[How-to] 5x Paladins Disscusion

[Tdog]

Hmm. Guess I need to go get that DS/DS macro set up. Had a really hard time on the last boss in UK with all that AoE shadow damage in phase 2.

Quick version of Ingvar the Plunder fight:

Phase 1: Ez mode tank and spank. Just keep the 4 ret behind Ingvar and supposing your prot pally isn't very under geared you should be able to leave him/her in for the smashes.

Phase 2: BURN THAT MOFO TO DA GROUND!!! Do not use Avenging Wrath however as you will surely eat at least one Dark Smash. As soon as he pops up go to town on him. Once he starts to cast Dark Smash pop Divine Protection not Shield, it will slow your dps down way too much and Divine Storm + JoL should be enough to keep you going just fine. Dark Smash however isn't the real killer here, it's that damn Axe. However for some reason I have never once seen him throw the axe any sooner than about 20 seconds after the first Dark Smash.

While you still have crap gear it may take you till after the 2nd Dark Smash to kill him, so you may need to just use a couple of rounds of Holy Light to heal up from the Dark Smash and also save a Divine Storm and a round of instant FoL's till after Dark Smash has already begun, then save Divine Shield for the Axe should he use the ability. Once you start to get better geared you can usually kill him shortly after the 1st Dark Smash and way before he ever uses the Axe throw ability.

K, it wasn't that short :P

[Stealthy]

Thought I'd post my thoughts (from a boxing perspective) on the upcoming changes to Pallies in patch 3.2, so here they are:

- Blessing of Sanctuary: This blessing now also increases stamina by 10%. This effect is not cumulative with Blessing of Kings.
PvE & PvP - if you're only running one pally in your group, and he's tanking - its a buff. For multiple-pally groups, no change since you would be covered by BoK already.

- Exorcism: Now has a 1.5 second cast time, but can once again be used on players.
PvE - Nerf. It was a nice instant cast spell to have on my ret palies for some extra DPS, especially when trying to burn down a mob as quickly as possible. Although it will be made instant when AoW procs, I like to use the AoW procs for spot healing on my main.
PvP - Buff. Since it now affects players again, the AoW procs will make some for some nice burst, albeit somewhat RNG

- Hand of Reckoning: Redesigned. Now does damage only when the target does not currently have the caster targeted, but damage done increased to 50% of attack power, occurring after the taunt effect is applied.
PvE - Buff. Single target pulling just got a whole lot better...
PvP - No change. Even though HoR can't be used against players, it still has a few uses in PvP. Firstly it keeps players in combat which is good for preventing players from mounting, and druids & rogues from stealthing (without using vanish anyway). Secondly it can be used against player pets to taunt them off, although reports from the PTR suggest that the damage component is not going through (even though the taunt is).

- Judgements: Some of these attacks were considered ranged and some melee. They are all now considered melee attacks that can't be dodged, parried or blocked.
PvE - Possible buff. With Art of War being changed to proc off melee crits, this could possibly assist on keeping AoW up more often
PvP - Possible buff. As per PvE

- Judgement of Light: Now heals for 2% of the attacker's maximum health instead of a variable amount based on the spell power and attack power of the judging paladin.
PvE & PvP - Nerf. Reports from the PTR say that raid buffed healing from JoL is down. Havent been able to find any numbers on non-buffed group healing though.

Lay on Hands: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 10/20% instead of increasing the target's armor.
PvE & PvP - Buff. Now becomes much more useful for non-plate wearing targets.

Sacred Shield: When a paladin casts Flash of Light on a target with this buff, they also now place a heal-over-time effect on the target, healing that target for 100% of the Flash of Light amount over 12 seconds.
PvE & PvP - Buff. If you've spec'd into Divine Guardian this change is just great. If it turns out the HoT stacks, it will be awesomesauce.

- Seal of Blood: This ability has been removed.
- Seal of the Martyr: This ability has been removed.
- Seal of Vengeance and Seal of Corruption: These seals have been redesigned to deal substantially more damage. Now, once a paladin has 5 copies of the debuff from these seals on his or her target, on each swing the paladin will deal 33% weapon damage as Holy, with critical strikes dealing double damage. In addition, the damage-over-time effect is now considered a melee attack instead of a spell attack.
- Seal of Command: Redesigned. This seal now deals 36% weapon damage on every swing, and deals substantially less judgement damage.
PvE - Buff. Seal of Vengeance / Corruption is the new PvE seal. Numbers coming in from the PTR suggest between a 10 - 20% increase in DPS. Numbers on SoComm have been underwhelming - its good for mobs that die fast, but in a majority of situations SoV/SoC will be better. SoV/SoC stacks are coming from judgements on the PTR now as well (they dont in 3.1).
PvP - Buff & Nerf. SoC/SoV is doing more damage than Blood/Martyr with 5 stacks, but less without. With the buffs to resilience in 3.2, it will be a buff against high resil/high health targets since you will have enough time to get up to 5 stacks. SoC/SoV ticks can now crit as well, which helps. Against low health/low resil targets its a bit of a nerf since we won't have the same burst as we did with SoB/SoM.

- Shield of Righteousness: Now deals 100% of shield block value as damage instead of 130%. In addition, the benefit from additional block value this ability gains is now subject to diminishing returns. Diminishing returns occur once block value exceeds 30 times the player's level and caps the maximum damage benefit from shield block value at 34.5 times the player's level.
PvE - Buff. With the changes to block in 3.2, the damage comes out to be about the same, but this ability now generates now generates additional threat, so a buff overall.
PvP - No change

- Ardent Defender: Redesigned. Any damage that takes the paladin below 35% health is reduced. This reduction applies only to the portion that pushes the paladin below 35% health (example: a paladin at 50% health takes a 40% hit; the first 15% hits as normal while the next 25% is reduced). In addition, once every 2 minutes an attack that would have killed the paladin will fail to kill, and instead heal the paladin for up to 10/20/30% of maximum health depending on the paladin's defense rating (example: a paladin with defense equal to only 5 times his or her level will receive no healing from the talent, while a paladin who is immune to critical strikes from boss creatures through defense will receive the maximum amount).
PvE - Huge Buff. Its now like a Cheat Death and and automatic Last Stand rolled into one. Awesome change
PvP - Huge Buff. As per PvE, this is an aswesome change. Especially given that most players go for your main, if you're spec'd prot you're going to love this.

- Art of War: Now only applies to melee critical hits, but will make your next Flash of Light or Exorcism instant. In addition, this talent now provides notification in the floating combat text when it activates.
PvE - Nerf. Judgements will now be considered melee hits, so they should now be able to proc this along with CS and DS. Although this is offset by the cast time of Exorcism, which means you'll have to choose between doing DPS or Healing.
PvP - Buff. Now we have the chance for instant Exorcisms against players, and more burst = good. RNG dependent though.

Crusader Strike: Damage reduced to 75% weapon damage to match the new 4-second cooldown. Mana cost reduced to 5% of base mana.
PvE - Buff. CS does slightly more damage over a 12 second time frame, provided you can cast it every 4 secs with no GCD clashes.
PvP - Nerf. Reduction in upfront burst.

Vindication: Redesigned. Now lowers target attack power, is consistent and does not stack with Demoralizing Shout.
PvE- Buff. This talent is now useful again in PvE, giving warriors & druids a chance to do more DPS / use other abilities.
PvP - Nerf. No longer scales against opponents.

Let the discussions begin!

Cheers,
S.

[Fat Tire]

Great stuff Stealthy!

Aye I believe Rets will be better off, but they lose their burst which puts a ton of pressure on whatever they are fighting PvP wise. A solo ret I believe will have a harder time against classes that can kite since the Ret cant blow them up anymore if gives the kiting classes an easier escape. No idea how it will affect boxing Rets.

[mefaircloth]

Hmm..reading this is motivating me to try it. I may do a 5 pally team as my next try.

Mark

[Stealthy]

Hmm..reading this is motivating me to try it. I may do a 5 pally team as my next try.

Mark

Having levelled a team of DK's to 80, I can honestly say I'm having a lot more fun levelling my pallies.

Interesting side note - with the heirloom shoulders (+10% exp gain) I was able to hit outlands at 68 and not have any issues worrying about running out of quests. I just hit 71 last night and have done about 2/3 of the quests in Borean Tundra, and only a handful of quests in Howling Fjord. Definitely a worthwhile investment if you can get them.

Cheers,
S.

[Tdog]

I pretty much agree with everything you mentioned in your list of 3.2 changes. As far as exorcism goes in a PvP situation I'd probably just use it while the target is stunned if I needed to use it.

It sucks that JoCom damage got dropped because 4x JoCom was a huge opener in a pvp situation since it always crit with stuns and incapcitates. Basically I would...

HoJ, 4x JoCom 1x JoR, 4x Crusader Strike 1x Shield of Righteouness, 5x Auto attack + several SoCom procs.

Basically killed anyone including very well geared tanks. For extremely well geared tanks I sometimes had to use a round of Divine Storm but still, that's a ton of burst right there. Hopefully JoCom crits are still something that hurts. ;(

[Dawnstrider]

New guy here with a few questions on your talent build. I just barely got my first team, 4 DK's to 80 and am now workin on my 4 pally team so I am curious to know why you specced the way you did on most of your team. I have always played a Protection or a holy paladin, solo. So I dont know a whole lot about ret, but from what I know, Heart of the crusader, once fully stacked, will not stack with further debuffs from other paladins. So wouldnt it be more useful to put one point in the talent on each of your paladins and then when you judge, assuming you all judge at the same time, it would stack fully and you would pick up 2 more talent points to put somewhere else?

The same would go for Judgements of the Wise. Replenishment does not stack, it just refreshes. So it seems it would be better to put 1 point in the tallent on each pally and pick up another 2 talent points there.Unless of coarse Im missing something. In which case its comething obvious becuase those are always the things I miss

Sorry for the wall of text.

[Multibocks]

It doesnt "stack" like you think it does. One debuff is either +1crit, +2 or +3. That's it. So if one guy specs only one point into it, everyone gets +1. If all 5 guys spec 1point into it, everyone only gets +1. You need at least one of them to spec into it all the way.

edit: what you are missing on replenishment is that for the pally that is judging he gets a guaranteed 25% base mana back. That's a LOT and ensure you arent oom all the time (well with your other buffs.) So, yes, all rets need to spec it.

[Dawnstrider]

See. I told ya it would be something obvious. lol

[Ughmahedhurtz]

[edit] lol...I'm slow today. :P