Ability Bloat - What would you do?

[nightfalls]

Thinking that Hand of Reckoning and Righteous fury are "bloat" is missing the entire point of what bloat really is.

That's part of the problem, "bloat" is really ill-defined. Generally "bloat" has to be useful actually (which means removing it is, in fact, a nerf). Why? Because if it wasn't useful in combat, you wouldn't bind it, and it wouldn't be bloat. See the paradox?

They are highly situational spells which sit on your bars for you to use them readily when needed and if needed. If you don't use it in a raid setting, you can surely use it in a H Scenario or a Scenario setting. There's no honest good reason to have them. It's not clogging up our rotation, its not eating up our keybinds, and we're not required to maintain it/constantly press it, there is no reason to rid of it.

Disagree with the last statement, but I agree those buttons are useful enough where we shouldn't dump them. RF fills the plate DPS role where if you're in a roleless group (scenario, leveling, old run), you can serve the purpose (as some other classes can) as "tank" by using it, group mobs, and holding them off say mages.

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Suffice it to say, I will state the following as to what is NOT bloat:

- For Protection, Holy Wrath and Consecration are probably not going anywhere.
- For all specs, Judgment is probably not going anywhere.

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For Talen: Honestly most of your "ideas" are so shit that I don't even know where to begin responding to them.

Righteous Fury: Removed
Seal of Righteousness: Increases threat from (Holy) damage.

Holy Shock: Removed.
Judgement: Gains healing effect when used on an ally (cannot be self targetted)

Hand of Salvation and Hand of Purity: Merged.

Serious?!

[Nobleshield]

I do think that some of the Hand spells could be merged. Sacrifice + Purity, for instance. Sacrifice already reduces damage (and the stupid transfer part should DIAF); Purity reduces damage by a smaller amount and then also reduces DoT, there's no reason outside of an extra ability since Purity is a talent why those two should be separate, just make Hand of Sacrifice reduce damage by 30% AND reduce DoT damage by 70%. Freedom and Salvation are bit of a weird state since Freedom is 95% a PVP talent, and Salvation is 95% PVE, so they could stay separate. Emancipate should be part of Freedom, no bones about that. I will concede about Cons + HW however, but I do think some kind of special version of Cons for Holy could be interesting.

[Freia]

Talen,

We would lose Holy Shock that can be casted on ourselves and not be able to cast the replacement judgment on ourselves? What sense does this make considering casting Holy Shock on ourselves is by no means overpowered?

Holy paladins would be forced into the Aura replacing the seal of insight healing bonus and not be able to buff the raid with kings or might? Basically for a holy paladin to provide a buff to the raid they would have to nerf themselves. Or is your intention that we would be able to stack multiple auras? That looks like bloat compared to what we have now. Is it really that difficult to just hit Blessing of Kings/Might?

I do think that some of the Hand spells could be merged. Sacrifice + Purity, for instance. Sacrifice already reduces damage (and the stupid transfer part should DIAF); Purity reduces damage by a smaller amount and then also reduces DoT, there's no reason outside of an extra ability since Purity is a talent why those two should be separate, just make Hand of Sacrifice reduce damage by 30% AND reduce DoT damage by 70%. Freedom and Salvation are bit of a weird state since Freedom is 95% a PVP talent, and Salvation is 95% PVE, so they could stay separate. Emancipate should be part of Freedom, no bones about that. I will concede about Cons + HW however, but I do think some kind of special version of Cons for Holy could be interesting.

I don't think Emancipate should be part of freedom. If anything it should be part of cleanse as it was in cata. Purity has a 30 second cooldown and Hand of Sacrifice has a 2 minute cooldown. That would be difficult to combine. Blizzard cannot take away the damage transfer portion of Hand of Sacrifice right now without nerfing Holy pvp which is already in a bad place.

[Krekko]

That's part of the problem, "bloat" is really ill-defined. Generally "bloat" has to be useful actually (which means removing it [i]is, in fact, a nerf[/]). Why? Because if it wasn't useful in combat, you wouldn't bind it, and it wouldn't be bloat. See the paradox?



Disagree with the last statement, but I agree those buttons are useful enough where we shouldn't dump them. RF fills the plate DPS role where if you're in a roleless group (scenario, leveling, old run), you can serve the purpose (as some other classes can) as "tank" by using it, group mobs, and holding them off say mages.

Whoops, very minor typo in one of my statements.

Mean to say

There's no honest good reason to not have them. It's not clogging up our rotation, its not eating up our keybinds, and we're not required to maintain it/constantly press it, there is no reason to rid of it.

Otherwise that'd be a contradiction of sorts! People just simply fail to see the usefulness of certain spells and their unwillingness to use the spells or poor grasp of use has them shoving it out the door, which doesn't look good when parts of the community are putting up useful spells to sacrifice. Blizzard DOES listen, sadly sometimes it's to the wrong people.

You're right though, that is a big part of the problem. They need to define what they are looking to cut down, and give examples of Bloat Vs Not-Bloat.

[nightfalls]

My idea behind "bloat" is this:

1) Is it useful? If not, it's not bloat. Contemplation is not "bloat" and would not be even baseline.

2) Now that we established its useful, is the actual usefulness really justified in the game setting? In other words, is it "worth the ability slot?" If not, then that's looking at bloat. Examples: Hammer of Wrath for non-Ret could be getting there. Seal of Justice/Righteousness. Crusader Strike/Judgment for Holy (most likely would not remove but rather rework for those two since Holy is not that ability heavy).

3) Another type of bloat would be whether the abilities, while useful, represent outdated mechanics in the overall setting that perhaps could be removed altogether. For instance, enrage dispels are a big one. For Feral we could look at Shred/Mangle. For us, I don't see too much of this. Seals could be considered an outdated mechanic at this point. Another one, perhaps we could combine Blessing of Kings and Blessing of Might into a single button as another example (we only bring one buff in the game anyway where many classes/specs bring two, so I don't see the harm in us providing both stats and mastery on demand).

[Nobleshield]

I would argue that something is "bloat" if it's not useful 95% of the time or only in fringe cases (e.g. a DPS using a threat-generating move + kiting a boss long enough for a tank to be rezzed; something that doesn't happen in any reasonable scenario) and basically "wastes" an action button slot. I've stated previously that I think the hard cap of "active" action buttons (i.e. buttons that you would reasonably have keybound) should be 24, and ideally even less than that to around 15-20. Anything else is just a button taking up a keybind and a slot on the bar for situations that almost never arise, and those should be the first ones sent to the junk heap.

[Freia]

That isn't bloat. So many people in this thread have given you examples of how Taunt and RF is useful for non-tanks, even in this tier. Just because you never are trusted to perform a role in raid that requires them does not mean they are useless or bloat.

And it doesn't need to take a keybind or slot on the bar if you don't want them to.

[Nobleshield]

That isn't bloat. So many people in this thread have given you examples of how Taunt and RF is useful for non-tanks, even in this tier. Just because you never are trusted to perform a role in raid that requires them does not mean they are useless or bloat.

And it doesn't need to take a keybind or slot on the bar if you don't want them to.

I've already said that's not what I meant by bloat. RF especially doesn't take up a keybind (usually) so doesn't even fall under what I consider to be "bloat".

[Talen]

We would lose Holy Shock that can be casted on ourselves and not be able to cast the replacement judgment on ourselves? What sense does this make considering casting Holy Shock on ourselves is by no means overpowered?

Holy paladins would be forced into the Aura replacing the seal of insight healing bonus and not be able to buff the raid with kings or might? Basically for a holy paladin to provide a buff to the raid they would have to nerf themselves. Or is your intention that we would be able to stack multiple auras? That looks like bloat compared to what we have now. Is it really that difficult to just hit Blessing of Kings/Might?

The question is how much "bloat" do you want to get rid of, how much space do you want to free up. As with everything else, the Paladin would be balanced around the resulting toolkit. The issue with bloat is to give the Paladin a suitably varied and useful toolkit without requiring too much in the way of excess keybinds or UI space.

So - Holydins would lose the ability to cast HS on themselves. Is that a major issue if Holy survivability is otherwise decent? Yes - Aura of Light would mean Holydins can't buff the raid with AoM/AoK. Of course, I also suggested a mechanism to use the current Blessings but even discounting that, that's only an issue if noone else can bring that buff.

The idea here is to merge and consolidate abilities where possible, remove them from the ability bar where feasible, keep enough tools to allow for variety and reaction and yet still provide for a suitable mechanic which may allow for such "discarded" to be used.

Is Holy Shock iconic enough to keep? Is Judgement? Or is one ranged spell on a 6s CD be enough? Does a Holydin WANT to Judge when healing? If his self healing is otherwise strong enough, is being unable to Judge yourself a major issue?

Its the same with the Auras; sure, this setup makes it awkward...at best..for a Holydin to buff Might or Kings. Major disaster?
Does the raid depend on a Holydin to bring either?

Everyone has a different idea of what bloat is, what would be acceptable to go, what needs to stay, how much change and disruiption woudl be acceptable. Exorcism and Judgement are very similar, for example. Maybe you could get rid of one and buff the other? But then, we also need hooks for secondary effects, and enough variety to keep the rotation interesting.

As I said, changes to the UI could free up some space by moving Seals, Blessings and some other moves off the ability bar entirely. A mechanic such as the suggested Zealotry could allow some moves to be merged or consolidated and still allow them to be accessible. Other moves can be consolidated based purely on their similarity. Holy Shock and Judgement fall here. As do BoM and BoK to be honest, as both do the same job in many ways. Others dropped. Does the class need HotR? Or reworked - Seal of Righteousness is still a bit lacklustre, so could we not rework it in to a threat generator and get rid of RF? Or would you consider RF bloat? if so - would it not be better to remove all tanking abilities from Ret entirely?

EJL

[Freia]

What holy paladin self healing? Stopping to cast on ourselves since we can't use our instant heal on ourselves unless we have Holy Power for WoG/EF. You want to get rid of holy shock and replace it with judgment and question if we want to use it? You do realize we use HS on cooldown? We do not use judgment(unless we take Selfless Healer next tier). Judgment does not give us holy power or provide us any benefit other than we need to use it on an add like the pink dino on Horridon. So why take away our ability to use our instant heal on ourselves? Questioning if it is an issue is pretty silly. Yea it can be a big deal. There are many instances in the game where you would want to use an instant heal on yourself in both pve and pvp. You are basically nerfing holy for no reason. And that whole post makes me think you really do not know what Holy Shock is for holy since you say it is just range attack like judgment.

And yes it can be a big deal if we don't provide the raid buff. 25m there are usually multiple specs providing buffs but 10m many times needs the paladin to provide one of their buffs. So making a holy paladin choose between might, kings and their healing throughput buff is quite frankly a stupid idea and shows you really have no idea on balance. What other spec nerfs itself to buff the raid? None. That is really all there is to it.

[-ex-]

Besides something spammable I'd probably get rid of Blinding Light, maybe remove a cooldown or two. I'm not quite sure but I know that I feel I have way too many buttons right now. I'd probably get rid of Crusader Strike or Hammer of the Righteous since they basically do the same shit; I was fine in Wrath with Ret having CS and Prot having HotR. Probably get rid of Templar's Verdict; Ret doesn't need 3 finishers when Prot only has two (e.g. SotR and WoG). Probably get rid of Sacred Shield as that's an additional button.

I really wouldn't mind if we only had Hammer of the Righteous for AOE, and then like a reverse Devastate for spamming, like instead of lowering the target's armor it increases our armor and stacks. Not 100% sure. I just don't like having 30+ keybinds on any class.

I think lots of abilities only work if some have cooldowns and you have a robust macro system like RIFT's where you can create spam macros (absolutely loved being able to consolidate a bunch of abilities and having reactive abilities), but Blizzard doesn't like that idea.

Thank god you don't work for Blizzard, I would hate losing all these abilities/binds

[Annarion]

Convert to the D3 system. Categorize spells that fulfill a specific purpose with different flavours or mechanics. Allow for 2 main categories where you must choose one from each. (ie: Nuke and Maintain) With different synergies for different purposes, and glyphs to make changes for each spell, either to even out weaknesses or specialize. (Like adding splash damage to a single-target for aoe/cleave fights, or increasing survivability for low gear levels, that sort of thing.) Then 4 categories (defense, utility, group buff, mobility) that you can pick and choose any combination of. I was contemplating this earlier and came up with a decent basic spread for shadow. I wouldn't be upset playing it. You'd go down to 6 buttons to press, and you could choose them before each boss fight. Imagine if you could pick up an extra dps buff instead of having Power Word: Fortitude that's already present in your raid.

...You'd probably have to have the buffs automatically apply in LFR though. Nobody would take them.

[Simulacrum]

Convert to the D3 system.

Then we roll out WoW for consoles!

- - - Updated - - -

I would argue that something is "bloat" if it's not useful 95% of the time or only in fringe cases (e.g. a DPS using a threat-generating move + kiting a boss long enough for a tank to be rezzed; something that doesn't happen in any reasonable scenario) and basically "wastes" an action button slot. I've stated previously that I think the hard cap of "active" action buttons (i.e. buttons that you would reasonably have keybound) should be 24, and ideally even less than that to around 15-20. Anything else is just a button taking up a keybind and a slot on the bar for situations that almost never arise, and those should be the first ones sent to the junk heap.

Again, everything you write appears based exclusively on the very narrow way in which you play the game. It makes about as much sense as it would for a guy who only solos to come here and announce that beacon of light is useless because he never casts it, except for in those "5%" fringe cases where maybe he groups with someone or has to heal an NPC. Totally absurd, of course, but so are your posts.

[nightfalls]

Let me reiterate the obvious again because some people can't seem to get it. In my opinion posts regarding any of these four are just derailment and pointless:

- For Protection, Holy Wrath and Consecration are not going anywhere.
- For Retribution and Protection, Judgment is not going anywhere.
- For Retribution and Protection, Crusader Strike is not going anywhere.
- For Holy, Holy Shock is not going anywhere.

Even if these abilities changed by name, there would need to be an exact ability made that would copy the exact function for all specs.

[Nobleshield]

Again, everything you write appears based exclusively on the very narrow way in which you play the game. It makes about as much sense as it would for a guy who only solos to come here and announce that beacon of light is useless because he never casts it, except for in those "5%" fringe cases where maybe he groups with someone or has to heal an NPC. Totally absurd, of course, but so are your posts.

I would also argue that my posts are closer to the reality of average raiders than the 1% of heroic raiders who can find a use for almost everything, so right back at you. Arguing something should stay because it has some out of the box use in heroic 25 raids is along the same lines, because heroic 25s are such a minority that who really cares what they use, if nobody else uses it?

If the majority of players find no use for an ability, then it should go and not stick around because a tiny fraction of the game can find a use for. Nothing can and should ever be kept just because it might be used in a fringe case by the top 1%; how a heroic raider plays should never be factored into anything related to game design because it's so far outside the curve.

[Deleted]

I would also argue that my posts are closer to the reality of average raiders than the 1% of heroic raiders who can find a use for almost everything, so right back at you. Arguing something should stay because it has some out of the box use in heroic 25 raids is along the same lines, because heroic 25s are such a minority that who really cares what they use, if nobody else uses it?

If the majority of players find no use for an ability, then it should go and not stick around because a tiny fraction of the game can find a use for. Nothing can and should ever be kept just because it might be used in a fringe case by the top 1%; how a heroic raider plays should never be factored into anything related to game design because it's so far outside the curve.

Most people trying to play a guitar dont find a use for a plectrum. That does not mean a plectrum is useless just because most people cant use it.

If you are bad at playing your class and cant find use for your spells, that is not an issue of those spells. The attitude that the spells of a class should be lowered to a level that a monkey could use them is the wrong attitude. People should learn to use their toolkit, that way they can see themselves getting better and you can see the difference between someone knowing what they are doing and someone that doesnt.

[Nobleshield]

We'll have to agree to disagree, then I find that mentality to be one of the worst things I've ever seen in any game, ever. Truth be told I absolutely loved the Wrath rotation, the 969; it felt very smooth, it was intuitive, it felt "right" and clean, but I have always and will always prefer rotations to priority systems. They feel much smoother, even if the top 1% can't flex how much better than the unwashed they are because everyone is hitting the same buttons in the same order.

[Freia]

Nobleshield, you speak for yourself. Don't try to group anyone else in your viewpoints. I have seen plenty paladins in average raiding guilds find use for the abilities you say should go away.

The only one to blame for abilities you find no use for taking up bar space is you.

We'll have to agree to disagree, then I find that mentality to be one of the worst things I've ever seen in any game, ever. Truth be told I absolutely loved the Wrath rotation, the 969; it felt very smooth, it was intuitive, it felt "right" and clean, but I have always and will always prefer rotations to priority systems. They feel much smoother, even if the top 1% can't flex how much better than the unwashed they are because everyone is hitting the same buttons in the same order.

Your mentality is that an ability has no place that you can't find a use for. How in that world is that better?

[Nobleshield]

I've found a use for almost every ability as Prot except maybe Turn Evil and Flash of Light (and I've used that one in the past). That doesn't mean I think all those abilities need to stay. You can use all the abilities and still think "Hmm some of these could be consolidated" so I don't see how these two ideas are mutually exclusive, while the general opinion seems for some reason to be that SOMEBODY uses the ability, so it should stay.

You can do both; consolidate abilities and still keep all of them useful. I'd prefer having 15 abilities that were useful 100% of the time than 25 abilities with a handful of them being useful 20% of the time.

[Deleted]

Flash of light is actually gonna be useful the next tier for Prot. Since it is getting an substantional indirect buff. In current state I only really use it out in the world when questing.

Turn evil is recieving some make over, and was only really useful in PvP (what! It was useful at Nefarian in cata!)

The general opinion seems to be that abilities that has a core function and utility for the class should stay. Some abilities certainly could go, but as far as bloat is concerned, it is not that bad for paladins. I just logged onto my paladin to check the spellbook. I can with all honesty say that I dont really feel any ability as not needed and that we would be better of without them.

The abilities that came to my mind was

Hammer of Wrath - This is not really needed since HW with FW serves as an execute. Still, I like hammer of wrath from the standpoint that it allows me to push higher dps in the burn phase by down prioritising CS. But that could be solved by just lowering the CD on HW with one GCD. This is truely the ability that I feel is the most useless as prot at the moment. As it could easily be exchanged by some CD tuning on some other ability.

Seals of Truth / Righteousness - These feel kinda useless in prot at the moment, but I would rather see buffs and them being removed from Prot.

CS/HotR - Yes, I said it. I feel like these two spells are the ones of our core rotation that could be replaced the easiest. Consecration could apply weakened blows on its initial tick and J could apply it for single target. You could make some other spell generate holy power. If you think about it, the only reason you ever use these two abilities is for holy power and weakened blows. Some CD and mechanic tuning on other spells, allowing somethig else to regenerate holy power.

Now, dont get me wrong, I want all of these spells to stay personally. I cant imagine playing without CS since it would require some insane amount of tuning on the other spells to make it work and not feel clunky. This is more of a hypothetical scenario, IF some abilities had to go from our core rotation, these are the ones I would miss the least. I still want them to stay.