Paladin self healing, poor scaling issue

Discussion in 'Tanks' started by Chaosflux, Aug 2, 2021.

  1. Chaosflux Augur

    So I recently played through on a TLP as Paladin and when I got bored during a long expac leveled another paladin on live.

    At 100ish our self healing felt about right as far as our targets target spells were concerned, and I noticed the further I leveled past that, the weaker it felt, so I ran some numbers and looked at parses I had through the eras. These are the raw values figuring best in era focus, max aa, figuring normalized crits, but not figuring in luck or type 3s. I used a spreadsheet, but referenced parses I had to confirm numbers weren't way outside of reason (the Valiant outlier at the end being the one that required double checking).

    Going to present the numbers, then analyze why this is problematic from a playstyle and player enjoyment angle at the end. Just going to only do a static comparison of Paladin tools, not trying to yuck any other classes yum.

    Level 100
    Burst
    39,328
    Ostracize
    20,855
    Protective (92.8% of Ostracize)
    19,364
    Valiant (86.4% of Ostracize)
    18,003

    Level 105 (****focus aa become a thing)
    Burst
    53,711
    Admonish
    28,252
    Valiant (97.8% of Admonish)
    27,638
    Protective (85.8% of Admonish)
    24,259

    Level 110 (10% focus aa burst/admonish)
    Burst
    72,058
    Censure
    38,130
    Valiant (90.9% of Censure)
    34,698
    Protective (83.8% of Censure)
    31,956

    Level 115 (15% focus aa burst/admonish)
    Burst
    98,973
    Remonstrate
    52,054
    Protective (80.6% of Remonstrate)
    41,987
    Valiant (74.35% of Remonstrate) **WTF?
    38,704

    *** for clarity across these ranges as you can see consistently the Admonish line is 52 to 54% of a burst every level increase, and other heals i do not have listed are pretty uniform in how they stack up because they have focus AA and this is a total package analysis the 2 spells that really lag behind are the ones that have been overlooked for focus AA, which is unfortunate because they are kind of critical spells for tanking survivability

    ** idk about other paladins typically in a normal group or raid by volume valiant is 20% of my casts outside of a pure dps setting with Protective usually around 5 to 8% during tanking. I can't think of another class who has tqo of their most frequently cast spells completely ignored by focus aa, to the tune of 25 to 30% of their total casts. This lack of proper scaling is a significant hit to player power, and makes it feel kind of clunky to use @ 115.

    Alot of this is caused by Protective not having a focus AA, that should be fixed, proportionally its getting worse every expansion, eventually it will become unusable from a healing standpoint. Especially since it shares a timer with the Blessed Light line and that has a focus. Just add protective to the viable targets for that aa.

    Valiant not being focusable, so being left up to the Dev remembering to balance it as such looks like a major issue, there's a massive drop off in capability going from being level 110 and Max AA/Gear and then 115, and its very streaky on where it falls balance wise relative to other abilities historically. However if it gets a standard increase like it did in COV at 120 it will be completely unreliable for healing.

    And going from the 110 to 115 Valiant it almost looks like this (balance) was completely forgotten at all.

    This creates an issue, where we have to rely more and more, especially during level cap increase expansions on the Admonish line for our proactive self healing, which has a deaggro component which actually makes it MORE difficult to tank because we need to counterbalance that deaggro component by spending more time casting aggro abilities, or in some cases not using the ability at all (heavy resists or AOE burning add waves on raids/missions).

    This loss of self healing capability on our targets target heals forces us to lean heavier on Burst, which has the negative effect of costing us spell casting uptime because of the longer quiet time, we can get caught in a death spiral on challenging content where if we were to burst because we need it, we won't be able to follow it up with another heal if the next round spikes, then boom dead generly. Which is quite frankly very jarring when we are trying to you know tank at the pace the modern game requires.

    Valiant line
    Should be added on level increase expansions, it is an integral tool in our toolset
    Needs a focus AA capable of bringing it into par its one of our highest % of casts by volume

    Protective line
    Needs a focus AA or it will continue to fall further and further behind in balance
    Spell cast time should really be addressed, it is the longest cast time self heal either knight has and it suffers alot of interrupts. .5s would be $ but even .7s would severely cut down on interrupts.

    Remonstrate line
    The whole reason the deaggro was added in the first place is because when it was asked for we needed a way to shed aggro while burning, that's no longer a thing or even really wanted at this point, remove it. Its not helpful or wanted and makes using one of our best spells detrimental in some instances
    Additionally the resist check is horrible on this (-10), so it can be really hit and miss which is kind of a raw deal for are strongest proactive self heal.

    Burst
    The quiet time should really be addressed, in today's game its alot more detrimental than it was in House of Thule when it was reduced from 6s to 3s. Especially given the context of the other abilities poor scaling.
  2. Wulfhere Augur

    Are you factoring in the protective guard portion (that's also only increasing linearly)?

    100 - Rk3 - 37238 hp
    105 - Rk3 - 46187 hp
    110 - Rk3 - 63652 hp
    115 - Rk3 - 87720 hp
  3. Wulfhere Augur

    I think it's important to emphasize that Valiant Heals are not focused by gear because they are not flagged as a level appropriate spell (paladin level 255). Fixing that would give them the same focus consideration as e.g. Remonstrate Heals.
    Szilent likes this.
  4. Wulfhere Augur

    Perhaps you're thinking of Helix of the Undying at -10? Because this resist check is actually a whopping magic -15! :p

    In order to use both Remonstrate and Protest for Honor reliably outside of a group or raid, the paladin needs to commit a spell gem to the Audacity debuff line too.
  5. josh Augur

    I've brought this up before but its a problem in general for all classes, things that can't be focused slowly become complete garbage. It's a problem with composite force as well, at this point, the healing light proc from the stun does as much healing as the heal does.

    I especially dislike this when it comes to direct damage spells, without the standard worn focus boost they either crit or they are a waste of a cast.
    Wulfhere and Szilent like this.
  6. Chaosflux Augur

    No I didn't, I consider that mitigation and was only comparing healing though we should prob compare that vie amount to average round damage now I believe we would show expected duration had dropped off drastically since 100 as well
  7. Wulfhere Augur

    Healing Light AA is why stuns are often better then nukes. Thankfully not all paladin spells are completely unfocused (paladin level 250 vs 255).