Prot Nerfs

[Promdates]

Even during BC you had to figure out ways to take damage after a certain gear point. We were even tanking lower content without gear on in order to actually not go oom because we were reducing so much damage that we hardly received any heals.

[Enosh]

My paladin is going to swirl down the toilet if this goes live. Im not going back to some slow ass shit rot, better things to do with my evenings than waiting on 4.5 second cds.

except nothing they changed has anything to do with haste so idk why the fuck you think you would be going back to "slow ass shit"
I guess parry and dodge will be slightly less shit with CS not triggering GC anymore, which was how it originally was when they tried to make parry and dodge not shit in 5.1 or was it 5.2? but then they put it as half and gave CS etc a lower chance to proc it, so meh, won't make anyone gear for parry and dodge imho

the mana thing has imo fuck all to do with prot so don't panic about this

[lakhesis]

I rather assumed the SoI mana return thing was to discourage holy from meleeing bosses to cheese mana regen. Don't see any real effect on prot.

Battle Healer: without them making the raid healing version do substantially more than the tank version, I'll probably just never use it. Odds of it being pointless overheal on raid are higher than on me.

Grand Crusader: Booooo. No major difference really, but a step in the wrong direction (i.e. trying to prop up a counter-productive stat interaction due to being unwilling to bite the bullet and remove traditional but trashy secondary stats from gear)

[Nairobi]

Maybe Blizz will be all like "OKAY GUIZ, EVERY1 LIEKS BC AS TEH BEST?! SO WE WILL RETURN BC PALLY ABILTY TO GET MANA BASED ON AMOUNT HEELZ U GET TO PROT!! LOLLOLZ!"

Memory is fuzzy, but didn't we also have some mechanic during either Wrath or Cata where we got a % mana back on a block/dodge/parry?

You're thinking of Blessing of Sanctuary: Reduced damage taken by a few% and gave 2%(iirc) mana back on successuful avoidance.

REALLY hope that's not the "solution" we get once they realize that Prot needs mana from SOI to not go OOM.

except nothing they changed has anything to do with haste so idk why the fuck you think you would be going back to "slow ass shit"
I guess parry and dodge will be slightly less shit with CS not triggering GC anymore, which was how it originally was when they tried to make parry and dodge not shit in 5.1 or was it 5.2? but then they put it as half and gave CS etc a lower chance to proc it, so meh, won't make anyone gear for parry and dodge imho

the mana thing has imo fuck all to do with prot so don't panic about this

Errr...wat? It has EVERYTHING to do with Prot as it currently stands. Until they announce that "Oops, sorry we meant that as a Holy-only change" or "Don't worry guys, it doesn't effect prot", then I'll not panic. As is exists now, Prot WILL go OOM in 45sec to 2 mins, depending on haste levels without the mana return from SOI.

[pld]

Errr...wat? It has EVERYTHING to do with Prot as it currently stands. Until they announce that "Oops, sorry we meant that as a Holy-only change" or "Don't worry guys, it doesn't effect prot", then I'll not panic. As is exists now, Prot WILL go OOM in 45sec to 2 mins, depending on haste levels without the mana return from SOI.

I feel like it was just a massive oversight on the dev's part. It feels unlike Blizzard to suddenly revamp class mechanics mid-expansion and expect that to be okay. While i'm with you on the point that I won't feel fully comfortable until we get a blue post addressing the issue, I find (some) solace in the idea that if Blizzard was indeed changing play style mechanics (ex. Sanctuary-style mana regen), we would also have seen the inclusion in the notes of: "Protection Paladins will now learn Blessing of Sanctuary at level xx".

Seems silly to purposefully give the bad news a full 24 hours BEFORE giving the good news.

[Deathgoose]

Even during BC you had to figure out ways to take damage after a certain gear point. We were even tanking lower content without gear on in order to actually not go oom because we were reducing so much damage that we hardly received any heals.

In the beginning, it was any healing you received, including overheals. Then they changed it so it was only actual healing done, not counting overheals, and THAT's when you were left sucking wind if you weren't taking damage. I remember having to tell my wife not to use her priest shield on me because I needed to take damage.

[celinamuna]

Battle Healer: without them making the raid healing version do substantially more than the tank version, I'll probably just never use it. Odds of it being pointless overheal on raid are higher than on me.

Looking at my WoL on basically every single fight i've seen i overheal for way more with SoL than BH. So odds of a smart heal overhealing the raid in the "world of unmitigated aoe dmg" more so than "heal the tank who should be getting healed by healers regardless" i would say are fairly low.

[Deathgoose]

You're thinking of Blessing of Sanctuary: Reduced damage taken by a few% and gave 2%(iirc) mana back on successuful avoidance.

REALLY hope that's not the "solution" we get once they realize that Prot needs mana from SOI to not go OOM.

Yeah, that was the one! Heh, I could just see it as an ill-advised way to try to make dodge/parry more attractive. As in, take it or go OOM.

[Nairobi]

Yeah, that was the one! Heh, I could just see it as an ill-advised way to try to make dodge/parry more attractive. As in, take it or go OOM.

That's precisely my fear.

[Noradin]

Maybe it is not intended to affect prot, but it does and blizzard has a history of not noticing things like this for a few patches.

[Belloc]

I haven't read the entirety of this thread, but the parts I have read, regarding mana issues, involve people attacking target dummies on live servers.

Has anyone tested out their rotation on the PTR target dummies? Contrary to popular belief, Blizzard does think these issues over before they test them out and I wouldn't be surprised if mana is a non-issue on the PTR. No guarantees, obviously, but it seems prudent to test it in context before making a huge deal out of it.

As far as Battle Healer goes, I sincerely hope they redesign it again. Perhaps something like, "Any overhealing caused by Seal of Insight is redirected to the raid/party member with the lowest health." That way, Seal of Insight still heals us, unless we don't need the heals. Considering that SoI's interaction with haste is one of the reasons that haste is so strong a mitigation stat (and I realize a lot of prot paladins aren't even aware of this benefit), this new Battle Healer glyph becomes completely unattractive for prot.

[celinamuna]

As far as Battle Healer goes, I sincerely hope they redesign it again. Perhaps something like, "Any overhealing caused by Seal of Insight is redirected to the raid/party member with the lowest health." That way, Seal of Insight still heals us, unless we don't need the heals. Considering that SoI's interaction with haste is one of the reasons that haste is so strong a mitigation stat (and I realize a lot of prot paladins aren't even aware of this benefit), this new Battle Healer glyph becomes completely unattractive for prot.

Making it for overheal would make it 100% braindead choice.
Atm it still might improve healing output albeit by shifting focus, and still making haste very attractive.

This is actually good glyph design. The only possible better fix is us being able to switch between 2 modes mid combat, but that would be too strong.

[Promdates]

In the beginning, it was any healing you received, including overheals. Then they changed it so it was only actual healing done, not counting overheals, and THAT's when you were left sucking wind if you weren't taking damage. I remember having to tell my wife not to use her priest shield on me because I needed to take damage.

I spent many raids not wearing pants and chests because I needed to take damage while doing 5 mans, or just not wearing pants when doing kara. Nothing was quite as fun as gearing up for ZA Bear runs, trying to maximize damage done with minimal damage taken and stacking as much spell power as I could past the 102.4% cap.

[UnderworldSoup]

Errr...wat? It has EVERYTHING to do with Prot as it currently stands. Until they announce that "Oops, sorry we meant that as a Holy-only change" or "Don't worry guys, it doesn't effect prot", then I'll not panic. As is exists now, Prot WILL go OOM in 45sec to 2 mins, depending on haste levels without the mana return from SOI.

Are we talking 40% or 50% haste levels (neither should be able to push the rotation that hard)? Twisting seals? .. Spamming Flash of Light?

Even the thought that Protection can oom by sitting in an alternate seal baffles me right now. Unless they nerf Guarded by the Light's mana return then you can't oom outside of forcefully dumping your mana into huge sinks like FoL or keeping Censure up.

[Nairobi]

Are we talking 40% or 50% haste levels (neither should be able to push the rotation that hard)? Twisting seals? .. Spamming Flash of Light?

Even the thought that Protection can oom by sitting in an alternate seal baffles me right now. Unless they nerf Guarded by the Light's mana return then you can't oom outside of forcefully dumping your mana into huge sinks like FoL or keeping Censure up.

On live, I just did it again. With SOT up, at 42% haste, I was OOM in 73 seconds while not using anything but rotational abilities.

Using things like Taunt, Defensive CDs, and Interrupts had me OOM in ~60 sec.

No heals, no seal twisting, nothing. Just pure rotation and typical tank things like taunt/rebuke/cooldowns WILL OOM you in ~1-2mins.

[Deleted]

Even during BC you had to figure out ways to take damage after a certain gear point. We were even tanking lower content without gear on in order to actually not go oom because we were reducing so much damage that we hardly received any heals.

Well, we also had seal of wisdom + MP5 buffs and other things that restored mana in ticks.

If they removed SoI outright today, we would actually be way worse off than we were even back then when class design was decided by throwing darts at a list of possible traits..

A tank that uses 1handed weapons, half and half spells and melee but has no spell power on any items except its weapon. Oh and Judgment, who even KNOWS what mechanic that uses. A ranged melee attack that deals holy spell damage. BECAUSE REASONS.

[Deathgoose]

Well, we also had seal of wisdom + MP5 buffs and other things that restored mana in ticks.

If they removed SoI outright today, we would actually be way worse off than we were even back then when class design was decided by throwing darts at a list of possible traits..

A tank that uses 1handed weapons, half and half spells and melee but has no spell power on any items except its weapon. Oh and Judgment, who even KNOWS what mechanic that uses. A ranged melee attack that deals holy spell damage. BECAUSE REASONS.

Back in BC, the Lamellar PvP plate was actually perfect for tanking lower content, like 5-mans and crap, because the resilience made you crit immune, it had pretty decent armor value for flat physical dam reduction, PvP gear had more +Stam than non-tank PvE plate of the same ilvl, the +Int helped with mana pools, and the +Spelldam helped with many of our spell-power based abilities before they all got converted to using AP. And +Str was not a particularly attractive stat for Prot back then.

And since it lacked dodge/parry/block rating/block value, you would be getting hit steady enough for heals to return mana, but the resilience was enough to stop crits.

How wacky the design was back then! (But better than Vanilla... because just eww...)

[Aceshigh]

Some people should calm down. I think there were some misleading statements here about the returned mana from SoI. Some people managed to go oom while this will not be the case under normal conditions. Guarded by the Light makes sure this won't happen and has to concern us in any way. And no, it does not happen if anybody turns off SoI and nuke a dummy. I did it myself on live an hour ago under mentioned conditions at a dummy and I merely dropped to 80% mana or even lower! Make a video out of it or prove your point in a similar way, else I won't believe any of those stories and assume you're just making it up.

Sounds like you have low haste or are pretty bad at keeping up a normal rotation/priority and have long gaps of hitting nothing because you can most certain OOM yourself, especially at high gear levels (I am 535 ilvl, nowhere near BIS and am using the 2p tank which has no native haste on it, tank shield with none, jinrohk ring with none, etc).

[Theck]

I rather assumed the SoI mana return thing was to discourage holy from meleeing bosses to cheese mana regen. Don't see any real effect on prot.

Battle Healer: without them making the raid healing version do substantially more than the tank version, I'll probably just never use it. Odds of it being pointless overheal on raid are higher than on me.

Grand Crusader: Booooo. No major difference really, but a step in the wrong direction (i.e. trying to prop up a counter-productive stat interaction due to being unwilling to bite the bullet and remove traditional but trashy secondary stats from gear)

As far as I can tell, you only start running OOM as prot if you're somewhere above 40% haste. Probably the devs never thought to check that edge case when making this change, as I think you're spot-on about it being a Holy nerf. I wouldn't be surprised at all if they compensated us in the mana regen department elsewhere, as it doesn't seem like this was targeted at us.

Battle Healer was sort of stupidly overpowered even at 20%. I guess they just decided it was too good at any percentage and redesigned it instead. Again, I'd bet that well over 90% of prot paladins used this glyph full-time, which puts it in that "so absurdly good that it's mandatory" range, which isn't ideal. I've probably had GoBH glyphed for 6 months or more, to be honest. I change out the other two, but never that one. It was just a matter of time.

That said, the new version is probably useless to any protection paladin working on difficult content. Giving up SoI is too much of a survivability hit unless you're already over-gearing the encounter. Might be an interesting option for 10-man or normal/flex tanks that don't feel threatened.

The Grand Crusader change is the original version they tested during 5.3 PTR. It obviously does a better job of propping up dodge/parry, but leaves off-tanking a little more boring. But I don't think it's a good idea to infer long-term plans from that change either. Sure, they could remove dodge and parry, but that's not something they're going to do in a 5.x patch. That's an expansion-level overhaul.

So I see this change as saying something more akin to "well, we know you're stuck with this stuff on some of your gear for a little while longer, we'll try to make it more useful to you in the short-term."

[Deja Thoris]

The SoI change still leaves me baffled but the BH one may have potential.

Tanks receive a lot of overhealing through beacons and HoT's. Wipes (in 10 man) generally don't happen because a tank dies. They happen because someone in the raid other than the tank dies. If BH takes care of low people in the raid with smart heals then the overhealing on the tanks would diminish because the healing is going to the raid rather than the tank.

Of course this is
a) Speculation
b) Situational

but I see the potential for this change to be pretty awesome.