WotLK talent trees/abilities discussion - Page 327

burghy · 10/06/08, 7:56 PM

Originally Posted by Vhex

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Then the fact of the matter is we still have no AE healing solution. What they should do is just make it work in reverse. Whenever you heal the beacon target, it heals a nearby damaged ally for X amount. Would work much more effectively now that CoH is a smart heal as well.

But that would be even more boring. Most of the time you'll have it on mt and heal the melees.
You already have coh, wild growth and somehow chain heal doing that, without the restriction to chose a target ahead of time.
Why this hunt for efficient solutions when the main complaint people have with the tree is that it's boring?

• frmorrison · 10/06/08, 8:07 PM

Originally Posted by Vhex

Easiest solution is to combine enlightened judgements and judgements of the pure into a single 5 -point talent that increases the range of your judgments by 4 per rank, 1% hit per rank, and restores 2 mana (tweak as needed) to paladin anytime someone in your raid procs JoW per rank. Less effective then jotw, but you don't have to give up a gcd every 8~20 seconds to make it worthless.

Make sacred cleansing give a 33/66/100% chance for your holy shock to proc cleanse. Add a new 3 point talent in place of enlightened judgements that increases the amount your spell power affects holy shock/holy light/flash of light by 6/12/25% or whatever the relevant coefficients are to make it trump sheath.

What they should do is just make it work in reverse. Whenever you heal the beacon target, it heals a nearby damaged ally for X amount. Would work much more effectively now that CoH is a smart heal as well.

Bam, suddenly deep holy is damn sexy. No longer do we have 10 filler talents (seriously wtf?) between IoL and Bacon. Bacon is now no longer situationally awesome but pretty much always awesome.

I like this suggestion, although that new Sacred Cleansing + those other buffs may be too much, remember GC doesn't want to make Holy Pallies the new Resto Druids in Arena.

Deris · 10/06/08, 8:10 PM

Originally Posted by frmorrison

I like this suggestion, although that new Sacred Cleansing + those other buffs may be too much, remember GC doesn't want to make Holy Pallies the new Resto Druids in Arena.

Remember we're a far, FAR cry in any serious conversation about 2v2/3v3 compared to Druids. When comparing new sacred cleansing (deep holy talent) to how amazing Abolish Poison (baseline) is, it doesn't seem all that great anymore.

Corronach · 10/06/08, 8:28 PM

Originally Posted by frmorrison

I like this suggestion, although that new Sacred Cleansing + those other buffs may be too much, remember GC doesn't want to make Holy Pallies the new Resto Druids in Arena.

We might be able to last with them, but unless we have an offensive ability deep holy won't be as good as resto druids.

SirSilk · 10/07/08, 12:21 AM

Furthermore, don't expect us to be ripping up every other talent tree in the game at this stage. We will continue to change talent effects before Lich King ships, but don't expect a lot more massive rejuggling of the trees themselves. The dual-spec feature will shine more light on talent design (more on that at Blizzcon) and we'll have a better idea of what we want to do with trees when that goes live. Some talent trees are nice and lean, and some probably have some points we could trim here and there.

GC posted this in the druid forums.

Somehow, the Holy tree fits the "nice and lean" (perhaps not the nice part) and the "points we could trim" categories. Seems like that shouldn't be possible. We have Spiritual Focus and Improved Concentration aura which need to be trimmed. For myself, I have trouble figuring out where to put points 19, 20, 25, 35 just so I can keep moving down the tree. Those four points as well as the two extra we have to put in Spiritual Focus seem like six wasted points. I'm not impressed with Aura Mastery, Imp. Lay on Hands, Imp. Concentration Aura or Imp. Wisdom, but I'm forced to put 4 points into them.

I truly hope that GC wasn't refering to the Holy tree... our tree looks too much like the one in TBC to be finished.

Rasczak · 10/07/08, 2:13 AM

Good news on the ret front at least: WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> Ok GC, I will make it simple.

Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler

Yes, Shadow should do the same dps as other specs and classes, provided you have similar gear and skill. Replenishment is considered a buff just like all the other buffs. Its one exception is that having more than one in the raid can stack to some extent.

They aren't considering replenishment to be a utility that a class needs to sacrifice dps to get. This means Shadow priests and survival hunters should be expecting some buffs to bring them up to real dps level instead of us getting massive nerfs to knock us down to their level. Although I think we will still be getting some nerfs since we can explode people and I have heard ret is above other dps in raids. Anyone have actual numbers relative to other classes in beta? Do they change much against demon undead where we can use exorcism and divine wrath? I've seen things all over the place but I don't know enough to say how ret feels compared to other classes.

Prinsesa · 10/07/08, 3:02 AM

We're probably seeing inflated numbers in Naxx parses specifically because of Holy Wrath, Exorcism and Glyph of Sense Undead, although it does call into question how much of that (if any) should be reined in.

Kigale · 10/07/08, 3:38 AM

I see beacon as the same thing as the hunter talent Readiness on live. Good talent, but not worth the investment to get to it. Beacon is fine, but the talents you need to pick up to unlock it are not. Buffing tiers 8-10 makes holy more attractive. Making an active talent that is fun makes it sexy.

allythepally · 10/07/08, 3:42 AM

Originally Posted by SirSilk

Furthermore, don't expect us to be ripping up every other talent tree in the game at this stage. We will continue to change talent effects before Lich King ships, but don't expect a lot more massive rejuggling of the trees themselves. The dual-spec feature will shine more light on talent design (more on that at Blizzcon) and we'll have a better idea of what we want to do with trees when that goes live. Some talent trees are nice and lean, and some probably have some points we could trim here and there.

To me, the second part is the best. If they're planning on implementing dual-speccing shortly in to wrath, most of the ret/holy issue goes away. Bacon better for dual-tank encounters but Sheathe better for single-tank fights? Who cares! Just flip your spec to whatever's best at the time. It would be kind of interesting to be a class balanced around the idea of dual-speccing, even if it's unintentional.

heidegger · 10/07/08, 4:11 AM

I just cleared all of Naxxrammas 10-man on my holy paladin and have some numbers to add to the discussion on beacon of light. First is Saphiron, this is a fight with lots of AoE healing. The other healers you see in recount are another holy paladin, and a circle of healing priest (respec'ed from shadow). The images are from recount; I didn't think to run a combat log.

For the Saphiron fight, 31% of my healing is from beacon of light. I had beacon of light on the main tank, and would raid heal when his life wasn't in immediate danger. If I knew some one was in range and down some health, I healed them instead.

This experience has really sold me on beacon of light. I have been using it to raid heal while keeping the main tank up to great effect. At one point the circle of healing priest ran out of mana, leaving just the two paladins to keep up the raid, which we were able to do. Furthermore, on this fight I was able to keep mana up for, as you can see on the screenshot, a 9 minute fight. My mana gained breakdown was: 34.2% divine please (38,462 mana), 26.7% illumination (29,981 mana), 25.8% spiritual attunement (28,987 mana), 13.3% replenishment (14,981 mana). I did not use a mana pot for that fight.

The second of of Kel'Thuzad, just for more data. The other paladin healer died about half-way through the fight.

I am really liking how holy is shaping up. Its fun, requires much more thought and awareness (who to heal with beacon up), and the mana issues are non-existent with good gear and the new divine plea. In fact, on any fight where I can melee the boss with regularity (Malygos 10 man), I simply cannot run out of mana. Each proc of seal of wisdom nets me 800 mana, and often another 400 from judgement of wisdom on the boss.

I should also add in some information on the gear level I was at. I was using all raid epics from Naxxrammas 10-man with the expectation of libram, which was an old level 70 epic. I had ~23k mana buffed, 20,074 unbuffed mana.

Palados · 10/07/08, 7:01 AM

That sounds quite crazy. All people who healed Naxx say that holy and beacon rocks and no healer comes even close (even in aoe fights), while people who just look at talents see that it should suck. I guess it's the change in the healing mechanics that makes us unusually good with such 'crap' talents. If they want people to heal reactively, class that relies only on reactive spells is more effective.

I guess we should just trash everything we know about healing in SWP and adapt to the WotLK, otherwise we can't judge our talents objectively.

Heidegger, how big is aoe damage? I guess CoH/CH/HoTs are not effective only when damage is big enough that you need a 4-5 GCD to top the people. Paladin could use same few GCD to top people healing tank at the same time.

Zaroua · 10/07/08, 7:37 AM

Originally Posted by Palados

That sounds quite crazy. All people who healed Naxx say that holy and beacon rocks and no healer comes even close (even in aoe fights), while people who just look at talents see that it should suck. I guess it's the change in the healing mechanics that makes us unusually good with such 'crap' talents. If they want people to heal reactively, class that relies only on reactive spells is more effective.

I guess we should just trash everything we know about healing in SWP and adapt to the WotLK, otherwise we can't judge our talents objectively.

Heidegger, how big is aoe damage? I guess CoH/CH/HoTs are not effective only when damage is big enough that you need a 4-5 GCD to top the people. Paladin could use same few GCD to top people healing tank at the same time.

In Naxx10 the only dangerous AoE is Sapphiron's aura (which is over the top, but that's not a discussion for here). All other AoEs are fairly lenient and while they all require to be healed, it's never too much of a big deal. In Naxx25 it's even easier, surprisingly enough.

The biggest change though is that Shadow Priests can use Vampiric Embrace (Imp. or not) without having to worry about pulling aggro off the tank. A Shadow Priest or two can not only do decent to good DPS, but they can also literally keep up with a normal healer on an AoE heavy fight.

To go back to Paladins: Beacon of Light is so good that it feels overpowered. Which ends up making Paladins very competitive healers in raids. Landing a 10k crit HL on someone, having the Beacon heal for another 4-5k and then another 5-6k from Holy Light glyphs makes up for a LOT of HPS potential. Of course it doesn't solve a lot of the problems Paladins have, but it's a really powerful tool, one that can at the very least be considered on par with Sheath in terms of utility. Sheath is also very, very strong especially when paired with Sacred Shield. But both specs are so very different and since healing is so hard to model accurately, it gets very hard to say which spec is best. At least I can say this with utmost confidence: Paladins can heal damn well in Wrath, it may not be enough in the end but right now it gets the job done.

And for the person who asked about tank stam: my DK has 1536 stam unbuffed. All my gems/enchants are geared towards Defense and my trinket/ranged slot don't give me any stamina. Buffed and without a flask, I sit at a little over 34.5k health.

Helot · 10/07/08, 7:38 AM

I'm curious: What healing spec was the other paladin?

For the Saph fight, he was almost 1.4k HPS less effective healing, which seems like a huge gap. Either your way out-gearing him, or you have radically different specs/healing styles.

For the Kel fight, it's pretty nice to see that BOL spec can do extremely well. Clearly it's an under-estimated talent, as shown by your logs.

It's nice to see some tangible data to back up claims that Beacon is effective.

Zed · 10/07/08, 7:42 AM

Originally Posted by Palados

That sounds quite crazy. All people who healed Naxx say that holy and beacon rocks and no healer comes even close (even in aoe fights), while people who just look at talents see that it should suck. I guess it's the change in the healing mechanics that makes us unusually good with such 'crap' talents. If they want people to heal reactively, class that relies only on reactive spells is more effective.

I guess the "sucks" comments were in reference to 25-man raiding and the "rocks" comments came from 10-man experiences. There were also concerns not about the position of Paladins on the healing meters but that their lack of healing versatility makes them dependable on other healer types (i.e. you cannot run 10man instances with 2 Holy Paladins) while other classes may not have such constraints and this goes against Blizzards new design theme of "bring whoever you want as long as they can push their buttons properly".
Naxx is nothing like SWP in terms of raid damage that is true, who knows what future encounters will be like, so it is probably better to fix the class when there is a major pass (if those concerns are valid).

bellator · 10/07/08, 7:59 AM

The problem with beacon is it's variability in power. In some occassions it is great, in others it is worthless. It makes it impossible to balance.

If you balance it around fights where it is usefull then paladins become severly underpowered on fights where it's worthless. If it's balanced around fights where it's of little use then paladins will become overpowered in fights where it's useful.

Personally for a top tier abilitiy I would much prefer something that had use accross the board not something that was so bi-polar.