06-21-2005, 09:46 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-23-2005, 06:42 PM by Skandranon.)
As long as we're talking builds, I'll chime in with Katrin's build and why I picked it, along with a general discussion of paladin talents and what I think about them. You can skip down past my ramblings to a discussion of a Protection build and its objectives by looking for the horizontal line.
Katrin is built like so:
Retribution (30)
-Improved Blessing of Might (5)
-Improved Seal of the Crusader (5)
-Seal of Command (1)
-Deflection (5)
-Vengeance (5)
-Precision (3)
-Consecration (1)
-Conviction (5)
Holy (21)
-Spiritual Focus (5)
-Improved Holy Light (2)
-Revelation (2)
-Illumination (5)
-Divine Favor (1)
-Improved Seal of Righteousness (5)
-Sanctity Aura (1)
I initially built this way because of the demands of soloing. Paladins' minuscule DPS output almost demands a heavy investment into Retribution, so I knew I was definitely going for Vengeance/Conviction, which, while fairly weak by the standards of most other classes, is as good of a DPS combo as Paladins get. Consecration was gotten because I built Katrin mostly to main-tank for Ab, Griz, and Sommli; I needed to be able to main-tank, and paladins without Consecration simply can't do that, as they rapidly lose control of more mobs than one without it.
The big question about this build is why I picked Sanctity Aura over Blessing of Kings. A lot of people think that BoK is the no-brainer selection, and I would agree that BoK is, in general, superior to Sanctity. But there were sound logical reasons to select Sanctity, and I'll get to those in just a moment. Right now I'll just kick out my thoughts on the paladin trees and what I consider important talents.
Retribution
-Improved Blessing of Might, Benediction, Improved Seal of the Crusader, Two-handed Weapon Specialization
The first four talents of this tree are the worst dross I've seen in any talent tree of any class in the game. Not a single one is really any good, and anyone can pick any ten points to plug into these talents in whatever combination and not go seriously wrong. You could go 2-3-2-3 in all four of them and it would make very little difference from concentrating 5-5 in just two of them.
-Seal of Command
A big damage seal that's hard to get away from. Without this you really have very little in the way of DPS options for soloing. Less important in the endgame, but if you use a two-hander, still useful. It almost justifies ten points of junk prereqs all by itself, but only almost. If you're going this deep I'd get other goodies out of Ret.
-Deflection, Precision
I like this line for solo work and main-tanking. Not entirely certain how useful it is in end-game raids, but I'd imagine not very.
-Anticipation
With as much +def gear as there is in the game, this seems like a terrible waste of points to me. After all, +2 defense is +0.08% dodge/parry/block, and you can get 1% parry for the same point in Deflection. 1% chance of negating a hit versus 0.16% chance of negating and 0.08% chance of removing a negligible amount of damage doesn't seem like a fair trade.
-Vengeance/Conviction
This line is almost assuredly something you want for solo. For raids, not so sure. 10 man and 15 man, these two can contribute to significant damage. 40 man, you won't want to be doing damage at all, but those raids aren't very common.
-Improved Retribution Aura
Each point adds 1 damage to the best retribution aura paladins can get. One point. I think realizing a gain of <1 DPS is a very poor use for a talent point.
-Consecration
Critical for main-tanking. Somewhat useful as DPS in solo encounters, since there really isn't much else to use your mana on anyway. Use has to be very careful in raids, because Consecration is crowd control's nightmare: an AoE DoT, for pathetic damage, too.
-Blessing of Kings
Those of you who listen to me in guild chat know that I rag on BoK a lot. It's not that I don't see the value in it, but it's like back in the old D2 days when I was the only one who wasn't a huge fan of max Warmth (this was before spell timers and everyone eventually coming around to my view). Yes, it's useful, but not as useful as everyone makes it out to be. BoK's a nice blessing, but it's a "third blessing", because every class is going to have two blessings they want more than BoK. DPS classes will want Salvation and then Wisdom or Might. Warriors will want Sanctuary and Might, and possibly even Light. Salvation is 30% more damage for DPS classes, and similarly, Might adds far more attack power than Kings, while Sanctuary adds far more survivability than Kings. I don't underestimate its value, but I see its limitations clearly, as well.
Plus, the mere position of BoK has led to legions of pubby pallies constantly blessing my mage with Kings instead of Salv. It can be intensely frustrating.
Holy
-Improved Lay on Hands
Just no. A bonus that you can get, at most, every 40 minutes?
-Spiritual Focus
With Concentration, this is uninterruptible healing. Even by itself, it's great for solo and group situations.
-Improved Holy Light
Holy Light is a pretty good heal, with Blessing of Light factored in. This isn't a bad place for points, and should probably be maxed for serious raiders.
-Revelation
I like it, just because things can tend to go wrong more than once an hour. If I really need it, I'd like to have LoH and DI available, and a 40 minute cycle is far friendlier than a 60 minute one. Can be argued, though.
-Improved Blessing of Wisdom, Divine Wisdom
This line is as raid-oriented as any one can be. IBoW isn't too good; maxed, it only increases BoW from 30 mana every 5 sec. to 36 mana every 5 sec. But combined with the bonus 10% mana from DW, these two specialize the paladin more in the healing/buffing role that endgame requires.
-Illumination, Divine Favor
Really can't speak of these two separately. Without Divine Favor, Illumination is okay but not great. With Divine Favor, the free crit heal every two minutes is powerful indeed.
-Improved Flash of Light
Flash's mana cost isn't large anyway, and with BoL its efficiency is good enough. I don't see a compelling reason to take this talent, especially given how infrequently Flash will be used outside of Onyxia's Lair.
-Improved Concentration Aura
The uninterruptible-cast talents available right now from all classes already go up to at least 65% on their own, so an untalented Concentration can already bring them up to 100%. For skills without such supporting talents, 35% vs. 50% doesn't make much of a difference.
-Improved Seal of Light
Not good enough, especially given Seal of Light's infrequent use. You are almost always better off judging Seal of Wisdom, even when solo, since the mana you get from Wisdom can be converted into far more healing than Light will give you.
-Divine Strength
This talent is terribly misplaced in the holy tree, and not too useful besides. Vengeance/Conviction and a strong agility focus create more damage than piling on the strength and going for this talent.
-Improved Seal of Righteousness, Sanctity Aura, Holy Shock
This is the big line of Holy. ISoR is okay if you don't have Command, Sanc is pretty weak overall, and even Shock is nothing special. It's funny that the final talent of the Holy tree doesn't actually help you heal at all, but that's another issue entirely.
When, if ever, is just Sanctity a good choice? Especially over Blessing of Kings? The answer is: if you expect to solo a lot. It's difficult to overstate the anemia that characterizes paladin damage past 40 post SotC-nerf. It's critical to squeeze out every last bit of damage you can, and in that comparison, Sanctity is strictly superior to BoK. BoK does not and cannot provide the enhancement to damage that BoM does, especially if you've got IBoM. Sanctity can be used concurrent with BoM, and combined with SoC can provide a noticeable DPS increase.
Protection
Protection's a funny tree, because it's all about tanking, and yet the talent that lets paladins actually tank, Consecration, is deep into a completely different tree.
-Improved Devotion Aura
A lot of newbie paladins almost instinctively reach for this talent to improve their tanking ability. It's passive, and it's appealing. It's also bad. Five points buys a mere 184 armor at the highest level, which more or less doesn't help at all. Factor in how frequently you'll be running Fire Res aura at high levels, and....
-Redoubt
The better first-tier Protection talent. If you're tanking, you'll get crit a lot, and the blocking you get from this will probably amount to much more mitigation than you'd get from IDA. Even if you're not tanking, higher level things toss out the crits fairly regularly. Of course, in endgame you won't be hit by much in the way of physical damage, but that's no help to either of the early talents.
-Improved Blessing of Protection
BoP is rather useful, but three minutes or five minutes, you're still getting only one a fight. Not a bad place to put points, but not particularly good, either.
-Toughness
Now here's the way to get armor. Armor value from items is likely to be 6000 or so of an endgame paladin's ~7000 armor, so each point in Toughness will end up offering somewhere around four times the effectiveness of a point in IDA.
-Improved Blessing of Freedom
Generally, mobs won't be resnaring you before BoF cools down. And even if they do, it's very unlikely that they'd be doing it within the extra five seconds that this talent gives you.
-Blessing of Sanctuary
Take this and tanks will love you. AoEing mages, too, if you've the presence of mind to slap it on before they go. It has a variety of uses and is a significant difference to damage taken.
-Improved Seal of Fury
Specializes the paladin for an off-tanking role that mostly disappears in 40-man raids. Before then, however, this can certainly help.
-Shield Specialization, Holy Shield
Shield spec is not particularly great, adding a tiny amount of damage mitigation. Holy shield is much like ISoF - makes the paladin a superb off-tank and improves the paladin's ability to hold aggro on a single target. I am not certain that a paladin with Holy Shield could main-tank anything that isn't mostly undead, but I've observed Holy Shield paladins being able to hold a single target as well as any warrior.
-Reckoning
This talent would be absurdly powerful for warriors. As it is, it's moderately useful for paladins and really emphasizes the single-target off-tanking role that much of the Protection tree is built for.
-Improved Blessing of Salvation
You can always rebuff, right? Well...not really. In long fights, especially Onyxia, the five-minute standard blessing will certainly run out, occasioning mid-fight reblessing, which is burning mana and time you could be using to heal. Better than I originally thought.
-One-handed Weapon Specialization
Each point in here translates to roughly 1 more damage per hit. I'll let that speak for itself.
-Improved Seal of Justice, Repentance
Ugh. Given the way Seal of Justice works, all ISoJ does is rapidly make it so your target is immune to your stuns. And Repentance, the worst CC in the game, has precisely one use I can see - hitting a Ghost Wolf shaman running away with your flag in the Warsong Gulch BG. Doubt it's worth 31 points.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Okay, now that I've rambled: A strong Protection build for the late game, IMO, has to think about single target off-tanking as a complement to a warrior, as opposed to replacing a warrior. Hence, Consecration becomes less useful proportionately in the endgame, as you shouldn't need to be holding aggro on multiple targets - someone with better tools to do so is already tasked to do that.
I'd recommend the following build for consideration in that role.
Protection (24)
-Redoubt (5)
-Toughness (5)
-Improved Seal of Fury (5)
-Shield Specialization (5)
-Blessing of Sanctuary (1)
-Holy Shield (1)
-Improved Blessing of Salvation (2)
Holy (11)
-Spiritual Focus (5)
-Illumination (5)
-Divine Favor (1)
Retribution (16)
-Improved Blessing of Might (5)
-Two-Handed Weapon Specialization (5)
-Deflection (5)
-Seal of Command (1)
Katrin is built like so:
Retribution (30)
-Improved Blessing of Might (5)
-Improved Seal of the Crusader (5)
-Seal of Command (1)
-Deflection (5)
-Vengeance (5)
-Precision (3)
-Consecration (1)
-Conviction (5)
Holy (21)
-Spiritual Focus (5)
-Improved Holy Light (2)
-Revelation (2)
-Illumination (5)
-Divine Favor (1)
-Improved Seal of Righteousness (5)
-Sanctity Aura (1)
I initially built this way because of the demands of soloing. Paladins' minuscule DPS output almost demands a heavy investment into Retribution, so I knew I was definitely going for Vengeance/Conviction, which, while fairly weak by the standards of most other classes, is as good of a DPS combo as Paladins get. Consecration was gotten because I built Katrin mostly to main-tank for Ab, Griz, and Sommli; I needed to be able to main-tank, and paladins without Consecration simply can't do that, as they rapidly lose control of more mobs than one without it.
The big question about this build is why I picked Sanctity Aura over Blessing of Kings. A lot of people think that BoK is the no-brainer selection, and I would agree that BoK is, in general, superior to Sanctity. But there were sound logical reasons to select Sanctity, and I'll get to those in just a moment. Right now I'll just kick out my thoughts on the paladin trees and what I consider important talents.
Retribution
-Improved Blessing of Might, Benediction, Improved Seal of the Crusader, Two-handed Weapon Specialization
The first four talents of this tree are the worst dross I've seen in any talent tree of any class in the game. Not a single one is really any good, and anyone can pick any ten points to plug into these talents in whatever combination and not go seriously wrong. You could go 2-3-2-3 in all four of them and it would make very little difference from concentrating 5-5 in just two of them.
-Seal of Command
A big damage seal that's hard to get away from. Without this you really have very little in the way of DPS options for soloing. Less important in the endgame, but if you use a two-hander, still useful. It almost justifies ten points of junk prereqs all by itself, but only almost. If you're going this deep I'd get other goodies out of Ret.
-Deflection, Precision
I like this line for solo work and main-tanking. Not entirely certain how useful it is in end-game raids, but I'd imagine not very.
-Anticipation
With as much +def gear as there is in the game, this seems like a terrible waste of points to me. After all, +2 defense is +0.08% dodge/parry/block, and you can get 1% parry for the same point in Deflection. 1% chance of negating a hit versus 0.16% chance of negating and 0.08% chance of removing a negligible amount of damage doesn't seem like a fair trade.
-Vengeance/Conviction
This line is almost assuredly something you want for solo. For raids, not so sure. 10 man and 15 man, these two can contribute to significant damage. 40 man, you won't want to be doing damage at all, but those raids aren't very common.
-Improved Retribution Aura
Each point adds 1 damage to the best retribution aura paladins can get. One point. I think realizing a gain of <1 DPS is a very poor use for a talent point.
-Consecration
Critical for main-tanking. Somewhat useful as DPS in solo encounters, since there really isn't much else to use your mana on anyway. Use has to be very careful in raids, because Consecration is crowd control's nightmare: an AoE DoT, for pathetic damage, too.
-Blessing of Kings
Those of you who listen to me in guild chat know that I rag on BoK a lot. It's not that I don't see the value in it, but it's like back in the old D2 days when I was the only one who wasn't a huge fan of max Warmth (this was before spell timers and everyone eventually coming around to my view). Yes, it's useful, but not as useful as everyone makes it out to be. BoK's a nice blessing, but it's a "third blessing", because every class is going to have two blessings they want more than BoK. DPS classes will want Salvation and then Wisdom or Might. Warriors will want Sanctuary and Might, and possibly even Light. Salvation is 30% more damage for DPS classes, and similarly, Might adds far more attack power than Kings, while Sanctuary adds far more survivability than Kings. I don't underestimate its value, but I see its limitations clearly, as well.
Plus, the mere position of BoK has led to legions of pubby pallies constantly blessing my mage with Kings instead of Salv. It can be intensely frustrating.
Holy
-Improved Lay on Hands
Just no. A bonus that you can get, at most, every 40 minutes?
-Spiritual Focus
With Concentration, this is uninterruptible healing. Even by itself, it's great for solo and group situations.
-Improved Holy Light
Holy Light is a pretty good heal, with Blessing of Light factored in. This isn't a bad place for points, and should probably be maxed for serious raiders.
-Revelation
I like it, just because things can tend to go wrong more than once an hour. If I really need it, I'd like to have LoH and DI available, and a 40 minute cycle is far friendlier than a 60 minute one. Can be argued, though.
-Improved Blessing of Wisdom, Divine Wisdom
This line is as raid-oriented as any one can be. IBoW isn't too good; maxed, it only increases BoW from 30 mana every 5 sec. to 36 mana every 5 sec. But combined with the bonus 10% mana from DW, these two specialize the paladin more in the healing/buffing role that endgame requires.
-Illumination, Divine Favor
Really can't speak of these two separately. Without Divine Favor, Illumination is okay but not great. With Divine Favor, the free crit heal every two minutes is powerful indeed.
-Improved Flash of Light
Flash's mana cost isn't large anyway, and with BoL its efficiency is good enough. I don't see a compelling reason to take this talent, especially given how infrequently Flash will be used outside of Onyxia's Lair.
-Improved Concentration Aura
The uninterruptible-cast talents available right now from all classes already go up to at least 65% on their own, so an untalented Concentration can already bring them up to 100%. For skills without such supporting talents, 35% vs. 50% doesn't make much of a difference.
-Improved Seal of Light
Not good enough, especially given Seal of Light's infrequent use. You are almost always better off judging Seal of Wisdom, even when solo, since the mana you get from Wisdom can be converted into far more healing than Light will give you.
-Divine Strength
This talent is terribly misplaced in the holy tree, and not too useful besides. Vengeance/Conviction and a strong agility focus create more damage than piling on the strength and going for this talent.
-Improved Seal of Righteousness, Sanctity Aura, Holy Shock
This is the big line of Holy. ISoR is okay if you don't have Command, Sanc is pretty weak overall, and even Shock is nothing special. It's funny that the final talent of the Holy tree doesn't actually help you heal at all, but that's another issue entirely.
When, if ever, is just Sanctity a good choice? Especially over Blessing of Kings? The answer is: if you expect to solo a lot. It's difficult to overstate the anemia that characterizes paladin damage past 40 post SotC-nerf. It's critical to squeeze out every last bit of damage you can, and in that comparison, Sanctity is strictly superior to BoK. BoK does not and cannot provide the enhancement to damage that BoM does, especially if you've got IBoM. Sanctity can be used concurrent with BoM, and combined with SoC can provide a noticeable DPS increase.
Protection
Protection's a funny tree, because it's all about tanking, and yet the talent that lets paladins actually tank, Consecration, is deep into a completely different tree.
-Improved Devotion Aura
A lot of newbie paladins almost instinctively reach for this talent to improve their tanking ability. It's passive, and it's appealing. It's also bad. Five points buys a mere 184 armor at the highest level, which more or less doesn't help at all. Factor in how frequently you'll be running Fire Res aura at high levels, and....
-Redoubt
The better first-tier Protection talent. If you're tanking, you'll get crit a lot, and the blocking you get from this will probably amount to much more mitigation than you'd get from IDA. Even if you're not tanking, higher level things toss out the crits fairly regularly. Of course, in endgame you won't be hit by much in the way of physical damage, but that's no help to either of the early talents.
-Improved Blessing of Protection
BoP is rather useful, but three minutes or five minutes, you're still getting only one a fight. Not a bad place to put points, but not particularly good, either.
-Toughness
Now here's the way to get armor. Armor value from items is likely to be 6000 or so of an endgame paladin's ~7000 armor, so each point in Toughness will end up offering somewhere around four times the effectiveness of a point in IDA.
-Improved Blessing of Freedom
Generally, mobs won't be resnaring you before BoF cools down. And even if they do, it's very unlikely that they'd be doing it within the extra five seconds that this talent gives you.
-Blessing of Sanctuary
Take this and tanks will love you. AoEing mages, too, if you've the presence of mind to slap it on before they go. It has a variety of uses and is a significant difference to damage taken.
-Improved Seal of Fury
Specializes the paladin for an off-tanking role that mostly disappears in 40-man raids. Before then, however, this can certainly help.
-Shield Specialization, Holy Shield
Shield spec is not particularly great, adding a tiny amount of damage mitigation. Holy shield is much like ISoF - makes the paladin a superb off-tank and improves the paladin's ability to hold aggro on a single target. I am not certain that a paladin with Holy Shield could main-tank anything that isn't mostly undead, but I've observed Holy Shield paladins being able to hold a single target as well as any warrior.
-Reckoning
This talent would be absurdly powerful for warriors. As it is, it's moderately useful for paladins and really emphasizes the single-target off-tanking role that much of the Protection tree is built for.
-Improved Blessing of Salvation
You can always rebuff, right? Well...not really. In long fights, especially Onyxia, the five-minute standard blessing will certainly run out, occasioning mid-fight reblessing, which is burning mana and time you could be using to heal. Better than I originally thought.
-One-handed Weapon Specialization
Each point in here translates to roughly 1 more damage per hit. I'll let that speak for itself.
-Improved Seal of Justice, Repentance
Ugh. Given the way Seal of Justice works, all ISoJ does is rapidly make it so your target is immune to your stuns. And Repentance, the worst CC in the game, has precisely one use I can see - hitting a Ghost Wolf shaman running away with your flag in the Warsong Gulch BG. Doubt it's worth 31 points.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Okay, now that I've rambled: A strong Protection build for the late game, IMO, has to think about single target off-tanking as a complement to a warrior, as opposed to replacing a warrior. Hence, Consecration becomes less useful proportionately in the endgame, as you shouldn't need to be holding aggro on multiple targets - someone with better tools to do so is already tasked to do that.
I'd recommend the following build for consideration in that role.
Protection (24)
-Redoubt (5)
-Toughness (5)
-Improved Seal of Fury (5)
-Shield Specialization (5)
-Blessing of Sanctuary (1)
-Holy Shield (1)
-Improved Blessing of Salvation (2)
Holy (11)
-Spiritual Focus (5)
-Illumination (5)
-Divine Favor (1)
Retribution (16)
-Improved Blessing of Might (5)
-Two-Handed Weapon Specialization (5)
-Deflection (5)
-Seal of Command (1)