WotLK talent trees/abilities discussion - Page 43

Feanor73 · 07/30/08, 6:45 AM

Originally Posted by Danath

So you wanted Hammer of Wrath to be usable at free will? Are you serious?It was usable below 20% target health, now it is usable under 35%, has 80%+ chance to crit and does not reset swing timer. AND scales better. Come on, be realistic! Of course talents could use some changes. Notably, Righteous Vengeance could be changed to work exactly like Impale, on every special skill or ability. Since our damage majorly comes from skills or spells, this would be a fair tradeoff.

AoW is good, maybe it could be improved to have 3/6/9% self haste and breaking also Fear effects with HoF.

Have I ever said that ?

I just was putting Hammer of Wrath in perspective listing points in the quoted post : we all agree it is much better than now and essentially fine.

If you didn't notice it, the focus of my post was about judgement of the wise and our end of tree talents

And for your information, our damage don't come majorly from skills or spells, auto-attack has always been around 50% of our damage.

Edited

Danath · 07/30/08, 6:52 AM

Originally Posted by Feanor73

Have I ever said that ?

I just was putting Hammer of Wrath in perspective listing points in the quoted post : we all agree it is much better than now and essentially fine.

If you didn't notice it, the focus of my post was about judgement of the wise and our end of tree talents

And for your information, our damage don't come majorly from skills or spells, auto-attack has always been around 50% of our damage.

Edited

Yes, maybe before Divine Storm and before the majorly increased damage of Judgements. Now, spells/skills damage is way more than 50%.

bellator · 07/30/08, 6:56 AM

Originally Posted by bathoz

Um, sorry to back track to sheathbots, but has anyone confirmed whether it functions like a ignite in the way it refreshes the tick counter. By which I mean, does every crit mean you are now waiting another 3 seconds for the HoT tick? And with a high enough crit rate of FoL, for instance (50%), does that mean you could be waiting forever (though getting a monstrous Sheath tick at the end of it)?

Yes, it refreshes the counter and means if you can constantly crit it will build up into an uber HoT. Unrealistic of course, but starting off with a divine favor HL and spam FoL/HS for crits at start could be an interesting way to start it off.

I have been doing some more messing about with Sheath and putting some formulas together:-

Sustained HPS Theory

Now, a 5k effective heal crit only gives 750/3 or 250hps. Not great, however consistent heals provide a far more powerful rolling HoT.

Lets Define...

Time = The consistent time between your crits
Heal = The effective heal of these consistent crits
HoT Tick Time = Average Time between HoTs landing (since refreshing the sheath delays the next Hot Tick. When:-

When Time = 3-6, HoT Tick Time = 4.5
When Time = 6-9, HoT Tick Time = 3.75
When Time = 9-12, Hot Tick Time = 3.5

Calculations

For a single Sheath Hot that is never refreshed (1 crit every 12+ seconds), the Sheath HoT will be:-

HoT Tick = 15% Heal
Hps = 5% Heal

However......

When Time is between 3-6 seconds (ie only 1 sheath has ticked), the Sheath HoT will rapidly build up to:-

HoT Tick = 60% Heal
Hps = 13.3% Heal

When Time is between 6-9 seconds (ie only 2 sheath has ticked), the Sheath HoT will rapidly build up to:-

HoT Tick = 30% Heal
Hps = 8% Heal

When Time is between 9-12 seconds (ie only 3 sheath has ticked), the Sheath HoT will rapidly build up to:-

HoT Tick = 20% Heal
Hps = 5.7% Heal

What Does this all mean

Whilst a single Sheath HoT on it's own is fairly weak, with a reasonable amount of crit and a little haste, I believe it is highly likely that a paladin will be able to get 5k effective crit heals off every 6 seconds. I personally think this is a very modest estimate. Though, it may be a little less, it may be a little more (feel free to change these values to what you feel realistic). Criting every 6 seconds for 5k effective means:-

HoT ticks every 4.5 seconds for 3000 (666hps)

Now of course when compared to lifebloom this isnt as powerful which could be around 1000hps. However, something like lifebloom is a seperate spell to the druids big heals which uses their global cooldown. This HoT is a free side effect to using our primary heals.

Personally I think having a free HoT that realistically can do 66% of Lifebloom's hps added to our primary heals from just some talent points, whilst also giving 500+SP (+830 HL heals, +500FoL heals), is extremely powerful

Argavaine · 07/30/08, 7:01 AM

I think it would be hardly possible to get that high hot ticks because you dont increase your hot for a overheal ammount of your crits.

bellator · 07/30/08, 7:05 AM

Originally Posted by Argavaine

I think it would be hardly possible to get that high hot ticks because you dont increase your hot for a overheal ammount of your crits.

But those HoT ticks are only based on 5k effective crits. Would you say in end-game instances, your crit heals are consistently doing less than 5k effective healing? If so what would you say your crit heals are consistently effectively healing for?

Hylo · 07/30/08, 7:25 AM

Now that our seal duration is 2 mins and judgement not consuming the seal we can (and must, due to the judgement gcd changes) say byebye to our beloved judgement-reseal -macros. This should also take away the judge/reseal-at-what-point-of-swing -factor. The more skilled paladins used to time their judge/reseals so that seal procs were not interfered by it (e.g. don't judge/reseal SoC at the end of the swing).

Now, while this was a way to differentiate "good retris" and "average retris" it also was very unintuitive - much the same way as hunter steady shots delaying auto shot etc. I suspect we'll see a bit less "bad" retri paladins in WotLK because you can be a lot more sloppy with resealing.

Has anyone tried seal twisting in beta? I would love to hear if its still possible/viable and if it still provides small edge over "straight" seals.

[e] Come to think of it, now that our judgements are much more powerful than before and Divine Storm eating up an additional gcd, we'll most likely are looking at a "priority queue" something like: CS > DS > Judge > Twist > Exo/Consecration. Not so many possible spots for twisting.

Argavaine · 07/30/08, 7:27 AM

Originally Posted by bellator

But those HoT ticks are only based on 5k effective crits. Would you say in end-game instances, your crit heals are consistently doing less than 5k effective healing? If so what would you say your crit heals are consistently effectively healing for?

It is difficult to say. I think it will be encounter dependant. If you have an encounter with hard spikes and your mt has all hots on him and everybody is spamhealing than your hots would probably decay otherwise if your mt only has a few mt healers on him the hot might stack. Maybe my formulation *hardly possible* was to hard, the thing I would like to say is that SoL would be more situational than it seems to be.

Nutron · 07/30/08, 7:30 AM

Originally Posted by Hylo

Has anyone tried seal twisting in beta? I would love to hear if its still possible/viable and if it still provides small edge over "straight" seals.

What I'm curious about in the same school of thought is if it's possible to effectively keep refreshing a full SoV stack while doing a normal rotation, and if doing so would be a dps increase over an optimal non-SoV rotation. Anyone on beta tried it yet?

bellator · 07/30/08, 7:46 AM

Originally Posted by Argavaine

It is difficult to say. I think it will be encounter dependant. If you have an encounter with hard spikes and your mt has all hots on him and everybody is spamhealing than your hots would probably decay otherwise if your mt only has a few mt healers on him the hot might stack. Maybe my formulation *hardly possible* was to hard, the thing I would like to say is that SoL would be more situational than it seems to be.

I would disagree a little in terms of situational. Looking at SWP MT healing, you have 1-2 healers on Kalegos MT, 2 healers per tank on twins, 1 healer per tank on Muru and 1 healer on tank on KJ. Agreed fights like Brut has many healers spamming same tank, but I would agrue that usefulness on 4/6 fights is far from situational.

Argavaine · 07/30/08, 8:00 AM

Originally Posted by bellator

I would disagree a little in terms of situational. Looking at SWP MT healing, you have 1-2 healers on Kalegos MT, 2 healers per tank on twins, 1 healer per tank on Muru and 1 healer on tank on KJ. Agreed fights like Brut has many healers spamming same tank, but I would agrue that usefulness on 4/6 fights is far from situational.

Ok we have to wait for WotLK encounter, but the other problem is that I think that spaming 1880 mana HL would not be a real option at level 80. I expect encounter with less healing (maybe this is where SoL will shine) because of high mana cost. SoL will not stack that high but you have more time after HL crit to heal with flashs.

rozetta · 07/30/08, 9:00 AM

Don't you guys find it a little off-putting that your "ideal" raid setup has the holy paladin going for Imp. Devo instead of the prot paladin? In a situation where you ran 3 paladins, you should really want 3 auras, but with the bloat in prot, and the fact that holy might anyway pick it up if they're going deep enough for Divine Guardian, everything seems sorely misplaced.

xi0nic · 07/30/08, 9:17 AM

Originally Posted by Altirias

...So what's the point then to use one talent point for this seal ? A filler in levelling while waiting for blood or martyr to be trainable ? Or is it becoming on pvp only seal that offers a random burst, and a *4 crit when judging stunned targets ?
...
So maybe I'm missing something, but I'm definitely considering a Ret pve build without SoC.
...

Welcome to BE Paladin specs. Seal of Command was terrible for PvE because of the random nature of the proc, and the fact that it scaled with Spell Damage. Seal of Martyr/Blood deals damage on every hit, and scales with melee stats, making it better 100% of the time for a melee DPS. SoComm never did make sense, and even more so now with the donation of Seal of Martyr to Alliance Paladins.

The seal needs to be changed or removed.

Hylo · 07/30/08, 9:45 AM

Originally Posted by rozetta

Don't you guys find it a little off-putting that your "ideal" raid setup has the holy paladin going for Imp. Devo instead of the prot paladin? In a situation where you ran 3 paladins, you should really want 3 auras, but with the bloat in prot, and the fact that holy might anyway pick it up if they're going deep enough for Divine Guardian, everything seems sorely misplaced.

As the trees stand now I can't see holys putting ANY points to protection really.

Imp. devotion is in good spot to be picked up as prot, think about this spec. If you are running without prot pala you most likely have ret pala to buff Kings. With changed AoW it's actually easy to get kings as retri, like in this build.

Cathela · 07/30/08, 10:16 AM

Originally Posted by Avitus

Add to that [Sacred Cleansing], it seems facing holy paladins will be a new experience in resisted abilities. Not bad, Cleanse has been looking pretty outdated for a long time.

I agree, and I think the progressive weakening of Cleanse over the last few years is something that's gone largely unremarked on. Back in vanilla WoW, Cleanse was arguably the defining ability for paladins in group PvP. Over the years other classes have gotten progressively better countermeasures to cleanse (resistances, ability to stack multiple debuffs quickly, "bonus" debuffs that come free with the main debuff, and of course UA). And given that Cleanse was originally really really powerful, that's probably not a bad thing. But it's very nice to see Cleanse finally getting to take a step forward in the arms race.

Originally Posted by Palados

Hm, I don't see either why sheath is 'that' good. You could always have 5% extra crit and BoL. In this case you should choose between:

1. 10% haste and BoL
2. AP -> SP conversion and HoT

Even if you manage to get 4% haste in sheath build it is negated by the fact that you should be in melee range to judge it. And if you could be in melee range it usually means there is no mechanics that prevents raid to stack on boss and BoL just rocks. If there is a lot of aoe and you should spread out, then you couldn't use that 4% haste on regular basis. So basically it is a choise between 10% haste (both melee and spellhaste) AND BoL vs AP->SP and HoT. I bet that 10% haste alone for high lvl of gear will overweight extra SP and HoT.

Something that kind of got overlooked in the whole BoL-vs-Sheath debate is that it's not just a choice between two fixed builds. There's a whole continuum of viable Holy/Ret builds that bring different things to the table. You can go 51/0/20 to keep Beacon (as in this quote) and just pick up the low-hanging fruit in Ret (HotC, Imp BoM and Sanct.Ret primarily), or 47/0/24 to drop Beacon for Sanct. Ret and Sheath, or 43/0/28 for JotW to add some group mana-regen, or hell maybe even 40/0/31 if you want to drop DI for Repentance (maybe for heroics or something).

Of course, two months into WotLK there may be a cookie-cutter spec that everyone agrees on, but right now it looks like there's a lot of build freedom there to customize for different needs and situations and still maintain some healing viability.

Originally Posted by Argavaine

I dont understand why people want SoR to be nerfed because it is better than SoB/SoM. Only because the alliance have waited so long for this seal does not mean that they have to use it.
Nevertheless SoB/SoM scales better with crit and has a self damage part so it will probably become an endgame seal. Its ok if SoR becomes a better grinding Seal and SoC a better pvp stun-> burst Seal.

I think the problem is that with the current scaling it looks like there's a danger of SoR just becoming so much more powerful than SoB/SoC for any situation and/or build.

Right now, it's easy for a Ret paladin entering Sunwell to have 3000AP fully buffed, meaning that he's getting over 200 white dps from attack power; the highest-dps weapon at that point (Cataclysm's Edge) is only 138 white dps. At some point AP-scaling is simply going to be the dominant factor for Seal choice.

I'll try to chug out some numbers in a bit if nobody beats me to it.

Originally Posted by Altirias

I'm not exactly saying that SoR should be nerfed. I understand that the scaling with attack power is essentiel for tankidins threat scaling now that they seem to require more strength on their equipment.

Eh. Threat can always be fixed by twiddling with threat multipliers on various abilities or by adjusting the RF coefficient. I think the best plan is for the devs to just get the damage correct first, and then twiddle with threat-specific numbers to get the threat right.

Originally Posted by rozetta

Don't you guys find it a little off-putting that your "ideal" raid setup has the holy paladin going for Imp. Devo instead of the prot paladin? In a situation where you ran 3 paladins, you should really want 3 auras, but with the bloat in prot, and the fact that holy might anyway pick it up if they're going deep enough for Divine Guardian, everything seems sorely misplaced.

I don't think that's terribly surprising. Holy is noticeably slimmer than Prot or Ret, and I think it's a deliberate design so that a healadin can pick up either the utility in shallow Prot or the utility in shallow Ret, so it's no surprise that there are talents in those areas that work naturally for a Holy Paladin.

And as I've said before, it's not a huge imposition for a Prot paladin to pick up Imp. Devo. You lose 3 points that you could be putting in 1-h spec or Reckoning, and yeah, that's annoying but it's far from being a show-stopper. If you have a holy/prot paladin along you can get 3%, if you don't you can't. That seems reasonable to me.

EDIT because I wanted to comment on this:

Originally Posted by GSH

Protection is a lot of fun for solo questing. It's not as fast as Ret, but it's pretty good. I used Judgement, Hammer of the Righteous and Holy Shield, and easily went through 1-3 mobs at a time. I didn't feel it was worth using Consecrate for so few mobs. Prot is a little mana-hungry, but I went JoL + SoW, and still killed fairly fast while keeping my health and mana pretty high.

The caveat to this is that I did not use Prot gear. I used my Ret gear + a green 1H hammer from one of the first WotLK quests (~84 dps) + an Illidari Runeshield. When I tried with my epic Prot tanking gear it just felt terrible. I think you really need a decent amount of strength to make the new Protection work. I'd probably get the new Cobalt blacksmithing gear as soon as possible, and replace all my precious epics.

I think I'm probably going to level as Protection in WotLK. It's solid for soloing, and I can tank instances on the way up.

This sounds a lot like Prot warrior soloing, where you basically stack str/AP and block value (for Shield Slam) and just smack through enemies. (And strangely, I actually like soloing on my warrior alt better as prot than as arms/fury.)

Sounds like the pro-active damage from HotR makes things a lot smoother, and I can only imagine it gets even better once you get ShR.

flyingtoastr · 07/30/08, 10:26 AM

Originally Posted by rozetta

Don't you guys find it a little off-putting that your "ideal" raid setup has the holy paladin going for Imp. Devo instead of the prot paladin? In a situation where you ran 3 paladins, you should really want 3 auras, but with the bloat in prot, and the fact that holy might anyway pick it up if they're going deep enough for Divine Guardian, everything seems sorely misplaced.

I don't find it "off-putting" at all. Prot has better places to put points, Holy Pally's positioning gives it a much better chance to hit as many people as possible and with the Shadow Priest knockback resistance talent there isn't any real need for an Improved conc anymore.

Having a Ret use Retribution, Holy use Devo and Pro using Resist/Conc as needed makes perfect sense to me.

Hylo · 07/30/08, 10:36 AM

Originally Posted by flyingtoastr

Having a Ret use Retribution, Holy use Devo and Pro using Resist/Conc as needed makes perfect sense to me.

You still assume Holy is going to spec deep prot (18pt!) for imp. Devotion. There just isn't enough incentive to do so - there are much better talents in ret for holy to pick up. Given that both prot and retri can now take Kings rather easily I see no reason for holys to keep the "must have Kings" -mentality. For example Cathelas holy builds all have 0 points in prot, and for a reason:

Originally Posted by Cathela

You can go 51/0/20 to keep Beacon (as in this quote) and just pick up the low-hanging fruit in Ret (HotC, Imp BoM and Sanct.Ret primarily), or 47/0/24 to drop Beacon for Sanct. Ret and Sheath, or 43/0/28 for JotW to add some group mana-regen, or hell maybe even 40/0/31 if you want to drop DI for Repentance (maybe for heroics or something).

Avitus · 07/30/08, 10:40 AM

Here's an interesting tidbit from a blue post about the Death Knight ability [Heart Strike]:

You have reduced what "100%" means for the enemy, not knocked it from 100% to 90%. But it is still a lot of damage.

This is going to be a pretty scary ability in PvP and it's very useful in PvE once you start fighting challenging enemies, like bosses.

Emphasis mine.

Is this blizzard rep actually saying [Heart Strike] and by almost certain extension (I assume) our [Vindication] will work on bosses? New info or just confused blizzard rep?

Cathela · 07/30/08, 10:41 AM

Originally Posted by Hylo

For example Cathelas holy builds all have 0 points in prot, and for a reason:

I really don't want to re-open the debate about whether holy/prot or holy/ret is "better"; my view is that it depends on who else is available in your raid. I'm just pointing out there that if you want to go Holy/Ret there's a whole slew of options that bring different utilities and trade-offs.

Originally Posted by Avitus

New info or just confused blizzard rep?

As always with blue posts, hope for the former but expect the latter.

Palados · 07/30/08, 10:41 AM

At the end it will depend on how many paladins you use in your raids. And how close you are to GM to persuade him that that other pala should spec for BoK/ImpDevo aura and you should spec for more personal efficiency.

flyingtoastr · 07/30/08, 10:50 AM

Originally Posted by Hylo

You still assume Holy is going to spec deep prot (18pt!) for imp. Devotion. There just isn't enough incentive to do so - there are much better talents in ret for holy to pick up. Given that both prot and retri can now take Kings rather easily I see no reason for holys to keep the "must have Kings" -mentality. For example Cathelas holy builds all have 0 points in prot, and for a reason:

Um.. Duh? That was the entire point of my post.

We've been going over this for 2 days now and I'm frankly sick of it: Cath and such are in love with Sheath and ret/holy, I think it's exploiting a talent that was designed simply to give ret pallys offhealing in Holy tier gear something to do with the copious amounts of crit.

So yeah, I am assuming a holy pally is going 20 points down prot. Again, prot pallys are giving up some nice survival/longevity stats to pick up Improved Devo and with the way SoR is scaling Ret Pallys do not have room to pick up Kings (if SoR continues to be the dominant DPS seal than this will be the bare bones ret PvE spec, with only 2 extra points). Holy Pallys lose some crit to get Improved Devo and can apply it to a lot more people at once.

Cathela · 07/30/08, 10:54 AM

Okay, seal/judgement numbers.

We're going to use a level 70 ret paladin starting Sunwell, with 3000AP raid buffed and a Cataclysm's Edge (138.0 dps, 3.5 speed). Ignoring effects like Vengeance, Crusade, Sanct. Ret, etc. since these all scale. Assuming 3/3 SoL for 900 spellpower.

Basic numbers:

White dps is 3000/14+138 = 352.3
Mean weapon damage is 352.3*3.5 = 1233

SoC: 70% weapon damage + 20% spellpower each = 1043 damage/proc. @7PPM, 121.7dps
JoC: 40% AP + 60% SP - 50 = 1690 damage/judgement. @8sec cooldown, 217.5dps
Total holy dps: 339.2 (ignoring crits)

SOB: 35% weapon damage = 123.3dps
JoB: 42% AP + 66% SP - 75 = 1779 damage/judgement. @8sec cooldown, 222.4dps
Total holy dps: 345.7 (ignoring crits)

SoR: 5% AP + 10% SP = 240dps
JoR: 45% AP + 73% SP = 2007 damage/judgement. @8sec cooldown, 250.9dps
Total holy dps: 490.9 (ignoring JoR crits)

That's a pretty substantial difference in dps between the "base" seal and the "specialty Ret" seals. That's not the entire picture, since SoC/SoB can crit and SoR can't, but the gap in base damage is still going to be substantial. And you might lose a bit of Vengeance uptime now and then due to getting fewer crits out of SoR, but it's kinda hard to see how that's going to close the gap either.

Of course, this assumes that the rate of weapon-dps scaling and the rate of AP scaling with raid progression will be the same in WotLK as it was in BC, where AP ends up counting for ~65% more damage than the weapon itself. If you reverse the situation, such that a T6-geared ret paladin has a 200dps weapon and only ~2kAP, then you get a very different picture.

Originally Posted by flyingtoastr

We've been going over this for 2 days now and I'm frankly sick of it: Cath and such are in love with Sheath and ret/holy,

No, I'm just willing to consider the possibility that it might be a useful healing spec, and I've found the arguments to its uselessness so far unconvincing.

But I fully agree about being sick of it.

levk · 07/30/08, 10:56 AM

You guys keep saying three paladins per raid when it's pretty clear paladins don't stack well past two. Go by blessings, and with salv and light out the window there's just 3 specs (ret, sheath of light, enhance) and one class (hunter) that benefit from three blessings now. Min/maxed you'll see 2 paladins per raid of whichever differing roles. So in my mind prot is required to pick up imp devo to somehow offset his uselessness when he is not tanking. And ret has to get kings and holy has to get imp wisdom.

Cathela · 07/30/08, 11:04 AM

Originally Posted by levk

You guys keep saying three paladins per raid when it's pretty clear paladins don't stack well past two. Go by blessings, and with salv and light out the window there's just 3 specs (ret, sheath of light, enhance) and one class (hunter) that benefit from three blessings now. Min/maxed you'll see 2 paladins per raid of whichever differing roles. So in my mind prot is required to pick up imp devo to somehow offset his uselessness when he is not tanking. And ret has to get kings and holy has to get imp wisdom.

A third paladin brings Conc. aura in addition to Ret/Devo as well, and as noted above if the third paladin is Holy/prot it frees the Prot paladin up to take a somewhat more "selfish" spec. I really think this is a case where it depends on the specific people you have available. A good third paladin versus, say, a crappy priest? Take the paladin. Vice versa? The priest.

thedopefishlives · 07/30/08, 11:10 AM

Don't forget that ret paladins will bring some pretty hefty DPS in their own right. Depending on how the class balance shakes out, it may no longer be the case that a raid is constrained to "only one ret paladin for Imp Crusader/Imp Might". While that doesn't mean that every raid will have more than 2 paladins, it does give the freedom to bring extras, even if their raid utility is diminished after the second/third.

Smurrf · 07/30/08, 11:11 AM

Originally Posted by levk

You guys keep saying three paladins per raid when it's pretty clear paladins don't stack well past two. Go by blessings, and with salv and light out the window there's just 3 specs (ret, sheath of light, enhance) and one class (hunter) that benefit from three blessings now. Min/maxed you'll see 2 paladins per raid of whichever differing roles. So in my mind prot is required to pick up imp devo to somehow offset his uselessness when he is not tanking. And ret has to get kings and holy has to get imp wisdom.

Pallies: Kings, Might, Wisdom, Sanctuary for Prot
Warlocks: Kings, Wisdom
Mages: Kings, Wisdom
Priests: Kings, Wisdom
Shaman: Kings, Might, Wisdom
Hunters: Kings, Might, Wisdom
Warriors: Kings, Might, Sanctuary for Prot
DK's: Kings, Might, Sanctuary for Tank
Rogues: Kings, Might
Priests: Kings, Wisdom
Druids: Kings, Might, Wisdom, Sanctuary for Bear

Of those, only 5 classes get benefit from only 2 blessings. The rest may be split on what's optimal, depending on spec, and therefore can override 30's with 10's, but with the new changes, at the very least as a Pally tank I'll want three blessings. Can you get away with only two? Of course. Is there any kind of benefit from having 3 along? Yep. Potentially half the raid, depending on raid comp.