Cataclysm Paladin Changes - Page 6

EvadDeWahr · 04/20/10, 12:47 AM

With Holy Paladin raid healing at this time it mainly means BoL on one of the Tanks or other strategic target and FoL on the raid. This works to some extent due to the fact that for raid members other than the tank this is sufficient healing to keep the person up and the fairly constant beacon heals can help smooth the damage profile on the strategic target.
With Cat the changes will mean using our new HoT on CD, BoL on the tank and using HL on the raid since we would not be able to sustain FoL due to the changes to mana cost.
So how this converts to game play depends entirely on damage profiles.

Blue did post that someone healing in a preview of Cat was freaking out trying to get everyone topped off until they realised they did not have to.

Currently the biggest issue I have in healing hard content is around 10 mans. In 25 mans you have enough healing types to cover all the niches. Not so much in 10 mans. So I am hoping the the tools will help cover the niches in Cat, but to be honest I remain to be convinced.

The problem I see with the new HoT will be either it is so significant that content will have to be balanced around it (a' la CoH/WG) until it is reduced.
Or it is limited significantly by range in which case it will very encounter specific how effective it is.
Or it is limited by it's power in which case it is just another button you press on CD to help out.
Or it is limited by a long CD, this is probably the best option for us, but it means that for it to work in 10 mans
that when the damage spike aligns with the CD it is easy otherwise it is NOT.

So here's hoping...

Elimbras · 04/20/10, 1:37 PM

Originally Posted by flyingtoastr

Now the difference once again becomes talented vs trained. If there's an ability that I can spend a talent point in that I'm only going to use in very limited circumstances [...]

Hunters have two talented abilities that shares a cd with baseline abilities: survival explosive shot shares cd with arcane shot, for a large chunk of additional damage, so that's a no brainer. Aimed shot shares a cd with multi-shot, and has only two small advantages : it's mortal strike effect, which is nearly useless in PvE, and the fact it's an instant when multishot has a hidden .5s cast time. It's not a mandatory talent, but useful one.

Think also of bladestorm for arms warriors. I think everyone would take it even if it was same dps on mono-target as slam, just for the possibility to have a strong aoe.

Nakari · 04/21/10, 8:21 AM

Originally Posted by Elimbras

Hunters have two talented abilities that shares a cd with baseline abilities: survival explosive shot shares cd with arcane shot, for a large chunk of additional damage, so that's a no brainer. Aimed shot shares a cd with multi-shot, and has only two small advantages : it's mortal strike effect, which is nearly useless in PvE, and the fact it's an instant when multishot has a hidden .5s cast time. It's not a mandatory talent, but useful one.

Aimed Shot is also cheaper (8% base mana instead of 9%) and is affected by several talents while Multi-Shot is not (for example Piercing Shots, Marked for Death and Sniper Training), so at least every Marksman-Hunter uses Aimed Shot most of the time and Multi-Shot only sometimes when there are adds around, while BM and sometimes SV skip the talent because they don't have the talents to make it significantly better than Multi-Shot. So it's relatively easy to make an ability interesting through other talents, by giving it an addtitional effect (like the 30% bleed Aimed Shot crits get from Piercing Shots) or making it just hit harder.

Blutelf · 05/06/10, 4:40 AM

The datamined talent calculator from MMO-C shows some of the first changes that Blizzard thinks about introducing (alpha, datamining, subject to change, let's be aware of that). So far only the Retribution tree seems to have been changed at all.

The Divine Storm change to 55% weapon damage and all targets is in.

There is a one point talent to improve Crusader Strike damage by 10% where the old CS used to be.

Swift Retribution is upgraded to 7% haste per point, making it 20% when fully talented.

Vindication has been adjusted to reduce physical damage done by the target by 10%.

Beacon of Light has also been adjusted to only work on Holy Light for now, but I expect a ton of changes to be made to the holy tree anyways so who cares.

EDIT: vvvv I would be careful making such a statement. CS is increased by Art of War and Sanctity of Battle to 100% weapon damage from 75% right now. Unless you can somehow see the CS version without the AoW and SoB talents, and you are sure that's exactly what it is you cannot be sure that a change has been done at all.

The new talent will indeed bring it up to 110%. Hardly the result of extensive balancing and we should reasonably expect additional tweaks as the alpha and beta proceed.

Glutton · 05/06/10, 5:14 AM

Swift Retribution no longer affects casting speed. I doubt this buff discrepancy will last, but the alpha version of Swift Retribution increases ranged attack speed in addition to melee attack speed whereas the DK and Enhancement versions only explicitly mention melee attack speed. Hunters will love us until it's fixed!

Crusader Strike looks like it was increased from 75% weapon damage to 100% weapon damage (and subject to an additional 10% from the revamped talent that's probably additive with the 10% from Art of War). Cooldown is still 4 seconds. This change largely makes up for the single target DPS loss from decreasing DS from 110% to 55% weapon damage.

flyingtoastr · 05/06/10, 11:50 PM

With the removal of the "3% All Haste" buff from Improved Moonkin Aura as well it's pretty much given at this point that SR is going to be another of the Windfury replacements. I hope they make it show up on the buff bars as well now, I never liked all the hidden buffs Ret brings.

GlacialRet · 05/07/10, 10:52 AM

How reliable is this talent tree considering Imp BoW and Imp BoM are both still listed? Both blessings are being combined and I remember reading that BoM will no longer be improved by talents. I know this is just an alpha but that should be one of the easiest things to change before changing percentages to other talents.

Blutelf · 05/07/10, 1:15 PM

There are many such equally "easily implemented" changes announced in Cataclysm. At some point the sheer multitude of such changes becomes "a lot of work". None of the talent trees have yet been reworked at all. I would not read too much into this.

Badpaladin · 05/07/10, 2:17 PM

The 41-pointer is likely just a placeholder because blizzard stated they want to avoid %modifiers in Talent Trees. Expect to see Imp. Crusader Strike(placeholder), Art of War, Sanctity of Battle, Crusade and Two-Handed Weapon Specialization be replaced.

beta4Life · 05/07/10, 5:42 PM

Originally Posted by GlacialRet

How reliable is this talent tree considering Imp BoW and Imp BoM are both still listed? Both blessings are being combined and I remember reading that BoM will no longer be improved by talents. I know this is just an alpha but that should be one of the easiest things to change before changing percentages to other talents.

I would call them very reliable, some changes are made before others, it is clear that one of the first major obstacles to the 10/25 equality model is buffs/debuffs, and several talent trees have their only changes as buff changes. It looks like we can probably expect heart of the crusader to be gone as well since the other version of it (master poisoner) has been changed instead to the CoE effect, and totem of wrath is gone completely and the new version of the ToW buff is without the 3% crit buff.

It looks like right now blizzard is shoring up the buffs/debuffs, spreading the major ones around more and just getting rid of most of the minor ones, most of the major talent tree changes haven't being implemented yet. As the alpha moves forward we will see the real talent tree changes, for now though we can just gain some insight into what some of the cataclysm plans are, like spreading major buffs to three sources instead of two in most cases.

Glutton · 05/08/10, 12:27 AM

Originally Posted by GlacialRet

How reliable is this talent tree considering Imp BoW and Imp BoM are both still listed? Both blessings are being combined and I remember reading that BoM will no longer be improved by talents. I know this is just an alpha but that should be one of the easiest things to change before changing percentages to other talents.

I wouldn't trust the talent tree where it's been explicitly stated that things are going to be changed or removed, but the revamped, hour long, and raid wide Blessing of Might has already been added: Blessing of Might. I believe Blizzard has stated in the past that they want to decrease the number of talents that increase the strength of buffs in Cataclysm, so I'd expect Imp BoM and Imp BoW to disappear.

Alterra · 05/09/10, 3:40 PM

We are scaling back the magnitude of some of the buffs, as we did with Sunder Armor. We want you to feel awesome when you have strong good synergy, but we don't want the buffs to overwhelm say your gear or skill. We're also planning on getting rid of any talent that buffs a buff. Any buff that is earned solely by talent needs to have a selfish component thrown in so that you don't feel like you should respec if someone else with that buff comes along. (source)

The current intent is that talents like improved blessings are going to be given the boot.

The main goal of the resource change is to buy DKs some free GCDs. Currently some abilities just can't compete, even if free, because you don't have the GCD to use that button. However, it's also not the goal that DKs stand around doing nothing for long stretches because all their runes are used up and everything else is on cooldown. Being GCD locked isn't a fun place to be, for any class. You can't vary your actions at all -- in fact you are often such a slave to those actions that you have tunnel vision for your UI (even if modded) and can't react to the dynamic nature of most encounters these days. If anything messes up your rotation, say you have to move or are temporarily CC'd, then everything just falls apart. (source)

Ghostcrawler responded to a thread about Death Knight changes with a bit of interesting information that definitely applies to Retribution. This makes it plausible that Ret will see changes to give it some breathing room in the rotation. Looking at Death Knights as a model, because of the increasing hp coming in Cataclysm, increasing damage on existing abilities and increasing their effective cooldown seems like it should be more feasible. This would present an opportunity help open Ret up for setting up some sort of system to allow for a ramp up that is more interesting, involved and rewarding than the current wait 10-15 seconds for auto-attacks or stack-and-forget Crusader Strikes.

Lavon · 05/14/10, 10:47 AM

Some preliminary information considering Mastery values has been datamined. I can't make much out of this but maybe you'll find it helpful. The source is apparently the same site that brought us so much information during the WotLK Alpha/Beta.

Mastery Values

Exemplar · 05/14/10, 12:58 PM

I will be interested to see if the 8% all damage and 20% holy damage are multiplicative or additive. Will Holy Damage be at 128% or 129.6%? As Mastery is acquired on gear that 1.6% would increase.

Also interesting will be the definition of "melee attacks" for the crit boost. For instance Judgement is a spell (silence impacts), has a 10 yd range, inflicts holy damage, but uses melee hit. Is it considered a "melee attack?"

If you spend only 51 in Ret you would have 24 free talents. It's likely we would want further talents in Ret (which would not impact mastery), reducing points to spend in other trees, but 24 should be the most possibly spent elsewhere. If Vengeance procs off of any inbound damage, sporadic levels of (up to) 2.352 * 2 * Stam extra AP could be very spikey. Even AOE or aura damage could give a steady increased AP. The alternative is up to 23.5% of your OOC spirit regen from Holy - not that our spirit would be significant in DPS gear (and no Spirit buff, right?). Makes Ret/Prot sound like the most likely combo unless regen is extremely tight or there are very tasty Holy talents (or mandatory, like Seals of the Pure).

Dram · 05/14/10, 1:49 PM

Originally Posted by Exemplar

If you spend only 51 in Ret you would have 24 free talents. It's likely we would want further talents in Ret (which would not impact mastery), reducing points to spend in other trees, but 24 should be the most possibly spent elsewhere. If Vengeance procs off of any inbound damage, sporadic levels of (up to) 2.352 * 2 * Stam extra AP could be very spikey. Even AOE or aura damage could give a steady increased AP. The alternative is up to 23.5% of your OOC spirit regen from Holy - not that our spirit would be significant in DPS gear (and no Spirit buff, right?). Makes Ret/Prot sound like the most likely combo unless regen is extremely tight or there are very tasty Holy talents (or mandatory, like Seals of the Pure).

I believe they mentioned that you would only be able to get the mastery bonuses from the tree with the most amount of points spent in it.