Redcape

Are you serious? Do you have any experience whatsoever with WoW as it was at launch? If so, your memory is obviously incredibly flawed. If not, then please just take my word for it that pvp then was much, much worse than it is now.

Polymorph lasting 30 seconds in pvp?

Warlocks chain fearing you to death over the course of 90 seconds if they felt like it?

Rogues at 20% health being able to handily defeat a warlock at full if they close before a fear hits?

Please. Pvp now (and at 80 as it stands) isn't perfect, but it is infinitely better than it was. Blizzard is making consistent, albeit bumpy progress and ignoring that is just sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming "lalala I can't hear you!".

 

Mearis

I should have qualified that 'at level 70 since the start of arenas'. Yes, pre DR on CC and pre trinket stacking PvP was far more imbalanced.

I would say that 3.0 is a huge step back in balance from the status quo, the status quo is basically fine with rogues/druids being overpowered, hunters/paladins/shamans being underpowered, and the remaining classes more or less fine.

At 80 there are not enough players to see what a metagame will look like, so it is basically a guessing game. Arena skirmishes suggest the game is incredibly imbalanced, and that's the current consensus - but odds are by the time people are 80 every class will have been buffed/nerfed enough where the standings are anybody's guessing game.

 

teeny

Since you're browsing Arena Junkies, and completely derailing this thread into a Wow-forums-like "Nerf ret Pal plx" thread, you might wanna take a look at the number of paladins in high-rated arena teams, whether as Ret or Holy.
If it makes you feel any better the results in LK will remain the same for Holy.

I'm sorry but I couldnt care less about SP beeing totally left behind in arenas, and same goes for Prot paladins, Prot warriors, Fire mages or whatever Pve spec . You have a whole branch of your talent tree dedicated to Pvp, and which makes priests awesome arena healer.
Hopefully you will figure that out and let us paladins get back to our thread topic: our talent trees/abilities and/or the lack thereof.

 

Khaelarys

So of the 9 classes, 4 are good, 3 are bad, and 2 are overwhelming. Not really sure how that's so great of a status quo to begin with. Disco priests probably push up a lot closer to the druid/rogue bracket than the "more or less fine" bracket.

If the game isn't going to be balanced at 70, and you can't predict how it will balance at 80, you're down to some anecdotal (paraphrase) "after some arena skirmishes, pretty much everyone knows that ret burst is too high so nerf em now".

Paladin damage may be a bit high, but you've already conceded that you're okay with a couple of the classes being overpowered for balance - so what's the difference?

 

levk

From a judge you get a little more than a single HL's worth of mana. Holy shock is better than sheath. In short I don't see how it's worth it to go for JotW anymore, which is how it should be with regards to JotW's position.

Beacon is just purge bait though so people will spec for JotW for pvp, but it definitely looks like the inferior build now.

 

jere

Cathela,

Have you had a chance to check out the SoV/JoV numbers since the nerf on them back on the 24th? The numbers listed at wowhead don't match your current values listed in the OP. The numbers at wowhead suggest the judgement damage is no longer 50% more of the BJD with a 5 stack, but 50% more of some other value they specify in the seal tooltip. Also, the seal tooltip lists 19.2% AP and 9.6% SP on what looks like 6 ticks (a *6 multiplier), so it might have gone down as well.

 

Puretide

Question to those deep in beta (my paladin is only 73), have any of you tried tanking an instance as ret or holy? I thought I recall a blue saying that a non-tank spec tank (ie arms/fury warrior - which I also guess is Ret/holy paladin) would be able to tank normal 5 mans/maybe heroics without horrendously outgearing the content. I was looking around for the blue post, but I couldn't find it.

Is that still a goal? Is that possible with SotR? I'd imagine ret and holy's self mitigation would be pretty bad (let alone threat issues) to the point where this isn't possible.

 

Prinsesa

@Puretide:

Mitigation is the only thing you have to worry about. However, the fact that Anticipation no longer provides Defense means you're supposed to be uncrittable with or without the talent, so it really falls on whether your healer is up to snuff. I was able to tank most 70 Heroics quite easily as Ret (although I do overgear it by quite a margin).

As for WOTLK leveling instances, they're reportedly so easy as to be completely tankable even by leveling 68s, so I wouldn't worry about those at all.

Threat is absolutely a non-issue with the insane Righteous Fury modifier. If anything, Divine Storm hits 1 more target than Hammer of the Righteous while providing more mana via JOTW. Crusader Strike is quite useless given that it doesn't get the RF modifier, but is more than made up for the dozens of increased damage (and increased threat) talents you get in Ret.

I haven't tried tanking as Holy, but I imagine it would be more of the same. AOE DPS might have to watch out for the first few ticks of Consecration since it's your only AOE threat move, but beyond that, I wouldn't expect any problems to crop up.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Puretide

Thanks for the feedback.

 

Rasczak

Puretide: WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> Tanking in Wrath of the Lich King
I'm not in beta but from what I hear non-heroic 5 mans are very tankable as ret as long as your healer is reasonably geared. Ret has no problem holding agro with CS and DS and ShoR. Holy may be able to tank some but I haven't heard anyone actually doing that, still they have have consecrate, ShoR, and shock so if dps takes it easy it might be doable. Some heroics might be doable with a dps tank as they are more of a stepping stone to naxx than the hellholes a lot were in BC, but from what I hear you would probably need a bit of a gear advantage over true tank spec.

 

allythepally

Re-phrasing that, "JotW gives you enough mana to mana-positve HL every 8 seconds." It means you can mix in a lot more Holy Lights and never worry about being OOM. (Divine Plea on cooldown? Just run in and judge.)

Don't compare Sheath to Holy Shock, compare it to Holy Guidance. Even stacking a fair bit of int, 30% of *base* AP is more than 20% of your total int. Throw in improved Blessing of Might and it's a *lot* better.

The better comparison for Holy Shock is the instant FoL AoW gives. Not as powerful, it's true, but the rest is (theoretically) made up for by extra mana for HL. Can't really call that one either way without raid testing.

Definitely. As 18/0/43 I've only got Consecration and Judgements to generate threat with, but I can tank with a Judge/Consecrate/Holy Light rotation and handily out-threat my Warlock friend who's doing 1500 DPS.

 

Blackthought

Would this be basically fine to you if you did not play a class that is highly represented in all brackets and the best in 3v3?

 

levk

If you're going to compare against same utility then you don't just gain JotW with 18/43 spec for nothing, you lose holy power and sanctified light. They're weaker, sure, to the tune of at most 1/4th of JotW combined but they're there. It's tough to quantify divine illumination, but it's there as well.

I just don't see losing even the butchered state of IoL utility for sheath. It's not worth it. As for 37/34 - I guess you'll see that build pretty often but it's definitely not the mana juggernaut it was with JotW at 20% total mana. However quirky bacon is still a useful utility. It's all situational, you could argue either way about this, to me for a mostly pve build the only choice is whether to pick up kings or not (which is yet another moronic thing).

 

• frmorrison

In the Protadin thread a few people have posted that imp Righteous Fury affects non-holy damage. However, if you are still using a SP weapon CS is pretty weak.

Regarding tanking, with any Pally spec you can tank non-heroics (just like in TBC), just the healer has to work harder.


Regarding JotW, with the nerfed state it is and with the new Divine Plea, I don't see it being very popular. However Shockadins (they still exist) may do a 37/0/34 type build.

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

 

jere

For clarification, the "baked in salv" is applied by having righteous fury up and basically multiplies all threat by 1.43. The normal 1.9 multiplier still only applies to holy damage. So if the comments about CS are correct (I have never tested CS), then the 1.43 multiplier would apply for sure, but the 1.9 probably wouldn't (again, I haven't tested CS)

 

allythepally

First off, lets compare apples-to-apples. 18/43 is a lvl 70 build, one that I think will be a good healing/DPS hybrid for the month until wrath. Going only to JotW (28/33) in this context is pretty crummy - you give up Sheath and Sanctified Wrath for 3/5 Holy Power, Sanctified Light and Divine Favor. Not worth it IMO. The only other viable lvl 70 build is 51/X/X, maybe 51/5/5, since you can't get down to the extra crit in ret.

But no one really cares about one month. Looking at lvl 80 builds, yeah 37/0/34 is still interesting, but it really depends on how much you value the now-gimped IoL. I'd be tempted to skip IoL and take 3 points in Holy Guidance instead. And once you're there, it doesn't make sense not to go a bit deeper for Sheathe, since the only things you give up are Holy Shock and Light's Grace.

Is it better than deep holy? It's really hard to say, and it probably depends on the encounter. But that's just the problem - holy should be so cool that there's no question that it's the tree to spec if you want to heal. The fact that deep ret looks viable at all is the sign that something's wrong. The way I see it, we don't have enough experience with Wrath content to have a sensible argument about "What's the best Wrath Holy spec." Really it's just a proxy for, "Is Holy still broken," which I think is a clear "Yes."

Edit: typos

 

Rasputin

I have to agree with allythepally. The simple fact that the discussion is about whether to put only 34 points into Ret or go crazy and put 40+ in there for healing is indicative of a failure of talent design. The discussion should be about whether to put only 51 into Holy or sacrifice some of the mid-level Ret talents for the fun, useful talents deep in Holy by putting more than 51 points in there. The fact that nobody even wants to dump 40 points into the tree, much less 51+ shows that the tree is broken and needs a lot of help. Now, part of this could be overreaction and unnecessary drama by Paladins who think they've been wronged and everything is doom and gloom. However, I don't think that's the case, at least not as the sole factor. I also don't think the problem is that deep ret is too good for healing. An AP scaling spellpower talent is not optimal at all for holy paladins, and having to judge every 8 seconds to maintain your throughput is similarly odd and unwieldy. The crit talents are the main synergy in Ret, and they can be reached with a Bacon build. The fact that people feel obligated to search out healing specs that include the absolute minimum necessary into Holy means that the tree, if not the entire playstyle, is pretty borked at this stage.

 

ZulazeeluIcecrown

That's not how I'm reading it, or how I'm seeing the tree. What I'm seeing is this (and no personal insults are intended to anyone): I'm seeing a bunch of people who really want to spec Ret, but told their guilds they'd stay healers. I'm seeing a bunch of people who really want to do DPS, who want to have the neat DPS talents in Ret, and are trying to justify taking them.

Now a big part of that is the new Ret talents simply are "sexier" and more interesting than anything in Holy. But that's not something new; they are not sexier for healing, they're just sexier in general. The flat fact is 51+/x/x will be superior for healing, no matter what. I can't believe I saw someone say "All you lose is Holy Shock!" like that wasn't a tremendous loss. I think that person hasn't looked at the changes to Holy Shock!

Is the Holy tree "borked"? No, hell no, not at all. Is it unsexy? Yes.

 

burghy

Imo BeoL is one of the best end tier talents in this expansion. Same way, the 2 tiers below are trying to be the worst. Anyway for pve healing, with current state of the trees I don't see much reason to not go full holy. Maybe some specific fight, but overall, holy is clearly better.

 

Corronach

Well you have two aspects of Holy Paladins, PVE and PVP. For PVE, some see Sheath as a nice delivery mechanic for our heals since we really don't need to increase their power (overheal). The bonus SP is a really nice bonus. But as you say, deep holy is just uninteresting. Holy shock is good, and that's when the tree stops being cool. We have a bunch of filler talents with 0 effect on PVE, minimal effect on PVE. JoTP has roughly the same effect on our overall healing as conviction. (The haste effect I doubt will increase healing beyond 5%, while conviction is more crits, so more healing and mana). So yeah some of it is powerful, spiritual guidance, light's grace, etc. But with our overheal numbers we have a ton of single target healing to spare for nice mana return and hots on our heals. Not to mention, fully talented retribution will take away the need for a ret paladin if they end up getting nerfed to subpar dps.

The PVP aspect is also disappointing. The two strongest healers in PVP (and definitely most fun) both have unique offensive tools that give them a role beyond healing. Something similar for Paladins, or significantly improved defensive abilities would have made holy interesting. Instead if we choose to heal with ret talents, we have repentance, a little extra damage with crusader strike, stun removal, etc. And I know stun removal is definitely worth more than blessed hands, sacred cleansing etc.

Being able to put control on a fight was my big hope for PVP healing. Having some new active tools was what I was looking forward to for PVE healing. As much as priests groan over lightwell, who here would not gladly trade them their 31 for our 41? Sacred Shield just doesn't excite me, and doesn't do much for me for either aspect of the game.

 

Corronach

For PVE Beacon is great, it definitely makes us very strong for our two targets. It just doesn't change gameplay very much, just once a minute put it on the secondary tank and you're good to go.

For PVE this assessment is correct, but PVE wasn't the only aspect of Holy that was suffering at the end of TBC. The PVP talents up and down the tree are pretty "borked" complete RNG, passive effects. Holy would be so much more interesting if we had actual control on a fight. I can't tell you how many times in arena when healing Paladin Rogue versus Paladin Warrior I could literally stand right next to the others team Holy Paladin. I'd judge seal of wisdom on him and start hammering so he'd start to run but it was a pretty comical sight. Meanwhile a druid, priest or shaman stand next to you, you bolt behind a pillar. Wasn't the original idea for Paladins to be front line healers? lol

 

Rasputin

I really, really, really do not think that healers are speccing ret to heal in order to be better at being Ret outside of raids. The people on this board are largely min/maxing raiders or those who like theorycrafting about min/max raiding. These are not people who giggle to themselves about being able to spec ret and still heal, these are people who are going to figure out the best possible way to perform their task, regardless of how odd it ends up being. If you have to spec ret to maintain decent throughput and longevity, then so be it. If you need Beacon to be able to do whatever it is that Beacon lets you do(heal a second tank?), then that's how it'll go. This is not a case of people sneakily trying to figure out a way to be ret and still cast healing spells.

As for Holy Shock, what does it really give you? It gives you approximately 1.5x a FoL for twice the mana cost, delivered at the start of a GCD instead of at the end. Consider a chain of 3 casts of FoL; your tank receives a heal at 1.5s, 3s, and 4.5s. If, instead of chaincasting FoL, you threw in a HS in the second place, what would happen? Your tank would receive 3 heals at 1.5s, 1.5s, and 4.5s(ignoring haste for the time being as it would change the GCD equally between the two cases). So you've frontloaded a little bit of healing and then created a gap in healing. It's a useful tool in some cases, but it's not the panacea of healing spells without which you will never be an effective healer. Even if you end up taking HS for its valid uses, why on earth would you continue down the tree to 51 points when there are simply BETTER HEALING talents in Ret?

51/x/x will be a superior healing spec in cases when your raid needs healing on two tanks(or just two raid members) taking consistent damage simultaneously; patchwerk and razuvious spring to mind. In all other situations Beacon is mediocre at best.

 

Tilted

As much as cross-class comparison isn't how things are balanced, every other healer wants 41+ points in their main healing tree, and in most cases they want 51+ (priests being the exception, most likely picking one Divine Spirit buffer per guild). On the other hand, we have Holy paladins who look at putting 32+ points in their "damage" tree in order to be effective healers. While it may not be entirely as effective as going deep-Holy (or deep-Ret when looking at damage), it's far more versatile and allows a person to bounce between healing and DPS as needed between encounters. The fact that this is an option is a good thing, but the fact that it may well compete with the "healing" spec in terms of effectiveness shows that the Holy tree is definitely in a questionable state.

That said, in the end the min/max crowd will likely show that 51+ holy is the way to go, with my guess being 51/0/18 (+2) at 80*. I've only seen a few first-hand reports from people who have healed at 80 and they almost all have a "pleasantly surprised" tone to them, so it may not be as bad as it sounds. I also get the feeling Bacon is better than it seems, just because it gives the potential of 2x throughput and efficiency when used intelligently, even though it will almost never actually reach that level. While there's definite room for improvement, it probably won't take much to make Holy the obvious choice again for healers.

* This also underscores the problem of a 5-point BoK in the Prot tree, as healers will need to choose between added throughput/efficiency from Sanctified Seals vs. the utility of an added buff. Not every raid will have a Ret pally to buff Kings.

 

Endoscient

You can also use Holy Shock while moving, which can be a a good increase in hps in fights that force you to move you can Holy Shock instead of doing nothing (ex: Illidari Council). Not having to wait for 1.5sec is really useful in some circumstances. Especially when for whatever reason (silence, etc..) you were not able to heal for a period of time.

 

Rasputin

Yes, Holy Shock is good and has viable uses, which I stated in the paragraph you quoted. It's a good spell. I'd probably get it if I were to spec healing. That doesn't mean it's a necessary tool for holy paladins, only that it is a viable one. Perhaps 900 mp5 at the cost of a GCD every 8 seconds is better, or perhaps that mp5 plus another few hundred spell power and HoTs on spell crits is. My point was merely that Holy Shock is the last reasonable Holy anchor point, and even it can be dispensed with in many if not most situations. The Holy tree is weak, boring, and unexciting right now. It needs help, and I really hope that it gets it before November 13.