As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
[WoW] What Are All These Buttons, Paladin Thread?
Langly
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Paladins! Some of them hurt things, some of them protect things, some of them heal things.
Let's talk about how these changes are going to fuck us right in our plate booties. Let's talk about spirit for healers and farewell to intellect stacking.
Let's talk about sects, baby. Let's talk about PvP, let's talk about you and me.
Let's talk about how these changes are going to fuck us right in our plate booties. Let's talk about spirit for healers and farewell to intellect stacking.
Let's talk about sects, baby. Let's talk about PvP, let's talk about you and me.
[url=http://blue.mmo-champion.com/t/24261189717/cataclysm-class-preview-paladin/]Nethaera[/url] wrote:In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm we’ll be making several changes to class talents and abilities across the board. While this list only outlines some of our plans for the paladin class, we want to give you a look at the new high-level abilities and an overview of how the new Mastery system will work with each talent spec.
New Paladin Spells
Blinding Shield (level 81): Causes damage and blinds all nearby targets. This effect might end up only damaging those facing the paladin’s shield, in a manner similar to Eadric the Pure's ability Radiance in Trial of the Champion. The Holy tree will have a talent to increase the damage and critical strike chance, while the Protection tree will have a talent to make this spell instant cast. 2-second base cast time. Requires a shield.
Healing Hands (level 83): Healing Hands is a new healing spell. The paladin radiates heals from him or herself, almost like a Healing Stream Totem. It has a short range, but a long enough duration that the paladin can cast other heals while Healing Hands remains active. 15-second cooldown. 6-second duration.
Guardian of Ancient Kings (level 85): Summons a temporary guardian that looks like a winged creature of light armed with a sword. The visual is similar to that of the Resurrection spell used by the paladin in Warcraft III. The guardian has a different effect depending on the talent spec of the paladin. For Holy paladins, the guardian heals the most wounded ally in the area. For Protection paladins, the guardian absorbs some incoming damage. For Retribution paladins, it damages an enemy, similar to the death knight Gargoyle or the Nibelung staff. 3-minute cooldown. 30-second duration (this might vary depending on which guardian appears).
Next you will find a list of some of the paladin spell and ability changes, followed by our intentions for improving each talent tree for the release of Cataclysm. There will be further changes, but those revealed below should offer some insight into our goals.
Changes to Abilities and Mechanics
- Crusader Strike will be a core ability for all paladins, gained at level 1. We think the paladin leveling experience is hurt by not having an instant attack. Retribution will be getting a new talent in its place that either modifies Crusader Strike or replaces it completely.
- Cleanse is being rebalanced to work with the new dispel system. It will dispel defensive magic (debuffs on friendly targets), diseases, and poisons.
- Blessing of Might will provide the benefit of Wisdom as well. If you have two paladins in your group, one will do Kings on everyone and the other will do Might on everyone. There should be much less need, and ideally no need, to provide specific buffs to specific classes.
- Holy Shock will be a core healing spell available to all paladins.
New Talents and Talent Changes
- We want to ease off the defensive capabilities of Retribution and Holy paladins slightly. We think the powerful paladin defenses have been one of the things holding Retribution paladins back, especially in Arenas. One change we’re considering is lowering Divine Shield’s duration by a couple of seconds. Having said that, Retribution does pretty well in Battlegrounds, and Battlegrounds will be a much bigger focus in Cataclysm since they can provide the best PvP rewards. Furthermore, the healing environment of Cataclysm is going to be different such that a paladin may not be able to fully heal themselves during the duration of Divine Shield to begin with, so this may not be a problem.
- We feel Retribution paladins need one more mechanic which involves some risk of the player pushing the wrong button, making the rotation a bit less forgiving. In addition, we want to add to this spec more PvP utility. Right now the successes of the Retribution paladin in PvP seem to be reduced to either doing decent burst damage, or just being good at staying alive.
- We want to increase the duration of Sacred Shield to 30 minutes and keep the limit to one target. The intention is that the paladin can use it on their main healing target. That said, we would like to improve the Holy paladin toolbox and niche so that they don’t feel quite like the obvious choice for tank healing while perceived as a weak group healer.
- We want to add to the Holy tree a nice big heal to correspond with Greater Heal. Flash of Light remains the expensive, fast heal and Holy Light is the go-to heal that has average efficiency and throughput. Beacon of Light will be changed to work with Flash of Light. We like the ability, but want paladins to use it intelligently and not be constantly healing for twice as much.
- Holy paladins will use spirit as their mana regeneration stat.
- Protection paladins need a different rotation between single-target and multi-target tanking. Likewise, we're looking to add the necessity to use an additional cooldown in each rotation.
- Holy Shield will no longer have charges. It will be designed to improve block chance while active, and will continue to provide a small amount of damage and threat.
Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses
Holy
- Healing
- Meditation
- Critical Healing Effect
Meditation: This is the spirit-to-mana conversion that the priest, druid, and shaman healers also share.
Critical Healing Effect: When the paladin gets a crit on a heal, it will heal for more.
Protection
- Damage Reduction
- Vengeance
- Block Amount
Vengeance: This is the damage-received-to-attack-power conversion that all tanks share.
Block Amount: We want to keep the kit of the paladin as a tank who blocks a lot. So by contrast, the warrior tank will sometimes get critical blocks, but the paladin will absorb more damage with normal blocks.
Retribution
- Melee Damage
- Melee Critical Damage
- Holy Damage
Holy Damage: Any attack that does Holy damage will have its damage increased.
This concludes this Cataclysm preview for the paladin class. The development of these changes will continue to evolve in the coming months. Please be sure to provide any feedback and thoughts you might have on what was covered here.
Langly on
0
This discussion has been closed.
Posts
(even though the mastery is a little boring)
(I am sure they mean that it will heal for more than 1.5% but it sounds silly)
This goose needs to be brought out behind a barn and shot:
How horrible.
Pins!
And nobody cared.
Seriously, this isn't a hunters pet or some shit, you hit it then forget it most likely. What's nice about a CD like this over something like AW is that if you get stunned or have to run like a madman, the CD isn't lost. The pet will still do its thing. How is this bad?!
2-3 buttons only? Shit what have I been doing? Not to say that Holy is complicated but 2-3 buttons is a gross oversimplification.
Ha.
Ha.
And if you've ever played any other healing class, you'd realize that while I am oversimplifying, the paladin class uses significantly fewer buttons comparitively speaking. I was merely exaggerating that difference.
p.s. thanks for killing my joke GOD
Yes, I have looked at the other classes, they do pack extra buttons, but most of those are to do things Paladins just -can't- right now. If you knocked all the AOE spells the difference in terms of pushable buttons is pretty small.
Behold
Chain Heal
Lesser HW
HW
Riptide
-Cleanse but only for curses thanks to totems-
Druid
LB
Rejuv
Regrow
WG
HT(???)
-Cleanse-
Priest
GH
FH
Penance(Disc)
Renew
PW:S
CoH
PoH
-Cleanse-
Paladin
SS
BoL (Optional)
HL
FoL
HS
Judgement[/QUOTE]
Everything else is a CD and not used regularly.
-Cleanse isn't actually being rebalanced; the functionality remains the same, however dispel mechanics on the whole might be changing. So I guess we're the only class that isn't losing/gaining anything? I'm cool with that.
-Potential for no more bubble hearth? Ye gods, whatever shall I do while leveling!
Aside from that I've got no complaints, but I'm still kinda nervous since those changes don't seem to mention how they're going to go about Ghostcrawler's long-mentioned Paladin tanking nerfs.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Edit: I bet the new Crusader Strike will be part of the new single-target tanking rotation and a nerf to Consecration's threat. Also with the new blind it may be Paladins new snap AoE threat ability that was desperately needed.
What?
I imagine that Holy Light (live almost every spell currently in play) will see its numbers adjusted both cast time and scaling wise to fit this new model. These previews weren't intended to show every nitty-gritty coefficient adjustment. They show the design intent and direction.
It looks less of a nerf incoming and more of a 'Increased complexity' (which for a lot of players is basically a nerf). Paladins most likely won't be able to 969 their way to great victory regardless of what they are tanking.
Steam Profile
that's not true at all though.
Thats actually exactly what they are implying. There may be some abilities that you use in both (most likely for a lack of something better in its place) but you are going to have to respond differently to AOE packs as opposed to ST Tanking.
edit: Did not noticed ESF's ninja edit, one sec.
edit edit: BoL and SS are once-a-minute type things. Why would they even be on a list to be considered equal with other classes' abilities that have <10 second CDs? And Judgement - the ONLY reason you need to be casting that more than once a minute is if there isn't a single other pally in the raid, which is pretty rare outside of 10-mans. Even then, you only need it once every 15-20 seconds. So half the abilities you listed for pallies shouldn't even be on there. Oh and you missed binding heal for priests
In addition to Holy Light, Flash of Light, and Holy Shock, you also need to manage your Beacon, your SS, and maintaining Judgments of the Pure (and JoL if you're the only Pally using it). Cleansing for a Paladin is at least as much work (if not more since there's no abolish anything or cleanse totem like effect).
Paladins aren't too difficult unless the raid is taking a lot of damage and you have to triage. We just don't have any good tools for dealing with group damage. So we have to shove a square block through a circular whole and start casting HS/FoL like they're going out of style and hope some people can mitigate their own damage.
i've raided as resto on my shaman and am currently raiding as holy on my paladin. druids have more spells but who cares since they don't even make us of them all. how many buttons you need to use a priest is going to depend on your spec, they do not use every single available ability every single fight as both specs.
In any case, managing BoL/SS/JoP hasn't been hard since... oh... ever. It's once a minute. At this point I have a little timer in my head that goes off when that minute is going up; it becomes second nature and isn't difficult at all. With a small amount of planning, you can renew BoL/SS at a convenient time rather than every minute but this takes about half a second of thought and the barest knowledge of fight mechanics. And with all that, you are STILL trying to compare these abilities to other classes' abilities that are used far more regularly.
Cleansing for pallies REALLY hasn't been difficult since it's pretty much <target> mash mash mash <re-target, wait for GCD> mash mash mash.
The problem is, priests and druids have more buttons available which they may not use all the time, but there ARE situations where infrequently used abilities become useful. Pallies don't really have this; the only thing I can think of is Purify, which I only use in PvP or on FC in ToC, to avoid getting silenced.
one more ability, but usually hw and lhw are exclusive as they're used in different roles.
This is how I heal. In some raids, if you have two holy paladins one might go for a sp stacked fol build, but I don't like doing that. Holy Light all day, erry day.
LOL, ok there. You dont need to hit divine plea or divine illumination or trinkets or gem your gear. Its just goosey not to do it whenever you can. Its a part of the class.
Everytime i judge and it procs i get around i think its 1450 to 1600 mana back dont remember. I have 40k buffed mana. When you spam Holy light all day, you want as much mana back whenever you can. Its also why a paly would go into melee and smack a boss as opposed to just standing back and doing nothing.
Exaclty!! My Healing is done primarily by 1) Holy Light 2) Beacon 3) Flash. Rarely if ever do i see it change unless there is another paly healer in the raid, then it evens out to around 50/50 with holy light/flash
Once again: You don't NEED to cast it more than once a minute. The amount of extra healing you get back from judging light is helpful but very small, so it should NOT be a priority compared to your direct heals - like I said, cast it when you're bored and you have no need to be casting heals at that moment.
If you need 5% spell power that is an issue.
edit: and 1500 is not a trivial amount. I mean I'm talking about full on, starting the fight and casting holy light every gcd and not looking back.
edit: I use seal of light because (a) I don't have mana issues and (b) the extra healing is very nice in most encounters [whether it's because of our strats or the nature of the fight, that's just the way it is]. You missed the point; I don't need 5% spell power or 5% reduced mana but in my situation the 5% spell power is much more useful.
1500 is not trivial for you, but it is for me. Different playstyles, once again.
edit edit: I had a friend who would say "if you're not at 0 mana at the end of a fight, you didn't do your job." While I definitely don't 100% agree with this statement, I DO think it's true that you need to keep your job in mind and try to excel at that. A paladin's job is not regenning mana; it's not ending the fight with more mana than everyone else; it's healing as much as possible. If there is a way you can heal more, you should do it. And I have - with seal of light, etc.
Sorry but this is just bad advice. Minimal mana from judging? What kind of gear do you have? Do you gem for int? I brought up those other examples because what you are saying is about as ridiculous as not using those abilities. You use every advantage you get. Why would you ever put up blessing of light? 5% overheals?