Greater Blessing 'Greater DeBuff'Follow

I kinda find this annoying as well, but as of today there is NO MORE greater blessing of Salvation anyway, and not even a 10 minute blessing of salvation, so the question is moot. With the new threat generation mechanics, salvation will only be needed in extreme emergencies, which is why the new Hand of Salvation has only a 10s duration (just long enough to remove threat from a player).

The Prot Pally is now going to use kings or sanc on himself (and thus every other Pally in group) and the holy Pally or Ret Pally is going to use Might or Wisdom (or maybe Kings if they spec into it). So all Paladins in a group/raid will have one of the following combinations after the patch:

Sanc/Kings
Sanc/Wis
Sanc/Might
Kings/Wis
Kings/Might

Without greater blessing of Salvation existing anymore, you don't have to worry about having that annoying 10-minute blessing anymore. Ideally, you could roll with a Paladin Tank, a Holy Paladin, and a Ret, (or some other combination of 3 Paladins) and the whole group or raid could have 3 Pally buffs.

Edited, Oct 14th 2008 12:02pm by jeromesimina

you guys are cute. Greaters used to be only 15min back during 40man raids. pretty much every 5 trash pulls would require a new round of buffs. if someone died, your choice was a new Greater or a 5 min buff!

i like the current setup. i will normally choose to give myself the 10min buff since there are times i need to change buffs. as Ret sometimes i prefer a different buff on the fly. as Prot i can switch out Kings and Sanc based on the pull. pally buffs are the most efficient since they can be class/spec specific.

also note, if they increase buff duration it only makes sense they increase mana cost.

The only problem I have with the Hand of salvation is that when I'm tanking I'm going to be way too busy to try to keep an eye on omen while still watching the monsters we're fighting, the monsters we're not fighting, and my cooldowns. Then I have to stop what I'm doing to target a random dps and hit him with a hand of salvation because he doesn't wanna keep a lid on things.

Something's going to give...I already miss Blessings of Salvation and the servers aren't even up yet.

uh oh. watch out for the incoming flames from veteran tanks.

i'll start. you SHOULD be watching omen anyway. it shouldnt come to the point when HoSalv is needed if you are staying above on the threat list. but there will be times that this is unavoidable. thats when a nifty macro comes in: you target the boss, the boss targets your squishy, your spell saves squishy. that was the old Righteous Defense.

it would seem to me that in the new tanking scheme there will be less 'threat dropping' from the raid and more pure 'threat building' from the tank. seems Blizz realized they'd either have to give every spec and every class an aggro dump OR leave threat control up to the tanks.

I often run with a ret pally friend of mine, and I don't find it annoying at all. I usually switch blessings depending on the fight ahead so I do greater Salv on him, and rebuff myself with kings or sanc according to fight. He do wisdom on me, and has to keep up might on himself.

It's not so bad with two pallys who can rebuff themselves, it's much worse when you run with a druid tank and druid healer. Then you'll have to rebuff the tank or the healer every ten minutes (usually the tank gets a small kings, as it's worse for a healer to pull aggro than to let a tank lose kings). Same problem with warriors (dps and tank).

Therenody, I have to disagree with you. You should keep an eye out for threat all the time. As should your dps of course, but I view aggro management as part of my tanking. Incidentally, I love Hand of Salvation, it gives a tank the ability to remove aggro from an overly enthusiastic dps in a way that we couldn't before ...

There are ways around giving another pally a greater blessing then changing your greater blessing. It involves buffing the other pally then running around a wall (LoSing the other pally) or out of range and rebuffing yourself. IMO Shorter blessing may sound like a pain but they are the easiest way around it. Now that we have lost BoL and BoSalv our choices have somewhat become limited in blessings (4 max).

You have the choice of a:
1. tanking blessing
2. mana return blessing
3. increase in AP blessing
4. flat 10% increase in stats blessing

Blessing 4 is deep in Prot so this leaves you at 3 blessings to choose from (if your not prot). If you dont spec into Kings because your sacrificing utility for either extra heals or dps, that leaves you with blessings 2 and 3.

For raiding I think that Rets are probably the better choice for taking Kings as it will benefit them more now if there happens to be a dps warrior in the group/raid (BoM and Battle shout dont stack anymore). From what I have seen postpatch, it seems that more Holy and Prot paladins talent into it though.

I am liking the change of BoSalv to HoSalv though. Gives Ret pallies a feint type of aggro management without having to sacrifice a buff to dps! Same with HoProtection. I always found it annoying that I'd have to rebuff someone after bubbling them as the old blessing of protection would overwrite the previous blessing they had on themselves! My compliments to the devs for that one!

Salvation isn't even a blessing anymore, and the shaman's equivalent totem was removed entirely. Tanks just make that much threat.

Hand of Salvation is currently something that ret paladins use on themselves at about the same time they bubble because they attacked too early.

Blessing 4 is no longer deep in prot, it just takes 5 points in prot to get it (the full 10%), and most prots are ignoring it so they can better spend the now 5 points it takes for this in MUCH better places. If I am doing a heroic or raid, I basically hope the Holy Pally or the Ret Pally put 5 points into Kings, because as the tank, I don't even have this anymore. BoSanc is deep enough in Prot that only the Prot is going to take it, and it is what the tank is going to use now.

My preference in almost any group now (be it 5, 10, or 25-man) is to have myself, a Holy Pally and a Ret Pally so I can have BoSanc, BoW or BoM, and BoK on myself at all times. A Prot with 3/4 or all 4 of these blessings now is INSANE!

Edited, Oct 28th 2008 11:55am by jeromesimina