[WoD] Protection Paladin Megathread

[Malthanis]

All Protection Paladin specific discussion for Warlords is to happen here.

General Paladin information to be found here (thanks to Zabannith for being awesome and opening that thread up).


I'm going to try and keep a log of things that are happening here in the OP. If you've got info about something, leave a post and I'll record it here (each item will be a link to the post adding it). If I ever miss something, feel free to call it out in the thread again for me, or to shoot me a PM about it.

Reported by Raeph (3-17-2014):

'Afternoon. WoD Tank info seems hard to come by. 3 ?s, if you are willing: Value of Multistrike for tanks(just dps or more)?
Multistrike will have defensive value. (Celestalon)

Will New Veng buff self heals? Dev team's goal for value of Bonus Armor vs other stats (situational or always good)?
Yes, it'll buff self heals. Bonus Armor is always good, except the extremely rare case where you're taking no physical damage. (Celestalon)

WoD Alpha - Build 18156 (4-17-2014):

Paladin (Forums)

• Flash of Light now costs 37% of Base Mana, down from 38.5%.

Talents

• Eternal Flame HoT now scales with 6.6% of spellpower, up from 3.3%.
• Seraphim now also increases Readiness.

Major Glyphs

• Glyph of Divine Favor was renamed Glyph of Divine Wrath and now works with Avenging Wrath.

[kensim]

Thank you very much!

[Raeph]

yep Thanks.

[Captainn]

Is anyone else worried about Sanctity of Battle with the new gearing system? Seems that with less gems/no reforging, haste is going to be hard to come by.

[Lovestar]

With the system changes, they have to give Prot a reason to care about Crit and Multistrike, so until we know what those reasons will be, it's hard to assess the Haste impact.

That said, being unable to mass-Gem/Chant/Reforge into Haste will make Prot (and Ret) feel really dull if the current rotation design is in place.

And the current rotation design is a trap, since it inherently assumes you're going to aggressively Haste gear and the CDs/gaps are designed accordingly. If it's fluid at low-Haste or non-Haste gearing, it will become crowded and unpleasant at high Haste (devaluing Haste from, if nothing else, a comfort/player-ability-to-keep-up angle) and if it's clunky at low-Haste then people will still feel driven into Haste over other stats or find it unpleasant and annoying if Crit/Multi/Mast become the 'better' stats to stack.

This is part of the issue of a design where you can't control your stats aggressively; removing Reforge and cutting down on gemming aggressively and cutting back on enchants leads to a situation where you have a big blob of random stats that are all "fine", but even if one is "AWESOME" conceptually you're at the mercy of pure RNG to get enough of it to be awesome.

Most of this can be mitigated by just giving Ret & Prot a no-CD filler and allowing Haste to continue to reduce the CD on "important" rotation buttons. As long as you have something productive to do while timers count down, you end up in a Prot Warrior situation where you don't really need CD reduction on Shield Slam / Revenge since you've got Devastate to fill in gaps and trigger more Rage any time you can't do something better.

[Captainn]

With the system changes, they have to give Prot a reason to care about Crit and Multistrike, so until we know what those reasons will be, it's hard to assess the Haste impact.

That said, being unable to mass-Gem/Chant/Reforge into Haste will make Prot (and Ret) feel really dull if the current rotation design is in place.

And the current rotation design is a trap, since it inherently assumes you're going to aggressively Haste gear and the CDs/gaps are designed accordingly. If it's fluid at low-Haste or non-Haste gearing, it will become crowded and unpleasant at high Haste (devaluing Haste from, if nothing else, a comfort/player-ability-to-keep-up angle) and if it's clunky at low-Haste then people will still feel driven into Haste over other stats or find it unpleasant and annoying if Crit/Multi/Mast become the 'better' stats to stack.

This is part of the issue of a design where you can't control your stats aggressively; removing Reforge and cutting down on gemming aggressively and cutting back on enchants leads to a situation where you have a big blob of random stats that are all "fine", but even if one is "AWESOME" conceptually you're at the mercy of pure RNG to get enough of it to be awesome.

Most of this can be mitigated by just giving Ret & Prot a no-CD filler and allowing Haste to continue to reduce the CD on "important" rotation buttons. As long as you have something productive to do while timers count down, you end up in a Prot Warrior situation where you don't really need CD reduction on Shield Slam / Revenge since you've got Devastate to fill in gaps and trigger more Rage any time you can't do something better.

That was exactly my point. It is really too early to think about this, I suppose, since they have to rework stats to make it work, but I do feel uneasy with the idea. I cringe every time I think about low haste values on my Paladin.

Maybe every time you crit you lower the CD on CS and J by .1 seconds... Or something along those lines. Even that seems like a very 'meh' fix.

[Lyese]

Just a couple ideas.

Multistrike procs could generate extra HoPo (CS procs multistrike, gets 2 HoPo), generate extra healing, or if there was some "Damage dealt is converted to a shield" mechanic.

Crit already has synergy with self-healing, and maybe with the above shielding mechanic can contribute to AM.

[Wyrden]

Warrior received a change on 1 of their lvl 100 talent, Anger Management. Every 15 rage they spend every ability that has a readiness effect will have -1 sec on cd.
Our original Unbreakable Spirit was almost the same, every 3 HoPo(IIRC) we have some sort of reduced cd on DP.
Not a log time prot pally here, only tanked this expansion and was a lfr tank during cata(main ret). Haste was a benediction for us, I hope i'll enjoy prot in WoD too.

[xebtria]

Regarding ability bloat, imho, paladins need to get some spam-ability which does something, and that something is more than just doing more damage than a melee attack.
warriors have devastate (applies/refreshes sunder armor, can proc shield slam)
druids have lacerate (applies/refreshes dot tick)
monks have tiger palm (refreshes that armor ignore buff, generates chi)

Death knight also don't have a similar ability, which is why I don't really like deathknight. they can spam all their abilities, sure, but they require either some rune, or runic power. they don't have a "I am lazy I just want to spam one button now"-ability. Just as paladins, although CS is sort of okayish, because it's every other GCD, it's not that we have to wait forever for it.

they could remove the CD from CS/hammer, change holypower abilities from 3 to 5 holy power (just like 5 combo points from a rogue) (and you can save up to 7 instead up to 5), and then make CS/hammer be able to proc grand crusader (just like Devastate can proc shield slam). This would be followed by a small rework of the class (they said, they won't change the general gameplay - no overhaul -, only tweak it at some places.):
avenger's shield always does generate one HP, if procced, generates two.
Consecration also creates HP.
then just make AS be a real AoE (e.g. "damages the main target for 100% damage and all targets 8y around the main target for 30% dmg"), and the glyph still makes it only singletarget dmg, with increased dmg)
holy wrath definitly needs some rework, I don't know how though. but the current design (always same fixed amount of damage, split between targets) is not nice.
then, ofc, the buffs from all finishers would needed to be rebalanced by amount and duration, but that's a different discussion.

they then need to balance the damage of our abilities:
the damage from abilities (from high to low, single target) would be: AS (procced), J, AS (normal, glyphed), CS, AS (normal, unglyphed), HW, Consc, Hammer,
the damage from abilities (from high to low, aoe, let's say at least 4 mobs): AS (procced, unglyphed), HW, Consc, AS (normal, unglyphed), Hammer, AS (glyphed, procced and normal) J, CS.
That way, we would again have a prio list and not a de-facto rotation which you can screw up, as we have it now.
single: AS (proc) > J > AS (normal, if you have it glyphed) > HW. and then CS if they all are on CD. AS would not be used unglyphed and unprocced in a pure ST situation you wouldn't use consc or hammer on singletarget either.
multi (4+): AS (procced) > HW > Consc > AS (normal). Hammer if all are on CD. you definitely do not want to glyph AS for multitarget, plus you wouldn't use CS or J on multitarget.

then, our lvl 90 talents should be reworked to function only as some CDs, e.g.:
either single target heal/hot for ES (but I don't think that would be needed, paladin has so much selfheal anyways), or maybe something like "every attack done to the paladin while ES is on the target heals the paladin for 20% of the damage done".
Hammer an AoE heal for the group just as it is now, but without the damage part for enemies. needs better visibility (maybe like disc priest bubble of some sort). increased healing and cooldown, maybe. maybe even "disc bubble reversed" (save the healing part for holy paladins) and make it "enemies standing in the effect area cause xy% less damage".
Prism just as it works now, but only one way (target enemy, heal party members in xy yard radius).


and with all that, I'm sure, there can be some CDs re-balanced and in the process of that, some also removed.

[Raeph]

With the system changes, they have to give Prot a reason to care about Crit and Multistrike, so until we know what those reasons will be, it's hard to assess the Haste impact.

That said, being unable to mass-Gem/Chant/Reforge into Haste will make Prot (and Ret) feel really dull if the current rotation design is in place.

And the current rotation design is a trap, since it inherently assumes you're going to aggressively Haste gear and the CDs/gaps are designed accordingly. If it's fluid at low-Haste or non-Haste gearing, it will become crowded and unpleasant at high Haste (devaluing Haste from, if nothing else, a comfort/player-ability-to-keep-up angle) and if it's clunky at low-Haste then people will still feel driven into Haste over other stats or find it unpleasant and annoying if Crit/Multi/Mast become the 'better' stats to stack.

This is part of the issue of a design where you can't control your stats aggressively; removing Reforge and cutting down on gemming aggressively and cutting back on enchants leads to a situation where you have a big blob of random stats that are all "fine", but even if one is "AWESOME" conceptually you're at the mercy of pure RNG to get enough of it to be awesome.

Most of this can be mitigated by just giving Ret & Prot a no-CD filler and allowing Haste to continue to reduce the CD on "important" rotation buttons. As long as you have something productive to do while timers count down, you end up in a Prot Warrior situation where you don't really need CD reduction on Shield Slam / Revenge since you've got Devastate to fill in gaps and trigger more Rage any time you can't do something better.

What about as a "no-cd filler" something along the lines of "ranged attack - gives your next holy power generator a 20% chance to generate 2 holy power instead of 1, stacks up to 5 times". Gives Prot a non-cd ranged attack to aid in picking up spawned adds, damage can be adjusted low enough so that it has lowest priority(something you use when you have nothing better to do or in a niche event during a fight like adds out of range and Judgement and AS are down) and with the chance to increase holy power generation you shave off the penalty of not having enough haste at low gear levels, though the use of the ability is such that it doesn't become meaningless at high haste levels either, because we could always use more Holy Power.

[Serenais]

With the system changes, they have to give Prot a reason to care about Crit and Multistrike, so until we know what those reasons will be, it's hard to assess the Haste impact.

That said, being unable to mass-Gem/Chant/Reforge into Haste will make Prot (and Ret) feel really dull if the current rotation design is in place.

And the current rotation design is a trap, since it inherently assumes you're going to aggressively Haste gear and the CDs/gaps are designed accordingly. If it's fluid at low-Haste or non-Haste gearing, it will become crowded and unpleasant at high Haste (devaluing Haste from, if nothing else, a comfort/player-ability-to-keep-up angle) and if it's clunky at low-Haste then people will still feel driven into Haste over other stats or find it unpleasant and annoying if Crit/Multi/Mast become the 'better' stats to stack.

This is part of the issue of a design where you can't control your stats aggressively; removing Reforge and cutting down on gemming aggressively and cutting back on enchants leads to a situation where you have a big blob of random stats that are all "fine", but even if one is "AWESOME" conceptually you're at the mercy of pure RNG to get enough of it to be awesome.

Most of this can be mitigated by just giving Ret & Prot a no-CD filler and allowing Haste to continue to reduce the CD on "important" rotation buttons. As long as you have something productive to do while timers count down, you end up in a Prot Warrior situation where you don't really need CD reduction on Shield Slam / Revenge since you've got Devastate to fill in gaps and trigger more Rage any time you can't do something better.

Sadly, it may end up that we will stack either stamina or strength, simply because numerically, they are the only worthwhile gems that will be available, unless something silly like intellect greately increasing our self-heal happens (hopefully not). That would still put our rotation to being stuck with large CDs on all abilities, whereas negating the fastpaced tanking style was the fun part of being a protadin. They could, in theory, aleviate that via "the higher your itemlevel, the higher your base haste/lower CDs on speciffic abilities", but that could get into problems (ilvl being the most valued stat - I probably don't have to elaborate on the disasters that would invite), or they could try to tie it into another stat, but... None seems to be making any sense (I mean, stack stamina, your attacks are faster - how would that even work?), not to mention that it would mean paladin tanks suddenly using weird stuff to tank, like intellect or, Ceiling Cat forbid, agility plate.

[Lovestar]

Well, with Primaries on gear auto-switching by spec, gem slots being cut down, Meta gems gone, and Primary stats not even available on gems in WoD, we're basically stuck 'stacking' Secondaries, although given the changes they're proposing 'stacking' is a generous term.

This is going to feel like the start of an expansion where your only available gear is slotless dungeon blues and you see neon angry red when that plate DPS or Pally healer takes the one Plate Haste piece in every slot every time it drops, leaving you with a rotation that feels like you press CrS and Judge once every 3 minutes.

Unless of course they make good on their magical unicorn promise of all stats being equal — but that sounds unlikely. Either you make stats so universal that no one cares what gear drops (sad) or you make stats strong in different ways (in which case you still care a lot about certain stats at certain times).

Take Brewmaster as a good example and somewhat of a model organism for 'all stats much closer together' — pretty much every stat they have on gear is very solid. But they still choose to stack specific ones based on their situation and needs. Crit is good, but 25H Progression goes for Mastery because that provides what they really need and Crit does not. Reversed in 10M. Not being able to gem/reforge to Mastery and being stuck with heavy Crit gear would make for a frusrated Brew, depending.

Part of the problem of course is we're speculating with approximately maybe 2% of the actual information available. So issues that seem glaring right now may be washed out even as early as the first Beta notes. But speculating is fun, and the past has shown community concerns are often legit, so

[Demsi]

I hope that prot gets a bit more engaging playstyle, as a warrior, Druid, monk and dk there is always something to press, even if it is just a filler spell, as a paladin we usually have to wait after using our HP generator, because everything is on CD, ofc with high haste that wont be much of a problem, but i doubt we will have that much haste in WoD, there is going to be moments where we just wait for our spells to get off cooldown, where we just auto attack, i find warriors much more fun even if it is just spamming devastate.

[Raeph]

I hope that prot gets a bit more engaging playstyle, as a warrior, Druid, monk and dk there is always something to press, even if it is just a filler spell, as a paladin we usually have to wait after using our HP generator, because everything is on CD, ofc with high haste that wont be much of a problem, but i doubt we will have that much haste in WoD, there is going to be moments where we just wait for our spells to get off cooldown, where we just auto attack, i find warriors much more fun even if it is just spamming devastate.

True, Prot spec feels horrifically clunky and slow until you get around 12-15% haste, then it just keeps getting better from there.

[Viriel]

I'm personally a bit worried about the whole removal of reforging and cutting back on gems. For both holy and prot I fear the personalisation and optimization will be taken out of your character(spirit levels, haste breakpoints for holy, haste>crit>mastery or haste>mastery>crit, exp level for prot), and I am not convinced by blizz saying 'you'll be fine'. It's nice and all that you want gear to be able to change stats from spec to spec, but I fear this change will be bad fpr the specs, and we'll end up with certain pieces for certain specs in our bags anyway.

[Lovestar]

It's hard to gauge because we haven't been in a situation like this since Vanilla, basically.

From TBC forward Gems allowed you to compensate for imperfect stats on an item and TBC-WOTLK standardized Enchants to have more variety/choices and also be more consistent, as well as steadily introducing more and more extra stats in other spots (head, legs, shoulder). Plus Metas, etc.

Reforging of course took it to an art form, but the combination of killing Reforge and making Gem slots "special" and cutting off other special enchants and diverging 'role' stats into Accessories only is throwing us way, way back in terms of stat personalization.

[KurenaiXIII]

I'm personally a bit worried about the whole removal of reforging and cutting back on gems. For both holy and prot I fear the personalisation and optimization will be taken out of your character(spirit levels, haste breakpoints for holy, haste>crit>mastery or haste>mastery>crit, exp level for prot), and I am not convinced by blizz saying 'you'll be fine'. It's nice and all that you want gear to be able to change stats from spec to spec, but I fear this change will be bad fpr the specs, and we'll end up with certain pieces for certain specs in our bags anyway.

Well, haste break points won't exist in WoD, according to the devs. Exp and hit will be gone too.

But I almost guarantee that there will be pieces you don't particularly want--and pieces that are highly contested. That's the nature of gearing even now.

[Lovestar]

It absolutely is but right now we have a lot of power to mitigate that. Which, admittedly, is something the devs have openly expressed displeasure about.

But I don't think people are concerned about stats which are just 'better' in large quantities. Take Blood DK for example — Mastery is great for damage reduction but if you get a piece that's Haste/Parry or something ungodly you're not going to /facepalm even in a world without reforging or gem slots since you can still play and do your job about the same as before.

Instead the people who are uneasy about this are playing specs where a given stat or stats is mandatory in large quantities. 'Mandatory' here is being used very loosely, but I think most Prots can agree that the difference in comfort between stacking Haste and not is significant once you've tried it. And seeing gear drop without Haste your first reaction is 'Thank god for reforging and gem slots'.

In WoD you're back to facing ugly decisions like pre-Cata 'Well it has 500 more Armor so I have to wear it, but now I'm under Defense cap so I have to rearrange everything else. I kept that Defense ring in the bank, right?' >.<

[Jackielope]

In WoD you're back to facing ugly decisions like pre-Cata 'Well it has 500 more Armor so I have to wear it, but now I'm under Defense cap so I have to rearrange everything else. I kept that Defense ring in the bank, right?' >.<

Considering there are no caps of any kind thanks to them redoing haste and entirely nixing hit and expertise, I don't expect there will be any need to rearrange all of one's gear except perhaps to min-max per fight since some fights could favor certain stats (especially readiness). If something is an upgrade, it's an upgrade, and that's all there is to say about it.

Then again, I do wonder how they might plan fights around readiness. We'll have to see which CDs are affected by readiness, and what the big abilities of fights will look like. But once we've figured out the ratings conversion for each spec it'll be easy to come up with breakpoints depending on the fight

[Lovestar]

Prot/Ret and Haste was never about 'caps', it was about your rotation feeling like riding a bike with rusted chains until you hit a certain minimum Haste and only getting smoother as your Haste climbs.

That's where the issue with these stat changes comes in — specs where a certain is basically 'never enough' or a certain minimum is needed/desired instead of the maximums that casters tended to shoot for due to breakpoints.

Oh I get what you're saying, I was just pulling an example from our dark and dirty past of why the loss of Reforge will potentially bring back bittersweet feelings about 'upgrades'.