AD Changes and Pally MTs

While I certainly welcome our new guardian spirit overlord, I have to admit, I'm going to miss hovering at 35% hp and becoming unkillable with SoL up versus low hitting trash.

Of course it's too good to be true. It also took me awhile to realise that it made more sense that only the damage taken beyond the 35% mark would be reduced. This is a well deserved change for a talent that became obsolete the day that bosses started hitting for half our hp. Now consider a 100hp tank taking 100dmg. AD would be responsible for taking 35dmg out of this lump and reduce it to 24.5, and the prot pally eats a total of 89.5dmg.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say it won't work like this because it's simply too complicated. Ardent Defender would not be a viable CD like this because you'd end up with RNG death while it figures out if it should reduce it or not.

Elsie wrote:

Of course it's too good to be true. It also took me awhile to realise that it made more sense that only the damage taken beyond the 35% mark would be reduced. This is a well deserved change for a talent that became obsolete the day that bosses started hitting for half our hp. Now consider a 100hp tank taking 100dmg. AD would be responsible for taking 35dmg out of this lump and reduce it to 24.5, and the prot pally eats a total of 89.5dmg.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say it won't work like this because it's simply too complicated. Ardent Defender would not be a viable CD like this because you'd end up with RNG death while it figures out if it should reduce it or not.

what you are saying does not make sense. you wont take any damage until the game figures out how much you should be taking.

I looked at the patch notes again today and here is what I read, "Instead, any attack that would reduce the paladin to 35% health or below has its damage reduced." This means I was very wrong earlier in the thread (and am sorry for it) and that what is being discussed now has no basis. Either way, only the PTR will tell us anything worth arguing over.

tl;dr ramble ramble, let's just wait and see k?

Fact is, it will get a Internal CD if it stays like that.

And even with a internal CD, i'm in love with it.

I like it too.

And now AD will be able to be seen by all.

Dead Pally -> 30% health = AD proc.

Hopefully something will be added to the combat logs too.

I can see how this might take holy priests time to get used to, since their Guardian Spirit basically does the same thing, and some of them will time them when they know spike damage is coming.

Grehn|Skipjack wrote:While I certainly welcome our new guardian spirit overlord, I have to admit, I'm going to miss hovering at 35% hp and becoming unkillable with SoL up versus low hitting trash.

I fail to see how this would no longer be possible ...

Playdoh wrote:I like it too.

And now AD will be able to be seen by all.

Dead Pally -> 30% health = AD proc.

Hopefully something will be added to the combat logs too.

I can see how this might take holy priests time to get used to, since their Guardian Spirit basically does the same thing, and some of them will time them when they know spike damage is coming.

GS is easily seen in combat logs (as well as the save). I just hope they code it so that only the Priest's is consumed should both be available.

dmok wrote:

Grehn|Skipjack wrote:While I certainly welcome our new guardian spirit overlord, I have to admit, I'm going to miss hovering at 35% hp and becoming unkillable with SoL up versus low hitting trash.

I fail to see how this would no longer be possible ...

The way it works now:
You take a steady stream of damage until you hit 35%, where the 30% damage reduction kicks in and the damage intake slows enough for SoL/JoL to make you virtually unkillable.
The way it'll work in 3.2:
You take a steady stream of damage until you hit 35%, where the offending attack is reduced by 30% and then you continue to die.

Grehn|Skipjack wrote:The way it works now:
You take a steady stream of damage until you hit 35%, where the 30% damage reduction kicks in and the damage intake slows enough for SoL/JoL to make you virtually unkillable.
The way it'll work in 3.2:
You take a steady stream of damage until you hit 35%, where the offending attack is reduced by 30% and then you continue to die.

I'm reading the change for 3.2 as:

You take a steady stream of damage, until one of those hits takes you below 35%. That attack is reduced by 30%, as well as all subsequent hits while you are still below 35%.

dmok wrote:

Grehn|Skipjack wrote:The way it works now:
You take a steady stream of damage until you hit 35%, where the 30% damage reduction kicks in and the damage intake slows enough for SoL/JoL to make you virtually unkillable.
The way it'll work in 3.2:
You take a steady stream of damage until you hit 35%, where the offending attack is reduced by 30% and then you continue to die.

I'm reading the change for 3.2 as:

You take a steady stream of damage, until one of those hits takes you below 35%. That attack is reduced by 30%, as well as all subsequent hits while you are still below 35%.

Ardent Defender: Redesigned. Currently, any damage taken by the paladin while at 35% health or below is reduced. Instead, any attack that would reduce the paladin to 35% health or below has its damage reduced. In addition, once every 2 minutes an attack that would have killed the paladin will fail to kill, and instead set the paladin's health to 10/20/30% of maximum.

Words like "redesigned" and "instead" seem to imply that only attacks that would bring you from 100-35.1% to 0-35% is reduced. Of course I could be totally wrong. Hard to tell WITH NO PTR, BLIZZ! ><

Grehn|Skipjack wrote:Ardent Defender: Redesigned. Currently, any damage taken by the paladin while at 35% health or below is reduced. Instead, any attack that would reduce the paladin to 35% health or below has its damage reduced. In addition, once every 2 minutes an attack that would have killed the paladin will fail to kill, and instead set the paladin's health to 10/20/30% of maximum.

Words like "redesigned" and "instead" seem to imply that only attacks that would bring you from 100-35.1% to 0-35% is reduced. Of course I could be totally wrong. Hard to tell WITH NO PTR, BLIZZ! ><

Yeah but that contradicts our Q&A:

Ardent Defender has two important changes. The first is that the damage can no longer “skip over” the 35% health level – it will always be reduced. Secondly, it has a new effect that if a blow would kill you, it instead sets you to 30% health. This portion of the ability cannot occur more than once every 2 minutes. Think of it as a Last Stand that you don’t have to push.

we gonna start arguing which vague blue statement is going to be more accurate now? to me, this topic has been spent until PTR comes up.

i dont understand how this is so misunderstood, they redesigned it to add in an internal CD and to buff the original portion of AD, the original portion is still the same, except it is no longer the attacks that happen when you are below 35%, but any damage below 35% is reduced by AD, its basically will of the necropolis

Ascendant wrote:we gonna start arguing which vague blue statement is going to be more accurate now? to me, this topic has been spent until PTR comes up.

Aye, vague description is vague. Rather not waste effort arguing over something that will be explained in less than a week in all likelihood.

So even with the internal CD and/or nerf to overall reduction that AD is almost certain to get before things are done, I like it. However, this is not a replacement for a strong mitigation cooldown.

The problem is that the guardian spirit portion only works vs. 1 attack. This would be great for breaths of doom on sartharion or whatever, but what about frozen blows on Hodir? Surge on Vezax? Plasma Blast on Mimiron? IBF or Shield Wall or whatever significantly reduces the 30k dps on Plasma Blast. But if you're healers can't already keep up with that level of incoming damage, AD will save you from the first tick or two, and then you die in the remaining 4s of unmitigated 30k dps. Right?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I don't love it. But it's good to be clear about the pluses and minuses of this as compared to a Shield Wall-style cooldown.