[WoD] Protection Paladin Megathread

[Rewyn]

No one I think wants seal twisting, or an upkeep buff, or GCD usage on seals.

Having seals be meaningful choices would be awesome. I.E XYZ just happened, thats a perfect reason to change to Seal Z vs Seal Y.

No one wants : omg 10 seconds left on my buff, betta switch seals!
That kind of mechanic does not reward skill or promote awareness, its just rewarding people for Addon Buff Timers (Weak Aura, etc).

[nightfalls]

On another topic: I really hope Seraphim isn't the best talent for Prot. It's going to make our rotation really weird having to cast a 5 HoPo ability every 30 seconds.

Beyond being against seal twisting, I'm 100% against any ability costing more than 3 Holy Power in any scenario whatsoever.

[Rewyn]

While I agree, since we wont be as tied to 5 stacks of bastion to keep EF refreshed on us (bastion wont effect EF ticks after all) means we could probably do a 5hp here and there. The main issue i have with it is 10 seconds..is very limited. Hard to do much in that time frame, and it promotes a strange kind of CD dump during that period of time.

[Deleted]

I dont see us using EF tbh in WoD with current tuning.

[Vaeladin]

I'm going to link this for sure to my guildie, who's also a paladin (mains Ret). He got on my case for complaining so much about alpha changes, but this is the reason why so many of us do so: to prevent these terrible changes from making live.

Giving feedback is good. But complaining that "Blizzard is killing their game" or "blah blah protadins are getting worse and worse blah blah" is NOT good feedback.

OT: I'm glad they reverted the changes. I do hope that they make the seals more interesting though, without forcing us to switch. We should want to switch seals for different occasions. Not because we're forced to, to use a certain ability.

[trystero]

Giving feedback is good. But complaining that "Blizzard is killing their game" or "blah blah protadins are getting worse and worse blah blah" is NOT good feedback.

Sure it's good. When you evaluate feedback, you're supposed to ignore the rhetoric, as that's the passion with which someone will post; it doesn't invalidate the merit of what they're claiming. At the same time, though, passion/rhetoric gives you a sense of how strongly someone feels about something. When several players are clamoring that "this is a horrible change, you're ruining the spec," it's a far stronger message than if you had some automatons churning out objective reports in APA style.

[Rewyn]

I dont see us using EF tbh in WoD with current tuning.

SS? Depends how both tools scale with our new vengeance I feel.

[Jackielope]

SS? Depends how both tools scale with our new vengeance I feel.

It'll also depend on the fight. If a mechanic tests our very short-term survival then SS might be better since it's a shield and all, while EF would still favor the longer game. We'll have to see how much they nerf absorbs though.

[Deleted]

I hope Blizzard will get the message that most protection paladins don't want seal twisting.

Healing is the only unique thing Protection Paladin has if you take that we have nothing left.

Giving all tanks Riposte, Bladed Armor and Mastery AP bonus seems like a design that just makes all tanks the same.

I feel like Protection was nerfed throughout mists and now there is little for us to get inspired about going forward.

[Jackielope]

I hope Blizzard will get the message that most protection paladins don't want seal twisting.

Healing is the only unique thing Protection Paladin has if you take that we have nothing left.

Giving all tanks Riposte, Bladed Armor and Mastery AP bonus seems like a design that just makes all tanks the same.

I feel like Protection was nerfed throughout mists and now there is little for us to get inspired about going forward.

Riposte is one way to give crit defensive value. There's perhaps the possibility of something like a monk's Elusive Brew, but wither way they want at least one way to boost avoidance through a secondary stat.

As far as bladed armor and mastery AP bonus they're going for the safest option of just directly boosting a stat instead of an entirely new mechanic like they're doing with multistrike. There's six tank stats to work with and each one is going to need offensive and defensive value, so I'm not at all surprised they're playing it safe and simple with a couple of them.

[Deleted]

I feel like EF is a far too high HP dump to be able to justify especially with Seraphim being an option. It would have to be so much stronger than SS for it to be viable, and currently it is being nerfed so I do not see that happening. Also, tanks will be topped of a lot, it is silly to think otherwise. The absorb will always be useful then.
But because SS has no opportunity cost it will most likely be used.

[celinamuna]

Crit/multistrike still useless for Prot Paladins in terms of mitigation? and any changes to Holy Wrath?
No, not useless. Very useful. Stay tuned for next patch notes update. Still considering Holy Wrath changes. (Celestalon)

Either blizz are clueless or they're changing crit/multistrike.

[Deleted]

Either blizz are clueless or they're changing crit/multistrike.

Clueless. I bet every penny I got on it.

[Kortane]

Either blizz are clueless or they're changing crit/multistrike.

Unfortunately, that tweet was made over 3 weeks ago. We've since learned all about Shining Protector and Riposte.

[Brollgarth]

Ok, brilliant with the feedback and all, keep it going guys!!

Here's my thoughts on the matter.

LOVE active mitigation, truly brilliant idea!


Did it feel fluid though through MoP? Hell no!
Was after ToT that the item levels allowed us to kinda not feel clunky with our rotation and actually started to feel that active mitigation started to work for us.
So, is it great now? Not for me.
I feel like the fact we have a rotation is wrong. Prot = tank. Tank = Hold threat, Stay alive. Sure the dps aspect is fun and useful to our raiding teams, but is it our job? Should it be?

Holy warriors is what we are, but I sure as hell don't feel like one most of the times.
I feel like a dps whore that is chasing damage output. And before some of you rush to judge, yeah I am not standing in crap to do so, or forgetting my job as a tank


How about we use active mitigation instead of boosting our dps, to boost our group survivability. Not with heals, but with damage reduction buffs. Yeah, we got shields now to do so if we choose (EF, WoG, SS, Hands etc), sure. But how about we take benefit out of it towards our survivability by doing so?
Example, consume X amount of HP to use an ability like WoG or EF to our allies, and by doing so, applying to them a damage reduction 3-6 sec duration buff (depending on HP consumed among other stuff) and we get more block or uptime on a damage reduction of our own too? Too OP you think?


As for the 100 lvl talents, stance dancing would be a great tool, but not with the seals in GCD as been said before!! Please put the seals off GCD!!! It's just wrong....

As for the Seraphim one...I just think that 30secs for 5 HP will add more clunky factor to our "rotation"....meh. 1min CD on that might actually feel a bit more productive, but I still think you are heading in the wrong way with Pala design in WoD. We need to feel more like rewarded by playing smart, and reduce our inc damage and avoid stuff that been pushed to do more dps. My opinion.

As for the holy shield talent, I don't know, I need to see it play to say more, but from what I read, I think it's very promising for the direction the protection paladin should be headed. But on it's own, and as it stands, it doesn't feel like a great reward for a 100 talent choice. Could be wrong though...as I said, I need to see it play..

[Raeph]

Ok, brilliant with the feedback and all, keep it going guys!!

Here's my thoughts on the matter.

LOVE active mitigation, truly brilliant idea!


Did it feel fluid though through MoP? Hell no!
Was after ToT that the item levels allowed us to kinda not feel clunky with our rotation and actually started to feel that active mitigation started to work for us.
So, is it great now? Not for me.
I feel like the fact we have a rotation is wrong. Prot = tank. Tank = Hold threat, Stay alive. Sure the dps aspect is fun and useful to our raiding teams, but is it our job? Should it be?

*snip*

As for the 100 lvl talents, stance dancing would be a great tool, but not with the seals in GCD as been said before!! Please put the seals off GCD!!! It's just wrong....

As for the Seraphim one...I just think that 30secs for 5 HP will add more clunky factor to our "rotation"....meh. 1min CD on that might actually feel a bit more productive, but I still think you are heading in the wrong way with Pala design in WoD. We need to feel more like rewarded by playing smart, and reduce our inc damage and avoid stuff that been pushed to do more dps. My opinion.

As for the holy shield talent, I don't know, I need to see it play to say more, but from what I read, I think it's very promising for the direction the protection paladin should be headed. But on it's own, and as it stands, it doesn't feel like a great reward for a 100 talent choice. Could be wrong though...as I said, I need to see it play..

AM right now is held back by the fact that HoPo generation doesn't really feel fluid until we hit about 30% haste. From what I've seen we'll be at that early in the expansion (I came up with 26% haste, looking at the item level 630 gear, which is level 100 normal dungeon rares). We should be able to maintain good haste levels to make our AM and generations feel very fluid, rather than how punishing it was early in MoP.

As for damage, the bulk of our damage comes from Vengeance, which is going away. The new Resolve tank passive only effects self heals and defensive abilities so were not going to see the tank doing 2-4x the damage of a dps in certain fights (I'll miss my 2mil SotR crits on Thok though).

There is room for discussion and most likely change on the three level 100 talents. Each has potential but they each have issues as well. Empowered seals uses up 2 GCDs every 20 seconds for buffs that may or may not be worth such an investment. Seraphim uses 5 HoPo for 10 seconds of a significant bonus (I'm personally watching how this one plays out, as it could be a fairly useful ability especially with 30% readiness and Mastery). Holy Shield as a passive is kinda boring (I'd use it if it turns out to be best but the reflect seems to be the best thing going for it, with the 10% block being fairly uninteresting).

[Jackielope]

One of the design choices Blizz said they made was that a good rotation/priority system for Active Mitigation would also be good for DPS thanks to generating HoPo and using it on SotR and such. Basically a good tank will also be a good damage dealer. It goes back to holding threat in Cata and before since dealing damage also means more threat and thus being a better tank.

[Nobleshield]

While I dislike active mitigation, I'm hoping that since they want to keep it, that it becomes more fluid and responsive as far as how it feels when doing your priority. Until I got my Haste up, the priority felt really clunky, and I think that was part of the big reason I absolutely hated AM during early MoP.

[celinamuna]

It's all fun and games, but our max dmg rotation != max AM rotation.
With that being said, i'm sad that vengeance is going away, but i'll have a blast, when a number of terrible players, who were blaming vengeance for their terrible dps, won't be able to use that argument in the future.

[bigmurph]

They better not take away my Avenging Wrath.. I'll be so pissed...