Third week of raiding: Eye of Sulfuras

[Tyraeus]

You have some valid points Tyraeus, though a lot of the things you listed can aswell be done by a full holy paladin right? What you would need, is some sort of a hybrid spec, Im not really familiar with paladin healing as a horde player though but as an exemple, you can spec a shaman to improved totems, providing a boost for 3 mdps in your group, the shaman will still be a main spec healer, he is equally strong at raid healing but completely useless as tank healing. In addition he can do dps on trash and bosses where no heals are needed. No matter how mich dps it is, its some and he doesnt need mana so he can heal between fights so downtime doesnt increase. And for hard bosses where you need all healers you have them all.

So in the end its the same as a resto shaman (keeping in mind that he can only be assigned to raid healing) but also brings more. Even if its only trash dps and half of the bosses and even though he cant use mana and debuff slots for his dps because he has to heal between fights still, it is playig hybrid. He is a dps'er quite often and since a shaman doesnt care about the exact dmg number because its inferior to others anyway, its no problem to do both

Yeah, it's true that a lot of that can be done by a paladin of any spec, but the Ret pally finds himself in a different position to the healers and is often unaffected by mechanics that affect the healers (and vice versa) so there will be different opportunities for these things to be applied. The Ret pally is also free to pay attention to things like this because they aren't busy healing the tanks/raid and can fit this stuff in around their damage abilities, where it might be more of a struggle for a holydin - if the choice is between casing BoF on a trapped melee or healing the tank, the holy pally probably won't be able to use that GCD on the melee for example. This is where we can pick up the slack, so to speak, and the real strength of the spec is in doing all these little things to fill gaps and help the raid while contributing solid (not amazing, not terrible) damage. IMO anyway. Don't get me wrong, I think Ret in TBC was a far better imagining and implementation of the spec and brought more benefit to the raid as a whole, but I still think vanilla Ret can make a decent contribution if geared and played well. With a Hand of Rag, preferably

In the end the content is easy at present and I really think people should just relax and play through it together, rather than freaking out over pure vs hybrid and whatnot. This game is a lot more fun when it's friends killing bosses and having a laugh together, rather than a super srs military unit with a sergeant barking orders and no room for deviation or creativity. That approach was necessary in progression Naxx and Sunwell...in MC? Not so much.

[Talzia]

Not trying to knock anyones playstyle here but you really just made the point that a ret paladin can swap to holy gear for healing, but in your mind a holy paladin can't just as easily swap to DPS or prot gear to fill a role on a particular boss?

They could, if it was needed (which it's not), without even changing talents and still be optimal for healing 99% of the time and available to tank or gather adds that 1% of the time we're discussing. The talents/abilities you need to gather and hold aggro on adds is literally righteous fury, which is baseline, and consecration which is in the holy tree. The only reason you might need all that other stuff, most of which is still gear based and usable as full holy - would be if you didn't have DPS to hit the adds after you gathered them, or perhaps if your DPS are taters and can't do enough damage to kill things quickly.


It's totally fine that you guys don't enjoy to play optimally in raids, but this line of logic really isn't fooling anyone. It's viable maybe but a far cry from optimal. The whole argument was summed up like 2 pages ago when a guy said theres 2 schools of thought, people who want to play optimally because they think its fun (correct) and people who want to play uniquely but viably because they think its fun (also correct).

[Tyraeus]

Not trying to knock anyones playstyle here but you really just made the point that a ret paladin can swap to holy gear for healing, but in your mind a holy paladin can't just as easily swap to DPS or prot gear to fill a role on a particular boss?

Your post is pretty much right, but I'd argue that a Ret's healing in healing gear will be better than a Holy's DPS in DPS gear, so the two things aren't exactly interchangeable imo.

I guess I tend to think of raiding as "Are the group's whole assets - healing, DPS, awareness, tanking etc - good *enough* to kill the boss?". If so, great. No need to optimise further. If not, change it. Overkilling the boss or freaking out about being super ultra minmaxed way beyond the needs of the encounter or whatever is just stupid to me - why burn through content super quick, so we can AFK in IF? Doesn't make sense to me.

Also, in my experience, the cohesiveness of the raid group and the combined level of awareness and uptime/stability - regardless of specifics (within basic limits - you still need healers, tanks, DPS etc) are a far greater influence on whether the boss goes down or not than an individual player's class or spec. In this regard, I think the obsessiveness and hostility some people display over this is misplaced. There are far bigger problems to address as a RL if you can't beat Geddon, for example, because chances are it'll be because idiots are blowing up the raid, not The Accursed Ret and his DPS.

[Theloras]

theloras, that shield should get damaged pretty often by it's proc and should break by itself very easily if you tank a lot of trash with it, it was normal to have 2 with you when you went to farm because the proc eats 1 durability quite often, if it didn't it would be not balanced.
And your screenshot shows that you TANKED a lashlayer, thus other ppl had to stop their dps because threat problems?? post something else. Lashlayer is dps fight not in sense of making high dmg, but everyone should be split all around, a perfect hunter battle is it!
I respect prot paladins as they are nice to have on some fights like Fankriss or Neff, just anything that spawns some little trash that is annoying, and I'll gladly take them to Scholo/Strat, but lacking the taunt is the problem, that's why ppl see them as inferior to other tankable classes, the lack of taunt, and high dependancy on mana that can't regen like it did in BC.

No I didn't actually tank Broodlord - that screenshot is there to show the dmg that one single Paladin was able to put out from the first pull of the gauntlet up to and including the brood lord fight - once Broodlord fight began I would either AoE tank any whelp adds that got agreed by accident or would help heal the tanks

what that means is that my true AoE DPS potential is much higher than the numbers shown - over time that is what the DPS averaged out to but in the actual heat of AoE tanking the gauntlet it was over 4k DPS - also, SWS stats was cleared before the first pull so the numbers are legit

has my shield broken while AoE tanking, yes, which is why I would get a warlock to initiate a summon and then hearth to repair it and then accept the summon and go back into the instance - whether that mechanic works here on Nost, I'm not sure, but if that's the case then I would just have a 2nd shield in reserve

as for needing mana breaks, I can just judge wisdom on a target to regain mana if need be as all I use when AoE tanking is rank 1 consecration which is only 135 mana every 8 seconds - hardly a taxing amount of mana to go through

regarding our lack of a taunt, 3/4 of the raid bosses are immune to taunt so it's a moot point - I personally don't want to Main Tank raid bosses as that's not my thing - but there are several other Paladins that I know who have and still do with ease

[Theloras]

People dont bring LOLRet or LOLPROT paladins and feral druids is cuz of they arent fit for raiding no matter u say tbvh.

Also people want smooth runs and tbh a tank with no taunt will never work either sure u can hold aggro but its fucked when u have to taunt

If you want to min/max then make your raid composition like this:

1 x Prot Warrior

1 x Resto Druid (for Mark of the Wild)
3 x Holy Paladins (for Kings, Might, Wisdom)
3 x Holy Priests

1 x Mage (for Arcane Intellect)
1 x Shadow Priest (for Shadow Weaving)
15 x Rogues (for Melee DPS)
15 x Warlock (for Ranged DPS)

#3/4OfTheRaidBossesAreImmuneToTauntSoItsAMootPointBro

[Theloras]

Not trying to knock anyones playstyle here but you really just made the point that a ret paladin can swap to holy gear for healing, but in your mind a holy paladin can't just as easily swap to DPS or prot gear to fill a role on a particular boss?

They could, if it was needed (which it's not), without even changing talents and still be optimal for healing 99% of the time and available to tank or gather adds that 1% of the time we're discussing. The talents/abilities you need to gather and hold aggro on adds is literally righteous fury, which is baseline, and consecration which is in the holy tree. The only reason you might need all that other stuff, most of which is still gear based and usable as full holy - would be if you didn't have DPS to hit the adds after you gathered them, or perhaps if your DPS are taters and can't do enough damage to kill things quickly.


It's totally fine that you guys don't enjoy to play optimally in raids, but this line of logic really isn't fooling anyone. It's viable maybe but a far cry from optimal. The whole argument was summed up like 2 pages ago when a guy said theres 2 schools of thought, people who want to play optimally because they think its fun (correct) and people who want to play uniquely but viably because they think its fun (also correct).

Never said that a Holy Paladin couldn't do it - although here on Nostalrius it's functioning differently though as Tyraeus pointed out - Consecration is scaling with Attack Power here and most Holy Paladins are wearing cloth/leather/mail/anything with +healing on it. Therefore their ability to maintain AoE agro would be limited.

Once BWL is released here, having a Paladin (of whatever spec as long as they have the appropriate gear to handle it) AoE tank the gauntlet, goblin packs and Nefarian phase 1/3 will make those encounters so much smoother whether you agree with me if it is "needed" as you put it.

It is much more efficient to do it that way than have 40 people spamming Oil of Immolation lol...