Milou

Of course you also know that imp rf only gives you damage reduction now, and not increased threat which is baseline. So murloc tanks, or skeleton tanking on Felmyst by a holy paladin doesn't really require this (it's nice but not needed).

Anyways it wasn't meant to be a flame, I just wanted to point out that it's not a utility buff so the argument that it's not useful if another paladin has it is not entirely true. Also, reducing incoming damage in general has utility in Sunwell even when not tanking with all the aoe damage going around.

 

Jiibus

Correct me if I'm missing something, but haven't they reduced the mana cost (down 105 on rank 1) and increased the range on BoL from 10 to 40? I'm basing this on Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft. If so then wouldn't most of the complaints cease to have validity?

 

◊ Cathela

That's the casting range. The area-of-effect range is still 10 yards. The mana cost is down 20% or so, which is certainly an improvement, but not nearly a large enough one to address my concerns (which I will not go into detail about here; if you're really curious feel free to read all the ranting I did in the first 10 pages of this thread. I'm simply saying that there's no way BoL can be characterized as a must-have raid talent until people actually start raiding with it.)

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

 

flyingtoastr

Numbers.

Holy Light XIII

Cost: 1880 mana
Base Heal: 4888 - 5444 (5166 avg)
Coefficient 1.77

With 1500 spell power you're looking at the following (assuming 3/3 Healing Light).

Holy Light

Normal Heal: 8759
Crit Heal: 13139

So even assuming zero overheal (hahaha) you're looking at a HoT of 1577 every 3 seconds with Holy Light.

In a realistic situation if you tank took 13k damage spike without someone else doing some healing in the time it took you to wind up a Holy Light you just wiped. But for now we'll let you have your fun.

Now compare this to a single Resto druid rolling a single 3 stack of Lifebloom on the tank. I don't know the new coefficient for LB, but if it simply doubles (conservative estimate given that FoL more than doubled, but regardless) you'll be looking at (with only 1500 spell power) a rolling 3 stack of at least (depending on spirit from ToL aura) 1154 per second. Not only is it ticing for nearly triple that of your ultra crit HoT but 3 lifeblooms costs only 1032 mana, nearly 50% of the cost of that Holy Light you dropped to get the HoT.

So, I want you to convince me that Sheath HoT is better than just letting a Druid run with his Lifebloom business.

Go.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

• frmorrison

BoL still has a 10 yard range (on the Beacon, you could always cast it 40 yards away), but the mana cost was reduced to 1900 mana on this build (from around 2300).

It still needs tuning by either reducing the cost and/or increasing the range of the Beacon.

 

• Chicken

I've heard a few people who were in the Alpha say as well that most post-70 mana costs were said to still be in need of tweaking; I assume they picked that up from developer posts made back during the alpha (See Enhancement WotLK Talents and spells discussion. for example).

Of course no tweaking has really been done on them yet since the beta's release, but it's something to keep in mind when considering the mana costs.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

bellator

You treated Sheath HoT as a 15 sec, not a 12 Sec HoT when calculating the heal per tick, but thats beside the point.

Did anyone here say Sheath HoT was better than Lifebloom? No. So who cares if Lifebloom is better, they can coexist. Sheath HoT + Lifebloom is better than Lifebloom on it's own.

Just because another class has a better HoT then ours doesn't in anyway discredit a SheatBot spec in comparison to a BoL without some astronomical giant leap.

 

Darion

You are missing the entire drift of my question. My question wasn't whether you should stack a raid full of pally sheathbots. It wasn't whether improved devotion, kings, divine shield, etc were important. It was whether the heal output of a paladin who was 48/0/23 was better than a 51/?/?. I understand diversity. You should have a prot pally that has kings, most likely you will have a BoL pally as well. So for theory craft - is the SoL HoT + SoL spell power increase worth not getting BoL and 4% more haste considering you can keep your judgements up?

I think I showed something reasonable saying 12% heal output increase. Other folks have argued that is too low because I assumed a very low AP. Using their numbers the 12% goes to something like 18% heal increase. Is BoL and 4% more spell haste better than 12-18% more healing output? I actually don't know - frankly - none of us know yet.

 

flyingtoastr

But you don't seem to understand.

If you want a spot as a sheathbot in a raid you will have to justify this exact question. "Why is dropping all this utility in the prot and holy trees worth it when a resto druid dropping nothing can do it better? It is what ret had to struggle with for the longest time as well.

I'm sure Sheath will be nice in 5 mans and maybe 10 mans. But in 25-mans you are gimping yourself so badly for a gain of near zero.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Khaelarys

They had no problem tweaking the mana cost of Divine Storm.

 

◊ Cathela

Why? There's no choice that has to be made between the two.

Sure, Lifebloom is better. Nobody in this thread has even remotely claimed otherwise. But casting Lifebloom is part of a druid's main healing activity; maintaining a Lifebloom stack costs a GCD every ~6 seconds, and so of course it should be much better. Comparing Lifebloom to the Sheath HoT is like comparing Holy Light to an Earthshield proc. Sure, one is much stronger than the other, but if you're even making that comparison you're missing the point.

The question is: if you're going to be tank-healing, and spamming heals on the tank anyway, is the free extra healing from Sheath, plus the extra healing from the AP->SD conversion, worth losing 3 talent points at the deep end of Holy? There's no proof of that yet one way or the other.

Many people have responded to this exact claim about "all this utility in the prot and holy trees".

Honestly, you seem to be hung up on this assumption that there will always be a Ret paladin present in a 25-man raid. Which may very well be true for the raids you run in, being a Ret paladin yourself and all, but you can't generalize your experience to all 25-man raids.

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

 

Syrion

Saying that the HOT is useless because druids can do much better with lifebloom is like telling a priest don't put renew up because there are lifeblooms and they can do it better.

1. As someone pointed out before, you are assuming any raid leader is stupid enough to bring a sheath bot before having imp devo and kings covered by another pally.

2. You are also assuming that a lot of raid encounters will be built around making BOL shine and there wont be ones with incredible tank damage. With a high crit rate you could see a healing version of rolling ignites that has tremendous potential depending on how the boss fight is structured. Same can be said for BOL.

3. You are again assuming that pallys will not be the MT healbots they are today. That somehow a pally throwing heals to his raid group instead of a coh priest, a chain heal shaman, or a flourish druid will be the norm.

Overall it depends on the fight. And until we see what the raiding encounters are like, saying sheathbot is a far inferior spec than BOL is short sighted and pure speculation.

 

bellator

If thats the case, then no holy palas will get raid spots. They'll just take a Prot and Ret paladin for the utility and use other classes who can better perform HoT/Raid healing duties

I think it's too early to be making sweeping statements when we have no idea of end game wrath, and have no clue exactly how many palas will be taken to 25-mans, as 3 is a viable amount

 

• frmorrison

As of the latest build, judgement uses a GCD. While Holy gets 10% haste for 30 seconds, one has to use a GCD to get the haste, so it has a cost with it.

Without seeing the new encounters and your group makeup, it is hard to judge what is best.

There is talk of allowing everyone the ability to swap between two builds, so you can spec BoL/Prot and Sheathbot and swap to whichever spec will work better in that instance.

 

flyingtoastr

But there is. In a 25-man you can expect 2.5 of each class, or roughly 1 pally of each spec. That means our only Holy pally is going to either be BoL or Sheathbot. You have to justify the loss of the Prot and Holy utility then to pick up Sheath, which is going to be very difficult given just how "jumpy" the Sheath HoT is compared to it's chief opponent, Lifebloom.

Maybe I'm just old school, but when you have a spec that is bringing that much extra utility (a JoW that tics >100 mana harder than the other pally specs alone is worth a raid spot) it just screams "TAKE ME!". But sure, maybe you have a raid leader who still thinks Enhancement Shamans are worthless too, and then you can go ahead and just run around HoTting people to your heart's content.

E: spelling

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

kalbear

Exactly. Having a strong tank healer have another hot that they don't even have to manage themselves is worth it in my mind. To me, this is very similar to the divide between IDS and CoH priests that exist now. For some fights, a sheathbot is going to be more beneficial; think of fights like Morogrim where healers get tombed often and the tank takes lots of unpredictable spike damage, or fights like Azgalor where silences occur often. Or heck, on Archimonde where the healers may not actually be in range all the time. More HoTs are great.

Then we may have fights where we have lots of raid damage. Clearly T6 and sunwell favor that, so right now BoL is probably better. But to say that BoL is always going to be the better case?

Sheath isn't going to be as good as lifebloom. It may not be as good as renew. But it's much better for tank healing than BoL is.

 

• Avitus

Have to say it's getting really tiresome to read BoL vs Sheathbot at this point, it's just repeating the same points now.

Toaster, I think the main issue with your rhetoric is that you're reducing "sheathbot" spec to being useless since hots are going to be wasted in MT spam situations. Fine that's true, but what about 10 man raids or fights with a lot of heavy random attacks on single targets (think Illidari Council). Crit healing someone to 70% HP and then going to the next target as you know your HoT will heal your previous target up to full is a big buff.

For example a fight where you'd have to keep up 2-3 targets taking high damage from a source that keeps switching between them, Sheathbot would be the perfect spec. A large HL crit and you know you can focus on the other target for a while.

Also remember the HoT from Sheath of Light is completely free, you can keep the rotation in the illustrated example up for a long time.

If you want to do this with BoL you will be killing yourself mana wise and achieving a worse result. (Obviously there's fights where BoL is going to shine and others where it will be rendered a waste vs chain heal spam.)

Additionally going the Sheathbot route means you'll gain 5% crit and a considerable amount of +healing from buffed AP. There's a lot of synergy to holy from talents by going into Ret. Buffs in the prot tree can be picked up by another paladin (of any of the 3 specs actually).



Anyway, different fights and more importantly different types of incoming damage in encounters will promote different specs, there is no all encompassing always true answer, so lets please stop comparing apples and oranges, it's an exercise in futility.

 

levk

If divine guardian is as big as you make it out to be, you should be dropping BoL for sacred duty anyway. I don't see it as all that big. Don't get me wrong, it's very nice and all, but it's only 12 seconds per 5 minutes. It's a tool of sorts, but it's definitely no Sheath of Light. Now imp devo on the other hand looks to have much greater potential as 25 man talent; but again, healing isn't damage, a talent that increases raid damage by 3% will see an exactly 3% return on that talent, with healing you have your healers accustomed to the amount of healing their certain ranks do and increasing them by 3% isn't going to change much. +3% healing raidwide talent will never see a 3% raidwide return unless it's exactly those 3% in throughput that you're missing, and even in that case, sheath of light might very well provide that 3% raidwide healing throughput by giving you 500 spellpower and (what you deem is a worthless) HoT.

I don't know I'm not sold on imp devo, sure it's nice, but I won't forsake sheath of light for it. Sheath of light a pretty decent tool that is always available to you and comes with a very strong passive effect. Trade offs are two very situational tools in BoL and DG and a passive of questionable value. A sheath of light build is also perfect for picking up both imp wisdom and imp might. You won't see that much use of benediction.

 

• frmorrison

Divine Shield and Divine Protection (50% less damage taken) work with Divine Guardian and Sacred Duty and do not share a cooldown. Sacred duty makes the cooldown on each 4 minutes, but I don't think another 7 points in Protection is worth it.

You have to wait 3 minutes before using the other Shield though, so it does limit "chaining" the damage redirection.

 

bellator

To sidetrack away from this discussion.

I managed to get onto beta (client has been buggered for hours), and I tested out the theory I posted on Sheath here:-

WotLK talent trees/abilities discussion

The tests i've just done have proved:-

Sheath HoT Tick = (60% Crit heal / 4) + Current HoT Tick * Remaining Ticks of Current Hot / 4

to be correct, so:-

a) there is 0 wasted HoT healing when it gets refreshed
b) It does stack to a degree (explained more in the linked post)

 

Eir

I don't see why any raid leader would demand that all their Holy Paladins spec into an unproven, situational talent. At the beginning of TBC we had Priests without CoH and a Dreamstate Druid or two. Once Lifebloom got buffed and fights were tailor made for CoH, those people picked up those talents and used them effectively. If BoL proves to be a vital tool for raids, then I'm sure the Paladins who went into Ret will respec to pick it up. Debating who will and who won't get raid slots at this point in the beta seems just a tad bit premature...

 

Kigale

Ideally for paladins, yes. But not all classes will have each spec represented. There are several reasons why a raid might choose to run with only 2 paladins, maybe because there are only 2 good paladins on the server, or maybe because the 4 best players on the server happen to be shaman and deserve raid spots, plus any other issue that can arise closing the raid door after the 2nd paladin zoned in. Now, which 2 specs do you choose? This would be up for debate, but let's say 1 will be holy (since this is a sheath vs BoL debate) this leaves the last one as Ret or Prot. My opinion would be that the holy spec will be determined by the other spec. If it's prot than the holy should be sheath, if ret than he/she needs the prot utility. So is Sheath the BEST holy spec? Only time will tell. Are there circumstances that would dictate a paladin to be sheath spec, I'd say so.

I'm just glad there will be a choice for healing paladins, I'm getting bored with my cookie cutter specs.

 

GSH

Didn't Cathela solve this way back when?

Slot 1: Sheathbot or Retribution
Slot 2: BoL or Protection

Seems to be the best of both worlds.

 

BFG

With Judgement being on GCD now, sheathbot will get 6% haste for spending a GCD every 30 seconds. Is it still worth it? Or maybe you could drop all new Holy talents and go deeper into Ret for JotW:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...00000000000000

You'll have to stand at 10 yd to judge, but you will have an option to regen some mana when you have a GCD free from healing.

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

 

Kigale

I can see the gap between good and great healing paladins widening in the WotLK. Currently, Priests time cooldowns with clearcast procs in order to maximize OO5SR regen. Paladins will have a similar mechanic to play with. Juggling Crit Holy Shocks with instant cast HLs and judging to maximize melee swings for JoW regen. Could be very fun.