◊ Cathela

I think it's not so much that the nerf is good news. But considering that the previous versions of JoW and JoL were overpoweredly good for hunters and rogues (respectively), it was obvious that some kind of nerf was coming. Better this kind of nerf than some kind of broad nerf to the overall power of the judgements.

Well, the jury has to remain out on JotW until it gets fixed, of course. At this point there's also the healing effect of Divine Storm, which will be useful on fights with raid damage, and the currently stronger judgements provided by a Ret paladin.

Nice work, bell. I'm not surprised that the judgement proc chance is up to 100% (Prinsea's post made perfect sense to me).

That per-player-per-mob cooldown is interesting, and potentially quite useful.

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

 

Questioner

Ah, I know must people don't care, but the cooldown addition seems like it is quite the nerf to the protection paladin, especially levelling. I used to stack as many fast attacking / additional abilities / gear as possible just to proc JoW. It was great the procs you could get with reckoning plus a weapon with a chance to hit a second time. ( I levelled to 60 in 4 days as prot )

I understand the need, it just seems weird that it would end up hitting the spec that generally applies it the hardest.

I guess with the quest xp change it is a moot point that made Ret just that much better at levelling anyway.

 

daemiaJadineCallec

That would require 25 man raids to be designed for four healers. A lot of talent trees are (in my opinion) designed for PvP viability, and are not intended to be good in raids.


Unrelated to that, I'm starting to worry about the prot tree, I rather liked how in TBC, if you needed more threat, all you had to do was get more spelldamage. With so many spells now scaling off spell damage and attack power, will there be a shift towards itemization identical to warriors, or are they just making the abilities better for Ret, and stacking spelldamage will still be ideal for protection? It seems like they need to clean up the prot tree to make it more clear what our itemization preferences should be.

 

• Chicken

Since the testing indicates the cooldown gets tracked per mob, it's just a situation where you'll have to judge Wisdom on a second mob (or more, though that'll get hard to keep track of and wouldn't really provide much benefit with most swing timers) and then swap between those. It should equal out, or potentially even work out better. It does make reckoning weaker for such a build, but the cooldown only applies to the Judgements of Wisdom and Light; Seal of Wisdom and Light both still work as they do now, outside of their effect scaling with Attack and Spell Power.

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

 

Altirias

It's quite clear actually. HotR and SotR rely on strength (the latter via block value), and every ability will scale with AP, including consecration.

And you'll get the spell damage you need via Touched by the Light as a STA -> SP convertion

 

Mlkmn

If some raids are designed to have more than one boss up at the same time, then Crusader strike would at least have use, keeping the other paladin's judgement up on one of them. With three paladins both judgements could be up all the time, without the holy paladin wasting mana chain judging.

This is very situational though.

Crusader strike really needs its secondary effect adjusted since it lost nearly all of it's utility.

It is still a great instant attack, but a 41 point talent should do something a little more special than be a x1.1 dmg white hit that costs mana.

 

bellator

With regards to Divine Storm, they need to fix it as its healing output is of very little use atm. Even if you have crit 4 mobs for 2000 each, for the 3 people it effects it still works out as only 266hp5. On single bosses it will be a quarter of that. Compare that to priests group healing or JoL and it really is an inconsequential ability. The problem however is that it needs to be balanced based on 1-4 potential targets damage taken. Personally i would have the % health be based soley around the % health of the primary target, up the health % a reasonable bit, and let it heal everyone in 10 yards, so it becomes a melee group healing utility. As it stands, the ability is quite cool, but the health part of it is a joke.

Prot now scales far better with strenth than it does spellpower. I doubt you will find plate prot armour with +spelldamage on in wrath.

I don't think the itemisation preferences for prot are complicated:-

1) Def - crit immune
2) Stam - survival, plus a bit a threat
3) Str - lots of threat
4) BV (on items which have it) - SotR thread and damage reduction
5) With crushings gone, parry/dodge/block rating not as essential to get crush immune, but all nice to have.

Personally i think it's odd they've taken us over to warrior/ret gear and then only half taken our abilities over that way (leaving some spdam coefficinets etc). Why not go the whole hog and drop spdam completely and balance abilities solely on spdam.

 

• Chicken

To add further, outside of the Seal spells and the two new Protection abilities all Paladin abilities currently get the same benefit from one attack power as they would from one spell damage. Strength also has the addition of scaling Block Value, and thus scaling Shield of Righteousness. Obviously Hammer of the Righteous's damage only scales from attack power, however it also procs Seals, something I hadn't expected until the release of the patch notes.

I haven't fully run the numbers yet on the exact value of strength versus spell damage with the current beta builds, but as more abilities have gained scaling from attack power now compared to then it's only looking stronger. Strength already beat an equally valued amount of spell power before the latest beta build. Especially the fact that Consecration now scales with attack power as well took away my last worry; previously Spell Power scaled multi-target threat better while Attack Power scaled single-target threat better. Attack Power is now just plain superior.

It does make Touched by the Light look a bit out of place though, but the talent is already plenty strong as Spell Power.

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

 

Mlkmn

At least with that extra spell power we can offheal during boss fights after we tank the trash. right?

 

gia

I'm nitpicking here but don't forget holy paladin plate, which will have crit/int/dmg/mp5 and possibly haste.
The question is whether wearing a couple pieces of holy gear is useful/desireable as prot in any kind of situation.

 

watersrog

anyone knows if the judgement range is indeed 30 yards? because if it's so, and the paladins HAVE to judge every 30 seconds (to actually make use of their high tier talents), then the effective healing range decreases to 30 yards, which would be a MAJOR drawback.

 

• Chicken

Ah yes, that's true. As a hybrid talent to provide both healing utility and a threat benefit it's perfect in it's current form. The extra crit healing it gives also works out well considering the only kind of healing style a Prot Paladin can typically sustain involves Flash of Light; with Holy Light making your crit heals stronger would mostly result in overhealing, with Flash of Light not so much.

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

 

Strom

I for one will probably skip this talent come WotLK with the way attack power is looking. I will be the MT of a 10 man raid and maybe even a 25 man raid, so I doubt I will be healing anything. I think this talent can almost be viewed differently than when we first saw it. Before it was a godsend to our itemization issues in Wrath, now it looks to be a talent to make us a lot better at off-tanking/off-healing, when we are not the main tanks.

I think its good, I like options!

 

levk

One doesn't conclude the other. Healing range is 40 yards whether moving closer is worth it for the benefit or not is your decision.

 

watersrog

that indeed makes sense. to actually profit of half our buffs we can accept a reduced range of 30 yards with all the disadvantages coming from that.

or, we could decide we don't actually need that haste and stay in the back. or even better, we can move forward to judge every 30 seconds, losing another 3-4 seconds in the process

but indeed, it is our choice.

edit: some typos

 

bellator

hehe, i meant prot plate wont have spell damage, but yeah there will be plate with spell damage. However if you are in need of more threat as a prot pala, i would guess dps plate with str/crit/hit/expertise/haste would be of more use than holy plate.

 

• Avitus

One pet peeve I have at the moment is how you really have nothing to look forward to regarding new talent/skill upgrades while leveling as ret.

Once you install WoW 3.0 and put your level 70 points in the ret tree, this is pretty much all the new stuff you will experience at this point for the spec.

Since all Seals are now single rank, in 10 levels of leveling, a ret paladin has to look forward to: A new rank of BoM, a new rank of HoW and a new rank of Exorcism. Both of said active abilities are in no way part of our main damage.

New class wide skills include:

At level 71 we get [Divine Plea], with ret and prot having such small mana pools that it feels pretty weak, (~2k mana over 6 seconds every 5 mins with an additional constraint of it being channeled makes potions look massive). For holy paladins with 15k mana it's going to be great, but I think they should rebalanced this somewhat. Add a "regens from 5k or 50% of your mana" mechanic or something.

At level 75 we get [Shield of Righteousness], a tanking spell. Nice for offtanking as ret spec since it's baseline, but has no worth for when we're doing our main role (DPS).

At level 80 we get [Sacred Shield] which again is no ret/DPS or "DPS utility" increasing talent. On a side note, I hope it scales with something as it looks very week at the moment.


Now combine that with what was previously said about the ret tree being pretty lack luster, you can easily get all the "good stuff" at level 70-72, having all the points you get later on only be put in semi useless fluff.

I feel like there's too little "carrot on the stick" here. While it's not a requirement, it's nice to have a level defining ability to strive towards.




Again, this is not a whine, just "evaluating beta experience". Compared to other specs that get noticable bumps in healing spells or new abilities they will use in their main rotations, or even other classes with new ranks to their attacks it feels like there should also be something for ret to strive for. A high level/level 80 ability or a new rank of CS/Divine Storm would be all that's needed.

I'm hoping there's still something to come and that you won't feel like once you hit level 71 you've "peaked" so to say.

 

levk

Well, the first raid is going to be Naxx and those mechanics are known. I can't see an issue with the 30 yard range on any fight. Like half the fights have some kind of adds you're bound to be in range of. Only glaring issues are with the four horsemen (whose numbers could have thinned going by hints in the general WotLK thread) out of 15 bosses. Besides, cleanse had 20 (or was it 30) yard range for the longest time and in places where it severely mattered like BWL and AQ40 and yeah it was a pain but you did what you had to do. I think I actually had to move up to cleanse tank off SWP on Malchezzar, but I could be wrong about that.

 

• Chicken

That's something that people often fail to take into account actually. Depending on the size of the hitbox and what side of the boss you're on even with a 40 yard healing range you might at times by a good deal closer to the boss to be in range than DPS has to be.

Bosses are often turned away from the raid as a whole since a lot of them have abilities that are directed to a cone in front of them. A lot of bosses also tend to be pretty big. While it doesn't hold true for all fights, on fights like Archimonde or Magtheridon it's very likely that you're both at the maximum healing range you can be while at the same time being 30 yards or closer to the boss itself.

And the boss doesn't even have to be that big for it to be true; 10 yards is twice your melee range. That's a very small distance.

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

 

zenos

I have a request for any of the paladins currently in beta.

According to the Paladin beta forums, they are only now beginning the "second pass" on paladin abilities. The last time they stated a second pass was for mages, and the new mage changes took place around 3 days later.

Would a paladin with the ability to post on beta please point out that haste rating will actually lower paladin DPS when using SOC? As it sets, adding the 3% haste rating to your ret aura will lower your SoC proc rate. With the changes to seals proccing on strikes and an additional strike, yellow damage will eclipse white for total output. This means haste rating will at best result in a 0 dps increase and more likely result in a loss of total damage.

If you look at the gems and gear we've seen thus far, haste rating will be a key component in our stats for WotLK. This results in SoC being essentially broken. Please bring this to their attention.

The recommended fix is to have the SoC proc based on base weapon speed prior to haste. This allows haste to effectively boost your PPM rate, and it scales. Another fix would be to just set the proc rate at a given percentage, but it needs to be addressed.

 

levk

I know all that, point here is what I remember: I'm standing at max healing range, tank gets SWP, I had to move up to cleanse. Shadow nova is a pretty simple boss mechanic as a healer you reflexively learn to deal with it by going to max heal range.

 

watersrog

yes cleanse/equivalent spells had a 30 yards range for all healers and you actually had to move to do it.

the problem is now only paladins from all healers have to stick on 30 yards range. and doesn't make much sense.

shorter range often means more movement. movement means less healing. and it's not like we aren't comfortably placed on last spots on most fights' healing meters.

for me it seems like a random discrimination with no logical reason behind it.

edit: added some more

 

• Chicken

I was trying to add to what you said already, I apologize if it came across as something different.

What I meant to say was that standing within 30 yards of a boss to be in Judgement range frequently is the same as standing at maximum healing range due to the fact that you're often at the back of a fairly large boss while the tank is (of course) in front of it. I should perhaps not have included your quote.

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

 

Gevlin

I wouldn't say that haste is broken. And it certainly doesn't lower dps. SoC doesn't scale with haste, but its damage is not reduced by haste. If at some point you get enough haste to make SoB do more damage than SoC then use SoB. Both factions now have it so the haste scaling of SoC is fairly moot. This was a factional problem in BC that never got addressed, but we need to pick different battles at this point.

 

Mordekhuul

Is anyone seeing potential for a prot pally to stack ret gear and DPS when not tanking? It would be very interesting if we could swap gear and do, say, 80% the DPS of other players instead of adding a (sometimes completely extraneous) extra healer into the mix.

I know that feral druids, death knights, and prot warriors will be doing such when not tanking, and perhaps we are destined to be different due to our access to the holy school, but having DPS as a non-trivial option would be very nice.