I don't think this can be solved with SP/AP coefficients, due to sheath ret paladins will have almost as much spellpower as a holy paladin will. Just going roughly by +healing now = half +spellpower later, end game holy has like 2500 +heal goes to 1250 +spellpower. End game ret has like 3000 AP goes to 1000 +spellpower. Going to some complex nonlinear formula to really make those 250 spellpower really matter is pointless and besides tanks will have different numbers for spellpower.
For pve holy you're looking at these:
Beaming Earthsiege Diamond +21 crit rating +2% mana
Ember Skyflare Diamond +25 Spell Power +2% Intellect
Insightful Earthsiege Diamond +21 Intellect Chance to restore mana on cast
Revitilizing Skyflare Diamond +8 mp5 +3% critical healing effect.
Some observations: according to the combat ratings thread you'll need about 4000 intellect for ember to overtake beaming on spellcrit. There're other factors to consider ofcourse. +3% crit healing effect on revitalizing doesn't look too enticing except maybe for ego building substance. Insightful effect looks like it's the same old 300 mana restore. Unclear on the proc mechanics, wowhead lists at 5%. I don't know but a quick look steers me to insightful as still the winner here. Any other takes?
I'm not sure we can model the mana return of Beaming until we have some idea of how we'll be casting. That's what... .5% to crit at level 80? 2% mana bypasses 21 int at around 15000 mana. Not sure really what numbers we'll be looking at. But I don't see .5% to crit being able to overtake the 300 mana with an internal cooldown.
Revitilizing might be interesting for a sheathe build.
Shorter summary: Shield of Righteousness and Hammer of the Righteous's "High threat" mean they cause an extra 20% threat. Avenger's Shield also has 20% extra threat on beta, but I'm unsure whether that's exclusive to beta or if it's on live as well.
buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of
I don't think this can be solved with SP/AP coefficients, due to sheath ret paladins will have almost as much spellpower as a holy paladin will. Just going roughly by +healing now = half +spellpower later, end game holy has like 2500 +heal goes to 1250 +spellpower. End game ret has like 3000 AP goes to 1000 +spellpower. Going to some complex nonlinear formula to really make those 250 spellpower really matter is pointless and besides tanks will have different numbers for spellpower.
Seems to me if they change Sheathe to Strength instead of AP they'll be to much more carefully manage the control of how this scales. AP is just too easy to score from raid sources - if it's meant to be an itemization talent, make it that way.
Seems to me if they change Sheathe to Strength instead of AP they'll be to much more carefully manage the control of how this scales. AP is just too easy to score from raid sources - if it's meant to be an itemization talent, make it that way.
Sheath was also designed to allow ret pallys to offheal somewhat effectively in PvP (like enhancement shamans, elemental shamans, boomkin druids, shadow priests, etc can do). If you changed it to Strength instead of AP you'e looking at putting ret heals back at useless. For example, in my ret kit (Tier 6/Sunwell stuff) I have a bit over 900 strength fully raid buffed. That would be only 270 spell power, which is pretty darn crappy.
Fix the coefficients, don't nerf the other things.
I still think the best solution is to just "bake" the seal fixes into the deep tree Judgement talents. Each tree has at least one major Judgement talent that they could tack on specific fixes for seals for that particular spec and then they could reduce the baseline power of the Seals. For example, Sanctified Seals could increase the damage of SoB/SoC by x%, Judgements of the Pure could increase the damage done by SoR by y and Judgements of the Just could increase the threat caused by SoV by z. Or something like that.
Shorter summary: Shield of Righteousness and Hammer of the Righteous's "High threat" mean they cause an extra 20% threat. Avenger's Shield also has 20% extra threat on beta, but I'm unsure whether that's exclusive to beta or if it's on live as well.
The more I think about it the more I'm convinced HotR is exactly what BoL needs to be. HotR is just so good no serious prot pally is going to touch Sheath, which is the exact thing they need to do with BoL.
Sheath was also designed to allow ret pallys to offheal somewhat effectively in PvP (like enhancement shamans, elemental shamans, boomkin druids, shadow priests, etc can do). If you changed it to Strength instead of AP you'e looking at putting ret heals back at useless. For example, in my ret kit (Tier 6/Sunwell stuff) I have a bit over 900 strength fully raid buffed. That would be only 270 spell power, which is pretty darn crappy.
Of course you'd also bump up the Sheath percentage if you scaled it off STR, perhaps to 60%. I think Khaelarys just meant that there are a LOT of places where you can get AP from in a raid, which isn't the case for STR.
Changing it to STR meant you couldn't mooch off of Blessing of Might, Battle Shout, Unleashed Rage, etc., which may curb the talent's scaling enough to make it less desirable for Holy Paladins.
Think about Commanding Shout in this fashion: They could just as easily have made it add +108 STA, but that would made it scalable with Blessing of Kings, Vitality, Sacred Duty and whatnot.
Of course you'd also bump up the Sheath percentage if you scaled it off STR, perhaps to 60%. I think Khaelarys just meant that there are a LOT of places where you can get AP from in a raid, which isn't the case for STR.
Changing it to STR meant you couldn't mooch off of Blessing of Might, Battle Shout, Unleashed Rage, etc., which may curb the talent's scaling enough to make it less desirable for Holy Paladins.
Think about Commanding Shout in this fashion: They could just as easily have made it add +108 STA, but that would made it scalable with Blessing of Kings, Vitality, Sacred Duty and whatnot.
60% of 900 is still only 540. Compare that to a boomkin druid with 1500 and better healing abilities...
I don't understand why this is such a problem to be scaling with AP. Enhancement Shamans have been doing it since 2.1 and there hasn't been too much of a problem. You could argue that since less of their abilities have SP scalars it isn't as important to them, but that just reinforces the point that the current seals are the problem, not Sheath.
Besides, how could all the little kiddies spec sheathbot if they only get 30-40 spell power from it?
Sheath is fine as it is, I was actually pretty happy to see it go off AP when it was announced. Making it go off Str only would kill any synergy it has with raid buffs (which a large portion of is AP rather than Str) and most temporary power ups (trinkets, procs).
I think it could benefit by being moved a few tiers down the ret tree though and ending all the confusion.
---
The problem with Seals at the moment is the approach. We have too many Seals and somehow they all need to work and scale with all sorts of gear.
Especially since SoB/SoV are not faction specific anymore and given the relative powers of the Seals on beta, there's a lot of overlap and it's not as clear cut anymore what seal you should use when.
It would be much simpler to just make SoR a 1h only seal (or alternatively add a penalty multiplier to reduce how good it is when used with a 2h). Holy/Prot wants to temporarily DPS using a 2h? Fine use SoB, it's not faction specific.
They need to make some sweeping changes to make Seals more distinguishable, since the current approach really isn't working.
100% str to spellpower. That would end up about the same as now for end game ret. Yeah it would make sheath far less desirable for holy, but I don't understand why does it have to be made less desirable.
EDIT:
Avitus, SoB and SoV are only available at what level 66? What are you to do before you get there if you don't have SoC? SoR and SoV are ret problems that should be solved in ret.
They need to make some sweeping changes to make Seals more distinguishable, since the current approach really isn't working.
Seals of Light and Wisdom could be combined to give a mix back on swing, but that only takes care of removing one from the mix.
SoC could go away and the new, better SoV could move into the slot. I am not sure if this is a fair replacement, its cleaner, but losing that pvp burst may not be acceptable for some.
These changes would give you
SoR as the one hand damage seal
SoV as the two hand and PVP damage seal
SoWL as the seal to recover bars
SoB as the "raiding seal"
SoJ as the interrupt seal
100% str to spellpower. That would end up about the same as now for end game ret. Yeah it would make sheath far less desirable for holy, but I don't understand why does it have to be made less desirable.
In my ret gear fully raid buffed I have 900 strength and close to 4000 attack power. So no, you're still nerfing ret because seal mechanics are screwy.
Avitus, SoB and SoV are only available at what level 66? What are you to do before you get there if you don't have SoC? SoR and SoV are ret problems that should be solved in ret.
Make SoR level off at 60 for a 2h or make SoB/SoV available earlier. It's not rocket science, it's not hard to make a few changes that would make sense without stepping on any bodies toes. It's only the "have your cake and eat it too" approach that's making everything more complicated (all seals, working for all specs, scaling with all stats, working for all weapons).
I don't want to make Sheathe less desirable. I just worry about an ability that balanced against such a huge potential range. AP is something that's very easy to get from PVE, and not so easy to get in PVP. I don't care about the spell power scaling as much as I care about the ability to deliver a decent heal - but that healing will be used in PVP, and I won't have 2k free AP. Balanced against something more static and with less of a range, yes obviously it won't leach from all of the raid buffs - but then again, it won't be weak when those aren't there either. Which for me is most of the time, since raiding is really a very small portion of my enjoyment of this game. Obviously the stength% would be different than the AP %. I didn't think that even required to be said.
toastr, fine 120% str, that's not the point if they wanted to make it scale off str they could make it scale off str.
I don't think they'll take the route of making beacon something like HotR. As in something you'd be stupid not to go for. If you look at priest and shaman 41 healing talents they're hardly all that huge. In case of priests the combined kit you get from improved concentration, test of faith, and divine providence is huge and what else do you have to go for excepting weird pvp specs? Certainly nothing in shadow and improved divine spirit? Shaman actually have a choice to go for unrelenting storm, something I think a lot of people will try out.
I don't want to make Sheathe less desirable. I just worry about an ability that balanced against such a huge potential range. AP is something that's very easy to get from PVE, and not so easy to get in PVP. I don't care about the spell power scaling as much as I care about the ability to deliver a decent heal - but that healing will be used in PVP, and I won't have 2k free AP. Balanced against something more static and with less of a range, yes obviously it won't leach from all of the raid buffs - but then again, it won't be weak when those aren't there either. Which for me is most of the time, since raiding is really a very small portion of my enjoyment of this game. Obviously the stength% would be different than the AP %. I didn't think that even required to be said.
Bear with me for a minute.
In my ret kit specced 5/10/46 right now I have 2176 AP unbuffed. Fully raid buffed I would have an additional:
46 AP (Improved Mark of the Wild strength)
48 AP (Food Buff strength)
120 AP (Flask)
160 AP (Blessing of Kings strength)
237 AP (Improved Strength of Earth Totem)
382 AP (Improved Blessing of Might)
468 AP (Improved Battle Shout w/ Solarian)
361 AP (Expose Weakness)
+10% (Unleashed Rage)
Which brings me to a total of 4398 attack power. In this same gearset I'm looking at roughly 1073 strength.
With Sheath as is that 4398 AP will give me about 1319 spell power. For a "strength sheath" to give me the same conversion it would require a conversion factor of just under 124% of strength > spell power. Anything less than that is a flat out nerf Does that seem like something blizzard would ever do? Might as well start begging for damn SP back on the ret gear.
tl;dr: Fix seals, sheath is fine.
E: Forgot to multiply something.
Last edited by flyingtoastr : 08/11/08 at 2:12 PM.
If Art of War and Sheath were swapped, the problem would be solved without causing any new ones.
Art of War isn't powerful enough to be Tier9. If they are swapped, the talent flows would not change for PvE or PvP builds.
For PvE, the amount of early talents allow for spec'ing into Divine Storm without needing Sheath.
For PvP, both Sheath and Art of War would be regardless of their relative positions in the tree.
I heard Sigurd scored an infinity on Rock Band and ascended to heaven.
Wasn't aware of HotR proccing seals. =) silly me. Another point in SoR's favor. However SoV still does WAY more threat/damage, is far more reliable now; seal twisting will be fantastic now if you can fit it in to your rotation.
I'm not sure it's quite such a solid point in SoR's favour; HotR would allow you to build a SoV stack on the mobs you're *not* hitting directly in an AoE-tank situation.
If Art of War and Sheath were swapped, the problem would be solved without causing any new ones.
Art of War isn't powerful enough to be Tier9. If they are swapped, the talent flows would not change for PvE or PvP builds.
For PvE, the amount of early talents allow for spec'ing into Divine Storm without needing Sheath.
For PvP, both Sheath and Art of War would be regardless of their relative positions in the tree.
Sheath isn't powerful enough to be tier 9 either, it's a "bandaid" change to make hybrids scale like the pure classes and able to compete with them - without going down the messy road of differentiating our gear sets and making them class specific.
Besides, PvE wise you can already skip sheath to get divine storm - nobody does because you'll also need the AP->SD for PvE.
If something IS wrong it'd be the seals themselves.
Sheath isn't powerful enough to be tier 9 either, it's a "bandaid" change to make hybrids scale like the pure classes and able to compete with them - without going down the messy road of differentiating our gear sets and making them class specific.
Besides, PvE wise you can already skip sheath to get divine storm - nobody does because you'll also need the AP->SD for PvE.
If something IS wrong it'd be the seals themselves.
Oh, I only mentioned skipping Sheath to show that it isn't needed for talent progression.
Perhaps swapping Sheath and Sanctified Seals would work. It uses the same reasoning as my last post, as you'd most likely get both regardless of their position.
Putting it there causes Holy Paladins to lose Holy Guidance, Divine Illumination, and Judgements of the Pure.
Last edited by DarKNecross : 08/11/08 at 2:51 PM.
I heard Sigurd scored an infinity on Rock Band and ascended to heaven.
Jesus Christ on a rubber crutch, here we go again. There is no problem with Sheath of Light. Why all the Ret paladins are up in arms about it I really can't fathom. Does it hurt you so much that Holy or Prot can now grab some damage talents and somehow steal all your raid spots, despite that making absolutely no sense whatsoever with their scaling? It is just years of repressed spite talking? I went over most of this issue in a previous post, and am seeing exactly the same stupid arguments I tried to head off four pages ago.
Again, there is no problem with Sheath of Light. Hammer of the Righteous is a better talent, and the Protection tree as a whole is a compelling (if not overwhelming) alternative to a Prot/Sheath build. Beacon of Light and the rest of deep Holy is not very compelling. That's a problem in Holy, not in Ret. How some of you people keep coming to the conclusion that Blizzard needs to "fix" this by filling up the first six tiers of Ret with nothing but shit talents no one of any spec would ever want (so you can all bitch and moan incessantly about bloat in deep Ret instead?) completely escapes me. Again, jamming all desired paladin utility in the last couple tiers of one spec is a really shitty way of balancing the class, and will result in shadow-priest-syndrome as Blizzard is forced to nerf your DPS to compensate for 20 points of pure utility at the end of the tree. Do you really want to see that?
And speaking of seals, honestly, if SoR or SoV is outperforming SoC, can we find a way to fix it without gutting the mechanics of the other two-thirds of the class?
Touched by the Light is tier 9 Prot and Holy Guidance is tier 8 Holy, and both of those talents only provide 300-400 spellpower at 70. I don't consider it unreasonable for a talent that provides a Retridin with at least twice that amount of spellpower at 70 to be tier 9 in that tree.
Jesus Christ on a rubber crutch, here we go again. There is no problem with Sheath of Light. Why all the Ret paladins are up in arms about it I really can't fathom. Does it hurt you so much that Holy or Prot can now grab some damage talents and somehow steal all your raid spots, despite that making absolutely no sense whatsoever with their scaling? It is just years of repressed spite talking? I went over most of this issue in a previous post, and am seeing exactly the same stupid arguments I tried to head off four pages ago.
Again, there is no problem with Sheath of Light. Hammer of the Righteous is a better talent, and the Protection tree as a whole is a compelling (if not overwhelming) alternative to a Prot/Sheath build. Beacon of Light and the rest of deep Holy is not very compelling. That's a problem in Holy, not in Ret. How some of you people keep coming to the conclusion that Blizzard needs to "fix" this by filling up the first six tiers of Ret with nothing but shit talents no one of any spec would ever want (so you can all bitch and moan incessantly about bloat in deep Ret instead?) completely escapes me. Again, jamming all desired paladin utility in the last couple tiers of one spec is a really shitty way of balancing the class, and will result in shadow-priest-syndrome as Blizzard is forced to nerf your DPS to compensate for 20 points of pure utility at the end of the tree. Do you really want to see that?
And speaking of seals, honestly, if SoR or SoV is outperforming SoC, can we find a way to fix it without gutting the mechanics of the other two-thirds of the class?
I would suggest you actually read the posts before opening your mouth again.
This has nothing to do with Sheath viability for prot or holy, they're complaining that sheath is leading to the massive scaling problems with seals (specifically Seal of Righteousness). Seriously, why is every post you have here some stupid condescending thing about how much "ret pallys hate people taking their spots" and such? It just so happens that one of the proposed solutions (strength > SP) makes Sheath shittastic for Holy and solves the sheathbot problem.
Jesus Christ on a rubber crutch, here we go again. There is no problem with Sheath of Light. Why all the Ret paladins are up in arms about it I really can't fathom. Does it hurt you so much that Holy or Prot can now grab some damage talents and somehow steal all your raid spots, despite that making absolutely no sense whatsoever with their scaling? It is just years of repressed spite talking? I went over most of this issue in a previous post, and am seeing exactly the same stupid arguments I tried to head off four pages ago.
Again, there is no problem with Sheath of Light. Hammer of the Righteous is a better talent, and the Protection tree as a whole is a compelling (if not overwhelming) alternative to a Prot/Sheath build. Beacon of Light and the rest of deep Holy is not very compelling. That's a problem in Holy, not in Ret. How some of you people keep coming to the conclusion that Blizzard needs to "fix" this by filling up the first six tiers of Ret with nothing but shit talents no one of any spec would ever want (so you can all bitch and moan incessantly about bloat in deep Ret instead?) completely escapes me. Again, jamming all desired paladin utility in the last couple tiers of one spec is a really shitty way of balancing the class, and will result in shadow-priest-syndrome as Blizzard is forced to nerf your DPS to compensate for 20 points of pure utility at the end of the tree. Do you really want to see that?
And speaking of seals, honestly, if SoR or SoV is outperforming SoC, can we find a way to fix it without gutting the mechanics of the other two-thirds of the class?
I'm curious as to why you're specifying Ret Paladins as the ones taking issue with Sheath. There's something wrong deep Holy, which is making a Holy/Sheath build look more desirable to healing Paladins. From a healing point of view, that's the problem. Since we don't know what changes are being made for deep Holy, nothing can be assumed, so we're speculating ways to make a Holy/Sheath build less desirable for Holy.
On the point of bloating, you must not have understood my post. Swapping the talents won't cause bloating, since the prior talent isn't essential to talent progression, and the abilities would be taken regardless of their position in the tree. Swapping Art of War and Sheath doesn't change any Retribution builds and doesn't cause bloating.
As for Seals, it's safe to assume the only way to make Seal of the Martyr and Seal of Command the best Retribution Seals is to change the way Seal of Righteousness and Seal of Vengeance scale. The other possibility would be increasing SotM/SoC damage, which isn't likely considering Paladins are already teetering on the edge of being too powerful.
I heard Sigurd scored an infinity on Rock Band and ascended to heaven.
I would suggest you actually read the posts before opening your mouth again.
This has nothing to do with Sheath viability for prot or holy, they're complaining that sheath is leading to the massive scaling problems with seals (specifically Seal of Righteousness). Seriously, why is every post you have here some stupid condescending thing about how much "ret pallys hate people taking their spots" and such? It just so happens that one of the proposed solutions (strength > SP) makes Sheath shittastic for Holy and solves the sheathbot problem.
This. Thank you. Ret paladins are ASKING for a reasonable nerf to the damage scaling right now and Sheath was just a SUGGESTED spot to look. By no means are we asking for it to be a ret-only talent. I personally think its a great teaser talent with its location in the tree. Yes, both prot and holy specs can grab it, with fairly significant sacrifices in their primary tree which is EXACTLY Blizzard's intention.
08/11/08, 12:51 PM
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