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Shield of Faith - A Devotion specced Oathbound Paladin's best friend.
jaegernl
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 455 Arc User
in The Citadel
My oathbound friends,
Since the Shield of Faith fix, I've not seen much discussion about this power at all, and I've seen a lot of Devotion Paladins - if Sprite will allow me to call them that - not using it. This might be because they haven't seen the patch notes and are not informed about it being fixed, or they are being bullied about using a power that was previously bugged, by someone that doesn't know it has been fixed. Anyway, this post is my serenade on Shield of Faith and it's lovely - albeit overpowered - Damage Resistance buff.
My Devotion friends, please take another look at this power. It absorbs 50% of every incoming hit while active. It does not have a target cap - meaning it affects everyone in range, not just your party - and at rank 4 lasts for a long, long time. Long enough to keep it up almost permanently - at least for me, being of the Justice path, which means Bond of Virtue triggers Vengeful Judge a lot. It has allowed me to safely function as a tank in T1 dungeons, because constant heals flowing from Prism plus Burning Guidance tends to draw a lot of agro and I even managed to survive the claw attack that hurts many of our brethren. It has recently greatly helped in beating Epic Cragmyre Crypts in a legit manner.
However, as any lover you might try to woo, she has been giving me mixed messages. And by mixed message - this is where I drop the silly roleplaying act and get down to numbers - I mean the CombatLog. I've become unsure as to which layer Shield of Faith applies. Sometimes the CombatLog would look something like this - fictionally, as I'm writing this from another computer:
Shield of Faith absorbs 100 (100) damage from X.
X deals 100 damage to you.
However, sometimes it's something like this:
Shield of Faith absorbs 100 (100) damage from X.
X deals 120 (120) damage to you.
And then, there's the odd:
Shield of Faith absorbs 120 (120) damage from X.
X deals 80 (80) damage to you.
I've been trying to figure out at which point in the damage reduction Shield of Faith operates, but these results mean it could be before, during, or after your native DR has been applied. I'm confused. I'm not big on math and I would like my Devotion friends to parse (using ACT) and share their results about Shield of Faith. Help me understand.
Also, and I know this might be unpopular, I feel this power is a bit too powerful. A 50% reduction to every attack - regardless of where in the DR calculation it's applied - is, in my humble opinion, quite the overpowered tool in a healers arsenal. Don't get me wrong, I love being a more than adequate - hah, signature reference - healer, but this seems to go beyond Astral Shield. And yes, I understand that *empowered* Astral Shield is an encounter, but as I stated before, this is up almost 100%, and we lack other useful dailies anyway. Honestly, what do we have?
Divine Judgement is only useful if your party is already zerging through a dungeon without any difficulty. Lay on Hands? Too slow. Bond of Virtue active + Cure Wounds will do the same, without the bother of having to actually target someone. Heroism? This one is quite useful to completely ignore the annoying invisible fireballs Lostmauth sends around, or his roar, but otherwise.... meh. Healing Font? This is like the Cold Steel Hurricane HR's have. To me, there's only two options. Your team is at full health or someone got one-shot. There's no in-between. Bond of Virtue + holding down Shift for a second is more effective.
So, wall of text, a couple of questions and very little answers. All I leave you with is a plea to use Shield of Faith and to provide some data. Help us all become better healers! Help us all to become better support!
Since the Shield of Faith fix, I've not seen much discussion about this power at all, and I've seen a lot of Devotion Paladins - if Sprite will allow me to call them that - not using it. This might be because they haven't seen the patch notes and are not informed about it being fixed, or they are being bullied about using a power that was previously bugged, by someone that doesn't know it has been fixed. Anyway, this post is my serenade on Shield of Faith and it's lovely - albeit overpowered - Damage Resistance buff.
My Devotion friends, please take another look at this power. It absorbs 50% of every incoming hit while active. It does not have a target cap - meaning it affects everyone in range, not just your party - and at rank 4 lasts for a long, long time. Long enough to keep it up almost permanently - at least for me, being of the Justice path, which means Bond of Virtue triggers Vengeful Judge a lot. It has allowed me to safely function as a tank in T1 dungeons, because constant heals flowing from Prism plus Burning Guidance tends to draw a lot of agro and I even managed to survive the claw attack that hurts many of our brethren. It has recently greatly helped in beating Epic Cragmyre Crypts in a legit manner.
However, as any lover you might try to woo, she has been giving me mixed messages. And by mixed message - this is where I drop the silly roleplaying act and get down to numbers - I mean the CombatLog. I've become unsure as to which layer Shield of Faith applies. Sometimes the CombatLog would look something like this - fictionally, as I'm writing this from another computer:
Shield of Faith absorbs 100 (100) damage from X.
X deals 100 damage to you.
However, sometimes it's something like this:
Shield of Faith absorbs 100 (100) damage from X.
X deals 120 (120) damage to you.
And then, there's the odd:
Shield of Faith absorbs 120 (120) damage from X.
X deals 80 (80) damage to you.
I've been trying to figure out at which point in the damage reduction Shield of Faith operates, but these results mean it could be before, during, or after your native DR has been applied. I'm confused. I'm not big on math and I would like my Devotion friends to parse (using ACT) and share their results about Shield of Faith. Help me understand.
Also, and I know this might be unpopular, I feel this power is a bit too powerful. A 50% reduction to every attack - regardless of where in the DR calculation it's applied - is, in my humble opinion, quite the overpowered tool in a healers arsenal. Don't get me wrong, I love being a more than adequate - hah, signature reference - healer, but this seems to go beyond Astral Shield. And yes, I understand that *empowered* Astral Shield is an encounter, but as I stated before, this is up almost 100%, and we lack other useful dailies anyway. Honestly, what do we have?
Divine Judgement is only useful if your party is already zerging through a dungeon without any difficulty. Lay on Hands? Too slow. Bond of Virtue active + Cure Wounds will do the same, without the bother of having to actually target someone. Heroism? This one is quite useful to completely ignore the annoying invisible fireballs Lostmauth sends around, or his roar, but otherwise.... meh. Healing Font? This is like the Cold Steel Hurricane HR's have. To me, there's only two options. Your team is at full health or someone got one-shot. There's no in-between. Bond of Virtue + holding down Shift for a second is more effective.
So, wall of text, a couple of questions and very little answers. All I leave you with is a plea to use Shield of Faith and to provide some data. Help us all become better healers! Help us all to become better support!
Isaac the Adequate - Level 70 Oath of Protection Paladin
Aurelius the Awkward - Level 70 Pathfinder Ranger
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Regardless, with the 25% damage reduction going in, divine protection, and a devotion paladin using shield of faith, this will make for some sturdy parties.
Going bulwark also helps tons if you are really serious about tanking, IMO.
The part about Shield of Faith being used to tank a T1 was only to illustrate its power. And remember, we're talking about Devotion Paladins here. It was a run without a tank just to see if we could. The holy trinity - Tank, Heals, DPS - is in my mind still the way to go. And, to be fair, it's quite stressful to be Tank and Heals at the same time. I prefer the old school ways. I prefered it even in previous Mods, where it wasn't *needed*. I just feel more comfortable doing my thing when someone is watching my back (healer) or if someone can trust I'm watching their back.
Addendum to my previous post. I think your feeling is correct, and that's because people who play support classes, which is both Tank and Healer, often play eighter one or both. Going from a DPS class - I used to main a HR - to a support class - Healer Paladin - has meant a giant change in playstyle for me, and I suspect jumping from DPS to DPS class would be less-so.
People going from a Healer/Buffer to a Tank or vice versa would have very little impact on the total numbers of Tanks/Healers. It would probably - and I'm just speculating a bit here - mean one less Tank and one more Healer.
But, and I know your comment was in the scope of the topic a bit, we're side-tracking here. My fault, probably, for responding. But please, my Devotion Friends, parse and show me your data.
Last edit: If anything is unclear in my phrasing, let me know. English isn't my first language so I always struggle with these long posts.
100/2 = 50/2 = 25
That happened. Instead of for 100 (fictional number) we'd get hit for 25. So, if we'd stack 5x Shield of Faith, we'd get:
100/2 = 50/2 = 25/2 = 12.5/12 = 6.25/2 = 3.125.
I never said to make a tank and healer at the same time
I was generally speaking from a tanks perspective bulwark should be the way to go. I know it's difficult in the current climate of people that think Justice is the bees knees, and all, though Justice is better for Devotion when you consider all things. Just weird to me that the feats that should be in other trees are slapped into Justice for some reason, like prism I have no idea why that is a justice feat and not a light feat.
No argument there. If Prism was a Light tree skill, combined with the Light tree amazing Recovery buff, I'd go Light. But I feel the Justice tree was devised a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none tree, while they completely failed to see the power of Prism. Prism is the sole reason why the Justice tree is the superior healer.
edit: Just don't Prism at any of the heads of Tiamat or during Herald runs. People will *hate*, and yes, I mean *HATE* you for lagging their instance. Especially with Burning Guidance.
That bug was fixed with prism. As far as Justice being the jack of all trades, I don't see it. I see they made it as the DPS tree, but for some reason slapped a few feats that should have been int he other two trees there, because I guess they didn't want Justice paladins to feel completely useless.
No, no it wasn't. Believe me. I've been doing a lot of experiments with the Paladin and two Paladins of the Devotion kind can literally *STOP TIME*. It breaks the instance. It makes the Cleric phase pop back up while heads are still around. It makes the Head phase last a lot longer while people just float around. Prism + Burning Guidance - which was what we were doing - is nowhere near fixed. I did 131mil damage in 12 second.
And yes, I agree, it takes two people coordinating to make it really, really bad. But why take the risk? Two devotion specced paladins can ruin it for EVERYONE.
Don't. Just, for the love of Torm, don't.
I've been literally running with it until last night for weeks now in high mob situations. There has been no slow down, lag or anything. From the HE swarms before they nerfed the RP in IWD to Tiamat runs just chain spamming Divine Protection. I've literally encountered no slow down since they fixed it a few weeks ago.
The brokenness of what we do is... Well, it's unseeable. Add me as your friend and we shall go in together. I will teach you how to, quite literally, stop time in game. Just to show you how broken Prism still is.
Just to clarify: We're not doing this for HAMSTER and giggles. We've FRAPS'd this and we've send the log to the devs. We're serious about this getting fixed.
Either way, the damage reduction on paper reads crazy good.
However it would note that any healer that is not justice specced will possibly have difficulty maintaining this.
Though... given how fast justice path allows us to cycle abilities...and that my encounters are basically complete heals on party members...I have a hard time seeing the benefit of going down the light path vs. capping justice and going 15 pts light for a pally healer build?
Solerro: I think that might be the problem touched upon by a couple of our fellow Paladins. Justice is just a catch-all at the moment. It's the superior healer thanks to Prism. With the 5% AP feat, Bond of Virtue and Divine Call, we get so much AP that Shield of Faith has a near 100% uptime - And, when you get a DC sigil and can use Relentless wisely, you can keep Heroism and Shield of Faith COMBINED up for nearly 100% - which just makes it overpowered. No way a Light specced healer can match that, unless their recovery is through the roof.
Compared to the other trees, Justice is overpowered. Hence, as Champion has said, so many Paladins 'gravitate towards it'.
I have tanked in etos for a group without a tank, although admittedly not the other two t2's, because of this ability. You just need a party that can clear adds fairly quickly as you can only tank things for a limited period of time, also, if you ever shield bug at the red laser by the last boss, then the laser kills you. It is a bit frustrating to die to that bug, but we have to live with it. The bug will likely be fixed when the entire class is rebalanced.
A really important issue to note with the prism/enmity/bond/burning guidance lag though is that it completely desyncs the game, so you can have 2 lasers occuring at once in eToS, or you can have tiamat never become unattackable in rise of tiamat.