GC clarifies Prot concerns from the preview
Ghostcrawler hit the tank forums with a vengeance last night, clarifying not just his philosophy of class balance in this epic thread, but also issuing some dictums on some lingering concerns we had from our class preview.
First, on blessings:
Kings and Might can just be raid wide. There should be no need to target individuals. We’re trying to make sure there isn’t a circumstance where one dude would prefer the opposite buff to everyone else.
Bo Sanc could just be Kings with an extra mana component (for the paladin). We’re also considering making it a passive that gives the paladin mana and provides the 3% damage reduction buff raid-wide which is currently brought by Renewed Hope (the Disc talent).
The best design, I would think, would be to make two blessings. One is Blessing of Kings, the other is Blessing of Might. Clicking either will automatically buff everyone in the raid, ala Arcane Intellect. And, for Sanc, do exactly what GC suggested: roll the mana return into a talent and make Blessing of Sanctuary similar to the other buff except all it gives is the damage reduction.
That way it won’t be mandatory for dungeons like the mana-spring Sanc was (which lead to the ridiculous parade of tweaks and retweaks so we wouldn’t be gimped for having it up as our only blessing), and it’ll be a steady buff that we as Prot can bring to the raid.
Lastly, regarding Blinding Shield and AOE:
That attack could have a 10 min cooldown. I’m pretty sure we didn’t specify in the preview, so I’m not sure how you’d decide it’s better or worse in any situation. Maybe it has a 5 sec cooldown but we nerfed the threat generation from Holy damage so severely that paladins are utterly dependent on it now. I just don’t think we gave you the information necessary to draw that conclusion, and this is partially why we didn’t provide that information. :)
This is a good point by GC. People (myself included) often make the mistake of viewing any future plans through the lens of our current abilities and numbers. There’s no guarantee our AOE toolbox will be exactly the same as it is now, and frankly, I’d be shocked if it were. Adding Blinding Shield to our spellbook right now would make our AOE repertoire even more overpowered than it currently is. But, in the future, a lot will be changing that will probably make BS (ugh, worst acronym ever) a natural fit.
Say what you want about the crab, at least he lets us peek into his brain from time to time. And takes the effort to keep us in the loop on his design intents and appears to be assuaged by any concerns we bring up.
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One thing I do love about GC is when he does let us take a look at what’s going on inside his head, many times you find him thinking the same thing over and over…
“Hey retards, I apologize. I really thought you all were more intelligent than that, but since you aren’t I will play your little game of exaggeration and respond appropriately with hyperbole.”
@Tarinae
15 April 2010 at 10:06 am #
The blessing information seems a little rough right now . But I will be honest, it would be NICE to be able to buff the whole raid in one click as a paladin. Not going through and clicking mana casters for Wis…DPS for Might…etc. Then doing it all again in 30 mins.
Tarinae’s last blog ..Cataclysm: Paladin Preview
@Rhidach
15 April 2010 at 10:08 am #
@Tarinae: Yeah if every person is going to get BoM, there is literally no point to making the Paladin perform 10 casts to get the raid fully buffed. It’d be silly to leave that mechanic in.
@Rhabella: Ha! No kidding. You can kind of glean that tone from him sometimes. I can almost taste the gin in the replies from time to time.
@suicidalzebra
15 April 2010 at 10:32 am #
I can’t say that I’m too impressed by the new skills.
Healing Hands seems to be more suited to a melee-based healer (oops, ret and prot) and not to a ranged healer unless the heal radius is quite large, >20 yards. Instant cast and with decent scaling it could be an extra tool for a Ret or Prot paladin with space in his or her rotation, but I’m sceptical of it’s value to Holy.
Blinding Shield is worse. A 2 second cast time on a spell to defend yourself against melee is a little bonkers for Holy and Ret, worse given that Ret’s periodic damage tends to break Blind and Disorient effects. Like Holy Wrath, it may see limited use in PvE in niche situations, but frankly whatever the damage it looks more like the ability is there to fill out a Prot Paladins’ AoE threat rotation a la Shockwave/Thunderstomp.
Finally, we have GAnK. It’s excellent that there are 3 different effects for the three different talent trees, but unfortunately its just a fire and forget spell on a long cooldown. I love flashy abilities, but I prefer such abilities when they require finesse and timing to pull effectively. Oh, and you can bet your bottom dollar it’ll cause Forbearance for at least one build of the Beta.
It’s a mixed bag, but then so were the Wrath skill. Just like in Wrath the proof of the pudding will be in the new Talents as they’ll have a far greater impact on gameplay.
Hey rhidach. love your blog. I gotta ask something that really puzzles me: why apply a blind effect with blinding shield (and don;t tell me it’s because of the shield :D ) ? blind would just break with next ability or all the AoE that’s typically flying around a tank and would be expected to still be flying around a tank come cata. It seems to be very situational ( maybe when the tanks trying to escape but that would be very rare :). Why not give a daze or stun or something? why blind?
*A rotten hand slowly raises from the ground on Brill cemetery while “Thriller” plays in the background*
Brainssss….
/cough
Now, thats better.
OK, I`ve been lost for quite some time, so I decided to get into wow after some intense burnout and RL issues, and then one week after i get back, I get the preview news, and get all excited again, then it gets delayed and i die a bit on the inside again, after that; Blilzz says its coming earlier and when i finally manage to read it, I find some very interesting posibilities, but the one and only thing i see missing there is a Gap closer.
Currently 3 of the 4 tanking classes haev one or more ways of closing gaps, namely Death Grip, feral charge,and Charge, and if we count Warriors, its not even a spec related ability since its baseline, and prot gets the extra “Intervene” and fury gets Intercept, and they are going to get one more! heroic Leap, so they actually get to have 4, yes FOUR gap closing abilities, and we remain the tank that tosses a shield and facepulls (after running to the mob, since trigger happy DPSers will often start doing their mojo after they see Cpt. America`s shield fly).
Still, this leaves us at a certain disadvantage for movement intensive fights or some situational uses, so, I would like to see whats Blizz viewpoint for cataclysm before I can get a real “idea” of what things will look like and if it will be something of an issue or not at all.
@Rhidach
15 April 2010 at 1:22 pm #
Logan! Good to see you man. Agreed 110%, we need a gap closer. Especially if Cataclysm is as movement-oriented as it seems Blizzard is going to make it.
@santander: I’m hoping it’s not an actually blind, but some kind of disorient that doesn’t break on damage. It’d be really dumb if it would immediately break via Consecrate, or what have you.
@suicidalzebra
15 April 2010 at 1:35 pm #
@Santander
I’m pretty sure that the Blind component is there as a PvP effect (+PvE is they add an interrupt mechanic to it) and is meant to be fairly meaningless in a raiding context for Prot Tanks. In fact, the blind component may be removed when talented as a trade-off for it being instant for Prot.
@Logandres
I believe that Gap Closers will continue to be ‘not for Paladins’ in general, but may be implemented in a form that requires a number of hoops to jump through, such as requiring a shield to be equipped + having a particular Seal active + a particular Aura etc and a specific talent spec. I’d like to see Avengers Shield being moved to Baseline and require shields, with the snare component being a Ret Talent (PvP requiring 2*GCD’s to use) and Interrupt being Protection. Don’t hold your breath though.
Boss mechanics are always changing, but I am finding myself healing from the melee on most ICC fights. Even if I’m stuck at range there will likely be many opportunities to abuse the aoe effect during various collapses.
As for BS and CS for Holy, I’ll be happy to have a more filled out dps rotation for those times when I’d otherwise be napping.
@ rhidach, @ suicidal
Yeah, That’s what I think. They might have us replace the blind with a daze or stun or like u mentioned an interrupt using a talent or a glyph. Seems like a perfect job for a minor glyph.
GC recently said that warriors will have a “mobilty theme, and mages will have a “CC” theme. I feel like this is him fighting against the homoginization factor, but I have little faith each class/spec will be a special snowflake.
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