AD Changes and Pally MTs

Tomyris

Fri Jun 19, 2009 1:25 am

AD Changes and Pally MTs

Quoting from PTR patch notes:

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.

Generally speaking, this should buy you at least a couple of seconds to receive crucial heals—not to mention the elimination of "leapfrogging." Sadly I haven't yet had an opportunity to sink my teeth into Ulduar, but I'm curious how the more experienced set feels about this change. I know many of you have already MTed hard modes successfully, in spite of our relative disadvantage compared to DKs in particular.

With this change and the nerfs to DKs (reduced armor, Icebound Fortitude on 2 min. CD, &c.), where do you see us stacking up in terms of hard mode viability relative to other classes? Like Blood Draining, it's one of those things that seems very difficult to model mathematically, but how do you think it will pan out in progression?

Dread

Fri Jun 19, 2009 1:48 am

Re: AD Changes and Pally MTs

The way the changes are currently worded, it's very possible that it could be overpowered now. Any big hit that would bring you under 35% (the scariest types of burst damage) will now be affected with no current word of an internal cooldown on the damage reduction. I'd say that alone is pretty significant even before you consider it also will have a passive, baked-in Guardian Spirit type effect.

Overall I'm very excited but a little worried about the changes announced. I expect "clarification" (ie NERF) before it goes live.

Saeverud

Fri Jun 19, 2009 5:43 am

Re: AD Changes and Pally MTs

It's like Ardent Defender, Guardian Spirit/Cheat Death and Last Stand all wrapped into one. I really really really want it to go through, but I doubt it will in it's current form. Not without increasing it's talent score again.

Ascendant

Fri Jun 19, 2009 6:02 am

Re: AD Changes and Pally MTs

Dread wrote:The way the changes are currently worded, it's very possible that it could be overpowered now. Any big hit that would bring you under 35% (the scariest types of burst damage) will now be affected with no current word of an internal cooldown on the damage reduction.

you are reading it wrong. saying that the effect wont be leapfrogged doesn't mean that the entire hit will be reduced by 30%, that would be ridiculous considering the frequency of boss attacks that would proc this. We will see for certain on the PTR

Dalithe

Fri Jun 19, 2009 6:19 am

Re: AD Changes and Pally MTs

I would love to see this go through...But it's just so beautiful in it's current incantation that I'm tripidious that it'll not happen and it'll be watered down.

The whole patch seems that way, everything that needs buffs is getting fixed, and DK's and especially the DK Tanks getting nerfed. It's not April is it?

Tomyris

Fri Jun 19, 2009 6:36 am

Re: AD Changes and Pally MTs

Ascendant wrote:you are reading it wrong. saying that the effect wont be leapfrogged doesn't mean that the entire hit will be reduced by 30%, that would be ridiculous considering the frequency of boss attacks that would proc this. We will see for certain on the PTR

Trying to out parse the devs' intentions from PTR patch notes has never really proven very fruitful. Clearly the language could reflect what Dread had in mind, or it may function differently.

One possibility that I could imagine would be that the mitigation applies to damage taken beyond what reduces you to 35%, whether or not you had 35% before the blow landed. For example, you're at 100% of your 50k buffed HP and take a hit for 40k. At 15k HP AD kicks in, mitigating 30% of the remaining 5k damage. Of course that's pure speculation, but it's a more reasonable mechanic to avoid leapfrogging than mitigating 30% of the entire 40k.

Racolus

Fri Jun 19, 2009 7:38 am

Re: AD Changes and Pally MTs

Well, consider the auto last stand is a bonus.

The way to avoid AD being leap-frogged is already something very, very good.

Dalithe

Fri Jun 19, 2009 8:02 am

Re: AD Changes and Pally MTs

Lets read this together. Line for line...

Ardent Defender: Redesigned. Currently, any damage taken by the paladin while at 35% health or below is reduced.
*blah blah blah, k got it.

Any attack that would reduce the paladin to "35% health or below has its damage reduced"
*That reads the entire attack would have its damage reduced. That is the entire attack. Now the real question is...Will AD activate reduce the damage then we never reach 35% Health? (Time paradox, world ending OMG)

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
*Which means it does not matter how much damage that attack was going to be for anything after 0 HP means nothing and we get "SET" to 10/20/30% of our health.

That is overpowered, insanely so. Will they change it? I don't know. This patch has me so excited though...so going with Murphy's Law on this one.

Solare

Fri Jun 19, 2009 8:38 am

Re: AD Changes and Pally MTs

Dalithe wrote:Lets read this together. Line for line...

Ardent Defender: Redesigned. Currently, any damage taken by the paladin while at 35% health or below is reduced.
*blah blah blah, k got it.

Any attack that would reduce the paladin to "35% health or below has its damage reduced"
*That reads the entire attack would have its damage reduced. That is the entire attack. Now the real question is...Will AD activate reduce the damage then we never reach 35% Health? (Time paradox, world ending OMG)

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
*Which means it does not matter how much damage that attack was going to be for anything after 0 HP means nothing and we get "SET" to 10/20/30% of our health.

That is overpowered, insanely so. Will they change it? I don't know. This patch has me so excited though...so going with Murphy's Law on this one.

I have to agree. I gathered a similar understanding of it by this wording. And it really is over-powered in it's current form. This will definitely see some changes once the general audience gets a look at it, in my opinion.

Mert

Fri Jun 19, 2009 8:50 am

Re: AD Changes and Pally MTs

Blue post about it:

Currently, we think paladin tanks are almost there and that they just need slightly better cooldowns to handle some of the tougher boss fights. Rather than add a new ability that felt like a clone of another class’s ability, we decided to buff an existing talent that was no longer cutting it. 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.

A second change to Protection is we want to make sure Blessing of Sanctuary is always the tanking blessing of choice. A likely change here is to have it boost stamina as well.

We also recognize that block does not provide the mitigation it once did. While we have long-term plans to change the way block works entirely, in the short term we are doubling the effect of bonus block value on items (so jewelry, but not shields).

Here's hoping that the Stam bonus from BoSanc is applied before BoK modification

Dantriges

Fri Jun 19, 2009 8:56 am

Re: AD Changes and Pally MTs

I hope there is no bug and i still get the other stats if I have both.

Ulushnar

Fri Jun 19, 2009 8:59 am

Re: AD Changes and Pally MTs

Mert wrote:Here's hoping that the Stam bonus from BoSanc is applied before BoK modification

Read the patch notes, there's a thread elsewhere. It doesn't stack, it's just there to make the choice between BoS and BoK easier.

Ascendant

Fri Jun 19, 2009 9:03 am

Re: AD Changes and Pally MTs

Dalithe wrote:Lets read this together. Line for line...

Ardent Defender: Redesigned. Currently, any damage taken by the paladin while at 35% health or below is reduced.
*blah blah blah, k got it.

Any attack that would reduce the paladin to "35% health or below has its damage reduced"
*That reads the entire attack would have its damage reduced. That is the entire attack. Now the real question is...Will AD activate reduce the damage then we never reach 35% Health? (Time paradox, world ending OMG)

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
*Which means it does not matter how much damage that attack was going to be for anything after 0 HP means nothing and we get "SET" to 10/20/30% of our health.

That is overpowered, insanely so. Will they change it? I don't know. This patch has me so excited though...so going with Murphy's Law on this one.

I would love to know what you are reading to suggest this, because everything I have ready suggests (in other words, a blue post and patch notes) suggests otherwise.

edit: or are you being sarcastic?

Tomyris

Fri Jun 19, 2009 9:10 am

Re: AD Changes and Pally MTs

You guys really aren't getting anywhere by trying to interpret the plain English of the patch notes. This has been attempted many times before and almost as often has failed to capture the actual mechanics as they function in game. Not even tooltips are written with consistent, self-evident logic. The fact is that we do not yet know precisely how it will calculate the mitigated damage, but two things appear clear:

AD can't be leapfrogged anymore.
We gain Guardian Cheat Death Spirit.

My question remains: is this the change that we need to bring us into parity with (or even place us ahead of) other tanks in challenging encounters? It feels good to me, but I haven't had the experience of holding Vezax static through Surges or any other current fights where a Pally MT is considered a liability.

Rehlachs

Fri Jun 19, 2009 9:17 am

Re: AD Changes and Pally MTs

Ascendant wrote:I would love to know what you are reading to suggest this, because everything I have ready suggests (in other words, a blue post and patch notes) suggests otherwise.