Dev Explanation of 4.2 (Prot specific)

[Nyghtfall]

I can put together a list of 4.2 gear where only 3-4(shield, relic, ring) of the pieces do not have mastery on them, which is about the same as this tier. With higher item levels worth of stats i foresee no real problems getting block cap as long as you gem and reforge to maximize mastery like everyone already does.

[Deleted]

I can put together a list of 4.2 gear where only 3-4(shield, relic, ring) of the pieces do not have mastery on them, which is about the same as this tier. With higher item levels worth of stats i foresee no real problems getting block cap as long as you gem and reforge to maximize mastery like everyone already does.

If this is the case it creates the best case scenario where standard damage taken is higher, but during heaving damage phases blocks are buffed by 10%. Assuming reasonable itemisation it also means that more of the tankadin playerbase will be able to reach full combat table coverage without sacrificing big chunks of their healthpool(stamina trinket, stamina from hybrid gems plus stamina from socket bonuses)

[Magisleeper]

This makes no sense to me, like someone else said this is actively encouraging tankadins to mastery cap to get reliable use out of the CD. I mean.. block is a chance.. if your not gaurenteed to block using the CD whats the point of having it be a CD?

[Deleted]

This makes no sense to me, like someone else said this is actively encouraging tankadins to mastery cap to get reliable use out of the CD. I mean.. block is a chance.. if your not gaurenteed to block using the CD whats the point of having it be a CD?

Yes it actively encourages getting full combat table coverage. It also still makes holy shield at that point a cooldown you would want to stack on top of other cooldowns for maximum benefit.

In the simplest terms: if X is broken don't nerf Y. which is pretty much what they are doing.

I don't mind the change too much as we will still clearly be viable tanks. However it still does not address the underlying issue which Blizzard need to accept and handle accordingly. I am sure no one wants to see a case of our mastery being flat out gimped just to prevent it hitting a point where it no longer provides any benefit.

Holy shield or Word of glory could scale off of mastery in a multitude of ways. This is the most feasible way of resolving the problem in line with reducing our chance to block per point of mastery somewhat.

[Nyghtfall]

Blizz has stated somewhere that they don't think that the problem of overcapping mastery will become too big of a issue in Firelands. Meaning that we will probably comfortably get block cap with 378 gear but will only have to start worrying about avoiding mastery when we are farming gear off of heroic Rag. The next tier will be a much bigger problem, but hopefully Blizz will adress the problem by then, despite how long it has been staring them in the face and how they have seemingly ignored it thus far.

[underdogba]

Yes it actively encourages getting full combat table coverage. It also still makes holy shield at that point a cooldown you would want to stack on top of other cooldowns for maximum benefit.

Stacking it on top of other cooldowns reduces the efficacy of Holy Shield's damage reduction in absolute terms, because the attacks that you will be blocking will already hit you pre-mitigated by the other CD, and blocking mitigates a percentage of that damage. This is the same reason that popping Guardian and Divine Protection simultaneously only results in a total damage reduction of 60%. Unless you specifically are block capped, and you absolutely need Holy Shield + another cooldown to survive some kind of "broadcasted" physical attack that would otherwise kill you, stacking it with other CD's is a poor strategy as far as average damage/second input.

[Deleted]

Stacking it on top of other cooldowns reduces the efficacy of Holy Shield's damage reduction in absolute terms, because the attacks that you will be blocking will already hit you pre-mitigated by the other CD, and blocking mitigates a percentage of that damage. This is the same reason that popping Guardian and Divine Protection simultaneously only results in a total damage reduction of 60%. Unless you specifically are block capped, and you absolutely need Holy Shield + another cooldown to survive some kind of "broadcasted" physical attack that would otherwise kill you, stacking it with other CD's is a poor strategy as far as average damage/second input.

It isn't the same though. Other cooldowns reduce all damage taken by x% whereas holy shield is buffing block damage reduction which is in itself not guaranteed unless you have full combat table coverage. You can fill 1/3 of your regular damage taken with increased block mitigation or you can combine it other buffs when known damage spikes are incoming. The choice is yours.

That is also assuming block mitigation is multiplicative against all cooldown mitigation which is unclear at this point.

[underdogba]

It isn't the same though. Other cooldowns reduce all damage taken by x% whereas holy shield is buffing block damage reduction which is in itself not guaranteed unless you have full combat table coverage. You can fill 1/3 of your regular damage taken with increased block mitigation or you can combine it other buffs when known damage spikes are incoming. The choice is yours.

That is also assuming block mitigation is multiplicative against all cooldown mitigation which is unclear at this point.

It is multiplicative, which you can confirm by blocking any attack with Divine Protection or Guardian up, then looking at the combat log.

With respect to the mathematics, the point I'm trying to make is that in stacking Holy Shield with other cooldowns, you are sacrificing a percentage of its efficacy in damage input / second. There needs to be a very specific reason in an encounter to be doing that, which does not justify the blanket statement in your original post about the subject.

[Deleted]

It is multiplicative, which you can confirm by blocking any attack with Divine Protection or Guardian up, then looking at the combat log.

With respect to the mathematics, the point I'm trying to make is that in stacking Holy Shield with other cooldowns, you are sacrificing a percentage of its efficacy in damage input / second. There needs to be a very specific reason in an encounter to be doing that, which does not justify the blanket statement in your original post about the subject.

Not really. Going by this tier there are predictable damage spikes which can at the least be handled by the smaller cooldowns divine protection and vial trinket on use brings. To use Holy shield instead is actually worse mitigation. Like I said unless they specifically tailor encounters to handle it, which they won't your best bet is going to be tying holy shield in with all your cooldowns.

You can spam holy shield on cooldown which will technically reduce your overall damage taken, it will also not account for large damage spikes which are what gets you killed.

It is a horribly thought out change which gives you the options of: Spamming holy shield on cooldown, linking holy shield to other cooldowns or using holy shield in place of other cooldowns for no apparent reason.

[Magisleeper]

Feel free to tell me is this sounds like a bad idea (constructivly) but..

Keep holy shield as it is but make the effectivness of the mastery over a certain percentage be based on the number of charges of holy power you have. Usually the beggining of fights your not faced with overwhelming dmg and the use of holy power to generate more threat is going to be a larger priority than having the healers waste a little more mana on you initially.

But then as the fight progresses and your threat is generally been established,(Barring aggro resets and the like), and you would have to remain more aware of the utilization of holy power by things like using a 1stack to rebuff holy shield, and then holding onto a 3 stack for as long as possible to gain maximum usage of the extra block. And it would accomplish what blizzard stated is their intent to add more interaction with the abilities, including say during a beserk phase using your 3 charges to heal yourself then activate divine plea to gain another full 3 stack on top of a refreshed holy shield.

Something like this would allow the most expert tanks to make maximum usage of the options available, and still not gimp the lower echellon(sp) of tanks to the point where they suffer a basic nerf by losing out on a basic mitigation stat.

I mean this isnt going to make pallies non-viable tanks imo or have people replace them for dk wars or druids but its counterintuitive to what they claim to by trying to accomplish. I expect changes and hotfixes soon.

PS. This would also increase the value of hit/exp by making it more punishing if you miss a crusader strike, and force a tank to choose to output more dps at a certain point or focus fully on keeping maximum survivability at all times.

[Contravene]

GC just in the beginning of his balance explanation has the big long speech about what is good for one may not be for many.. HE ASKED MANY about Protection Paladins but not me so that is one he missed. Did he ask you guys what you wanted because if majority really wants this sure ok fine but I want to see the poll that was given. Or explain how Protection Paladin's are getting to personally tell GC what they want.. Is there a gold member club I wasn't told about? I kind of feel entitled to have been included on this polling I pay as much as everyone else right? I get he says of course not all but I kind of feel like what you asked the important people?

"We redesigned Holy Shield, partially because paladin mitigation was going to be too good in the Firelands raid, but also because many paladins (though of course not all) told us they wanted a more dynamic rotation and less passive mitigation."

[Ruzhyo]

GC just in the beginning of his balance explanation has the big long speech about what is good for one may not be for many.. HE ASKED MANY about Protection Paladins but not me so that is one he missed. Did he ask you guys what you wanted because if majority really wants this sure ok fine but I want to see the poll that was given. Or explain how Protection Paladin's are getting to personally tell GC what they want.. Is there a gold member club I wasn't told about? I kind of feel entitled to have been included on this polling I pay as much as everyone else right? I get he says of course not all but I kind of feel like what you asked the important people?

"We redesigned Holy Shield, partially because paladin mitigation was going to be too good in the Firelands raid, but also because many paladins (though of course not all) told us they wanted a more dynamic rotation and less passive mitigation."

Its funny, because if anything this change only made our mitigation MORE passive, and our rotation less interesting. Instead of me making sure I keep generating Holy Power and hitting Inquisition or SOTR to keep holy shield up, I literally could just stand in place not hitting a single offensive ability and it does not affect my incoming damage one iota.

Wait, funny is the wrong word...

[Deleted]

"We redesigned Holy Shield, partially because paladin mitigation was going to be too good in the Firelands raid, but also because many paladins (though of course not all) told us they wanted a more dynamic rotation and less passive mitigation."

Made up facts are the best kind of facts. GC loves them. The change isn't effectively lowering our mitigation anyway it is making it more spikey via a clunky mechanic.

[Deleted]

As well, they haven't fixed our issue either with Mastery. They do not like that we can cap it already, nor the fact Warriors will be able to cap it eventually.

Warriors won't even try to cap it because they can further increase their critical block.

For now you can sit at ~ 97% ctc with 61% block, you might even want to drop some % avoidance while further increasing your critical block chance and spent the free'd itemisation points on more hitpoints, armor or threat stats.

But i guess with the changes to agility warrior will end up having a hard time ever reaching that cap without using two mastery trinkets and the elixir combo. You might see a 25% stats (maximum, 20% is more likely) increase on well rounded items while jumping from 372 to 391 and warrior are still in need of about 1000 mastery rating on non-nightelfs to become "block capped".

And more on topic: holy shield without an increased block chance like on shield block seems lacking some fine tuning. And please help me on the math but why only 20% more damage blocked on a 1/3 uptime instead of 30%?

[Deleted]

And more on topic: holy shield without an increased block chance like on shield block seems lacking some fine tuning. And please help me on the math but why only 20% more damage blocked on a 1/3 uptime instead of 30%?

Because its meant as a nerf to our smoothness in damage taken, so healers dont like us so much. Stupid thing is Divine Guardian is what gives Prot Pala's their raid spot not any amount of mitigation.

[Ap0calypse]

Can see Warriors being used more often than Paladins after this change, as their incoming damage will be less spiky on heroic boss fights. I dont see their critical block changing, so why was ours made worse than it?

[Deleted]

Because its meant as a nerf to our smoothness in damage taken, so healers dont like us so much. Stupid thing is Divine Guardian is what gives Prot Pala's their raid spot not any amount of mitigation.

Evidently it isn't. Not to mention half the time it would be useful you are out of range of at least half the raid.

[Talen]

The downside is lower overall blocking but you'd block high when it actually matters which is better. The problem is that with a 10sec duration I feel like it's too short to really last for the "when it matters" phase.

Its not a CD. Its too RNG and unreliable to be a CD. Therefore, it doesn't matter if it lasts for the "when it matters" phase.

The question is whether, overall, its going to have enough impact to warrant saving for certain phases or whether it be just as valid, or nearly so, macroed into every ability and forgotten about.

With the former, you're going to have to keep it available for those phases, which means not using it anywhere near as often as you can. That means, the actual benefit you get from it is going to be much less than it otherwise wold be - especially sicne you're liekly to sue it in conjunction with other CDs, further diminishing its usefulness. Thing is, sure...it might save you from that 100k hit....but it might not so you have to have the ability to survive without using it....just in case it doesn't proc.

With that latter, you end up gaining more benefit from normal phases, and have a higher uptime. You'll get some benefit from big hit phases, but not full benefit.

Overall....the question of which tactic to take is easy to phrase:

Which tactic will cause your healers to use less mana over the course of a fight? Because it ISN'T a survival CD...its a mitigation tool whose benefit is not that you will live, but that you'll require less healing.

Other than that, the change lowers the spec survivability either way, as well as making the class spikier and thus more difficult to heal. I will also note that less reliance on passive mitigation was what Blizzard took away from the class with the WoG nerf.

Although, it still boggles my mind that they didn't foresee and act upon full CTC as an issue for us during the beta.

Especially when everyone else did. And when they put in a spillover mechanic for warriors.

EJL

[Nyghtfall]

Every healer in my guild has told me I was the easiet tank that they have had to heal. The problem is apparently our damage intake is too smooth and easy to heal IN 4.2. Why? Idk. Maybe its because alot of the Firelands bosses have a add phase? Maybe its because the 200% critical healing and more healing power overall makes more of a difference than we thought? Maybe its because block cap could possibly be a given? Maybe its all of these, maybe its none of these. Blizz only said that 40% block value with 100% uptime is "OP". They didnt say specifically why, just that its a problem with tank balance in 4.2.

A bad explanation is better than no explanation IMO, and I'm glad Blizz atleast took the time to point out what they thought was wrong with the classes, especially when they are normally so silent whenever asked. Do i like the change? No, not really, but from what i *hear* it is a tiny if at all nerf in damage taken and actually *may* be a buff in disguise so until my healer starts crying that im taking too much damage, i'm okay.

My only problem with the "less passive" mitagation thing is that while warriors don't have thier shiled block up, they can still critical block. When we dont have Holy Shield up, we can't do anything. This is a mastery problem more than a spell problem though and i hope to see some changes on this front a few weeks after 4.2 lands and when Blizz has climbed out of the hole that they keep digging themselves into called the Paladin class.

[Deleted]

When you use Word of Glory, you get *-massive amount scaling with ilvl- armor, 15% dmg reduction for the next 5 seconds, 1x% dodge, 1x% parry, 50% block, 100% block and +10% block amount 0% dodge 0% parry*, so WoG could be our 'Strike', but as it will always succeed, the long CD would remain, and Avenging Wrath should grant Prot Paladins 0CD on WoG and make it into our "hard CD" because then we will be actively trying to survive.

Bold text: actually that would be awesome for soft enrages without a hunter in the raid.