[WoD] Protection Paladin Megathread

[Deleted]

My most pressing concern as pertains to Prot in WoD is that with SoO, 10/10 HC-raiding prots and rets have gotten used to having, effectively, a 1-second GCD and being more-or-less GCD-capped. Blizzard might (although I trust them so very, very little in this regard) manage to make all the secondaries attractive to us in a vacuum and make us "work" per se, but unless they change something about us significantly, it's just going to feel unpleasant to play both prot and ret.

Ideally, I'd like to see them make SoB a passive that only affects ret and prot, have it give us a 1-second GCD baseline, and make Holy Wrath a spammable filler for both specs. That way, we'd still be somewhat bearable to play even without being able to stack haste.

Most likely, of course, is that they do nothing and prot and ret turn into specs where you stand there with your dick swinging in the wind 50% of a fight, auto-attacking the boss with everything on CD, and that this is not fixed until the penultimate tier of the expansion at best.

[Jackielope]

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'.

Yeah, that's pretty much it with the minimums. Defense was a maximum stat and looked odd as the example. I would have probably gone with something like crit for warriors or fire mages. Feels totally screwed and boring without it, and pretty much always has.

[morislayer]

I realize the majority of this thread is theory crafting, itemization and priority but really anyone else want to tank with a 2h and a shield? or 2h and a libram? Just some different than warriors sword and board?

[Radeghost]

I'm new to prot paladin (currently 50-ish level), but I hope they do smth about skills so I won't have everything on CD for like 1.5 sec. aaand I'd like to have def stat as main stat, not haste

[Jackielope]

I'm new to prot paladin (currently 50-ish level), but I hope they do smth about skills so I won't have everything on CD for like 1.5 sec. aaand I'd like to have def stat as main stat, not haste

What defense stat would that be? Dodge, parry, hit, and expertise are gone, so what's left is crit, haste, mastery, multi-strike, and readiness, all of which will be useful in some way to every spec, including tanks. And bonus armor will only be appearing on non-armor pieces like amulets ad rings

[Malthanis]

Not to mention a 'defensive stat' is now more defined as how the spec utilizes it, rather than the stat having a specific effect. Which, in my opinion, is a far better way to run things.

[Captainn]

Not to mention a 'defensive stat' is now more defined as how the spec utilizes it, rather than the stat having a specific effect. Which, in my opinion, is a far better way to run things.

Definitely agreed. I just think paladins are gimped because we need so 'much' of that particular stat.

[Lovestar]

He probably means he doesn't want to use 'DPS' stats, he wants to feel like a Tank using Tank stats.

Those days — for better or worse — are thoroughly dead, though.

But cheer up chap, you can still stack Neck, Cloak, and Rings (maybe Trinkets) with "Bonus Armor" on them. There's your tank stat! :p

[Raeph]

He probably means he doesn't want to use 'DPS' stats, he wants to feel like a Tank using Tank stats.

Those days — for better or worse — are thoroughly dead, though.

But cheer up chap, you can still stack Neck, Cloak, and Rings (maybe Trinkets) with "Bonus Armor" on them. There's your tank stat! :p

I was under the impression that "bonus armor" like "spirit" would appear natively by default on "tank" and "healer" non-armor pieces...oh nvm even if the bonus armor stuff drops doesn't mean you have to stop using your "dps" stuff if it is itemized better.

Granted though that brings up the value of "armor" compared to other stats.

[Lovestar]

Yeah it's just an option that sets accessories apart by role, since normal gear is role-agnostic now (every role uses all 2nd-tier stats, and Prime stats switch automatically by spec).

A healer can opt for no Spirit if they're confident, etc.

[Raeph]

Yeah it's just an option that sets accessories apart by role, since normal gear is role-agnostic now (every role uses all 2nd-tier stats, and Prime stats switch automatically by spec).

A healer can opt for no Spirit if they're confident, etc.

True but does that mean we'll only need as much armor as we are comfortable with, or does that mean that it will be the be all that ends all?

Granted need to wait for beta, but we'll have to see. Depends on how much base armor on gear we'll get. If our gear by default gives us 50%+ reduction and the bonus armor is like 1% increase per piece then it will be worthless. If we only get like 35-40% and get 3%+ per bonus armor piece then it will be near mandatory to stack +armor in all slots we can, just for the physical damage reduction.

[Lovestar]

I think it will be similar to defensive stats today — if you are farming content, or your raid feels it needs 1% more DPS and your healers are confident, you'll probably swap out your Armor pieces. Some specs may do it anyway because their AM gains more from other stats. Other specs will be like "ARMOR ARMOR ARMOR MORE ARMOR".

Or of course if you're minmaxing a fight with zero to trivial Physical damage you'd swap Armor pieces.

So yeah, probably it will be similar to Spirit. Most players won't even think about it, they'll just equip whatever they get that's +iLevel and be happy. I suspect those who wish to tinker with the details will accumulate lots of off-pieces, similar to hoarding Trinkets now.

[Jackielope]

As far as armor goes, we'll see how well Blizz makes do with the "promise" of making each stat useful and none over- or underpowered. I have a feeling what would eventually happen is if stats are close enough defensively then we'll default to the one that gives the most offensive punch too. I don't envy their position of having to balance all the offense and defense.

But yeah, it seems we'll definitely be hoarding off pieces for certain fights that favor certain stats, especially armor. And then healers will have spirit pieces for fights too.

[Lyese]

Bonus Armor, while powerful for fights like Patchwerk, might not be as useful in fights like Sindragosa, where the majority of the damage was magical. Now, those are old fights, and they might just design encounters differently, but there's the chance that BA won't be as useful. This way, other secondaries won't be totally eclipsed.

On a sidenote, I'm super spoiled by a 1s GCD.

[morislayer]

Anyone else want righteous defense back? It was my favorite ability in raids for add tanking, or just taunting off a trigger happy dps. Maybe glyphed? I can only hope

[tuesday the paladin]

Does nobody like to tank on these forums? Holy is at 12 pages, Ret is at 9, prot is at 2!

Would love a bit more baseline mobility. Would like to see block be a bit better. From cata to mop we went from block being awesome to effectively ignored.

I hope baseline prot gets sped up a bit. Having to wear ~20% haste just to not feel sluggish is annoying. Atleast if secondary stats are remotely balanced, and we won't have to have haste on everything.

Also a bit worried that readiness is going to be useless for tanks in general. A few scenarios could occur:
1. You have to have X level of readiness to allow for CDs to line up with boss abilities. Any more is effectively useless.
2. The stat will be effectively useless until you can get X amount which will lower CDs sufficiently enough to allow for cheesing boss mechanics or drop a healer.
3. The stat will be sufficiently rare that you won't be able to gain a meaningful or noticeable reduction in abilities.
4. It will get weaker once you learn the fights and get more gear reducing the need for cooldowns.

[slondon]

Does nobody like to tank on these forums? Holy is at 12 pages, Ret is at 9, prot is at 2!

Would love a bit more baseline mobility. Would like to see block be a bit better. From cata to mop we went from block being awesome to effectively ignored.

I hope baseline prot gets sped up a bit. Having to wear ~20% haste just to not feel sluggish is annoying. Atleast if secondary stats are remotely balanced, and we won't have to have haste on everything.

Also a bit worried that readiness is going to be useless for tanks in general. A few scenarios could occur:
1. You have to have X level of readiness to allow for CDs to line up with boss abilities. Any more is effectively useless.
2. The stat will be effectively useless until you can get X amount which will lower CDs sufficiently enough to allow for cheesing boss mechanics or drop a healer.
3. The stat will be sufficiently rare that you won't be able to gain a meaningful or noticeable reduction in abilities.
4. It will get weaker once you learn the fights and get more gear reducing the need for cooldowns.

Point 4 I'm not too phased about tbh. If the stat is useful during progression, that's all that really matters.

[celinamuna]

Because holy is probably circlejerking the cast times and ret doing god knows what.
With prot we really don't have much to discuss (outside of blizzard hopefully fixing haste in consecrate and making HotR/HW less poopy on aoe pulls).
Like someone mentioned earlier my main concern is that i enjoy prot playstyle, but i enjoy it at 30%+ haste, anything below feels too slow. With the removal of a large number of gems sockets + reforging, i just wish that blizzard would bump up Prot's baseline gcds to say 30% haste value, and let us go from there.

[Raeph]

Does nobody like to tank on these forums? Holy is at 12 pages, Ret is at 9, prot is at 2!

It's mainly because of a lack of tank information out currently, all classes/specs. Healers know to a degree what they are expecting (loss of many instants, consolidation of abilities, Cata-like triage style healing though bliz said they will make sure mana isn't too hard to come by). DPS varies but given the pvp blog that was released we know there are going to be a reduction in burst across the board and many CDs are either going away or being consolidated, which can mean that on the pve side of things Ret could see a buff on sustained while taking a hit in burst. Time will tell.

There hasn't been a "Tank" watercooler or document dump. Without that information, even just a direction bliz is going with tanks, all we have to talk about is the lvl 100 talents, one of which is gone, bonus armor on non-armor slots and dodge/parry/hit/exp going away.

From the tank side of the game there is too much that we don't know, so we wait.

[Lovestar]

That and tanks got their huge revamp in MoP, which worked out very, very well.

So, the chances of major sweeping changes is low going into WoD. Instead we nitpick clunky slow rotations and the loss of Haste. :p