6.0 Paladin Discussion and Speculation (All Specs)

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Things i would like to see: whole ret remade or added 4th spec for real holy warriors... not this melee spellcaster with horrible whack-a-mole styled gameplay where you wait for CDs to pop out to smack them all the time...

i mean really, holy warrior with 2 weapon abilities and rest spells... tv+cs vs exo+how+judge+hotr+ds+talents(and thats just dmg, ALL other abilities are spells, whole ret paly has 2 non spells) yay melee caster
they really need to add or make it special spec that doesnt use mana or at least has some sort of "form" for dpsing that doesnt use mana but diff resource... and now that we are going back, might as well make it like frost DK... both dual wield and 2h options

already suggested it, but not like it will ever be considered... make it 2 resource system, holy fervor + holy power... holy fervor works like rage, you get it from autoattacks + some abilities to fix the dry spells and then you use it on attacks that build up holy power, and then holy power for big stuff and finishers... and obviously spell:attack ratio other way around, mostly attacks with couple of spells thrown in, unlike now...

but oh well, keep leveling paladin to max lvl every exp hoping that something will be done, but nothing yet... ending up playing other classes instead

Ret should stay Two handed melee. Don't change that ;....;

[Deleted]

Ret should stay Two handed melee. Don't change that ;....;

Then we need new one... Avenger or something :P
Maybe they are waiting with that... when turalyon returns to wow, then we might see dual wield! But then again, bolvar was in wow and nothing... 2 of the 5 or so most know paladins were dual wield :P

But dual wield is not my primary concern, thats just turalyon fanboying :P but gameplay should really change a lot... all other classes have abilities they can chain, because they have non infinite resources (like mana is for ret)... having all on cd is so boring and all you do is wait on cds... holy damage is ok, but make it come through actual strikes and stuff, not hand waving! i mean, after lothar died, turalyon radiated holy light and smacked that silly orc with sword, he didnt wave hands at him till he defeated him with magical hammers circling around himself or dropping from sky... or pointing hands at him to exorcism him...

but if ret has to be melee spellcaster with 2h (like uther etc), should make 4th spec for bolvar/turalyon wannabes, holy fighters, not fighting priests :P

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Pass. Go back to Holy you heretic!

[cncrules45]

Personal choice, if all stats are closely balanced, which is Blizz's goal, I would avoid Readiness at all costs. For all of the previously mentioned reasons, but also because it will be balanced around the understanding that it gets 100% effectiveness. In any case where the extra readiness didn't buy you an extra CD in the fight, you got nothing. In any case where there was downtime or a heavy DPS window which requires you to hold your CDs, readiness buys you nothing. Multi-strike, Crit, Haste, Mastery, and Amplitude all passively give you a boost and offer you no way to not use them optimally. I really hope it gets scrapped.

[Lovestar]

Personal choice, if all stats are closely balanced, which is Blizz's goal, I would avoid Readiness at all costs. For all of the previously mentioned reasons, but also because it will be balanced around the understanding that it gets 100% effectiveness. In any case where the extra readiness didn't buy you an extra CD in the fight, you got nothing. In any case where there was downtime or a heavy DPS window which requires you to hold your CDs, readiness buys you nothing. Multi-strike, Crit, Haste, Mastery, and Amplitude all passively give you a boost and offer you no way to not use them optimally. I really hope it gets scrapped.

Yes.

The SoO trinx are cool because they're trinx, for one thing — don't need it? Swap it. And second, they have a secondary effect, so even if you don't get a lot out of the CD shave, you get a consolation prize.

Readiness feels like a talent — something you swap out on a fight-by-fight basis because it doesn't always work, but is awesome when it does. Like Unbreakable Spirit. As a stat on gear which will be force-fed to you by drop tables and locked in by inability to Reforge, I have this sneaking feeling it's going to become one of those stats — 'Readiness legs dropped off Blackhand' 'sorry bro '

or in 6.5 — 'Why doesn't this gear have Readiness?? MORE READINESS' because you cross some magic line at high quantities as you get GoAK down to 1m30s.

Really, when I first heard about Readiness as a stat, I was like "OMG, COOL!!!" It's a very appealing concept. Then I started thinking about the practice... haha.

I can't really judge until it's implemented and tested, since people who live in a world of numbers and spreadsheets — my mathematical overlords — tend to sort out the truth from the fiction with this stuff. Like how Bladestorm is OK single-target apparently. >.o

My gut, though, from going through too many patch cycles is — "Uh-oh".

[Talen]

The talents are fairly poor.


DC is probably the best.
TLW? Empowered Seals is an old mechanic. It was removed for a reason. If its powerful enough to justify the continue switching, its too powerful. if it isn't...it won't be used.
SoF? A way to try and make the class fill more of a support role. This should be baseline. Better yet - why is it needed when SoI exists?


Poorly thought out. Unimaginative.


Stats: We'll see whats good later on when we see how effective they are.


New skill improvements:
We'll have to see. Is it 1 skill per spec per level? So each spec gets 10 each? Or is it 1 skill per level? So each spec gets three and the talent? Is it just improvements to existing skills as suggested? Or would there be new passive skills involved a swell?


Then there is the ability bloat. Are any skills going to be removed? I could see HoR going and only one of Holy Shock, Judgement or Exorcism staying. Prot might lose Holy Wrath. Emancipate might be wrapped into HoF. The CDs will probably be separated out between specs...which kinda misses the point in many ways. And so on

Things are still too vague.


EJL

[Zabannith]

Don't forget guys this is all subject to change , for all we know the talents may be already changed, I mean we have seen 2 warrior talents changed already the only thing that stayed was ravager , and glad stance changed to prot only and fury and arms got ignite weapon when they take that talent , I would not be surprised is they have changed for us as well.

I actually like the new warrior anger management talent and would love to have some thing similar, It seems a little OP but this is probably blizzards response to make haste worth some thing for warriors
Imagine something like this but with HP instead of rage for us

[Rogal Dorn]

I actually like the new warrior anger management talent and would love to have some thing similar, It seems a little OP but this is probably blizzards response to make haste worth some thing for warriors
Imagine something like this but with HP instead of rage for us

This could be our new mastery, cuz I think our current mastery is too similar to multstrike. Maybe it would help our sustained damage problem.

[Pasture]

From a PvE standpoint these talents are terrible for holy.

Double beacon is highly overrated, but is shaping up to be the only remotely viable talent to use in that tier.

In today's 10 man heroic environment there are plenty of fights where double beacon would be fantastic. My beacon sometimes approached 20% of my healing. A second one is nothing to turn your nose up at.

The problem for the expansion is that the main raiding difficulty will be 20 man, where beacon just won't be that useful with all the other thousands of heals already dropping on the tanks.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

This could be our new mastery, cuz I think our current mastery is too similar to multstrike. Maybe it would help our sustained damage problem.

Multistrike I believe is damage converted into aoe or something like that? Our mastery doesn't seem anything like that unless I missed something.

[Raeph]

Multistrike I believe is damage converted into aoe or something like that? Our mastery doesn't seem anything like that unless I missed something.

"X% Multistrike means: Each ability has two separate (X/2)% chances to hit each target an additional time for 30% damage. Multistrikes count as hitting the same target twice with one cast, not multiple casts. (i.e. Mind Blast won't generate 2 shadow orbs) Multistrike is split into two (X/2)% chances, so that you can occasionally get a triple-hit (fun!), and the cap is 200%, not 100%."

from Celestalon on twitter.

I think you are thinking about the Cleave tertiary stat.

[Deleted]

Unless they remove the haste-dependance from Ret, I got a feeling that we're all gonna be going JC/BS for Profs, assuming those remain unchanged. With the removal of Reforging and lesser amount of Gem slots realistically available will make BS's guaranteened 2 sockets AND JC's double potency gems VERY strong for us.

Hell, probably every spec of every class is in a similar situation. Or that's my first impression of the situation.

As far as Ret changes go... Final Verdict will most likely be our go-to talent if it goes off in the current form. Might even give us some much-needed PvP damage (our biggest nuke unaffected by armor? GIEF!). TLW seems a bit... well uninspired. Like someone posted above, it has an inherent weakness of "If its good enough to overweigh FV, it's too strong. If its not, nobody will use it." Though to be honest, on the first raid tier it probably will be atleast even with FV because low haste levels lead to more empty GCD's thus allowing us the room needed to seal twist and judge between SoT and SoR. SoF on the other hand can go die in a fire. No sane Ret would take it even for PvP.

For Prot the situation looks quite similar. The new tertiary stats are a bit meh when you think about it. Sure, being able to shave a few seconds out of your DR Cd's can be nice, but I highly doubt we'll get situations where we need a certain amount of readiness to be able to get AD/GoAK/DP/Whatever up for a certain ability or Die. Amplify seems to be the overall best out of the new abilities, again assuming Prot stat-dependancies don't change. Getting BOTH Haste AND Mastery is good. Talentwise this might actually be a more complex question than with Ret. Holy Shield VS TLW's HoT? (Again, SoF can go die in a fire)

But my main problem with WoD as far as it stands now is that unless they do something new for Ret, I am going to hate playing Low Haste Ret for a few patches. (Went through some Challenge modes the other day. Haste went from 40% -> 14% and GOD that was an awful spec to play. it was physically uncomfortable.)

[Xs]

Unless they remove the haste-dependance from Ret, I got a feeling that we're all gonna be going JC/BS for Profs, assuming those remain unchanged. With the removal of Reforging and lesser amount of Gem slots realistically available will make BS's guaranteened 2 sockets AND JC's double potency gems VERY strong for us.

Hell, probably every spec of every class is in a similar situation. Or that's my first impression of the situation.

I doubt it'll shift up that much from how it is now, certain specs prefer the main stat bonus so they take what ever they want, others prefer Mastery/Haste so they get more value from BS. If they don't change the JC system from how it is now, its almost never worth using the secondary gems anyway, even for specs that prio yellow > red > blue gems. That said though, I imagine they'll have to change it if sockets aren't going to be on items anywhere near frequently enough to socket two profession specific gems, either changing it to one super powerful gem or a different bonus all together.

[PosPosPos]

In today's 10 man heroic environment there are plenty of fights where double beacon would be fantastic. My beacon sometimes approached 20% of my healing. A second one is nothing to turn your nose up at.

The problem for the expansion is that the main raiding difficulty will be 20 man, where beacon just won't be that useful with all the other thousands of heals already dropping on the tanks.

Which is why I say it is viable, but overrated.

[Jackielope]

Might want to modify the OP a bit, specifically for Amplification. Amp not only increases crit damage, it also increase sulti-strike damage (they worry it would be possible to cap cit and MS if it buffed ratings directly) and buffs haste, mastery, and readiness ratings by a certain percent.

And do note that they're making all specs able to benefit from all six secondary stats, which includes giving prot a viable use for crit that can compete with other stats (hopefully).

Edit: There was a fair bit of speculative posts done back in this thread about talents: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...oooooo-talents

Even though I won't be able to play WoD for various reasons, I'm hoping Seal of Faith is able to stay in some form because a way to actually weave heals and damage together instead of "spam X ability that does both healing and damage" seems more interesting to me. I'm hoping it'll also mean Blizz actually looks at healer DPS too and makes them all able to be similar to each other both in terms of damage as well as mana expenditure.

[Deleted]

Even though I won't be able to play WoD for various reasons, I'm hoping Seal of Faith is able to stay in some form because a way to actually weave heals and damage together instead of "spam X ability that does both healing and damage" seems more interesting to me. I'm hoping it'll also mean Blizz actually looks at healer DPS too and makes them all able to be similar to each other both in terms of damage as well as mana expenditure.

If I understand the mechanic correctly, it could actually work somewhat with SH talented. Depending how it will exactly work.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

Seal of Faith looks amazing for ret and prot if you're into the support play style.
potential uses (keep in mind that nothing of this is confirmed to work, obviously)
Seal of Faith + Light's Hammer = potential as strong as tranquility.
Seal of Faith + Eternal Flame = potential strongest HoT at early stages of the expansion. Can be VERY useful on tanks if there's dot mechanics for tanks to beware of, can potentially make your raid able to drop a healer.
Seal of Faith + Selfless Healer - Should be obvious that this has the potential to be a 3 judgement long cd lay on hands in effect.


In regards to multistrike, again not confirmed.
If multistrike also carries with it the effects of the ability that procced multi strike then it's going to be very strong for all combo point specs.
All of our holy power generators would have a chance to give us not 1 but 2 (or more if multistrike can proc of itself, which I doubt) holy power per GCD, sick strong.
Divine Purpose - Imagine our current 4set but instead of it being limited to DS we could use it on whatever. (let me explain)
---- You have DP specced. situations: 1. Hit TV (or full holy TV w/e) DP procs, you get another TV off as usual. 2. Hit TV DP doesn't proc but Multistrike does, that multistrike procs DP. 3. Hit TV, DP and Multistrike procs (see where I'm going?), DP TV triggers multistrike but no DP, the multistrike however triggers DP... (still not getting where I'm going with this?) 4. Laugh while you chainproc DP/multistrike.
Yes this is horribly RNG (and I hate RNG, thus I fear how strong multistrike can be for multiple classes) but once in a while stars do align and if this whole "chain" thing works anything like how our current 4set and DP works together (which it does brilliantly) then it's not impossible for it to happen again. I've had a fair bit of discussions with guildies (namely mages) about Fire stacking multistrike, Fireball crits - multistrike also crits = free pyroblast in 1gcd - chain.
I fear that multistrike can get seriously out of hand by the end of the expansion, to the point that you'd keep multistrike items even if the ilvl difference is massive. Obviously this is all unconfirmed and I'm pretty sure a lot of these potential "bombs" will be ironed out during beta/ptr tests but still I think multistrike (and cleave) are 100% bullshit ideas to add as a baseline "stat" that you can stack (if you're lucky obviously).

[PosPosPos]

Seal of Faith looks amazing for ret and prot if you're into the support play style.
potential uses (keep in mind that nothing of this is confirmed to work, obviously)
Seal of Faith + Light's Hammer = potential as strong as tranquility.
Seal of Faith + Eternal Flame = potential strongest HoT at early stages of the expansion. Can be VERY useful on tanks if there's dot mechanics for tanks to beware of, can potentially make your raid able to drop a healer.
Seal of Faith + Selfless Healer - Should be obvious that this has the potential to be a 3 judgement long cd lay on hands in effect.

For Prot, maybe, just maybe. For Ret lolno, you would just get laughed out of raid and be too embarrassed to show yourself in guild afterwards if you so much as even say you want to run it in a semi-serious setting.

[Lovestar]

For Prot, maybe, just maybe. For Ret lolno, you would just get laughed out of raid and be too embarrassed to show yourself in guild afterwards if you so much as even say you want to run it in a semi-serious setting.

The primary issue is putting a DPS loss talent in direct competition with a DPS gain talent.

Am I missing something, or is this totally senseless?

edit:
I guess Huntingbear has an odd way of looking at it — it could be a personal DPS loss, but a Raid DPS gain, assuming it lets you bring 1 less healer to a fight.

Still seems... idk... sketchy. Overly idealistic?

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

For Prot, maybe, just maybe. For Ret lolno, you would just get laughed out of raid and be too embarrassed to show yourself in guild afterwards if you so much as even say you want to run it in a semi-serious setting.

Yeah that's where you're wrong, it's situational obviously but say an encounter is doable with 3 healers but once every 30sec a debuff comes up on a random raid target that requires the attention of 3 healers. In those situations bringing a 4th healer to "cover" would be ideal, but instead you could bring a ret (or prot) stacking SoF and helping out. Another example could be for big aoe raid damage, some examples of recent is Garrosh heroic or Malkorok cleave phase. Instead of relying on long raid cds (or more healers) you'd simply turn a ret (or prot) paladin into a hybrid for a couple seconds.
By doing this (again, situational) you can bring another dps which is going to increase raid dps, who the fuck cares if your ret only does 70% of the dps a regular dps would do if it enables you to bring another 100% dpser into the raid? In effect that ret would be worth 170% dps instead of the usual 100% (or however "balanced" ret will be).
This is the problem people have when considering the "power" of hybrid-style specs or play styles, it gives your raid flexibility that can be a great asset. Consider raid dps before class dps. Even if Warriors did horrible dps you'd want to bring them for crit banner, if every single heroism class was horrible you'd still bring them for the raidwide dps increase. Your individual dps doesn't matter at all compared to raid dps, yes you add to the end number but different specs and tools increases the raid dps in different ways...

Will it be seen in top 10 world raiding? Probably not, we'll have to wait and see. Healers are 100% of the time the first thing top guilds look to drop one of to increase dps, if some hybrid play makes them able to do so then I wouldn't be at all surprised if you'll see more of this type of play to happen.