Holy Paladin thread for Patch 3.3 changes - Page 96

Gormal · 11/30/09, 11:25 AM

Notice that I said heals and not exorcism. You can start a heal after you swing and abort it without interrupting your timer:

08:40:13> Kaelas's melee swing hits Heroic Training Dummy for 1199 Physical.(Glancing)
08:40:13> Kaelas's Seal of Righteousness hits Heroic Training Dummy for 1015 Holy.
08:40:14> Kaelas begins casting Holy Light.
08:40:15> Kaelas's Holy Light failed.(Interrupted)
08:40:16> Kaelas gains Kaelas's Vengeance (2).
08:40:16> Kaelas's melee swing hits Heroic Training Dummy for 3089 Physical.(Critical)
08:40:17> Kaelas's Seal of Righteousness hits Heroic Training Dummy for 1045 Holy.
08:40:17> Kaelas gains Kaelas's The Art of War.

3.53s weapon swing.

Varuk · 11/30/09, 11:36 AM

Another thing to realize about reproducing this on a dummy is that you're missing a lot of haste -- 23% melee haste to be specific. In a raid I've got a roughly ~1.15s swing speed thanks to all the multiplicatively stacking haste buffs. Reproducing this without that kind of speed is going to be hard and less accurate.

Maybe what I saw with the delayed SoW proc was just a graphical bug, but still, if you do this you'll still get a swing off for nearly every instant cast spell. And that is worth it any day. All I can say is that when I do this I end up getting more mana from SoW than from both Illumination and Replenishment combined, and those results I can't argue with.

Gormal · 11/30/09, 12:13 PM

You get more out of haste rating on your melee swings than your spells, so with a 1.5 speed weapon you should always get a white swing off for every instant cast. You'd need <500 haste from gear, WoA, and no WF for your GCD to be longer than your swing timer I think.

Mox · 11/30/09, 4:51 PM

Originally Posted by Gormal

Notice that I said heals and not exorcism. You can start a heal after you swing and abort it without interrupting your timer:

08:40:13> Kaelas's melee swing hits Heroic Training Dummy for 1199 Physical.(Glancing)
08:40:13> Kaelas's Seal of Righteousness hits Heroic Training Dummy for 1015 Holy.
08:40:14> Kaelas begins casting Holy Light.
08:40:15> Kaelas's Holy Light failed.(Interrupted)
08:40:16> Kaelas gains Kaelas's Vengeance (2).
08:40:16> Kaelas's melee swing hits Heroic Training Dummy for 3089 Physical.(Critical)
08:40:17> Kaelas's Seal of Righteousness hits Heroic Training Dummy for 1045 Holy.
08:40:17> Kaelas gains Kaelas's The Art of War.

3.53s weapon swing.

It applies to all spells, or atleast it used to. Just tested it out of interest and I was able to replicate using quartz swing timer that /cast /stopcast doesn't reset the swing, altho letting the cast complete does predictably reset the swing timer which effectively means if you want to melee between HLs you need to wait for however long your raidbuffed wep speed is probably around ~0.9 sec. I wasn't able to get any melee hits after I'd began casting, so I'd say if you do see any it's probably just cause of lag.

DiamondTear · 12/01/09, 7:29 AM

Originally Posted by Mox

most people generally judge atleast 3-4 times a minute so getting 3-4 SoW procs is pretty achievable.

Why are they doing that? I checked a log from Anub and it showed that I got four SoW procs over 3 minutes in phase 3. When each global used not casting HL is a risk for the tanks (not true anymore, but it was the case before Anub was nerfed), one would expect the paladin to minimize the number of judgments they cast.

Isn't the worst case scenario usually what we base our theorycraft around?

Mox · 12/01/09, 12:39 PM

Originally Posted by DiamondTear

Why are they doing that? I checked a log from Anub and it showed that I got four SoW procs over 3 minutes in phase 3. When each global used not casting HL is a risk for the tanks (not true anymore, but it was the case before Anub was nerfed), one would expect the paladin to minimize the number of judgments they cast.

Isn't the worst case scenario usually what we base our theorycraft around?

You've picked the most extreme situation possible, I wouldn't say theorycrafting to meet the very extreme is the best way at all, it would be like a warrior tank using his pure +block set for tanking all bosses. Anub P3 you don't even need to get SoW, you start the phase with full mana and could quite easily end it with mana left without getting any SoW at all so that point is completely moot.

Under normal circumstances you can easily judge 3-4 times a minute. If blizz make a fight that requires non-stop HL spam that lasts for longer than is sustainable without juding/sow then you might have a case to theorycraft for it.

grunz · 12/01/09, 2:16 PM

Originally Posted by Mox

Under normal circumstances you can easily judge 3-4 times a minute.

There's a difference between "can" and "want to". Assuming we're talking about tank healing (ie, constant damage), steady mediocre healing is preferrable to inconsistent massive healing. People should be itemizing to allow themselves to spend as much of the fight as possible hitting the tank with some kind of heal (optimally holy light). Theoretically, this would mean using three gcd's per minute for something other than casting heals (refreshing beacon, ss, and jotp). I'd presume the goal of this community is getting as close to that ideal as possible, regardless of the fight we're talking about.

And before someone starts splitting hairs about burst-oriented fights, I'll say that there is no encounter in this game where I'm thinking to myself, Shit, I wish I had some more throughput on these holy lights.

Noiralos · 12/03/09, 1:31 AM

From what I can tell, barring any amazing heroic loot or heroic Lich King loot, it look like if you have Val'anyr you'll be using it though ICC. The best part of the mace is that it scales with gear, and it basically will continue until the point your putting up a 20k shield every heal (Which would be a heal for about 133,333) or weapons gain a significantly more amount of SP. This proc should work even better in ICC with the more consistent tank damage. Anyone else have any thoughts about this?

This is all in reference to a paladin who prefers HL, it might be different for those who prefer FoL.

Sorry if I missed it before but I didn't see any discussion about it so far.

kadas · 12/03/09, 1:43 PM

It might be different for those who prefer FoL.

This is a pretty big variable I think. Tier itemization is pointing toward FoL - so is the 4 set and libram (since Shock is actually used in FoL style). Not to mention the statements of lighter but faster boss melee.

I agree that Val'anyr will be best for HL builds and am still even holding out for one last buff to it (stupid, I know), But if FoL ends up being the way to go then the heroic version of Trauma probably beats it just on item level. Trauma's proc behavior is admittedly unknown currently, but the shear item level difference will be hard for Val'anyr to overcome.

grunz · 12/03/09, 2:31 PM

Trauma has garbage itemization (0 haste or mp5, ho-hum int), and from what I've heard, the proc rate is currently like 1%, which would be pretty awful for a single target heal. Trauma might end up being pretty interesting if it procs off HL glyph and/or beacon bounces, but without an internal cooldown (which 1% proc rates tend not to be coupled with), it would be ridiculously overpowerd. The AoE hot would have like a 30% uptime with HL spam.

Noiralos · 12/03/09, 5:35 PM

From what I understand, bosses will not hit lighter just more consistently. I also think that saying the 4 piece is built toward FoL is stretch, cause well it affects HL. Now I don't play FoL so Im not sure how often HL is used if at all but I see this 4 piece as being very nice for HL. And as far a Trauma goes, I personally don't like it Id rather have HL splash + the val'anyr shield.

• Spaarky · 12/03/09, 8:06 PM

Originally Posted by Noiralos

From what I understand, bosses will not hit lighter just more consistently. I also think that saying the 4 piece is built toward FoL is stretch, cause well it affects HL. Now I don't play FoL so Im not sure how often HL is used if at all but I see this 4 piece as being very nice for HL. And as far a Trauma goes, I personally don't like it Id rather have HL splash + the val'anyr shield.

The 4pc is not really built for either play style. It is there in an effort to get us to use HS more, as is the new, worthless, Libram for badges. As has been previously discussed in this thread, the only time you should really be using HS is when you are moving and need to save someone otherwise it is a HPS loss and mana inefficient.

The proc on Trauma will be very interesting to see, if as others have speculated, it procs off HL splash I would expect to see it get changed very quickly.

tiberion02 · 12/03/09, 8:13 PM

Originally Posted by Noiralos

From what I understand, bosses will not hit lighter just more consistently.

I'll believe it when I see it.

As far as trauma goes, I'd be shocked to see it proc off of HL glyph splashes. However, even having it proc off the MT should cause the HoT to land on the melee DPS.

kadas · 12/04/09, 12:59 PM

saying the 4 piece is built toward FoL is stretch,

Is it?

Holy Shock is an HPS loss for a HL-spammer. It shouldn't be used.
Holy Shock interwoven with FL spamming is an HPS increase. HS is not mana efficient, but FL-spamming is and can afford to sustain Shocks as needed to keep the stacking SP buff up, for what it's worth. An extra 255 spell-power is more of an advantage to small heals than large after factoring in over-healing.

the intrinsic failure of FL is that inevitably a point is reached where it's not cutting it and you have to switch to HL. This is made highly impractical due to Light's grace not being maintained and the initial HL cast being too long. This is partially answered by the 4 set bonus; reducing that initial HL by 0.3 seconds. Also consider that some of your HL's would have very short cast times as you wove HS into the HL spam to keep up the libram buff.

The advantages are obvious: better mana efficiency without using divine plea, lower over-healing, as well as better mobile burst-healing capabilities (HS glyph, SP gemmed, etc.)

I think this is the design blizzard is aiming for: to make short phases of HL spam possible but have FL our primary heal assuming we can properly use the HS "buffs" available. Is it going to be competitive with straight HL-spamming? Probably not. However, if IC bosses hit light and fast and my slightly slower HL is being sniped by hot ticks and fast heals... maybe.

The real appealing aspect of the design is that it would require a lot of finesse to pull off: to know how much HS to use, when to switch back and forth between HL and FL spam, and to do so without using Divine Plea. Sometimes HL spam can have a very 'brute force" feeling to it.

Please don't construe this as an argument for FL. I'm gemming int, gearing haste and relying on HL in IC like everyone else. I just find it interesting to see hints at Blizzard's design philosophy for us. I'm pretty sure they don't like us relying so heavily on one stat and one spell. I think one yellow socket and no int bonuses on our tier reinforce this idea, and so does the complete lack of plate haste/MP5 gear.

Cardano · 12/04/09, 3:33 PM

Originally Posted by kadas

However, if IC bosses hit light and fast and my slightly slower HL is being sniped by hot ticks and fast heals... maybe.

If your HL spam is being sniped by fast heals and HoT ticks enough to keep the 2 tanks up, then you have an extra healer in the raid.

It will be all but impossible for the designers to make a challenging instance with the bosses hitting for less overall damage taken per second after avoidance and mitigation(dtps). With Radiance, they have increased dtps by decreasing avoidance. All without requiring either an increase in the attack size or an increase in attack speed. They could half the damage of each attack and double their frequency, but that would drastically increase the effectiveness of block which is applied after armor, think Anub Adds.

Whatever we are left with, we can count on our Tanks taking more dtps than they currently do. Otherwise we will faceroll the content. That means 25man raids will almost have to have a HL Spam with Bacon HolyPally going balls to the wall in order to keep 2 targets up. Designers have done nothing to change the fact that HL Spam is the single highest HPS to two targets possible from a single healer in game. And basic game design mechanics require that if there need to be at least 2 tanks for 25man content, then those two tanks need to be taking serious damage very frequently, making those HL spams better and better.

Any other option involves removing the requirement for having at least two tanks from a boss encounter design or creating gimmics against a specific class and build. Even incinerate flesh and penetrating cold ( targeting a non-tank with "THREAT_OF_DOOM" ) just makes me want to spam HL more.

FC Heroic - a complete gimmic fight - is the only place that having at least 1 HL Spam in the raid isnt *mandatory*.

Requiring significant movement times that force LG to fall off, imposing serious mana issues ( Vexaz ), or overheal penalties ( Anub P3 ) are the only hints of encounter design that I can think of which would make me want to FL instead of HL.