Ellerain

I don't realy see your point. If sheathbot has to get these bonuses nothing prevents him from standing closer and getting them.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my job here is done!

 

bellator

Why wouldnt a pala be getting those buffs? theres nothing stopping us standing 20 yards from the melee group (and ideally 20 yards) from any caster range buffs

 

Stardusty

Wouldn't that be entirely dictated by encounter design? Which will make sheathbot JoW entirely situational.

 

bellator

Every ability/spec in game is effected to some degree encounter design, and thus one could bring the 'situational' argument up about any ability/spec.

 

Stardusty

True, but when there is an option for a Retribution paladin to keep JoW up while getting all the melee buffs with little hassle and while being in the right location i.e. melee to to his job, then the sheathbot judging JoW is as situational as it gets.

I like the current direction of diversification of classes/talents in raids as opposed to the stacking that is prevalent at the moment, but still allowing for cross talent utility with caveats.

 

bellator

Based on the information supplied by GSH, rough damage done per 3 seconds is:-

SoR: 15% AP + 30%SP
SoV: 7% AP + 17%SP

What this means that over an 18 second SoV debuff, the damage gained from SoV will be equal to the damage lost from SoR when SoV is active for 50% of the time. This means the swap to SoV and back to SoR needs to be <9 seconds for there to be a beneficial dps gain.

This is possible with 100% proc rate, however, over at maintankadin, someone has put together an optimal cycle for prot palas:-

ImageShack - Hosting :: threatcyclesdm7.png

It shows a cyle keeping Holy Shield up for 100% of the time, using Hammer and Shield of Righteous on each CD, and having an 88% uptimes of consecration.

However this currently shows an 18 second cycle with 2 spare GCD's 9 seconds apart. The SoV gain is not more than the SoR loss.

One could swap the Consecrations and Holy shield over and then drop the first Consecration so that there are 3 spare GCD 3,6 and 9 seconds apart.

I would guess the 3 second window would be too risky, and SoV would drop off on 1 miss/dodge/parry, this leaves the 6 second window.

With a 6 second window the net gain over 18 seconds by twisting would equal roughly 12% AP and 42% SP. Assuming 2kAP and 1kSP, this would be 660 damage, less than the consecration damage.

In short I get the feeling looking at the coefficients found that SOR/V twisting will not be beneficial unless a paladins rotation is unable to support consecration mana wise. Given the big increase in JoW on top of SA etc, then this is an uncertainty

 

Ellerain

The reason this situational spec surfaces is twofold: First, in 25 men we can expect 2 raidslots for Paladins. With Protection and Sheath or Holy and Sheath already present you may not be able to bring full Ret into your raid. Second, 10 men, where everything is random and you just may end up with Sheathbot, period. Nobody judges instability of playing this spec to its full potential, but to deny it viability based on simple 'you won't get those buffs because you are too far away' is stupid.

And yes, cross-talent utility options are fascinating at this moment of early dawn of WotLK. Over there, in Shamen camp, Elemental Shamen are evaluating deep Enhancement possibilities, for an example, and all druids are seem to be pressed for 13-points Resto dive.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my job here is done!

 

Prinsesa

From these numbers, are we able to conclude which Seal is better (or the inflection points where one overtakes the other), assuming you do not (want to) twist?

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

bellator

Yeah, the numbers indicate SoR is almost twice as good.

SoR is doing 5%AP +10%SP damage per second
SoV is doing 2.33%AP + 5.66%SP damage per second

Considering SoR also is effected by haste (WF totem) it is a clear winner. Only question is how better is the SoV judgement, and does it pull the damage back

 

Stardusty

I won't deny that the spec is viable, but I think currently it is too early to call on the number of raid spots and specs required for 25 man raids. For 10 man raids yes, you will be limited in choice and having JoW up from any paladin spec will always be better than not having it at all. For the 25s, it may be possible that the encounters are designed to encourage a diverse lineup. Depending on the final implementation of Judgements of the Wise and with the change in mana costs/downranking penalties, you may very well find that every 25 lineup will desire a Ret paladin and Shadow priest for mana regen.

 

Aldur

I don't understand why so many of you see the need to evaluate how many paladins will there be spots for. How I see things, one paladin of each spec can have it's place assured.

What a holy paladin brings? Great singletarget healing, now with powerful instant options in form of DF or crit shock+instantHL, LoH and Hand of Sacrifice + a situational AoE heal for when it's really needed + a Sacred Shield as a paladin version of Earth Shield on the tank (well ok rage generation, but still when burst is too much, obviously more surv > more rage). Reminding you LoH no longer uses all mana. That's not the end tho, as improved concentration aura is quite frankly awesome.

What a prot paladin brings? Well it looks it brings a lot now, with 3% extra healing and nice portion of armor on top of highly versatile tanking abilities that seem to be quite good on single target too, mitigation-wise and threat-wise (tho that we will have to see for ourselves). For example, shield-slam type ability, thunderclap-like effect on judgment, tons of blocks and no need to be crush immune anymore.

What a ret brings? A judgment scaling with his AP, 3% crit + 2% dmg + 3% all haste for whole raid and more threat for tanks especially protadins as retri aura again scales with gear. It also seems to have a solid dps increase even excluding extreme scaling of judgments.


Compared to that, blessings look pale. I'm not trying to say, that a raid needs 3 paladins but I am trying to say raid is perfectly fine with 3 paladins, just as it's perfectly fine with 3 shamans now, also one of each spec. It's more than many other classes can, being stuck at 2 or even 1 slot max.


Few more comments I have on the matter:
- Buff of HoW is purely for PvP imho and it fits there very well, no need to call it useless. ;-) (or it's not, look messages below)
- Change to Hand of Salvation is actually a buff not a nerf, paladins could as well just get salva removed and get nothing in return. It's especially useful for retris to help manage their threat, but it's applications overall are endless.

 

Stardusty

Actually, it seems that current beta implementation of HoW does not reset the swing timer.
Extra DPS from 35% onwards? Yes please.

 

Selenia

Since it apparently doesn't reset your swing timer now, it's hardly useless for PvE.

[edit]Damn you, Stardustyyyy! *shakes fist*

 

Aldur

If it indeed does not reset swing timer, it's actually going to be quite solid dps increase. But can you say more details about it not reseting swings? Is it now completely separate to swings or "clipping" like Steady Shot?

 

Deac

just tried to kill some mobs with my ret pally on the beta server and jeebus the crazy ass burst we have atm.

Was kinda hard to test out hammer of wrath since normal 71 mobs died in 2 hits. It did feel like the reset of swing timers is still there, sorry. Hopefully im wrong tho.

Still at work soo cant keep wow loged on my laptop too long ;]

 

Lawgivah

As I said in the Retribution thread, a friend and I did testing with HoW on "weapon skill" mobs in Blasted Lands. Based on Quartz, we noticed HoW did NOT reset the swing timer. We varied the casting of HoW during different points of the swing timer and like on queue, a swing would proc no matter when HoW was casted. If timed correct, HoW would hit and immediate be followed up by a swing (sometimes with proc).

If someone wants to double check this on Beta, that would be cool. But after playing around for a few hours, we found HoW does not reset the swing timer.

 

Lawgivah

Haha, ya Deac, we encountered the same problem... It was hard to tell, because mobs would be die at an alarming rate. Once you head out to Blasted Lands or worked on an elite, I found it much easier to test. Also, we used Quartz, who knows if its working properly (LD_50 Swing Timer was wonky).

 

Raggsokk

This is great news! Does it reset the swing timer even without instant cast time? (0.5 sec cast time, untalented).

 

Lawgivah

It always has a .5 second cast time... talented it increases crit chance up to 50%. That is exactly what we tested, whether the cast time effected the swing timer, which we found it did not.

 

Stardusty

Aldur's question still stands though, does it 'clip' the autoswing? Because you cannot auto attack while casting, will casting a HoW JUST before a swing delay the swing by 0.5s?

 

Lawgivah

Ahh ok, now I understand... sorry about that. To my knowledge, it would clip and push back the swing until the HoW cast. Everything we tried, a swing would only register after HoW hit the target. I think that is helpful to your question.

EDIT: Just double checked. By casting HoW with .2 or .1 left on the swing timer, a white hit will not appear until HoW is casted. So ya, I think it doesn't reset, but it CLIPS it by the time casting. Really neat question dude, sorry I didn't understand.

 

Raggsokk

I think I deserve a facepalm there, thanks for clearing it up.

 

flyingtoastr

wotlkret on Vimeo

About 38 seconds in you can see him casting a HoW with a white swing going off in the middle of the cast. I think its pretty safe to say HoW is coded exactly like Steady Shot now. Given the scaling and obscene crit rates HoW could very well be a primary nuke (ahead of both Divine Storm and CS) at sub-35% levels on bosses.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Siddown

It looks to me like the White Swing goes off immediately after the HoW not during the swing, the damages sure both do appear at the exact same time. Granted I had to rewind the thing about 20 times, so I don't know for sure due to the lousy resilution. Too bad the person in that video doesn't have their combat log on, it'd be hard to see but at least you can see what would hit first.

 

flyingtoastr

Stop whining, its a free video someone was kind enough to film so we could see some ret stuff in Wrath. If you don't like it as is please feel free to buy a beta key and film us a better one.



Can anyone else say holy shit?

Divine Favor still costs mana.