Arkamis

As every knows, paladins have a choice of seven auras from which to choose. I will highlight their UNTRAINED/UNBUFFED (at lvl 60) details here in concise form for the rest of my argument.

Devotion Aura: +735 armor to everyone in the aura radius
Retribution Aura: Does 20 holy damage to anyone who attacks any player within the aura radius
Concentration Aura: Gives a 35% chance to not interrupt spellcasting while taking damage
Shadow Resistance Aura: Gives +60 shadow resistance
Frost Resistance Aura: Gives +60 frost resistance
Fire Resistance Aura: Gives +60 fire resistance
Sanctity Aura: Gives +10% damage to all holy attacks (but not healing) 21-point talent in the Retribution Tree.

Most people who party with a paladin only have one paladin in the party. And as a result of most paladins drooling over their high AC, most run Devotion Aura, and most other classes have learned to love it. However, I hate it and find it mostly useless.

Damage reduction scales superlinearly and inversely with your base armor value. Plate wearers holding a shield get about a 2.4% DR increase from unbuffed DA. Clothies get closer to 7%.

In a fight, the tanks need to be the primary holders of aggro. This is to avoid non plate-wearing clsases from taking heavy melee damage. As a result, that 7% AC bonus should not come into consideration for cloth wearers, only the 2.4% increase for plate wearers.

For a short trash mob fight, devotion aura should never be on. Allow us to assume that the mob lands 150 damage on a main tank. 2.4% DR on this attack will bring it down to about 146 damage. This lands inside the standard deviation from the mean on a melee attack, meaning this -4 damage isn't even noticeable.

On a trash mob fight, they will probably only get about 10 melee attacks on the tank before dying. Devotion aura only equates to, in this case, 40 damage. Certainly not a game breaker. In fact, I can't even cast a rank 1 flash of light that will heal for that little!

Even if the tank is holding three mobs, and the group is (properly) focus firing one target, we have DA stopping 40 damage from mob 1, 80 damage from mob 2 and 120 damage from mob 3, adding up to only 240 damage. This is about what my rank 1 flash heal costs, and this is approximately 3% of the total health of even a moderately geared tank.

Point?

Devotion Aura is mostly worthless except on hard hitting trash or bosses (Molten Giants/Destroyers are good examples of when DA helps. 2.4% DR on 1000+ dmg hits adds up, especially on how long it takes to drop two of them).

So what then should a paladin use?

Obviously Fire/Frost/Shadow auras are for specific fights, and if you have a smart priest, then Shadow Aura is garbage too. So let's just assume these are used only when necessary (firelords, Geddon, Vael, Rag, etc).

Santicity aura is a good aura for a DPS paladin (har har). But it's only really useful in a group with 2 paladins or a group where you have a smart smite-spec priest and a restro druid who loves to heal. It's also good for soloing, but useless for raiding. (We'll see how Naxxramas changes this).

Concentration Aura is a phenomenal talent and can be a game breaker. A paladin with a buffed CR (up to 70%) should be stacked in a group with the healers for harder fights like Jin'do. This will increase the overall DPS and the overall healing management of that party. An oomkin and a CR pally would absolutely devastate the healing meter on a hard fight with lots of mobs. This is something that is awesome to use, but sadly you only see it used in a 2-pally party. Pallies need to smarten up on this one.

My favorite aura is Retribution Aura. Even unbuffed, this does 20 damage to every attacker of a target in the aura radius. That means a tank is doing damage EVEN AS HE TAKES DAMAGE! In the same fight above but with unbuffed RA, the attacking mobs will take 200, 400 and 600 damage respectively, just from trying to attack the tank. That's a total damage output of 1200 damage over a short fight, just from being beaten upon. Further, if a paladin is running Righteous Fury, this extra damage (as of 1.10) properly generates hate, thereby making him a more effective tank.

As a result of all this, the benefits of Devotion Aura, I've found, are limited in their usage in the same manner that the shadow, fire and frost auras are.

Anyhow, enjoy!

Sunderland

I have issues with ret and here they are:

If a clothie draws aggro ret aura makes it harder to pull the mob off the clothie with ret aura.
The clothie cannot stop dealing damage, and thus it makes escape that much harder. Also, 2.4% of what the tanks are getting hit for endgame>20 dmg. This means that the damage the tank does to the mob when he has ret aura on is considerably less than the damage that would be prevented to the tank if he had Devo on. Even trash mobs.

Also when you take into consideration the tanks role, Devo aura suits the tank better than ret in the simple way that it is designed to keep the tank alive. Ret does a piddly 20 damage every time the mob gets a hit off...meaning if you are lucky on trash mobs you will get to do 100+ damage to a trash mob before the DPS classes get to burning them down proper.

It isnt the fact that pallies that use Devo are "worrying" they just know that the kind of damage ret puts out is just not worth using ret. Its the same reason druids dont buff thorns in raids.

If you are in a caster group concentration is nice though

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Kemotaha

Druids buff thorns in Raids. On the Tanks. I try, especially for boss fights to put thorns on tanks. The extra little bit help. Life saver? probably not.

But you are right you don't put thorns on clothies. Maybe we can work this out to our advantage. If 2 pallies were in with the tank, they could use both auras and get the best of both worlds?

Just a thought.

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Kemotaha

Arkamis

That's why you don't stack clothies with tanks. Like I said, Devo does very little to keep the tanks alive.

A clothie based group would want concentration, exactly for the reason that devo would increase hate. However since aura dancing costs zero mana, a smart paladin will watch his party's aggro and swap as needed.

Sunderland

Warlocks have to be grouped with tanks because of our fabulous imp buff. It also helps having priests assigned to specific groups/tanks. Mages dont matter as far as groups but that is only 1 squishy class.

Also, I still think 2.4% damage reduction is a lot more than you think.

And sorry kemo...didnt know you used thorns

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Manny

*shrug*
I find that the Ret aura is best to use when in A)PvP (those speedy jackass rogues don't know where that 500 health went after beating the snot out of a sapped Pally) And B) when i'm feeling Sassy, and don't need the extra 900some armor i get from my Devo Aura.

Personally, I've always been a big fan of the Sanctity aura... back when it was easy for a holy pally to get to. It increased my damage, and, combined with holy shock, gave me a surefire way to actually rip a mob off of a priest/mage/lock. Now that that aura has been moved into the ret tree, I don't have access to it. Oh well.

Either way, I find that the Devo aura is generally the most in demand buff. If i had any idea exactly how much aggro that 20 holy damage was causing, i might be tempted to actually use it more often.

We should test it out... Annnnnnd, Probably look into having two pallies in the group... cause i wouldn't be surprised if that holy damage draws Aggro to US... just like Judgement of wisdom used to do. (heheh, Oops.)

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Arkamis

Yeah but you're not a clothie. You're a paper tank. *grumbles* nerf warlocks *grumbles* =P

Adrielle

Whatever Manny, everytime I group with you you put on your "n00b" aura D:

Everyone in your group gets a +99% chance to do something n00btastic.


Like jump off cliffs!

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ScratchMonkey

I wish I were a Photoshop stud. I'd love to see a "screenshot" of someone with the n00b buff!

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Manny

you Cannot blame that on me. It's not my fault that you secrete n00b all over the place. ESPECIALLY that paticular streak of n00b leading from the door to that group of Ogre Warlocks in Dire Maul North.

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Adrielle

Maybe it's me with the n00b aura instead of you ... :x

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