Lorini
1602
Pally tank nerf incoming (in the long term)
And yes Paladin tank AE damage and threat generation is still too high, largely because of Seals and HoR, but long-term we’re going to nerf that instead of making all tanks able to trivially maintain threat in all situations. Referencing the other thread on threat a little, why as a tank would you even care what buttons you push if maintaining threat is a foregone conclusion?
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- AE tanking was fine in Naxxramas. AE damage was, and has remained, over the top. We prefer a model where the risk of tanking too many mobs is that the tank dies, not that you can’t maintain threat on them all (within reasonable limits of course). We also prefer a model where the dps do AE damage on some pulls and switch to single target dps on others.
It does seem with a pally tank I can AE as much as I want as a mage. Didn’t use to be that way back in the day but I guess the AE tanking has gotten out of hand. Wonder if the nerf will be in 4.0?
Not surprising. Tanking as a paladin is laughably easy in comparison to a warrior or a dk. Single mob, many mobs, doesn’t matter, it’s all done effortlessly. This is coming from a tankaholic who has plays all 3 of these tanks in endgame raiding.
Druids however, I suspect might get a similar nerf. Swipe is, imo, is almost as bad as consecrate. Just get the mobs in front and spam swipe. Tab target maul if you want for more aggro (and with the glyph it makes it even easier). Now, if swipe was made similar to thunderclap, where it’s cooldown was 4-6 seconds, it would bring it in line with how the other tanks manage aoe threat.
Kareem
1604
While I’m sure paladin AoE tanking is easy, I don’t think it’s particularly difficult for any class at this point. As a warrior, the combination of Thunderclap, Shockwave and tab-spamming Cleave when you have the glyph for it is rather painless. I don’t have a problem with leveling the playing field in AoE tanking - but it probably would have counted about a year ago when everyone was doing Naxxramas and warriors had to taunt individual mobs off the paladin tanking or simply go afk and do something productive during trash packs.
On the other hand, I did finally manage to level my long dormant priest alt who became the second of my characters to receive mail from Rhonin congratulating him on reaching 80 seasons of trials and tribulations.
While I leveled exclusively as shadow (and had tremendous fun face melting), I did immediately switch to holy and started healing instances. And it’s a lot of fun! Holy priests seem to have so many tools to play with, and although they’re not on the top of the single target healing hierarchy, I think the variety and the level of AoE healing is totally worth it. Also, how awesome is Hymn of Hope?
Speaking of which, any tips on how to play, gear or mod the holy priest? As a tank I never really used a lot of mods except to play around with for fun, but I’m guessing I probably have to tweak my interface a lot if I want to do 10 mans? What are the hardest fights to heal, in heroics and 10 mans? I’ve done ICC briefly on my main, but I don’t really have time to raid much these days, so I’m enjoying doing a new role. In terms of gear, should I pretty much just go for items that have spirit and intellect both? It’s not really an issue getting the spellpower gear as most people running heroics are doing it for the daily emblems, but should I ever opt for gear possessing more spellpower? With spells, I tend to rely a lot on Prayer of Mending (which strikes me as incredibly powerful) and renew, plus flash heal (but since my spellpower needs some work I often have to rely on greater heal here). And obviously circle of healing and prayer of healing when several people are taking damage.
And if you’re a healing priest, do you enjoy healing more as discipline or holy?
Apologies if I’m reading this out of context, but I’m not sure I like this decision. I imagine balancing 4 tanks between AoE & single target threat is tough, but if threat becomes trivial to maintain, you’ve eliminated an interesting tactical choice from all the dps classes. Balancing the desire to do the most damage with the danger of drawing aggro should be, IMO, part of the dps role.
Take away the possibility of accidental aggro, and it seems like you oversimplify dps contribution to:
- figure out the right priority system to max your damage
- stay out of the fire (which applies to all group members)
Blizzard has a good track record – maybe they’ll make crowd control necessary again & split abilities between the dps classes – so I’m interested to see what happens, but I don’t mind the current system.
In my experience swipe threat isn’t nearly as strong as consecrate + holy threat buff. it definitely helps, but I find tab+maul to be necesary on anything that doesnt die in a few seconds. How does cleave compare? I definitely feel I can hold threat fine against a group, but a paladin can certainly do so with less effort.
jeffd
1607
Cleave’s apparently pretty comparable. Both are an order of magnitude more of a pita to pull off than Consecrate.
Kareem
1608
Cleave is like heroic strike, only it hits two mobs next to each other, or three if you have it glyphed. Tabbing and cleaving, along with thunderclap and shockwave when they’re up, makes it pretty easy to AoE tank, even though it’s probably easier for a paladin if he doesn’t have to individually target different mobs.
Consecration is overrated, but HoR is pretty badass and I’m sure will be nerfed.
A lot of holy priests just gem for socket bonuses (unless the bonus is MP5), since they get a pretty good benefit from SP, Haste, Crit, Spirit and Int. When I used to play holy I biased in favor of haste, but I’m a total haste whore. In general you’ll want to gem for throughput, i.e. SP and haste, unless you’re having mana problems, in which case Int. Disc haste caps really low so they just stack SP. Both specs will need 1 blue gem for the meta, so Holy should use Spirit (because they get SP from spirit) and Disc should use MP5 (because they don’t).
For raid/party frames I use Grid + mouseover macros, but a lot of people like Healbot, or Grid + Clique, or Vuhdo.
And if you’re a healing priest, do you enjoy healing more as discipline or holy?
Discipline all the way for me these days. I haven’t cared for holy since they wrecked it in 3.1.
Kareem
1610
How did they wreck holy priests? They seem pretty usable to me. Unless it was something they did to their throughput on tank healing in raids?
The big things were the Circle of Healing nerf (6 second cooldown, used to be none), Holy Concentration (used to be able to use it to game the 5SR, since it made your spells free, thereby letting you get full regen for a time), and the change to Serendipity (used to give you reduced cast time on crits). It’s definitely not unusable, and they enhanced some other aspects of the spec, particularly renew, but that was the same patch they added Soul Warding to Disc, and GCD Power Word: Shield is like the best thing ever. It’s ultimately a matter of preference.
idrisz
1612
unless your cleave does 5k on 4 targets does gives 80% more aggro, it’s not anywhere close to HoR + SoCom
In my opinion, it not that swipe’s threat generation is substantial or not, it’s that it’s essentially spammed and that’s it. Sure you can throw maul in there and tab target, but maul is on it’s own timer and does not inturrupt your swiping.
In short, it’s easy to do. The paladin rotation, while more complicated, is still very, very easy. This is why I think they plan on nerfing swipe as a druid’s primary aoe threat as it is currently.
In fact, it’s on thier list of things to do (somewhat) - http://www.wow.com/2010/03/04/the-daily-blues/#continued
I play a holy priest, though I haven’t even tried disc as I’m already getting my fix of mostly-preventative-healing out of EQ2. I’m still getting my sea legs with him after bringing him out of a multi-year retirement and then powerlevelling as shadow, though.
We only have a disc priest in guild (well the shadow guy can go holy when we lack healers but his healing gear is not that good).
She is pretty nice to have in certain fights in ICC (Sindrigosa) due to the shield on everyone. Great group healer on Dreamwalker as well while the holy pally and resto shammy or druid heal the boss.
Jag
1616
This is true. I run two tanks, a Druid and DK. Druid is all swipe, swipe, swipe, but the threat isn’t as much. My Frost DK’s AOE abilities have cooldowns, but when they fire, they tend to generate alot of threat.
Joe_M
1617
DK threat is fine. If you aren’t specced frost, then expect to have to work harder, but to assert that DKs are somehow miles behind paladins is incorrect. In fact I find myself sometimes wishing my threat were as mobile, easy and flexible as DKs. With howling blast, DND, pestilence, death grip and even death coil in a pinch, I can pick up anything at any time and keep it on me. Blood AOE threat is a little inferior but you still have options (tab cleave) and it is, after all, a talent choice you made.
My paladin requires a little more planning ahead with one ranged snap aggro option, the rest requiring melee range and consecration being stationary threat (and frankly, only good for initial pickup on predictable pathing + filler in your rotation). I’m not shedding any tears over paladin threat, I’m just saying the situation is far more equitable – between those two classes – than Vincent seems to think.
Warriors need better scaling (or remove TC’s cooldown). Druids need more options. It looks like they may fix the latter.
idrisz
1618
My paladin requires a little more planning ahead with one ranged snap aggro option, the rest requiring melee range and consecration being stationary threat (and frankly, only good for initial pickup on predictable pathing + filler in your rotation). I’m not shedding any tears over paladin threat, I’m just saying the situation is far more equitable – between those two classes – than Vincent seems to think.
that’s not true.
Pally
Hands of Reckoning > Death Grip or Death coil, HoR is a taunt that does around 3k holy damage on target that’s not aggroing on you, shorter cooldown compare to death grip.
Righteous Defense = taunt up to 3 targets aggroing on target.
Avenger’s shield = Howling blast in term of the damage, but totally win in term of aggro, since it’s 100% holy damage, and paladin gain 80% more aggro on holy damage.
Almost all the paladin’s instant skills are short cooldown, with 100% holy damage which they gain massive aggro due to righteous fury.
Seal of command = every melee/skill now hit up to 3 targets for 500+ holy damage.
Shield of Righteous = 6-7k holy damage shield bash, short cooldown.
Consecration = 400-500 damage a tick holy damage.
Holy Wrath = instant aoe, 4k holy damage on all undead and stun them.
even Holy shield = every block does around 800 holy damage to attacker.
All I am saying, is that out of the 4 tanking classes, the paladin and the druid are the easiest to hold aoe threat due to the way it’s performed. Druids spam swipe, paladins have cons, holy shield and HotR, which are natural in the tanking rotation regardless of situation. It is not about the amount of threat you can generate per ability, or how many abilities you have that can perform the job, but the ease of which you can do it, while also doing your normal rotation and anything else the pull requires. That’s all I’m saying.
Blizzard seems to feel that druids and paladins have it too easy in comparison to dk’s and warriors, and I agree.
And paladins have plenty of snap aggro. Nevermind the fact that we have, imo, the best 2 taunts in the game, but we always have an ability ready to be used on whatever target that needs the snap aggro provided your doing your rotation properly.
Spellpower. Spellpower, spellpower, spellpower. Spirit converts to Spellpower for Holy, and Haste and Crit are both good. Have I mentioned spellpower?
Clique + perfectraid + Quartz + Decursive are all the addons I’ve ever needed.
I actively dislike healing as Holy. I somewhat enjoy healing as Discipline, and I’ve found I enjoy playing Shadow.
