Hello!
My goal with this is to start a discussion about the talents in a prot/holy build. I'm not setting out to prove anything or to say that my thoughts are the only "correct" thoughts. I simply want input from a few sources.
My goal with my paladin character is to use one build that can be effective in tanking 5-10man dungeons, as well as at least be somewhat effective for raid healing. I also want to be as effective as possible in pvp. I understand that it may be impossible to do all three of those things with the same build, but I'd like to try. At the very least, I'd like some inputs on my thoughts about this.
This is my current build. http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#sVxuzxZVGpIczxo I'd imbed the image if I knew how. Essentially it is a 20/31/0 build. Pretty standard stuff in the protection tree, with 5 points in Reckoning instead of One-Handed Weapon Spec. Holy has the points in Divine Intellect, Spiritual Focus, Healing Light, Consecrate, Illumination, and one point in Unyielding Faith because it had to go somewhere.
I'd like to start by sharing my thoughts on the points in the holy tree.
In the first tier I have to make a choice between 10% more intellect (Int) and 10% more strength. This one has really stumped me. If I'm only healing, then more Int is the obvious choice. However, I also plan on tanking, and doing some amount of damage in pvp. Strength helps with block value, but I think the amount is so minuscule it can basically be ignored. Yet, strength also causes me to do more damage, thereby making it easier for me to hold threat and kill foes in pvp faster. Strength also increases damage with some holy attacks. I know it increases the damage of consecration, and I've been told it also increases the damage of seal of righteousness (SoR), but I'm not 100% sure on that.
I also need to consider how my gear is going to look. If I'm gearing primarily stam/defense for tanking, then more strength really doesn't help me for tanking (0 x 1.1 = 0). If I'm healing, my gear is going to be more int/healing/mp5 oriented and obviously strength doesn't help me at all. But what about for pvp? Is it even useful for protection paladins to gear strength in pvp? Would it be more effective to stack int/stam and +dmg/healing, relying on SoR and Consecration for damage and the increased manapool to outlast opponents?
-> (TL;DR) Summarized, my questions for the first tier of holy is is "What is the damage output of gearing strength/crit versus the damage (and survivability) output of gearing +healing/int?" And "How well do abilities like Consecration and SoR scale off of strength and/or Int?"
Moving on to the second tier, I have to make a choice between Spiritual Focus and Improved Seal of Righteousness.
My first instinct is to grab Spiritual Focus. It seems like a necessity in pvp. But lately, I'm not so sure. Obviously I don't need it for tanking, and I shouldn't be getting hit by things while raid healing, so I don't need it for that either. It really comes down to "How important is this to have in pvp?" I've actually noticed that it might not be as useful as I've always thought it was. After doing some pvp with this build, I realized that any time I tried to heal myself without first bubbling or stunning my opponent, I would only get stunned, silenced, kicked, or otherwise interrupted anyway. If slow attackers are attacking me, I can spam flash of light between their attacks without getting interrupted anyway. And if fast attackers or multiple attackers are on me, then I get so much pushback that it isn't worth trying to heal without bubbling first. So my question is, is Spiritual Focus really all that useful?
Second, Improved Seal of Righteousness seems incredibly important for both tanking and pvp. A 15% damage bonus is incredible, *especially* if I'm gearing for +dmg/healing. It also makes me wonder if that 15% is added on before or after any bonus from +dmg/healing. There are two main reasons why I didn't take this talent on my first build. The first because I felt Spiritual Focus was necessarily in pvp, and the second because Improved Seal of Righteousness isn't a talent that I see taken on many protection paladin builds! I just assumed there was some reason for this, but the more I think about it, the more it baffles me. 15% more damage means 15% more threat! Why wouldn't you take it?
-> (TL;DR) My questions for the second tier of holy boil down to this. "Spiritual Focus seems very good on paper, but in practice doesn't seem to matter. Is there something I'm missing?" And "Why don't protection paladins take Improved Seal of Righteousness?"
Third and Fourth Tiers.
This is where things get really tricky. Obviously I want Consecration. In my experience it's pretty much necessary for multi-target tanking. In pvp it's somewhat less useful because of the immense mana cost and low damage output; but throwing down a rank 1 consecrate has some utility for area denial and unstealthing rogues. The real question comes down to what to do with the 9 other points. I *could* spend them in protection, but I'll talk about that later in the protection section. For now lets assume I want to spend them in holy or retribution.
As of now, I have those 9 extra points in talents that will help me raid heal. Remember what I said at the start, I want to be able to tank 5-mans and raid heal with the same spec. Increasing the amount I heal by 12% seems like a no-brainer, for both pvp and raid healing, so I think that I'll keep 3 points in Healing Light no matter what. But what about Illumination? 5 points in Illumination restores mana on critical heals, but I don't really ever get critical heals. I don't have the talents to improve my chance by 5% and even stacking Int only increases it by a small amount (1% for every 20 Int if I'm remembering correctly). Without the later holy talents to increase healing crit rate, is Illumination even worth having? Especially when those points could be spent elsewhere, like in Improved Seal of Righteousness, Divine Strength, or even over in the Retribution tree on Benediction to decrease mana cost of seals. All of which would be great for tanking and pvp. Will not having illumination effect my raid healing all that much? Even in full int/healing gear I'll likely only have about 7% spell crit. I'll likely be using a downranked version of flash of light. So it'll be something like a 7% chance to restore 100 mana. Will it even be noticeable?
-> (TL;DR) "If you don't have the points further down in holy to increase healing crits and Divine Favor, does having Illumination even matter?"
Now on to the Protection tree! Joy.
First tier, and probably one of the most "controversial" things that I want to talk about. I just think it's garbage. There are no good options. I *could* improve devotion aura, which I'll NEVER use in ANY situation. For tanking, I'm always going to be using retribution aura. If for some reason I feel the need to actually use devotion aura, the improved version doesn't actually help much. At max rank Devotion aura gives something like 700 armor, a 25% increase to that is 175. 175 armor. An absolutely meaningless amount when you already have 6k. If I'm healing it obviously isn't going to help me. The *only* situation where I see it being kind of useful is if I'm in pvp and wearing a few pieces of mail/cloth/leather healing gear, and that extra armor might actually mean something. But, if I'm in pvp I'll probably be using concentration aura anyway.
Next is Redoubt. It's just... also useless. See, the problem is that I need to be crit for it to activate, and that just doesn't happen often, or at all in 5-man dungeons. I'm not fighting raid bosses where I need 140 defense to be uncritable. Now I may be wrong, but I don't remember any of the 5-man bosses being 63 elites. They were all 60 or below, meaning I should only need like 125 defense to be uncritable, which I feel shouldn't be too hard to get with just blue gear. It means that this thing will never activate once I get some gear, somehow making it even more useless than improved devotion aura.
-> (TL;DR) I guess at the end of the day, Redoubt is the only thing worth taking, simply because it leads to a talent that does have some value; which I'll question later. So am I right on this or am I missing something really important?
Second Tier.
I feel like this one is where decisions actually need to be made. Precision is pretty awesome. That combined with the human racial of +5 weapon skill in swords and maces means that I'm almost hit capped without any gear at all. Guardian's Favor is also pretty good for both pvp and pve. As a paladin tank, I don't have a taunt, but I can still make an enemy stop attacking the healer every 3 minutes. In pvp the blessing of freedom cooldown reduction is crucial. Finally, Toughness is also pretty good. 10% extra armor becomes something like 500-600, which means 2-3% more mitigation. With my build I get all three because I have the points for it, but I'll talk about that later. Once again I don't really have a question about this other than "Is my line of thinking for this good? Is there something crucial that I'm missing?"
Third Tier.
The only thing i see in this as a must have is Improved Righteous Fury. It's just necessary for tanking. The rest, I'm kind of iffy about.
Blessing of Kings (Kings): I feel like this buff is worth the one point investment, but at the same time I hardly ever find myself using it. For myself I always want blessing of sanctuary over it while I'm tanking. For healing I'd rather have wisdom. I suppose it would be most useful in pvp, but with the amount that I use blessing of freedom, blessing of protection, and just getting purged or dispelled, It really wouldn't stay on me long. For just buffing a group, I don't *need* kings. Wisdom and Might covers pretty much everyone, and half the time I just end up putting salvation on everyone anyway because I suck at tanking. The ONLY time I've used kings was in a group once where it was me, a holy paladin, and two retribution paladins. That was an interesting BRD run. So am I right in thinking that there isn't much purpose in spending a point in Kings?
Anticipation: 10 defense equates to like 1% in overall avoidance... so I just don't feel like it's worth putting 5 points into. Especially since, as I said earlier, I really don't need to be defense capped for 5-mans. And even if I was, my redoubt would never activate. I just don't feel like it's worth it.
Finally we have Shield Specialization. People will probably disagree with me on this, but I think it's kind of useless. I never really liked the way the block mechanic worked in this game. The main reason being that even blocking an attack still means you take *most* of the damage. Non-raid shields have like 40 block value on them. Let's say I have 100 strength, thats 10 more. Shield Specialization increases this by 30% so that's 15 more. 3 points to block 15 damage from mobs that are hitting me for like 300. Wahoo? I just don't see it as useful, especially since I'm only blocking about 40% of the time anyway (thats with holy shield active). I *guess* might matter in BRD or somewhere, where that 30% is the difference between taking some damage and 0 damage, but it's BRD so who cares? The only other way it might matter is if I had some end-game shield where that 30% actually means a relevant amount, but chances of me getting that loot are slim, and who is going to let a protection paladin make use of it and tank BWL or AQ in the first place?
-> (TL;DR) Improved Righteous Fury seems like the only thing really necessary for taking, and everything else seems pointless.
Fourth tier.
Improved Hammer of Justice. Extremely useful in pvp and pve. Worth the 3 points.
Improved Concentration Aura: I've strongly considered taking this instead of spiritual focus. There really isn't an aura worth using in pvp besides concentration aura anyway, and the 15% chance to resist silence and interrupts seems *better* than Spiritual Focus. So my question for this tier is "Should I take spiritual focus or improved concentration aura?"
Fifth Tier and up.
Clearly I want blessing of Sanctuary. I think max rank reduces damage taken by like 60, making it better than actually blocking. And obviously I'm going to take holy shield, as its my main form of mitigation as a prot paladin.
Reckoning. Okay, this is where I'd like the bulk of the conversation to take place. Reckoning is a very interesting talent. I'm conflicted about how best to use it. It actually changes the way I gear for paladin. For tanking, I feel like that if you have reckoning you should have a slow weapon to make better use of reckoning activating. But on the other hand, if I have defense and I'm not getting crit much, or at all, then it's kind of pointless. I suppose it's main usefulness is in pvp. The interesting thing is that I can just let myself be attacked, only cleansing and healing myself, while my reckoning charges build, then switch to a two-handed weapon and take a swing for massive multi-attack damage. The question is... *should* I do that? Most classes attack too infrequently, to the point where if I don't do any damage to them by the time my reckoning stacks build, I'm dead. Or, they just put dots on me and the stacks never build. There are only a few classes where this is actually a viable strategy. Hunters, who run around and you can't hit most of the time anyway, but their pets build up those reckoning charges for you, so when you do catch up to them you just smash them. And rogues, who attack so frequently that the charges get built up quickly. But you end up not needing to deal with rogues because they seem to do more damage to themselves than they do to me, as a protection paladin. Kind of funny.
Anyway, my point is that is the "reckoning bomb" really a viable strategy in battlegrounds? Sure its fun for world pvp because you can have a mob wail on you until you have your stacks, then go seek out some unsuspecting player and more-or-less one-shot them. But, it's not so useful in battleground where you need to build up those stacks while fighting other players. I feel like I'd much rather just be doing constant damage with my one-hander, SoR, and consecration; ESPECIALLY since I don't have seal of command (SoC). With SoC you are pretty much guaranteed to one-shot people with your reckoning bombs, but with SoR, your damage is... lacking. This also makes me question what effect my gear has on it. If I'm in full strength/stam/crit gear, then yeah, a reckoning bomb is going to hit really hard, even with SoR. But if I'm going full stam/int/spellpower, wouldn't it be more useful to just be doing constant damage with SoR?
I guess it really comes down to the class you're facing. If you are being kited around by a mage or hunter, then you are going to be getting those reckoning stacks anyway, and you might as well switch to a two-hander when you catch up to them for massive damage. But if you're fighting an arms warrior, then he's not really hitting you frequently enough for you to gain stacks, and when he does hit you it's really hard. So, it's better to try to kill him as quickly as possible instead of trying to outlast him until your reckoning stacks build.
As you can see, I think about this kind of stuff all day, which is why I could really use your input!
Finally, One-Handed Weapon Specialization. I don't take it because I don't have the points for it. I also don't know if its worth taking anyway. For pvp, If I'm playing with reckoning, then won't I be trying to use a 2-handed weapon for damage anyway? And for tanking, 10% more damage on my fast one-hander with spell power is basically nothing, so why bother?
->(TL:DR) "Is Reckoning Bomb a strategy worth using as a protection paladin without SoC?" And "Does One-handed Weapon Specialization matter at all?"
Alright, well those are all my thoughts about this. I wanted to actually play some WoW tonight, but now it's 1am so... I guess that's not happening. I hope to hear from people and get some input on my thoughts. Please don't hesitate to tell me I'm wrong about something, but also include reasons why I'm wrong. I'm not looking for a "Don't play protection paladin in pvp". Yes, I know it's not optimal. I'm asking for your help in making the best out of an non-optimal situation :)
