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Q u o t e:
I'm not confused by how it works but I am confused by why you want me to be placed in a party by myself every raid.

Edit: What I mean is that in high aoe situations it would be better to have Divine Sacrifice not absorb any damage so the raid can benefit from the full effect of Divine Guardian. Imo the Divine Guardian effect is the best part of this spell and I don't think it should last the full duration no matter what happens with the Divine Sacrifice portion.

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You mean with one other person? You can click all day, but on PTR it will not have any effect if you are partied by yourself.

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Q u o t e:


I though it couldn't be stacking, a blue post for 3.0 about stacking buffs said it.

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I doubt they are supposed to stack, but try it.

Have devo aura. Get a shaman to drop a stone skin totem. Your armor will go up by 1150. Or whatever stoneskin was.

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Q u o t e:
I'm not confused by how it works but I am confused by why you want me to be placed in a party by myself every raid.

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From what it looks like it's not a good active tank cooldown due to damage done to you still doing damage to you., ie 10,000 hit gets reduced to 7,000+1,500 from the redirected damage.

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Q u o t e:


From what it looks like it's not a good active tank cooldown due to damage done to you still doing damage to you., ie 10,000 hit gets reduced to 7,000+1,500 from the redirected damage.

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There is a 20% reduction from DG too though.

Its not the best tank cooldown in existence but it does ok.

Even if you need a second person in the group you can choose someone that won't take much damage. Or there might be so little raid damage you just keep the Prot Paladin in their normal group.

Any interpretation of this ability seems to encourage funky groups, at least situationally.

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Q u o t e:


From what it looks like it's not a good active tank cooldown due to damage done to you still doing damage to you., ie 10,000 hit gets reduced to 7,000+1,500 from the redirected damage.

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For a heavy tank damage fight, like Patchwerk, H. NRB, or Vezax, there is frequently very little raid damage. Accordingly, a prot paladin in a group with 4 people who don't take damage on the fight will have a third (4th?) cooldown available. The cooldown would function for up to 200% of his health, assuming that he did not hit 20% health.

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Q u o t e:


We tried to come up with situations where it would really be advantageous to sequester the paladin in this manner. You would have to make sure nobody in the paladin's group took damage (it does require at least one other person in the party) and even then all you're getting is 20% less damage for 10 sec. You could do it on Patchwerk I suppose, but you could put 4 people with the paladin and avoid damage from Patchwerk anyway. A lot of the other bosses do either raid-wide damage or strike random people so it's hard to keep the paladin from transferring any damage to themselves.

Put another way, it requires you to do more work and convoluted things to get a smaller benefit from the current "raid wall." While the latter was overpowered and could be game changing on a few specific encounters, it's not as if we see a lot of raids stacking paladins just for the DS + bubble option.

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In one particular situation I see the new version being much better than the old, and that is for massive raid wide burst a la black hole explosion/ground tremor.

Before, the Paladin basically required divine shield to use divine sacrifice for these. The skill basically had a 5 minute cooldown, since using it on one of these abilities would kill the Paladin every time unless you also had divine shield up.

But now, if you stick a paladin in a group with one other (preferably with another Paladin) they can use the skill every 2 minutes safely. You only get 20% damage reduction instead of 40%, but even 20% is a huge help and you get to use it more than twice as often.

Whether this will be particularly useful depends on encounter mechanics, of course. But I doubt in the entirety of Icecrown there is no "hit the raid for massive damage in one burst" type deals.

Overall, the skill is weaker in many respects. But now it becomes functional as a tank cooldown in many situations and in certain raid damage situations is actually stronger, and taking full benefit requires messing with groups in strange ways.

There has to be a more elegant solution, but I'm not exactly sure what it would be yet.

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Q u o t e:


We tried to come up with situations where it would really be advantageous to sequester the paladin in this manner. You would have to make sure nobody in the paladin's group took damage (it does require at least one other person in the party) and even then all you're getting is 20% less damage for 10 sec. You could do it on Patchwerk I suppose, but you could put 4 people with the paladin and avoid damage from Patchwerk anyway. A lot of the other bosses do either raid-wide damage or strike random people so it's hard to keep the paladin from transferring any damage to themselves.

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Some scenarios for you--holy first:
Paladin in a group with another healer on NRB after all fires are down. No other raid damage and raid wall goes up on tanks.

Paladin in a group with the MT for the heroic Jaraxxus encounter. Jaraxxus hits very lightly and mt takes no other significant damage.

Holy Paladin in a group with 1 other ranged on Anub'arak. Very predictable and light raid damage in P1 and 3.

Please reconsider this talent. A suggestion made earlier of having it redirect damage from the 5 people closest to you would go a long ways towards balancing this.

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Q u o t e:
You would have to make sure nobody in the paladin's group took damage (it does require at least one other person in the party) and even then all you're getting is 20% less damage for 10 sec.

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Despite this, without a debuff to limit the number of times this can be used and the ability to make 8 groups, in a 25m raid I could see stacking paladins to effectively chain this an entire phase of a fight. Maybe 20% dmg reduction for nearly a minute in ICC isn't something you are planning to design around but I can almost guarantee raid leaders will be seriously looking at this ability as a means to gimp any phase where it's possible.

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Q u o t e:


We tried to come up with situations where it would really be advantageous to sequester the paladin in this manner. You would have to make sure nobody in the paladin's group took damage (it does require at least one other person in the party) and even then all you're getting is 20% less damage for 10 sec. You could do it on Patchwerk I suppose, but you could put 4 people with the paladin and avoid damage from Patchwerk anyway. A lot of the other bosses do either raid-wide damage or strike random people so it's hard to keep the paladin from transferring any damage to themselves.

Put another way, it requires you to do more work and convoluted things to get a smaller benefit from the current "raid wall." While the latter was overpowered and could be game changing on a few specific encounters, it's not as if we see a lot of raids stacking paladins just for the DS + bubble option.

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In this form it seems less "overpowered" and more balanced. True a raid could put a paladin in each group but i doubt most raids have 5 paladins much less that many spec'd for DG (for the 20 percent raid wide absorb). The latter of which is confusing since i assume you intend for ret to pick this talent up yet its really not feasible due to having to spend 5 points in holy. Any plans to shift around Seals of the Pure to make it possible for us to pick DG up without sacrificing dmg? Or is that a choice you want us to make?

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Q u o t e:


In this form it seems less "overpowered" and more balanced. True a raid could put a paladin in each group but i doubt most raids have 5 paladins much less that many spec'd for DG (for the 20 percent raid wide absorb). The latter of which is confusing since i assume you intend for ret to pick this talent up yet its really not feasible due to having to spend 5 points in holy. Any plans to shift around Seals of the Pure to make it possible for us to pick DG up without sacrificing dmg? Or is that a choice you want us to make?

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To me thats like saying raid groups won't stack shamans in BC for BL in SWP. Guilds doing ICC hard modes WILL stack paladins in raid groups if it will give an advantage. Because they will probably have the means to do so.

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Q u o t e:


Then why don't you do that (stack paladins) now when you can mitigate 40% raid wide damage when you want (assuming a bubble)? I don't see how this change makes the ability more attractive.

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It generally doesn't, except in the case of massive raid wide burst, since you can now use the ability without a bubble along with it if you stick the Paladin in another group with a partner.

20% raid wide damage reduction every 2 minutes + being able to use the bubble for other things > 40% damage reduction every 5 minutes + having to reserve bubble for use with Divine Sacrifice.

If there is a boss that hits the whole raid at once for a lot every so often, the new version of Divine Sacrifice will be stronger than the old, so long as you stick the Paladin + someone else in group six.

Will this encourage raid stacking? Depends on exactly how often such an ability is used. If its done say, every thirty seconds and is truly threatening, having four paladins cycle Divine Sacrifice to hit every one could be very enticing.

Even if it doesn't encourage massive stacking, the increased effectiveness in certain forms of raid wide burst (which seems to be the reason you want to nerf it in the first place) seems problematic.

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To me thats like saying raid groups won't stack shamans in BC for BL in SWP. Guilds doing ICC hard modes WILL stack paladins in raid groups if it will give an advantage.

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Well considering not everyone does it now in its overpowered form i don't think its a major issue. I find most high end guilds use it (for the most part) as an oh sh*t button in-case it hits the fan, not as a handicap to down a boss they wouldn't be able to without it.

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Q u o t e:


Then why don't you do that (stack paladins) now when you can mitigate 40% raid wide damage when you want (assuming a bubble)? I don't see how this change makes the ability more attractive.

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We have. Although to be fair it gets used as an external cooldown for the tank(s) more often.

Does having no one in a group with the paladin suddenly cancel DS now? The could be canceled mechanics of this ability are still very confusing. If you are allowing a raid wall (for any duration) then just allow it. Make it a reliable cooldown on an appropriate timer. I very much dislike the it might work for the duration abilities. GOGO Pop N Pray

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Q u o t e:
We tried to come up with situations where it would really be advantageous to sequester the paladin in this manner. You would have to make sure nobody in the paladin's group took damage (it does require at least one other person in the party) and even then all you're getting is 20% less damage for 10 sec.

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I went over this in the other thread:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=20677629974&sid=1&pageNo=1

1) The 20% damage reduction to the raid is more valuable than the party-wide redirection in almost any possible case. As such, players can and will go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that the 20% DR is up for the full 10 seconds, including putting paladins in their own raid groups with DivSac buddies (other paladins, or classes/people not likely to take damage). This leads to some very counter-intuitive behavior, like swapping people in and out of raid groups mid-battle ala Sunwell Bloodlust rotations.

2) As a paladin tank, Divine Sacrifice went from a button I only ever pressed when when I was OTing or between phases or whatever, to an extremely reliable tanking cooldown when I am placed in my own group with a healer or another ranged DPS (anyone who is relatively safe). If there is no raid damage being splashed around, I just gained a mini-Divine Protection with no Forbearance and on a separate cooldown. This brings the number of possible paladin tanking cooldowns to four (Divine Protection, Ardent Defender, glyph of Hand of Salvation, Divine Sacrifice).

My suggestion would be for the following:

Divine Sacrifice
Instant 2 min cooldown
20% of all damage taken by party or raid members within 30 yards is redirected to the Paladin (up to a maximum of 150% of the Paladin's health). Redirected damage that is prevented or reduced still counts towards the damage maximum. Lasts 10 sec.

Divine Guardian Rank 2
Increases the maximum damage Divine Sacrifice redirects by 50% and reduces the amount of damage you take from your Divine Sacrifice spell by 100%. Also increases the duration of your Sacred Shield by 100% and the amount absorbed by 20%.

Essentially, you either need to get rid of the 20% raid-wide DR completely or make sure it stays up even after the Divine Sacrifice ability goes away early (which it will in traditional 5-party groups due to the failsafe trigger). Regardless of what ends up happen, we all know that encounters will be balanced around this cooldown being used, so I highly suggest sticking with the version that is at least intuitive and not hopelessly clunky (e.g. encouraging 2-man raid groups, etc).

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Q u o t e:


Then why don't you do that (stack paladins) now when you can mitigate 40% raid wide damage when you want (assuming a bubble)? I don't see how this change makes the ability more attractive.

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You do. One of the most common strats for 25 man Twins is to have the entire raid grouped up in a spot and use Divine Sac/Divine Shield to mitigate each vortex.

However, now that you're uncoupling it from divine shield, you're effectively turning it from a 5 minute cooldown that is only useful while not tanking or while no mob is on you to a raid-skin that's usable on demand with a 2 minute cooldown. Sure you have to funk your groups up, but people will deal.

How about this: a fight like NRB where you stick the prot paladin in with the healers. Prot paladin gets a third cooldown, and the other tanks get the barkskin.

Also, you can have just 4 paladins and have 50% uptime on 20% reduced damage. How do you balance around that?

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Q u o t e:


Then why don't you do that (stack paladins) now when you can mitigate 40% raid wide damage when you want (assuming a bubble)? I don't see how this change makes the ability more attractive.

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I think the idea is that by removing the self-gibbing portion of the ability, and limiting it to party-only, it has effectively become a much shorter cooldown and it's now more feasible to perform said stacking. Theoretically a 25-man raid of 50% Paladins could provide near 100% uptime on DG. That's gonna be pretty powerful on tanks.

I think, perhaps, putting the DG effect up at the moment of transfer would solve that particular issue. If no damage is ever soaked via DS, DG would never go up.