Protection Paladins in Cataclysm.

Ok, so I did the other 2 paladin specs so I'll give a stab at protection Paladins aswell.

Firstly I have relatively little experience with Wrath Tanking as a Paladin, I've done heroic tanking on my paladin which basically involved facerolling on 5 sets of keys and face rolling, yes paladin tanking is very hard ... :/.

However I haven't really raid tanked at all in wrath on a paladin, I've tanked some 10 man stuff on my warrior (Naxx and Ulduar) but nothing that major.

Lets get a few provisos I have about tanking out of the way. There are 2 ways I see a difficulty of class scaling, there are "Difficulty for the new player" and "Difficulty for the knowledgable player".

I generally consider the healer to be the hardest class to play, under the lk scope, especially Holy Paladins and to a lesser extent Resto Shamans because you don't blanket so much and you actually make individual choices on who to heal, you don't just shove out a rotation like the druid/priest or dpsers/tanks.

Then if you are a new player i consider tank to be the next hardest, since you are asked to lead a dungeon, often the tank dictates the pace of the run and is looked to for knowing tactics and stuff, especially at 5 man content this is the next difficult job.

At a raiding level however I consider the tank to be the easiest Job, and there are a few reasons why:

1) Gearing is pretty easy, you just go for the stuff with more stamina/armor on it in LK, thats pretty much all you gear for, you probably want to hit the hit cap and expertise soft cap for threat, but otherwise you are pretty much purely itemising for stamina

2) *Most* hard parts about a fight are avoided or mitigated by being a tank, ghosts on deathwhisper, Slimes on Putricide, Pact on Lanathel etc. Even if you fuck up on basic mechanics usually you have enough hp to survive.

3) Nobody Looks at a tanks rotation or threat, noone cares if it isn't 100% optimal, as long as people don't have issues with it, it's no problem: that means there is much more slack in a rotation of a tank than a dps.

Now Paladin specific in Lich King we have the fact that Ardent Defender exists, the only active dr cooldowns you have in LK is when to use Divine Protection and Divine Guardian, Discounting Glyph of Salvation, so mostly you can fully concentrate on moving, unlike say a dpser who has to pop his cooldowns on time you just have to do it at a specific point in the fight, say when you just taunt or are taking soul reaper.

These points all lead to me believing that tanking is the easiest part of a raid team in lich king, and that your tank can be significantly worse than the rest of your raid and you probably wouldn't notice or care as long as they geared right.

Like Blizzard has quoted many times Tanks are really only judged on success rate, you are judged on whether you were able to get through the fight or not.

Now, moving on to the actual topic of this post we have a few things that I like about the Protection Spec Iterations.

1) A real choice between threat and Damage Reduction. This change alone shows me that Tanking is moving to a more difficult level, I know Blizzard has said they don't want dps to have to worry about a threat ceiling and for Tanks to not worry about people pulling aggro, However to be Honest what I would hope that means is that a perfect tank with perfect dps would mean that the Dps were at a constant 85% of the threat level of a tank.

Since Perfection does not exist, this should mean that a Tank that can perform within 80% of perfection would be able to hold back 99% of dpsers without them really having to worry about taking aggro.

What I like about this system of choosing between threat and damage reduction is that it rewards those good tanks more, the best tanks that will pull out optimum threat and move bosses well and taunt at the right times meaning they can dump their Holy Power on Holy Shield instead of Inquisition. A system that rewards good players is something I definitly like.

2) The diversity away from warriors: the removal of shield of the righteous is great, I personally hated how samey warriors and Paladins felt. The Diversion of cooldowns between the 2 aswell is nice.

3) Cooldowns: Just gonna talk about cooldowns, I personally LOVE how ardent defender is changing, god that cooldown was such a total mistake in Lich King in my opinion, taking choice away from tanks just made them so easy and not taxing, it was horrible to see raid groups having to switch to Paladin tanks on Lich King for that insurance factor of Ardent Defender.

I remember chatting with some guy from Irae Aod who were one of the first groups to do 10 man Lich king (at the time of the conversation nobody had done 25 man heroic lich king) and they were like "yeh we wiped so much with a warrior and dk tank, but then we switched out our fully decked 264/277 tank with a t9 245/251 geared Paladin tank and 3 shot the boss." Comments like that really hurt me inside, the fact that one cooldown can give so much leeway on mechanics and make a difference between suceeding and defeat on an encounter, simply because the choice is removed from the player is really sad.

I like the new version of Ardent Defender aswell, a mini dr cooldown with basically 15% extra health, obviously it isn't clear whether it works on multiple blows that would have killed you or not but I don't think it would be that overpowered even if it did, considering it is only 15% healed. Regardless this is a really new and innovative cooldown and I like it alot.

I also like how Divine Guardian is being made into a strictly raid cooldown and not a personal cooldown, it seemed like a waste to have to save D.G. for a single person cooldown. It also means that having a Prot Paladin on your team gives your other tank 2 extra cooldowns (Hand/Divine Guardian) which is nice synergy as a tank partner, although perhaps a bit too powerful.

4) I like how Consecration is changing to make Paladin tanks more like well TANKS, you stand your ground, you want to tank in that spot and be like juggernauts.. that's awesome and compelling, obviously the rotation can support moving and using consecrate more but its nice to sort of only use it once every 45 seconds ideally and not have all this incidental damage.

I don't like how hammer is still the main nuke of Protection per-say: I am hopeful this will get iterated out or made a choice, considering also that they want to make Holy Wrath part of the rotation aswell means that Paladins are going to be just as good at aoe tanking in cata as they are today, since all their abilities to tank have incidental aoe. I would prefer a system where you have to choose between hammer doing single or aoe. Perhaps you could say make it so that doing C.S-> Hammer made it do single Target and Holy Wrath-> Hammer made it do aoe damage, it would be quite innovative to make certain spells affect the functionality of 1 spell but I feel like it would diversify the protection paladin class more: and make Paladins less good at aoe tanking (provided of course numbers were tweaked).

Obviously these are just ideas I'm throwing out but ye i just like the idea of using different spells to affect the functionality of this 1 spell. Exorcism could make it a ranged casted attack (like the trial of the champion boss) all this stuff, would just make it awesome and very unique.

I haven't really got much else to say other than that, it's hard to judge because I don't really play protection paladin's especially in the beta and am mostly just going off the talent trees and spells you use.

Anyway hope this wasn't too noobish of a random post

Holy Paladins in Cataclysm

Ok, so onto my beloved Holy spec: Lets get a few facts down, the only real main I would play is my Holy Paladin: I love this spec, it is the only healing spec I have fell in love with and for the next few paragraphs I am going to detail why I love it, especially in Wrath. The second fact is I do not love it because it is "overpowered", but that will be explained in the next few paragraphs.

Firstly, Wrath healing is not really mana limited, I do run out of mana as a holy paladin: But that is usually me being over-zealous on using Holy Light or not using plea enough: this sort of thing. Basically though this means my healing is basically a combination of 5 spells: Keep Beacon and Sacred Shield and Judgements of the Pure up, Holy Shock when moving and Holy light 80% of the time. Whilst Using Plea with cooldowns to compensate that loss.

Now whilst that is pretty simplistic meaning you are only really using 1 spell the majority of the time, the fact that it is a direct heal means that it is totally different from say Rejuvenation and Shields and Renew. Whilst those 3 healers (Druid/Disc/Holy) are the majority of their time blanketting a raid, relatively they are just using 1 spell and keeping up hots/shields on around 10 people whilst using other spells to either heal directly (Prayer of Healing/Penance/Swiftmend) or more blanketing (Coh/Wild Growth) meaning their healing has relatively little choice, you are sort of pidgeonholed into healing specific people at specific times with only really 3 or so heals over 15 seconds.

In contrast Paladins have free reign on who they heal, because their "job" is usually to heal the beacon target only on 1 tank fights, this means that on fights with lots of aoe damage you are basically choosing who to heal, whilst the 3 aforemented heals blanket people the holy paladin and, to a lesser extent, the resto shaman pick them back up to full hp. Basically although you don't have much choice in your spellbook you have full choice on who to heal, perhaps you might be assigned to a specific group or pact of the darkfallen target or whatever but regardless you are choosing who to heal and aren't cycling montonously.

This is precisely what I love about Holy Paladins, you choose who to heal, it doesn't matter to me that I am only using 1 spell I get to have alot of choice and freedom in my healing, even if it is in a niche role.

Now I won't make any bones about it, I have my severe doubts over Cataclysm Healing Style, not the intention of it: I think that is good, but I feel it is going to take away what I love about Paladin healing, one of the main reasons why I am quitting hardcore raiding is because I don't think paladin healing will be attractive enough in Cataclysm, along with real life issues and all this jazz.

Now I am going to make alot of points about "healing style" and will attempt to not view paladin healing in cataclysm under a "lk eye" like many people do when reviewing the current status on the beta. What I mean by this is I will make a few key assumptions and ignore numbers on the beta.

1) You can Spam Holy light constantly for a good 5-6 minutes using standard mana regen techniques and have a good 20-30% mana left. I make this assumption based on blue posts that have been made about cataclysm healing.

2) Any necessary "healing buffs" are kept active/used on cd satisfying condition 1, ie if i keep up my healing buffs and spam holy light I have 20-30% mana left after 5-6 minutes.

3) Flash of Light and Divine Light cost the same mana, and are worse hpm than Holy light.Flash of Light Heals for the same as Holy Light. Holy Light and Divine Light take the same amount of time to cast.

4) Light of the Dawn is a choice and Healing Hands is Spammable.

5) Holy Shock is something you want to use on cooldown.

6) At 3 Holy Power you want to use Word of Glory without question.

7) 80% of your Holy Power Generation will be through Holy Shock and not through Tower of Radiance.

8) I assume that tank healing is purely tank healing

9) I assume Raid healing will be group based

Now these assumptions are based on the current talent design of the Trees and what I would envisage healing choices to pan out between the 3 direct heals.

Under these assumptions I assume that whatever the Paladin is healing they will be doing a few things: Keeping Beacon up, Keeping Sacred Shield up, Keeping Jotp up, Using Holy Shock on Cooldown, Using Healing Hands on Cooldown, using Word of Glory at 3 holy power and using Holy Light with Infusion of Light.

Now if they are Tank healing they will be healing in melee for healing hands splash on the tanks and basically using Holy light Primarily, using Flash of Light if say they need to top the tank fast before some high damage point and using Divine light after a high damage point with small threat of them dying.

If they are Raid Healing they will stand with their specific group, using holy light primarily and light of the dawn when all members of the group are taking damage, mostly using flash of light in emergencies rather than divine light.

Now what I have a problem with is the first paragraph of the 3.. the fact is that you have a good 7 things you have to do, you don't really have a choice not to, I might have some of these assumptions wrong like using holy shock in cooldown mostly is what I am a little unsure about, but that would still leave 6 things you are forced to do, obviously 2 things would be far less stringent without the holy shock assumption.

Now in the same way that druid/priest healing is very montonous with lack of choice I feel like because you are having to do 6-7 things without thought you are losing alot of elements of choice. I mean alot of this ties into cataclysm healing style where you will have a max of 5 people you are healing, because overhealing matters I presume that raid healing will go back to 1 healer per group and 2 healers on tanks.

I know Blizzard's position on making healing fun is to make you choose between spells and manage your own mana and really have an obvious idea of who you are healing. Now whilst I actually don't have a problem with that at all, I feel that is a very good mantra and actually makes healing far less stressful, which it currently is today. However I don't feel its been implemented in the best possible way for a paladin. Paladin healing has lost its simplicity and has become a very complex healer.

Firstly, lets take the positives: 1) Far more viable raid healing, personally I feel they should give an aoe heal talented for a holy power dump so you have a nice choice between word of glory and this aoe heal as a power dump, that way its far less monotonous.

2) I LOVE how the position of the paladin matters, it has given paladin alot more mobility they don't currently have, its a very unique way of aoe healing and even single target healing this part of the paladin healing is my favorite.

Personally I feel that Paladin healing is going to be in a good place, I actually like the style, I would definitly find a way to generate Holy power besides Holy Shock, like I said if you don't have to use holy shock on cooldown then you have 4 main things you have no choice over and 2 you have to do based on a proc (again giving an aoe heal as a power dump along with Word of Glory would be 1 less of that) then I think the healing style is actually going to be great.

Things I don't like about Paladin Healing and the talent tree at the moment.

1) The Bloat of the tree, I know there was a post saying they like "bloat" but when I need to take 32 points in my specialised tree with 0 choice for utility and all for performance, and then the only point I can "choose" is to get pursuit of Justice for more manoeuverability.

What I envisage for a "good tree" is that you take a good 25 points all for performance with not much room for manoeuvere in your specialised tree and then 5 points in another tree you have to take again for performance. You are then with at least 6 points to choose between utility points in your tree and then 5 points to choose in the other 2 trees or further in your own tree.

At the moment you need don't really have any utility choices in the Paladin tree. (Note: I do not consider Enlightened Judgements as utility, you can argue that it is, but considering that having the hit cap and being able to Judge anywhere is vital to keep up judgements of the pure which is essential to performance)

2) The bottom of the tree: It's hideous, Improved Concentration Aura needs to be cut, improving auras is just generally a bad decision, I don't want to have to say Yes I need a holy paladin for improved conc aura, and a prot for devotion aura. I presume this talent will be cut but yes, it needs to go, or be tier 1.

Blessed Life, I like this talent and again with say some of the NEEDED BLOAT cut it will be an interesting choice, it has no real place in the current tree of course.

Denounce should really be higher in the tree (tier 3) just so that a person levelling as holy can have access to it earlier, again it suffers from the rest of the tree, and would be a nice choice, would also be nice if it could proc seals but i doubt that would happen :D.

Those are my big 2 quarrels besides what I already stated above. I believe Paladin Healing can be great, and is poised to be in a great spot, it just needs a few iterations and it would be awesome :D.

Although to be clear I won't be healing "hardcore" in Cataclysm, I still want to see paladin healing get into a great place as it is something I hold dear to my heart :).

Retribution Paladins In Cataclysm

Ok, so this is gonna be another bit of a long drawn out post on Retribution with another on Holy later, I won't comment much on prot because a) I have never really seriously played prot and b) It isn't really that finalised on the beta at the moment.

First I am going to talk about Ret, why? because I was doing Deepholm as Ret so probably am the most experienced with the new mechanics.

At first I was like, yes this feels like a good change, I mean what you essentially have is a static DO THIS ON CD ABILITY (C.S) which you will always do on cooldown and then everything else having a priority in the free globals with this being Inquisition -> Templar's Verdict -> Judgement -> Exorcism -> Holy Wrath for single target and Inquisition -> Divine Storm -> Holy Wrath -> Judgement -> Exorcism for Multi-Target.

To comment on a few things, that sort of lead me turning on this system: a) I have played feral druid (mostly this) and rogue (a little) extensively enough to know their dps systems inside out b) I really hate the standard UI, maybe I will do a post on what I hate about it. c) I always thought Paladins were about some sort of burst.

Now, I'll deal with each of these points separately. Firstly we have the fact that Inquisition is basically a Savage Roar/Slice and Dice Clone, it is basically the only ability you would use with less than full holy power and if you miss keeping it up you lose a fuck tonne of damage. Now, whilst I don't mind these mechanics I think it's laboured: Do we really need 3/6 melee dps classes feeling very samey when it comes to the dps rotation. Holy Power also seems to basically be combo points in disguise, theres nothing interesting and new about Holy Power C.S is just a new sinister strike or shred and Templar's Verdict is the new Eviscerate/Ferocious Bite and Inquisition is the new Savage Roar/Slice and Dice. It is kinda like you split the rogue aspects and thought " We will give energy to hunters but make it more like runic power, and we will give combo points to paladins but limit them to 3". I just think its a laboured mechanic, I would much rather see a clone of say the DK rune system that a clone of combo points which is already used on 2/6 of the melee classes.

Secondly, the standard UI is attrocious for Holy Power, maybe you can argue that "eventually it will be on the main frame" but that makes me cringe really, the problem with both of these is you need to know how much Holy power you have at any one time. However, this is actually a minor problem, at the moment on the beta this is very annoying, but if Crusader Strike got reduced to 3 seconds this problem would be far less intrusive.

Finally, the point about Wrath and why Holy Paladins were "overpowered" in pvp early on in the expansion was because they could blow all their cooldowns and knock somebody over without fear of dying. Paladin burst was pegged back with emphasis placed on talents like righteous vengeance and Spells like Seal of Vengeance becoming prominent. Whilst the core of the Paladin fcfs rotation remained intact. Come Cataclysm I just feel that Paladins have lost pretty much all burst. Note: I am not a PvP and never will be a PvP fanatic, I am talking mostly about PvE burst.

From my Experience as a dpser you have 2 types of Dps: Controlled Burst Dps and Sustained Dps, the definition of the difference between the 2 is obvious and best described by say choosing between an "on use trinket" and an "on proc trinket". In wrath useful "On use" trinkets went away (something I am very annoyed about personally) so basically you only had proc trinkets as a dpser, so there was no choice between increasing your damage in a 30 second period or over a 5 minute period, it was always the latter.

As a Ret Paladin in Wrath you have ways to choose between Controlled Burst and Sustained Dps, mostly these revolve around your use of Avenging Wrath, but also in a minor way seal usage. You can use your Avenging wrath on cooldown to increase your sustained dps or you can use it at specific points in a fight to increase the dps where it matters, with seals it is mostly switching to command on Valkyr's so that they die, even if that means you might lose your vengeance stack on the boss, since we want to increase our dps in that timeframe rather than the long run.

Personally I was always a fan of increasing dps in the short term, I hate people who blindly look at spreadsheets and go HUH A>B must be an upgrade when actually, especially early on in wrath, keeping a trinket like wrathstone (NEVER DROPPED (Seriously :<)) which was a reasonable on use trinket was something I would always do so that if the encounter required burst, say Valkyr Shield Popping on Twin Valkyr's that I would have guarenteed dps increases in that small time period. For the Same reason I don't tend to favour crit beyond 50% since crit works like a normal distribution curve, it becomes less and less bang for buck in a short term window past the critical 50% number, obviously in Cataclysm Crit will be much more valuable with the lower combat ratings, but I digress...

The point is that the new system is very "RAMP-UP-ESQUE", similar to how feral druids/Rogues work you have to spend a good 10-15 seconds of ramping up, on the beta this is obviously amplified by the fact C.S has a 4 second cooldown, but the problem is still there with a 3 second cooldown, it takes a long time to ramp up damage, I feel like Paladins don't need 2 mechanics to ramp up: Seal of Truth and Inquisition (Holy Power), it means your damage is very poor at the beginning of a fight for a good 10-15 seconds, this can be horribly taxing on a player who is looking out for his survival as is being advocated alot recently and I feel the Paladin should only be having to worry about 1 ramp up ability.

Ok, so bringing all this together.. Basically on its current state on Beta, the dps rotation is hideous. C.S going down to 3 seconds will do wonders for this though, it's already been posted that this change is in a build and let me be blunt: It needs to be 3 seconds if you intend to stick with Holy Power being a Combo Points system, if it is 3 seconds it makes the rotation feel totally different from a rogue and a feral druid, if it is 4 seconds it feels like a bad clone.

Let me Elaborate on that a little.. At 3 seconds you will never run out of something to do: It is always C.S move C.S move C.S move... etc with the move based on a priority system of 5 abilities (lets ignore the fact that this keeps us gcd locked because I feel like a gcd locked class is better than a non gcd locked class that only has specific windows where they can use something, also move could be used for dispelling and every 3 seconds is easily often enough to dispel or use freedom/protection... this sort of thing).

This is cool because you don't have downtime and it is both monotonous and non-monotonous in terms of C.S and the move part of the rotation respectively.

At 4 seconds you have C.S move move C.S move move C.S move move, this means that the cooldown of C.S actually becomes 4.5 seconds, you also run out of moves real fast so you end up doing nothing for the vast majority of the time, this is dull and boring and although gives you freedom to move around also means you are punished severely when having to move and you need to use an ability. Also it means you are going to be forced into 2 stacking inquisition I feel instead of 3 stacking because of timings.

At a 3 second interval your rotation looks like this:

C.S -> Inquisition -> C.S -> Judgement -> C.S -> Exorcism -> C.S -> Inquisition -> C.S -> Judgement -> C.S -> Holy Wrath -> C.S -> Templar's Verdict -> C.S -> Judgement -> C.S -> Exorcism -> C.S -> Templar's Verdict -> C.S -> Judgement -> C.S -> Holy Wrath -> C.S -> Inquisition... etc

I am not sure of the current Holy Wrath cooldown on Beta, but obviously with a 3 second C.S it needs to be around the same cooldown of Exorcism: I.E 15 seconds, so you just alternate between the 2 in the rotation, meaning that an aoe rotation swaps exorcism/holy wrath and swaps Templar's Verdict with Divine Storm.

Now obviously this does not take into account the extra holy power procs from the talent Divine purpose, which is basically a clone of a rogue talent I forget the name of, regardless the fact that it is so lovely without them only means that with them it is more lovely since you get to hit T.V more often which is always fun. With a 4 second c.d C.S you just had so much downtime it was really boring.

I am obviously not even talking about Zealotry or Avenging Wrath at the moment, Zealotry is actually a really lovely spell, however it seems pointless: Why? because you would always use it with avenging wrath, there is no time where you would use Zealotry without Avenging Wrath, so you might aswell just bake them into the same ability in my mind. The only time I can think of where you would separate them is if you have events that are say a minute apart in a boss fight and you need high dps for both, so it's better to use a cooldown on each rather than both on one and then fail at the other. Like say Lich King Valkyr's, spread cooldowns over waves rather than blow them all on one and then struggle on the next few.

So ye I feel like if C.S goes to 3 seconds and Zealotry is baked into Avenging Wrath, i.e the talent adds the functionality to Avenging Wrath, then I feel like Ret Paladins are going to be in a great place.

If we talk about my experience on beta with ret I would say that there are a few other concerns 1) Choice between Seal of Truth and Righteous is very Urgh, I couldn't really choose between them when levelling, I would think Righteous should be my seal of choice but it just feels weak at the moment. 2) I don't like that Divine Storm is usable without Holy power, it means if you accidentally press it twice you ruin your rotation, I feel that Consecration is a "Constant aoe" that you don't need a spammable Divine Storm, Divine Storm should obviously be ideally used at 3 stacks of holy power and not before.

3) I also didn't know whether to use Inquisition on mobs or just use T.V, although i have the same problems when levelling ferals/rogues so I feel thats less of an issue.

As a minor point: I don't like how the ICC gear doesn't have the extra stamina baked into it, I know you obviously want people to take the new gear in the new zones, but I feel that if I have 264/277 gear I should only be taking the blue quest rewards in the first 2-3 zones and whilst that is true for dps, I am losing around 10k-20k hp I feel of where I should be because I am not taking the quest rewards, which means some of the damage of mobs is overly high.

I'll do another post on Holy Paladins O:.