I’m not looking forward to losing bulwark of light. Every prot paladin is gett 3x bulwark because it is so good – unless they stack other traits for damage. Absorbs are just such a strong tool for tanking, especially when they only do a partial absorb like ignore pain to smooth out incoming damage.
Light of the Protector(LoP), being a reaction based spell, feels really bad being on the GCD. If it was off the GCD I would be happy with LoP.
My suggestion going forward would make LoP a partial absorb and remove it from the GCD. Have it scale with mastery, be able to crit, and have its cooldown reduced by haste so it doesn’t fall off.
In general, I think core tank abilities should be focused not on healing but on smooth out the damage to make healer’s lives easier. I think the best mechanic to accomplish this goal is through absorbs for two reasons. 1) It’s a system already present in the game. 2) It also shows up on meters which would give tanks a metric to compare with one another. (I know meters aren’t all there is. But an imperfect metric is > no metric).
What do you folks think about this suggestion? Do you have any of your own to make to change prot paladins going forward? I look forward to reading about them.
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I think it would be great to have LotP off of the GCD. And in Shadowlands if we are to retain something of the Azerite trait system combining Bulwark of the Light with LotP would be cool and make sense thematically.
I mostly PvP (Warmode, random BGs) on my Prot. I would love it if they reversed the healing nerf to LotP in PvP. I can see it staying in effect for Hand of the Protector in PvP since their stated reason for the nerf was Prot off-healing in PvP was too strong. But as it stands now both versions are nerfed to 60% in PvP which doesn’t make sense if their goal was to balance off-healing.
I disagree with changing Light of the Protector to some type of absorb. In Legion it was not on the GCD and you could have 2 charges. I do miss pally tanking from Legion because our heal was not on the GCD though, this goes for all tanks. I miss frenzied regen not being on the GCD as well. As for Bulwark of Light, in my opinion, you do not really need to run it x3, x2 is fine unless you need more gear. While it does help out tremendously " more so in mythic +" its not the end all be all and not a must have for raid tanking.
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The reasoning that it should be an absorb, specifically a partial absorb, is because it feels better to heal. It doesn’t feel good as a healer to be casting a big heal only to be sniped by the tank. I didn’t know there was two charges in legion that would be a nice improvement as well.
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Just revert it to the legion version including removal from the GCD.
Don’t fix what isn’t broken.
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I don’t know the details of the legion design unfortunately.
How would it scale with Mastery? Mastery only affects Consecration, Block and Attack Power.
How would a Crit Absorb work? Just 2x the Shield?
There are many different ways you could have it scale. The easiest would be just mastery times coefficient = absorb multiplier. Picking the right coefficient would be important for balance.
As for crit, yes you could have it crit at 2x the shield or whatever the normal crit multiplier for heals is.
Or you could have it not scale with secondaries but it is important that is does scale and doesn’t fall off as we progress into an expansion. So you could have it scale with strength or stam – I would prefer to see tanks stacking stam like in the BC days so it stacking with stam would be cool in my opinion.
I believe I misunderstood the original post. I’m not in favor of LotP becoming an absorb instead of a heal. I thought the idea was to add a partial absorb to the heal as a way of retaining some of Bulwark of the Light in Shadowlands.
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Better change, put back mop sacred shield and get rid of this janky heal that either heals for 10 percent of hp or full heals when it crits.
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I did means an absorb and no heal. But a mix of absorb and heal is a cool idea too. Why would you prefer a mix over a straight absorb?
I don’t like the idea of a reduction in our ability to heal. Especially in PvP, having an instant heal on a short cool down which can heal to full with wings is nice.
So if it’s to be altered, I’d rather it be something adding to the heal verses removing the heal.
I get your meaning. Because healing >> absorbs in lots of situations and we wouldn’t want to lose that while others keep it. But I would propose that all tanks lose healing in favor of ways to smooth out incoming damage.
It makes healing more enjoyable – you actually get to perform your role. And I think it would be better for pvp (again only if all tanks were on board) because tanks couldn’t just live forever they could be beat down and would rely on healers. But again it would only make sense to do this if you took away everyone ability to self heal.
Taking everyone’s healing away would be tricky because you want people to be able to quest without long down times and I think switching back to a model of eating and drinking while questing would be bad. A good example of a spell that does this well ( no combat heal but good out of combat heal for questing) is victory rush. Where you only get the heal if you kill something.
Take LotP off the GCD, honestly make HotP the baseline spell and replace the talent slot with Bulwark of Light. Happy Paladins.
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