Fleurdumal

Well, Sheath also gives a lot of spellpower, more than Holy Guidance, however I agree that losing Holy Power in holy is a bummer; but if FoL is your main heal, the extra HL crit is not that big a deal (though there is the argument that a FoL/Sheath build is senseless, since FoL isn't really about crit). The main argument against the experimental spec though is that it won't be good at 80, Holy Guidance will overtake Sheath's spellpower since the intellect from gear will overshadow the base strength of the class, and that as you say, 37/0/34 or 38/0/33 Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft is more sound. However, that's a Lvl 80 talent spec, which on the one hand is the only type of spec that will matter, but the 18/0/43 is at least something you can toy around with at 70 and sustain at a certain gear lvl.

 

Wrathblood

I liked the idea of Paladins being the "block tank" as our niche (since AoE tanking supremacy, at the moment, anyway, appears to be shifting over to warriors, and we don't really have much else at the moment). However, as others have noted, block is a horrible candidate for a niche. Since its based on a flat amount rather than a %, its either horribly OP against trash or useless against bosses w/o much room for middle ground.

However, what if they introduced an 11 point talent that was something like:

"Beleaguered Guardian" - 3 point talent - When the paladin blocks an attack from an enemy higher level than the paladin, his/her block value is increased 10/20/30%.

Basically useful when leveling or when tanking raid bosses. One possible problem is that threat generation is so good now, that bringing a 79 pally in to tank for level 80 instances with level 80 bosses might actually be an advantage. Might solve that by making it "three or more levels higher than the paladin". That would make it pretty much explicitly only useful for tanking raid bosses, though it would badly hurt it for use in leveling. Also, I don't know the data-tracking of the combat system well enough to know how feasible it is to do.

 

Zed

Something like this would make more sense in my opinion: "if you take damage from a blocked hit greater than your block value (or a multiple), your block value is increased by x% for y seconds". This guarantees that you only get the bonus when you really need it, and not in situations where it drastically decreases incoming damage.

Block value is tricksy though, being about the only stat remaining in the game with increasing returns. It is scarcely handed, but I wonder how long it can stay this way seeing what happened to the avoidance stats.

 

Wrathblood

Zed,

That would work as well, something that only kicks in when you're hit for x5 your block value or something.

I also agree with your second point. Part of the issue, IMO, is that once warriors are decently geared, the combination of Shield Block and Critical Block starts shifting Block Rating from being a mitigation stat to an avoidance stat. Sure, that happens already in BC to some extent when you seriously outgear the content, but with a few exceptions (poor Watchkeeper Gargolmar in heroic Ramps can have his attacks fully blocked by anyone t5 and up who focuses on block rating), you have to REALLY outgear the content AND focus on block value for it to happen.

In WotLK, however, everyone is now a block value monster, and the potential x4 BV from a critical block while shield block is up may as well be bonus dodge % against most trash mobs. Considering the diminishing returns on avoidance, this is pretty powerful.

 

Sozar

Is that really a good idea? Won't you have a point where it is *bad* for you to get more block gear, because you'll stop the talent from triggering?

 

◊ Cathela

You could look at it as "If you have more than this much block value on your gear, you really should switch it out for another stat."

If mobs aren't triggering that talent and you don't have any lower-BV gear to switch into that'll help, it's probably because you outgear the content.

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

 

Thorgred

Just a note Wrathblood - the 11pt talent is always a single point talent.
I agree that our 11pt talent should be a mitigation one.
The way i see it, tanks have 3 roles:
Damage Attraction - Gain threat and absorb as much of raid damage as you can
Damage Mitigation - Reduce the damage you take by as much as possible
Damage Prevention - Prevent raid damage to other members.

We are plenty fine for threat. Damage Prevention is mostly in the forms of Interrupt/Taunt/BoP, which is fine for the moment.
A blocking talent akin to warrior's critical block, of a slightly different flavor, would be most welcome



One thing i'm very concerned about is how low level paladins will play. Previously they were pretty boring: Judge, seal, autoattack. Hammer of Wrath once on the last 25%.
However there was a small amount of interactivity: resealing after judging, the choice to switch to SoW, judge and then SoR again for mana returns...

Now, its Judge, Autoattack, until lv40 IF you spec solely into one talent tree (or lv50 if you're ret)
Even the interactivity of applying a debuff judgement is gone as that is automatically done with JoW. I'm also quite concerned about how the new scaling values are going to affect low level play.

I think the best solution would be to move our class-defining strike abilities all to 11pt/21pt talents, and give them a shared cooldown. That would greatly increase the 'fun' factor of playing at low levels.

(I compare this to a shaman i am leveling atm, who at lv20 already has 1 ranged attack, 3 different shocks, a large range of totems, a damage shield, and is much more fun than leveling my paladin was)

 

Demonseedx

Honestly it doesn't matter to me so long as DPS scales properly. Now if they don't scale equally then yeah we have a problem but I'm not sure giving us a copycat ability is all that important.

But it would have to be more then Blah does Blah% to be good and isn't this just giving you the number as opposed to a percentage?

So we get a much larger variety of gear to chose from instead of being pushed into plate? I am not sure that is all that bad of a choice.

 

Wrathblood

Good point, Thorgred. Perhaps make it a 1 point talent that increases block value by 25% if the mob is 3 levels higher or more. That keeps it from being overly useful during leveling, though its still a heck of a lot of value for 1 point.

 

flyingtoastr

They can adjust the other percentage talents (say you make Crusade give the AP for armor and such, they could then take the amount of damage you lost that you need from that modifier and tack it on to a preexisting one like vengeance).

It isn't a question of "more variety". In Blizzard's mind the plate classes wear plate, the leather wear leather, the shamans wear maille. They don't want us rolling against rogues for leather because those rogues can't turn around and roll against us for the plate. They fufil the "options" by itemizing a shitton of off-set gear pieces for you to mix and match (the current ilevel 213's have like 3 different pairs of DPS plate bracers you can choose from).

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Soul

Why not make Holy Shield the 11 point Prot talent? Any other spec is going to be using a big two-hander to batter things down. Putting Holy Shield as an 11-pointer would at least give an opportunity to go sword and board for competitive leveling at an earlier stage.

There are any number of more powerful things you could put as a deeper Prot talent to replace Holy Shield, although I would put Avenger's shield as a 31-pointer and in the 41-point slot, put a cooldown reset or something appropriately powerful that you'd want exclusive to Prot pallies.

 

Embher

This is an analysis of the threat difference of a spell dmg weapon vs a melee weapon, based on the functions of spell dmg and AP or Strength of Seal of Vengeance, judgement, and further abilities, noted by Wowhead: Now available on all known Internets!

For an example, I compared the
Deadly Gladiator's Gavel
[Deadly Gladiator's Gavel]
with 416 Spell dmg
and the Broken Promise
[Broken Promise]
with 29 STR
both level 213
The Spell dmg implied from the stamina difference was ignored (64 vs 55 = 9 STA diff=9*1.12 with talents=10.08 STA=3 Spell dmg from Touched by the light talent)

White dmg does not get the benefit of righteous fury. So white dmg is of little importance.

We still have 90% increase in threat from righteous fury on our HOLY** dmg. I assumed all these abilities provide a 190% threat per dmg point, flat across the board. If the threat modifiers aer actually different beyond the righteous fury buff, let me know. All our abilities and spells are holy. Our abilities though are now dependent on just spell dmg but also AP. Seal of Righteous has 0.055 coefficient on spell dmg and 0.028 coefficient on AP,which means 0.055 coefficient on STR. Seal of vengeance has a 2 to 1 ratio between the coefficients of AP and Spell dmg, or 4 to 1 of STR vs Spell dmg, favoring STR 4 to 1 over spell dmg. New talent in prot tree gives spell dmg equal to 30% of Stam and considering the stamina increase talents (St and Combat expertise now 6%) , that means 100 Stamina gives about 37 spell dmg.
Other abilities likes avenger shield , the judgements , holy shield also depend on AP and spell dmg instead of only spell dmg now.
THe only thing that depends on dmg of the weapon is Hammer of the righteous. Hammer of the Righteous - Spell - World of Warcraft BUT IT is the "DMG per Second" of the weapon NOT the base dmg. Melee speed is completely IRREVELENT. It uses the number in "41 dmg per second" not the base dmg number above.
IF you want to maximize dmg from your "Hammer of Righteous" spell, you could obtain a melee weapon, though keep in mind you are losing the spell dmg on the weapon and melee weapons do not have enough STR to compensate forthe loss of spell dmg. Assume at best you use Seal of Vengeance, a melee tanking weapon provides 29 STR , which also helps with defense which is an advantage over a spell dmg weapon.
THe SOV dmg according to
Seal of Vengeance - Spell - World of Warcraft
is
[(0.016 * SPH + 0.032 * AP) * 6] =[(0.016 * SPH + 0.064 * STR) * 6]
29 STR in terms of coefficients for the SOV dmg is equivalent to 120 spell dmg. Compared to this weapon, that is a loss of over 461-~120=~340. This implies a 0.016*340*6=41 loss in dmg per SOV which lasts 15 s, but stacked five times, that is ~200 dmg/15s=14 dps loss which is proportional to threat by 190% with righteous fury. The judgement gives [1 + 0.28 * SPH + 0.175 * AP] =[1 + 0.28 * SPH + 0.28* STR] every 10 s assuming you do not have the imp judgemetn talent. IN judgement, that is striaght loss of 461-29=430 spell dmg or 0.28*430=120 dmg or loss of 12 dps.
Now the question is would a multi tanking ability such as Hammer of righteouson a boss would be used often enough to compensate for the loss in holy dmg /threat in SOV and the the other abilities -judgement,holy shield, avenger shield. AT 80, you will be using shield fo righteousness over hammer of righteous for a single target boss. It provides more holy dmg for the same mana on a single target.

ok so Shield of Righteous gives 240% of BV. STR gives 1 BV per 2 STR now. 29 STR=15 BV, which means it increases Shield of RIghteous dmg by 15*2.4=36 dmg or 36/6s cd = 6dps increase.
Actually, this changed apparently looking at the updated page: Shield of Righteousness - Spell - World of Warcraft
Shield of Righteous gives 300+ BV. STR gives 1 BV per 2 STR now. 29 STR=15 BV, which means it increases Shield of RIghteous dmg by 15=15 dmg or 15/6s cd = 2.5dps increase.
However, the tooltip says this provides a high amount of threat. The threat modifier ologn with the Righteous fury modifier is not known. At best we can say its 2.5+threat per second or saydouble that 5 dps...

Hammer of rightous Hammer of the Righteous - Spell - World of Warcraft gives 3 times the "dmg per second" of the weapon on three targets. Using this spell dmg weapon compared to the Broken Promise melee weapon decreases that number by 143-90=53. 53*3=150 or 150/6 s cd=15 dps.

Of course you will use holy shield, but the function of AP and spell dmg is not known, but it has been rumored it also based now on AP as well as spell dmg.
Holy Shield - Spell - World of Warcraft
Ignoring this for now.

Ok assuming you use both Seal of Vengeance, judgement , Shield of righteous and hammer of righteous this is total difference of -14 dps-12 dps+5 dps+15 dps=-4 dps.
So in one item you lost 5 dps. and we are assuming you can use all these spells in your rotation.

Say you use eal of Vengeance, judgement , Shield of righeous and consecration,
consecration Consecration - Spell - World of Warcraft gives [8 * (113 + 0.04 * SPH + 0.04 * AP)] over 8s=[8 * (113 + 0.04 * SPH + 0.08 * STR)] THe 29 STR is equivalent to60 SPH for consecration. That means a loss of 461-60=400 in terms of equivalent SPH. Dmg for 8s would decrease by 8(0.04*400)=8*16 dmg=128 or 128/8 s cd=16 dps.
this is total difference of -14 dps-12 dps+5 dps+-16 dps=-38dps.

The loss using Seal of righteous would be even higher so its not good to SOR with a melee weapon, which has no spell dmg.

The point is any way you look at this, any rotation you use, even the one constantly using Hammer of rightoueos , you are losing threat with holy dmg using a melee weapon over spell dmg weapon on a single target. For multi targets using a melee weapon, spamming consecration and Hammer that is a decrase of -16 dps+15 dps (only on the three targets) or -16 dps on the other targets not hit by Hammer and only hit by consecration.

Honestly, in terms of threat, i do not see the benefit using melee weapon. Ya it has some DR, but is that worth losing all this threat over?

Feel free to evaluate the math and the assumptions, however...

 

Rasczak

Agreed Soul, HS at 11 points would let ret or holy pick it up and be a much more respectable tank for 5 mans. Its rather odd that they are expected to be able to tank without having a block ability. Hell I would roll the block chance of HS into a base skill and make the damage return and maybe a BV increase while its up the talent. I don't see how having it baseline would really unbalance anything. Ret would never use a shield except to tank, and it would give holy a moderate bit of damage reduction while soloing.

Has blizzard given any reason that holy shield still has charges? It seems like it doesn't serve a real purpose except to hamstring paladins compared to warriors.

 

Soralin

At level 80 - it would also only be useful in raids. All Dungeon and Heroic bosses will be level 82 (if they follow the trends set at 60 and 70) which would render this ability useless. I don't really see Blizzard adding such a situational talent as an 11pointer, do you?

Adding some sort of "use" ability as an 11pointer talent wouldn't be a bad idea, although it might play havoc with tanking rotations once you get higher. Having said that, the need to re-seal after every judgement has been removed, so perhaps that wouldn't be a bad thing. The only problem is, protadins already have a "hit this button to block" ability in Holy Shield at 31 talent points - adding another "hit this button to affect block" would feel ungainly and fiddly.

Thorgred's comments:
We are fine for threat, so we have two options left, Personal Damage Mitigation, and Raid Damage Mitigation.

What is one thing that warriors and druid tanks have that paladins don't?

Mass taunt.

Wouldn't that make a nice 11pt prot talent?

 

flyingtoastr

I'm not gonna lie, most people would much rather have a single-target taunt. RD is a cool idea, but damn it is clunky when you have to taunt something off another tank.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Prinsesa

I'd like to bring up the topic of selfish benefits for raid-utility talents, since most classes have received theirs already:

Talents which still need selfish benefits:

Heart of the Crusader - increases the crit chance of all attacks against the debuffed target by 3%.

The Rogue's Master Poisoner has a selfish benefit of reducing all poison effects applied to the Rogue by 50%. The Shaman's Totem of Wrath is a little weird though: It only increases SPELL crit chance by 3%, but increases spell power of all friendly targets by 100, presumably to make up for the loss of Flametongue Totem.

Swift Retribution - increases spell, ranged and melee haste by 3%.

The Moonkin's Improved Moonkin Form has a selfish benefit of increasing the Moonkin's spell power by 15% of their SPI.

Hopefully, someone can post this feedback on the Beta forums, because this is a significant gap in talent budgeting if those two classes get incentives to take their raid talents while we don't.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

burghy

You couldn't judge on cooldown, now you can. Also resealing after judge wasn't interactivity, just 1 more button to push for a single action.
Old seal of light/seal of wisdom were learned at lvl 30/38, judgement of light/wisdom it's level 4/12. You have the choice between using jow/jol instead of sol/sow/dmg judgement and you get that choice a lot faster. And you'll still have the choice for different seals but it just costs a bit more mana.

As for the scaling, at least at lvl 4 judging new sor does more damage than old one.
And it seems you'll get the no downtime leveling from the start.

Afaik GC posted a couple of times that if it's needed it will be given to paladins.

 

Palados

Hm, so you actually checked that low lvl chars have judgement damage increased instead of decreasing as well as downtime effectively removed? That's nice to hear.

 

Blutelf

SoR now hits like a fluffy feather though. You spend around 20 secs per mob on the higher levels - 3 Judgements.

 

Kirion

The only warrior talent that gives strength is Vitality and it's clearly not dps talent. DK have small strength bonuses from multiply talents, in realistic builds they will have ~8% bonus str.

42.

 

burghy

Do you mind being more specific? What spec/levels and what are you comparing it with?

Strength of arms is 4% str.

 

Palados

Hehe, Bliz devs see some of the potential problems, blue post:

 

Thorgred

I've already done a few comparisons regarding this.
Basically the end result:
1 Weapon DPS= 2.1 TPS
1 Spelldamage = 0.38 TPS.

On epic level weapons you get approximately 7 Spellpower for every DPS they 'sacrifice'.
7*.3.8 = 2.66
Compare 2 weapons, 1 has 150 dps, other is 86 dps/441 dmg.
Melee = 315 TPS
Spellpower = 348.15 TPS

However, the melee weapon is much more likely to have threat or avoidance-oriented stats on it.
For example, ss little as 33 attack power or 11 strength is enough to make the melee weapon a higher TPS weapon. Add that to the fact that it will probably have hit/crit, stamina, and possibly defense/dodge/expertise, melee weapons are better. A spellpower weapon will waste iPoints on Spirit, Intellect, Mp5 etc.

 

Hidden

At least you can use Judgements, currently you can choose to either kill one mob in ~10 seconds and drink for another 15 then or take around 20-30 seconds per mob and still need to drink after a few mobs. This should also only be a problem in very very early levels, while leveling my Paladin in the last 2 weeks from 0 to 60 I often calculated especially my Judgement damage that also has 1 base damage in 3.0 and it was always more in 3.0 than on Live servers, even though I'm wearing terrible gear.

@Plate/Mail/Leather gear discussion:
Having Leather and Mail as the best in-slot items is pretty bad in my opinion. The first problem is that Plate gear is quite useless then. The second problem is that Leather/Mail classes always have a problem with "classes that can wear higher armor gear" that want "their" gear. The third problem is a balancing problem, if Blizzard decides to balance Ret Paladins to do the same DPS as other classes in Plate gear only but Leather is better. Paladins will do too much DPS in Leather, leading to QQ posts, leading to Ret Paladin nerfs, leading to the Paladins that don't have access to the Leather gear to do subpar DPS.

 

Siawn

New info from GC regarding TC and Swipe.
The swipe change doesn't bother me, but with the changes to TC, are we looking at Prot Warriors effectively replacing Prot Pallies for ae tanks? If all you lose by having a warrior is a small amount of threat, I'd say the slow from TC vastly out-weighs that. I'm curious to hear others' thoughts on this.