6.0 Paladin Discussion and Speculation (All Specs)

[Raeph]

FV sure is a boost to single target damage but I can imagine that the 10% AP / 10% Haste could be better in cleave heavy encounters where you tend to not primarily utilize that one finisher but Divine Storm and do not forget the AP bonus applies to every attack and not just one. If FV wants to compete it has to be strong because it only buffs one ability out of many.

True but when you choose The Light Within for the bonus you are Gaining +10% Attack Speed(not haste so only really effects white swings) and +10% AP, but you are losing (potentially since it hasn't been confirmed) 2 GCDs every 20 seconds to maintain the two buffs. With zero haste that's 13 action events, with 7 HoPo generators and 6 fillers. THW forces you to dump 2 fillers for seal switching.

I state it at zero haste because even if you have 50% haste, rather than zero, you still lose out those 2 fillers regardless, you just compress the rotation a bit to open up room for additional HoPo generation.

[Deleted]

Yeah, I do not really see us switching seals for 10% attack speed but the 10% AP permanently and without lost GCDs would still apply then. It would be another math thing to really come to a conclusion. But oh well we do not even have beta available nor do we know our third new T100 talent. Who knows what we are to behold in this currently open spot.

[nightfalls]

But for Holy & Prot T90 is pretty nice and offers a good set of choices.

Holy T90 is not what it was earlier, it's actually kind of crap now. If you want a good T90 that actually does something, look at Priests.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

10% ap would mean that your attacks hit so much harder that the 10% attackspeed prob wouldn't be worth it considering how small a percentage auto attacks do of our damage with the current damage breakdown anyways, just speculation ofc.

[nyc81991]

In my experience in playing my assassination rogue alt, blindside is an amazing mechanic , i'd love to see it applied to hammer of wrath , even if it was removed from being available to use during AW, if we were to make a direct copy it would be
Performing a successful crusader strike has a 30% chance to enable a single use of Hammer of Wrath ,Regardless of the enemy targets health

this would actually make haste even more valuable because you'd want to get the CS cooldown as low as possible, or they could say successful CS crits will enable a single use of HoW regardless of target health , if they wanted us to gear towards crit instead of haste , id actually like this a lot i think.
It would give us another proc to watch for that we'd want to use before our next CS or risk loosing another proc , lets face it art of war isn't exciting .. or rewarding really

I like that idea. Hammer Of Wrath doesn't even hit very hard anymore so its not like it would be broken to have a proc that lets you use it outside of AW / -20% hp. It would also make Crusader Strike feel better to hit.

[Lovestar]

I do not believe Seal Twisting will survive development if it remains on-GCD and 20s duration. The game doesn't support that kind of megaclunk anymore, people don't have patience for it, and where it still exists, it's getting pruned constantly. If it somehow goes Live post-Beta, it will become one of those x.1 "We changed our minds" casualties.

Off-GCD, maybe, because in that situation you can go "WHOOPS" and split-second swap it when you check your buffs right before you Judge, and it wouldn't impede your rotation in any way. Even then I suspect this talent is not long for the world, at least not in its current incarnation. There's nothing "wrong" with it per se conceptually, but it doesn't work in the contemporary WoW environment.

If they insist on playing with Seals I see a more plausible outcome as something like "Judging temporarily activates all Seals with buffed effects" or "Judging temporarily supercharges the effects of your current Seal" or "Judging triggers an additional powerful effect based on current Seal", etc. etc. Maybe rename the talent something very Blizzard, like Seal of Approval, or Trained Seal, or Seal the Deal.

Decoupling it from Twisting would also allow it to be more appealing to Holy without pulling this jarring "WHOOPS YOU SWITCHED SPECS, NOW IT'S TWO BEACONS. WHY? BECAUSE." Asking Holy to Judge on CD to trigger a special Seal effect isn't any worse than Selfless Healer (which is a surprisingly tolerable talent now). You could bring back, for example, the feel of Insight Mana Judging by making Insight splash out a heal and restore Mana when judged (sort of a Pally Power Word: Solace, really).

I think the goal is to feel nostalgic Retro-Pally and get back to the Judge-Seal tension/interaction the class used to have, and there are probably better ways to do that than trying to revive Seal Twisting, which will end up as a nuisance in the current game design. Especially since this is a talent — so the rotation has to be compelling/engaging with or without Twisting. That means adding Twisting on top will probably be overkill and annoy people.

Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of players who would love it because they're twitchy APM gamers that long for arcade stuff like that and playing GCD Tetris. Based on most of Blizzard's change history, though, I'm assuming people who would enjoy working Twists in correctly are in the minority, and that Blizz wants talents to be appealing to the majority.

Like, it's one of those talents people will try for 15 minutes, then drop and pick Holy Shield/FV, unless a guide or Trade Chat specifically tells them to take Twisting or they'll be Armoried and made fun of. And in that case they'll go to the forums and yell "I DIDN'T ROLL A PALADIN TO MAINTAIN 20 SECOND BUFFS", and we know this because we were all here for 4.0 and Inqusition version 1.0.

Then again, I also said Elemental Blast wouldn't make it because it's annoying as hell / nearly-pointless for Resto and annoying as hell for Enhancement. But it survived every MoP patch, to my amazement. So maybe everyone will be laughing at me in 6.4 as they Seal Twist. :p

[Zabannith]

True but when you choose The Light Within for the bonus you are Gaining +10% Attack Speed(not haste so only really effects white swings) and +10% AP, but you are losing (potentially since it hasn't been confirmed) 2 GCDs every 20 seconds to maintain the two buffs. With zero haste that's 13 action events, with 7 HoPo generators and 6 fillers. THW forces you to dump 2 fillers for seal switching.

I state it at zero haste because even if you have 50% haste, rather than zero, you still lose out those 2 fillers regardless, you just compress the rotation a bit to open up room for additional HoPo generation.

Not to mention the 2 hp you'd loose in addition because you're not using generators but switching seals (and if they take seals off the GCD then ppl will just macro seal switching to judge with a shift mod to keep both up by pressing shift every other judge, and since blizz has said they don't like people macroing abilities together I can't see them coming off the GCD)
But I do think what bear said is right , we will just use it for the 10% attack power and call it a day on aoe fights simply because 10% attack speed really only will apply to white hits and they are such a small percent of our dmg that we will for the most part ignore it

[Raeph]

Not to mention the 2 hp you'd loose in addition because you're not using generators but switching seals (and if they take seals off the GCD then ppl will just macro seal switching to judge with a shift mod to keep both up by pressing shift every other judge, and since blizz has said they don't like people macroing abilities together I can't see them coming off the GCD)
But I do think what bear said is right , we will just use it for the 10% attack power and call it a day on aoe fights simply because 10% attack speed really only will apply to white hits and they are such a small percent of our dmg that we will for the most part ignore it

I think so for Ret. If prot chooses it then I'm not really sure which choice it will be.

If the gameplay video that they released last week or two weeks ago is any indication we should see 100k hp tanks at level 100 (maybe a bit more but that should be what we see).

100k with the +3% Hp per sec bonus is obviously 3k hp per second, on top of whatever they do for self healing (depending on what they do with vengeance scaling on Eternal Flame/Word of Glory/Sacred Shield). Not sure what we can see with regard to tank AP, I'd guess somewhere in the range of 7-10k in the first tier, so that is only 700-1k AP with the 10% AP bonus.

Guess we'll see. Don't really have time to napkin math it out atm.

[Kelemar]

Calculation with the result: 52%


wow that's a wall of text sorry lol

Ah, that's really good to know! Thank you for your work and time.

[Zabannith]

I think so for Ret. If prot chooses it then I'm not really sure which choice it will be.

If the gameplay video that they released last week or two weeks ago is any indication we should see 100k hp tanks at level 100 (maybe a bit more but that should be what we see).

100k with the +3% Hp per sec bonus is obviously 3k hp per second, on top of whatever they do for self healing (depending on what they do with vengeance scaling on Eternal Flame/Word of Glory/Sacred Shield). Not sure what we can see with regard to tank AP, I'd guess somewhere in the range of 7-10k in the first tier, so that is only 700-1k AP with the 10% AP bonus.

Guess we'll see. Don't really have time to napkin math it out atm.

Yeah most of my posts aside from when I update the Op will be from a ret POV because that's what I main , and even tho i tank as 3rd tank on heroic shamans every week , it's like pulling teeth for me .

on a side note , since I don't use twitter I need you guys to post anything you find on there here in this thread so I can put it in the OP

[Deleted]

You know, I wouldn't go around pointing out just how strong FV will be in contrast to TLW TOO much. Knowing Blizz, their reaction MIGHT very well be "Oh, Nobody is gonna take TLW because FV is strong? NERF FV!"...

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

I think so for Ret. If prot chooses it then I'm not really sure which choice it will be.

If the gameplay video that they released last week or two weeks ago is any indication we should see 100k hp tanks at level 100 (maybe a bit more but that should be what we see).

100k with the +3% Hp per sec bonus is obviously 3k hp per second, on top of whatever they do for self healing (depending on what they do with vengeance scaling on Eternal Flame/Word of Glory/Sacred Shield). Not sure what we can see with regard to tank AP, I'd guess somewhere in the range of 7-10k in the first tier, so that is only 700-1k AP with the 10% AP bonus.

Guess we'll see. Don't really have time to napkin math it out atm.

Not really much point even doing napkin maths when we have no idea what the updated attack power/spell power scaling will be, what with base damage being removed. Especially as the first balance pass will be a good two months after the beta starts.

[kensim]

Random thought...

Blizzard likes a bit of randomness so lets remove seals as "stances" and tie it to Judgements...so when you judge a target one of 3 seals appears on the target.

Seal of Truth - Preferred Single Target Seal/When used against a player it becomes Seal of Justice.
Seal of Righteousness - Preferred AoE Seal
Seal of Insight - Preferred Healing Seal

So once you attain the seal you want on your target you can lock it in with Inquisition. As long as you maintain Inquisition then further judgements proc the seal.

Seal of Truth - I wouldn't do a dot, I would do an extra strike or something with a revamped holy fire graphic or something as proc damage.
Seal of Justice - Proc a slow that would get you to the next judgement blah blah blah
Seal of Righteousness - AoE blast of light impacting all nearby targets (ignoring CC'd mobs/players)
Seal of Insight - AoE blast of healing to all nearby targets

Possibly the new L100 talent could be to give Judgment a charge system (like Warriors charge) to reduce some of the randomness and up your dps/healing and add a bit strategy. Just a fresh brainstorm, but certainly would spice up some rotations.

[Deleted]

Personally I do not like mechanics that can only be triggered by one ability. You will then always look out for those procs when using this single ability and praying to the rng gods to let it proc after that next button press. Rather I would like to see all our abilities have a certain chance to proc it. Then it wouln't be that predictable and furthermore not as frustrating because you always know the next button press, no matter which attack it is you are about to press, can proc the mechanic.

[kensim]

Makes sense to proc with all abilities, can certainly be balanced that way. On further reflection I like your way better (random proc on all HP giving abilities or something rather than 100% on Judgement)

[Nurvus]

Lovestar, you need more Crit and Mastery before trying to make a compelling argument out of ridiculing those who enjoy(ed) Seal Twisting and exaggerating its flaws with a Wall of Text.

I don't particularly look forward Seal Twisting, with or without GCD, but I admit it is a good change of gameplay.
Your counter-proposal (temporarily activating all seals) is the kind of Talent that would probably be weaker in its damage potential to compensate its increased utility, and remove choice because it just gives you everything in one button, both of which make you look rather contradicting in your assessment of the current state of The Light Within.
Your other counter-proposals represent the blandest kind of Talent blizzard could come up with. The kind of talent you put in when you're really out of ideas.

We don't yet know exactly how much GCD will be freed by the changes to secondary stats and our abilities, and as such saying that Seal Twisting is unviable is a baseless statement.

Furthermore, the talents are not in their final iteration, and we may see llonger and/or stronger buffs compensating the GCD loss.

Please be less hyperbolic.

[Malthanis]

For the sake of helping keep conversations organized (as organized as they can be in large threads, anyways), there are now spec specific megathreads for Warlords.

Protection

Retribution

Holy

We'll keep general Paladin info to this thread from now on.

[Lovestar]

Lovestar, you need more Crit and Mastery before trying to make a compelling argument out of ridiculing those who enjoy(ed) Seal Twisting and exaggerating its flaws with a Wall of Text.

I haven't ridiculed anyone nor am I trying to exaggerate flaws. I said straight-up that there's a legitimate market for it, but I'm sceptical that market will be large enough to keep the talent alive since Blizzard tends to redo or chop anything that proves too unpopular statistically.

I like the idea, personally. I think the concept sounds cool — all the T100 talents sound cool. But you're looking at a class which for whatever reason has had Inquisition boosted from I think 18-24s or something crazy low in Cata Beta (!) to 30s via Inquiry of Faith to finally now 60s (!!) while also constantly increasing its ability to generate Holy Power during that time period.

Blizzard doesn't make these decisions blindly. Even if Inq seems fine to you or me, they have good reasons for giving in or softening the requirements. In that environment, I'm sceptical that people will tolerate "Press Truth > Judge > wait 15s > Press Righteoussness > Judge > Press Truth". And if people don't even bother shifting out of Truth, then what you basically have is a passive 10% AP with some throwaway optional gimmick perks no one uses.

And again, this is a talent. The rotation has to work without it. Which means it will either trample all over a clean rotation, or the baseline rotation will feel glacial and stilted without GCDs to plug up with Seals. Neither possibility is appealing IMO. That leaves off-GCD Seals, which has its own set of issues.

Obviously, you're correct we don't know what's happening to rotations or ability lists yet, and that talents are still iterating. But since this is the 6.0 Speculation and Discussion thread, I decided to speculate and discuss based on what we do know. :p And my speculation is that no matter what Blizzard does design-wise for WoD, Seal Twists probably won't work out in practice based on preexisting patterns of player reactions — at least not as currently proposed.

Our discussions are monitored during periods of development like this. Even if we're proposing concerns that are silly, overblown, or already neutralized internally, it still provides the devs part of what they're looking for — real-world expectations and reactions to their designs. I think that "Just wait and see what happens" is, generally, less useful than constructively speculating about flaws or issues or how you would use something.

If the worst thing that happens is someone runs numbers and tells me I'm wrong and here's why — good!! Now we all know better. =)

[Zabannith]

updated op with dev watercooler stuffs for holy ppls

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Lay on Hands is currently exempted from the percentage-based heal "nerf" because of its super long cooldown and "once per fight" usage.

Screenshot of conversation with Lore on twitter earlier today: