Possible Paladin Rework...

[TheodoreMcIntyre]

I would just like to point out that PLD is not better overall at mitigation than a WAR and that in a lot of instances, such as boss fights, a WAR can have better mitigation.

This is because of a few things.

First off the eHP provided by the two tank stances is the same.

But...Shield Oath doesn't give any HP while Defiance does? I assume we're talking about Shield Oath and Defiance because Sword Oath isn't really a tank stance

The differences: IB does damage and has a self heal, but the big one is that they actually don't mitigate the same amount because of ShO being a base % damage reduction which means Rampart actually ends up being a 16% damage reduction while IB is still 20%.

The way you're wording this is misleading. You're saying it like Rampart results in less mitigation than IB, when actually the PLD, with Shield Oath and Rampart, mitigates 36% of damage. The PLD ends up taking less damage which is what you should be looking at here, not just comparing the individual skills percent reduction.

Sentinel and Vengeance. Sentinel with the trait says it does 40% damage reduction which actually results in a 32% damage reduction and lasts for 10 seconds and is on a CD timer of 180s. Vengeance does 30% damage reduction, does damage on being hit by physical attacks, lasts for 15s and has a 120s CD timer. So they have almost the same % damage reduction, but Vengeance does damage, lasts longer and can be used more often.

Again, the way you're wording this casts PLD in a pretty negative light.
It's not fair that you're not counting Shield Oath's mitigation in that percentage, because Shield Oath + Sentinel reduces 52% of damage, which is much higher than Vengeance's 30%. Because, again, you can't just compare the two skills and say "Shield Oath makes this mitigate less" and then not actually tell them how much Shield Oath and Sentinel mitigates.

Bulwark and Foresight. This one is a bit harder to measure because of block. Bulwark can give greater burst damage reduction, but block only effects physical damage and it has a shorter duration and longer cool down. Foresight may do less reduction but it lasts longer and can be used more often. The difficult to compare elements are that block could potentially block a really nasty attack or hit, but then on the other hand since block only effects physical damage its effectiveness in magic heavy fights is greatly reduced.

If you're going to point out that you can only block physical damage, you need to point out that Foresight, which only increases physical defense, would be equally useless.

The point is, you can't really say "Because of Shield Oath's mitigation, X skill reduces less damage resulting in Y reduction from X skill" and then not include Shield Oath's mitigation in that. It's not really fair to the class, because Shield Oath is kinda PLD's thing, and with it, it always results in a higher mitigation percentage than any of WAR's stuff.

[Alphras]

eHP (effective HP) is the amount of damage you can take before you die. For PLD eHP = HP / 0.8 (since he reduces incoming damage by 20%), for WAR it is eHP = HP * 1.25 (since he has an 25% increase to his HP pool). So if you are talking about how much damage a tank can take before he dies, you can ignore ShO and Defiance completely.

As a result the 20% reduction of Inner Beast and the 20% reduction of Rampart have the exact same effect on the survivability of the tank for example.

[TouchandFeel]

@Theodore

As Alphras pointed out and I stated already and has been shown many times on the forums, the eHP (effective HP) provided by Shield Oath and Defiance is the same, which means the boost in survivability provided by both is the same and therefore can be ignored for the most part when looking at the defense provided by other abilities. The only consideration that affects the other abilities is mainly, as I clearly stated, the fact that the way the game calculates stacking percent based effects is multiplicitive, not additive, so the fact that ShO is a percent based damage reduction buff, it reduces the mitigation percent of PLD's other main defensive cooldowns.

In the examples that you gave you stated that I should really be comparing the cumulative effects of PLD CDs+ShO to just WAR CDs/abilities, which would mean that those comparisons then completely ignore the benefits provided by Defiance, so it is obviously a skewed comparison and therefore should not be considered when looking at balance.

Yes, the point you made about foresight affecting only physical damage is correct. The reason I keep emphasizing the limitations of block is because I feel that some people on the forums keep trying to equate it or treat it like it is pretty much the same or as good as a straight % damage reduction which it is not.
However that does not nullify my first point when comparing Rampart and Foresight, Rampart can potentially provide a better damage reduction spike but it can be used less frequently and lasts for a shorter duration while Foresight provides a longer lasting, more consistent reduction in damage but potentially less damage reduced per hit.

You are calculating survivability and mitigation solely on % damage reduced effects, which is not how it should be looked at since there are many other things that result in added survivability and eHP.

Lastly, as I originally stated, while it may seem like I am "casting PLD in a bad light" or showing WAR to have better mitigation, I am not. One may be better in some situations while the other is better in other situations, but overall their defensive capabilities are approximately the same, which was the point of the changes made in 2.1, to put them on equal footing in that respect.

@Alphras

Don't forget the 20% to heals from Defiance when calculating survivability since that is where their sustainability mainly comes from
IMO, the %hp boost is more there to accommodate for the larger numbers (HP out through damage, HP in through heals).

But yeah, as has been said the two tank stances result in an equivalent eHP boost.

[Giantbane]

Don't forget the 20% to heals from Defiance when calculating eHP since that is where their eHP boost mainly comes from.

No, Alphras is exactly correct. eHP is just the number of hits you can take before you die without heals. What you're talking about is sustainability, or the amount of healing required to restore the tank to full. SHO is actually more effective in that regard, since the PLD is taking 20% less damage, he requires 20% less healing. Defiance provides 20% MORE healing, which at first glance seems the same as what SHO is doing, but it's not. In order to compare the two, we need to know how much LESS healing is required due to defiance. First you invert it to determine how much healing is required to heal to full with defiance on:

1 / 1.2 ~= 0.833333

so a WAR requires about 83% as much healing to be healed from 0 to full, which means they require 17% less healing due to Defiance, which is slightly worse than the 20% less healing needed when under shield oath. However, a WARs self heals will cover that discrepancy in most cases.

Rampart and Inner Beast. While IB has a shorter uptime, it can be used more frequently as long as you are doing your rotations which results in approximately the same overall uptime for the two. The differences: IB does damage and has a self heal, but the big one is that they actually don't mitigate the same amount because of ShO being a base % damage reduction which means Rampart actually ends up being a 16% damage reduction while IB is still 20%. Also, as far as the difficulty of timing IB to big attacks, Infuriate + IB is available more often than Rampart so while you have to push one more button you can time it to more potential big attacks.

Sentinel and Vengeance. Sentinel with the trait says it does 40% damage reduction which actually results in a 32% damage reduction and lasts for 10 seconds and is on a CD timer of 180s. Vengeance does 30% damage reduction, does damage on being hit by physical attacks, lasts for 15s and has a 120s CD timer. So they have almost the same % damage reduction, but Vengeance does damage, lasts longer and can be used more often.

You're looking at these two wrong. You have to remember that while the eHP of a WAR and PLD are the same from Defiance and Shield Oath, the WAR has more actual HP and the WAR is taking more damage, exactly 25% more damage to be exact. This has been left out of your comparisons. In truth, the 20% reduction on Rampart is exactly as effective as the 20% reduction of IB. There's no difference in how it works in practice.

For example.

You have a PLD with 8000 HP. War in the same gear would have 10000 HP with Defiance. In this instance the WAR can take 10,000 damage before dying. The PLD in shield oath can take the same 10,000 damage before he dies (10,000 damage x 80% damage from shield oath = 8000 actual damage done to the PLD in this case, just enough to kill him). With Inner Beast active, the WAR can take 12,500 damage before he dies (12,500 damage x 80% damage from inner beast = 10,000 actual damage done to the WAR). With Rampart active, the PLD can take the same exact 12,500 damage before he dies (12,500 damage x 64% damage from both shield oath and rampart = 8000 actual damage to the PLD).

As you can see, both abilities are working the same way and allow the tank to take the exact same amount of extra damage before dying.

[TouchandFeel]

@ Giantsbane

I made the statement multiple times that while it seems like I am making the WAR mitigation look better than PLD, I am not and that overall their defensive capabilities are very equal, just tailored a little different.

Here is a direct quote from my last post.

"Lastly, as I originally stated, while it may seem like I am "casting PLD in a bad light" or showing WAR to have better mitigation, I am not. One may be better in some situations while the other is better in other situations, but overall their defensive capabilities are approximately the same, which was the point of the changes made in 2.1, to put them on equal footing in that respect."

The reason that I made the comparisons that I did for Rampart and Sentinel is because people kept looking at the % damage reductions additively instead of multiplicatively, which makes the PLD numbers seem better when the effective mitigation is actually the same as you have shown. Also because someone was trying to present Foresight as the correlative defensive CD for Rampart, where IB really should be.

However for the sake of clarity I have edited those statements as follows:

Don't forget the 20% to heals from Defiance when calculating survivability since that is where their sustainability mainly comes from
IMO, the %hp boost is more there to accommodate for the larger numbers (HP out through damage, HP in through heals).

The differences: IB does damage and has a self heal, but the big one is that they actually don't mitigate the same % amount because of ShO being a base % damage reduction which means Rampart actually ends up being a 16% damage reduction while IB is still 20%. When coupled with the tank stance buffs, their defensive gain is the same. Also, as far as the difficulty of timing IB to big attacks, Infuriate + IB is available more often than Rampart so while you have to push one more button you can time it to more potential big attacks.

Sentinel and Vengeance. Sentinel with the trait says it does 40% damage reduction which actually results in a 32% damage reduction and lasts for 10 seconds and is on a CD timer of 180s. Vengeance does 30% damage reduction, does damage on being hit by physical attacks, lasts for 15s and has a 120s CD timer. When coupled with the tank stance benefits, they result in approximately the same defensive gains. Sentinel will provide a bit more mitigation per hit over a shorter period of time, while Vengeance lasts longer but has less mitigation per hit. However there still is the discrepancy of the cooldown times between the two (180s vs. 120s) and that Vengeance also does damage.

So again, main take away here is that the defensive capabilities/survivability of PLD and WAR are the same or at least very very close, with any major differences being situational.

[Sokerimuro]

Very good points all along the thread, and it is true that WAR and PLD are pretty much equal in their respective mitigations/eHP, at least on a factual numerical basis. In practice, both tanks have their own "niché", which differentiates them somewhat. (Physical vs. Magical damage handling mainly)

Only thing I would add on the discussion with WAR vs. PLD is that Warrior can on occasional situations, especially in the case of a less skilled WAR, be more draining for the healer's mana. This being due to the fact that even though they take more factual healing through the increased healing trait of Defiance, they can "spike" a bit more. As is, sometimes (through a personal experience while healing) I have noticed that Warrior tends to drop low suddenly more often than a Paladin, which is completely logical. A mitigation tank vs. HP tank scenario, even though both take similar, or exactly the same as was pointed out earlier, time to die, other one takes more rounded hits and other one takes more straight hits to the face.

Even though this does not change the actual numbers, it can be a difference between WHM casting Cure or Cure II, and the more it occurs the more strain can happen on healer's mana. This to emphasize the fact that WAR does take more focus to play right out of the box. (Not going for CD management which in turn is a high tactical/skill intensive play on PLDs part)

And as there has been suggestions flying around about how to change PLD, I will throw out some of mine. Even though I think PLD is very fine as it is, I would not mind some extra interactive play on our part/some little fanciness. The following ideas to reflect on that.
Oaths off the GCD. Manacost could and should stay, but the Oath dancing would add in itself a lot.

Shield Swipe off the GCD, with a 15 second CD in it. Blocking an attack has a 10% chance to reset the recast timer of Shield Swipe. Dealing damage with a Shield Swipe gives Paladin a shield similar to Stoneskin/Galvanize, lasting for 5-10 seconds and absorbing damage equal to 5% of the Paladin’s total HP. This effect cannot occur more often than every 30-45 seconds.
An ability that would add a small interaction to Paladin’s basic kit/rotation without altering core design much. The absorb granted by Shield Swipe gives PLD some additional interactive tools to deal with high magic damage, and in turn also prevents the ability to “be buried into a macro”. On the other hand, the shield occurs rarely so Shield Swipe is an additional Spirits Within/CoS, similar to BRDs Bloodletter.

Another thing that could be fancy, I have always liked the Paladin design in different game systems as the protector and frontliner, but also as a tool of retribution. Shield Oath could have a “porcupine effect”, in that blocking an attack while in a Shield Oath deals damage to the attacker with a potency of 20. This damage is minor at best, similar to CoS DoT but it is there as an additional AoE tanking tool.
Could go further and add a skill called, say, Reckoning. Maybe 180-300 second recast, duration 15 seconds. Would activate both Oaths at the same time, and allow PLD to benefit from both for the duration.

My 2, and somewhat more, cents.

[Brannigan]

Paladin is a fun class that has a lot of great tools and can use almost all of its skills effectively... in 4 man dungeons. However, in most 8 man content, Paladin loses a lot of buttons. I think that that, combined paladin having a lot of abilities that either have the same basic function (for example, Rampart/Bulwark/Sentinel/Foresight all reduce damage) or have limited usefulness, make the job fall behind in some areas. Paladin functions well as a tank, and it doesn't need a complete overhaul, but I think a few small changes would make it a lot more fun to play. Abilities I think could use a second look are:

Flash - loses blind effect in 8 man content (with a few exceptions).
Shield Swipe - loses Pacify effect in 8 man content (again, with exceptions), and doesn't work on a lot of 4 man stuff either. The damage increase from using the skill is a bit underwhelming. When you consider that this WS is one of the few "reaction" abilities in the game, it seems really lacking.
Shield Bash - Can't stun most stuff in 8 man. Other class stuns are off-gcd extra attacks. While I'd like to keep Bash on-gcd, I think this skill could be used creatively
Bulwark - The 60% block rate increase for this skill seems like it was just arbitrarily decided. Defensive cooldowns need to be reliable to deal with the big attacks in this game (Flatten, Ravensbeak, Death Sentence).
Tempered Will - Good, but too situation-dependent.
Awareness - This skill has always been bad. Final Coil and Shiva have abilities that were designed to make you want to use it, but it's still pretty bad. Also, it takes up a trait slot.
Riot Blade - Paladin's MP basically goes to three sources: Oaths, Stoneskin, and Flash. Of the three, really only Stoneskin should be done often enough in 8 man content to warrant an MP regen ability. Paladin is the only melee class with the ability to regenerate its own MP, but it doesn't even really use it. This is a huge wasted opportunity, IMO. Warrior has Wrath, paladin should have MP.


This is all just spitballing, and I don't expect anything even remotely like this to be implemented, but I'd like to see stuff along the lines of:

Shield Swipe allowing you to ignore the Shield Oath penalty for a short time (like 1-2 GCDs) after use.
The ability to use Shield Bash for extra damage in some way, with the limiting factor being its extreme TP cost.
Tempered Will getting a greatly reduced cooldown, or granting immunity to bind/heavy for the duration
Bulwark being more reliable and on a much shorter cooldown. Maybe something like 100% block rate for one attack on a 45s-1m cooldown.
More reasons to use MP in general. Riot Blade should be used regularly in our rotation. Alternatively - and this is a straight up nerf - move the STR debuff to Riot Blade.

Right now paladin's biggest weakness is damage dealt while tanking, and changes like those might help address it somewhat, while also making the class more interactive. Anyway, this is all pie-in-the-sky stuff, but with the expansion coming I do think it's important to point out areas where classes can be improved when it comes to core gameplay. Even if paladin ends up underpowered (or overpowered, or just right) in the expansion, I'd really like to be able to use more of my buttons in high end content.

[Krr]

2c as I'm not really a tank main nor theorycrafter for tanks, but I think the main issue with PLD isn't that it's bad at much (other than single-target damage) mechanically...

But there's something to be said for the fact that 90% of the time you're a one-combo job with an AOE button, some Off-GCDs, and a bundle of defensive cooldowns that aren't very exciting or interactive to use (compare timing Sentinel with managing Wrath/Infuriate/et al to get Inner Beast out in response to an incoming Big Attack, etc.)

[TouchandFeel]

Shield Oath could have a “porcupine effect”, in that blocking an attack while in a Shield Oath deals damage to the attacker with a potency of 20. This damage is minor at best, similar to CoS DoT but it is there as an additional AoE tanking tool.

You present some interesting ideas, but the one that really stood out to me was the one quoted above about a "porcupine" effect for ShO. I think this is really a neat idea as it would do two things that I would like. First off it adds a little extra dps to PLD while they are using ShO, which I feel they need. This coupled with making Spirits Within not be affected by the ShO damage reduction or HP% potency decrease would be a big help to bring them closer to where they should be. Also it has the side effect of increasing dps a decent amount when Bulwark is used, so it creates a correlative effect to the damage done by Vengeance. The potency may need to be upped seeing how Vengeance provides attacks of 50 potency, but then again maybe not. Having the effect tied to the shield and block, makes it feel very fitting to PLD. All in all a very good idea.

[Sokerimuro]

You present some interesting ideas, but the one that really stood out to me was the one quoted above about a "porcupine" effect for ShO. I think this is really a neat idea as it would do two things that I would like. First off it adds a little extra dps to PLD while they are using ShO, which I feel they need. This coupled with making Spirits Within not be affected by the ShO damage reduction or HP% potency decrease would be a big help to bring them closer to where they should be. Also it has the side effect of increasing dps a decent amount when Bulwark is used, so it creates a correlative effect to the damage done by Vengeance. The potency may need to be upped seeing how Vengeance provides attacks of 50 potency, but then again maybe not. Having the effect tied to the shield and block, makes it feel very fitting to PLD. All in all a very good idea.

Glad you like and picked up the same thing I was after, though I did not say it out originally: The synergy between this and our Bulwark ability.

One other thing of note is also the build possibilities this type of idea would enroll: Buckler type of shields would bring some interesting possibilities with their much higher block chance, to trigger this damage more often with weaker mitigation opposed to Tower type where the powerful blocks get much more value out of Bulwark but conversely dropping the dps/threat output. With Kite type standing the balanced middle ground. Little things, little things.

Basically, any changes PLD would get I feel should relate somehow to our shield. Because THAT is what makes us Paladins really, especially since the next upcoming tank is also a two-hander.