Yes, it's exciting to get into the Beta and be able to check out the new class, the new race, and the new continent, but the price you pay is that things can get really, really buggy. This latest build causes the game to crash very frequently. This is not a complaint. The whole point of a Beta is to see what causes the bugs to pop up and then smash them with a hammer (a programming hammer.)
The newest change to my main's spec (Prot Paladin, in case you had forgotten) is that Mastery finally functions as something more than Block Rating. Now, I know a lot of people complain that it was boring through Cataclysm, but I'm actually ok with Mastery being on a simplicity level comparable to other secondary stats. Still, the big problem for Mastery was that it was flat - if you capped it, it became worthless. Admittedly, the same can be said for a lot of Masteries, but unlike, say, Strikes of Opportunity, Divine Bulwark can cap in existing gear because of the way that Block interacts with Dodge and Parry currently.
By separating out the Block roll from the Avoidance rolls, you make it highly unlikely anyone's going to be Block capped, because you'd need the full 100% from Mastery alone and the more dodge and parry you get, the less exciting it is to get another 1% block.
However, the thing that was so good about Protection Paladins' Mastery in Cataclysm was that you could cap it. Now that block capping has been castrated, Paladins needed something else to make Mastery worth picking up again.
And that's where Bastion of Light comes in. There's a new effect on Shield of the Righteous that causes you to stack up a buff called "Bastion of Light," which scales with your Mastery (don't worry, Mastery also still provides Block Chance) and stacks up to 5 times, increasing the healing done by your self-targetted Words of Glory.
I haven't gone into the math of it very much, and in fact I've only run one dungeon on the Beta, but I understand that as they buffed Shield of the Righteous' defensive effect, other finishers (pretty much just Word of Glory, because what else do we use?) started to feel really lackluster. Now, you'll get a super-charged Word of Glory once you've stacked up Bastion of Light.
There are a couple ways to interpret how to use this. One is that you want to take advantage of the buff as much as you can, making every 6th finisher a Word of Glory. That's a fine idea, but I actually think that the best use is a solution to the whole question of AM (the acronym I'll be using for active mitigation): namely, is it rotational or reactionary?
Ever since they made Shield of the Righteous into an AM ability, I struggled with how the hell I was supposed to use it. Just hit it every time I can? Or save it for some big hit? As I've mentioned before, the problem I have with AM is that it's hard to be a proactive, defense-based tank when your enemies aren't telegraphing their moves. If Boss McLootman uses "Super Punch" every once in a while, certainly I'm supposed to hit my AM button right before it goes off. But if I have no way of knowing when Super Punch is going to go off, I'm either going to hold off on using it so long that I wind up taking way more damage than I need to (and sometimes miss the punch anyway) or I'm going to find that when he does use Super Punch, I don't have the resources to actually use it.
By tying Shield of the Righteous to a buff for Word of Glory, we can have our cake and eat it too. My proposed strategy (and this is really just a strategy - intricate knowledge of a fight can probably allow more intelligent use of these) is that you want to hit Shield of the Righteous rotationally. You probably want to pool up to 5 Holy Power so you can get back up to 3 in a pinch. You hit Shield of the Righteous every time you get to 5 Holy Power, and if that means wasting a few stacks of Bastion of Light, it's not the end of the world. After all, if you're not taking too much damage, the it will be an over-heal anyway.
However, let's say you're on... Zon'ozz, for example (the boss my guild is stuck on. Yes, I know, kind of sad, shush.) While he does start to pound pretty hard on you as his buff stacks, the healers can generally get you through that - plus, it's physical damage, so your ShotR will help with it. However, the really painful part is when he hits you with Psychic Drain. Even if you've hit Guardian of Ancient Kings or Glyphed Divine Protection, that's still going to leave you down a quarter or a third of your health (and it happens too often to have a cooldown ready for all of them.) This is a perfect opportunity, then, to hit your super-powered Word of Glory. If you've been good about stacking to 5 Holy Power, you can very quickly get your full-powered WoG off, and your healers will have a much easier time topping you off.
A lot of people have been talking about putting the overhealing absorb shield back on Word of Glory for Prot. Certainly, it would make it a more powerful ability, but I actually think that the design as is makes a lot of sense.
One of the problems I always had with AM is that it seemed like you could get in a position where you felt that you needed to do nothing for a while just in case you needed to save the resources for later. It's the whole "Use it now and risk wasting it on trivial damage or wait to use it and risk wasting its cooldown" thing that I hate about the current Holy Shield. This offers a great solution - either way, you're still doing something, but smart tanks will know when it's time to shoot off the super-powered WoG and when it's time to save it for a rainy day.
No comments:
Post a Comment