Warlords of Draenor

Era wrote:

fuzzygeek wrote:If channeling the light *hurt* the undead paladin every time they did it, it would just add to their badassery and lore, in my opinion.

This is how devoted I am, though it burn my blood and sear my soul. You think you loved the Light, Uther? Your faith is a small, simple thing. My every prayer wracks my body, my every breath bubbles with agony. And yet, I Believe.

Your conviction is cheap, Human.

That's good! I like it! Now do one for trolls and orcs too!

Orcs: The Light is shiny!

Era wrote:

fuzzygeek wrote:If channeling the light *hurt* the undead paladin every time they did it, it would just add to their badassery and lore, in my opinion.

This is how devoted I am, though it burn my blood and sear my soul. You think you loved the Light, Uther? Your faith is a small, simple thing. My every prayer wracks my body, my every breath bubbles with agony. And yet, I Believe.

Your conviction is cheap, Human.

That's good! I like it! Now do one for trolls and orcs too!

Trolls and orcs seem far more shaman-y to me. Not paladin material. Nor goblins, for that matter. But:

Troll: I eat the ganja mon, and the loa, he speak to me. He word be Light. The loa see all, hear all, feel all, know all. And he voice moooove me.

Orc: For too long have we toiled with our heads bowed, our faces in the dirt; for too long have we been chained to the earth with bonds of fire, water, and air. Raise your eyes up, my brothers and sisters, and see the Light. Listen to the shouts of the gods; hear the echoes of eternity. Beside that, what are the whispers of spirits? Let be the sighs of the earth. Rise up and serve the Light!

Goblin: Hey man, you have any idea how much money there is in this organized religion racket?

(clearly I don't know orc lore) None of these really resonate much with me the way Undead do. Must be all that high school angst bubbling to the surface.

going just on lore basis, i can see undead paladins much easier than i can trolls or orcs

undead, being mostly raised Lorderan citizens, would have been exposed to the light and to paladins before, and there are already undead holy/disc priests that get their power from the light, but they are rare in the lore because the simple act of wielding the light causes them not only physical pain, but also mental anguish as it heals them and makes their senses better, so they can see and smell what they truly are all that much better

sir zelek is an interesting case
i dont remember where i read it, but his body was turned undead, but he maintained his mind.
that is why he is yelling for the players to run away, yet his body (under control of the lich king) is trying to kill them

a foresaken paladin also has history with the argent crusade. i am fairly certain there is at least one undead with tyrion at lights hope chapel

just for the sake of keeping things even, give Pandaren the chance to be Paladins... They're already priests and that way both Alliance and Horde gain a Paladin race at the same time -- which is what happened with Shamans.

that would also give alliance 4 paladin races, and 3 shaman races, where as horde would have 5 shaman races and only 3 paladin races
OMG HORDE FAVORITISM! WTF BLIZZ!

Klaudandus wrote:just for the sake of keeping things even, give Pandaren the chance to be Paladins... They're already priests and that way both Alliance and Horde gain a Paladin race at the same time -- which is what happened with Shamans.

I disagree because I don't want to play Pandaren or Goblins and this game is clearly all about me and my interests.

The Pandaren are too cuddly for me to immerse, and while I don't have anything against the Goblins in that sense, it's something about the small size of the character model that just feels weird when playing. I kiiind of get it at the other end of the scale as well, with Taurens, but my love for them outweighs it.

bldavis wrote:a foresaken paladin also has history with the argent crusade. i am fairly certain there is at least one undead with tyrion at lights hope chapel

The undead at LHC wasnt a paladin

Also,he was the only undead to join the AD (back in vanilla) and he did so after turning away from the forsaken

And i forgot

https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/status ... 3958854656
https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/status ... 8927354882

Took them long enough.

Glad to see all the dps-whoring tanks getting a huge hit.

If this has the side effect of being able to quest as Prot again, I'm all for it!

How will it affect threat?
Also, how long it will last? If Prot damage is too high, then they will nerf it again cuz of PVP, but if it doesnt scale high enough... well... we could have issues in the later tiers.

Remember our bases: we typically needed Vengeance in the late stage of x-packs because, while we did decent damage in the early tier and had an easy time with threat, things always went for a switcheroo later on because we were stacking non-DPS stats, while DPSers were busing upping their damage by the truckload.

This is in part why the new Vengeance (AP bonus) clashed so bad with the Prot Paladin Haste paradigm: we got the Vengeance bonus, but we also got the Haste bonus to DPS, and got to keep the Tanking cake and eat it.

For WoD, tanking stats are as good as gone - DPS stats will empower our Active Mitigation (and maybe the rest of our toolbox. The only nuance will be us stacking more Stam where they stack Strenght/Agility/Intellect (and even THAT is open to debate).

That means that late x-pack, our damage will be scaling almost as well as DPSers, because our DPS stats will keep growing. We'll still be behind, but not outrageously so.

One thing to realize is that ex nihilo, this solution is not perfect - all it does is extend the ilvl "safe zone" where Tank damage is relevant, but not outrageous. But we can expect the likelyhood of leaving that "safe zone" to remain low this time around. Hopefully. In theory. Maybe.

Regarding tank damage not scaling as high as DPS damage, and vengeance and all that, I think they could solve this easily with an extra threat passive that hit any target that your avoidance procs on with an amount of threat, amount scaling with health and/or armor. Or base the reflected threat off of your armor ((raw damage - reduced damage)/raw damage), but not so much that you can just stand there. Like holy shield, but w/o the damage. Like the enemy gets pissed off because it's not hurting you enough. I personally get tired as a tank of out-damaging everyone, and I get tired as a DPS of getting outdone by the tank, at least until the very end-game content. It just feels wrong, and their solution seems very lazy.

I heard they're doing away w/ dodge/parry as stats, so I'm not sure how it would work with that. I'm having a hard time grasping how gear is going to differ between, say, a ret paladin and a prot paladin, and what the combat logs are going to be saying while we tank.

I'm going to assume dodge and parry still exists, and that they just removed our ability to increase them through gear. Unless bear tanks now have to tank facing away from the boss, blocking attacks with their massive bums. So your idea should still be possible!

I like the idea of a survival-based kind of threat, where blocking/avoiding attacks actually increases your threat, in addition to normal attacks. Would probably end or at least make any DPS offtanking difficult though. I've saved many an LFR fight (with the help of competent healers) by popping RF in retribution spec if a tank dies.

I'm assuming we'll get our avoidance through the primary stat (strength --> parry for plate tanks, agility --> dodge for leather tanks).

I'm thinking we'll get a set level of avoidance, and then a way to increase it by a set amount - more resources means more uptime, or higher chance of a proc. Think Elusive Brew and Shuffle.

Sagara wrote:For WoD, tanking stats are as good as gone - DPS stats will empower our Active Mitigation (and maybe the rest of our toolbox. The only nuance will be us stacking more Stam where they stack Strenght/Agility/Intellect (and even THAT is open to debate).

Brute wrote:I heard they're doing away w/ dodge/parry as stats, so I'm not sure how it would work with that. I'm having a hard time grasping how gear is going to differ between, say, a ret paladin and a prot paladin, and what the combat logs are going to be saying while we tank.

From what I gathered core armor pieces don't roll role specific stuff like armor or spirit and maybe not even some of the new stats like life steal. While secondary armor slots like cloak, rings, necklace, trinkets can roll the role specific stats and most likely not the simple low levels those slots have now, since the role stats are limited to those slots and they don't count towards that budget I'd expect armor or spirit on a ring to be substantial.

For tanking, without any other changes from now, I'd imagine the ideal core armor pieces will be stam/str/haste/mastery while accessory pieces will be stam/str/haste/armor so tanks will be limited to what DPS increasing stat they stack as they are now.

Just remove the threat mechanic. Mobs fixate on whatever tank hits them first. Make taunt a one minute fixate, until overwritten by another taunt. Bring back AoE taunts.

They have all these stupid hacks trying to address a flotilla of problems down the line -- just cut to the chase and remove the problem at the root. It's in line with some of their stated design goals ("Fighting for threat isn't fun." "Undergeared tanks + overgeared DPS = Bad time", etc.).

Tie tank survivability into active mitigation and tank performance. Tanks won't play like DPS anymore, and that's fine.

They still need to figure out a way to incentivize tankiness beyond the bare minimum to survive a boss. I still like my idea of buffing the raid based on tank performance (with thresholds and stairstepping and ceilings to prevent tomfuckery). Right now there just isn't anything to do once you've hit the minimum EH required to tank the boss.

fuzzygeek wrote:Just remove the threat mechanic. Mobs fixate on whatever tank hits them first. Make taunt a one minute fixate, until overwritten by another taunt. Bring back AoE taunts.

They have all these stupid hacks trying to address a flotilla of problems down the line -- just cut to the chase and remove the problem at the root. It's in line with some of their stated design goals ("Fighting for threat isn't fun." "Undergeared tanks + overgeared DPS = Bad time", etc.).

Tie tank survivability into active mitigation and tank performance. Tanks won't play like DPS anymore, and that's fine.

This is actually a great idea, way better than mine. It lets the DPS go all out from the start and makes tanking what it should be: a dance with death rather than a threat/dps race.

It would also allow them to completely nerf tank damage and make the DPS responsible for the killing the boss, and introducing mechanics like enrage timers would really put the onus to do damage on them where it belongs.

Maybe it's just me, but I think tanks doing more damage than a pure DPS class is just silly, and it completely marginalizes DPS roles.

While I also dislike the current model of tank dps, I wouldn't say it "marginalizes" dps.
To do that DPS a tank needs to actually be tanking stuff. You can't make a raid of tanks, because the other 17 tanks would take no dmg thus deal 0 damage.

Brute wrote:and it completely marginalizes DPS roles.

At any one time, only one tank is doing a massive amount of damage. Without vengeance, a paladin tank in 560-570 gear does about 40-50k dps.

Fetzie wrote:

Brute wrote:and it completely marginalizes DPS roles.

At any one time, only one tank is doing a massive amount of damage. Without vengeance, a paladin tank in 560-570 gear does about 40-50k dps.

Well in raids, the gear is at such a point that DPS can easily beat tanks if they're doing a proper rotation, so it's not as much of an issue there, but it's still an odd model.

I forget that my perspective is a bit different from most here. Raiding is probably only 25% or less of my group PVE experience, with leveling dungeons being at least 75%, and as a proportion, I've raided more this expansion than I ever have. It seems to me they should be able to come up with a system that works from levels 15-90, keeping damage ratios roughly even.

If levelling 5 mans weren't merely "bomb the hell out of trash for 3 minutes, then kill a boss while still tanking half of its trash", then tanks wouldn't be so high in damage done. The first in damage is the one that lands the most AoE, and the tank is the first player to engage the mobs.

Fetzie wrote:If levelling 5 mans weren't merely "bomb the hell out of trash for 3 minutes, then kill a boss while still tanking half of its trash", then tanks wouldn't be so high in damage done. The first in damage is the one that lands the most AoE, and the tank is the first player to engage the mobs.

Back in MY day we had to WALK to the dungeon, and know where it was! And there was this thing called "crowd control" that was basically essential!

I don't think I'll ever stop pining for difficult 5-mans. The way it is now, they should just let you pick your level when you roll a toon, all the way up to 85 or even 90, because 1-89 is just a joke. Why do they even sell food/drink anymore?

I was there in Vanilla. I was there in TBC.

I DONT MISS needing to build a team of 3 CC (possibly 3 mages) to get through heroic istances and I DONT MISS having to spend 45 minutes for a *timed version* of a 5 men assuming you don't wipe and having to start all over if you did a error.

No thanks.