Protection Paladin - 15640+

#1 - April 25, 2012, 5:53 a.m.

With the changes to SotR alone I think it calls for a new thread for discussion.

We have gained a raid cool down with Devotion Aura shared on all specs, giving us the ability to reduce magic damage, which makes up the bulk of the raid damage, usually. A nice additional with some added benefits with the silence immunity and what have you and we get a raid cool down.

Mastery now has a secondary effect call Bastion of Glory which is tied into the new SotR. SotR now increases block percent, block amount, and puts the stacking Bastion of Glory buff up which increases healing done by WoG. As I see it this gives us a very powerful heal that we have some control over how powerful it is. I can easily see a 5 stack healing for a massive amount, turning WoG into an oh crap button in many situations where we are plugging along keeping SotR up. Similarly it can be held for periods of high damage to immediately help heal a prot pally up and. I very much like the interplay here between the two HP abilities. I wonder if we could use the over heal absorb effect back with this change to give a bet more leeway in using the 5 stack even when we are not taking enough damage for the heal to count.

The change to SotR in terms of block was needed given the multitude of problems it causes for mastery. This was a much better fix than I had anticipated. I see some steps heading towards prot pallies holding high levels of block as long as we maintain SotR. Given my current gear is fairly close to full end game I see the general expected level of block being acceptable without immediately negating the want for tanks not to block everything.

Problems:

We are still missing Weakened Blows being added to CS. It makes no sense to place it on one of two mutually exclusive abilities. Warriors TC applies deep wounds, DKs get theirs on diseases, Druids on Thrash which causes mangle resets. It just is silly to weave a HotR in every so often for the sake of this.

We are still one of two tanks, the other being a druid, lacking a secondary 'taunt' mechanic. We lost a unique version of our own, only to see unique abilities given to warriors and monks, with the DK retaining DG. Its less the other people have something and more we lost one while they gained theirs.

While I personally am content with the WoG glyph for producing extra damage when survival is less needed, at least as a substitute for inquisition, which I do not believe we need. Some have called for a means comparable to maul or HS to burn HP in these situations. I had suggested a glyph removing mitigation from SotR and turning it back into its hard hitting version we see on live. However, with the amount that SotR does it may not be as elegant an addition as initially suggested. Perhaps another HP finished for Single target damage would be appropriate but it is not like you see DKs swapping off DS for something else so it may not even be needed, seeing as SotR does damage whereas Shield Block/Savage Defense does not. This is a lesser concern to be sure.

Ghostcrawler

Game Designer

#95 - May 8, 2012, 5:27 a.m.

I can't imagine that blizz intends for paladins to have to get a swing timer addon to effectively micromanage a 3 second buff. I'm waiting patiently for a 'fix'.

Bosses hardly ever attack slower than 1.5 second these days and there is no longer a boss swing timer debuff. We find that when bosses attack slower, they have to hit really hard to do the same DPS, which means tanks risk being two-shot. A Shield of the Righteous should be able to get two hits.

Even if that were not the case, the penalty is mostly on healer mana. Because Shield of the Righteous can't be up all the time, it can't be the case that a paladin will die without it.

The challenge with the current SotR design is that Prot paladins generate Holy Power pretty quickly, which means any 3 Holy Power ability will be used often. We don't want SotR to have 100% coverage, or it starts to feel more like Inquisition or the Hammer of the Righteous debuff and not like a short cooldown. We could slow down Holy Power generation, but we're reluctant to do that, because it feels good coming in quickly and coming from abilities like Judgment. Having Bastion of Glory buff Word of Glory so much is a way to encourage paladins to spend some of their Holy Power on Word of Glory once in awhile so that it all isn't funneling into a persistent Shield of the Righteous shield.

Ghostcrawler

Game Designer

#113 - May 10, 2012, 6:12 p.m.

Unless by "these days" you mean "in Mists of Pandaria" instead of "on live WoW", this isn't true. Morchok, Ultraxion, and Twilight Elite Dreadblades/Slayers all have baseline swing times of 2.0s+, as far as I can tell. It's pretty common.

Sorry, I should have said we hardly ever have slow speed times on assbeaters -- bosses whose autoattack matters. Blackheart and Baelroc had a 1.5 speed timer. Patchwerk had a 0.75 speed timer. Zon'ozz started at 2.0, but increased his swing speed. I don't know that many tanks are worried about getting clobbered by Hagara, such that timing cooldowns to her weapon swings is very important. The default swing speed for creatures in WoW is 2.0, but we change it to 1.5 whenever we are worried about tank spike damage. (I only mention raid bosses, because you should be just fine in dungeons if you just use your cooldowns regularly).

This discrepancy is particularly glaring when it comes to Warriors, whose active mitigation buff is essentially identical to ours in practice (30% physical DR against unavoided hits with a chance of an additional 30% DR).

Warriors get a 6 sec Shield Block about every 15 sec though. Paladins are getting a 3 sec Shield of the Righteous about every 8 sec. If SotR lasts longer, then the uptime is very high. We can go to a longer duration if we make the SotR effect weaker (which doesn't feel visceral) or if Holy Power income is about twice as slow (which would feel terrible IMO) or if SotR somehow cost 6 Holy Power (which is weird).

Remember, these buttons are useful, but we're also not balancing around flawless use of them. Using your other cooldowns (Lay on Hands, Divine Protection, Ardent Defender, GoAK, Devotion Aura, big WoG stacks, etc.) at the most appropriate times is still a big part of being a tank, and arguably more important. The active mitigation model of converting resources into mitigation is to make tanks care more about their damage buttons (in a world where threat isn't super hard to manage).