[Macawber]

As far as giving paladins a single target taunt, I posted this on the official suggestion forum earlier: World of Warcraft (English) Forums -> Single target taunt for paladins

The short version: let all tanks have a generic melee range single target taunt on a 10 second cooldown, plus one special taunt on a longer cooldown: Righteous Defense, Death Grip, Challenging Roar, Mocking Blow/Challenging Shout.

[Knaughty]

Source: JacenSolo raid stacking is rarely due to certain buffs being amazing or certain classes being OP. it's usually due to some element with the encounter that some classes can handle better than others. ie; mass aoe damage that chain heal is very good against, lots of aoe damage on the melee but the casters are free to go wild, etc

That hasn't been my experience in Sunwell.

Brutallus was the fight for my guild where we had to hugely min-max the raid.

We were doing huge mathcraft posts on our guild forums to work out how much DPS things like "Imp JotC" and "BoW" being up due to presence of a Ret pally were bringin to raid. Did MS/BF cover it's personal DPS sacrifice via improved raid DPS (yes, so long as you brought enough hunters). One hunter has to be specced survival, and has to re-gem their entire gear-set. Brute remains the only progression kill in the entirety of TBC where we needed a Ret paladin to hit the DPS requirement. Etc, etc.

At the same time we were having to theorycraft tank survivability to the utmost as well. One hunter has to bring a bird-pet, one lock has to be Affliction, you have to very carefully work out the +/- AP from CoR vs Demo + Screech, etc, etc to combine max DPS with min damage.

To continue using 2.4-era retribution as an example: What's worse about this is that because such a large proportion of Ret DPS/utility at Brute is due to the nature of the fight (Stand and deliver utter maximum DPS for 6 minutes while not moving unless you get burn) it fails to hold it's own anywhere where you're moving, not mana constrained, or DPSing multiple targets. IE: Every other boss in the zone you'd rather have a rogue or fury warrior.

The other aspect that removes "stack ZOMG OP classes" is the design principle change between 2.4 and 3.0 re the "DPS penaly" for being "utility DPS". Come 3.0, all DPS provide some utility - even rogues. And even the absolute highest "utility" specs (SP/Boomkin/Ret) can have their stuff covered by other classes. AND the design goal is for them to be only 2-300 DPS behind "pure" DPS. In 2.4, Ret is more like 800 DPS behind the rogues, and SPs are literally half the DPS of a good hunter.

[Dots]

I agree with pretty much everything that Knaughty said in post #64.

Source: JacenSolo having a certain amount of 1 class for certain buffs really only applies to shaman and paladins. which I think is what blizz intended originally. having 3 paladins and 3 shaman is amazing though, and it makes sense that you would want to stack heavy raid support classes as opposed to say rogues, warlocks, hunters, etc

It was intended in the old design where hybrids were worse than pure classes and raid utility was punished with a worse personal performance, but that is a thing of the past. In 3.0 it should be possible to have every buff and debuff in a 25 man even if you only have 1 person of class X, that is not really the case with paladins.

[2ndNin]

I am still of the opinion that Paladins need / want:

a) Single target taunt
b) Move HoJ interrupt to something else
c) Hand of Spell Warding as a solution to spell damage / fears (take the 2 hands off forebearance please).

Mitigation etc needs to be pretty much equal between Warriors / Paladins, so if we are the block tank we need block that matches the scaling potential of avoidance, if we balanced then we need to make it work correctly rather than the strange situation we are in now.

Hand of Spell Warding really does seem to be the solution to the magic damage, fear, raid utility thing.

Sanctuary would be nice as an addon to other blessings or as a self buff.

[Bokur]

How about simply a change in the mechanics of RD - When cast targetting a mob, it taunts only that mob, when cast targetting an ally it behaves as before.?

[Nicki]

Source: Lore This is a collection of what I feel are the last few tweaks the Protection Paladin needs to be "finished." This is based largely on my experiences in Beta, both as a tank and as a DPS. Mitigation I'm only going to mention this briefly, as Blizzard has stated several times already that they're working on another mitigation pass. Prot Paladins are ever so slightly on the low end of the mitigation spectrum at the moment. We only have 6% built-in physical damage reduction from Improved Righteous Fury, compared to the Warrior's 10% from Defensive Stance and the Druid's 12% (15%?) from Protector of the Pack. If Block is meant to be how we are to make up that difference, our Block needs to be increased by a fair bit, as we barely break even with Warriors in overall damage reduction from blocking. We're also falling behind a fair bit (along with Druids, I believe) on the spell mitigation front. We simply can't stand up to Death Knights and Warriors against caster mobs, especially where Spell Reflect is available. I like seeing Spell Reflect usable more frequently, and Death Knights have suffered through enough nerfs already, so it seems the best option here is to boost Prot Paladin (and possibly Feral Druid) spell mitigation a little. Personally, if we're to be the "block tank", I'd like to see some portion of our block value applied to spell damage somehow. Reckoning Wrath thus far is shaping up to be the final nail in Reckoning's coffin. With no real threat modifier on physical damage, internal cooldowns on Seal of Wisdom and Seal of Light, and Seal of Vengeance/Corruption becoming our primary tanking seal, extra melee swings really aren't that useful anymore. They're definitely not worth 5 talent points for a 10% chance on hit. Something needs to be done with Reckoning to make it worth consideration, or it will be dropped from the Prot Paladin build entirely. It doesn't have to be anything amazing; a good fix might be to just make the extra swings do Holy damage. Taunting Righteous Defense is an awesome tool that works well until you have to work with another tank. The Paladin's lack of a single-target precision taunt requires a substantial amount of extra coordination out of Warrior, Druid, and Death Knight tanks working with a Protection Paladin. Worse, it's nearly impossible for a Protection Paladin to work properly with another Protection Paladin in multi-target situations like trash packs, or even boss encounters like Four Horsemen where tanks have to taunt bosses off of each other. One Paladin ends up with everything, while the other just whacks away trying to build enough threat to peel the mob they're trying to get back. The end result: Prot Paladins are annoying to work with. We need a single-target taunt of some sort, even if it's on a long cooldown or shares cooldowns with Righteous Defense. Righteous Fury Warriors don't have to rebuff Defensive Stance, Druids don't have to rebuff Bear Form, Death Knights don't have to rebuff Frost Presence, Paladins shouldn't have to rebuff Righteous Fury. The fact that it's dispellable occasionally causes problems as well (first few packs in Blood Furnace, final boss of Old Hillsbrad). I'd really like to see this made more along the lines of Shadowform or Hunter aspects, as an undispellable "Lasts until cancelled" buff. I'd even take just a duration increase at this point. I'm tired of losing aggro because my 30-minute buff wore off in the middle of a fight and I didn't notice. Blessings The Paladin class has 3 unique buffs that stack with everything (Wisdom, Kings, Sanctuary). Two will likely be considered required for min/max progression (Wisdom and Kings), and the third (Sanctuary) is a second blessing from the Prot tree which will not likely be castable in many situations (as the Prot Pally will probably be the one with Kings as well). Holy Paladins sacrifice a lot to pick up Kings (at best, they lose 5% spell crit). Ret Paladins can pick up Kings fairly easily, but will probably want to buff Improved Might instead. This is problematic for raid composition. My suggestion would be to make Blessing of Wisdom not stack with Mana Spring Totem (they're nearly identical in function), and to slightly rework both Blessing of Kings and Mark of the Wild to be identical -- Add the armor and possibly the resistance bonus to Kings (resistance bonus doesn't stack with auras anyway, so that might not be necessary), and make Mark of the Wild 2% stats baseline with a 10% bonus at full Imp MotW. Direction When Not Tanking The Protection Paladin seems to be somewhat torn at the moment as to what its role is supposed to be when you just don't need another tank. Warriors, Druids, and Death Knights are all being pointed towards DPS as the non-tanking utility, largely because it serves the new "Tanks as DPS" direction the game is taking quite well. Protection Paladins are being mostly pointed that way, with our two new offensive spells and all-around DPS increase, but we still have one talent deep in the tree that gives us a Spellpower bonus from Stamina as well as increased effect of critical heals. We're currently taking it for the little bit of threat increase it gives, but the healing bonus seems misguided. Having Prot Paladins off-healing simply doesn't fit well in the overall scheme of things. We need to be put firmly in an off-DPS role when not tanking.

Righteous Defense:

As said the biggest flaw is it taunts 3 targets off one player this makes for VERY fun situations when say a warlock overaggros a void sentinel and the adds spawn out of consecration.. 1 goes for a healer 2 go for a warlock you taunt off the healer and get 1 add so much for AoE taunting. (yes i know that should never happen but it did)

So yes a single target taunt is needed badly especially if raid groups are to have 2 prot paladin tanks (e.g. having 2 hard hitting mobs stuck on one protadin and having the other taunt them off doesn't help it just brings a different protadin to their death.

Charge:

The biggest time i really hated not having charge/intercept was Al'ar. I could not do the fight on the platforms unless i was the third tank so while you can do Al'ar with 2 warriors and one feral/protadin You can not do the fight with 2 paladins 1 warrior. Inconvenient and alot of wipes having to use lesser able tanks...


Secondary role:

I hate that suggesting paladins secondary role is to heal is how it has gone about...The fact is 9/10 fights you need more dps not the extra tank. Prot healing isn't as weak as it was in TBC but we have no regen and not a big enough pool to cope with MT healing.

I'd like to see prot paladins go to the DPS with sword+board (Like Bolvar Fordragon??) but currently this design is not possible as any prot paladin knows if your not being hit you have no mana regen.

Mitigation:

I see this as the biggest offset especially for prot paladins who want to make it in a min-max guild. The 4% difference only keeps increasing as the damage intake gets bigger and bigger. Already its a good 1000-2000 Effective health difference.

Stamina?

On ptr atleast i notice i have 400+- less health? due to the reduction to 12% increased stamina (from 16%).. Base paladin health should be buffed then atleast to compensate for the gunslot warriors have (alternatively they could just make librams not so crap).

A paladin who is tanking will perform well, a paladin off tanking is still somewhat of a joke unless there is a hateful strike mechanic. A paladin not tanking is probably just as useless as ever...:d

Also waiting for that increased reason to use a melee tank weapon!!!

[Lore]

Regarding "no mana regen" - we've got Divine Plea. It works great for off-DPS, but if we're healing we'll have to spam it every cooldown, and with a 15 second 50% healing debuff that's not exactly ideal for off-healing.

We have no reason to use anything but a tanking weapon unless you desperately need another 40-50 TPS. (You don't).

Regarding taunt: How does something like this sound? 40-second cooldown, taunts a single target from melee range, places both itself and Righteous Defense on a 40-second cooldown (likewise, RD puts it on a 15-second cooldown). In 99 out of 100 situations it's inferior to Righteous Defense, but in that one situation where you really just need to grab that one guy, we're not impotent.

[Dots]

Something I had already posted elsewhere but wanted to throw it in here as well:

Give paladins a 5yd melee range taunt, 10 sec CD. The glyph for this spell increases chance to hit by 8% like it does for the other 3 classes.
Change Righteous Defense to 'forces enemies to attack you for 6 seconds' instead of a real taunt effect, increase CD to 30 seconds. Maybe have the glyph add the taunt effect back to it.

[2ndNin]

Just shove it on the same 10s cooldown as RD with the same range and have them lock each other out, we are still a 1 taunt class but with the option of single target "get over here" taunt and RD "Well Mr Lock that'll learn you good" functionality. In most cases we just use RD, on others we use the single target version, a long cooldown makes very little difference in any scenario I can think of.

[phaze]

Source: Lore Regarding taunt: How does something like this sound? 40-second cooldown, taunts a single target from melee range, places both itself and Righteous Defense on a 40-second cooldown (likewise, RD puts it on a 15-second cooldown). In 99 out of 100 situations it's inferior to Righteous Defense, but in that one situation where you really just need to grab that one guy, we're not impotent.

That'd fix the gap, but it does require some complicated cross-ability cooldown management. Not sure if the devs would like that; they've been moving away from chained cooldowns on base abilities whenever possible, especially if the cooldowns are different lengths.

You also have to account for ability bloat: it'd be a second taunt button to cover up the problems of the first taunt button. Same reason I'd like to just have all true taunts be unavoidable, and drop Mocking Blow from Warriors completely. Yes, there are other uses for MB outside of taunt resists; however Warriors can live without MB, to make taunt-style abilities more consistent across the tank classes.

Having said that, the devs have gone to the trouble of allowing MB in Def Stance, for 3.0. So my approach is just as unlikely to be adopted at this time.

[MontanaTaur]

Source: Knaughty • Tree-form buff is the same (slightly worse, actauuly) than Improved Devotion Aura from a prot pally. • Moonkin Aura is covered by Swift Retribution, Elemental Oath and Demonic Pact. I grant you, Moonkin Aura is a lot simpler. • Leader of the Pack is covered by Rampage. • Improved LotP is a 2% heal every 6 seconds, at best. Very "meh".

Just a quick minor correction to this - Improved LotP is 4% if both points are in the talent. However, it is still very MEH indeed. And I don't think it should really be figured heavily in these raid buff discussions, because a LOT of ferals will likely be passing on the improved version.

I currently have the talent on live, and I intend to take it for leveling, but I have not been able to squeeze it into either a tank OR dps build for level 80. Compared to other talents, it just isn't worth the 2 points.

[Norrath]

The major problem with having off-healing as your role while not tanking is that healing only needs to be sufficient -- once you're there, extra healing does jack.

Extra DPS, though -- there's no "cap" on how much DPS you want. The more DPS you have, the faster the boss goes down.

[Darksend]

Source: MontanaTaur Just a quick minor correction to this - Improved LotP is 4% if both points are in the talent. However, it is still very MEH indeed. And I don't think it should really be figured heavily in these raid buff discussions, because a LOT of ferals will likely be passing on the improved version. I currently have the talent on live, and I intend to take it for leveling, but I have not been able to squeeze it into either a tank OR dps build for level 80. Compared to other talents, it just isn't worth the 2 points.

agreed, i have my spec for 70 and 80 planned out and neither of them have ILOtP, it will be amazing for leveling so i will be respecing once northrend opens. the feral tree is just to bloated atm with having to spend so many points in resto.

it also provides 8% mana at 2 points but again most of us ferals will not have it.

[Alent]

Source: MontanaTaur Just a quick minor correction to this - Improved LotP is 4% if both points are in the talent. However, it is still very MEH indeed. And I don't think it should really be figured heavily in these raid buff discussions, because a LOT of ferals will likely be passing on the improved version. I currently have the talent on live, and I intend to take it for leveling, but I have not been able to squeeze it into either a tank OR dps build for level 80. Compared to other talents, it just isn't worth the 2 points.

4% of your max HP once every 6 seconds is supposed to "mimic" shield block. I don't see why you'd skip it.

[Darksend]

Source: Alent 4% of your max HP once every 6 seconds is supposed to "mimic" shield block. I don't see why you'd skip it.

simply way to many other better talents and because of there it is in the tree. you have 1 free point to spend below 25 points as a filler but that far down, any feral who does not have naturalist is severaly gimping themselves so thats 10 more points right there.

also most of the time it would be pure overheal anyway.

edit: i dont want to derail this thread so can we move this over to here please 3.0 feral tanking spec

[MontanaTaur]

Source: Alent 4% of your max HP once every 6 seconds is supposed to "mimic" shield block. I don't see why you'd skip it.

Hmm, I hadn't thought of it that way. You may be right. In most of the builds I have played around with, I had trouble squeezing it in.

I think I will reconsider my planned level 80 build.

[Norrath]

Source: Alent 4% of your max HP once every 6 seconds is supposed to "mimic" shield block. I don't see why you'd skip it.

Agreed. 4% health every six seconds is nothing to scoff at.

I can't make a decent Feral build either, though. :/ Especially after the Swipe changes.

[Knaughty]

Source: Lore Regarding taunt: How does something like this sound? 40-second cooldown, taunts a single target from melee range, places both itself and Righteous Defense on a 40-second cooldown (likewise, RD puts it on a 15-second cooldown). In 99 out of 100 situations it's inferior to Righteous Defense, but in that one situation where you really just need to grab that one guy, we're not impotent.

Remove the complicated CD mechanics and just give it a flat 30-40 sec CD and we're golden. Oh, and isn't RD 10 seconds now? And Mocking Blow / Taunt don't share CD for warriors - it would be nice to have a backup for the times RD doesn't stick.

The other good suggestion made was:
• Target mob: Single Target
• Target player: AE.

I would say that I don't really feel like RD is a full-featured AE taunt anyway. 3 mobs != AE. That said, I prefer taunting 3 mobs to 1 mob, and don't feel the need for a "taunt everything" button. I have Consecrate to do that

[Nicki]

nope RD is definately 15 sec cooldown...

I prefer taunting one cleaving mob as supposed to 3...(Twins trash sounds fun!?)

[phaze]

Source: Nicki nope RD is definately 15 sec cooldown...

RD has a 10s cooldown on Beta/PTR.