Paladin: The Tank Mountain

[winsock]

snip

Your logic doesnt make sense. You're saying: "WARs tank + dps; therefore, paladins should insta-heal and dps."

PLD currently "gets 2 cures every now and again." Im fine with that as well, just not as an instant heal. Here's the difference:
If a war pushes high dps, how does the war step on the toes of the DPS role? It doesnt.

The DPS role is mainly to keep high "damage per second" i.e. to maintain a rate. If a WAR maintains high DPS, it doesnt limit a dps player's ability to maintain high dps.

With instant heals, if PLD uses an insta-cast clemency as a save, it means the healer doesnt get to perform the save. In other words, the PLD would step on the healer's toes.

Not to mention, it would give a tanking class what would arguably be the best insta-heal in the game.

[Gooner_iBluAirJGR]

Not to mention, it would give a tanking class what would arguably be the best insta-heal in the game.

Let's not get crazy. Tetragrama-whatever is a high potency AoE heal on a fairly short CD. In terms of raw potency, that takes the title of "best insta-heal"

[Brannigan]

Let's not get crazy. Tetragrama-whatever is a high potency AoE heal on a fairly short CD. In terms of raw potency, that takes the title of "best insta-heal"

Tetragrammaton is not AOE. You're thinking of Assize, which isn't that high potency (still good though)

[Zeyn]

snip

I understand and respect your argument, but I disagree on your vision of healers.

A healer's job is to keep people healed. They counter the dmg the boss puts out, and they keep people alive. They counter damage from mechanics and heal after a big hit. If someone screws up, they save their life or raise them.

But none of that, in my mind, is an emergency heal. An emergency heal is when something goes wrong, and you need a heal RIGHT NOW or the raid wipes. It can be as easy as a healer having to move instead of heal the tank, or as bad as one healer going down and someone is about to die during the raise. If PLD's heal was fast, it would help the healer not take their job.

Tanks and healers work together. Tanks use cooldowns and healers ready heals for expected damage. You shouldn't expect the tank to do both, and that would be bad design. I see no reason to limit one class's abilities so that they literally can't help.

[Seku]

Your logic doesnt make sense. You're saying: "WARs tank + dps; therefore, paladins should insta-heal and dps."

PLD currently "gets 2 cures every now and again." Im fine with that as well, just not as an instant heal. Here's the difference:
If a war pushes high dps, how does the war step on the toes of the DPS role? It doesnt.

The DPS role is mainly to keep high "damage per second" i.e. to maintain a rate. If a WAR maintains high DPS, it doesnt limit a dps player's ability to maintain high dps.

With instant heals, if PLD uses an insta-cast clemency as a save, it means the healer doesnt get to perform the save. In other words, the PLD would step on the healer's toes.

Not to mention, it would give a tanking class what would arguably be the best insta-heal in the game.

Never said anything about PLD's dps.

War's fellcleave is among the highest potency Weapon skills in the game.

No healer is going to care about a PLD curing itself after a tank buster or a DPS that messed up and will actually probably thank them since it would ease up the difficulty on them. It would also push PLD in the direction that people think it's at, and that is freeing up the healer's to DPS.

[Februs]

If a war pushes high dps, how does the war step on the toes of the DPS role? It doesnt. With instant heals, if PLD uses an insta-cast clemency as a save, it means the healer doesnt get to perform the save. In other words, the PLD would step on the healer's toes.

So, I'm not terribly keen on giving Clemency an insta-heal either... but this doesn't follow.

If we're talking about pure healing capability, than the fact that Pld's even have clemency steps on the healers toes (since they can self-heal or heal other teammates), so, by your logic, Pld's shouldn't even have that move... and War's should not have inner beast or equilibrium (which effectively allow them to self heal sufficiently without healers at all in many circumstances). This is especially considering that Clemency can save a Pld, even without insta-cast.

There's nothing to stop a Pld from beginning the cast during the cast bar of a tank buster and timing it in such a way that the heal goes off immediately after the hit (I do this all the time). It's true that sometimes the cast gets interrupted, but you'd be amazed how many tank busts don't actually interrupt cast bars. It's actually the auto attack. So, if the timing is right, Pld's can already save themselves from high dmging tank busters. This would just provide for a larger margin of error.

Now, if we're talking about "saving the day" (which really sounds like an ego thing, but w/e), than it still doesn't follow. Again, Pld's can already save the day (for themselves or one other unlucky target) if they know how to time their clemency correctly... or even a well used stoneskin.

It used to be super popular for Pld's to apply SS before big cleaves in order to buff themselves against tank busters. Why was this important? Because Tank busters are traditionally followed or preceded by big AoE dmging moves. The Pld's ability to be self sufficient for the immediate seconds before or after the tank bust allows the healer to "save the day" for the rest of the raid, especially because Dps are known to panic and stand in stupid. The healer's job doesn't just end at the tank. If I self heal a tank bust, the healer shouldn't be moping around, lamenting that they didn't get to shine for a minute, they should be looking after the rest of the group and applying buffs.

The Warrior comparison doesn't make sense either. I have seen and been in fights where the Warrior's outgoing Dmg was the only reason the group made the dps check. How do I know? Because two of the Dps were dead and we still made it. The Warrior was working a PvP burst dmg rotation (you can look it up in the PvP forums if you want the exact rotation. It's pretty impressive, and has an obscenely high output), and that's more than enough to make a difference.

So, the question is, why is the high dmg output of a Warrior, something which has been proven to be an effective means of meeting DPS checks (which are supposed to be the responsibility of the dps... kinda in the name) and is now considered the Meta for clearing high end raids (at least until gear levels get higher) somehow not considered stepping on the Dps's toes, but a Pld self healing through a tank buster (something that a Warrior can already do with the right cooldowns), is somehow considered stepping on the toes of the healer?

[Kabooa]

but a Pld self healing through a tank buster (something that a Warrior can already do with the right cooldowns), is somehow considered stepping on the toes of the healer?

Because the interface sucks and it's hard to know who's healing what. You can't 'overdamage' something in a negative fashion. If it dies, it's dead, and that's great.

If either the healer or the paladin takes the time to heal the same target, then someone wasted their time, -and that can lead to someone else dying for it.- The 'incoming' lines are sluggish compared to other 'incoming' systems in other games, so you're far more likely to slam on the healing to someone who already had one coming.

I really miss GRID from Warcraft.

[Februs]

Because the interface sucks and it's hard to know who's healing what. You can't 'overdamage' something in a negative fashion. If it dies, it's dead, and that's great.

If either the healer or the paladin takes the time to heal the same target, then someone wasted their time, -and that can lead to someone else dying for it.- The 'incoming' lines are sluggish compared to other 'incoming' systems in other games, so you're far more likely to slam on the healing to someone who already had one coming.

I really miss GRID from Warcraft.

The problem with this is that the 3 second cast of Clemency ensures that any overcuring done will most certainly be done by the tank. Healers can fire of their Hp restorations much faster than a Pld can fire off a Clemency, not to mention the fact that they can AoE heal, and often do, following one of those pesky AoE move that bosses use.

Secondly, even if the cast were instant, Clemency can only be used twice, three times at the most with stretch Mp regen, before the Pld is dry and can no longer cast. No Pld is using Clemency willy-nilly. They are either using it in emergencies (which these days may, sadly, include being dry on TP... /weep) or for planned usage during Tank busts. In the former case, they are self healing (regardless of if the cast is directly on them or another target). There is no way that Clemency, even with it's ridiculous cure potency, can overcure a tank through a tank buster. They're not hurting anyone by using it. All they'd be doing is removing additional strain off of the healers by saving their own ass, and, again, this is something that War's do all the time. I have never heard a healer complain about War's self-healing getting in the way of them curing the rest of the group. This would be no different.

Thirdly, the concept of a Pld's use of Clemency "wasting a healers time" and thus leading to the death of another party member is kind of made a mute point by the simple fact that there is a second healer in Raids. The second healer can cast their spells faster and far more frequently than a Pld ever could, and is far more likely to waste their fellow healers time than a one-shot use of Clemency from a Pld. If we're going to consider "wasting a healer's time" as an issue because of sluggish targeting bars (which is even less of an issue for the Pld because healers usually have the Main Tank focus targeted, and thus, know exactly when the Pld is using Clemency), than by that same logic we might as well do away with the second healer, because it's awfully inconvenient when they accidentally heal the same target as the first healer and wipe the team.

Obviously this is not the case, and I'm over dramatizing a bit, but the point is sound. I don't want Clemency to be an instant cast, but there really is nothing wrong or over-powered about a Pld being able to self-heal using Clemency. It's no different (actually even less effective) than Warriors using innerbeast/equilibrium, and I've never heard anyone express concern over War's stepping on healer's toes. By comparison, Clemency doesn't even come close.