Prot Pally BfA Changes

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

All the tanks are scheduled for changes, and their overall intent seems to be avoiding the disparity in tank balance we've seen in Legion. It's early days, nothing is even close to being final, so obviously there's no reason to over-react to any particular specifics.

That said, I am curious about what they are trying to do with LotP and HotP. They won't heal equally, apparently? Also the healing will be based off a flat amount? The figure quoted is surely a placeholder, but any flat amount - as opposed to % of damage or % of health - seems destined to scale poorly.
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Protection:

• Shield of the Righteous: Slams the target with your shield, causing Holy damage, and reducing damage you take by 25% increases armor by 125% for 4.5 sec.
• Light of the Protector: Calls down the Light to heal you for 30% of your missing health. 1,678, increased by up to 200% based on missing health. While standing in consecration, its effects are increased by 20%.
• Hand of the Protector: Calls down the Light to heal a friendly target for 30% of the target's missing health. 1,398, increased by up to 200% based on missing health. While standing in consecration, its effects are increased by 20%.

Source: Battle for Azeroth Class Ability Changes on the Demo Floor

[inert]

Judging by those numbers I can tell they really don't like the ability to LoH other party members on a sub 10 second cooldown. Probably fair.

I'm more concerned with SotR not doing anything for magic damage anymore. I've always felt Holy Shield should be baseline or an ability that's like SotR that you'd use instead or something, so if either of those things happen to compensate that's fine I suppose.

[inert]

I doubt we're getting anything in return for no longer being able to throw a Lay on Hands at party members every ~10 seconds, tbh.

I can't see us not getting something else to compensate for no longer being able to block magic damage without talenting into it, but you never know.

[Galzra]

Probably nothing, druid tanks must stay #1 for all time. Make pally tanks obsolete, just like they were in vanilla. But seriously I hope they do something interesting with all pally specs.

[CptEgo]

We are currently the weakest tank on live

Easily fixed by nerfing the other tank specs Especially bears.

[Deleted]

Really hope we get some mayor overhaul with these announcements and the current state of our tankingspec.
We have such bad mitigation outside of soth + the lack of mobility in all specializations.
PvP was a big No go for me this xpack.
Paladin will allways be my main, I just really hope they don't screw us anymore for Bfa.

[Easo]

So just protection from melee/physical damage, not spells, but IIRC, other tanks has the same changes. Let's see how that plays out on beta.
However, there really needs to be some work put into this, yes, I know Mythic+ are cool, but stop making tanks into DPS. I can do some stupid numbers now, but is that really important? Tank should feel that he is doing some damage, but that never should be the priority (maybe make one or two exceptions), survive bosses/intercept adds/protect your raid, those should...
And Seraphim? Cool, expect when you do progression, because then I will take whatever increases my survivability, instead of doing more dps and loosing said survivability.

[Helkor]

They're nerf in mitigation for all tanks, not just prot paladin afaik. They said they wanted to lower the impact of the mitigation game play in order to minimize the difference between the different tank classes.

[Nefarious Tea]

They're nerf in mitigation for all tanks, not just prot paladin afaik. They said they wanted to lower the impact of the mitigation game play in order to minimize the difference between the different tank classes.

Really? UGH.

I hope they make healers have infinite mana then if they want tanks to just be pure sponges.

[Ruxe]

Shield of the Righteous Slams the targets in front of you with your shield, causing (360%42% of Attack power) Holy damage, and reducing damage you take by (- 1 * 25 ; Min - 80, Max - 25)%increasing your Armor by 250% of your Strength for 4.50 sec.
Protection

thoughts? seems to be a requested change so that we can activate our mitigation without a target right next to us.

[Barnabas]

We are currently the weakest tank on live

I disagree completely.

- - - Updated - - -

Easily fixed by nerfing the other tank specs Especially bears.

Then bears would just be a one button spec if they nerfed iron fur

[redwolfrain]

I just hope we stop playing like a D3 crusader, I hate those spinning hammers so much.

[Barnabas]

I just hope we stop playing like a D3 crusader, I hate those spinning hammers so much.

I love the combat animations of prot paladin. It's part of why I play it.

[Masternewt]

I think that as soon as you remove the ability to reduce the damage of a certain type, stamina (or health pool) wins out. Meaning that with the current changes, we can expect Guardian Druids to continue to dominate for another expansion. If Blizzard's idea of a protection fantasy is "lowest health pool, biggest gaps in AM, lowest mobility, lowest damage unless sacrificing the rest of the survivability, but looks good in yellow", then things aren't going to be any better than ToS or BRF in WoD before it.

[redwolfrain]

I love the combat animations of prot paladin. It's part of why I play it.

The animations are nice, but we need a real spam able attack. Blessed Hammer sucks as a go too spell. Not to mention it breaks any cc you have in 30 yards.

[LittleLai]

Now that's the million dollar question!!

One thing I saw was Devo aura coming back as a passive effect, armor is good, we defo need that, and I also agree with a nerf on SotR effect, but at the same time they need to equalize the intake damage outside of SotR, cause atm this is our Achilles heel. Spiky spiky, spiky is the one description I am hearing from all the healers I know every time they have been healing a prot pala through out Legion.

My healers never told me that.

[Easo]

My healers never told me that.

Tomb of Sargeras? Especially KJ? His autoattacks took off up to half of my HP. Autoattacks. Bears just fricking ignored them. It was not comparable in any way. Poor warriors too...

To be fair, it was OK before that, ToS was just... painful and Antorus is again OK (though I hate Hounds).

[Taeldorian]

Antorus is only really OK because they significantly buffed our health pools and we get a trinket that perfectly complements our weakness (well I haven't yet, FUCK YOU KIN'GAROTH!)

Don’t forget the set bonus that improved mitigation outside of AM which was also an issue

[Marrilaife]

They're nerf in mitigation for all tanks, not just prot paladin afaik. They said they wanted to lower the impact of the mitigation game play in order to minimize the difference between the different tank classes.

Well that won't help if you have tanks with spammable mitigation (druid, dk) and non spammable one (warrior, pala, dh), monks supposedly have a cd on brews but are balanced around 100% ironskin uptime, and atm the cooldown of it is going DOWN while on shield of the righteous / demon spikes it's going UP and shield block has duration reduced (so also lowering uptime).

Generally it would be wise to balance all tanks around either 100% mitigation uptime (so it's a buff you keep up, like for example dps buffs - savage roar, slice & dice come to mind) or around "use only for specials" and then make all tanks balanced around it. No more raid bosses trucking you for 80% of your hp pool if you don't have mitigation up because in that case tank with higher mitigation uptime always wins over the one that just dies in 2 melee hits if not avoided / mitigated.

Every expansion we have a "great tank disarmament" and then come back to usual ridiculousness that tank dies in 2 unmitigated hits and that's not counting specials you need tank cds or healer cds to cover. Being a tank who has to use their own cds to survive and has to rely on externals for anything extra is a burden over a self sufficient tank that allows healers to use externals for example on dps with specific debuff (like soul blight on argus).

Seraphim is also another culprit why paladins won't be balanced. They'll always be balanced around dps with seraphim and mitigation without, while you can't have both. So either you go with sufficient mitigation and lower dps or with sufficient dps and mitigation lacking even more than usual. Guilds will always prefer tanks who can do as much dps as possible with little to no compromise to their mitigation. Especially when those tanks do more dps normally than a paladin can do with all the sacrifices (example: monks).

[Easo]

Yes, I can agree that the permanent buff to block helps with surviving standard boss attacks, its more smooth now.