The Paladin Thread ;)

[jpark]

Shade of Aran is the hardest fight by my measure, and also the most different kind of fight you will encounter in there.  Pretty much more DPS and your runs go faster, best way to do that is to supplement your gear with Heroic loot and Badges.  Prince is a joke, but the Infernals can fuck you over, Netherspite is a joke if your group can learn to stand in front of beams, and Nightbane is basically healer endurance.

Van I just moved from a protection warrior MT for Kara - to a paladin healer for Kara.  The paladin is very new to me (after being a priest for a year and more recently a warrior) - can you post your armory profile?

I am curious to see how paladins build threat - do they go for a dps 1 hander like a warrior - or a spell power/damage weapon?  I have heard through the grapevine that paladin tanking is going to be reviewed - since so few exist.

[Vanifae]

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Mal'Ganis&n=Vanifae

Typically I use a spell damage one-hander, with mostly warrior defense plate and a few pieces of Paladin tanking gear.  Most of our spell damage comes from our weapons; we typically use Seal of Righteousness as our main threat builder.  Our mitigation is nearly as good a Protection Warrior with better Crush protection thanks to Holy Shield.  Our main detracting point currently is lesser HP which becomes less of an issue at Tier 5+ level gear, and lack of a fear break.

I have been Protection since I started my paladin, so I have a lot of experience and have tanked every boss in Karazhan, adds on High King Maulgar, and off-tanked Gruul.  I have not done Nightbane because I don''t have Fear ward or a reliable fear break.

[Merusk]

Prot pallies are leveling 

I can't wait until I hit 60 and get some actual spelldamage/ int gear to speed things up a bit.  All these low-level pieces that are all +str/ +sta make  for a very, very, very long grind with LOTS of drinking.  Still, at least I can kill 3 mobs at a time to make up for it.

[Jeff Kelly]

I am curious to see how paladins build threat - do they go for a dps 1 hander like a warrior - or a spell power/damage weapon?

Paladins generate threat by damage. This is done by using everything that does holy damage.

The main talent for every prot paladin is improved righteous fury which raises the threat generation by holy damage by 60% if righteous fury is active. A prot paladin also uses retribution aura (causes holy damage every time the pala or a party member is hit) and consecrate as AoE holy damage generator. The prot pala usually fights by judging seal of the crusader (increases holy damage done to the target) and having seal of righteousness on while using a fast 1 hander but other styles are also valid.

The prot pala for instances and raids mainly focuses on a def profile (+stamina, +def, +strength, +dodge) offset by a few +spell damage (mostly the weapon) and +int pieces. Lack of mana is not a problem there because he gets it back via being healed by the ability spiritual attunement.

The advantage of a prot pally is that he generates threat in an AoE fashion and it is very good threat generation (you can keep threat against mages and locks going all out if done right) and he can generate threat as long as he has mana (no rage problems), the disadvantage is that he lacks some key warrior abilities, mainly charge and the ability to used ranged attacks for pulling mobs (slightly offset by avenger's shield if you spec 41 points in prot), defensive stance (10% less damage), taunt (biggest disadvantage in my opinion) and berserker stance (immunity to fear and fear-like effects)

The disadvantages lead to some mobs and bosses that a paladin simply can't tank at all. Onyxia because of the fear for example or mobs that do an aggro reset because you don't have taunt abilities.

After a certain level (40 or so) prot is a better levelling spec than ret, damage is more predictable and you can easily tank 2 or 3 mobs of your level at the same time.

[Zetor]

I leveled my paladin as holy from 1->70. Yeah, I'm insane.

Anyway, pally aggro is spell damage dependant. In normal (non-heroic) instances it's sufficient to go in with mostly stamina and +spell damage gear (of the Sorcerer greens work just fine) until 70.. at that point you need to start stacking defense and prot warrior stats. Pallies suffer from "rage starvation" the same as warriors: if your gear is too good, you won't get hit enough, and won't get enough Spiritual Attunement mana to output sufficient threat. That's why it's a good idea to load up on more +spelldamage gear when tanking instances you outgear.

The typical pally 'high-end' tank in heroics and raids wears prot warrior gear and gets spell damage from a weapon, maybe a trinket.
Paladin tanks ARE viable for endgame raids, but there are a few encounters where they are at a severe disadvantage; however, in other fights having a ranged taunt, a ranged aggro builder and crazy AOE aggro is pretty uber. Prot pallies are better offtanks as long as they are actually getting hit by stuff (for an early karazhan example, they are bad for Moroes #2 tank, but they rock at tanking the non-CCd adds or maintanking moroes) There's a vid showcasing a prot paladin tanking some of the "harder" encounters.

Warriors do have defensive stance, but paladins get Improved Righteous Fury (passive 6% damage reduction), Sacred Duty (6% increased stamina) and Ardent Defender (30% damage reduction when below 35% hp). Still, there is a noticable HP gap.


-- Z.

[Ryuno]

I just started levelling a paladin so I could go holy for raiding.

God help me! :p

[Merusk]

The main talent for every prot paladin is improved righteous fury which raises the threat generation by holy damage by 60% if righteous fury is active.

Actually, Righteous Fury has a base increase of 60%.  The Improved Righteous Fury talent says it adds 50% on top of that. Sooo, yeah lotsa threat through holy damage.

Pallies biggest "oh fuxor" are the things like shield slam and improved kick.  Since all their damage and healing is holy, a few of those chained together shut them down.

After a certain level (40 or so) prot is a better levelling spec than ret, damage is more predictable and you can easily tank 2 or 3 mobs of your level at the same time.

 

I went prot from ret around 35ish.  So long as I hunt-down the +int pieces and keep a good 1hd weapon I haven't had any problems tanking 3 mobs 1-2 levels above me.  I do wish I'd dropped points into spiritual focus earlier than I did rather than running up to Avenger's shield, though as it's better than switching from ret or devo aura to conc aura.

[Oban]

Srsly, heal me bish.

[Vanifae]

Paladins do have a taunt, it works at range and taunts up to three mobs.  It has a higher cool down then a warrior Taunt but not by much.  The HP gap is most noticeable at the Tier 4 level, but the gap closes the higher in tiers one goes.  Personally I think Blizzard could stand to give Paladins another 500 or so unbuffed HP but that is just me, to make the gap less noticeable.

We do gear up in mostly warrior plate because most paladin tanking pieces were horribly itemized with MP5, or strength when really paladins need Stamina, Avoidance, Spell Damage, and Defense.  If you are a Blood Elf you can utilize Seal of Blood with warrior tanking weapons to do some serious threat building, but the mainstay is still Seal of Righteousness.  From my experience we can front-load a ton of threat but since we have to wear warrior plate with little spell damage, our sustained threat is not much greater then a warrior, but we can just front load a ton of threat all at once which allows DPS to start much sooner.

We are the undisputed kings of AOE tanking, and can hold several mobs on us at once with ease.  A well geared Paladin tank does not need CC in most five man instances, and Heroics.  I love the class, and enjoy the challenge.  Our biggest hurdle is more or less the public’s misconception about what we can and cannot do.

[Dren]

Paladins do have a taunt, it works at range and taunts up to three mobs. 

Yes, it works well, but the problem I had while prot specc'ed was that you couldn't use it 90% of the time.  It will break CC since it causes damage on top of taunting.  Unless you have the room and the organization to keep the CC'ed mobs well away from your AOE, they'll become active.  It was this basic problem that made me go to Holy to help with healing in raids instead.  I feel I can help my guild much better with this spec since I can actually help off tank for short durations when needed on top of healing.

[Vanifae]

Paladins do have a taunt, it works at range and taunts up to three mobs.

Yes, it works well, but the problem I had while prot specc'ed was that you couldn't use it 90% of the time.  It will break CC since it causes damage on top of taunting.  Unless you have the room and the organization to keep the CC'ed mobs well away from your AOE, they'll become active.  It was this basic problem that made me go to Holy to help with healing in raids instead.  I feel I can help my guild much better with this spec since I can actually help off tank for short durations when needed on top of healing.

Umm no it does not cause damage.  You might be confusing the shield with the taunt.

The Taunt does not cause damage.

[jpark]

Okay - thanks for that input - I would also like to ask about the healing paladin.

Context:  Played an undead priest (named "Femur" hehe) from 1 to 60 in holy mode (lol) and healed through MC / Onyxia before it was on farm status on our server (back in the day).

Perception:  Priests have uber burst healing and can stack healing effects to protect clothies (PWS; heal over time; burst healing)

How do paladins stack up here - what is their "core competency" as a healer vs. a priest in a raid situation? 

My perception is that paladins have superior mana regeneration and inherently lower threat involved with their healing compared to priests.  Most "uber" paladins I review on the armory are stacking their + healing to 1800 - very similar to what most priests do.  However, I am wondering about stacking up threat reduction gear instead - since I hear that mana is not rate limiting in BC raids (beyond Kara) so either burst healing or threat must be limiting (I assume).  My plan is to heal more via threat reduction gear and heal earlier in the fight.

At this point I have no real experience as a paladin healer - I have not been in Kara as a paladin healer - I am trying to plot my strategy out so I can look for the relevant gear along the way.  I chose a Dreani - I thought their heal over time racial was a nice touch to a healing paladin.

EDIT:  I wish Schild would chime in here - people still talk about his paladin on the wow boards - a true legend.

[Vanifae]

Paladins are the single best single target healer in the game.  They used to focus only on Spell Crit and Plus Healing, but now with the change to overhealing and mana regain; many also stack MP5 because our spirit sucks.  But simply put a Holy Paladin is the best single target healer in the game, many raids stack them for Main Tank healing, and because they have very little threat.

[Zetor]

Yeah, my paladin alt is holy and we have one in our Kara raid too [our two healers are holy priest + holy pally, with a spriest helping out occasionally]. Our priest does most of the 'big heals' on the tank and predictable damage [ie. bolt soaker on curator], while the pally does spot/offtank healing and helps the priest out on the maintank as needed. BoP and BoSac are also pretty clutch in certain situations (BoP to save a clothie who rips aggro or to wipe physical debuffs. BoSac for AOErs and Maiden, etcetera). Pallies have extreme longevity, but don't have the burst healing capabilities of any of the other classes [swiftmend, NS, shield], Flash of Light is in fact the polar opposite of Flash Heal -- it's a very mana efficient, but small heal.

You don't need to worry about healing threat at all. Pally heal spells are 50% the threat of priest/shaman/drood heals, you are never going to aggro [unless you specifically want to, for example on nightbane -- you can just turn on righteous fury and spam heals to gain aggro in the airborne phase].

Pally healing is very simplistic when compared to priests. You basically have 6 heal spells and only end up using two of them most of the time [one of them over 80% of the time, unless you're the only healer]
- Flash of Light max rank: spam spam spam, this has crazy mana efficiency, and hits for decent amounts. Use it to spot heal people and keep the tank topped off. Maybe also if they'll die before you can get a big heal off.
- Holy Light max rank: 'shit hits the fan' kind of heal, you won't be able to keep chain-casting this for long, but it has very high HPS if you have Light's Grace.
- Holy Light rank 4: Another spammable heal, hits for about the same as your max rank flash of light, it's better if you have the libram of souls redeemed for Kara. The reason for using this is keeping Light's Grace up.
- Holy Shock: Much weaker than a priest shield, use this if you need to heal on the run or if the target needs a heal RIGHT NOW.
- Lay on Hands: The ultimate oh-shit heal, you can use it on yourself if you need the ~900 mana, or use it on the tank if you need the extra boost. Only use when you're out of mana, obviously.

"utility":
- Holy Light rank 1-2: Use this before a pull so you have "Light's Grace" in case the tank needs a big heal right away.
- Flash of Light rank 1-2: You can spam this when OOM, it'll still hit for 700ish with good heal gear and Blessing of Light. Unlike priests, paladins are encouraged to spam heals and not play around the 5-second rule to regen. Pallies stack MP5, not spirit.
- Divine Illumination: Halves your spell costs for 20 seconds, I like to use this at the start of the boss fight, and it'll be up again near the end [maybe even earlier than that if it's a long fight]. Might as well take advantage and cast Holy Lights for the duration [use Divine Favor to get a guaranteed crit HL, and you'll end up with 10% of its mana back]
- Divine Favor: Either use this reactively (oh crap, tank just ate a 8k hit, time to heal him up) or proactively (I'll just wait 5 seconds and then use a big heal to conserve mana) depending on the encounter.

I typically don't have the luxury of keeping a judgement on the boss, but Wisdom is probably the best choice.


-- Z.

[jpark]

Since it has been a long time since I have functioned as a healer...

What is the logic behind using lower rank heals?  Ya back when guys did that - but I used the big heals exclusively - and picked up the spike damage through "pre healing" (mid cast interrupts) - it worked extremely well - that was just my style as a healer.  Are lower rank heals still considered more mana efficient than their higher ranks due to the healing bonus?  (was not sure if that was corrected in a patch sometime ago)

Given the low threat and lack of burst healing - would it make sense to stack spell crit gear on a paladin?

Thanks for your post above Zetor - some of your comments I will understand more as use the class.

[Zetor]

Downranking is in general not as powerful as it once was. Basically you should use the top 2-3 ranks of your healing spells, any lower than that and you lose some of the +healing coefficient. The only exception is rank 4 holy light [that's the last one that still gets full benefit from blessing of light] and the rank 1-2 'oom' heals. Pallies don't benefit so much from 'stop-healing' [ie. chain casting big heals and interrupting them when not needed] since their spirit regen is so bad and flash of light is so mana efficient it can be basically spammed through an entire boss fight (obviously there are very few boss fights where you only need to cast flash of light the entire time).

Priests still downrank a fair bit from what I've seen (mostly greater heal rank 1 to proc clearcasts when low on mana) -- pallies, not so much.

Pallies do benefit from spell crit, but since the illumination nerf, it's not THE stat anymore. You will need a fair bit of mp5 alongside spell crit [can't recall the numbers offhand]. You get a lot of bonus spellcrit from talents too [and the gladiator gloves, ironically, pvp for pve gear! :P]


-- Z.

[Dren]

Paladins do have a taunt, it works at range and taunts up to three mobs.

Yes, it works well, but the problem I had while prot specc'ed was that you couldn't use it 90% of the time.  It will break CC since it causes damage on top of taunting.  Unless you have the room and the organization to keep the CC'ed mobs well away from your AOE, they'll become active.  It was this basic problem that made me go to Holy to help with healing in raids instead.  I feel I can help my guild much better with this spec since I can actually help off tank for short durations when needed on top of healing.

Umm no it does not cause damage.  You might be confusing the shield with the taunt.

The Taunt does not cause damage.

That only works on those being the target of agro.  If you already have agro, you can't use it to build more.  I've found it to have limited use unless everyone stops attacking  so the threat can be gained again.  Most of the time I get their attention for a split second before they go after somebody else.  It feels like the ability just wipes their agro table clean and places you at the top for a very small amount.  That may be good, but the first person to lay some dps on them will get the agro at that point since you essentially have to stop attacking to target the person you are grabbing agro from.

I only use it in some small situations of emergency.  However, it is available to all paladins, so I still get to use it as a Holy spec.  So, it is a nice tool to have.

[Vanifae]

It is mainly because threat can switch, but 8 times out of 10, it works for me.  I have it macroed so I just fire and forget.  The same happens to warriors if they taunt and DPS still goes nuts and the warrior does not build adequate threat.  Also warrior taunt does not build threat if they already have threat on the mob.

But yes threat can switch and can happen in that split second you use Righteous Defense, and it ends up doing nothing.  It is a shortcoming of the ability, but having a ranged taunt is a godsend most of the time, if you need it.  If you are doing things right the only time I ever use it is to pull a mob that was trapped by a hunter or on a loose add.  I usually follow up with an immediate Judgment of Righteousness, that should give you a suitable threat lead unless your DPS is just idiotic and suicidal.

[Jayce]

It is mainly because threat can switch, but 8 times out of 10, it works for me.  I have it macroed so I just fire and forget.  The same happens to warriors if they taunt and DPS still goes nuts and the warrior does not build adequate threat.  Also warrior taunt does not build threat if they already have threat on the mob.

Warrior taunt, as I understand it, gives the warrior something like 10 more rage than the highest person on the threat chart.  If they ARE the highest person on the  threat chart already, it does nothing.  DPS can easily surpass him again if they keep hitting and he doesn't sunder/HS fast enough.  Sounds very similar to Dren's description of the pally ability.

[Vanifae]

It is mainly because threat can switch, but 8 times out of 10, it works for me.  I have it macroed so I just fire and forget.  The same happens to warriors if they taunt and DPS still goes nuts and the warrior does not build adequate threat.  Also warrior taunt does not build threat if they already have threat on the mob.

Warrior taunt, as I understand it, gives the warrior something like 10 more rage than the highest person on the threat chart.  If they ARE the highest person on the  threat chart already, it does nothing.  DPS can easily surpass him again if they keep hitting and he doesn't sunder/HS fast enough.  Sounds very similar to Dren's description of the pally ability.

I think we are saying the same thing.  All taunts have no effect if the taunt user is already at the top of the aggro list.

[Jayce]

It is mainly because threat can switch, but 8 times out of 10, it works for me.  I have it macroed so I just fire and forget.  The same happens to warriors if they taunt and DPS still goes nuts and the warrior does not build adequate threat.  Also warrior taunt does not build threat if they already have threat on the mob.

Warrior taunt, as I understand it, gives the warrior something like 10 more rage than the highest person on the threat chart.  If they ARE the highest person on the  threat chart already, it does nothing.  DPS can easily surpass him again if they keep hitting and he doesn't sunder/HS fast enough.  Sounds very similar to Dren's description of the pally ability.

I think we are saying the same thing.  All taunts have no effect if the taunt user is already at the top of the aggro list.

I think so too.  I just noticed an error in my post - I meant 10 more threat, not rage.

[Merusk]

The warrior one is only temporary though, isn't it?  I'm not sure on the pally taunt, one way or the other.

[Chimpy]

The warrior one is only temporary though, isn't it?  I'm not sure on the pally taunt, one way or the other.

They changed the mechanics of taunt either with the release of Naxx, or in the next patch after because of the 4 Horsemen. It went from being a temporary boost to get you back above everyone to giving you the top threat. I can't imagine that fight even being possible with the old taunt mechanic. It was retarded enough as it was with 8 warriors in 4pc Dreadnaught.

[ajax34i]

As I understand it, it gives you the top threat and forces the mob on you, after which it's up to melee DPS to get 10% more threat than you have, or ranged DPS 30% more, to steal the mob from you (sometimes melee DPS can do that with one hit, and ranged DPS with one hit/spell, so that's where the problem is).

[Vanifae]

As I understand it, it gives you the top threat and forces the mob on you, after which it's up to melee DPS to get 10% more threat than you have, or ranged DPS 30% more, to steal the mob from you (sometimes melee DPS can do that with one hit, and ranged DPS with one hit/spell, so that's where the problem is).

This is correct and just to say again it is a permanent boost, not a temporary one.