120SP and BoL. I basically won't miss DI, since I now operate with an order of magnitude more mana. This new mana allows me to cast relatively more HLs so I'm making up some of my average throughput (which decreased by losing 20% int to SP and 10% haste). Where I'm losing out most is in maximum throughput (10% haste) and the utility that is BoL. However, this new mana situation would probably allow me to regem heavily for throughput and that 10% I lost can be made up with 328 haste rating or 17 sockets worth with epic level WOTLK haste gems. Now this won't be available on most gear sets, however it illustrates my point: the benefits of deep holy, when weighted in this manner, are underwhelming at best.

 

tarja

So then what if they changed JotW to give 35% of base mana instead of 20% of total mana? It's no change for a raidbuffed Ret Paladin, a decent buff for the PVP Ret Paladin, and a pretty big nerf for the viability of a 37/0/34 Holy Paladin raiding spec.

I don't see the problem with that at all, in fact I'd much rather have the slight buff to PVP mana regen then worry about how viable I am for healing as Retribution. Our current healing tools on pre-3.0 live servers are already enough to heal quests and normal 5 mans, plus we'd be getting Sheath and a version of JotW that is still decent for healing. That's more than enough to perform as a healer in 5 mans.

 

flyingtoastr

Replenishment is .25% of total mana/second (in % base for a raid buffed paladin that would be ~.43% base/sec). JoW with a 3.5 swing timer is 2% total / 4.7195 (again in % base that would be around .73% base/sec). SA is negligible since JoL and AoW heals will be making up most of it (not to mention if you're really worried you can SS yourself).

So with Replenishment and JoW you're still looking at only 28.36% base per second. That gain is still too small to do anything with.

In PVP both JoW and Replenishment would get knocked off by the 6 classes with dispels before you could get much out of them, so they are negligible.

And my Warrior is Arms for life. Slam rotations are the only thing in this game that actually takes some semblance of skill anymore.

Sure, that's exactly what I would propose if the devs are too lazy to actually fix holy.

I just see most of the people in the general populace who have no idea what base mana is (it is not your mana while naked for the last time) who would see that as a major buff when in reality it is simply a rewording. Yes it would help Ret PvP, but right now they can't even sustain a full rotation in PvP because the current JotW doesn't return enough mana unless you have raid buffs.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

burghy

Regarding 35% jotw and pvp, I really don't see the problem. Aside his damage ret should be able to bring some utility: cleanse, shields, etc.
The solution is simple to implement and effective and with a lot less side effects than what they'll probably end up with :p

 

levk

People are basing opinions on current experience, it's only natural. And currently throughput at max rank is hardly a problem, beats anything short of CoH/CH/PoH in raid damage situations. Longevity is an issue so that's why people are looking at JotW. If they're going to move to much shorter fights or make longevity no longer an issue otherwise (a-la Vael) of course people will forget about this.

Turn this issue around - say the self return on judge part was moved to 30+ holy instead, what does ret have? Great skills with no way to sustain them at all. This is what holy has right now - beacon is nice (I still don't see any pvp builds ever taking it while it's a magic buff though), but then you look at JotW and it addresses all your current valid concerns. It's like chrome rims on a car are nice but it should have a working engine. Divine plea is nowhere comparable to JotW, it's 1/6th as effective at face value and comes with a stupid (stupid stupid stupid) penalty.

If they leave JotW like this the majority of healers will have it, call them stupid, whatever, it's what works. Look at it this way: why do fury warriors ditch stuff like imp zerker rage and imp execute both of which make the game more fun to play and go for impale which doesn't? Spreadsheets show that it works better. If they're trying to achieve a similar effect here that's just dumb. Everything past 37 holy will just become "well it'd be nice if I had the points for it." And if you move JotW deeper just replace 37 with whatever number.

Basically any time a healer paladin voices concerns about total mana scaling JotW it's because they don't want to feel forced to spec 34 points into a tree of what they don't do to be viable. And this isn't an 'alternative' spec just like not having impale is not an 'alternative' spec. Not having JotW is a subpar spec period in any situation where longevity is remotely a concern - anything that lasts longer than a minute.

So they can do a few things here: a) move JotW returns to base mana, I don't really care what % as long as it's a fairly trivial amount for a healer so that you're not overly compelled to spec for it as a healer; b) move it shallower and balance both ret and holy around having it; and c) institute regen mechanics in holy that are comparable to JotW returns making it redundant. If they're going to do (c) with divine plea for example, it has to be buffed substantially either base skill or by talents - at the very least eliminate the dumb penalty, actually add a buff in either mana, +heal, +HoT or something like that, reduce cooldown to 30-40 secs and take it off gcd if it's on it.

 

Blackthought

Why not make JotW (-replenishment) a baseline skill at a certain percentage and balance all specs of paladins around the ability? It will make Holy more interactive and, with 30 yard judgments, many of the concerns regarding healing from melee range with the current sheath spec go away.

You could still add a Ret talent for replenishment and, if needed, add talents at the bottom of the trees to increase the JotW return.

 

Spenda

It seems to me that if Blizzard wanted Deep Holy to have excellent mana regen they wouldn't continue to nerf Divine Plea to hurt healing throughput.

 

Antmanton

I'm pretty sure this isn't going to be a very popular viewpoint, but bear with me for a moment while I explain my reasoning: JotW should to remain as a percentage of total mana but the percentage returned needs to be knocked down a bit. "But now we can't sustain a full infinite rotation!" you say, but that's the point. Hunters recently were told that they too were considered a caster class, and it's been apparent throughtout this beta that Blizzard wants casters to have to worry about mana. I submit that if hunters are going to be considered casters, there is absolutely no question that a paladin should be considered such as well, seeing as we cast actual spells instead of just using mana for shots and such. While "blue rage" is all nice and cool, it's too close to just being a "warrior plus," which is not balanced.

So I've just gone and stirred up the hornet's nest. Why? Well, mostly to try to get some more overlap between paladin gearing strategies, and to provide scalar room for gear improvement. As has been pointed out before, a raid-buffed Ret paladin is infinitely sustainable, while an unbuffed one is not. The purpose of such a change, therefore, would be to make Intellect a desirable stat again (and I refer the reader to this druid thread to demonstate that Blizzard wants stat diversification) for all paladins, not just Holy. By doing so, you provide a choice to the player to gear for stronger burst but less endurance, or vice-versa. A secondary benefit of this would be to soak up some itemization points in something other than Strength, Crit, and Haste, and hopefully reverse some of the rapid-fire series of nerfs to Seals and Judgements as high-end Ret paladins repeatedly blow the top off the DPS charts while the mages are sitting around OOM.

The situation Ret is enjoying right now is similar to that of warlocks throughout TBC, where they'd gear almost exclusively for spell damage and completely avoid (as much as possible) Intellect, Spirit, and MP5 because they had Life Tap. Sure, it cost them a GCD here and again, but the effectively infinite mana pool and spell damage advantage they had allowed them to leave most mages completely in the dust by the end of TK and SSC, much less in Sunwell. Fixing this kind of problem now allows both a second metric for progression (ie, how long can you go for, not just how hard can you burst) and puts a kind of natural leash on throughput that nonetheless doesn't come off as badly as have the harsh coefficient nerfs. Finally, with less mana returned, the talent is somewhat deincentivized for Holy without having to further bloat the bottom tiers of Ret by moving JotW down even more. Of course, Holy does still need a lot of work in any event to truly make it attractive, and I am not claiming this proposal to be a panacea for all of our ills. Even so, I'd like to get back into the groove of paladins gearing like paladins, not just being warriors who happen to deal Holy damage and occasionally heal.