wow Prot Paladin and Disc Priest Changes on BfA Beta

[Starym 3,800]

 

There are more changes coming to classes on the beta, and although none are as big and impactful as the Balance Druid rework, both Protection Paladins and Discipline Priests are getting quite a few changes soon.

With Paladins it's all about the core rotation and mitigation, with Consecration being at the heart of the changes, while Priests get a brand new talent, increasing their damage by a flat amount reduced by the number of Atonemets up at the time, as well as more talent reworks.

Protection Paladin (source)

A few changes to Protection in an upcoming build. Mostly focused on smoothing out issues in the core rotation and active mitigation.

• Consecration no longer buffs Shield of the Righteous and Light of the Protector
• Consecration cooldown 4.5s (from 9s) and duration 12s (from 9s), but you can only have one down at once
• Mastery: Divine Bulwark reduces all damage you take while in Consecration (instead of increasing Shield of the Righteous effectiveness)
• Avenger's Shield increases the effects (damage and armor) of your next Shield of the Righteous by 20%
• Consecrated Hammer will be replaced with a new L15 talent

Listing all at once because they're all pieces of the same goals. First, Avenger's Shield is back to having some baseline defensive value, which pulls the rotation together by making you care about both hit and Hammer of the Righteous other than for pickups/damage.

Second, Consecration is easier to work with. If you don't have to move, you have to replace it less often, and if you do have to move, you can replace it much more quickly. While standing in Consecration still has some value, your core buttons no longer rely on it, and the loss of mitigation from being outside it is much smaller than Legion. It also provides a small source of baseline magic mitigation.

Finally, the gap between Shield of the Righteous uptime and downtime, in terms of mitigation, is less dramatic. The previous mastery made that gap get wider and wider as the expansion went on, leading to the problem of increasing moments of vulnerability when active mitigation was down. Shield of the Righteous will now have more consistent value across the expansion. The spec will be tuned expecting slightly lower Shield of the Righteous strength and uptime compared to Legion, which helps avoid the problem where there were windows of very poor mitigation compared to other tanks.

 

Discipline Priest (source)

A few changes for an upcoming beta build.

• New talent: Sins of the Many. Your damage is increased by up to X%, diminishing for each ally with Atonement.
• Likely location is L75, pushing Lenience to L100, and removing Grace.

We agree with trying to find a talent that calls to having a smaller number of Atonements out, but are trying a version that still provides some benefit in all situations.

Grace's concept was generally subsumed by the new mastery (which is seeming successful so far), and stacking Grace on top of mastery led to huge variance in the strength of Shadow Mend and Power Word: Shield casts. Making that choice with mastery is a better place than making it with a talent that was essentially required in some types of content.

The talent rearrangement should leave L100 as a row of talents that most show their strength when effectively healing a large number of targets, and L75 as a row of talents less focused on that situation.

• Contrition's healing is increased by Power of the Dark Side

So that Power of the Dark Side remains neutral as to your choice of which mode of Penance to use.

• Mindbender's damage reduced 24%

It has been unintentionally strong ever since the squish, as many people have observed.

[Yridaa 490]

Looks like they're never satisfied with how Consecration works or interacts with skills. If I'm not mistaken, every single expansion since Cataclysm (Perhaps even Wrath but I can't be sure) had it changed quite drastically. There used to be times where you could throw it (Like DK's D&D) with a glyph, it'd move with you with a glyph (Or perhaps even made baseline), cooldowns increased and decreased, interactions with skills added and removed.

 

It keeps feeling like "Well we gotta do something with Protadin this expansion, let's just change Consecration again."

[Seksi 208]

Nice new design direction for disc priest, although tuning is weak enough on the new options that they won't be chosen as is (contrition / evangelism are much stronger in the same niches).

[Marick 11]

2 hours ago, Yridaa said:

Looks like they're never satisfied with how Consecration works or interacts with skills. If I'm not mistaken, every single expansion since Cataclysm (Perhaps even Wrath but I can't be sure) had it changed quite drastically. There used to be times where you could throw it (Like DK's D&D) with a glyph, it'd move with you with a glyph (Or perhaps even made baseline), cooldowns increased and decreased, interactions with skills added and removed.

 

It keeps feeling like "Well we gotta do something with Protadin this expansion, let's just change Consecration again."

Consecration in Wrath was only a dmg abilty for all specs and it gave no bonus for anything and it spawned under you,

[PatrickHenry 293]

8 hours ago, Starym said:

The spec will be tuned expecting slightly lower Shield of the Righteous strength and uptime compared to Legion, which helps avoid the problem where there were windows of very poor mitigation compared to other tanks.

"VERY POOR MITIGATION" is putting it mildly.

Now if they would give me the option for Crusader/  Knight Templar back...

Edited May 24, 2018 by PatrickHenry

[Migol 433]

Gotta chuckle at these "Prot Paladin changes".   It tweaks the timings a tad, but the basic rotation doesn't really change, at all.

Anyone checked lately if Retribution aura is gone in beta?   Kinda a sore spot for me that it was ignored the entire expansion despite easily being a "never take it" talent.     Even if it was a freebie you'd never notice its effects.

[Reldey 5]

When doing heroic Argus, having to keep up SOTR all the time was practically a necessity. Glad that it is being tuned down a bit, and hopefully our overall survivability will see a good uptick. Still want LOTP/HOTP off the global cooldown, but hey it's something.