Righteous Fury Mechanics == OP Paladin Threat (1k+ TPS)

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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The tooltip for Righteous Fury specifies the following:
Increases the threat generated by your Holy attacks by 60%. Lasts 30 min.

In practice, however, Righteous Fury increases the threat of ALL spells in the Holy school, such that it affects the threat generated by blessings, heals, etc, which vastly improves the threat potential of Protection Paladins, as shown in the two videos linked below.

A very notable property of Righteous Fury is that it uses the same Aura as Defensive Stance.
SPELL_AURA_MOD_THREAT
The only difference is that Righteous Fury only affects Holy spells, whereas Defensive stance affects physical spells.

Brief History of Righteous Fury:
Righteous Fury was implemented in Patch 1.9.0 “The Gates of Ahn’Qiraj” as part of the Paladin overhaul, replacing the Seal of Fury ability as a threat generation ability.
For the remainder of WoW Vanilla’s lifespan, Righteous Fury has only had two updates.
Patch 1.9.3: "Greater Blessing of Sanctuary - Paladins with Righteous Fury will now generate extra threat correctly when this Blessing procs. "
Patch 1.10.0: " Righteous Fury - Righteous Fury will now always generate the correct amount of additional threat on all holy damage. There were some abilities, such as Retribution Aura, where this did not work correctly. "

In TBC and afterwards, Righteous Fury’s tooltip was updated to include all Holy Spells, rather than just Holy Attacks. It’s as if the “bug” was later adapted into the ability description.

Is this a bug?
Yes. In a recent conversation between a member of the Classic Paladin community and Kevin Jordan, former Game Designer at Blizzard who designed nearly all the spells for all the classes available in vanilla World of Warcraft, it was confirmed that Righteous Fury was only supposed to affect Holy attacks, and was therefore a bug.

Q: “was RF supposed to boost threat from everything and not just holy dmg abilities?”
Kevin: “Holy attacks only.”
Q: “ok so then this is a bug?”
Kevin: “If it’s modifying greater blessing threat generation, yes.”

However, later in the conversation, another paladin community member brought up that Righteous Fury and Defensive Stance both use SPELL_AURA_MOD_THREAT , to which Kevin replied,
“Yes, it makes sense that Defensive Stance and Righteous Fury would be built the same but there may have been (or should have been) a script attached to Righteous Fury to limit it to attacks only. The warrior doesn’t have as many buffs as the paladin which is the reason the tooltips read the way they do to prevent that awkward paladin play pattern. Something we may have missed back then though. We also have #nochanges to contend with.”

It’s a bug, but should it be left untouched?
Clearly, it was not intentional for non-damaging Holy Spells to be affected by Righteous Fury, however, as Kevin stated, the bug may never have been resolved for the remainder of Vanilla WoW’s history. It is very likely that this bug may never have been fixed because it never became an issue, as no one discovered this unintentional mechanic until WoW Classic’s release, 15 years later.

Looking at Defensive Stance as a precedent, since it affects the threat generated by Battle Shout, it would make sense for Righteous Fury to affect the threat generated by similar abilities such as Greater Blessing of Kings because RF and DS both use the same aura SPELL_AURA_MOD_THREAT.

Although not intentional, by virtue of being a mechanic/bug that was left untampered with for the lifespan of WoW Vanilla up until the launch of The Burning Crusade, it is my personal opinion that the Righteous Fury mechanic should remain in Classic in its current state under the #nochanges rule, regardless of it being a bug.

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It shouldn’t be changed.

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No changes. If this makes them them the best tanks well lol at warriors.

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They still have mana issues the keep them tanking long fights.

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I’d say it should be compared to the 1.12 reference build.

I recall Blizzard nerfing the threat generation from Greater Blessing spam because we were abusing it on phase 1 Nefarian.

but if it’s legit to how it was in 1.12, then that’s how it should stay.

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Without a taunt?

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Well, the possible large on demand threat generation makes it a lot easier to use pure threat generation to swap aggro. And there is no chance for a resist unlike taunt.

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lolprot 10 characters

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lol who needs a taunt…

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Greater blessing of kings requires a symbol of kings to cast, i think they are around 30 silver a pop from the vendor. Not going to be tanking much when you cant repair your armor.

Have fun with that.

Also notice in the ony video he wasnt able to tank phase 3.

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Seal/Judgement of Wisdom is BiS threat and mana regen now while GBoK spam :stuck_out_tongue: for threat

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cuz the warrior OT was able to grab it without any issues - hence he stopped spamming GBoK in phase 3 to let him tank it

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I could have easily stolen aggro off of the other tank during Phase 3, but there’s no good reason to do so. We got Onyxia in position for Phase 3 without any threat issues, and as far as things go, that’s all that matters.

Symbols are extremely cheap. 27 silver for 20, so like 1 gold, 35 silver for a stack of 100. pretty affordable compared to other raid cons.

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^^^DING DING DING^^^

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Thats an issue in itself. You dont need 2 tanks for this fight, could have just used 1 warrior and used the slot for something else.

Dont get me wrong its cool he has a guild thats letting him do this but most wont have the patients for it. We get pushed into the healer role for a reason

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The problem with tanking Onyxia is that during Phase 2 she launches fireballs at the players who are on top of the threat table. Being hit by the fireballs eliminates the majority of your threat, so she moves on to DPS when landing.

To account for that, the strategy my guild did was have all our tanks build insane threat on her for Phase 1, which I was easily able to out-threat. After me and another tank got hit with fireballs in Phase 2, we had another tank left on top of the threat table who was able to get aggro on Onyxia when she landed for Phase 3, so mission success.

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Paying 1.35 silver every 1.5 seconds to hold aggro.

Honestly, if you’re willing to go to those lengths to make yourself viable, I commend you. You still have mana issues, a lack of taunt, generally poorer mitigation, and worse DPS, but hey, you can hold aggro for 54 silver a minute.

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keep in mind kids - GBoKings spam threat does NOT show up in the threat addon - as can be clearly seen in phase 1 as Askalon was nowhere near number 1 threat and yet was still main tanking her

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Symbols cost 1 silver, 35 copper each. Reagent Vendors sell them in stacks of 20 for 27 silver. It’s pretty cheap.

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