[WoD] Protection Paladin Megathread

[Rewyn]

Yeah so

twitter.com/Faytte/status/458727840876224512

It appears Seals will remain on GCD, meaning any time you need to switch from Crusader Strike to Hammer of Righteous, you have to eat a GCD to do so, and that the lead designer thinks thats fine. Trying to be an optimist but the multistrike 'perk' we got is pretty useless, the draws for us to get crit are pretty small (mostly cause I do ot foresee the reset on AS being tweaked up from 30% Parry/30% Dodge(lol?).

The idea that I cant weave between CS/Hammer without wasting a GCD each time just seems like a huge step backwards.

[celinamuna]

Tbh HotR was such shit anyway, that it just gives me a great excuse to take it off the bars.

[Deleted]

The idea that I cant weave between CS/Hammer without wasting a GCD each time just seems like a huge step backwards.

That is definitely some TBC+Wrath design choice, like when Warriors had to stance-dance to access Whirlwind. They got rid of all that nonsense precisely because it was not fun, now they're apparently giving it to us?

This is going to hinder our ability to pick up adds when other options (unglyphed HW/AS) are on CD by making HotR now require some fore-thought (AKA watching-the-add-spawn-timer) or risk of delaying the first hit due to GCD = chances for a DPS to get aggro, delay HoPo generation each time we swap and is all around just clunky and slows the fluidity of the rotation down.

His comment of "there is room between CS cooldowns" shows that he hasn't thought this through. If I need AoE in the next 2 seconds, I have to stop whatever my next action is with possibly other spell sitting there waiting to be used, swap into AoE mode, then HotR. It's not like we're going to wait and weave swapping into a dead GCD if we need it right now.

Your car gear comparison is apt; definitely a feeling of "ok I'm in AoE mode now... ok, engaging... ok, swapping back to ST mode". The more Haste we get, the more jarring the swapping is going to be by pushing spells back. Are other tanks getting anything like this?

I might just... not use HotR ever unless it gets a significant buff. (which it should do now that it has its own opportunity cost)

[nightfalls]

Your car gear comparison is apt; definitely a feeling of "ok I'm in AoE mode now... ok, engaging... ok, swapping back to ST mode". The more Haste we get, the more jarring the swapping is going to be by pushing spells back. Are other tanks getting anything like this?

No, of course not. The only thing close I can think of is the DK which used to require several GCD's for good AoE threat, Outbreak + Pestilence + Blood Boil (less if you took talents). They are making it 1 GCD now (just BB) because of how shitty, awful, and clunky it was for initial threat compared to other tanks esp.

[Rewyn]

Wish List:

Remove this CS/Hammer Business. Its a bad idea I feel. Keep two buttons, its not the end of the world.

Seals are generally pretty boring, with changes to insight we seem to be forced into '2', we never had justice. I would love to see Seals work a bit more similarly to mantra's in D3. Good passive effects with an active component. The issue is we also have 2 seals that serve an offensive role in different aspects. My thoughts

1) Reduce our offensive seals to 1
2) Give us a defensive seal
3) Give us a self heal seal
--
Make all seals 'passive' aspects active at all times
Make all seals have an 'active' aspect that triggers a potent effect. All seals share a cooldown and are off GCD.
All specs have '3' seals, two being shared, one being unique to the spec.
Change 'empowered seals' to add a additional bad ass effect to our actives.

Example:
Seal of Truth:
Passive: Adds X% Holy Damage/Healing and Censure/Some Hot to Single Target Attacks/Heals and Y% (Y < X) Holy Damage/Healing multi target abilities(hammer, wrath, shield).
Active: Your next ability increases the holy damage/healing significantly (3 times X or Y depending on the ability used)
Seal of Righteousness:
Passive: Your attacks and outbound healing have have a chance to heal you for X% AP/SP (based off spec).
Active: You become empowered, causing your next holy power generating ability to generate two additional holy power.
Seal of Justice(Prot):
Passive: Those that would harm you are burned in turn. Any spell or attack cast at melee range causes the attack to suffer X% attack power holy damage.
Active: The next healing affect on you also effects nearby allies for 50% of the amount received.

Obviously this would require many other abilities to be changed to keep a balance, but if seals are meant to be an INTERESTING part of our gameplay, then make them interesting. Level 100 talents could easily be altered to work with this (with each talent focusing on a specific seal to enhance. Seraphim works with Righteous, Holy Shield with Justice, and a 'burst' talent could go into Truth). I imagine other specs 'third' seals would be something like: Attack Speed/Move Speed for Ret, and Damage Shields for Holy.

Not that they would ever do this or something similar of course. Instead they are enforcing gameplay around what is a boring and uninteresting aspect of being a paladin.

[Deleted]

Wish List:

Although not a bad idea (giving seals some sort of activate), there is one major thing to be considered with it. If seals share a cooldown, and have an active component, they all have to be pure utility. As soon as they add damage or healing, one sims out to be "the best", used on CD (or saved until healers want it), and nothing else gets a look in and then we're back to square one of nobody caring about what seal they're using. So either they share a CD and are utility only, or they don't share a CD and can then have DPS/HPS-related benefits. But then we're also running into the problem of "CD-stacking" and just macroing them into things.

Personally, I think at this point Seals have become so far removed from what they started out as (an important part of the rotation) that they could just be baked into each spec and nobody would miss them. What are they really doing? Adding 10% Haste for Holy and 5% (is that staying?) healing. Or adding 9% Weapon Cleave/12% +DoT ST damage for Prot and Ret. Justice is now the only mildly interesting one by providing a snare in return for less damage.

Edit: I know it seems like I'm pretty negative here, not trying to shoot your ideas down :P Just that I try to look at everything critically, and as it stands, with the currently philosophy Blizzard seems to have, I can't see what they can do with seals to make them cool again. Maybe they should look at how to expand the Hands set instead and scrap Seals if they can't make them work besides forcing us into a TBC design in a game where nobody else is playing with such a system. If everyone gets "stances" or toggles to be able to AoE then fine. But this current HotR/CS thing is not OK.

[Rewyn]

Its more the concept than the specifics. Yes the actives should not lend themselves clearly to a particular situation. My imagination was something like this.

"Ok..I just got 2 seconds left on Seraphim/Wings/ETc and want to get off another finisher, so I'll use Righteous active"
"Ok my raid just took a bunch of damage, time to help out healers, pop Justice"
"Nothing significantly is happening and I think i'll be safe if I just pop more damage right now"
(this is obvi from the tanks mindself. For retadins or healers, I imagine the idea of 'getting off' another finisher is one that will come up, so generating 2 extra HP (enough for an immediate finisher) on demand is useful, and sometimes better than extra heal/damage of Truth. In both case I imagine their third 'seal' would offer some active that would offer some strategic importance (for Ret likely survivability, for Holy likely some proactive healing in the form of shields).

In any case your right that I doubt they are going to re-create the wheel, but it is an issue. If seals are definitive and are a thing we should care about (and not just sit in one without a care) enough to warrant 'swapping' or interacting with them mid combat, then they need to be INTERESTING and BENEFICIAL. The current mechanic proposed (which I do not think anyone in this thread disagrees with) is just a method to force us to interact with a system that no one finds interesting, which is the worst type of system. Before I could ignore the fact that our seals are super boring, now I feel like my nose is being rubbed in the fact AND I'm being penalized (loosing a GCD=Loosing a HP in many situations, so there are both reaction issues and performance issues going on here).

[Tehterokkar]

New prot changes:

We wanted to improve Seal gameplay for Protection and Retribution, so have made a few changes in that regard. Protection had three Seals, but only used Insight due to its defensive value. We’ve moved that defensive value into a passive for Protection Paladins, and expect them to primarily use a mixture of Seal of Truth and Seal of Righteousness now. To provide better gameplay between Seal of Truth and Seal of Righteousness, and effectively remove a button, we made Seal of Righteousness transform Crusader Strike into Hammer of the Righteous.

*Seal of Insight no longer gives melee attacks a chance to heal the Paladin.
*Inner Light is a new passive ability for Protection Paladins and provides a chance for each melee attack to heal the Paladin.
-Glyph of the Battle Healer is now available only for Protection Paladins, and affects healing from Inner Light instead of Seal of Insight.
*Crusader Strike and Hammer of the Righteous are no longer separate spells.
*Seal of Righteousness now also causes Crusader Strike to be replaced with Hammer of the Righteous while active.

[Deleted]

Clearly, they actually don't have a fucking clue what they're talking about anymore... Here's a lil' snippet:

To provide better gameplay between Seal of Truth and Seal of Righteousness, and effectively remove a button, we made Seal of Righteousness transform Crusader Strike into Hammer of the Righteous.

effectively remove a button

remove a button

expect them to primarily use a mixture of Seal of Truth and Seal of Righteousness now

use a mixture

Now let's do some math...

You have two buttons. You take one away. You add two buttons. How many buttons do you have?

Well according to Blizz it's 1.

Thanks Blizz for removing a bind, then adding two more! ^________________^

[Tehterokkar]

Clearly, they actually don't have a fucking clue what they're talking about anymore... Here's a lil' snippet:











Now let's do some math...

You have 2 buttons. You take one away. You add two buttons. How many buttons do you have?

Well according to Blizz it's 1.

Thanks Blizz for removing a bind, then adding two more! ^________________^

Actually same amount of binds, but more clunkyness. /use !Seal of Truth; Seal of Righteousness

[Deleted]

Glyph of the Battle Healer is now available only for Protection Paladins, and affects healing from Inner Light instead of Seal of Insight.

GotBH was never intended to be a protection paladin glyph

[Deleted]

Actually same amount of binds, but more clunkyness. /use !Seal of Truth; Seal of Righteousness

If you macro it, true. The average player is probably not going to (and Blizzard doesn't make changes with the assumption it'll get macroed) so as far as they'll be concerned, this is 2 buttons turning into 3 for no good reason. That doesn't really change how incredibly fucking stupid this shit is and how out of touch they are with what Paladins want.

[Jackielope]

As if Empowered Seals wasn't screwed up enough, now we have to deal with the new seal change? And supposedly since 30% of the player's health is worth a talent (holy's Saved By The Light) we'll likely be weaving in Seal of Insight too. I think the talent just went from "Hell no." to "Fuck no!"

There's also the issue of maybe wanting to use HotR while still having SoT up due to "multidotting" long-lived mobs with SoT instead of switching to SoR.

[Deleted]

I guess at this point there's nothing we can but wait it out and see what they decide to screw with next (mutually exclusive Hands!). Then when beta starts, hope enough decent Prot Paladins can get in to tell them how stupid these changes are.

[celinamuna]

So, i was actually thinking and Str tanks are going to be fucking op.
Unless blizzard changes something crit is going to batshit OP in the last tier (i'll give you a hint, Crit doesn't DR).

[Deleted]

So, i was actually thinking and Str tanks are going to be fucking op.
Unless blizzard changes something crit is going to batshit OP in the last tier (i'll give you a hint, Crit doesn't DR).

Not following you here. The best I could come up with is that it's something to do with Riposte.

[celinamuna]

Not following you here. The best I could come up with is that it's something to do with Riposte.

Late expansion we should be able to get fairly fairly fairly high crit %
For us 1% crit --> 1% parry , so say... 50% crit == 50% parry.
Except normally parry DRs.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Late expansion we should be able to get fairly fairly fairly high crit %
For us 1% crit --> 1% parry , so say... 50% crit == 50% parry.
Except normally parry DRs.

Are you sure it is 1% crit = 1% parry (unaffected by DR) and not 1 crit rating = 1 parry rating (affected by DR)?

[trystero]

Can't think of one positive change made to prot paladins yet. Spec gets worse every week.

[Deleted]

Are you sure it is 1% crit = 1% parry (unaffected by DR) and not 1 crit rating = 1 parry rating (affected by DR)?

This is what I was thinking. From the wording I just assumed Riposte converted the rating into rating.