Palados

Maybe consider that part of AoW as PvP ability only? In PvP it makes sence, in PvE - hardly.

 

Fiola

All paladin (base) instants do not reset the swing timer, in my experience.

[strike]Not so sure about LoH, but it's hardly a big deal with a 1 hour CD. = P[/strike]

Edit: LoH does not reset the swing timer. = )

 

Prinsesa

Just so we're all clear on this:

1. Every ability with a cast time resets the swing timer.

* The only exception to number 1 is Slam, which is going to be changed in WOTLK to simply "pause" the swing timer.

2. All (caster) Druid, Hunter, Mage, Priest and Warlock instant-cast abilities reset the swing timer.

3. Paladin and Shaman instant abilities do NOT reset the swing timer.

4. Abilities with a baseline cast time but are made instant-cast by a proc or some other ability still resets the swing timer.

* The best current example of this is Nature's Swiftness. A Druid that makes his Healing Touch instant-cast via Nature's Swiftness will still see a swing timer reset, but then a Druid sees a swing reset even on a Moonfire anyway.

* A Shaman that makes his Healing Wave instant-cast via Nature's Swiftness will still see a swing timer reset, even if a baseline instant-cast Flame Shock will not.

* The only exception to number 4 is Maelstrom Weapon, which was changed to not affect the swing timer since it would cause a DPS loss even if it were used in conjunction with Lightning Bolt. However, Maelstrom Weapon was further changed to include Lesser Healing Wave and Healing Wave, and these heals do not reset the swing timer either.

* Specific to Paladins, Art of War's instant Flashes of Light and Infusion of Light's instant Holy Light still reset the swing timer.

====

From these, and especially with Maelstrom Weapon, there's really no precedent either way. Blizzard has total control over whether a swing timers will be reset or not.

If we want AOW procs to leave the swing timer alone, we simply have to ask, and it will be given to us if we need it.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

flyingtoastr

And Steady Shot (though Hunter mechanics are slightly different in that it isn't a full reset but a .5 second pushback if you're too close to the next shot IIRC).

WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> Art of War

I'm keeping it bumped. No point in arguing further until we get an answer.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

• Avitus

I do think there should be consistency in mechanics in general as well as here between MW and AoW, however looking at the big picture: They lose DPS if they consume their MW heal, we lose DPS if we use AoW FoLs. Fairness is more or less maintained.

That said, again I personally don't see this as such a Big Deal (tm). The comparison to HoW is not valid; HoW is a damage ability that was worthless because the penalty of resetting the swing timer made it not worthwhile to use *ever* as a DPS increase, completely eliminating its use in PvE as well as making the 4 set T6 bonus a joke that should never have existed. In a nutshell: "A DPS ability that reduces DPS".

In contrast, an AoW FoL has nothing to do with DPS and is always going to be worthwhile casting if it means you'll save yourself or someone else, despite any mildly annoying DPS penalties. I'm not saying I wouldn't prefer it to not have that penalty, but at the same time I don't see why this is causing so much grief and I definitely think the analogy with HoW is not valid (actually false analogies and exaggerations tend to hurt any argument, so why use them?).

You are not going to lose 200 DPS over the course of a fight because of AoW FoL except if you spam it. If you use it as an emergency measure, which I'd wager is the intended use, DPS loss will be very negligible over the course of a boss fight.

1.8k heal? I seem to recall ~4k+ FoL crits + Sheath effect (for a combined total of 6.4k+ healed) fully buffed at level 80 in a raid, though I could be off with this one. Unbuffed with only a flask I still had, I'm getting ~2.7k FoL crits, BoM adds roughly 200 on that, a 3k crit + Sheath gives you roughly 4.8k healed. I wouldn't say it's too bad. That is going to be saving lives.


I like buffs just as much as the next guy and as previously said if I would see this as a worthwhile cause I'd be the first one in line to support this argument, however it seems in this one opinions differ.

 

pope master

So, from here.:

Emphasis mine. Sounds like they're removing kings...yay!

 

Shalcker

You're reading it wrong. They are just changing it to AP, and since AP is not affected by Kings (which definitely was taken into consideration when designing that talent), they reduce required amount of armor to reach same amount of AP by 10% instead.

Edit: and 1 ap is mistake, GC later corrected it to 2 ap as it should. So it just makes that talent dps increase "independent" from paladin presence, most likely for small group content and solo.

 

• Avitus

I'd say this one is an example of a talent where we would have a legitimate reason to push for similar treatment.

Considering the idea behind the talent is to encourage plate wearing melee DPS classes (which we are part of) to go for plate rather than mail/leather as well as the fact that the other two plate classes have such treatment leaving us as the only exception, it makes no sense why they wouldn't share the love.

Warriors: 3/3 Armored to the Teeth: 6 AP for every 360 armor.

Death Knights: 5/5 Bladed Armor: 10 AP for every 360 armor.

~15k armor (probably more) in starter level 80 epics = 250 AP for warriors, 417 AP for DKs, 0 AP for paladins

 

pope master

Oh. Boo

 

BFG

More from that GC's topic:
Don't know about you, but it's more important if they'll let me actually MT Icecrown... Being the tank for easy content like 5-10 man and getting benched for endgame already made me sour in TBC.

(no, being required to spam Consecration on two Sunwell bosses isn't tanking)

No, this is not a whine post. It's legal to be a pessimist.

 

Prinsesa

Avitus, I have to disagree here: Warriors and DKs are getting plate-encouraging talents because of their high hit caps. Without Armored to the Teeth, the amount of Hit found on Leather/Mail is enticing enough to ditch Plate in favor of something with better returns.

Even without Precision, our hit cap is less than half that a Fury Warrior/DWing DK. The only reason we'd want to wear Leather/Mail would be if the stats on it are generally better than the Plate, which is unlikely given how well STR scales for us and the fact that the Hit on Warrior/DK-designed is more than enough to cover 9%.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Hidden

Would be great to have such a talent in early Protection, otherwise Level 70 Paladins would do even more DPS and Burst damage and still not getting any significant DPS boosts when leveling to 80.

@AoW:
Remove the instant FoL part from Art of War and add it Fanaticism without resetting the swing timer. Currently Fanaticism seems to be a bit underbudgeted anyway (I'm not counting the threat reduction as part of the talent budget as any other classes have merged threat reductions in good talents as well. That would also give PvP Rets a reason to spec into it.
For PvE you will always lose DPS by using the instant FoLs, if it's because of the GCD when you're not mana-limited or because of the mana when you are mana-limited. From what I understood currently you can use everything but Consecration on CD on Naxx, so you can decide between higher Consecration uptime or the occasional instant FoL.

 

• Avitus

I don't think hit is the missing link as you claim.

The main benefit of mail/leather is usually the double dipping in crit, since they had crit rating as well as agi (of wihch we gain a lot more than warriors). This, as well as having stats more spread out usually results in much better gear, even if AP is worse.

Str has increased in worth yes, but that's mainly due to Sheath as well as more attacks scaling with it. The exact same is true for AP, meaning while STR has moved away from most stats, it's not moved away much from where it stands relative to AP now (only the added 5% from Divine Str).



It has nothing to do with hit, the principle remains the same. Them needing more hit or us gaining more from agi (than warriors) is irrelevant if the fact still remains that mail/leather items are superior in many cases without an armor -> AP talent. This is the reason why such a talent makes sense.

 

Fqubed

300ish AP is probably not going to compensate a 10% hit gain from grabbing a collection of rogue drops. Or rather, can anyone who has kept up to date with war modeling see how 300 ap compares to 10 hit?

 

Hidden

But it's a step into the right direction. Also the WotLK leather isn't that hit heavy due to Feral Druids anyway, it's mostly that you have a Plate item with X different stats and a Leather item with X+1 different stats, having converted the Strength to AP and Agility as an additional different stat. The stat allocation formula makes items with more different stats superior to ones with less, so that's the reason why most Leather items are superior to Plate items.

 

Hylo

I have to agree here. Currently I'm using 75 hit rating shoulders from Naxx25 and 80 hit rating legs from heroic Nexus. Actually it seems to be harder to find well itemized plate gear *without* hit than with it.

Our rogue with 11/17 Naxx gear has 240ish hit rating. I have 290.

 

Kirion

Paladins got divine strength talent to compensate this. There are no gear with str on it outside of plate (and some jewelery). Now maybe this talent isn't giving enough difference to wear plate gear, but thats another story.

42.

 

flyingtoastr

That seems like a pretty weak argument given that both Warriors and DK's also have +Strength talents and the devs clearly didn't feel that was enough.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Demonseedx

IMO the reasoning behind it is that since Plate gives you more strength then the other armors the 15% increase from the T1 protection talent covers this encouragement to wear plate.

Much like others said this might not be enough of a buff but that is a point to debate.

 

Demonseedx

Should we really be tinkering around this much with Ret? IF the added AP pushes Warriors and DKs over Paladins wouldn't it be wiser to buff a talent you already have instead of adding another one?

 

• Avitus

Use the edit button instead of chain posting.

Anyway as already mentioned before, I highly doubt the 5% increase over the current conversion rate of AP will be enough to keep us away from mail and leather (had Sheathe been STR only - not that I'd want it to, you'd have a case.). Mail/leather will always have an edge due to having more stats as well as the double crit stats on them. Armor -> AP is a great idea since it adds a "hidden stat", equalizing it somewhat.


Another thing I thought I'd clarify: I understand how they at least try to keep each class unique. The case that has to be made however is that while 1 out of 3 classes having a special talent/ability would translate into acceptable "uniqueness", 2 out of 3 classes having a special talent/ability turns things upside down into a class being singled out.

Different gains from 2h spec was a perfect example of bad design, good thing it was fixed.

Adding Armor -> AP to 2/3 of the plate classes is, in my opinion, another example of bad planning.

 

flyingtoastr

I would rather they replace one of the boring "your blah does blah% more damage" talents, but the fact remains that right now we still have very little reason to use non-set plate, especially given Naxx's... "quality".

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

ZulazeeluIcecrown

Well, there is a perfectly empty spot at 11 points in Protection that could be filled by an armor->AP talent, heh. As a one-pointer though it would have to provide less benefit than even the Warrior version, let alone the DK version. Still, it would be a useful one-pointer for threat generation, and further encourage Ret Paladins to bring Kings, at any value of armor->AP.

 

Fleurdumal

Hi, I've been lurking for a bit, but thought I'd jump in and try to address some issues I saw on this rather long and detailed thread. My apologies in advance if some of these ideas are being written without proper credit given to their OPs.

While the new paladin talents were being developed, it was always Sheath that caught my imagination, not Beacon, even in its old form as an AoE heal. I see sheath as a way to further empower our single-target healing, for if the target is taking significant damage, the hot will not be mere overheal. So before Sheath became a 40 pt Ret talent, I was definitely going to bypass Beacon to pick it up, not to mention the 5% crit from Conviction is always nice, as it is not rating dependent, like all my crit from rating on gear at Lvl 70.

But anyway, my current experiment is basically, can I still pick up Sheath of Light and effectively heal (pve)? This is the spec I was using: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft . The cost of Sheath is no Holy Shock, no improved blessing of Wisdom, no infusion of Light, no Divine Illumination, no Light's Grace, no Holy Guidance, and so on.

OK, well that means no instant heal, right? Well, once you have enough points fanaticism your judgements are most likely going to crit (right now with 2 pts in AoW, I have only a 40% chance to crit on judgements), so you get an instant FoL, so you can once again heal while moving. Furthermore, the instant FoL compensates for "wasting" a GCD to judge. Finally, 1 pt in AoW would not be bad if you intend to primarily heal, since the cast time is very quick while giving you time to gauge the right target (in which case 1 pt in Infusion of Light may not be terrible).

So no improved wisdom, but it doesn't matter, since with JoW you should be tripping on your personal mana restore (a nice instant 2k+ every 8 secs) and the replenishment effect. Furthermore, your main heal has to be FoL, since you've dropped LG. Finally, you won't bless yourself with wisdom to heal anyway, you will prefer might for the AP conversion into spellpower, thanks to Sheath. Indeed, FoL is still about stacking spellpower.

No infusion of light: this is really where the build may be proven unsound. Without downranking, pallies can't spam HL anymore, but with the much improved Holy Shock in your rotation, you don't have to worry about keeping up LG or you can use the infusion heal to proc LG. But anyway, this talent allows you to cover big tank spikes without spamming your biggest heal: really the only Holy talent that caught my imagination (and it sounds cool - yes I play with game sounds and music =).

Divine Illumination was one of our best talents in Sunwell. But again, with JotW you can serve as your own mana battery, as everyone knows it's extremely OP in Holy gear. As for "wasting" important GCDs to regen mana, the fact is, Divine Plea used to be channeled (which I liked better, since it was the baseline version of the Naaru healing trinket). Once you ding a few lvl's you can max out fanaticism anyway, to virtually guarantee (well, almost) an instant FoL to compensate. Edit: the crits also proc Vengeance, which would be nice if it increased healing by 9% for offensive crits - sounds OP, but you gamble GCD's for increased healing, you have to "make a choice" as the devs say.

The lack of LG is another bummer, but honestly 2.5 second HLs that crit for 9.5k at Lvl 70 without any raid buffs is not that bad. It does hurt our HPS, but priest's greater heal is the same base cast time with their talents, while our HL coefficient got incredibly boosted. If Sheath is ticking on the target, well, maybe we can afford these longer cast heals. Furthermore, with blessing of light folded into all heals, the new and improved Libram of Redeemed Souls, and with Avenging Wrath on a 2 min CD (basically another OP trinket without consequences), you can put out some pretty impressive FoLs: with the T6 4pc bonus, I've gotten a 5215 FoL crit just standing in Shatt healing myself (Essence of the Martyr and Avenging Wrath up, no Hyjal ring proc though). Inevitable the Sunwell gear will all be replaced, but keeping the 4pc for a bit may not be a bad idea, though at the moment in Sunwell, it is rather lackluster compared to the 2pc.

The loss Holy Guidance is meaningless since Sheath gives more spellpower even in Holy gear, since your base strength as a Lvl 70 paladin is decent anyway. Furthermore, though Holy Guidance is currently bugged, providing 35% healing spellpower when it should provide just 20%, Sheath still surpassed it once you put BoM on yourself to heal.

Initially, I was upset with the changes to paladins, for example, the incorporate of Strength into Prot gear and the loss of spell damage, since I saw it as part of the "homogenization" of all the class so you could "play with your friends." More importantly, I thought Blizz was forgetting the forgetting the distinction between the physical and magical planes, which was rather vigorously enforced in TBC. Paladins after all were the unique caster-tanks, not warriors. However, my opinion now is that rather than forgetting the distinction between the physical and magical worlds, Blizz is just trying to reincorporate the two, that the separation in TBC was really a mistake. Simply put, I like the combination of Str and spellpower and how paladins as a hybrid class can use them together - though still in this regard it is the holy tree that is still lacking: is has no deep crossover talent, which again is why it fails to capture my imagination, not to mention that Beacon is no longer an accurate name for the new version of the 51 pt talent. Anyway, the point is that this build, 18/0/43, is supposed to capture the idea of hybridity - hybridity with viability.

If the healing spec proves horrible for raids, well, it will still be very good for Lvl'ing, since I would bet you would still be able to heal the new 5 mans, and for solo play you can toss on your Ret gear. The absence of Crusader strike isn't a big deal, since white damage and Judgements are enough to topple any SMV elite mob in a few seconds. Obviously you could just go full Ret and do more damage with Divine Storm and proc AoW more for self-sustainability, but the goal was ultimately to find a clutch healing spec.

Thanks for wading through this: main reason for posting is, with the relocation of Sheath in the Ret tree, I did not see any attempts to force the issue nonetheless and experiment with the seemingly absurd idea of healing with might.

 

Thorgred

IMO you lose far to much out of both specs to make Sheath healing a viable build anymore.
Really what you gain is a HoT on your crits. Is that worth losing 5/11% crit, holy shock, IoL? I wouldn't think so.

However the much-discussed 37/0/34 still has nearly all of Holy's strengths and some of the best bits of ret.