Sunday, November 30, 2008

Incoming Holy Nerf?

Sometimes I feel sorry for Ghostcrawler. It's looking like he'll have to nerf Holy Paladins again, and I don't think they're going to take it well.

Essentially, in T7 content, paladins are able to reach around 70% crit rate on Holy Light. With Illumination, that works out to max rank Holy Lights that are 42% cheaper, and thus can be spammed. Remember that this is the first level of raid content, and it's only going to get worse.

I wonder what form the nerf will take. Another hit to Illumination? Making the Retribution crit talents only work with melee attacks? Maybe lower the intercept on the crit rating equation so that it starts very negative, but still increases at the current rate.

In my opinion, what really needs to happen is for the +crit talents in Holy, along with Divine Favor and Divine Illumination, to be removed and replaced with new talents. There is too much of an emphasis on saving mana in the Holy tree, and so far, it always ends badly. The talents really need to encourage the paladin to spend mana. Of course, I doubt a Holy tree revamp is coming anytime soon.

17 comments:

  1. An easy solution for the retribution +crit talents to make them only affect instant spells

    ReplyDelete
  2. I don't think the ret tree is really an easy solution. At most you get rid of 8% crit. A 62% crit rating in T7 is still problematic, and will easily be back to 70+ by Icecrown.

    Illumination of any sort simply scales too quickly. It's lame at lower levels, and gives you infinite mana at higher gear levels.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Can't say I'm surprised. Fortunately, I don't have to think up the best way to fix it. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. So start stacking more Mp5 is what your saying? :(

    ReplyDelete
  5. The real issue is the insane amounts of +crit on gear. Like all other stats, it has started to get jacked up to incredibly high levels in TBC and has only grown more ridiculous since. If Blizzard would just go back and trim down the +crit on gear and replace it with a little bit of +spell power and +MP5, the problem should be resolved.

    ReplyDelete
  6. There are also a lot of talents in the holy tree that are simply boring, such as the disease duration, the cleanse giving resistance to debuffs..the list goes on.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Place the crit for ret future down in the tree. I hate nerfs to, but a 70% crit rating is redonkulous.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Also...I just hit 80 yesterday and got sacred shield, I havn't played around with it much but I remember it gives 50% crit to fol if it hits...so wouldn't this mean FOL is always critting as long as sacred shield is up?

    ReplyDelete
  9. @Preston: True, but the prevent portion of Sacred Shield isn't up for very long, usually only until the next hit.

    ReplyDelete
  10. /sigh
    I was getting suspicious when my crit chance hit 40% with blues and badge gear. We do, however, desperately need a fix to HL too, as it is way too expensive for what it does. I'm not asking for it to be spammable, but we should be able to fire off a few during a boss fight and not instantly go oom.

    ReplyDelete
  11. It's a tough call. Whilst toning down the efficiency through crit of HL is potentially desirable, it still needs to remain viable as a source of healing. We also have to be very careful not to leave Holy in the situation seen in high-level raids in TBC where they were being benched in favour of other classes. If we want a rotation to be formed then a cooldown on HL is the crudest and simplest solution.

    At best, Illumination with 100% crit rate makes HL cost 11.6% of base mana. I'm not necessarily sure that 70% crit rate is possible, 100% certainly isn't, but that makes HL cost 16.8%bm over time. Is this a sustainable value... I'm not sure, it depends very much on your total mana (and via Replenishment and Divine Plea). It's worth noting though that as Haste increases do does healing throughput and mana consumption rate per second, so 1% hate is still likely to increase mana cost per 5 seconds more than 1% crit will save you.

    If a <20%bm cost is too low for HL then getting rid of talents specifically increasing the crit rate of HL is probably a good idea. Sanctified Light is a prime candidate, swapping HL for FoL in this talent would make sense. In terms of high Paladin crit rates in general it's probably best to control it through itemisation balance and possibly reducing our Crit per Int ratio (currently ~100 per 1%, Priests are next at 160).

    Unfortunately, problems like this occur when a class is given two and only two Heal spells with no cooldown, and both of them direct healing. Pally Healing mechanics are really simple, and so I'd very much be up for replacing crit talents with more interesting systems. I'd be very careful not to suggest reducing Paladin crit rates across the board without some form of throughput recompense. Though our efficiency could be over the top, I'm pretty sure that our overall healing throughput isn't, and remains very inflexible.

    All the above said, reaction to a nerfing of efficiency shouldn't be nearly as bad as the first nerf to Illumination. It should be comparatively marginal, and with Divine Plea we finally have a spell which can off-set nerfs to the talent.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I guess I should prefis this comment by stating, I'm not 80 yet -- I've only raided, pre xpac after the nerfs and initial new talents and changes to classes were unveiled.

    Without changing our gear at all -- the holy paladin in my raid group who frequently healed right along side my holy priest -- and was usually either just ahead of me on the healing meters or just below me. Started doing about 30% more of the healing than I was doing.

    Basically any heal I did cast was over written by his, cause his cast times were all faster then mine and his heals would land before mine. Not only that but the mana cost of his spells were about half what mine were.

    And while the crit on my heals, started getting smaller .. his increased.

    I've never seen a decently geared holy pally benched in favor of other classes. I've never seen them as being under favored. I've always thought they were amazing healers who could, despite 'mana issues' keep going in a fight long after I was OOM (so long as they were geared properly).

    But 70% crit chance??? 0.o

    Holy priests are lucky if they have a ummm 20% crit chance. Nerf a class? Ha. Maybe just bring them down to normal levels so the rest of us healer classes stand a chance eh?

    ReplyDelete
  13. Mind sourcing this 70% crit on Holy light statement? Perhaps a link to a armory? Sure I am not stacking crit but instead spell power/int But i have a few decent peices including a kt drop and I am running around 33% raid buffed(no oomkin). I just ran through a few armories of various well Geared Vodka Paladin and highest I found was 27% according to unbuffed char sheet.

    Having said that while holy Paladin definitly have issues in heroics they are borderline OP in raids and that without stacking crit.

    By the way GC posted holy was mostly likely tree for some talent adjustments 3 weeks ago.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Holy Paladins don't have problems in raids - what the HELL are you smoking? In heroic gear, I've done nearly every achievement and never even come close to a wipe. Paladins are back to being ridiculous healers, and it concerns me people like the last poster think they aren't.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Er, I meant in heroics :P

    ReplyDelete
  16. Any healers having mana issues on raids?

    Like someone said on replies the problem isn't the crits on talents which are on par with other healing trees arund, the prob is that Plate attracts crit instead of mana/stats.

    ReplyDelete
  17. The 70% number was thrown around in an EJ discussion, I think. I don't have an exact source, and it may have been an exaggeration.

    As for not putting crit on plate, all that will happen is that paladins will downgrade to elemental/resto shaman spell gear.

    ReplyDelete