Few things about Paladins

[Fedan-lone-wolf]

Heyo,

I have a few points about the paladin that are of interest for me and maybe i will get some answers here. Hopefully (if there are any mistakes) you correct me and make me understand certain things better.

Starting with:

Avengers Shield "Daze" or "Snare"

@Kaivax

Avenger’s Shield’s movement slow is now properly considered a Snare and can be removed by effects that remove movement impairing effects

I don’t get it. The tooltipp of Avengers Shield is pretty clear:

Hurls a holy shield at the enemy, dealing (365 * / 100 + 0.091 * + 0.091 * ) to (365 * / 100 + 0.091 * + 0.091 * ) Holy damage, Dazing them and then jumping to additional nearby enemies. Affects 3 total targets. Lasts 10 sec.

In comparison there is the warrior ability “Piercing Howl” which tooltip is also pretty clear:

Snares all enemies within 12 yards, reducing their movement speed by 70% for 8 sec.

So. I am not that deep into the different kinds of cc effects in classic wow. My knowledge is pretty much based upon what i find on wikis or other sites.
But of what i found there is a clear difference between “daze” and “snare” effect while the “daze” effects are also splitted in the sup-categories of “player daze” and “creature daze”

While “creature daze” dismounts players and is not removable “player daze” does not dismount players and is in fact removable by skills/items that remove movement impairing effects.

So…maybe i am wrong on this but for me it seems like the slow of avengers shield should be

@Kaivax

properly considered a

“player daze” (as its stated as “daze” in the tooltip) and in fact not as a “snare” (which is another cc category as it seems).

If so (pls tell me if i am wrong on this): I also found this information on shapeshifting from druids:

• In all forms besides caster form (and Treant Form), the druid is immune to polymorph effects. Shapeshifting from caster form to another form breaks polymorph effects.
• Shapeshifting breaks most movement-impairing effects (like [Slow] or [Hamstring]) and roots ([Frost Nova] or [Entangling Roots]). Does not break [Dazed].

(Source: https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Druid_shapeshift_forms). I don’t know if the source is true but for now i go with it.

So currently i come to the conclusion that the Avengers Shield “slow” is in fact a “daze” (a “player daze”) and therefore it is a movement impairing effect that is of another category than the category “snare”. So the statement “is now properly considered a snare” is wrong if one insists on the term “properly”.
Combined with the information about the druid shapeshifting that I could find, I come to the second conclusion that:
If it is the case that the avengers shield slow is a “player daze” then druids should in fact not be able to shapeshift out of it because they cannot shift out of daze effects but only out of all the other movement impairing effects.

(Little disclaimer…i am already exalted in warsong so i dont play pvp anymore for now but this thing still is of interest for me to understand correctly.)

Wild Strike proccs and Paladin abilites

So this one is based upon an information i found pinned in the SoD section of the “Paladin Classic” Discord.

The raw information is:
Warrior: Whirlwind → physical attack → proccs Windfury/Wildstrikes
Warrior: Quick Strike (Rune ability) → physical attack → proccs Windfury/Wildstrikes

Paladin: Divine Storm (Rune ability) → physical attack → does NOT procc Windfury/Wildstrikes
Paladin: Crusader Strike (Rune ability) → physical attack → does NOT procc Windfury/Wildstrikes

So I dont get the “why?”.

Quick strike is a rune ability like the two paladin abilites. All three are 100% physical damage attacks.
Like it’s stated in the Divine Storm tooltipp:

An instant weapon attack that causes 110% of weapon damage to up to 4 enemies within 8 yards. The Divine Storm heals up to 3 party or raid members totaling 25% of the damage caused.

So take a look at Wildstrikes now:

While you are in Cat Form, Bear Form, or Dire Bear Form, party members within 20 yards gain increased combat ferocity. Each melee hit has a 20% chance of granting the attacker an extra attack with 20% additional Attack Power. No effect if the party member is already benefitting from Windfury Totem.

So, I dont get why melee abilites of the warrior should be able to procc Wildstrikes while paladin abilites cant, if both function the same. Both are physical, both require a weapon and do a “melee hit”.

Maybe someone can enlighten me here.

Reckoning "extra" Attack

In 2019 Classic the reckoning mechanic worked a little bit different from how it “should” when you look at the tooltipp (rank 5 here):

Gives you a 100% chance to gain an extra attack after being the victim of a critical strike.

So…i guess we dont have to discuss what the word “extra” means…or maybe we have.
“ex” (latin) = out of, from
or from Latin extra (“outside, except, beyond”, adverb and preposition), from exter (“being on the outside”)

Being an “extra” Weapon Swing means it is a weapon swing that comes additional to the normal weapon swing. It is “outside of the normal weapon swing timer”.
There are 2 ways to do this:
1: The “extra” Swing is done as an “instant”
2: or it comes as a “double-hit” with the next normal weapon swing.

Unfortunately the mechanic of the Classic 2019 reckoning works a little different.
In the reckoning mechanic of the 2019 Classic reckoning, when it’s activated, it set’s the swingtimer of the normal next whiteswing to 100% and executes this next whiteswing as an instant.

That means for example:
When your swingtimer is 3.0 seconds in total and your swingtimer is at 2.5 of 3.0 right now and reckoning proccs you get those missing 0.5 seconds to finish the swingtimer and execute the next white-hit swing.

How it should work if it would work properly as an “extra” is:
Swingtimer is 3.0 in total and your swingtimer is at 2.5 of 3.0 right now and reckoning proccs.
Either 1: You execute an instant weapon swing caused by “reckoning” that is “extra” of the normal weapon swing…so after 0.5 seconds the normal weapon swing will still be executed as it was planned by the normal swingtimer.
Or 2: You have to wait until the next normal weaponswing (0.5 seconds in this example) and then you execute 2 weapon swings at once. One normal weapon swing and one EXTRA weapon swing.

Maybe they fixed it in the last years…I haven’t played much since the end of Naxx. If not it’s still a topic for phase 2 paladin in SoD.

[Zerezas-wild-growth]

From the quick check in DB, Divine Storm and Crusader Strike are not considered an ability, meaning they are actually considered to be spells.

That seems to be the source of the issue. Whether Blizzard will change it or not, who knows.

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Avenger Shield has a snare tag, as a matter of fact I checked a few other abilities that state “Daze” and they are all in fact snares. I would not give much credibility to tooltips - they were always all over the place especially in Vanilla, it’s the actual tags is what matters.

[Fedan-lone-wolf]

@Zerezas-wild-growth

From the quick check in DB, Divine Storm and Crusader Strike are not considered an ability, meaning they are actually considered to be spells.

Hm…a bit strange for a “Button” with the description “An instant weapon attack” to be categorized as spell.
But yeah could be the reason. Hope they fix it.

@Zerezas-wild-growth

Avenger Shield has a snare tag, as a matter of fact I checked a few other abilities that state “Daze” and they are all in fact snares.

So does that mean the category of “player daze” effects simply does not exist, or what? And how did you check the “tag” where and how?

I mean it’s stated “snare” on wowhead aswell but I mean i dunno if that’s because of the bluepost-hotfix and they changed it or if it even was before the hotfix considered to be a snare.

[Zerezas-wild-growth]

@Fedan-lone-wolf

@Zerezas-wild-growth

From the quick check in DB, Divine Storm and Crusader Strike are not considered an ability, meaning they are actually considered to be spells.

Hm…a bit strange for a “Button” with the description “An instant weapon attack” to be categorized as spell.
But yeah could be the reason. Hope they fix it.

@Zerezas-wild-growth

Avenger Shield has a snare tag, as a matter of fact I checked a few other abilities that state “Daze” and they are all in fact snares.

So does that mean the category of “player daze” effects simply does not exist, or what?

1. It is what it is. You raised a question what’s the difference between Quick Strike and Crusader/DS - and the obvious difference in DB is that Quick Strike has “is an Ability” tag, and the other two do not have it.

2. I don’t see anything to indicate any “player daze” or “daze” in DB. The tag for it, and lets say Concussive Shot and Aftermath is a “snare”. They all claim “daze” in tooltip, but are all “snare” in actual spell tags.

And the change to Avenger’s Shield was probably adding “Magic” tag to the effect, so it can be dispelled.

BTW, Piercing Howl is also a “snare” and also is an “ability”, but does not have “Magic” tag, so it can’t be dispelled by Dispel Magic.

Now I won’t claim I’m some mechanics expert, but the DB tags seem to be telling the actual story, while tooltips are not super reliable (kind of a known issue over many years in WoW anyway).

[Fedan-lone-wolf]

@Zerezas-wild-growth

And the change to Avenger’s Shield was probably adding “Magic” tag to the effect, so it can be dispelled.

Nah the effect was “magic” before the hotfix.

@Zerezas-wild-growth

I don’t see anything to indicate any “player daze” or “daze” in DB. The tag for it, and lets say Concussive Shot and Aftermath is a “snare”. They all claim “daze” in tooltip, but are all “snare” in actual spell tags.

And that’s kinda weird imho.
But…hm…well i looked it up again and i guess i read it a bit wrong. On the wiki it says:

Daze is a type of [snare] [debuff]. Daze can be applied by mobs - “Creature daze” - or other players - “Player daze” - and each form functions differently.

https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Daze

But i don’t get why they even list the category “player daze” in the wiki when all this effects are simply “snares”.
The whole concept of “player daze” is ad absurdum if there is no difference to “snare” in general.
So I guess the wiki should delete the “player daze” section completeley and just let the “creature daze” be there?

Man this stuff gets confusing.

And yes, i know that tooltipps are often not as the mechanic works. But for me I always see it this way:
Tooltipp: How it SHOULD work (the “intention how a mechanic should function given as information to the player”)
Mechanic: How it DOES work.

In the end…it would be great if blizzard would at least correct the tooltipps if they want to handle it the other way round.

So maybe it’s the same stuff with reckoning idk. I did not play Vanilla back in the day so i cannot say if reckoning ever worked like a real “extra” attack back in 2005. So it might be that just the tooltipp doesn’t fit the mechanic as well.

But how is a player supposed to find mistakes or bugs if one should always just assume the tooltipp to be “wrong”?

[Zathina-stormscale]

@Fedan-lone-wolf

Hope they fix it.

Wouldn’t count on it. During the Blizzcon demo, CS did proc Seals. But they intentionally broke it before the release of SoD for balance reasons.

Although now that Paladins have fallen behind a bit, i suppose it is possible they will give CS/DS the ability to proc Seals again. Assuming Blizzard doesn’t fix the issue by introducing new runes instead.

[Zerezas-wild-growth]

@Fedan-lone-wolf

And yes, i know that tooltipps are often not as the mechanic works. But for me I always see it this way:
Tooltipp: How it SHOULD work (the “intention how a mechanic should function given as information to the player”)
Mechanic: How it DOES work.

Blizzard did not manage to meet your stated goal for 20 years, don’t expect much of it next 20 years either.