Gevlin

The scrolling combat text shows the white swing landing first. That could either be lag in the SCT mod or it could mean its actually landing first. Either way, they are landing near instantly so even if you're pushing your swing back 1/4s its still worth using when its CD is up.

 

GSH

Wrath Paladins: Significant Changes in Healing Techniques Ahead? | Altitis

Interesting post comparing the base efficiency of paladin spells, with pretty graphs. Upshot is that both HL and FoL's base efficiency decreases, but Holy Shock's efficiency increases to fall in-between the two other spells.

Of course, this is before taking SP into account, but it it might point to Shock becoming a staple part of the healing rotation.

 

flyingtoastr

Wouldn't it be possible to have the prot pally starting the stack and have a ret maintain it for him? Unless SoV is changed it should be entirely possible, though it would be a slight DPS loss to the ret pally.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Raggsokk

Wouldn't this be very unpractical? And will it be necessary threatwise?

 

◊ Cathela

I theorycrafted basically the same cycle in the Prot paladin thread here, so it's good to have independent confirmation.

The relationship between SoR and SoV damage on live is the same; SoR does more damage than even a 5-stack of SoV even under "base" conditions, and then effects like windfury, reckoning, and parry-hasting benefit SoR but do almost nothing for SoV. What's always made SoV competitive is the much larger judgement damage.

Regarding a 9-9 SoR/SoV cycle for tanking, the best case would be if you had the Imp. Judgement talent for an 8-second judgement cooldown; in that case, you could do two judgements per cycle and land them both during the 9 seconds of SoV.

A Ret or Holy paladin could maintain a SoV stack much more easily with one SoV swing every 12 seconds or so (GCDs permitting).

As the article says, I'd be careful about drawing any conclusions about Shock's efficiency given that the top 3 ranks seem to have identical mana costs at the moment.

But yes, I've noticed massive drops in efficiency of HL and FoL. Shaman actually lose even more efficiency on on HW and LHW (compared to what they get now). But interestingly, Priests actually show a slight gain in efficiency on GH and FH.

I'm wondering if Holy paladins and Resto shamans are meant to do more melee in raids to get JoW mana returns. This would also keep them in range of all the melee AP buffs to boost their JoW/JoL strength.

The Ret paladin would need to do one SoV'd swing every 12-15 seconds or so. It might be useful on some fights for threat. It would also be a way for the Ret paladin to "dps" without having it show up on his threat, which could be useful.

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

 

bellator

Well if a ret pala can maintain a prot palas SoV stack, which in all honesty i doubt is possible, a ret paladin's SoV dot would be much greater than a prot palas. It would be a rdps loss to do this. The only upside, if possible, is the threat boost, and looking at the abilities we have I do not feel threat will be an issue in wrath.

Still lots to test....gimme a beta key tigole

 

◊ Cathela

Er... why? That's how it works on live right now.

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

 

• frmorrison

The new epic gems are great, but wouldn't 20 strength be better? At least for yellow slots this gem may be king.


I also saw a trinket that mixed Strength, attack power, and crit rating, so that is a outstanding use of the item budget not seen in raids since Quick Strike Ring.

 

Raggsokk

It's favourising warriors slightly though

 

Harmann

Wondering if we'll still be using a Spellpower weapon in Wrath. Hammer of the Righteous with a 107dps 1H weapon probably doesn't scale our threat as much as an extra 250 spell damage would.

Looking at an added ~105dmg on Hammer of the Righteous (which for all we know probably gets modded by Spellpower on top of the 100% weapon dmg) and that's really it. Consecrate, Holy Shield (barely), SoR, Shield are all made much stronger with Spellpower though.

I probably see us still using an SD weapon but sticking to pure tank stats on our armor. A tank with 22k health would probably sit at 700 spell damage if he just had a caster weapon.

 

bellator

Didn't know that. Rest still stands.

 

flyingtoastr

Depends. There is a point of inflection right now where haste (and incidentally armor penetration and even crit) become better for DPS than additional strength.

In addition haste is almost always better for DPS than crit, so to socket yellow hybrid gems for assumed metas these would be ideal.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

◊ Cathela

Back of the envelope calculations:

The rule of thumb as prot is that 2 spelldamage = 1 tps for a single target.

If you switch Hammer of Judgement (the Hyjal trash mace) out for a 100dps weapon (which is what you'd get at the same ilevel) with a 2.4 speed, you lose 236 spelldamage, or roughly 118 tps.

You go from roughly 80 damage on HotR up to 240 damage. (Both get AP bonuses of course, but assuming for now that AP is normalized on HotR so they both get the same benefit from AP.) That's a gain of 160 damage, or 26.7 holy dps from the hammer. The threat gain is 51 tps times whatever extra threat multiplier HotR gets.

On top of that you get roughly 60 extra white dps, which gets no threat multiplier, so that's 60 tps.

So basically at that gear level:

2.0-speed caster weapon: 118tps
2.4-speed melee wepaon: 60 + 51*m threat per second

Basically it's going to depend on that multiplier, and that's assuming that there's no spelldamage coefficient on Shield of Righteousness or Hammer of the Righteous.

My guess is there will be no spell coefficient on those abilities, and that the threat multiplier on the hammer will be high enough that a melee weapon will be demonstrably superior for 3 or fewer targets. (If that's not what they intended, I don't think they would have bothered with putting a weapon-damage strike in deep Prot.)

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

 

Strom

This

Lets face it, they want us at least some of the time using a melee DPS weapon. If testing proves otherwise, they will adjust it some more so we are using melee DPS weapons.

 

• frmorrison

Exactly. The mantra of Wrath is to make multiple classes use the same gear (exception Holy Pally), so the goal is for Prot Pallies and Warriors use the same stuff.

Note the ideal weapon enchants may turn out to be different (Warriors may want the new Mongoose and Prot Pallies may want spell damage).

 

Kigale

You would have to include the fact that SoR is apparently getting an AP coefficient also. A melee weapon with strength might be the best threat weapon for paladins. Melee weapon with SP enchant might come out the best.

 

Jessie

Just to clear this up, Seal of Vengeance currently produces a separate stack of Holy Vengeance for each paladin. Here's a screen shot I just took on a live server:

http://i207.photobucket.com/albums/b...208_130730.jpg

When we look at you we don't even see the testicles on your chin. We see the testicles in your heart.

 

Divinefury

There's some love about Holy Shock in this post on the Beta forums. It's lacking any true numbers, but it does give a feeling for Holy Paladin healing as it stands in Beta.

 

Darian_TruBlade

The problem is 1H melee weapons don't carry much AP with them at all, most of their damage comes with the base DPS of the weapon.

Take [Vanir's Right Fist of Brutality] for example. Despite being one of the best fist weapons available, you get a total of 44 AP. The [Vengeful Gladiator's Spellblade] by comparison has 247 SP. Assuming a 1.8 attack speed weapon, the 60 DPS difference would amount to an additional 108 damage for Hammer of Righteousness. A quick calculation puts that around 36 TPS. The gains from using a normal melee weapon don't honestly seem that great threatwise. At best, it's just a perk for when you have to use an avoidance weapon.

 

thedopefishlives

You're also forgetting the increase in TPS from the increase in DPS of using a melee weapon in place of a caster weapon. As noted above, with a top-end caster weapon compared to a top-end warrior tank weapon, it comes out to a virtual wash. I get the feeling we're going to be making a lot of warriors cry by stealing their swords and putting spell damage enchants on them.

 

flyingtoastr

Wow... FoL sheath crits overwriting larger HL crits makes the talent absolutely horrid. Too bad.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Darian_TruBlade

Considering mitigation, you get at most a 50 TPS increase in addition to what I stated previously as the additional damage done by the weapon isn't affected by Righteous Fury. So in total, along with Hammer of Righteousness, you're gaining ~85 TPS.

But you're losing 250 SP. Currently that's ~125 TPS in normal fights. The calculations might be slightly different for WotLK, but I don't believe they'll swing toward closing that gap.

The bottom line is as I said before, you aren't actually making any real threat gains for trying to use a warrior tanking weapon. It's only a nice perk for when you need to focus on avoidance.

 

Cathmor

*Horrid for holy paladins, perhaps.

The talent still is great for Retribution in both PvE and PvP - the spell damage conversion is great in both areas, and the HoT from a heal crit will be helpful in topping one's self off in the arena, enabling less time spent healing and therefore a) more time on target, and b) less chances for a fatal counterspell/shock/kick locking everything up.

I am the light that brings the dawn.
http://e4ae.blogspot.com/
-Cathmor of Malfurion
formerly Baelor of Runetotem

 

◊ Cathela

You're forgetting melee gearing rule #1: Slow weapons maximize damage from instant strike abilities. There's no reason at all to use a 1.8-speed melee weapon for threat when there are plenty of options available at 2.4 or slower.

As I showed above, it's going to come down to the threat multiplier on HotR, but it will almost certainly be set high enough to make melee weapons a better choice than caster weapons.

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

 

JettJaguar

Won't this depend on the rating to % conversions i.e., 16 haste rating = 1% haste, 22 crit rating = 1% crit (at level 70)? Of course, +% damage on crit modifiers will change this comparison somewhat.

On a slightly separate note, since spell hit and melee hit have been concatenated, does anyone know whether they standardized on the 12 spell hit rating to 1% or the 16 melee hit rating to 1%?