WotLK talent trees/abilities discussion - Page 277

• frmorrison · 09/25/08, 7:13 PM

I don't understand why a few people want changes to Ret.

If you lost track of time, WotLK will be released in 39 days, and 3.0 at least a week before that, so it is too late to do any major changes like making Ret want Int.

What mechanics are there are set, however things such as HotR and JotP are very likely to be tweaked before release.

If you do not like JotW, cancel your account and tell Blizzard your concerns (while Blizzard employees did not read every forum post, I believe they read every cancel note) because I do not believe it will change.

Anauel · 09/25/08, 7:21 PM

Originally Posted by Antmanton

It makes perfect sense, you're supposed to be a paladin. Your Hand and heal spells don't disappear the moment you put that first point into Benediction, you're intended to keep casting those spells, this change just reinforces that. As for why paladins failed in TBC, it wasn't because of stat dependancy, it was due to the arbitrary design decision of putting hybrids 30% or so behind pure classes. That philosophy is gone now, according to numerous posts by Ghostcrawler and Koraa. Besides, even if adding some Intellect so cripples your AP that you can't compete with other classes, your AP coefficients can be tuned up a notch in a couple keystrokes to bring you up to parity.

That's why I specified tier loot and selected badge gear. Warriors and DKs won't be wearing those pieces, and so shouldn't care about what's on it. Again, no problem.

Yes, but hand spells and fol cost a relatively small amount of mana and all hand spells have a cooldown. You're not meant to be spamming them so their cost is negligible.

You're still a paladin but you're there to dps. That's your role. Ghostcrawler said that they will now be classifying specs as DPS, Tank or Heal, and even though we still have heals and utility, in the end we're there to DPS. Int does not help us dps right now. With JotW as it is, int is nigh-worthless. That's good. Having our basic rotation be infinite means that we can focus on damage stats, which is what dps is all about... doing more damage.

And what about dropped loot? Nobody wants to have a piece itemized for ret pallies in a 10 man when they have no ret pally. It's just unnecessary for us to have specific gear.

Fiola · 09/25/08, 7:44 PM

Originally Posted by Cathela

Wouldn't it? They'd have to re-create a whole separate category of "Ret paladin gear" distinct from Warrior/DK dps gear. That's exactly the kind of thing they're trying to get away from. (EDIT: Okay, so you've responded on this point, but it's still going to be extra itemization work to create new ret badge gear, etc.)

And if they did want to add intellect to Ret paladin gear and use that as a means to nerf JotW, they'd have to add a lot. If you want to nerf JotW from 20% to 10%, then you have to double a Ret paladin's mana pool, which would require like 300 more intellect. That would come out of damage stats, so in order to avoid gimping Ret paladins dps-wise you'd have to re-tune them to do more dps with fewer damage stats on their gear. Like I said above about another proposal, it's not impossible to make it work, but it would take a whole lot of effort, and there are far easier ways to address the problem.

Re-creating Ret paladin gear with int brings up another problem - is Ret DPS balanced around our tier items with Int, or with the non-set items with 0 Int? Either tier gear will be "weighed down" by un-necessary stats, or we end up not wanting the non-optimal "Warrior" gear.

Foofu · 09/25/08, 7:49 PM

Originally Posted by Antmanton

Your Hand and heal spells don't disappear the moment you put that first point into Benediction, you're intended to keep casting those spells, this change just reinforces that.

Unless they've changed the fact that spells made instant through talents reset the swing timer you will not be casting many FoL's in PvE as a dpser. Every time you cast it you lose dps, even timed with a swing (which won't always be possible due to your dps cooldowns having priority) you can't eliminate the impact, so you have to have a good reason to cast it (e.g. prevent a death).

Demonseedx · 09/25/08, 8:59 PM

On the whole ret gear thing I do find it kinda ironic that with the change over to Spell power Ret and Holy paladins could have shared the same gear pushing Ret back to a melee spell damage build.

• frmorrison · 09/25/08, 11:07 PM

Originally Posted by Demonseedx

On the whole ret gear thing I do find it kinda ironic that with the change over to Spell power Ret and Holy paladins could have shared the same gear pushing Ret back to a melee spell damage build.

Assuming CS and Divine Storm were changed to use spell power to scale, you still have the issue of balancing Holy Pally vs this ideal spell damage melee Ret needs, and it would cause additional headaches (since it would be the only spell power melee class, so they would have many issues balancing it versus the other melee classes).

In addition, many Players would be mad since Ret has used melee stats for four years and a Retadin's current gear wouldn't work well with this spell power melee class.

Demonseedx · 09/26/08, 12:34 AM

Originally Posted by frmorrison

Assuming CS and Divine Storm were changed to use spell power to scale, you still have the issue of balancing Holy Pally vs this ideal spell damage melee Ret needs, and it would cause additional headaches (since it would be the only spell power melee class, so they would have many issues balancing it versus the other melee classes).

In addition, many Players would be mad since Ret has used melee stats for four years and a Retadin's current gear wouldn't work well with this spell power melee class.

I wasn't thinking of it in a balance sense, just on the goal of blizzard to have more overflow to the gear. As of right now only one class in one spec wants the Spell power plate and that seems counter intuitive to have one set of gear for one spec of one class.

On the other hand can't imagine it being that much different then the hoops its gone through to be balanced to melee dps. Certainly it would make it easier for Holy to sink up much better in terms of leveling/farming gear if all the paladin spell coefficients were balanced based on two sets of gear instead of three. Of course it would make Protection a pain to be competently balanced but when hasn't that been the case?

Anauel · 09/26/08, 12:41 AM

Originally Posted by Foofu

Unless they've changed the fact that spells made instant through talents reset the swing timer you will not be casting many FoL's in PvE as a dpser. Every time you cast it you lose dps, even timed with a swing (which won't always be possible due to your dps cooldowns having priority) you can't eliminate the impact, so you have to have a good reason to cast it (e.g. prevent a death).

I'd think that the rewording on Art of War from -1.5s to instant would make it so it doesn't reset the swing timer. The shaman equivalent doesn't. Anyone from beta or in the PTR that can confirm?

• frmorrison · 09/26/08, 12:46 AM

An Art of War FoL when used will reset your swing timer.

Andrast · 09/26/08, 1:01 AM

Originally Posted by Anauel

I'd think that the rewording on Art of War from -1.5s to instant would make it so it doesn't reset the swing timer. The shaman equivalent doesn't. Anyone from beta or in the PTR that can confirm?

The difference is that shaman use Maelstrom weapon to continue their dps cycle. The most common use of a 5-stack of MW is to cast either Lightning Bolt or Lava Burst. While a ret paladin's main use of Art of War is to heal. It seems unfair to penalise shaman by resetting their swing timer for merely continuing their dps, while it doesn't seem quite as unfair to reset the swing timer for paladins since they are switching roles by throwing out a heal.

Thorgred · 09/26/08, 1:07 AM

The whole ret itemisation discussion is moot. We will be using warrior/dk gear with no intellect, no mp5 and no SP.
End of discussion.

Bascially the whole JotW problem shows a couple of things, most notably that HOLY is the problem, not ret.
Blizz moved JotW and sheath further into ret to make them 'unattainable' for a full holy spec paladin. However, Holy sucks so badly that people would rather waste points in DPS talents and still get JoTW, than in the upper tiers of holy.

Chnage JotW to 35% base mana is a good start. But holy still needs more.

Noules · 09/26/08, 1:53 AM

I'm personally not arguing that JotW is strictly better than BoL. For some encounters, I imagine BoL will be pretty dominant. But in circumstances where you can realistically get a couple of 10 yard judgements off, you are primarily constrained by mana, and BoL does not give a ridiculous (and necessary) amount of throughput for the cost, JotW seems generally better.

JotW doesn't have to be universally superior to BoL in order for it to be potentially a problem (part of this also depends on whether or not having Holy usually ignore deep Holy is in of itself a problem). It just has to be significantly better for enough encounters where not respeccing will put your raid at a noticable disadvantage.

The 'problem', from my perspective, is that JotW Holy feels more like the 'base' Holy build - it's great for soloing, it's more than sufficient for small group content, and it's likely the superior spec for (presumably) a lot of serious encounters. Given the state of the talents now, it seems like 51 Holy would be the niche, alternative spec for specific encounter mechanics, while JotW Holy is what you spec in general.

The other, perhaps very serious, issue is numbers/encounters being balanced around Holy having access to JotW...

Edit: I should also probably state that I absolutely agree that deep Holy needs something besides BoL to be enticing to Holy pallies - I felt that was a given. The reason I focus on JotW is that I have difficulty imagining something which is so good that JotW becomes comparable/worse even in situations where it can be used effectively (tight mana, chance to judge a couple of times per minute).

Blutelf · 09/26/08, 3:25 AM

if JoTP removed the healing penalty on Divine Plea, people would be much less likely to spec into JoTW in PVE. For PVP though, it probably would not change anything. But I like that, at least on paper, a JoTW Holy Paladin can actually do something in Arena - repentance, some damage, recover some mana back.

Veneda · 09/26/08, 3:29 AM

Originally Posted by Noules

Edit: I should also probably state that I absolutely agree that deep Holy needs something besides BoL to be enticing to Holy pallies - I felt that was a given. The reason I focus on JotW is that I have difficulty imagining something which is so good that JotW becomes comparable/worse even in situations where it can be used effectively (tight mana, chance to judge a couple of times per minute).

It doesn't have to be something THAT good - but the reasons for choosing it might be limited.

JotW is basically super-regeneration tool. By super-regenerating, holy paladin is able to achieve better throughtput - more mana means more HL casts.

What holy need then is:

- better mana efficiency on its own (maybe it's time to make Illumination in deep, improved version return 100% mana again? Or at least 80% (again, deep talent)?),

- better throughput via deep talents (which is achieved to some extend by current deep Holy tree - it's not that instant HLs, haste on heals and BoL are not rising it),

- some fun, new mechanics giving paladin tools for switching to raid healing when needed (no, glyphs are not good permanent solution here).

Curiously enough, Divine Plea was supposed to deal with problem no 1, but for some reason Blizzard is hesitating in actually making it normal healing regeneration tool (like Shadowfiend, Innervate or Mana Tide) instead of emergency button/solo grinding gimmick. MT healer (which paladin seems to remain in WotLK) can't just stop healing for 10, let alone 15 sec. to regenerate.

Thorgred · 09/26/08, 9:37 AM

Illumination can't return to 100%.
At increased crit rates, there is an exponential increase in the mana regen. As crit rates go from 75-100% you reach literally infinite mana return.

75% return wouldn't be too bad though

On the whole I think there needs to be a few things to make holy more interesting
A group heal - either AoE or HoT - based on Judgement of the Light would be ideal i think for Holy.
But then again, i'm starting to realise that half the things that blizz promised are being taken away/changed totally beyond what was originally specified, and we're getting less and less likely to get any sweeping changes.

Hell, i'd be glad just for the 11pt Prot talent before release.