Other Shoe Falls on Lay On Hands

Well we knew something was coming with Lay on Hands and now we know how it will change.

Lay on Hands is now affected by Forbearance and can now be cast on self again - Heals a friendly target for an amount equal to the Paladin's maximum health and restores 1950 of their mana. Once healed, the target cannot be targeted by Divine Shield, Divine Protection, Hand of Protection, or Lay on Hands again for 2 min.

So the Developers solution was to add our old friend Forbearance.

So my question is, why doesn't it also apply to Shieldwall, Icebound Fortitude, and Barkskin?
Basically the tooltip should say :
Shield Wall, Icebound Fortitude, and Barkskin can not be used while under Forbearance.
I'm not asking for other Tank classes to be nerfed. This is a tank balance issue. I'm attempting to show how this change will impact Paladin tanks. The Paladins 'shield wall' is called Divine Protection. It's our one and only activated cooldown. Our other cooldown, the much discussed Ardent Defender, is completely passive.

When the need for a change to Lay on Hands was discussed, Lead Developer Ghostcrawler was specific in citing PVP reasons.
He said fighting a Paladin (in PVP) was like a 3 phase fight. I don't PVP enough to be able to give any kind of opinion on if Paladins needed another PVP nerf. Shoot, maybe they do.

But
Ghostcrawler didn't say anything about Paladin tank cooldowns. What happened was in nerfing Paladins for PVP, which who knows might have actually been needed, Tankadins have taken some collateral damage.

What really bothers me about this change is the lack of control. I can't control the Holy Paladin casting Lay on Hands on me, yet, this will prevent me from using my 'sheild wall' type ability for 2 minutes (or 1 minute 30 seconds with 4 piece Tier 9).

Imagine a cooldown check fight. For whatever reason the tank gets low before the big nuke and to save him, the Holy Paladin casts Lay on Hands. Now the big nuke comes, but our Tank is a spunky Paladin who, through no action of own, has lost his cooldown. For the safety of the raid, it would be foolish to have your Paladin tank that fight. Any other tank class would not have that drawback.

Another scenario: the Paladin tank has just used his activated cooldown to survive a big nuke cooldown check. A minute or so later, he gets low. The Paladin healer uses his 'oh no' button Lay on Hands. He gets an error message 'that can not be used right now' and has to scramble to try to get off a Holy Light. But in the time lost trying to cast a spell that he couldn't cast, the Paladin tank has died. Again, no other Tank class has that kind of drawback.
Paladin poster Zothor summed it up well: "Making 1/4 of the tanking classes a slave to the external cooldowns of their healers is never, ever, ever a solution. The class has inherent balance problems because it's got two of the strongest baseline abilities in the game.[Bubble and Lay on Hands] We get it. If you don't want to inflame the entire community by removing their existing functionality, cut it out in specific talents as a necessary choice for specs. Every healing spec has an "oh crap button," and holy paladin's is Lay on Hands. Tanks oh-crap button is shieldwall. Guess what? we're likely to want them AT THE SAME TIME." (emphasis added by me)

Perhaps a better implementation would be to have the Forebearance debuff go one who cast Lay on Hands rather than the one who received the heal.

Even better, if the issue was really for Battlegrounds, then why not just make Lay on Hands not usable in Battlegrounds, the same way they make spells unusable for Arena matches?
So what do you think? Am I over reacting to this? Nobody likes to get nerfed, I understand that, but I wonder if the Developers have thought about the side effects for Tankadins and if they will choose to take any action in that regard. I just don't want the fact that I chose to be a Paladin tank (as opposed to a Druid/Death Knight/Warrior) to be a hindrance to my raid.

EDIT!!

Reason has prevailed in the land of the PTR. This is breaking news from GC!
The change we're thinking about now is that LoH only causes Forbearance if you cast it on yourself. A paladin healing a paladin tank wouldn't run into the Forbearance problem.

We don't think the paladin tank needs to be able to stack both tools at once. If you know big damage is coming you can use Divine Protection. If you managed to take the big damage, you can use Lay on Hands.


http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=20677235952&pageNo=2&sid=1 (Post#23)

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=20677775489&pageNo=4&sid=1 (Post#65)



That sounds reasonable and addresses the issue as well as the Tankadin concern. I can live with that.

Comments

Rhidach said…
You're not overreacting. It's a spectacularly stupid "solution" for Lay on Hands. I can't believe Blizzard could remotely think that's a good idea.
Anonymous said…
Since self-healing seems to be the problem, your solution of placing Forbearance on the caster and not the recipient makes a lot of sense.

I don't think that Paladins need a battleground nerf -- BGs are far less susceptible to class comp problems than Arena -- but this process has been a very good example of how the PTR feedback process can work well. I hope the devs take this feedback and act on it.
Tegoelf said…
I want some of whatever the devs happen to be smoking... because it be some wacky $%*(

I can understand that pallys have some kick @$$ cooldowns etc, and I can respect that the devs want balance, but No Honors, you are not over reacting they are smoking some fine leaf
Icarus said…
forbearance doesnt affect glyph of salvation... a paladins "barkskin" albeit one that lowers threat which sucks but its still a self activated damage reduction cooldown that I think you are forgetting

or am I the only one who actually uses this?

I am with you though honors.. ANY change that hurts pve because an ability was too powerful for pvp I cant stand, and it seems that paladins get hit by changes like that the most.
I think it should only trigger forbearance if casted on self. That way holy pallies can still use it on someone else without screwing themselves. Prot pallies can still use it on themselves but at the cost of bubblewall.
Gravity said…
What are the main cooldowns nowadays for tankadsins?

- divine protection (damage reduction)
- lay on hands (self-heal)
- ardent defender (passive.

I agree for tankadins there should be a different mechanic if they want to stop LoH being exploited in PvP, but really it's necessary in PvE.

They could make LoH scale positively with defence skill, and with normal defence (like in PvP) it just acts like a big holy shock, but no forbearance, just a 2 min cooldown.
Firespirit said…
I think the "oh crap" button that blizz wants holy pallys to have is the guaranteed crit/holy shock/fol combo instead of LoH right now. But that is 3GCD's and not a whole lot of healing (maybe the same as a HL).

Its not a true oh crap button.
Anonymous said…
I think all paladin are over-reacting to this. Simply put, Lay on Hands is a permanent 'oh crap' button. Shield Wall, Barkskin, Last Stand has a set time and the character is placed back to 'pre-button hit'. With Lay on Hands, it's not something where you get all HP and some MP back and then it retracts after X seconds, you just get it.

As said, Barkskin, Shield Wall, Last Stand, even Army(to a lesser extent), isn't as powerful as LoH.

Taking it away from self-use would have been decent in my mind as well. In PvP, Paladins have to be beaten twice when LoH is on CD...no other class can boast that.

In fact, I think the thing the devs really could've done is make it 'non-self-use', but have it's CD reduced and it's MP increased. Or, make it 'no-self-use' in a marked BG, arena, WG or whenever the char is marked as PvP.

Sorry if my opinion isn't in the majority, but I've fought with and against enough paladins to know that Lay on Hands is OP, and PvP balance is swayed towards a Pally over most plate wearers.
Anonymous said…
I find it interesting that Zothor put it that way, I must have missed it, because I said the exact same thing a page later.

As I said on my post, I am more than fine with losing LoH if necessary, it is not a defining or essential part of the Prot Paladins rotation and utility. Sure it is a great oh crap button, but its not a deal breaker.

Adding Forbearance to it is a deal breaker, I may as well go back to holy, because if a healer has the ability to dictate my cool down rotation, and effect my damage taken management, then I should not be tanking any progression encounter.
Ken Bowen said…
It's just another example of a lack of imagination of the devs in fixing a PvP problem by messing up PvE. I agree that paladins are too hard to kill in PvP. I've actually killed many dps classes 1 on 1 when playing Holy in pvp because they just could not kill me.

I think causing the caster to have forbearance is a much better idea. That way it does not cause a player to give another player a debuff.
Rhii said…
Speaking as a newly minted Holy Paladin, I probably won't be casting LOH on the tank at all if this goes through. It's much more important that he has bubble available in a critical moment.

Of course, since the high end of my healing experience is heroics, there's never really been a time when I've needed LOH without having fouled up something earlier in the fight anyway.

But basically, I'm a holy pally and my bf is a tankadin. We're not going to have any synergy as a tank-healer team anymore, as our emergency buttons are mutually exclusive. Making the best dedicated tank healer gimped when paired with a significant number of tanks is... crazy.
Grimadin said…
I agree totally with you on this one Honors. If they are going to make us suffer from being stuck with no cool down to use for 2 mins, make it apply to the other tank as well, or just to the caster. If they make it so that it only affects the caster, it would clean up the issue in my mind, because if a holy pally has to use a bubble, there is other problems to be had in the battle then the tank needing a big heal.

I wish the dev's wouldn't single us out all the time on stuff like this. Share the pain, or for once, fix it in a way that doesn't cause PVP to make PVE suffer. I know thats a novel idea, but since the onset of arena, trying to balance PVP has always caused the PVE nerf bat to swing, and oh what a roller coaster ride its been.
Rhii said…
@ Anonymous
"I think all paladin are over-reacting to this. Simply put, Lay on Hands is a permanent 'oh crap' button. Shield Wall, Barkskin, Last Stand has a set time and the character is placed back to 'pre-button hit'. With Lay on Hands, it's not something where you get all HP and some MP back and then it retracts after X seconds, you just get it."

Honors isn't comparing LOH to barkskin and shieldwall. He's comparing BUBBLE to barkskin and shieldwall. If the healers act prevents him from using BUBBLE then he's lost his best defensive cooldown... so if a holy pally puts LOH on a druid tank, why doesn't she lose barkskin?

Just clarifying the argument, since you seem to have misread it.
Honors Code said…
@Icarus,

I'm bad at remembering HoSalv as a cooldown. I generally only have the glyph in for Firefighter, but that doesn't mean it isn't a cooldown. It's just one with a very large drawback.
Honors Code said…
@Anon,

You should post your opinion regardless of it is agrees with the majority/me or not.
Honors Code said…
@Rhii

Its actually Divine Protection. BUBBLE (full immunity for 12sec) is Divine Shield. Divine Protection reduces damage by 50% for 12s. That's the skill that gets locked out when we have forbearance and that's our 'shield wall' type skill.
Rhii said…
LOL. Watch me clarify and then be clarified at.

I'm miserable at the tanking end of things and should know better.

:)
Anonymous said…
@Rhil "Honors isn't comparing LOH to barkskin and shieldwall. He's comparing BUBBLE to barkskin and shieldwall. If the healers act prevents him from using BUBBLE then he's lost his best defensive cooldown... so if a holy pally puts LOH on a druid tank, why doesn't she lose barkskin?

Just clarifying the argument, since you seem to have misread it."

Actually, I wasn't quoting Honor, nor missing his argument...I was stating every tanking class has an oh crap button/skill, and just using it as a reference for my own argument/opinion.

In all truth, Forbearance shouldn't be blanketed like that unless it is a self cast to begin with. I don't like the idea of a bubble negating using another ability(pallies are really the class that has to worry about that, since priests are mostly Pw:Shield and that's it for blanket prevention after casting).

I also feel that Forbearance isn't a requirement anymore and most abilities should just have elongated cool-down periods - and just get rid of Forbearance altogether! This would kill many birds with one stone, and I think would allow for the idea that all paladin skills are OP'd(ya, many people haven't touched the class, and compare it to a hunter or warlock in it being a 'button masher' without thought; which isn't true for any class).

In the end though, because LoH and bubbling have become integrated in mitigation and last ditch effort uses, there will be some unhappiness no matter what the devs do on both sides.

As said, I think a simple fix would be to make it non-self-use while flagged(on PvP servers, the rules would need bent a little for instances and raids to allow self-use, of course)...simple enough. A longer hope would be the elimination of Forb....it's a stupid debuff that is limiting, no matter the benefits posed.
Anonymous said…
Honestly how could you be surprised? Only a few short months ago they nerfed ret pvp based on low rated teams/players, not the highest rated players who are squeezing every drop of ret goodness from their build.

Conversely, if your so amazing in a battleground, playing another class, as to be able to make a ret go through both cool downs and actually force him to make it a 3 phase fight, THAT YOU STILL WIN, maybe the dev's should be looking at the balance issue from a different angle.

But this is still pretty silly, it will hurt every paladin that specs ret to do the simple and fun stuff we generally like to solo, ie dailies, chillmaw, lvl 60 content, etc etc


Wankster of Magtheridon
Dr Panda said…
"but I've fought with and against enough paladins to know that Lay on Hands is OP, and PvP balance is swayed towards a Pally over most plate wearers."

The thing is in a PVE setting this sucks. Yes I understand trying to kill a pally is hard as hell. And something must be done about it but to just take it away in PVP settings or as someone else said when ever your flagged for pvp.

The nerfs to pallys from pvp will just keep coming because as fast GC and friends nerf pallys they find a way to make it work. In beta wrath is was Holy/ret nerf then just ret nerf then prot/holy nerf now I'm seeing prot/ret for pvp and all the while Blizz keeps nerfing.

GC said he has a vision for the class but what he keeps forgetting is the players have more hands on time with the game and will shape his vision to suit them
Meloree said…
Minor correction: If a holy paladin casts LoH on you, you get a 2 minute forbearance, WHETHER OR NOT you have 4t9 equipped. It's the same if you get an external BoP. If the Forbearance comes from someone who doesn't have 4t9 prot, it's 2 minutes.

That's right... someone can lock us out of our primary cooldown for longer than our default lockout.
Anonymous said…
"So my question is, why doesn't it also apply to Shieldwall, Icebound Fortitude, and Barkskin?
Basically the tooltip should say : Shield Wall, Icebound Fortitude, and Barkskin can not be used while under Forbearance."

Because its a pvp change. Currently you have to do 3x a paladin of any specs lifebar in damage to actually kill them after theyve gone from full, bubbled and healed to full and then hit LoH. Its ridiculous!
Renovear said…
I read this somewhere before (forget where) which always makes me chuckle as its a good paradigm shift. People are constantly complaining they have to kill paladins twice. Should they not rather be thinking about the fact that in the time it takes them to kill us twice we've still not managed to kill them?

Yes I know the statement above isn't necessarily true but like everyone elses comments it bares a hint of accuracy. Paladin PVP utility is balanced around our surviveability. Look at how unbalanced it was when ret pallies had all that burst. However they have taken a lot of that away and with this they are to a large extent taking away our survivability as well.

Additionally I find that a lot of people tend to focus on the two key abilities of our class (LOH and bubble) to the detriment of seeing its weeknesses. Paladins are fun to play but please dont talk to me about being overpowered. We can be dealt with by pretty much every class out there when the person playing it is willing to think about his tactics. Sometimes I think people enjoy QQ'ing about us just because they can't faceroll their way to killing us.

From a PVE point of view as a tankadin I cannot emphasize enough for my Holy and Ret brothers out there how much of a bad thing this is. We have 1 ability we can trigger and it is linked to forbearance. Anything which locks me out of the power to control when I hit Divine Protection is not a good thing and ultimately is going to cause wipes. There are fights in TOTGC where it is absolutely critical that a cooldown of some description which we can hit to mitigate incoming damage and I'm sorry but if you want to maintank anything Blessing of Salvation is simply out of the question with the amount of tps we have to generate these days.

I have to say either take away LOH from battlegrounds or come up with a different solution as this is going to be a pain. I wont say it will stop me playing the game or even stop me tanking but it will mean I have to stand second string on a lot of the fights where there are high amounts of incoming damage as we are no longer actively in control of our own cooldowns.

PS: Apologies for the wall of text! But then again I dont know any paladins who dont have a lot to see about their favourite class.
Ard The Paladin said…
I don't really thik it's over reaacting, if it goes life in the way that a Holy Pala casting LoH on you causes YOU to have Forbearance, I don't think it'll work that way. I think the malignant interaction with prot cooldowns is too obviously flawed.

I think the clearest thing I can say is: I don't miss instant-cast Exorcism. not even when I've been playing as Ret for a few hours.
Honors Code said…
@Anon,

I think we all recognize it's a PVP change, but the fact remains that this will lock out Paladins primary activated cooldown. It seems only balanced for it to lock out the other 3 tanks primary cooldown. (And if it did, we'd have Druids, Warriors and DKs complaining about it JUST as much as Paladins are).

If you want to make a PVP, make a PVP change. Don't make a change that negatively impacts primarily PVE Paladin Tanks.
Anonymous said…
@Anon

'Anonymous said...

"So my question is, why doesn't it also apply to Shieldwall, Icebound Fortitude, and Barkskin?

Basically the tooltip should say : Shield Wall, Icebound Fortitude, and Barkskin can not be used while under Forbearance."

Because its a pvp change. Currently you have to do 3x a paladin of any specs lifebar in damage to actually kill them after theyve gone from full, bubbled and healed to full and then hit LoH. Its ridiculous!'

Actually, I agree but disagree with this as well. Bubbling and healing, I feel, is equivalent to Shield Wall, Barkskin, etc. Bubbling only last so long, and then goes away, and you have to wait for a cooldown. Does Shield Wall, IB, Barkskin, Last Stand, any other skill/ability basically 'increase' a health bar/ARM level/DEF without resetting the health/armor/defense after X seconds?

As I have said in a solution, if Blizz is so concerned with this in PvP, simply make LoH only non-self-usable while flagged as PvP, or on a PvP server, allow LoH to be self-usable in instances/raids, and pitch that forb. bull.

To another poster who stated while 'I(in the general sense) would have to kill a paladin twice to truly 'kill' him/her, he still hasn't killed me once' the problem is I can't kill a pally twice. I can run him/her down to 0, but then am killed within a few more percent AFTER LoH and him/her back to 100% HP.

Me, personally, I don't want LoH to go away for tanks. As a tank on a few other classes as well, my cooldowns are my existance. They are the way I stick around for the fight...ya, heals are coming in, and ya, I have def cap, or I have 3 pnts in my build for my furry tanking friends, and other mit. but damage mitigation and self-saving abilities are the difference between a close fight where we stand a <30% to fin and then wipe, or a fight where everyone is safe and can focus on positioning, phases, adds, heals and threat.

Anyhow, those are just my thoughts. I play a pally in PvP and tank with her. But, I don't raid tank. On my warrior and bear, I raid tank. The DK only instance tanks. So, I do understand the importance of this CD in tanking rotation when things get hot and heavy(f-u enrage timers); but for PvP, in my mind, blizzard can find a solution that is a lot sweater than 'lets just dump this into this stupid blanket effect'.

The other thing that tweaks my goat is that under the forb. change to LoH, someone could accidentally fat-finger a key as a healer and drop LoH during a bad phase. Now, the tank pally is hosed from LoH, bubbling, everything for X seconds...usually equalling wipe if it happens at the wrong time (and we've all seen it, even in 25-mans on farm, a person hitting the wrong key at the wrong time).

Where I am seeing the most resentment to this is ICC level pally tank raiders. They got double 'Ike Turner smacks' where their damage mit. AND CD both get fubar'ed the same week.

No matter what happens, someone is going to be mad. But Blizzard needs to realize that this situation has more solutions that just 'throw LoH into the frob. blanket'; and should try to find one to make PvPers AND raiders happy...maybe even for once, they should look to see what fresh level 80's are in need of as well.
Tabogon said…
You are not overreacting, it is un-needed and really without justification. As posted before, you may have to kill a pally 3x in order to get you HKs, but at the same time you just killed him 3x. So really the only complaint is that it took so long for you to kill him. I don't PVP on my pally, but I have come up against many types of pallies in BG's and Arenas. It does take some time to kill them but, in most cases, they are still dead at the end of the fight.

One situation was in WG, my Priest Arena's teammate and I were doing the PVE weekly quest there and came up against a Prot/Ret couple doing the same quest. It took FOREVER to kill them, but in the end they died not us.

I think a lkot of this steams fromt he old stereotype that pallies should be for PVE and should be a free kill in PVP like vanilla WoW.
Anonymous said…
"@Anon,

I think we all recognize it's a PVP change, but the fact remains that this will lock out Paladins primary activated cooldown. It seems only balanced for it to lock out the other 3 tanks primary cooldown. (And if it did, we'd have Druids, Warriors and DKs complaining about it JUST as much as Paladins are).

If you want to make a PVP, make a PVP change. Don't make a change that negatively impacts primarily PVE Paladin Tanks."

If its that big a deal just dont let holys use it on you (im not convinced its used often by a healer to save a tank anyway)or assign another class to MT heal if you have a pally tank. As a warrior I honestly couldnt care less if it locked out shield wall for 2 mins because im not convinced ive ever had a holy pop it on me anyway.

A lot of the argument above is from people worrying that their healers will lock them out of bubble wall. Be honest whats more likely to happen in an "oh sh*t" situation - you hit LoH yourself or your healer cancels the spell they already have mid cast and hits it for you? If they made it a deep holy talent you would still complain because YOU lost the ability to go instantly to full health.

Its stuff like this that gives the impression that paladins whine and QQ about anything. Everytime theres mention of a change you start complaining about POTENTIAL problems rather than looking for solutions.

Seriously guys this aint vanilla or TBC you can tank fine now, stop playing the victim. All tanks got their problems the rest work around them while pallys b*tch and whine.
Anonymous said…
I think Blizzard is losing it.
Honors Code said…
Anon: "Everytime theres mention of a change you start complaining about POTENTIAL problems rather than looking for solutions"

Pointing out potential problems with proposed changes is WHY the PTR exists.

Anon: ""oh sh*t" situation - you hit LoH yourself or your healer cancels the spell they already have mid cast and hits it for you?"

I'm going for a cooldown, probably Divine Protection if its up, and yes, Holy goes for LoH. That's the essence of the problem. Whichever one of us hits it first will prevent the other from using it.

Anon:"assign another class to MT....As a warrior"

Assign the Warrior to Tank, brilliant suggestion Mr. Anonymous Warrior! That wouldn't benefit your class in the least would it? Who is the MT shouldn't be decided by the color of your raid bar.

"just dont let holys use it on you" Just how are Tankadins supposed to do that. It's the control issue. I can't stop a Holy from casting it on me.

"As a warrior I honestly couldnt care less if it locked out shield wall for 2 mins because im not convinced ive ever had a holy pop it on me anyway" I think the Warrior community would scream bloody murder if Forbearance locked out shield wall.

"paladins whine and QQ about anything" Honestly, you want to go there, as a Warrior? Really? Have you seen the volume of whines and QQs from Warriors? Should I go pull up some of the Titan's Grip threads?
Lakini said…
Reading these comments is like reading the wow forums
Westin said…
On the most recent patch notes:

Sanctified Light: This talent now also has a 33/66/100% chance to prevent Lay on Hands from causing Forbearance when Lay on Hands is used on others.

I'd be happy with this. Even if you wouldn't be, take it as a sign that Blizzard is toying with a change to LoH. They're testing on the test servers, if you will. Everyone on the PTR is giving feed back on the changes, and if you're not one of those people it's best (emotionally, at least) to just wait for the dust to settle.

Look, at least it's not a ninja hot fix nerf like exorcism was, right? Let them test, and be happy :)

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