◊ Cathela

Thanks, Redcape. Just verified on beta that per-swing SoR damage stays the same with haste.

That has some implications for SoR-vs-SoV for tanks since in a 25-man raid you'll pretty much always have ~20% haste from buffs alone, and SoR benefits a lot from haste where SoV really doesn't.

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

 

Belisarius

Problem being Hidden, is that on our T7 gear has no ArP stat on it. Whereas Warriors do for obvious reasons. Now we have approx. 45% (15-20% white, 15%~ CS, 10%~ DS as it stands at the moment with rotation with DS as physical, its at the bottom of the foodchain and so offers little for a 51 pointer) of our damage mitigated by armour with this change (and I'm wondering if the original plan was for us to have haste etc and no ArP because of the original DS, as it was 20% of our damage) it sort of throws us in the deep end a bit now, particularly with the boss armour increase at 80.
Again making us far too stat dependant as we were in Vanilla & TBC.

I agree our burst was far too much, but I'm actually starting to worry if they overdid it on our burst potential to be honest, maybe and hopefully we will see an about face on the DS nerf after the changes to AoW and RV, even if it's toned down a tad before Nov 13. or near after, because I think we are going to need it to be competitive in PvP tbh moreso, I'm seeing grave problems for us without the burst. PvE not so much of a problem obviously with the number crunchers in here already pointing out that potentially we may see even a slight increase in dps perhaps with the DoT effect of RV.

 

thedopefishlives

The other thing to remember, though, is that with SoV and HotR you can have the DoT ticking on the extra mobs you're tanking. In my mind, that makes aggro gen on secondary targets more consistent, which is a good thing when you've got a lot of trigger-happy DPS, or when a pull goes badly and all of a sudden you've got 3 mages spamming Blizzard, 2 locks spamming Seed, and a boomkin who just won't lay off the Hurricane button.

[edit] I guess for single-target, though, it wouldn't matter, would it?

 

◊ Cathela

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking about. Obviously SoV + HotR is the way to go for multi-mob tanking.

I'll do the full math in a bit, but basically if you have ~20% haste then it comes down to Reckoning, mob avoidance, and weapon speed (HotR+SoR still scales with weapon speed as far as I know).

[e] Though it's worth remembering that like all tanks, our threat is very high compared to DPS, so it's not likely to make a lot of difference.

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

 

• frmorrison

At least with Wrath herbs, you can get 10 expertise with SoV. That is useful unless you already have some capped expertise gear.

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

 

bellator

Personally I found that SoR was most useful even when multi-mob tanking. The reason being all mobs in 5/10/25man die so fast. Over time SoV does increase TPS, but takes a while for it to build up. I found it more useful to simply use SoR for faster initial aggro to reduce chance of any aoe dps pulling mobs and due to the facy everything dies so quickly.

Only times i would use SoV were in instance like Noth shortly before blinks/teleports.

 

JettJaguar

These WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> GC, 3.0.3 hurt Ret's "Cool Factor" kinds of posts really make me wonder sometimes. It really seems like the whole ret nerf was just a ploy to shut up the QQ and they expect to revert at 80 because they expect we will be underpowered again.

 

Hylo

Well that would be the best solution for all imho. Blizzard could read the forums for some other feedback than "NEFR RAT PALA", non-palas could breathe a bit more relaxed in PvP (but still not ignore us!) and paladins were balanced at lvl80 after the revert.

The problem for ret palas now is uncertainty how we can compete with others at lvl80, not our post-nerf performance at lvl70 (we are still ok because of our scaling mechanisms). As a paladin I'm really sick of the constant nerf calling whats going on now - even the good humored jokes are not so funny anymore.

 

Rasputin

It's unfortunately true. I can't even discuss things intelligently with my guildmates without it turning into them dismissing everything I say as "Yeah well you're op anyway, stop whining". I'd like to believe Blizzard wouldn't care about the whining but when 80% of the threads are whines, maybe it's worth it to quell that.

 

• frmorrison

The good thing is the devs are more interested in making things fair, for example yesterday GC said he wished he could have buffed Mage damage in Sunwell, but I assume he could not due to lack of tools and support (at the time most devs were working on Wrath).

Now they have better tools than before (they could flip a switch and DS does Holy damage or flip a different switch to make Frostbolt get more spell damage), they can do better this time around.

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

 

Kachaka

I have a question for the Paladin theory crafters about what they think the Raid viability of a Shockadin spec is.

The idea came from the fact that it seems like every other Healing classes in WOW now has the ability with dual specs to swap into a ranged spell damage spec (Balance/Elemental/Shadow) when they are not required to heal, while using almost the exact same gear which they use to heal with. Paladin DPS specs however seem to be primarily based on close combat with Spells being used to increase/supplement melee DPS.

So with the idea to build a "range damage" spec which I could swap to without requiring completely different gear I came up with this spec.

Shockadin (43/0/28)

It takes all the % damage scaling talents from ret and combines them with Holyshock/Ranged Judgments from Holy.

So if I haven't messed up the maths to bad I figure Holy Shock should have about a base 21% crit (assuming heart of the crusader is active on the mob) before any +crit from Int bonuses and the Judgements should be about a 15% base (-6% since they don't benefit from sanctified light).

As for additional damage, Holy shock should also have a 18% damage boost (counting imp ret aura) before Vengeance and the extra 3% for Humanoids, Demons, Undead and Elementals. The basic damage Seals (righteous or vengeance) that get judged will also have an additional 3% damage boost from the 5 point tier 1 holy talent which should put the base at 21%.

Coupled with Vengeance from the Ret Tree, which according to wowhead seems to activate from any crit (healing or damage) and lasts 30 sec. That should be good for an additional 6% (keeping two stacks active shouldn't be to much trouble) damage boost to all damaging attacks.

So a Shock runs about 30% crit (I think +10% crit at level 80 is realistic with int bonuses) with an average 25% boost in Damage (it will actually float between 18%-32% depending on mob and length of fight).

A Judged Seal of Right/Vengeance should have a realistic crit rate of about 25% with about a 27% damage boost.

The one nice thing I realize about this spec is that it can still heal fairly effectively without having to swap back to a pure heal spec. The healing aspect comes from the fact that every Holy shock crit should preload the ability for an Instant FoL, or a 1.5 second cast Holy Light. This could make for a very mobile heal spec since it effectively has two instant cast heal spells (FoL and Shock when needed), as well should a bigger heal be needed, a Holy Light should be a 1.5 sec cast, which is a fairly large heal for a 1.5 sec cast.

Still I am not sure if the Crit rate and damage boost enough to carry this spec as a DPS alternative. I have played mostly melee classes to this point and I am not sure how much of a damage boost Holy Shock receives from Spell power.

Any opinions would be welcome.

Thank you.

Kachaka/Akhacka

 

Aerynlore

Here's the problem... Seal of Righteousness's Spell Damage coefficient got nerfed "TO THE GROUND, BABY" (it's just fun to link that quote... no other reason).
That pretty much destroyed any hope of a Holy Shock build doing much sustained damage. This is a problem that is plaguing Holy Paladins in general (latest stat I read was that Holy's DPS is 20-30% lower than all other Resto/Holy builds).

It's a problem, they are working on it, but until the fix, Shockadins are not raid viable.

 

CKaz

For a similiar reason I shelved my Warlock for now - not so much Guildies saying so, but the community.
End game Destro was a bit too high end of BC sure, but that doesn't mean you leave them weak/broke 3.0+/WotLK.

 

Amera

It's difficult to hit the sweet spot where you are good and viable, but not a resto druid, where everyone assumes you leveled and geared the character purely to cheese arena. Right now it is almost embarrassing to be specced Ret because of all the Season 2 All-stars running around AV obliterating anyone and everything and believing they suddenly got good at the game.

That being said, for the first time I actually do believe they really want different specs to be good and are actually going to really stay on top of it this expansion, and GCs posts are generally very reassuring.

 

◊ Cathela

At present, probably not too much. Holy paladin dps is uncomfortably low at this point, to such a degree that devs have openly acknowledged that it needs to be worked on (as referenced in the last few pages of this thread). Adding Vengeance will help a bit, but it's still probably going to be somewhat lacking.

One problem that a shockadin spec has for dps is that it relies on both physical and magic damage and needs both AP and SP to scale properly, whereas priests/druids/shamans can do a hybrid heal/dps spec that only uses magic damage.

But that's all guesswork. Your best bet is to go try it yourself in 5-mans, Kara, ZA, etc. The instances are so easy at this point that you won't really be endangering the group with your low dps.

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

 

Kachaka

That's to bad, I was liking the look of that build.

Still the real problem I have with it upon closer examination, is the lack of more then two standard range attacks (I am not counting Hammer of Wrath since it can only be used when a Mob is below 35% health). This is not a problem when combating Undead or Demons since there are two other options, but it is a problem with every other mob type.

In a two spell DPS cycle, with one spell having a 6 sec cool down and the other with talents at 8 sec, makes it tough to create a proper DPS rotation. You end up spending one or more of your cool down's doing nothing but waiting for something to do. It looks like Holy Paladins really need some sort of 3rd ranged DPS option, the two we have are just not enough with which to build a proper spell rotation cycle. I dream of a range consecrate (somewhat like the hunters ice trap but tied to maybe a targeted toon like beacon) but I know the likely hood of that happening to be between slim to none percent.

Well here's to waiting and seeing what the dev's have in mind for this.

Thanks

 

Tuftears

I already evaluated a holy shockadin build's DPS, it works out to about 900 dps, on a premade 80 vs a level 80 target dummy. This is under the DPS of a disc/holy priest. (a deep holy paladin hits 750 dps sustained)

The basic issue is just that spellpower-assisted DPS is woefully tiny, nothing gets boosted more with +damage than it would be with a matching amount of attack power, and as a result, your damage will be much better if you gear for attack power instead. At that point, you might as well go full ret anyway.

upstart feline miscreant (47 feral/14 resto)

 

◊ Cathela

Is that with a 2-h or with a 1-h/shield and SotR? (And did you try both?)

And also, this is exactly why a SP->str conversion talent in deep holy would be really helpful.

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

 

• frmorrison

Holy has been a little buffed a little, I got the premade to about 1050 dps using healing Holy (51/20), so I could have gotten 4% more damage from SotP (very weak talent, would have added 42 dps). The differences are 5% more haste (more SoR and melee) and SotR new rank (400 + shield block value).


This is still well below other healer's dps (around 1200-1300). Since they don't want SoR to be Ret's seal, adding another Holy attack seems like the best answer; I always was above 50% mana and had lots of open cooldowns.

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

 

◊ zeidrich

HotR is weaponspeed independant. SoR scales with weapon speed. SoR procs on HotR scale with weapon speed.

 

Dekkar

It is longer as far as I can tell. I know this is only anecdote, but I've run the badge-farm Karazhan so many times on my paladin that I know each and every pull like the back of my hand, including whether or not AS will get the adjacent group depending on which mob I cast it on. The bounce range is definitely up from before. I can't give you an exact number, but the 3.0 patch brought it up to 15 yards from something lower. I'm going to venture a guess that it was approximately 10 yards.


I tested out the Mechanar thing last night, I just didn't have time to post. I went in there by myself on normal mode. My shield did indeed hit a robot, which aggro'd the other elf group as well. I had to bubble and run out the instance portal.

On that note, the bounce reduction is mostly a blessing.

 

Hammuhtime

I've got the same exact problem in my guild, i can't get half way through trying to explain where i'm coming from without someone telling me i'm out of my mind. None of them can seem to understand that this patch was meant to balance classes at 80, not 70. Even the dps warriors are telling me i'm crazy, which is hilarious considering their current state.

I'd agree, I want to believe that they ignore A LOT of the nerf qq threads about ret, but after seeing what they did to our 51 point talent, i'm having second thoughts.

 

Tuftears

1-hand/shield and SotR. Didn't try 2-hand. It's not really easy finding a non-staff 2-hand caster weapon.

upstart feline miscreant (47 feral/14 resto)

 

Thorgred

Does JoL healing get credited to the player who it heals, or to the player who cast the judgement?

If its given to the Judging player--- could this be used for obscene threat amounts for a Prot Paladin?
Is this the same as JoW - ie is the mana restored credited to the paladin?

 

Prinsesa

JoL's healing is currently credited to the player who cast the Judgement.

If Joe Paladin (with RF up) casts JOL on a boss, and John Rogue procs JOL for 100 HP, Joe Paladin will gain roughly (100 * 0.25 * 1.9 * 1.43) or 68 threat.

To be clear, 0.25 is the Paladin's base healing threat multiplier, 1.9 is the Righteous Fury base threat multiplier and 1.43 is the 'baked-in Salv' threat multiplier.

Yes, currently JOL can be used to provide HUGE amounts of threat, but only because JOL is currently bugged to not have its 4 second internal cooldown. Once that gets fixed, threat gain from JOL should be reined in somewhat.

That being said, JOL is also bugged to provide far less healing than its tooltip suggests it should, although it remains to be seen whether the error is in JOL's coding or in JOL's tooltip.

Fnally, the new crediting functionality of JOL also means that a Paladin can gain Spiritual Attunement mana if they proc a JOL that comes from a different Paladin.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler