Shield of Righteousness possibly going away

[Modal]

Am I the only one that things we now don't have enough going on? I thought these changes were to add complexity, but now it seems we will only have 4 buttons to push for most fights. Seems a tad like complexity is being reduced (even if 969 was not difficult).

Single target rotation has a ton of gaps now. We really only have Judgement and AS to fill space between CS and ShoR; we'll be hitting CS on its 4s CD rather than using every GCD in many situations. On the plus side, I guess, that means we might actually have enough holy power to use WoG occasionally.

[Arincia]

Bleh we are going to have serious balance issues against warriors blocking to borrow some napkin math from someone else:

"-Figuring 25% pure avoidance (Dodge/Parry/Miss), 100% Holy Shield uptime, and zero Mastery Rating
-Warrior: 30% Block Chance
-Paladin: 36% Block Chance

-2.2s NPC swing timer (rounding up to 28 attacks/minute for simplicity)
-7 attacks avoided, 21 which connect
-Approximately 7 of those 21 are guaranteed blocks for Warriors due to Shield Block (20/60s)
--Leaves 14 remaining attacks, which at a 30% block chance comes to 4.2 attacks blocked, rounding it down to 4
-Paladins, without a chance at guaranteed blocks, would block 7.56 (rounding up to of those 21 non-avoided attcks

Warrior: 11 blocks / 60 seconds
Paladin: 8 blocks / 60 seconds (and that's with ensuring Holy Shield has 100% uptime)"

If you look at the damage taken it (and accounting for perfect rng on one of those blocks being a crit block) it has warriors taking: 10(.7)+1(.4)+10 or only 17.4 our of 21 hits of damage (or 82.85%)
Paladins end up with: 8*(.7)+13 or 18.6 hits or 88.57%
To end up with the same amount of hit damage taken the paladin needs to block 10% more then the warrior so
12*.7+9=17.4 damage taken.

So our block amount needs to be X% higher then warriors crit block rating to achieve similar damage taken by block over time. But if we just went off what i gave that means that paladins need to go from 36% block rating to 57% block rating (21% increase). Given the 2 mastery we have we would have scaling difference such that warriors would get almost no scaling or paladin scaling would have to be absurd to where we would end up block capped.

[Sabindeus]

It's not functionally equivalent. Holy Shield is a prot talent. Shield of Righteousness is a baseline spell.

It's functionally equivalent as a part of prot's toolkit, which I thought was the subject. And it doesn't really give holy or ret any meaningful extra options, either. They might as well make ShoR a level 10 prot ability (and we're just assuming that they won't, at this point).

Right now Holy doesn't have any HoPOW -> Damage sinks, which is a great place for ShoR to fit in while soloing or otherwise not healing.

Even if it makes no difference to a Prot specced L80 paladin it is still not functionally equivalent in the grand scheme of things.

[Arincia]

Notice i said it was some else napkin math. But still as a balancing point its
block rating= Abilities+base+mastery

Warrior= 100(20/60)+15+10= 58.3%
Palading= 15+5+16= 36%

That's not even considering balancing out amount of damage block to be almost equal in the end. (easiest way is crit block chance= increase amount per block on paladin assuming you achieve equal block ratings).

[Darielle]

-2.2s NPC swing timer (rounding up to 28 attacks/minute for simplicity)
-7 attacks avoided, 21 which connect
-Approximately 7 of those 21 are guaranteed blocks for Warriors due to Shield Block (20/60s)
--Leaves 14 remaining attacks, which at a 30% block chance comes to 4.2 attacks blocked, rounding it down to 4
-Paladins, without a chance at guaranteed blocks, would block 7.56 (rounding up to of those 21 non-avoided attcks

Warrior: 11 blocks / 60 seconds
Paladin: 8 blocks / 60 seconds (and that's with ensuring Holy Shield has 100% uptime)"

Your math is off. Since the combat table is a single roll, block chance isn't based off attacks that land, but on the total number of swings.

For example, according to the variables of that math, Paladins should block 0.36*28 = ~10 attacks per minute.
For Warriors, it'd be something like looking at number of normal blocks, then the number of attacks landing while Shield Block is up, minues the number of attacks landing while Shield Block was up that would have been blocks anyway or something. I'd do that math but class soon so bleh. But that's a bit misleading since Divine Protection is utrned into a 1 min cooldown to provide a minor cooldown analogous to Shield Block.

[Rasmfrackn]

I wonder if that means HotR will be on a 4 second cooldown? Having a 10/30 consecrate makes me a little nervous, but if HotR is 4 seconds that should be pretty decent. Now if only it applied seal procs, I'd feel pretty good about that aspect.

I am pretty glad they're downplaying holy meteor though.

-- Oh, and I wish they'd go back to a fixed-block variable-duration holy shield. I guess that would make it (too?) easy to weave in more ShoRs for frequent refreshes instead of storing up to 3, but honestly I agree we may be a bit light in the single target department. If we can push ShoR on cooldown and more or less keep holy shield up with 1-2 stacks of HP, that'd give us more to do.

[d503]

I was trying to map out 1 minute of our "new" rotation based on GC's post and found some frightening stuff.

Assumptions:

• No procs of Grand Crusader since it's place in the timeline is unpredictable.
• Consecrate not used, as intended by Devs.
• 4s Crusader Strike cooldown.
• Holy Wrath on cooldown.
• ShoR only at 3 Holy Power.

1_minute_of_threat.zip

Excel File. Looks weird in GDocs.

(6.75 KiB) Downloaded 10 times

Total Count of Abilities used on Single Target threat situation:
Free GCD - 13
Crusader Strike - 13
Judgement - 7
Shield of Righteousness - 4
Avenger's Shield - 2
Holy Wrath - 2

Somebody with another set of eyes look at this and make me feel better about the implications of this rotation.

[Arincia]

Yeah looks more or less correct (just eyed over it). Blizz relly just doesn't seem to know how to handle our class. It still doesn't address our issue of 15% block rating tied to a 12 second minimum ramp time and having it fall off so easily if needed. Then there is the issue of GCD fillers. Something needs to come off a CD to be a filler ability so we can actually hold threat and not just try to keep spiking up. Hell if they took HoR and CS off CDs and make exorcism a instant cast with AS a 8-10 second cooldown we now have a more interesting system. Judgement, CS, AS, SoR, Exo for single target.
If suggested was done we could have a more fluid set up:
8 seconds as judgement/as/SoR means that we have 4.5 seconds every 8 filled with a spell add in 2 other abilities (CS as filler and HS/HW/WoG) and we suddenly have a very fluid rotation filled with choices on Holy Power and how to spend it.

Anyways i guess to adjust the napkin math of someone else:

With holy shield up
25% avoidance
36% block paladin
30% warrior

With shield block up:
25% avoidance
36% block paladin
130% block warrior

Ignoring the shield block its
28 attacks per minute:
Warrior and paladin dodge 7 of them no taken
Warrior would block then 6.3 or 6 of them
Paladin would block 7.56 or 7 of them

Just using those numbers as % now and making it a 5 minute fight:
140 attacks
35 avoided
31 blocked warrior (3 will be crit blocked)
37 blocked paladin

Damage taken (W)= 35*0+28*.7+3*.4+74=94.8 or 94.8/140=67.7% damage taken
Damage taken (P ) = 35*0+37*.7+68= 93.9 or 93.9/140=67.07% damage taken
Damage taken (P w/ out HS)= 35+ 22*.7+83= 98.4 or 98.4/140=70.28%

% difference:
P vrs P w/ out HS= 3.21% (67.07-70.28)
or 70.28/67.07= 4.8% more damage taken respectively

So actually if they don't have shield block up except as a cooldown then we are balanced almost equally as long as mastery scaling remains proportional (otherwise we can always add more block amount per paladin if more block rating isn't feasible because we would be block capped).

[Ocin]

There are no tanking niches, at least not by design...

You should edit out that quote.

GC has stated in the past month or so that the tanking niches or visions for warriors is mobility and for DKs CDs.

[Sharlos]

There are no tanking niches, at least not by design...

You should edit out that quote.

GC has stated in the past month or so that the tanking niches or visions for warriors is mobility and for DKs CDs.

That's not a niche, that's a stylistic choice. Paladins seem pretty obviously to have a Holy Warrior Defender/Guardian style to them.

[Ocin]

There are no tanking niches, at least not by design...

You should edit out that quote.

GC has stated in the past month or so that the tanking niches or visions for warriors is mobility and for DKs CDs.

That's not a niche, that's a stylistic choice. Paladins seem pretty obviously to have a Holy Warrior Defender/Guardian style to them.

Either way it feels flat. I've been tanking since BC and it just seems to me there's not much to separate us from warriors in beta.

[Loras]

Their kind of logic starts to get a bit annoying...

First, they say if we can't maintain our Holy Shield all the time, it won't be a problem, as it's 15% block, no big deal.
Now they say that us debuffing 3 targets only with Vindication compared to the unlimited debuff applied from the other 3 tanks is fine, as we are not supposed to get a pull of a gazillion mobs. Fair enough, but I don't think it will be impossible to meet pulls of 4 or 5 mobs. That leaves us with 1-2 mobs attacking us with extra damage until we hit them again with HotR. And in the following situation it's not even guaranteed to debuff them: a pull of 5 mobs, you debuff 3, then with the 2nd HotR you target the 4th, unbuffed, mob, but the other 2 jumps of HotR bounce to the already debuffed mobs. 1 mob still not debuffed.

Simply awesome. If 15% block and -10% dmg done are no big deal, then why have we wasted our efforts for all that time to min max every single bit of armor, why did Theck bother to make all those insane math calculations, just so that we can squeeze out the last bit of survivability needed, in order to be the most effective in every encounter, and now this being kinda... neglected by the *awesome* game devs.

Sure, sky is not falling. But the logic is terrible. Completely terrible.

[Flex]

Either way it feels flat. I've been tanking since BC and it just seems to me there's not much to separate us from warriors in beta.

Besides us being Paladins.

[Archeth]

Their kind of logic starts to get a bit annoying...

[...]

Sure, sky is not falling. But the logic is terrible. Completely terrible.

I entirely agree. In a game where we min-max 0.5% gains (and sometimes even less), devs running around claiming how we shouldn't worry about a 15% block difference or being the only tank with a clearly inferior debuff option (let's just ignore the complete lack of feedback on interrupts...) is just silly.

Sure, as he implies it may not have any practical implications in most content or to most people (those who gear and gem however they like anyway), but at the end of the day there's going to be fights like heroic Lich King again and tanks will try to squeeze out every ounce of survivability.

[Pizbit]

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/190 ... Blue-Posts

ShoR looks to be returning and prot's rotations firming up and looking kinda cool, final judgment on seeing release day implementation though haha

Although I would probably like to see Consecrate last just a *little* longer, maybe 15 seconds? 1/2 potential uptime from 1/3, possibly do this via talents do ret don't get their hands on it, or glyphs, those are still be figured out!

I'm guessing they're not even looking at glyphs for most classes until talents settle down to the minor adjustments phase.