Build 13033 tries to doll up Word of Glory
Ah, but does it fail?
Before I get into that, let’s look at the changes:
Divinity is now a Tier 1 Protection talent.
Yes, perfect! Now I don’t have to divert unnecessary points into Holy. This will really help with leapfrogging the (other than Seals of the Pure) rather lackluster first tier. Also means I can work Divinity into just about every build rather than just a survival-focused one.
Protector of the Innocent is gone, moved to Holy.
I feel like I just dumped my garbage on the neighbor’s lawn.
Guarded by the Light additional effect – In addition, your Word of Glory will also cause Holy Shield.
This is a good step in the right direction for Word of Glory. It’s not the end game–by far–but a good building block. I’ll expand on this a little further down.
Judgements of the Just now also reduces ranged attack speed.
Excellent.
Crusader Strike now causes 120% weapon damage, up from 100%.
Loving it! Crusader Strike needed more oomph. This should firmly ensconce it above HotR for single target, if the last build didn’t already.
Anyway, let’s talk about Word of Glory and the current Holy Power design. Right now the consensus is that we, as Prot, do not have enough Holy Power. We can only generate the good stuff every 4.5 seconds, and ultimately expend it every 13.5 seconds or so. It’s a rigid process, to say the least. Compared to Ret who are nakedly rolling around in massive piles of HoPo, we are the pauper spec of the Paladin class.
A huge side effect of our HoPo drought is that when we have three options for expending the resource–ShoR, Inquisition, or Word of Glory–there emerges a clear winner in an unfortunate triage. Inquisition is ideal for AOE situations, and other than that, the predilection is to dump Holy Power into Shield of the Righteous. Word of Glory isn’t given a second though because it doesn’t make sense to expend 13.5 seconds of resource generation on a self-heal when you could deliver a major hit that is running 25% of our current damage done and put up a damage reduction effect.
With every previous build Blizzard has been putting more an more lipstick on the pig to get us to take her home. First there was allowing overheals from WoG to convert into a shield, then it was slipping Eternal Glory into the first tier of our tree, and now we have Word of Glory also putting up the Holy Shield effect.
Side note to recognize the inanity of this–at this juncture let’s just redesign Holy Shield to go up whenever Holy Power is expended, yes? Seems like it’d be less code and tooltips that way?
Anyway, back to my beef. Word of Glory is getting more attractive, sure, but there is one major problem with the ability that can’t be tinkered away. Fundamentally, it’s a tiny heal that doesn’t scale and costs you as many resources as a giant shield slam. The return on investment is minuscule, to say the least. If they want us to use Word of Glory, they need to make a giant change to it: it needs to be free.
For the moment it’s clear they’re not going to give us more Holy Power, despite this being badly needed. Apparently the fear (according to the crab) is:
If we give Protection ways to generate more Holy Power, then that opens the door for getting both Inquisition and Shield of the Righteous going at the same time. As soon as that’s possible, you’re going to assume you have to do both to be competitive, and whenever you can’t keep both up, you’re going to be frustrated.
I guess this is a valid concern but it’s a damn stupid reason to restrict our Holy Power generation. Why not make ShoR and Inquisition exclusive from each other (much like Inq and HS were back at the beginning of beta)? Is that too hard a solution to implement?
Anyway, back to Word of Glory. Like I said, the fix is to make the spell free. Not directly free, of course, but instead redesign Eternal Glory to something like “when you use [some spec-specific ability] there is a x% chance you will proc the effect Eternal Glory, which will make your next Word of Glory expend no Holy Power and have the effectiveness of a 3HP heal.” Make the effect last 15 seconds so we can find a neat gap in our rotation (because the Light knows we’ll have plenty of those) to pop WoG.
And there we go: problem solved. Word of Glory will now be used, and it won’t severely cramp our rotation, aside form pushing everything back a GCD. Which is a much more reasonable threat loss than a whole ShoR.
Make it so.
28 Comments to “Build 13033 tries to doll up Word of Glory”
Leave a Reply
There was an awesome suggestion in the thread that GC posted that in. It basically boiled down to doing exactly what he said they didn’t want to do, and letting the good paladins separate themselves by being able to balance Inquisition and Holy Shield, while the bad ones would struggle to have both up. I have no issue with that–would in fact find it really engaging, if in an unsettlingly mut rogue fashion–though from the PTR numbers ShoR would need to have its base damage slashed to accommodate it.
@Rhidach
24 September 2010 at 1:02 pm #
The only problem with that is, we’d then have to balanced with the assumption that our normal damage output includes Inquisition, which means our total damage would have to be nerfed across the board. So rather than gaining a bonus for being an attentive player, you’d have a whole swath of players who would be utterly screwed because they are bad at balancing resources (though that’s not an absolutely awful thing…) and you’d be faced with hard points where maybe RNG isn’t giving you free Holy Power, and your threat would be likewise penalized because you can’t max Inq uptime.
I’m thinking less RNG Holy Power generation, and more tightening our rotation. Playing on the PTR so far has been something of an excercise in frustration due to the fact that if someone (particularly a well geared mage…) pulls off me while I’m in the dreaded “dead-zone” of our new ‘rotation’, there’s nothing I can do but taunt… and unless they stop attacking it, as soon as the fixate is gone, that mob just turns around and runs at them again. If, say, CS and HotR had their cooldowns reduced back down to 3 seconds, we would have a slight surplus of Holy Power–enough at least to try to balance ShoR and Inquisition–AND we would have less frustrating empty GCDs.
Personally I have no problem with bad paladin tanks being unable to cut it, at least in raids. I’ve seen enough paladins in 10-11/12 HM guilds who, upon speaking to them, obviously know nothing about the class beyond the 969 rotation. If they were essentially phased out, I would lose no sleep over it.
I don’t mean to sound elitist, but it always strikes a nerve with me to see a geared paladin tank–or any player in general–who obviously has done zero research into their class and doesn’t at least put in some effort to improve themselves.
Agreed
“Word of Glory isn’t given a second though because it doesn’t make sense to expend 13.5 seconds of resource generation on a self-heal when you could deliver a major hit that is running 25% of our current damage done and put up a damage reduction effect.”
I actually disagree with this.
Threat is something that (generally) has no benefit beyond what is necessary. For example, there is no benefit to being 40% ahead of the next person on the threat less compared to being only 30% ahead. You only need as much threat as you need – which is just enough to stay ahead.
Now.. damage reduction and healing is different. There is no realistic point at which damage reduction becomes worthless. Therefore, in my mind the idea is to use WoG always now unless you are falling behind in threat.
Therefore, my priority would be WoG over ShoR unless threat necessitates it (keeping threat decay in mind, of course).
Oh.. and to top it off 30% of the time you’ll be able to ShoR after using WoG anyways.
@Rhidach
24 September 2010 at 1:16 pm #
You raise an excellent point, but I really want to see how the threat decay works in practice in raids before I can really sign onto it. I’m concerned that if we’re not constantly producing threat, we’re going to have issues with staying ahead of the dps. I can’t foresee much resting on laurels.
Your quote also makes me notice an embarrassing typo.
Definitely. Threat decay is what will make or break my thinking on this.
I wonder as well if the new talent Protector of the Innocent in Holy will apply to WoG overhealing.
I seem to recall GC saying a ways back that the threat decay mechanic won’t kick in automatically. I might be pulling this out of thin air, but I remember hearing the figure was somewhere in the ballpark of about 10 seconds before threat decay would kick in and you’d start to lose your lead.
Regardless of whether or not that number is true, you have to go in at least partially assuming that they’ve taken this into account, considering GC’s always telling people to just assume it’s going to work properly, rather than assume it’s broken without having seen it in action.
Just my 2 cents.
And since I can’t edit my posts, another comment.
As far as WoG goes, GC stated it will scale with SP or AP. Here’s the quote, with the link to the post after.
“Word of Glory now scales with either attack power or spell power, whichever is higher. The net result is that Ret and Prot Word of Glory will heal for at least 50% more than they did before. That was why we had to nerf Selfless Healer. If I am remembering correctly, a level 85 Ret or Prot paladin 3 Holy Power WoG went from around 6000 to around 9000 (before Selfless Healer or Guarded by the Light). You should test it yourself though, since I may be misremembering. ”
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=26726066766&pageNo=10
He also discusses other points about tank balance there. All in all, many of our concerns seem to have been addressed within the last day or two.
Since we’re discussing threat decay, thought this might be relevant.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=26859270372&pageNo=1
“We actually never implemented threat decay. We’re not sure we’ll need it.
The bottom line is that being a good tank is a mark of pride for tanks. It’s not fun to do a job well that any guy off the street could do with no practice or experience. Getting better at your job is a major motivator for players to play.
Threat is part of that. Back in the day, you got excited when you had a tank who knew how to generate threat. It was a source of bragging rights for the tank.
So just autoattacking, or just Thunder Clapping, shouldn’t be enough for you to never worry about threat. You should have to pay as much attention to your rotations as an Affliction lock or Frost DK needs to do in order to be competitive on meters.
We don’t want to go too far though. While it’s not asking much for a mage to wait a few seconds before unloading with everything they have, it’s also not fun if you feel that tank threat is constantly throttling you. In particular, we’re trying to clamp down on the situation where say at minute six or seven despite everything the tank can do, the dps start to creep up on you. Vengeance was implemented almost entirely for this reason — it helps keep tanks scaling their threat as dps classes gear up.
Finally, we don’t want the tank to be solely at the mercy of others to generate threat. We don’t want abilities like Tricks of the Trade or Misdirection or dps classes using their threat drop abilities on cooldown to solve the whole problem for the tank. All of those abilities still exist, but they won’t turn a bad tank into a good one and they won’t make a great tank feel 100% at the mercy of others. “
@Rhidach
27 September 2010 at 8:43 am #
Thanks for posting these Lanaka! I’m pretty happy with the WoG change. I wonder if that’s actually live in “beta”? I need to go test it if so.
“I feel like I just dumped my garbage on the neighbor’s lawn.”
At first I thought “One man’s trash is another man gold”, but then I checked WowTal and it turned into a pure PvP talent: Healing a target will also heal you for XXX.
Not really complaining about it, as I PvP as holy and a free Holy “Bacon” on me is always good, but…
Julio Biason/Thorianar’s last blog ..Weird scam email or Is Battlenet having issues
@Rhidach
24 September 2010 at 1:17 pm #
Definitely good for Holy, basically useless for us, as you said. Hence my garbage comment, haha. But excellent riposte!
You’re making me disagree with you again! ;-)
I dunno what the numbers are on Protector of the Innocent so I’m guessing.
But, what if you healed yourself with WoG and then got a bonus from PotI heal of an additional 5k or something (I’m making up numbers) and it was all overhealing.
That would mean a shield of 13-15k.
@Rhidach
24 September 2010 at 1:30 pm #
I don’t think it would double dip like that. I will definitely check this weekend when the patch is on beta.
If it did do that, however, it could change a lot.
I’m doubtful as well. /crosses fingers though
I would be thoroughly…well, stuck in a hard spot, if this turns out to be true. I was elated to hear that PotI got moved, but if it turns out it’s actually useful, that means I’m gonna be tempted to get it. Argh.
Do you think it could add to the appeal of the heal if they just made it scale? I’m thinking something like 10% of your max health per point of HoPo. To me this would feel similar to the way Lay on Hands scales. Larger health pool, larger heal. It could also affect how big of a HoPo load you blow. Need a little cushion before the incoming heal lands, drop a one or two point heal and get back to generating threat.
@Anafielle
24 September 2010 at 6:38 pm #
This is all I can think of when I see all this talk of Word of Glory.
Ana: I NEED HEALZZZ
Zilga: HEAL YOUR GODDAMN SELF YOU LAZY TANK
I can’t wait.
Neither can I, Lazy.
er, I mean: Has anyone else met a player who assumed they could heal themselves while tanking? At lvl 80?
As for PotI, it’s of little value to a PvE healer but the cookie-cutter will place 2 points to get to Tier 2 because they provide more value than Judgement crits.
Divinity is the new big deal and I’m betting on it changing or disappearing. Holy almost requires it, which hurts the “spend your last 10 points however you’d like” goal. Divinity also looks a lot like a +heal talent that just has to go away.
Joe Ego’s last blog ..Welcome!
@Rhidach
27 September 2010 at 8:42 am #
It does seem antithetical to the whole “no +% talents” ideal, eh? I’m not sure they’ll remove it though, seems awfully late in the game for that. So to speak.
Considering the WoG issue I’ve been trying to consider the background context that we experienced in BC and will be experiencing again in Cata – healer mana will matter.
I can remember many times where, unlike WotLK, I didn’t die because of spike damage but died simply because healers went oom. If we’re running around with 125K HP and we’re dying in 4-5 hits instead of 2 than this will become much more of a reality. I think this is something that my friends of at maintankadin are not really keeping in mind as much as they should.
In that case, shields and self-heals matter considering that our ability to self-heal is endless whereas healer mana is not. Moreover, overhealing is going to be a lot less – thus making +healing talents far more valuable. 5% may not seem like a lot but if we’re getting 5% more healing from 3-6 sources at a time that really adds up over the course of a fight.
So.. all that leads me to the conclusion that it is in our best interest to self-heal/shield whenever threat permits.
I think that the new PotI will work with WoG but I don’t like the though of having to spec into 3 different talents for 7 points total just to make it viable(thats not including GbtL).
Orthien’s last blog ..New Patch and Improvements for Prot
Things are looking up, imho, esp. considering GC’s comment regarding the avoidance delta.
Now.. fix our rotation to make it less boring and eliminate the long gaps and I’ll be a happy tankadin again!
@Rhidach
27 September 2010 at 11:17 am #
Yeah one more single-target ability for the rotation would be pretty handy. Maybe a no-cast time Exorcism.
Consider the number of situations where threat is essentially a non-issue, due to fight design, but that especially on a longer time-window an extra heal at the right time might be the difference between life and death.
H-LK, for example, threat is a total non-issue after about 15 seconds in P2. DPS simply doesn’t have the same time-on-target that the tanks do, so the tanks inevitably open up enormous leads. Sacrificing ShoR to time WoG’s in with SR applications (easy to do, it’s on a predictable timer), will be a much better way to play.
You can pick out those situations in every fight that’s hard for tanks or healers. The paladin community has been very quick to dismiss WoG, and I think they’re fundamentally wrong about it. I’ve said so before, but I don’t like beating a dead horse, so I’ve given up the fight until closer to Cataclysm.
EDIT: And, hey, if all the bitching is getting it made better and better, then more power to the bitchers, because I think this ability has tons of potential to separate the good tanks from the bad, and tons of potential to create first-kills out of wipes. I expect the WoG talents will go into my progression/survival spec.
Pretty much exactly my opinion on the matter.