The Holy Paladin Guide for WotLK - Page 4

Blutelf · 11/05/08, 5:59 AM

As for Flasks, please add the Flask of Distilled Wisdom to the list of consumables, which should be a sensible and cheaper alternative to the spellpower flask.

Andrast · 11/05/08, 6:41 AM

Originally Posted by Endoscient

I wouldn't drop Pursuit of Justice though, unless the quantity of movements fights dropped drastically. In any fight that you are healing and have to move, when you are moving you doing much less healing then if you weren't. PoJ lets you get to where you need to go faster, so you can start healing 15% earlier. Remember sometimes when you just didn't move out of the AoE fast enough? This will help with that, and remember a dead paladin does no healing.

Generally movement fights will not favor paladins anyway and also will generally require less healing throughput. For all the time you spend standing still you are gaining exactly zero benefit from those 2 points. Remember this isn't a choice between run speed enchant on boots or vitality. This is a choice between Improved Blessing of Wisdom on the entire raid vs a single player running faster. You have approximately 15 mana users in your raid and having Improved Blessing of Wisdom on them equates 270mp5. Surely this is worth 2 points in any serious raiding spec?

PallyPower (Blessing Asssignments)
This AddOn will make your life keeping everyone blessed with the proper blessings much easier. While I am sure a lot of us have had their frustrations with PallyPower, it is significantly better then the alternative.

Can you please include ZOMGBuffs as an alternative. I do believe it is worthy.

Applejuiced · 11/05/08, 7:02 AM

Originally Posted by Zarty

Can anyone confirm what I see on wowhead: Armor Tokens - Items - World of Warcraft

If that is to be believed, it appears that we'll be sharing tokens with the same classes as in T6 for T7. Ugh!

at least we didn't have DKs slapped onto our token as well :p

raremage · 11/05/08, 7:52 AM

Originally Posted by Malleus

By which I'm presuming AW keeps its 3m CD and DS its 5m CD, but each one triggers a 30s CD in the other when used. I'm also presuming they're dumping Forbearance, at least on AW. GC didn't actually say this would be the case, but it stands to reason - there's no sense in putting a 30s linked CD on a spell you couldn't cast for another couple of minutes anyway.

I'm trying to understand the logic in this, and think it's overkill.

The major problem with Ret that has been pointed to again and again was attacking under bubble. Adding AW exacerbated this issue.

Wouldn't simply reducing damage output to 50% while under bubble address this issue? Leave AW at full power, on its own timer. This would (a) reduce damage output for Ret while bubbled to 50% (b) reduce damage output for Ret while bubbled under AW to 60% (I'm assuming damage *1.2 *0.5) and (c) Allow Holy to heal effectively and use AW while under bubble to increase healing if wanted, which (to my knowledge) has never been identified as an issue.

This isn't a huge nerf to Holy, but it is a small one, and I'm not at all sure it makes sense.

Endoscient · 11/05/08, 9:27 AM

Originally Posted by Andrast

Generally movement fights will not favor paladins anyway and also will generally require less healing throughput. For all the time you spend standing still you are gaining exactly zero benefit from those 2 points. Remember this isn't a choice between run speed enchant on boots or vitality. This is a choice between Improved Blessing of Wisdom on the entire raid vs a single player running faster. You have approximately 15 mana users in your raid and having Improved Blessing of Wisdom on them equates 270mp5. Surely this is worth 2 points in any serious raiding spec?

Can you please include ZOMGBuffs as an alternative. I do believe it is worthy.

Except that I included a spec with both PoJ and Imp BoW or you could already have another Holy Pally with Imp BoW. Sure PoJ isn't useful all the time, but the time it saves you because you ran out of the AoE just fast enough or you got to the tank just fast enough is when the two points earn their worth.

raremage, they said they are going to do something like that. Since, the attack speed penalty isn't much of a penalty anymore.

Hulabaloon · 11/05/08, 9:57 AM

Originally Posted by Endoscient

raremage, they said they are going to do something like that. Since, the attack speed penalty isn't much of a penalty anymore.

Yes, here is the quote:

Originally Posted by GhostCrawler

Our eventual plan is to put Divine Shield on a shared 30 sec cooldown with Avenging Wrath. We also plan on changing Divine Shield's attack speed penalty (which isn't really much of a penalty) and have it apply to all damage done while the bubble is up.

Divine Protection would no longer have the attack penalty, but since Prot paladins typically talent out of that penalty, it won't have a big effect on tanking (though obviously that talent would need to do something slightly different).

All of this assumes that preventing AW from being used with DS actually makes the Ret tree a little more balanced. We'll need to monitor that a little bit longer first.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> ?'s most Paladins are wanting answers to.

raremage · 11/05/08, 11:11 AM

That's the quote I was referring to, actually. What I'm suggesting is that, if they are changing the mechanic to dilute the damage instead of attack speed, why bother making the two mutually exclusive? It seems like there's no need for the exclusivity if the mechanic changes to reduce the damage output. The number crunching that has been plastered all over the place shows that Bubble + AW on offense = OverPowered, not Bubble+ AW on Healing = OP.

This being a healing thread, my thought there was: As a holy pally, we could then benefit from shielding and AW healing, without penalty - and still allowing for the correction in damage output of a bubbled Retadin. Making them mutually exclusive isn't really necessary.

Just a thought, though.

Endoscient · 11/05/08, 12:08 PM

While it would be nice and not overpowered to be able to AW+Bubble for healing, I am fine with a 30 sec exclusivity. It isn't long enough really that it will prevent you from using AW regularly. While it makes you think more about using AW instead of just using it close to on CD. Like for Brutallus it would be prudent to use AW right after a Burn goes out, so it decreases the chance you won't have Bubble up when you need it.

Malleus · 11/05/08, 1:08 PM

Originally Posted by raremage

That's the quote I was referring to, actually. What I'm suggesting is that, if they are changing the mechanic to dilute the damage instead of attack speed, why bother making the two mutually exclusive?

Presumably it's to prevent any possible abuse of Divine Guardian. Honestly, though, I can't think of any situation where I'd need both bubble and AW. It would have to be a scenario where there was massive spike damage on both the tank and myself. Generally speaking, if I can't cope with a spike without AW, I can't cope with it full stop.

Saladin · 11/05/08, 1:19 PM

Originally Posted by Malleus

Presumably it's to prevent any possible abuse of Divine Guardian. Honestly, though, I can't think of any situation where I'd need both bubble and AW. It would have to be a scenario where there was massive spike damage on both the tank and myself. Generally speaking, if I can't cope with a spike without AW, I can't cope with it full stop.

What about from an arena/PVP perspective though? I know that's not the focus of these forums, but most non-priest comps tend to jump on the pally to make them bubble as early as possibly, then train to his partners, and go back to the pally when it's down. In that moment of assist-train burst-damage load blowing, it would seem that holy paladins have a legitimate need for both the protective component of DS and the healing component of AW at the same time.

Not to mention AW's infamous purgeability. Many paladins since 3.0 started preferring to use the bubble as a self-defense mechanism for wings to keep them from getting dispelled.

This is all wild conjecture of course, because I've never played holy in arenas (not past 1500 anyway, because I was terribad). But unless I'm severely mistaken, Holy Paladins aren't sitting too pretty in PVP already, and this just sort of adds insult to injury.

EDIT: Spelling and grammar. My second post on EJ forums and I'm already making a fool of myself. >.<

Arthaal · 11/05/08, 3:11 PM

On bubble + AW: with AW granting 20% more healing there is no way it won't be immediately targeted for dispelling by any team capable of dispelling. Any team without that ability will focus the paladin to CC him, knowing he locked himself out of his one CC break (apart from trinket) for 30s. Letting a full duration AW go would be terrible play. Is it off the GCD by the way? I can't verify this myself, but as a reactive healing ability that is likely to not last the full duration, it would be nice to activate it during the cast rather than 1.5s before it.

At this point in the PvP paladin game it's a little ridiculous to say, but our animations are one of the things really hurting us. Every single dispellable buff we have comes with such a light show it's hard to miss it even in the midst of an arena match.

Single biggest problem I see with the new mechanics though: seals being so expensive and dispellable. Now that 15% haste hinges on us landing Judgements, a large portion of WOTLK upgrades depend on having seals up to judge. The glyphs of SoW and SoL are also nothing to sneeze at. I suspect holy paladins in arena might spend an inordinate amount of mana and GCDs trying to simply maintain more than untalented healing going.

They should seriously look into making paladin seals physical. While they are at it, some other paladin self buffs probably deserve the same treatment: Righteous Fury in particular should be a physical aura type buff with no duration in my opinion. At least they had the decency to make the 15% haste buff physical... that would truly have been a nightmare to keep up otherwise.

Saladin · 11/05/08, 3:19 PM

That's exactly my point. Currently (I guess now it's previously) our bubble is the ONLY way to ensure 100% duration of our "power" button. If they're going to make DS penalize damage, then it should be allowable to Bubble and AW. Otherwise AW will never see the light of day in an arena match.

And no, it is not off the mother-farting GCD. No matter how much we ask, they refuse to do it because "everyone wants everything off the GCD."

As far as animation's contribution to our failures, I have to agree. But that's also something I'm really, really hesitant to give up, because it's fun to see glowy things happen when you press a button in a raid. I literally have 1/8th of an orgasm every time I hit Moonfire on my druid for that very reason.

I don't think the solution is to dull down our spell effects. I think we need more vigorous, more accessible dispell protection. Because honestly, at 2000+, they're going to know when you pop your wings even if they removed the animation completely.

Endoscient · 11/05/08, 4:17 PM

Yea, Holy Paladins overall are very vulnerable to dispells and very little way to counter them. Blizzard stated the offensive dispell system is something they don't like how it is. For Arenas with AW, I will probably only be use it once Bubble is already on cooldown.

AW is on a 1sec GCD, which make no sense compared to all other abilities like it.

Also I added more spells to the Abilities section, Judgements and Hands.

Aerynlore · 11/05/08, 4:24 PM

Originally Posted by Saladin

I don't think the solution is to dull down our spell effects. I think we need more vigorous, more accessible dispell protection. Because honestly, at 2000+, they're going to know when you pop your wings even if they removed the animation completely.

Building on this, look at all of the Holy Paladin utilities that are dispellable, and their cooldown / manacost to reapply:
Divine Plea - 1min Cooldown (there goes our regen)
Divine Illumination - 3min Cooldown (there goes our cheap spells)
Divine Favor - 2min Cooldown (there goes the crit - though, admittedly, unlikely to actually be dispelled)
Beacon of Light - 35% Base Mana (there goes our "AE" healing)
Sacred Shield - 12% Base Mana (there goes our "HoT")
HoSac (2min CD), HoProt (5min CD) - 6% Base Mana (there goes that utility - though with a 30% dispel resistance, talented)
SoW, SoL - 14% Base Mana (there goes judging and, with glyphs, cheaper or stronger, respectively, heals)

That's a whole lot of our utility that is dispellable. Am I the only one concerned about this?

Endoscient · 11/05/08, 4:45 PM

Yes, almost all of our spells are very susceptible to dispels, and it could be a problem in Arena for 80. Lets leave it at that for now, and if it is a problem at 80 then talk about it in the Paladin PvP Thread. This thread isn't really the place to talk about potential PvP problems at 80. For all we know shamans and priests will not be common in comps that give our comps trouble, so it might not even be an issue.