Also how are the Healing glyphs working out? Is FoL and HL useful or are you finding them lacking? It seems to me that because we have so few heals to begin with playing with either is kinda risky. Would a Holy shock version of either of them be a better alternative?
I've been catching up on the last few pages, and I'm glad to see someone brought this up. Both glyphs look pretty terrible right now. The HL glyph simply doesn't have a large enough radius to be useful. If it were bumped up to 10 yards instead it would be far more likely to actually do something. The FoL glyph, no matter what they do to the HoT portion, is going to be close to worthless if it cuts the initial heal in half. This means if you ever use FoL for its throughput, you essentially cut your healing in half by picking up this glyph. FYI, in its current form it takes 12 seconds for the initial heal + HoT component to heal what you would have healed without the glyph, and that's assuming a) zero overheal for the duration, and b) no other FoL casts to that target while the HoT ticks.
IMO they need to reverse these glyphs, and add a little range to the AoE heal. That one change would make both far more attractive than they are right now. Cutting a HL in half is totally manageable and the HoT would actually be worthwhile and usable as a method of increasing efficiency, as well as provide a great potential synergy with BoL. And while 10% of a FoL isn't much, it's spammable, allowing for recovery of AoE damage in a meaningful manner as opposed to the mana dump that the glyph is right now.
EDIT: burghy posted while I was writing this.
The FoL glyph will never be useful for anyone besides pure healing builds, because it takes a major glyph spot. On top of that, testing was done a few weeks ago that showed that the pre-nerf glyph wasn't good at all for ret because of Sheath mechanics and how the HoTs stack. Now that the HoT has been dropped from 200% to 140% it's even worse.
I havn't been able to find an answer to this anywhere: Does Hand of Sacrifice work pre or post mitigation?
Suspecting it's pre, since it might be too strong otherwise, and I seem to remember that BoSacr works this way.
It could be neat to steal some tank damage for heal->mana in raids, or scaling up HL by casting Beacon on yourself and healing the tank with Sacrifice. But if you increase total damage by doing this, it may not be a good idea.
The new Hand of Sacrifice is a % damage transfer - what difference would it make?
X% * damage == damage * X%
Okay, I guess there's the issue of blocks, but the tooltip clearly says it transfers "damage taken". It wouldn't make sense if it trasnferred damage that was absorbed by your shield. (For what it's worth, current BoSac works post-mitigation, too, as someone pointed out earlier)
Profession are fleshed out. The highest dps gain is Blacksmithing (two extra sockets, possible good weapons) followed by leatherworking (bracer enchant).
...
--- Jewelcrafting = 62 AP or 31 AGI or 31 STR etc. (Bonus from avoiding using a blue gem for meta requirements)
- Blacksmithing = 80 AP or 40 AGI or 40 STR or 40 Crit Rating or 40 Haste Rating or 40 Hit Rating or 280 ArPen
- Leatherworking = 76 AP
You can't base your conclusion on "AP" numbers if some of them provide potential Str benefits. 31 Str from JC is equivalent of 78.43 with Divine Str and BoK, putting it pretty much tied with Leatherworking (or even very slightly ahead).
On the same topic, it seems the description for "prismatic gems" has changed in TBC from the original of "Matches a Red, Yellow or Blue Socket" to "Jewelers Gem: Matches any Socket".
Can anyone confirm if the new prismatic gems still actually count as 1 red, 1 yellow and 1 blue? The outcome of this would decide whether you can save yourself from socketing a slightly crappy blue (purple/green) gem for meta or not and most definitely make or break JC in the "optimization ladder" (21 str vs 31 str).
Originally Posted by Arthaal
The haste enchant on gloves is pretty tasty even though it replaces the relevant 'enchanting' enchant. 340 haste (10% or so at 80) for 8s on a 2min cooldown. Pop it to match your trinkets + AW + bloodlust for possibly quite an effective increase in DPS for a class that scales well with haste (like us).
It's not hard to see that it's less worth than the other perks however. 340 haste rating over 8 seconds every 2 mins = equivalent of 22.67 haste rating constant, while taking a loss of 44 AP which you would have enchanted on your gloves instead (whatever happened to all the str enchants? seem to be missing in wotlk).
Obviously it's somewhat better than this if you pop it with AW/trinkets, though you can see that it won't be enough to outdo the other profession perks.
Though this means that it's probably not the most optimal profession for ret DPS, I wouldn't say that makes engineering bad however in general with the truckload of gizmos it has as well as the helmets, where it remains to be seen how they compare to tier helmets (generally used to be pretty good).
Edit: Edited out some stuff that made no sense. Late night posting = bad.
The only potential use I can see for the FoL Glyph is synergy with BoL. In theory you could get an impressive array of healing going via FoL HoTs being present on myriads of hurt raiders, though I see a couple problems with this.
Most obviously, HoTs don't tick on overhealing. Unless mana is such a huge problem in Wrath that other healers are more than happy to have you FoL HoTing everyone you can't count on consistent healing for your BoL target. That's, of course, assuming that the HoT ticks also heal your BoL target at all, and that the targets are hurt enough such that you get more than just a couple of ticks.
In concept the idea of being able to have 10 FoL HoTs across the raid all healing your BoL target (93% of a standard FoL per second with that many) is nice, but practically speaking it doesn't seem worthwhile.
What I lack in intelligence I make up for in verbosity.
I've been catching up on the last few pages, and I'm glad to see someone brought this up. Both glyphs look pretty terrible right now. The HL glyph simply doesn't have a large enough radius to be useful.
...
IMO they need to reverse these glyphs, and add a little range to the AoE heal. That one change would make both far more attractive than they are right now. Cutting a HL in half is totally manageable and the HoT would actually be worthwhile and usable as a method of increasing efficiency, as well as provide a great potential synergy with BoL. And while 10% of a FoL isn't much, it's spammable, allowing for recovery of AoE damage in a meaningful manner as opposed to the mana dump that the glyph is right now.
If the HL Glyph heal still procs on the target HL was cast on, it's still 10% bigger Holy Lights without having to splash on anyone else. Overhealing arguments aside, that's not bad at all.
Regarding your idea of switching those glyphs, I actually really like the idea if balanced well. Say a 70% initial HL with 100% of that over a few seconds would be very useful. The same could be said for a splash AoE healing FoL glyph as that's the main spell you'd use to throw some needed raid heals anyway (with exceptions).
The new Hand of Sacrifice is a % damage transfer - what difference would it make?
X% * damage == damage * X%
Okay, I guess there's the issue of blocks, but the tooltip clearly says it transfers "damage taken". It wouldn't make sense if it trasnferred damage that was absorbed by your shield. (For what it's worth, current BoSac works post-mitigation, too, as someone pointed out earlier)
I think he was more concerned with it adding overall damage done if it were to be calculated pre-mitigation. I.e. Tank takes a 10k hit, mitigates 70% and ends up taking 3000 damage. If the damage reduction is calculated pre-mitigation, then the paladin casting HoSac would be taking a 3k hit, mitigated by his own armor( say 50% ). So the total raid damage there would be 7k*.3 + 3k*.5 = 3600, which is > 3000. If it's post-mitigation, then sure, the paladin casting would take 1000 damage, leaving the tank taking 2000 damage and the total would be 3000.
It'd certainly be odd if this is the way it worked, but then again it's also odd that the current Blessing of Sanctuary reduces pre-mitigated damage instead of post-mitigation as well.
I think he was more concerned with it adding overall damage done if it were to be calculated pre-mitigation. I.e. Tank takes a 10k hit, mitigates 70% and ends up taking 3000 damage. If the damage reduction is calculated pre-mitigation, then the paladin casting HoSac would be taking a 3k hit, mitigated by his own armor( say 50% ). So the total raid damage there would be 7k*.3 + 3k*.5 = 3600, which is > 3000. If it's post-mitigation, then sure, the paladin casting would take 1000 damage, leaving the tank taking 2000 damage and the total would be 3000.
It'd certainly be odd if this is the way it worked, but then again it's also odd that the current Blessing of Sanctuary reduces pre-mitigated damage instead of post-mitigation as well.
The current BoSac works post mitigation, and only deals as much damage to you as was removed from the blessed target. (ie: Max rank BoSac transfers 82 damage, but a 40 damage hit will only transfer 40 damage)
There's little reason to expect HoSac to follow different rules.
It's balanced compared to BoSanct and other similar effects, since the damage still happens. (Whereas a flat damage reduction that worked post-mitigation would do very funny and exploitable things)
It's not hard to see that it's less worth than the other perks however. 340 haste rating over 8 seconds every 2 mins = equivalent of 22.67 haste rating constant, while taking a loss of 44 AP which you would have enchanted on your gloves instead (whatever happened to all the str enchants? seem to be missing in wotlk).
Obviously it's somewhat better than this if you pop it with AW/trinkets, though you can see that it won't be enough to outdo the other profession perks.
Though this means that it's probably not the most optimal profession for ret DPS, I wouldn't say that makes engineering bad however in general with the truckload of gizmos it has as well as the helmets, where it remains to be seen how they compare to tier helmets (generally used to be pretty good).
Edit: Edited out some stuff that made no sense. Late night posting = bad.
Actually the other engineering glove enchant is the rocket launcher for 1k-1.2k damage on one minute cooldown. I doubt it scales with anything, but it's 20 DPS at least, before any crits/AW etc, and used on the minute. Would you get that much out of 44 AP?
How does the FoL glyph interact with Sheath of Light? Is the Sheath HoT cut in half as well?
yes: your critical heals with the glyph are half of what they would be without. Thus for Sheath builds, the HOT you recieve is half the size.
At 200% the glyph was bad for a sheath build, at 140% its even worse.
As other people have said, the only use for this glyph that i can think of is to have the equivalent of 10 HoTs on the beacon. But it totally ruins FoL spam (flash heals for trivial amounts now, to cut that in half is silly) as well as the HoT being overwritten by new casts.
To switch over the effects of each glyph would be awesome.
As holy, i would probably use Glyph of Wisdom, Glyph of Light and Glyph of Holy Light - both seal glyphs for different situations.
However, i'm never going to spec holy as noone will want me healing anything, so thats moot anyway.
Actually the other engineering glove enchant is the rocket launcher for 1k-1.2k damage on one minute cooldown. I doubt it scales with anything, but it's 20 DPS at least, before any crits/AW etc, and used on the minute. Would you get that much out of 44 AP?
Unfortunately you're not just comparing it to the enchant, but the enchant + other professions.
In terms of practicality the engineering stuff doesn't have the right numbers, as ideal as AW + that Right click sounds.
Glyph of Lay on hands sounds interesting as well, 1950 mana for you every 16 or 20 minutes. Glyphs of wisdom vs light I wouldnt be suprised if we standardize on which debuff different Paladins do and then glyph appropriately. Glyph of fol I dislike, for all but short fights fol is going to be our main spam heal. If you glyph it then it loses that purpose.
Glyph of Lay on hands sounds interesting as well, 1950 mana for you every 16 or 20 minutes. Glyphs of wisdom vs light I wouldnt be suprised if we standardize on which debuff different Paladins do and then glyph appropriately. Glyph of fol I dislike, for all but short fights fol is going to be our main spam heal. If you glyph it then it loses that purpose.
Glyph of Lay on Hands only increases the mana given by Lay on Hands by 20%, currently it is only a 390 mana increase. With the new system which seal you have up doesn't effect what you Judge, you can have Seal of Light up and still cast Judgement of Wisdom.
Just up in the paladin forum, in response to a thread titled "Reason for Infusion of Light nerf?":
Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler
We saw one too many Arena where paladins got huge FLs that couldn't be interrupted. I know it can be frustrating when a PvP concern ends up making a talent less useful for PvE. We have some ideas of what we'd like to do with it though.
I posted a few ideas I had as a suggestion on the beta forum. The one I liked best is making IoL affect Flash of Light instead by making it instant cast, guaranteed crit, and some extra multiplier on its healing. Basically make it a realiable amount and then tune it to whatever's needed by adjusting the multiplier.
My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.
The problem with finding ways to "fix" IoL to make it beneficial is that the devs seem very reluctant to allow Holy access to any sort of fire & forget heal spell - they want us to babysit our targets. If the intention of IoL was to improve mobility then we are left with some sort of lesser version of the same talent (as per Cathela's suggestion) or with some sort of shield that will tread all over the toes of Sacred Shield or something more suited to pure PvP like:
Infusion of Light
Your Flash of Light and Holy Light critical heals have a 33/66/100% chance to reset the cooldown on Holy Shock.
Which would provide a fairly large throughput advantage for PvE as well at the cost of spending a heap of mana.
Just up in the paladin forum, in response to a thread titled "Reason for Infusion of Light nerf?":
I posted a few ideas I had as a suggestion on the beta forum. The one I liked best is making IoL affect Flash of Light instead by making it instant cast, guaranteed crit, and some extra multiplier on its healing. Basically make it a realiable amount and then tune it to whatever's needed by adjusting the multiplier.
That's the point, they don't want paladins to have too many insta cast large throughput heals. Look at all the instant heals that exist - they are either very vulnerable to dispell and work over-time (hots, shields), very weak (holy shock), or have a very long cooldown (ns).
A very large direct insta cast heal is really really powerful in PvP, that's why nature's swiftness is on a 3 minute cooldown. Having a ~40-50% chance of landing a max rank insta cast holy light every 6 seconds was way too powerful. The same is probably true for having a max rank guaranteed crit flash of light.
If you PvP'd on beta you would see this quite clearly. Paladins were basically the new druids in arenas.
I recognize that instant casts are powerful in arena, but I really have to disagree that reason alone made IoL unmanageable as an instant cast talent. Look at all the instant cast spells you mentioned in your post and what classes they belonged to... Now look at what we had to work with. Instant casts aren't merely strong in arenas... they've become the only workable spell for significant amounts of time in some brackets, moreso at high ratings. Druids, priests and shamans all have at least a few instant options available to them at any given time, we had 1 on a 15s cooldown that healed for an average FoL crit. They buffed and buffed and buffed HS to the point it's now usable in arena and to some effect, however the fact remains it's prohibitively expensive to use and buffing it doesn't in any way expand our arsenal of available spells.
SS, with adequate scaling, seems to provide us with an Earth Shield type effect... similar mana cost, now appears to probably absorb more than ES can heal per charge, but with an internal cooldown, mandatory unmitigated first hit to activate and ridiculous secondary effect (might as well not be there for PvP purposes). Druids and Priests still hold an incredible advantage over us in healing diversity (not to mention cyclone/manaburn), shamans are closer to our situation but bring so much offensive utility I'd still put them ahead (loss of windfury in arena will hurt, but hex and better totems, free mana shield and PURGE!)
Now IoL + HL crits mean basically 16k HP back in 1 GCD... other healers can match this, but probably not at a 30% chance once every 6 seconds. I understand that this is a problem, but the instant nature is a mandatory requirement for this talent to work and help us, both in arenas and in PvE mobility dependent fights. Tying to FoL might be an answer, reducing the instant HL's scaling may be another, having it reset HS cooldowns for the possiblity of back to back HS might be yet a third option, but the bottom line is it MUST be instant and the random nature of crits should be taken into consideration and result in a stronger spell than on-demand Druid/Priest/Shaman instants.
Now IoL + HL crits mean basically 16k HP back in 1 GCD... other healers can match this, but probably not at a 30% chance once every 6 seconds. I understand that this is a problem, but the instant nature is a mandatory requirement for this talent to work and help us, both in arenas and in PvE mobility dependent fights. Tying to FoL might be an answer, reducing the instant HL's scaling may be another, having it reset HS cooldowns for the possiblity of back to back HS might be yet a third option, but the bottom line is it MUST be instant.
That's where the problem is, you won't get a large instant direct heal. A crit NS from a very well geared PvP resto druid might be ~9000 HP, but that's once every 3 minutes, and druids have incredibly low base crit.
What might be more workable is every holy shock crit leaves a heal over time equal to half the size of the holy shock. That would be even more mana-efficient, and it wouldn't be nearly as overpowering since it would be vulnerable to purge/dispell/fel hunters etc.
I hate suggesting implementation, because Blizzard clearly stated they only want you to point out problems, not solutions, but having big insta cast heals on a non-trivial timer would completely break arena. They are trying to shift even druids to use cast-time heals more, and less heals over time by destroying the efficiency of lifeboom.
That's the point, they don't want paladins to have too many insta cast large throughput heals. Look at all the instant heals that exist - they are either very vulnerable to dispell and work over-time (hots, shields), very weak (holy shock), or have a very long cooldown (ns).
A very large direct insta cast heal is really really powerful in PvP, that's why nature's swiftness is on a 3 minute cooldown. Having a ~40-50% chance of landing a max rank insta cast holy light every 6 seconds was way too powerful. The same is probably true for having a max rank guaranteed crit flash of light.
If you PvP'd on beta you would see this quite clearly. Paladins were basically the new druids in arenas.
I think comparing it to NS is a good point. If you look at a PvP perspective, it's not hard to find a good use for Holy Shock right now. Although costly, it gives you the unique ability as a Paladin to actually LoS crowd controls, mana burns and spell locks. With that said, look at the benefit Holy Shock has gained in the tree's, 12% gain in effective healing and 6% additional gain to critically strike. It's evident that Blizzard wants to see this spell used more frequently and play a role in rotation as a healer, so with that in mind, consider how many times you could use Holy Shock in it's current state and how often it would possibly crit within 3 minutes. With Divine Favor and a 11% Crit increase from talents, it's not hard to imagine how incredibly OP it would be in PvP situations compared to NS.
One second Holy Light's (or 1.5 if you're caught without Light's Grace) is still a pretty big, beneficial gain. It would be interesting to see though if there's any consideration to changing it to 1 talent point but I don't think that's a make or break factor in the current tree design.
It's still beta though and we're likely too see many changes, so there isn't much need to cling onto worries about how a tree looks just yet. Even after launch it's likely to see changes again anyways, that's the nature of the game. I just hope that they can come up with solutions to making the role a bit more exciting to play in a raid environment.
I think he was more concerned with it adding overall damage done if it were to be calculated pre-mitigation. I.e. Tank takes a 10k hit, mitigates 70% and ends up taking 3000 damage. If the damage reduction is calculated pre-mitigation, then the paladin casting HoSac would be taking a 3k hit, mitigated by his own armor( say 50% ). So the total raid damage there would be 7k*.3 + 3k*.5 = 3600, which is > 3000. If it's post-mitigation, then sure, the paladin casting would take 1000 damage, leaving the tank taking 2000 damage and the total would be 3000.
Almost. I'm not expecting armor mitigation on the transfered damage (Are you saying BoSacr works this way?). So the options in my mind where:
Pre mitigation:
Paladin takes 0.3*10000 = 3000
Tank takes 0.3*0.7*10000 = 2100
5100 total.
Post mitigation:
Paladin takes 0.3*0.3*10000 = 900
Tank takes 0.3*0.7*10000 = 2100
3000 total.
I agree the first option would be less useful, and somewhat silly, but as you said BoSanc was silly this way, and I had somehow convinced myself that BoSacr was too.
One second Holy Light's (or 1.5 if you're caught without Light's Grace) is still a pretty big, beneficial gain.
It's allows for an instant cast heal... that's pretty much where any comparison to NS has to stop. It's not controllable, and it doesn't come within the larger context of a class with a multitude of instant cast options. It also isn't NS because it's not 10k to the face instantly, it's 12k (unless HL crits as well, now that i think about it) in 1.5s. Druids also have swiftmend on a short cooldown, which offers a similar mechanic for a smaller heal (roughly the size of a HS, but the effect is on demand, not RNG based).
So it didn't pan out with HL attached, that's fine. It's still needs to be instant to address mobility and counterspelling issues. The RNG aspect of it should be counted as detriment to it's final value and the general paucity of comparable alternative healing options for paladins completely warrants something better than NS in my mind. That or give me 3 types of HoTs, an AoE HoT and make IoL be a button I can press on a 15s cooldown to instantly heal for the total amount of whatever HoT I have up. Oh, and lifebloom and cyclone please.
It's allows for an instant cast heal... that's pretty much where any comparison to NS has to stop. It's not controllable, and it doesn't come within the larger context of a class with a multitude of instant cast options. It also isn't NS because it's not 10k to the face instantly, it's 12k (unless HL crits as well, now that i think about it) in 1.5s. Druids also have swiftmend on a short cooldown, which offers a similar mechanic for a smaller heal (roughly the size of a HS, but the effect is on demand, not RNG based).
NS is ~5000 HP if it doesn't crit, and druids have a pathetic crit rating in arena gear.
Swiftmend has 3 times the cooldown of HS, requires an extra GCD to apply the rejuv first, and is completely mana inefficient. Druids however have a lot more tools for instant healing than paladins, but swiftmend is a pretty crappy spell that you should not try to use at all except in emergencies.
So it didn't pan out with HL attached, that's fine. It's still needs to be instant to address mobility and counterspelling issues. The RNG aspect of it should be counted as detriment to it's final value and the general paucity of comparable alternative healing options for paladins completely warrants something better than NS in my mind. That or give me 3 types of HoTs, an AoE HoT and make IoL be a button I can press on a 15s cooldown to instantly heal for the total amount of whatever HoT I have up. Oh, and lifebloom and cyclone please.
I suggested attaching a non-trivial HoT/shield to every crit holy shock, which would give you an extra heal that is vulnerable to purge. Saying that something is 'rng' therefore it cannot be relied upon is naive. You can make your holy shock crits once every 2 minutes (faster than NS) and with 40-50% crit rating, you can usually use it to get out of clutch situations.
Again, have you tried PvP on beta? I want to avoid a repeat of the situation where every team required a druid to perform well in 2s/3s, that instant holy light made paladins a scarier version of druids.
I logged onto the PTR today and noticed that the gladiator set bonus for holy has been changed from "Set: Increases the healing of your Holy Shock spell by 30%." into "Set: Increases the effective spell power of you Holy Shock when used as a healing spell by 15%."
Talk about a final kick in the nuts. In full season four gear, my Holy Shock heals for ~2800. Swapping in T6 legs and chest, it goes down to ~2500. I wonder what the logic behind this change is? Force paladins to wear even more PvE gear in arenas?
The way it's worded makes it seem exactly the same though - considering that healing spellpower supposedly affects healing spells about twice as much as in TBC. Are you certain that you are seeing a decrease in the overall amount?
10/02/08, 8:14 PM
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