Hulabaloon

The way I understood it was that aura-like effects would not stack with each other, but self buff effects like Judgements of the Pure, a mage's Icy Veins etc. would stack.

 

flyingtoastr

Multiple outside % haste buffs do not stack, i.e. Power Infusion and Heroism.

Personal % haste buffs will stack with outside haste buffs, i.e. Icy Veins and Heroism.

Again though, I'll bet a fair share that it will be changed. Blizzard doesn't want to screw over the shiny new talents for Druids and Pallys just because Windfury was stupidly broken.

Some people's minds are like cement: all mixed up and permanently set.

 

bellator

I feel sorry for blizz on this one. This spell will still be great in the very situational use where the majority of the raid takes raid damage whilst standing in the same location, but aside from that, yes it is weak. However what choice do blizzard have. If they put a spell in that can heal the entire raid then they cant give it a 140% coefficient with 30 yards range and allow a paladin to chain cast it. It becomes too poweful. However without these things it is weak when it comes to healing only say 5 people. Blizz could cap it at five people and boost it's power but then it's just another CoH etc.

 

◊ Cathela

The sheath HoT effect sucks for a healer build, agreed. But it still might be worth it for the AP->SD conversion.

If you can get BoM (i.e., 3 paladins) and stand in the right place to pick up Battle Shout, SoE, Unleashed Rage, etc, you could come out with ~1500AP at level 70, which would translate into 450 spellpower. Not too shabby, and it might be worth the 3 points you lose in Judgements of the Pure.

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

 

Torq

To be entirely honest, you're getting 30% of your STA as SP. I wouldn't be complaining too much about that, STA is one of the cheapest, if not the cheapest, item stat in the game. You're effectively doubling the value/cost ratio of STA. GIven a statmod of .67 (according to WoWwiki), you can essentially say each point of stam is worth 1.5 that of anything that. Well, toss in 30% of that as SP (a .7 cost, same source), you're effectively increasing the value of STA to 1.5 + (.3*(1/.7)) or 1.93x any other stat. That's a pretty hefty bonus, especially considering tank gear tends to stack stam to very high degrees anyway.

I mean, just looking at the maintankadin in my guild, with just kings he has 1664 stam, which would equate to ~500 SD. With full buffs, he'd probably be up to ~1750ish, or about 525 SD, which is more SD than he currently even has. So with just that talent, he'd be more than doubling his SD, with no additional investment.

[E] Added quote.

 

flyingtoastr

Off-topic

New beta patch notes for pallys:
Holy

* The amount of health point healed by Holy Shock has been increased by 66%. (eg. Rank 7 now heals for 2401-2599 instead of 1431-1549)
* Infusion of Light now reduces the cast time of your next Holy Light spell by 1.3/2.5 secs instead of 1.25/2.5 secs.

Protection

* Holy Shield will now give you 6 charges instead of 4.
* Avenger's Shield mana cost reduced by 70%, damage has been reduced. (eg. Rank 3 now deals 494-602 damage for 780 mana instead of 705-861 for 1745 mana)
* Guarded by the Light now reduces the mana cost of your Consecration, Holy Wrath and Avenger's Shield by 15/30% (Old version : Whenever your parry or dodge an attack you have a 10% chance to reduce the mana cost of your next Consecration, Holy Wrath, or Avenger's Shield spell by 25%/50%)

Retribution

* Improved Blessing of Might now increases the attack power bonus of your Blessing of Might by 10/20/30/40/50% instead of 4/8/12/16/20%
* Vindication now has a chance to reduce the target's attributes by 10/20% for 15 seconds. (Old version : 5/10% reduction)
* Pursuit of Justice is now a 2 rank talents (was 3), reducing the change to be hit by spells by 1/2% and mounted movement speed by 9/15% (Old version : 1/2/3% hit and 5/10/15% mounted speed)
* Repentance now costs 395 mana instead of 9% of base mana.

They really want us using Holy Shock aggressively it seems.

EDIT: Incidentally even Blizzard's calculator is showing the static 435 mana for the final 3 ranks of Holy Shock. If this remains the same it would become one of the most efficient spells in the game (435 mana for a base 2500 heal is pretty massive). How ironic.

EDIT AGAIN: Improved Lay on Hands now gives a 25/50% bonus to armor, but only for 15 seconds. Meh, not as good now personally.

Some people's minds are like cement: all mixed up and permanently set.

 

◊ Cathela

Yeah, that seems like a fundamental problem for any raidwide heal: It's hard to balance both the best possible case and the more normal case. Basically any "fix" for this spell has to change the relationship between the small-group case and the large-group case.

The two ideas I can think of:

1) Cap the total healing, similarly to the AoE damage cap. Balance the mana cost, range, healing amount and coefficient so that the spell is useful for a 5-man, and then cap total healing at 10 times that amount. In other words, full healing on up to 10 people with the healing per person falling off as people over 10 are added to the area of effect. If you want to clump the whole raid up for RoS p3, you'll only get a small amount of healing per person (which is still useful) No beacon-stacking; each target only gets healing from the beacon that would be strongest on him/her. Limit each paladin to one active beacon at a time if necessary for balance.

2) In addition to the current effect, set a larger area (30 yard radius?) where targets only get half-strength healing from the beacon. So you'd have the current effect on closely-stacked people, but you could also use one beacon as a weaker wide-area raid heal.

Kind of an odd change for an ability that's basically a one-shot threat burst at the beginning of a fight. I wonder if they want us working it into a tanking rotation somehow? The cast time would seem to prevent that.

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

 

Divinefury

I never thought of that. With the conversion talent, SP will scale up with Kings. Keen.

I think they're trying to move Prot Paladins into a more dynamic rotation, with a single AS/Consecrate in the beginning, and Hammer of the Righteous working as a multi-target Sunder Armor. For more than 3 targets, the initial Conc will get their attention, and then you'll tab-target/HotR a couple times to hold them there.

 

flyingtoastr

With a .5 second cast time it could become a nice new "extra threat" nuke when HotR and SS are on cooldown (just cast it right after a swing from a boss). Honestly though if they want it that way the cast time should indeed be removed entirely.

It could also be a simple change so that you aren't dumping 20% of your total mana just to pull a mob.

Some people's minds are like cement: all mixed up and permanently set.

 

Argavaine

The numbers seem to be similar to Death Knight DPS Numbers from DK Thread (~3,5k dps).

 

Strom

I remember a post from Eyonix discussing his experiences with a protection paladin. He stated that one thing he would like to see change was AS having its cast time lowered so that it could be used more readily during combat as either an extra threat boost while tanking or hitting targets that you taunt back to you on their return.

So my guess would be they want us using it more often, specifically after a pull. Maybe they are keeping a slight cooldown for PvP reasons? IDK...

 

Fiola

I see it more as a 5 man buff. It's infuriating to wait for the Prot paladin to drink after each and every pull, and the 1.7k mana spell at the start of each fight does not help that. (on a 4k~ base mana pool, especially)

Experienced Prot paladins don't do that, but not everyone gets the joy of running with an efficient and effective tank.

 

Thorgred

I've actually been waiting on an AS mana reduction for a while... seriously, when starting a pull with full mana: cast AS, Consecrate, Judge/reseal + holyshield: that's half mana gone before mobs hit you. The mana cost on AS is prohibitively high for no reason.
Although the cast time reduction does seem to be along the general lines of making tanking more interactive.


@ Ret DPS numbers - these seem crazy ATM, especially compared to current gear standards. Yet so did ret DPS on the eve of BC, so much that we got nerfed heavily for it and have only just been buffed back to that level... so don't make too huge assumptions until we know what every other class has at 80.

@ Prot Weapons: Again, whilst slower weapons will boost HotR damage, that is the only ability: it already has high innate threat also, so it's not like it is completely useless with a fast weapon. However, if we pick a high Spellpower weapon (250+) that is an insane amount of threat, even though we will probably aim for more Strength on the rest of tanking gear.

@ Other new abilities: Are any of the tanking abilities off the global cooldown?
Currently we have:
Judgement / Reseal (macro'd so cast together), Consecrate, Holy Shield, Righteous Defense.
In WOTLK we will have: Consecrate, Holy Shield, Hammer of the Righteous, Shield of Righteousness, Reseal (every 30 sec), Righteous Defense, Avenger's Shield.
Are any of these going to be removed from the GCD? I'd like to see one of Holy Shield or Consecrate off it: that way they can be macro'd together

 

Strom

I think they should consider reducing the cooldown of AS to like 15 seconds if they wish to reduce its damage and make it more viable for threat rotations.

 

jere

Actually, I wonder if this is a mistake. Rank 3 was never that much mana. Rank 5 was however. I wonder if they looked at one talent tree, saw the rank 5 stats, and then looked at the other and saw rank 3 stats and forgot to check the ranks when comparing.

compare the highest rank listed in the talent tree:
Paladin - WotlkWiki - Wrath of the Lich King Information

to the Rank 5 spell at the wotlk wiki site:
Paladin - WotlkWiki - Wrath of the Lich King Information

 

rozetta

I know that prot has never really been the spec for questing, grinding or PvP since TBC and entering outlands, but I'd like to hear from anyone in beta who is prot specced about these parts of the game. The reason is that I'm, for the most part, roped into being the guild's main tank due to my attendance, play skill and knowledge of the game, and also since I take things seriously enough to gear properly, etc. I've however become completely cheesed off with the spec especially during the summer when there haven't been enough on to run content, and I've moved over to ret, which I'm loving.

I can't ever see myself going back to prot due to it's absolute gimpness in every other facet of the game outside of running instances and raids. If this will not change for the expansion, I'll most likely reroll a DK due to it's advertised ability to tank and DPS in the same spec. This is why I'm interested in hearing if anything has changed for the prot paladin in this regard.

 

levk

I was browsing stuff on wotlk.wowhead and noticed something funny -- after merging critical ratings, spellpower and Sheath of Light talent, the pre-T3 old world hybrid gear is actually looking strong. I compared the rank 13 set and T4 healing set, mind you I'm mostly interested in healing, and apart from the massive stamina difference and to lesser extent intellect, they're pretty close. With sheath of light spellpower is about the same, mp5 is exactly the same, and crit isn't that far back either (currently all the crit on rank 13 set is melee and spell power is all damage and healing).

It got me thinking, while obviously it's very centered around sheath of light talent, but could it be possible we're in for a return of the hybrid set? With sheath of light, you could get stronger spellpower figures by having strength which is a free stat otherwise.

 

Kahoona

With the stat consolidation, I just can't wait to be able to use haste potions for healing. It will be nice to be able to chug those then not in need of mana potions.

 

• frmorrison

That is the way the talent calcualtors have been saying since wowhead first got them up. Note with the talent LoH can be used every 16 minutes and doesn't cost anything (other than a GCD and using the cooldown).

Having a 2 minute armor buff with little penalty would lead to requiring multiple Paladins to keep the armor buff up.

 

Fordel

What's the cut-off limit on Arena abilities again? 15 minute reuse?


I love the new LoH as a Prot Paladin. A Real 'oh shit' button. Really, it's a universal Paladin 'oh shit' button now. Which is great, compared to live, where I forget it exists half the time due to cool down and mana drain penalty.

-Bird of the Storm

 

mdokane

Are we playing the same game? Prot is amazing for grinding, you just gather 15 mobs together and consecrate them down. Granted, single target damage is completely ineffective as prot, but any class with an aoe (or multi-target damaging ability such as sweeping strikes and blade flurry) is better off using aoe from a pure efficiency standpoint. However, many of them dont have healing and thus trade killing speed for downtime. Prot paladins, when geared and played correctly do not have this downside at all. Additionally as prot you can solo just about any quest designed for 3 players or less at the designed level. Personally, I leveled as holy/prot and it was far quicker than my amrs warrior or my feral druid.

 

Russta

"Are we playing the same game" pretty much sums this up perfectly. Seriously, where did you get this crazy idea from? Not only is AoE grinding as Protection Paladin the most efficient form of leveling I've ever experienced but it's also far and away the the most fun. I know I won't be changing spec for leveling in WotLK; I even picked up a Rising Tide to embrace the changes.

About the only shred of validity that can be given to this is that trying to AoE grind quest mobs the first week WotLK comes out could be a bit hairy with all the competition.

 

BFG

Maybe offtopic, but I find these claims (Prinsesa said something like that too) a bit inaccurate. I have access to prot pally account which I'm often asked to log onto and tank Felmyst skellies and sometimes other things in Sunwell. In Felmyst set (SD+avoidance) I have under 1700 stamina fully buffed and about +750 SD with oil. I wear T6 helm/gloves though, while your maintankadin has Illidan helm and Felmyst gloves - and for some reason warrior BT boots - but those are "warrior" gear not "pally" and WotLK pally (threat) gear shouldn't be balanced around such numbers.

What I mean, I like paladin changes, and strength on tank gear is really great, however a pally in WotLK tank gear will have less SD than a pally in TBC pally gear, not more. Someone from Blizz said they haven't done threat balance yet, and I hope they won't repeat TBC scaling - paladin aggro excellent in Kara and weak in Sunwell.

No, this is not a whine post. It's legal to be a pessimist.

 

tachycardia

I think a lot of people are missing the reason why 'Sacred Cleansing' is actually one of the most powerful PVP talents in a paladin's arsenal, if not the game. A lot of people are petitioning to make it what they think will be better, when in fact their ideas make it worse.

Sacred Cleansing

When ever you cleanse there's a 30% chance that the target gets 30% resistance to poison, magic, and disease.

If you don't really think about it, you just come to the conclusion that your target will get 30% fewer poison, disease, and magic debuffs. However, if you do think about, you notice the 30% resistance to magic. Magic isn't just debuffs. Magic is damage. Mages, warlocks, priests, balance druids, ele shamans, even paladins to some degree all rely on magic to do damage. If this talent works anything like it says it does, 30% resistance to magic reduces magic damage by 30%. What other spell in the game is spammable and reduces the damage taken by your target from all magic dmg classes by 30%?

Sure, it's only 30% chance. But chance is that you're using it frequently anyways, especially vs locks, mages, shadow priests. It also lasts a considerable amount of time- using cleanse every 5 secs will keep the debuff up ~75% of the time.

It's not as good vs. poisons because rogues apply poisons at a very fast rate in WLK. You will reduce the (small) dmg from them. However, the real value is that if your target is also being hit by a caster you consistently get 30% reduction from them even if the caster isn't applying that many debuffs.

Sure, it's dispellable. But so are almost all great buffs. You can lower the chance of this by 30%. Also, cleanse is cheap, and like I said you'll be using it all the time anyways. Amongst the other buffs your allies will have on them, mages, hunters and warriors, warlocks (all classes with dispels on CD's) will have a hard time dispelling this. Priests and shamans will be able to more easily, but with stoicism and your other buffs it will be fairly costly for them.

All in all, I think this talent will allow for a significant reduction in damage from all casters, unsurpassed by any other ability you can use consistently. Please don't petition to change this spell to a weaker form without really understanding its implications.

 

Palados

I also leveled as holy/prot. I could solo pretty much any group quest, though I had a good gear as a starter (had T3/AQ40). Very nice survivability + ability to heal > burst dps. Though if they don't nerf retri before live it might be better now .