It’s apparent that people really don’t understand the impact that each of these tier sets actually have in real play.
Season 3’s set bonus does great damage, that’s true, but getting the most out of your damage depends entirely on staying in your empowered consecration, which in m+ you simply cannot guarantee. There are too many events that will force you to move out of your consecration, even with the increased radius. And the fact that so much of Paladin’s defensive ability is dependent on which pixel they’re standing in needs to be looked at.
Also, understand that the damage you get out of the 4pc is more dependent on your ilvl than how you play. Tanks use our CDs on cooldown/when needed; you’re not holding anything to burst in your empowered consecration, you’re sending your CDs when you need them.
Season 2’s set is basically just a simple damage buff to Avenger’s Shield and Judgment. The 4pc proc rate was so low that it didn’t realistically change your gameplay at all, you just did a little more damage. The healing was negligible and contributed nothing to gameplay. It’s boring, and could be replaced by blizzard just outright buffing our damage by a flat percentage.
Even if the healing were tuned high enough to be noticeable, trickle healing isn’t actually very effective for Paladins. The healer should be providing that and if we really need healing WoG does the trick (In fact WoG grows stronger the larger the health deficit).
Season 1 provides constant 5% parry chance which translates to a lot of damage outright being ignored in m+ pulls. On top of that you give yourself and a melee buddy 6% Vers all the time. Realistically, 6% extra damage for a DPS is going to contribute more damage than the strongest tier set would ever give a tank. Not to mention that 6% Vers is going to reduce incoming damage enough that you will likely save your healer some globals throughout a key.
So, Season 2’s set - boring, a slight damage increase, nothing more. Season 3 - a decent chunk of damage, but requires you to stay in consecration at all times which isn’t feasible. Season 1 - it’s up all the time and sure that’s boring, but it will have a tangible impact on the outgoing damage and survivability of your group, and that’s powerful.
Vs a target dummy, or in a simulation, season 3 tier is by far the best option at the current time on paper in theory, that’s why some think it’s the best choice.
in real scenarios… where movement is required the vast majority of the time, season 3’s tier is actually very bad in practice.
bad tanks will take unnecessary damage, failing mechanics, just so they can sit in their empowered consecration and parse, then come here and claim it’s the best choice.
good tanks will be forced to move out of their empowered consecration, for mechanics and proper movement, meaning the season 3 tier provides little benefit.
season 1 tier doesn’t hinder your movement or positioning, so it’s better in practice.
blizzard already said they’re going to buff old tier sets to bring them in line with the others, so season 1 tier will probably give MORE than 6% vers to you & ally, and possibly more than 5% parry.
not even worth mentioning season 2… hahahahahahaahaha
most players know the correct choice, praise be the poll, for it will deliver us to the light!
yeah, its horrible, there’s no prot paladins in top IOs, its not like the season is getting dominated by vengeance and prot pallys you know…this tier set sucks!!! give me back season 1 to compete with all the best tier sets from other tanks…yeah, with season 1 tierset we’re going to beat season 2 druid tierset…for sure.
I’m okay with season 1 winning. I’ll be running with a windwalker in 90% of my keys and the vers buff will greatly benefit him. The defensive benefit is okay as well.
Since we can already achieve 50 haste 40 mastery right now, I imagine our sum of stats will be very attractive in s4 (as will all specs but yeah vers buff from s1 tier should play into it nice enough).
I really like the s3 gameplay though, and am surprised at how unpopular it is. I know at times consecration can get a bit obnoxious but a big part of the skill expression IMO is the ‘gather’ and ‘plant’ routine you do as prot pal in m+.
It’s really not ‘bad tanks will plant and take extra dmg and die’ and ‘good tanks will move out of it when they have to and lose the buff’.
It’s more like ‘bad tanks will either lose focus/track of their empowered buffs, and place it at the wrong time wrong place causing them to either lose it or stand in a bad spot to keep it.’
and
‘Good tanks will plan their pulls around their first empowered cons opener burst and also realise that there becomes a nice flow and pace to the 5 judgement pace where you get 1 full length empowered cons, 1 full length normal cons. Rinse and repeat.’
It actually makes consecration feel like something nice within the spec rather than an annoying maintenance buff in my opinion.
I’m curious how they will buff S1 set (assuming it wins) to be on the same power level as the rest of the sets.
Defensively, its pretty solid. 10% DR from S3 is really good, but 5% parry and 6% vers kept up is pretty nice as well.
Offensively, 6% vers is really quite weak. Sure, you get to apply it to someone else as well, but the damage prot pally did with that bonus was not stellar.
I love the concept of the set, as it feels VERY group centric and good to play with, but compared to the damage the other two sets can put out, S1 will need some sort of big damage buff to compete.
its as strong as the others, it just didnt have a “big details bar” despite substituting low value buttons for stronger ones like judgement and shield, especially if you stack crit. so its overal gain is hidden. but ya theres no point all 3 tiers are ultimately problematic, if s1 is the play then frankly its w/e