Shaman Totems vs Paladin Blessings

[Kevin]

You assume that the hunter is only auto-attacking rather than using an aimed-shot, multishot, auto-attack cycle, which ironically means that your hunter isn't using any mana at all. The benefit to an Alliance hunter is greater than your calculations indicate.

Um no. I'm not assuming that. I'm assuming 2 aimed and 1 multi shot every 10 seconds. That is why I'm using mana. That is why I have calculations on the length of mana pools.

Second, comparing to MC, which you've clearly outgrown with your gear, and even BWL which it appears you're outgrowing isn't a good comparison. MC is designed to be difficult for a raid in a mix of blues and tier-1 or flarecore fire resist gear. It's not designed for people walking around in a significant number of tier 2 epics and BWL weapons. I mean, yeah, a person can argue that mages don't benefit from having a larger mana pool or mana regeneration, because we can kill Ragnaros now before the first Son's phase, but I think you would agree that that is a poor argument. The same is true for hunters.

Again no, it feels like you didn't read waht I said at all. My comment was, when on the cutting edge alliance has a bigger advantage. That is what I said. My hunter I'm talking about now has 4 epics from MC, most of the raid is now at 4 epics from MC. MC isn't the cutting edge for us anymore. BWL would be cutting edge for us though we aren't going there, and at this stage I would do less DPS than an alliance hunter becuase the fights would get outside the drink window.

Hunters don't have the burst dps of mages, rogues, or even warriors on short fights. And on long fights, like Twin Emps, C'Thun, or even Nefarian, where hunters ought to excel, Horde hunters have to spend a significant part of their fight drinking while Alliance hunters do not. This shows up in the damage meters on kill fight videos of new bosses. Alliance hunters tend to show up much higher on the damage meter rankings at the end of the same fights than Horde hunters do. People are starting to realize now that it's actually hunters who benefit more from mana regeneration than any other classes, which is why there's a significant push now to put shamans with mana spring in hunter groups rather than healer groups.

I never disagreed with Alliance hunters getting better damage in long fights. But you can in fact figure out th break point based on where the gear is. I don't actually have a Rhok. We've only downed Domo once (we've only been in MC 9 times), but that basic calculations on Mana/5 with that are pretty unisversal. I got a Striker's Mark last run. But you can sit down and look at how much longer an alliance hunter mana pool will last and you sit down and look at how much more damage a horde hunter can do while they still have mana and you can in fact calculate the break point. They do exist.

Yes it is better for the alliance hunter, but not all the time. It isn't a OMG SO MUCH MORE UBER thing that it seemed you made it out to be. I don't have a raiding alliance hunter, but I do get to see them in action. I do have a raiding horde hunter. Things aren't that dire for me, and I know that I do in fact have advantages over alliance hunters. We entered MC horde side in ZG and AQ20 blues, some had a few ZG purples. So we did in fact enter MC at what feel is about L3 for gearing if you look at a 1-10 scale with 1 being just barely good enough to be in there, 5 being good enough that you should be able to put the place on farm and that your gearing level adds no additional challenge, and 10 being yeah whatever let's just 20 man the place. This is because MC was designed before ZG and AQ20 hit. Right now we don't have the FR gear and are a little bit shy on DPS gear for Ragnaros, but we'll get enough gear (DPS gear at least maybe not enough FR) on the one or two more runs we need to get practice in on him anyway.


So yes, as I said. Alliance hunters have it better, though you didn't seem to follow my admittedly rough analysis at all. Going full out I can last at least 110 seconds. If I had alliance buffs I could last 150-170 seconds. That's the difference right now. So the windows for damage are still there. I can still do more damage as horde in those 110 seconds than an alliance hunter can. If we both have to drink once I can still do more damage. The fact is, the only way alliance buffs beat out horde buffs is when I have to drink 1 or more times than an alliance hunter. That happens more and more as you get deeper into raids. That happens more when you are learning. That happens less as the whole raid gets better gear. Alliance wins. I never denied that. I contended with the 9 greater than symbols you used.

[lemekim]

"Raid-wide" is a confusing term. Totems currently have two limits as to how they're applied:
1. Range
2. Party

Taking away the range limitation destroys the mechanic of using totems; I believe the suggestion at hand is to remove the party limitation instead. Then a shaman can carefully place tranquil air to reduce the aggro of only people standing in range.

At the current 20 yards, you will be lucky for that totem to cover 10 people - that hardly qualifies as "raid-wide". And considering the ever-increasing amount of fights that require either spreading out, or significant player movement (just look at AQ40), I don't think it's too much to ask to at least double or triple the range.

As for limiting Tranquil Air by having 20 yards range (30 with talent/set bonus)... It could work partially. You could have Healers/Casters in the back getting totem, but you would probably still want to give the melee upfront party-only Tranquil Air, so as to not accidently give it to MT/OT. Of course, it will still have the downfall of short range if you must spread out/move around, which is why I said that if we buff other totems - including their range - we might as well leave Tranquil Air party-only, rather then have it as exception with short range and introduce different potentialy weird problems.

[Kevin]

While Hunters will benefit from higher agility of GoA, Mages/Warlocks will not.

I never said they did.

Also, you forgot to count in the mana procs from Multishots and Aimed Shots, which will come out to about 40 mp5 on top of your estimate - to 139 mp5 - and you called 121.7 mp5 overpowered! BoW is superior to raid-wide Mana Spring, and with JoW, mages/warlocks/hunters enjoy much higher mana regeneration, and conversely, DPS, than their Horde counterparts.

No. Multishot has a 10 second cooldown. Aimed shot has a 6 second cooldown, and if you don't time them right you can in fact have aimed eat an autoshot even though it doesn't reset the autoshot timer anymore.

So in essence you get 2 extra shots every 10 seconds. You get one more proc every 10 seconds. You get at best 59/2 = 29.5 mana/5. Though at one point Judgement of wisdom and light couldn't proc off special attacks anyway. I assumed it still couldn't. If it can again they need to fix that too.

I also wasn't talking about the effect on hunters in that example. Yes I brought it up, but the argument was against having it because of what it can do for casters.

Yes, horde hunters will do less damage than alliance hunters as soon as they run out of mana. It won't take an alliance hunter more than about 2 or 3 autoshots to make up the damage difference, so yeah it won't take more than abut 5 seconds to get that damage back and you have to drink longer than that.

Of course with raid wide totems assuming the aggro cieling isn't the problem horde melee will out damage alliance melee so hunters can do less damage.

The issue with mana tide raid wide is that it would do much more for the healers and casters. With healers effective mana pools being part of the game design I'm not a fan of changing that. The fact that it also "bursts" that mana can't be ignored either. Leave it as a party totem and let it help a smaller portion of people. It's fine. It will still be very useful.

Upping the amount from mana spring will mess up how totems in 5 mans too where I think they are pretty well balanced against what the paladin does in 5 mans.

I don't think you understand the problem of raid-wide Tranquil Air. Let me rephrase this. If Tranquil Air is applied to everyone in the raid - including the tank - what is the point of it? Do you see the problem now? How do you make it NOT affect the MT? It's easier to just leave it party-only and place Shamans in groups based on that.

It's not. It's applied to everyone in the raid that is in the radius of the totem. I'm not suggest the totem hit everyone in the riad. I'm suggesting the totem affects everyone in the raid who is in it's radius.

I don't want to turn totems into blessings.

At the current 20 yards, you will be lucky for that totem to cover 10 people - that hardly qualifies as "raid-wide". And considering the ever-increasing amount of fights that require either spreading out, or significant player movement (just look at AQ40), I don't think it's too much to ask to at least double or triple the range.

As for limiting Tranquil Air by having 20 yards range (30 with talent/set bonus)... It could work partially. You could have Healers/Casters in the back getting totem, but you would probably still want to give the melee upfront party-only Tranquil Air, so as to not accidently give it to MT/OT. Of course, it will still have the downfall of short range if you must spread out/move around, which is why I said that if we buff other totems - including their range - we might as well leave Tranquil Air party-only, rather then have it as exception with short range and introduce different potentialy weird problems.

And if one totem covers the whole raid you drop the benefit of more than 3 shaman on the run (3 because you need the 3 air totems for everyone).

If you have 5 shaman you can place 2 tranquil air to cover more range and then the WF and GoA more where you need them.

No it won't be as good as what alliance does but it will feel a lot more like totems. Yes in mobile fights it means that shaman have to move the totems and be more careful.

Yep it means that one shaman can't buff the whole raid. But since one shaman can in effect provide 3 buffs (fire totems I count like pally auras) and a paladin can only do 1 + aura (which I more what I count some of the totems as) that is OK too.


And yes a party tranquil air might still be the best way to but I can live with it being like other raid totems which I don't envision as hitting everyone, just hitting everyone in range.

[lemekim]

I never said they did.
No. Multishot has a 10 second cooldown. Aimed shot has a 6 second cooldown, and if you don't time them right you can in fact have aimed eat an autoshot even though it doesn't reset the autoshot timer anymore.

So in essence you get 2 extra shots every 10 seconds. You get one more proc every 10 seconds. You get at best 59/2 = 29.5 mana/5. Though at one point Judgement of wisdom and light couldn't proc off special attacks anyway. I assumed it still couldn't. If it can again they need to fix that too.

I also wasn't talking about the effect on hunters in that example. Yes I brought it up, but the argument was against having it because of what it can do for casters.

Yes, horde hunters will do less damage than alliance hunters as soon as they run out of mana. It won't take an alliance hunter more than about 2 or 3 autoshots to make up the damage difference, so yeah it won't take more than abut 5 seconds to get that damage back and you have to drink longer than that.

Of course with raid wide totems assuming the aggro cieling isn't the problem horde melee will out damage alliance melee so hunters can do less damage.

The issue with mana tide raid wide is that it would do much more for the healers and casters. With healers effective mana pools being part of the game design I'm not a fan of changing that. The fact that it also "bursts" that mana can't be ignored either. Leave it as a party totem and let it help a smaller portion of people. It's fine. It will still be very useful.

Upping the amount from mana spring will mess up how totems in 5 mans too where I think they are pretty well balanced against what the paladin does in 5 mans.
It's not. It's applied to everyone in the raid that is in the radius of the totem. I'm not suggest the totem hit everyone in the riad. I'm suggesting the totem affects everyone in the raid who is in it's radius.

I don't want to turn totems into blessings.

Well, again, all this is hypothetical, and any change even close to this would be a huge step forward. However, if we do not make Mana Tide raid-wide (because that sounds overpowered, right?), here is how the typical raids will compare:

- Alliance will still have more manafe/spirit
- Alliance will have higher armor (thanks to Devotion Aura)
- Alliance will have higher heal efficiency (Paladins)
- Alliance will have better aggro control
- Mana regeneration will be roughly equal - Shamans have mana tide, Paladins provide JoW and BoW (that is slightly superior to Mana Spring)
- DPS will be roughly equal - Horde melee DPS will be slightly superior, while Alliance caster DPS will be superior to that of Horde (currently, Fire Mages and Shadow Priests are not viable at all for Horde on fights of any significant length, consumables or not)

So when all is said and done, we get a Horde raid that, while equal to Alliance raid in some areas, is still inferior in others. Why can't Horde raids be superior in one area? Blizzard could half the effectiveness of Mana Tide, make it trainable, give it a raid-wide totem (is 600 mana to everyone in the raid overpowered?), and give Shamans some decent 31 talent instead. Raid-wide Mana Tide would be pretty great, it is one option that I can think of that will give Horde a boost in raiding while not affecting 5 mans, PvP, Soloing, Duels or anything else of consequence.

[Lissa]

Well, again, all this is hypothetical, and any change even close to this would be a huge step forward. However, if we do not make Mana Tide raid-wide (because that sounds overpowered, right?), here is how the typical raids will compare:

- Alliance will still have more manafe/spirit
- Alliance will have higher armor (thanks to Devotion Aura)

You do realize that even talented Devotion Aura is at max going to be maybe 2% more mitigation, that's about 20 damage less against a tank from a 1k hit. The top end Shaman totem that directly drops damage, can't remember the name, does more than even Talented devotion aura for a tank (which is mainly where the aura is going to be run).

- Alliance will have higher heal efficiency (Paladins)

Any healer can have better efficiency with their healing if they're willing to go with more +healing and step down ranks in spells they cast. They may not have a highest burst heal, but they can certainly last longer healing with more +heal gear and stepping down in ranks to conserve mana to using less +healing and go with higher ranks. Efficiency comes from how much the player is willing to sacrafice in other areas to get more +healing.

- Alliance will have better aggro control

Aggro reduction yes, control, that is up to the individual player. Any player with Salvation can still out aggro a tank with the right Talent build and equipment if they don't pay attention to their aggro.

- Mana regeneration will be roughly equal - Shamans have mana tide, Paladins provide JoW and BoW (that is slightly superior to Mana Spring)

JoW is only useful to those wanding or making physical attacks. Few Mages and Warlocks ever use their wands preferring to use other methods to regain mana (Evocation/Mana Gems and Lifetap respectively) and Druids really don't have an option unless they want to try and get in harms way on a Boss, same with Paladins. So that leaves only Hunters and Priests that are wanding to regain mana from JoW.

- DPS will be roughly equal - Horde melee DPS will be slightly superior, while Alliance caster DPS will be superior to that of Horde (currently, Fire Mages and Shadow Priests are not viable at all for Horde on fights of any significant length, consumables or not)

I disagree.

Mana shouldn't be an issue for a Fire Mage at all, they have Evocation and Mana Gems (you can have one of each level). If they're not willing to prepare before the boss fight to have those two items available, they need to learn their class better.

For Shadow Priest, if a Shadow Priest doesn't go atleast 13 deep into Discipline, they need to be slapped. There are a number of items out there that are +damage/healing with +mana/5 seconds (let's not forget the Blue Dragon Card as well). A Shadow Priest that sets up their talents properly and gets the right gear shouldn't have many mana issues either as Mind Flay is very mana efficient and Vampiric Embrace is also highly mana efficient. (In a raid situation, casting SW:P is basically throwing away mana as it will be knocked off pretty easily unlike Mind Flay and VE is so low in cost that the only problem to it is the cooldown.)

So when all is said and done, we get a Horde raid that, while equal to Alliance raid in some areas, is still inferior in others. Why can't Horde raids be superior in one area? Blizzard could half the effectiveness of Mana Tide, make it trainable, give it a raid-wide totem (is 600 mana to everyone in the raid overpowered?), and give Shamans some decent 31 talent instead. Raid-wide Mana Tide would be pretty great, it is one option that I can think of that will give Horde a boost in raiding while not affecting 5 mans, PvP, Soloing, Duels or anything else of consequence.

I don't see a huge inferiority in all the areas you state. There are some, I will grant you that. Some of what you call inferiorities are player driven. Alliance can cover those a little better, but if a Horde player recognizes the inefficiencies, they can work around some of the issues.

Does Horde need raid level totems, yes, is the things you listed above directly related to the powers of one class, partially, but not all, some of that lies with the player themselves and not whether they have a Shaman or a Paladin backing them up.

[vor_lord]

Any healer can have better efficiency with their healing if they're willing to go with more +healing and step down ranks in spells they cast. They may not have a highest burst heal, but they can certainly last longer healing with more +heal gear and stepping down in ranks to conserve mana to using less +healing and go with higher ranks. Efficiency comes from how much the player is willing to sacrafice in other areas to get more +healing.

<snippage>

Aggro reduction yes, control, that is up to the individual player. Any player with Salvation can still out aggro a tank with the right Talent build and equipment if they don't pay attention to their aggro.

Can we at least assume equal gearing and skill? That's what lemekim is talking about. We're comparing Horde to Alliance in this discussion, not player A with Gear X to player B with Gear Y. A shaman with X amount of +healing gear will never be as mana efficient as a paladin with X amount of healing gear. A warlock who controls his aggro perfectly on Alliance does 10% more damage than a horde warlock who controls his aggro perfectly.

JoW is only useful to those wanding or making physical attacks.

Really? The tooltip says "attacks and spells".... is it broken right now? Haven't logged in with my paladin for a long time...

[Kevin]

Well, again, all this is hypothetical, and any change even close to this would be a huge step forward. However, if we do not make Mana Tide raid-wide (because that sounds overpowered, right?), here is how the typical raids will compare:

- Alliance will still have more manafe/spirit
- Alliance will have higher armor (thanks to Devotion Aura)
- Alliance will have higher heal efficiency (Paladins)
- Alliance will have better aggro control
- Mana regeneration will be roughly equal - Shamans have mana tide, Paladins provide JoW and BoW (that is slightly superior to Mana Spring)
- DPS will be roughly equal - Horde melee DPS will be slightly superior, while Alliance caster DPS will be superior to that of Horde (currently, Fire Mages and Shadow Priests are not viable at all for Horde on fights of any significant length, consumables or not)

So when all is said and done, we get a Horde raid that, while equal to Alliance raid in some areas, is still inferior in others. Why can't Horde raids be superior in one area? Blizzard could half the effectiveness of Mana Tide, make it trainable, give it a raid-wide totem (is 600 mana to everyone in the raid overpowered?), and give Shamans some decent 31 talent instead. Raid-wide Mana Tide would be pretty great, it is one option that I can think of that will give Horde a boost in raiding while not affecting 5 mans, PvP, Soloing, Duels or anything else of consequence.

I agree that raiding should be equal be it because horde have some advantage in the key areas are because they are all essentially equal. Or because design of the encounters means that over the whole dungeon the differences balance out.

I actually think horde with mana tide left just as a party totem will still have pretty much the same mana regen but you make mana tide trainable and replace it with something else. Talented (and with raid wide you would have shaman with the talent) mana stream is 31.25 mana/5. Why they don't just bump that up so that it is 40 mana / 5 like talented BoW is I don't know. So the big factor assuming raid totems, would be Judgement of Wisdom. Drop the proc to 25%, cut what it does in half and then really what mana tide, in just a party should overwhelm it, and it gives you an advantage in burst mana. Alliance would be better at total mana over the long haul, but horde would be better at more mana right now which can be just as, if not more critical in some encounters, like the "we have to burn this thing down now that it is at 30% or it regens to full". Mana Tide even in just 4 or 5 groups > BoW + JoW.

Aggro control may also be equal. Don't forget that tanks get aggro from damage as well as much as 50% of their total aggro and I don't think it is every less than 20% of the total aggro. Since the tanks will be doing more damage than alliance tanks that means better aggro. I'm not sure if the 10% difference in the totems will be enough. I think we still need an adjustment here.

A raid wide healing healing stream as healing or damage mitigation, however you want to figure it in, can't be ignored. I've been hit for 35 healing a tick from one of them. I'm pretty sure they get 10% of your +heal spread out over the duration but I haven't looked closely. Stoneskin raid wide would be the same as sanctuary raid wide more or less, if not they should be equaled out. Is the extra little healing going to be the same as the extra armor for tank longevity? Well in a mostly magic damage fight it will actually be better than devo. In a mostly physical damage fight it will be worse. The problem might be the aggro that a totem like that will generate for a shaman, if the whole raid is hurt that would be 700 healing a second (if it healed the whole raid, which as we know it wouldn't from positioning). That is the same as what 350 DPS? But you could do a holy nova thing for aggro with it if you need to, it would need to be tweaked you would not want a mob running off to kill some totem.

The bigger life pools matter. 2 shot kills aren't going to be stopped by some dinky stoneskin and healing stream. That extra 500 health can really make a huge difference to burst damage. What I talked about earlier is for sustained damage. And you would need to increase the advantage against sustained damage more to balance it against weaker burst survival. That can be done via encounter design or something else.

I'd say a 31 point resto totem that gives your party 10% more life but now you have the "Raid shaman have to life totem spec". I think the card that gets played against this is Tauren warriors. When does 5% more life (not just stam, kings is just stam) over take 10% stam? Does it ever? If the fear ward card can be played against alliance I can at least look at this as stupid of a balance mechanic as it is. Tauren get 105 life from a 100 life enchant they get extra life from everything, not just stam. It's still a broken mechanic, just like fear ward, forcing horde to carry some Tauren warriors would be just as dumb as forcing alliance to carry dwarf priests. I haven't looked at it, but since the bigger life pools seem to matter the most to burst damage if we give horde enough of an advantage in effective life is this stupid mechanic that both sides have to deal with good enough? Are we still to weakened by the fact that mages and warlocks and rogues are taking enough burst damage that the the idea of better mitigation doesn't matter at all? I think shaman having NS is supposed to make up for this as well. Horde have more ways to quickly recover from damage spikes. And actually Tauren warriors are probably the reason you don't see some horde buff that gives everyone 10% more stam because you buff them up even more. I still don't have a good answer for this one. I think I see how it was supposed to have some balance but it still needs help.

Healing efficiency. This is a problem as well. But I'm a little stumped on it as well. Make shaman even more efficient by talents and there are problems. The extra nature's swiftness for one. The other is that in other things shaman already can burst damage better and can do more DPS if they aren't needed to heal in most situations as well. This isn't that big a deal in raids, but it can be a PvP issue. I don't want to break PvP balance, and despite some of the claims I think there is more balance there (faction imbalance aside) than some claim. But while paladins can heal longer their heals are still not generally as effective as shaman. I still think healing is a wash between the two factions in raids. Healing seems better for alliance because debuff curing is currently better for alliance since they have 2 ways to get rid of magic, poison, disease, and curses. Horde has 1 way to get rid of magic, 3 ways to get rid of poison and diseases, and 2 ways to get rid of curses. The totems for getting rid of poison and disease generally don't matter, they do help in some of those encounters but they still generally don't matter. And magic debuffs are just more harmful than poison or disease debuffs in the current design. I've never quite understood why shaman couldn't clear magic debuffs.


So if we give raid wide totems and all shaman mana tide that only hits the party, the real problem seems to be Judgement of Wisdom and the extra life from kings in raids. Mana tide for all probably didn't happen because an elemental shaman who can drop one in PvP gets too much of a burst DPS boost. But I'm not sure I care that much about that. But mana tide for the party with raid wide mana spring, should still be enough to keep sustained healing the same (remember a priest doesn't get a lot of wand shots to benefit from JoW). I'm not sure if makes up for sustained caster DPS. It will help with burst caster DPS. I can live with horde hunters doing less sustained physical damage becuase horde melee will do more sustained physical DPS and total melee DPS will go up.


Yes I do want to fix the problems and just raid wide totems alone can't do it. Other tweaks have to happen.

[lemekim]

You do realize that even talented Devotion Aura is at max going to be maybe 2% more mitigation, that's about 20 damage less against a tank from a 1k hit. The top end Shaman totem that directly drops damage, can't remember the name, does more than even Talented devotion aura for a tank (which is mainly where the aura is going to be run).

Devotion will provide roughly 2.5% increased mitigation actually - listed. So warriors listed mitigation will go up from, say, 60% to 62.5%. However, the mitigation from those additional 2.5% is not 20 damage on a 1k hit. The damage taken from a hit went from 40%, to 37.5%, 6.25% reduction.

Example:
Your tank gets hit for 1k damage with 60.0% mitigation - the actual hit was for 2.5k, but 1.5k was mitigated.
Now, with 62.5% mitigation, your tank will get hit for 937.5, or 62.5 less damage (again, 6.25% reduction in damage taken)

That might not seem like a lot, but consider that this reduction scales with damage - so it works best against spike damage, in situations where you need it most, e.g. a crushing blow following a critical hit, a thrash, etc. Let's take a look at an extreme example - Patchwerk's Hateful strike, which hits for 22100-29900 damage. Against this, Devotion Aura will reduce this by 2.5%, or 552-747 damage. But this is an example of extreme spike damage of course.

Stoneskin totem suffers from two problems - it doesn't scale, and it reduces damage before the mitigation is taken into effect. So talented Stoneskin totem reduces damage by 36 - however, the actual reduction in damage that the tank will see with 60.0% damage reduction is 14.

[Rinnhart]

A couple things, and then I retire from this debate. I don't care anymore.


- In most fights, mana is not the limiting factor for DPS; aggro is. Hunters are a unique and broken exception. I saw a bit about aggro in the longer threads, below, but I'm not reading them. Take it as you will.

- Ignoring the buffs, paladins are still #$%&ing lame.

- It's all moot. This isn't a necessity. It'd be nice to have raid totems, but horde guilds are competitive without. As to how they OVERCOME THE ALLIANCE ADVANTAGE, let your egos be your guides. If they are added, something does need to be done for the paladins. For PR and damage control, not actual game balance.


Keep on truckin', GG.

[Concillian]

n/m I should really read all of the responses first.

[Lissa]

Can we at least assume equal gearing and skill? That's what lemekim is talking about. We're comparing Horde to Alliance in this discussion, not player A with Gear X to player B with Gear Y. A shaman with X amount of +healing gear will never be as mana efficient as a paladin with X amount of healing gear.

Yes and No. If you do not consider BoL (which is usually the 4th Blessing put up, so requires 4 Paladins), the Shaman's Healing Wave is more mana efficient than the Paladin's Holy Light (HL is quicker to cast, but offers less healing and costs more mana than HW). If you consider Flash of Light vs. Lesser Healing Wave, the top end FoL (FoL 6) is equal to LHW 3 (again, barring BoL) and LHW 6 is more akin to the Priest's Flash Heal than it is to FoL. What makes the Paladin more efficient is BoL, but again, in a raid situation you have to have a minimum of 4 Paladins to actually see it in use (and it's kinda rare for Avarice to see more than 3 Paladins in a raid).

A warlock who controls his aggro perfectly on Alliance does 10% more damage than a horde warlock who controls his aggro perfectly.

Again, yes and no. If you are strictly considering Blessing of Salvation against the Totem equivalent, then yes. If you consider a Warlock with Master Demonologist and an Imp out along with 8/8 Nemesis, the difference shrinks to around 5% due to the multiplicative factor of aggro reduction (only thing that breaks this rule is mage talents which are getting changed to being multiplicative in 1.12 from being additive).

Really? The tooltip says "attacks and spells".... is it broken right now? Haven't logged in with my paladin for a long time...

I took a closer look last night, it does work with spells, but, and this is the kicker about it, JoW is only going to last 10 seconds untalented and it is going to typically be knocked off very quickly (literally there was one up for 1 cast of a SB last night, since I have Bane, that's 2.5 seconds that it lasted, I could have gotten that much mana from a single tick of mana regeneration). If a Mage or Warlock is lucky, they're going to get 177 mana back in those 10 seconds (timing to get 4 spells in during the 10 seconds is difficult due to lag) if the JoW doesn't get knocked off before then.

[savaughn]

*sigh*

Point 1: Horde Shaman are far better in groups than Paladins up through and including UBRS. A single Shaman gives his group the equivalent buffs of _4_ Paladins. They can heal just as well, and do far more damage. They have a single advantage of plate armor which is effectively irrelevant since they rarely if ever tank and with to be blunt, shaman actually have better aggro holding skills and make better tanks.

Point 2: Horde Shaman are far better in PvP than Paladins. Yes, Paladins can be hard to kill ... if you don't have a rogue, mage, priest, warlock, warrior, or any other class than can't silence/stun/interrupt heals. Simple fact. It is easier to completely shut down a Paladin than any other class. A Shaman or Priest can trivially eliminate their entire combat mechanism. Any tree-wide silence shuts off every single ability they have. Earth shock DESTROYS paladins. If you can't kill a Paladin in PvP, it's a PvP skill issue, not a class imbalance issue. A Paladin will also not be able to contribute significant damage and will spend any reasonable battle unable to even CATCH someone to hit them. This means that for every Paladin the alliance side brings, the horde side has vastly more DPS. Focus firing through a Paladin's tiny little heals is trivial.

Point 3: In 20 man raids, Paladins and Shaman are radically different, but very much equal. You can't get 4 paladins in a 20 man raid which means the Shaman's groups will be far more powerful than the alliance equivalent while the pally can keep the raid as a whole moderately buffed.

Point 4: In 40 man raids, yes, Shamans are less powerful.

Now, this means that in this ENTIRE GAME the Paladin is less powerful except for 4 dungeons. These 4 dungeons aren't even end game material. It's just a what's there for the next couple months.

Want to push for a radical improvement to totems? Great! Tell me how you're going to nerf them in every other scenario to bring them in balance there. Otherwise, I find myself suggesting that this is an entirely pointless discussion. You have no clue what happens at level 70 yet nor do we know if there even ARE any more 40-man dungeons. And we know for a fact that there are epic 10-man dungeons where 2 Shaman are RADICALLY more effective than 2 paladins.

[MongoJerry]

*sigh*

Point 1: Horde Shaman are far better in groups than Paladins up through and including UBRS. A single Shaman gives his group the equivalent buffs of _4_ Paladins. They can heal just as well, and do far more damage. They have a single advantage of plate armor which is effectively irrelevant since they rarely if ever tank and with to be blunt, shaman actually have better aggro holding skills and make better tanks.

Wrong. Read the original post, because you do not understand how shaman totems work, if you believe that four buffs can be up on a five-man party at once. First, fire totems do not buff a party at all. Second, several useful totems are in the air category, and you can choose only one. Third, not all totems help all players. A mana spring totem doesn't help a warrior or rogue, and a windfury totem doesn't help a priest or mage, as examples. One paladin can choose to hand pick his blessings for different people and place an aura on the whole party -- thus having the effect of having "four totems" up. Well, really three, because again, the fire totems aren't really buffs.

Point 2: Horde Shaman are far better in PvP than Paladins. Yes, Paladins can be hard to kill ... if you don't have a rogue, mage, priest, warlock, warrior, or any other class than can't silence/stun/interrupt heals. Simple fact. It is easier to completely shut down a Paladin than any other class. A Shaman or Priest can trivially eliminate their entire combat mechanism. Any tree-wide silence shuts off every single ability they have. Earth shock DESTROYS paladins. If you can't kill a Paladin in PvP, it's a PvP skill issue, not a class imbalance issue. A Paladin will also not be able to contribute significant damage and will spend any reasonable battle unable to even CATCH someone to hit them. This means that for every Paladin the alliance side brings, the horde side has vastly more DPS. Focus firing through a Paladin's tiny little heals is trivial.

Again, vastly ignorant. Paladins are dominating in PvP -- just in a different way. They are excellent 1v1, but they kill slowly, but in groups, they are absolutely dominating. Just because you like to pew pew kill things fast doesn't mean that that is the only way to fight. It is the paladin's surviveability and ability to transfer that surviveability to his or her groups that make them a terror in battlegrounds. It's the reason why on Tichondrius Alliance paladins outnumber Alliance priests in battlegrounds 3:1. Yes, I'm 100% serious. It is rare to see an Alliance priest at all in a battleground and at most you see one. However, in AB, you'll typically see three to four paladins and in CTF two or three of them.

Edit: I'll add to this. Two comments are key to your statements: "A Shaman or Priest can trivially eliminate their entire combat mechanism" and "[A Paladin] will spend any reasonable battle unable to even CATCH someone to hit them." If you play a paladin and are running around trying to whack people in a group PvP environment, you need to learn to play. That is not how to play a paladin in a dominating role. It is a paladin's ability to survive while being able to heal, dispel almost all forms of crowd control from his parties (Once you trivially kill a Horde party's priest, the Alliance can sheep, root, HoJ, and charm at will), hammer of justice, repent, shield, and cast useful buffs like the godly Blessing of Freedom that can make them a terror in a group PvP setting.

Point 3: In 20 man raids, Paladins and Shaman are radically different, but very much equal. You can't get 4 paladins in a 20 man raid which means the Shaman's groups will be far more powerful than the alliance equivalent while the pally can keep the raid as a whole moderately buffed.

Point 4: In 40 man raids, yes, Shamans are less powerful.

So wrong, I can't even start. In a 20-man, with four paladins, you can have all the useful paladin blessings on everyone and provide auras to their parties. Shaman are stuck giving only the same buffs they could give when they were in 5-man parties. Read posts before replying to them. Heck, just read the first post of this thread and your ignorance will be cured.

[Xanthix]

...this is the kicker about it, JoW is only going to last 10 seconds untalented and it is going to typically be knocked off very quickly (literally there was one up for 1 cast of a SB last night, since I have Bane, that's 2.5 seconds that it lasted, I could have gotten that much mana from a single tick of mana regeneration). If a Mage or Warlock is lucky, they're going to get 177 mana back in those 10 seconds (timing to get 4 spells in during the 10 seconds is difficult due to lag) if the JoW doesn't get knocked off before then.

Judgement of Wisdom doesn't work quite like this in practice, in my experience. I don't know how our pallies do it, either through getting the Lasting Judgement talent or by continuing to whack at the judged mob, but when the raid needs JoW up, they can keep it up continuously.

For example on Garr (a long fight) we ask a Paladin to keep Wisdom up so the healers can wand the mob for extra mana when they are regenerating. Or if the raid is running a little dry on mana during the General Rajaxx event, we will put JoW up on the last mob of a wave, and just have the tank keep it busy while all the casters wand it to death for extra regen.

I suppose this will not help the Alliance's side of the argument, and indeed it does not make an encounter-breaking difference IMHO, but I figured you should know how we use JoW. When not using wisdom, we normally try to keep JoL up on trash mobs etc for a little top-off healing for the melee people.

[Mavfin]

BTW, as Quark is reporting, WF totem change has been reversed.

[oldmandennis]

- In most fights, mana is not the limiting factor for DPS; aggro is.

Most blackwing lair fights. Except, um Nef. Then there is the next two raid dungeons, which aren't that aggro sensitive from what I've seen and heard.

- It's all moot. This isn't a necessity. It'd be nice to have raid totems, but horde guilds are competitive without. As to how they OVERCOME THE ALLIANCE ADVANTAGE, let your egos be your guides. If they are added, something does need to be done for the paladins.

Wowwalkthroughs has 40 US alliance guilds at 8 Nax kills or higher. The horde have 3 at that level. Ofcourse, this isn't perfect, but its the best indicator we have. 13:1 probably is well outside the relm of any systematic error I can think of. I would say fixing a major portion of the end game for what is supposed to be half of the population is at least as large a priority as fixing a class that accounts for 1/9 of the population. I would be happy if they could make the pally more fun to play, if they could do it without further aggrivating raid balance or upsetting PvP balance.

Yes and No. If you do not consider BoL (which is usually the 4th Blessing put up, so requires 4 Paladins)

Stop right there. Averice apparently has an abnormal shortage of pallys. You can't balance the game around one guild that has an odd balance. It would be like saying "We only have 2 warlocks, so we can't get Curse of Shadows up. Warlocks need a 10% buff to damage to be competitive."

JoW is only going to last 10 seconds untalented and it is going to typically be knocked off very quickly

You guys apparently don't have enough palladins if you don't have a holy one. In any event, since your pallys are so gimped by lack of blessing of light, it wouldn't be a big loss to have one of them go up and whack away to keep it up. I'm not sure what the matter with your debuff control is.

*sigh*

Point 1: Horde Shaman are far better in groups than Paladins up through and including UBRS. A single Shaman gives his group the equivalent buffs of _4_ Paladins.

Want to push for a radical improvement to totems? Great! Tell me how you're going to nerf them in every other scenario to bring them in balance there. Otherwise, I find myself suggesting that this is an entirely pointless discussion. You have no clue what happens at level 70 yet nor do we know if there even ARE any more 40-man dungeons.

This whole post generally shows a lack of comprehending the original article. The fire totem's only buff is frost resistance, which is coincidentally provided much more easily by an aura. There is no horde equivelent at all for shadow resist aura (oh, the repair costs that would have saved!).

The most common solution proposed is some sort of way for totems to affect the whole raid. That would have no effect on leveling, solo, or 5 man. It might skew things the hordes way in the one 10 man and 2 20 man dungeons. But 4.5 > 3, so on the whole it would balance things. I still think it's ugly, but I don't have a better idea at the moment.

If we don't, as a community come togeather and think (and sometimes squack) about these issues, stuff like the windfury nerf will go live. It's only when the players get a good look at stuff does it even have a chance of coming out right. When it is kept a secret (PEW PEW LAZER SHIPS, BWL), it gets messed up.

[Xanthix]

There is no horde equivelent at all for shadow resist aura (oh, the repair costs that would have saved!).

Minor nit: Pally resistance auras do not stack with Mark of the Wild or with the Priest buff Shadow Resistance. Therefore, the Shadow Resistance aura is rarely used and offers no benefit, since Priests tend to put Shadow Resistance on the whole raid for shadow-heavy encounters.

[oldmandennis]

Good point. I think there was pleanty of content in my post without it. For some reason I was under the impression that the priest spell was 20.

[MongoJerry]

Minor nit: Pally resistance auras do not stack with Mark of the Wild or with the Priest buff Shadow Resistance. Therefore, the Shadow Resistance aura is rarely used and offers no benefit, since Priests tend to put Shadow Resistance on the whole raid for shadow-heavy encounters.

And Shaman have nature resistance totems that Alliance don't have -- but they are an air totem, which means no windfury, grace of air, or tranquility for the group. And like the shadow resistance aura, they don't stack with MotW or hunter aura. Basically, two equally useless auras.

Everything else you said, oldmandennis, is spot on, though.

[Falomin]

If you play a paladin and are running around trying to whack people in a group PvP environment, you need to learn to play. That is not how to play a paladin in a dominating role. It is a paladin's ability to survive while being able to heal, dispel almost all forms of crowd control from his parties (Once you trivially kill a Horde party's priest, the Alliance can sheep, root, HoJ, and charm at will), hammer of justice, repent, shield, and cast useful buffs like the godly Blessing of Freedom that can make them a terror in a group PvP setting.

Wow, this sounds great. Too bad I have never actually run into decent PvP pallys in all my days playing on Azgalor (on the alliance side). Now I know that Azgalor is a lousy server and a bad example, Alliance AVs always looked like kindergarten recess.

I would kill to have some good pallys in an AV with me. Maybe we would have won more often than once per week during my rep grind. When Pallys would grace us with their presence in AVs, all they wanted to do was DPS....rather pathetic.