Lightsmith Paladin Interview with Nobbel and MarcelianOnline - Holy & Protection Hero Talent Tree

Live Posted 2023/12/18 at 11:57 AM by Archimtiros

Nobbel87Flame of MarcellianOnlineInterview with Nobbel and FlameMarcelianOnline's videoObtaining Hero TalentsAre the hero talents unlocked as we gain levels or will there be more connected to it, like quests?

You’ll unlock the hero talent system at level 71. This does mean it won’t be available as pre-patch content. As you level you gain more points to fill up the tree, eventually filling up the entire tree at 80.

Are there already plans for adding more hero talents as we get further into the expansion?

Right now focused on developing these at launch. We’re building this out as evergreen, so it’s certainly possible down the line, maybe later in this expansion or future expansions, but nothing to share at this time. Right now focusing on these trees for launch.

Visual Customizations & Narrative ImpactWill we be able to collect new visuals for our new abilities (warlock green fire)

Nothing we can talk about at this time, but it’s certainly top of mind for us. We’re going to try and make these hero talents visually impactful so there’s a lot of avenues that we’re exploring.

Lightsmith, Herald of the Sun and Templar as talent names for our kits. Will we also be recognised as Lightsmith’s like highlords in the past or is it purely a name used for the talent system?

Currently, no. Right now this is a system, you’re picking up the teachings of not necessarily becoming one so currently no intend for people to recognise you as the Lightsmith.

Will we dive deeper into the backgrounds of different light wielders, like will we dive deeper into the background of those that follow An’she or the Naaru?

Currently, mostly just the name for the talent system. Might be room for us to explore later to integrate it a bit more into the lore, but right now focused as a secondary talent system.

Design ProcessWhat was the process behind getting this system going? How did you get to picking things like Lightsmith or Herald of the Sun or Templars?

Very fun, but difficult. Sat in calls for hours to decide what makes sense. If we pick Lightsmith for this combo, what makes sense here? A lot of teams working together. Ultimately the 39 we sent in at Blizzcon are the ones we felt good about. Good to start with. Lightsmith you get that you’re going to make something out of light. San’layn, very much Blood Death Knight. What are fun and cool design hooks for unholy as well? Fun, difficult process but also really fulfilling.

Talent & Mechanics BreakdownCould you paint us a picture of how holy armaments will look in game?

Ground target reticles that you place at a set location. Cast it on top of a player, nearby them and they can walk through and pick it up. What will Holy Armaments look like? Visually we are still trying to figure it out. How much space they take up. How we can make sure to draw players' attention to them. Adding verticality to them?

It’s not like a Lightwell? You walk over it or spawn it on someone and they auto pick it up?

Yeah right now it's walking over it. Discussing if there should be a delay so that you don’t pick it up too quickly, give people time to react to it without feeling like they have to stand on top of it or even move out of it. Thinking of how we want to deliver that mechanic fully, but we have an early version in that we’re play testing.

It rotates between Bulwark and Armaments, Shield or dmg/healing increase. Does this rotate on the ability itself before you cast or does it rotate on the armament itself?

It rotates on the ability, cast it once it's bulwark, cast it second time you’ll get a weapon.

What are your thoughts on how these talents will play and their impact on your rotation? Like how a protection paladin has the stationary consecration playstyle forcing the heavy play when it comes to survivability because you have to move out of consecration then you’re kind of losing a lot of dmg reduction and since we don’t know exactly how the armaments will spawn. Does the spawn rate or distance from the paladin itself force the paladin out of consecration or is this something at all that you're considering when it comes to impacting the rotation and playstyle.

We want hero talents to elevate your current rotation and gameplay style. Influence maybe a couple of subtle changes here and there. Not looking too upset the balance of what your core rotation is. If we look at Divine Inspiration within the Lightsmith tree which has: Spawns holy armaments nearby, wont spawn 20 yards away from your concentration, easy to pick up for you or for someone else.
Solidarity: An ally picks up armaments, you get benefits as well so even if it spawns far away from consecration, someone else can pick up armament and you’d still get the benefit so we are trying to take those things into consideration.

Divine Inspiration: Choice node together with forwarding. In the sense of these choices making them feel like a good choice. The choice node between this and Forwarding makes it feel like it relies entirely on whether or not forwarding makes the armament align with other cooldowns. SInce we don't exactly know what the cooldown is. If this would be the case, the chances of forwarding being preferred 100% of the time is very likely. Is this something you take into consideration when designing and tuning cooldown lengths and reductions for the holy armaments and potentially other cooldowns for the paladin?

Yeah it's top of mind for us. The intent with that choice node specifically is to account for situations when there aren’t immediate obvious uses for the armament. Where a player doesn’t necessarily need or want to plan out these cooldowns or when there are critical moments that are covered by baseline uptime, and bonus proc vs bonuses. It should be expected that a well timed/targeted armaments is better than a proc, but a proc is better then unused. We’re giving ourselves a lot of tune ups for these and conversations we have every day.

This is the type of feedback we want from players, part of the reason we get these out early. Is to get this kind of feedback on choice nodes or even just talent tuning in general. These numbers are not final. We trying to get these numbers into a sane state for our internal playtesting, very likely we’ll see these numbers change before they become available for public testing.

Hero talents should not be a dominant part of your core gameplay, do you look at it (armaments) like something you’ll pick up as a side thing/doesn't matter or is this something you’ll really want to time in the fight itself?

They’re going to be impactful for overall player power. You don’t wanna skip being a lightsmith, you’ll feel the impact. We don’t necessarily want to force a player into a specific playstyle, if they want to play lightsmith you should be able to pick and be viable. They’ll be impactful talents for sure.

Valiance talent; consuming shining light or infusion of light extends duration of any armaments by 3 sec or reduces cooldown if none exist. Will there be a cap on how much extension 1 player can get and how will this balance work with holy bulwark who’d seem to want the extension of the 30% buff more than the cooldown reduction which implies that you’ll want to re-amp up the cooldown or buff strength. Instead if a choice between a cd reduction and an extension is presumed of course.

Great question on the cap, we need to talk about this on our end. The point of this early feedback is important. Regarding the bulwark, it only stacks up to 30% if the wielder isn’t taking damage so if the player chooses to extend bulwark in order to give that buffer for an upcoming damage event, that’s their prerogative. Choosing to extend one armament functionally delays the next cast of the other so it's a trade off and a balance of your priorities.

Talent that makes armaments randomly spawn; are there any ideas as to how many weapons you want on the field at any time? Is there a despawn timer? Are these things already considered?

Definitely things to consider, I’d have to check in to see if there’s a current cap. The proc is infrequent, enough to be exciting but not so much to have 20 different armaments on the field at a time. Probably don’t want more then 3 at a time per paladin, but these numbers are made up and will have to make sense for the health of the overall gameplay for it.

I've seen the Race to World First and degen gameplay, so I could imagine them pulling trash and putting a whole bunch of armaments on the battlefield.

Yeah they won't last forever. Long enough for people to reach them but not so long like it makes you feel you have to instantly pick it up. One thing i think we’d def do if its not already in, have it clear before a pull so that you can’t stack them up.

Would be cool though! We wouldn’t do it, but would be visually cool.

Specifically to hammer and anvil; right now it says judgment critical strikes cause a shockwave around the target, dealing additional holy damage or healing at the target’s location. Relies on crit strike. Designing effects based on stat priorities, will you consider how the same stat affects both specs? Since crit is historically desired for holy paladin, while protection favors haste/mastery/verse most of the time more than crit itself.

Definitely something we think about and give ourselves tuning knobs to account for it. Going to make up numbers real quick to paint a picture. Let's say holy is 5% crit needed, prot 10% crit needed. Numbers are high, not saying those numbers are going to be. But we would make those individual tuning adjustments per spec to get those nodes roughly. I think there’s still some merit to making crit cool for prot to look forward too. So I don’t think we’d necessary change if it’s a crit node for holy paladin but a haste paladin for prot, don't think we’d try something like that but we’d like the value of the overall node be impactful for both so we’d see it different for the spec you’re playing. (Don’t want to change it specific for 1 stat, but make crit cool for both and have it play a bit differently, but as with everything, changes will happen depending on feedback.)

Prot paladins could change their whole gearset to favor crit to get more effect out of this one, I'd imagine you keep tuning this to balance it out since crit is a bit RNG when it comes to survivability for a tank.

Definitely, if this one node is so strong its driving the entirety of your gearing decisions it probably means balancing is off somewhere, bit too impactful for a node in that regard. But if it slightly changes your gems or enchants priority, that's fine, that’s in the realm of acceptability for me.

Blessing of the Forge right now makes Avenging Wrath summon an additional Sacred Weapon, and during Avenging Wrath your sacred weapon casts spells on your target and echoes the effects of your holy power abilities. Will the spells cast by Sacred weapons be the same spec variants, like Holy Shock for a holy paladin or in this case the spender so Word of Glory and if so will there be synergies between the spec and the rest of the kit like let's say Protection Paladin would cast Shield of the Righteous, would you be able to stack that on top of your current Shield of the Righteous, extend the duration or anything of that sort or is it just pure flavor?

We talked about this a bit, right now it’s just damage and healing events that echo, but could go either way. What do you think is cooler?

Replication/echoing sounds so cool but I imagine it's a balancing nightmare. Prot Paladin gaining max Shield of Righteous is not that hard, less impactful if that would be the intended effect.

Got ya. For now its dmg and healing events, feedback really important. Something we’ll keep in mind. Right now it could go either way.

Identifying overall effects and impacts of having it interact with every single talent synergy along those lines and if that's really something we could actually do without making it super overpowered. Alot of tuning implications there that we have to be wary of. If something has a lot of talents it synergies with and interacts with, it becomes a lot harder to just echo the effect itself because you start compounding the actual impact of that singular talent.

Generating FeedbackI hear you say that would be cool, is that something you’re looking for in feedback? Cool new things or is it more about numbers?

I’d say both. Tuning is good to know, ideas we love as well. Stuff we can as long as it makes sense for lightsmith.

Dragonflight talents changed quite a bit during development. Names, does it make sense? op?, any feedback is great feedback right now.

Right of Sanctification, right now it says imbue your weapon with the power of the Light, increasing your armor by 5% and your primary stat by 1%. Lasts 1 hour. Weapon imbue.
While Rite of Adjuration: imbue your weapon with the power of the Light, increasing your stamina by 3% and causing your holy power spenders to sometimes unleash a burst of healing around a target. Weapon imbue.
There are no numbers available right now to put it into perspective but, historically main stat buffs have been vastly superior to secondary effects or even stats. Stamina seems to behave more like a secondary stat nowadays in terms of its overall value of a character in this case of survivability. Assuming balance and tuning is addressed as well, would there be a higher consideration for underdog stats like stamina/armor and essentially damage/healing procs so we don't feel like we have to get the main stat buff since that would always be the safest option or the more generic one that would function across the board in all content?

Definitely, tuning something like this is pretty tight, it’s a fine balance. The Intention behind choices like this is that they're close enough so you can make situational or preferential decisions. Something reliable like stats vs something that's like a proc that has variable applications depending on the content that you’re doing.

Divine Guidance: For each holy power ability cast, your next consecration does additional holy damage or healing split across all enemies, up to a fixed total.
Blessed Assurance: Casting a holy power spender increases the damage and healing of your next Crusader Strike blessed hammer or hammer of the righteous by 100%.

We’re talking numbers which are subject to change. Assuming that’s the case, currently both specs in the sense of the meta in the current patch, take little to no consecration synergies in their builds. While crusader strike for both of the specs and what it transfers to for protection, is a low impact ability in terms of their dmg output. How would hero talents affect your class and spec talent builds if the dmg increase, 100% to Crusader Strike, would be something impactful enough that people would want to choose Bless of Assurance over divine guidance.

Talents like these are outlets for us to give some tuning knobs for holy armaments. Numbers subject to change as the tree really. Ideally we will make these as close as possible within each other.

Talents in terms of synergy and what's taken in current impact in case of Crusader Strike, we’re looking at the core and base spec trees when looking at hero talents to make sure these things are both viable as you progress. Reworks or updates to tuning are on the table where appropriate. We don't necessarily wanna change existing gameplay, we talked about this with consecration earlier just to make a hero talent tree work. But if there are things that are so obvious, like crusader strike is a really low impact ability, maybe that shouldn’t be the case? Maybe it should be more impactful, a case for us to increase the viability a little bit. Not just for the hero talent tree to work, but also to give you more interesting, ya know even if you're not playing lightsmith, maybe crusader strike should feel more impactful as a paladin. Opportunity for us to one; give us a different trigger for hero talent trees but also give players something more interesting to look forward to if baseline, or core rotationally.

Consecration becomes stronger, I find it interesting when 1 spell becomes a center point to a playstyle or build. And from what I understood from what you guys said, you don't want the holy armaments and the hero talents to effect the core gameplay too much and when this addresses specific spells like Consecration or Crusader Strike, as a prot paladin or a holy paladin I’d wonder if i’d have to talent more into consecration talents to make this synergy more impactful or to make the hero talent more impactful. That’s kind of the area of this question.

We need to find balance in that. Ultimately we’d want you to feel like you play your core class any way you like and hero talent enhances that. That can be tricky. Again, this is great feedback from the community. If something swings too much into 1 direction, and it feels like you kind of losing a bit of your core identity, those are things we want to know. Want to make sure if it feels good/bad if you want to see more or less of it. Make these hero talents as exciting for everyone as possible no matter what hero talent tree or spec you’re playing.

If you could throw out anything about this new hero talent system, what would you say?

We want your feedback! Big reason for our push to get this in front of players as early as possible. Our goal is to have the majority of these in and play testable with the first public testing when this does become available. Some of the good feedback we love to hear is, how do you feel about the fantasy of the tree and how well do you feel these talents embody it? What are your thoughts on how these talents play and their impact on your rotation? What is the impression of how these talents affect your class and your talent builds. Even feedback on the names of the talents or the visuals; are we hitting that fantasy with the visuals you’re seeing? Are we selling the identity of the Lightsmith to you, would love to hear what community have to say.

Best way to give us feedback through our forums. That said, we read Reddit, Discords, Tiktoks, so really it's on you to figure out how you want to present the feedback. Reading is easier to parse but really everything is on the table.

Plan for Public TestingYou mentioned getting these talents on public testing as soon as possible. At Blizzcon we were told Alpha. How are we going to get people to test these talents? What can we expect for alpha/beta invites or will it be available on the PTR?

Unfortunately, I can't speak on specific time windows for things like public alpha or anything like that. Can’t give specifics there. Goal is when public alpha or ptr opens up, these are play testable so that people can log in and test them.

We’re doing blog posts for these, Lightsmith, San'layn, Mountain Thane, Chrono Warden. Paper isn’t easiest to get feedback on but that's the first step and we can still get valuable feedback. Feedback you've given is already super valuable, our plan is to roll out more hero blogs in the future as well. Before we get to the public testing alpha stage, everyone will have a good familiarity with a lot of these hero talents.

Will they be available before the expansion launches as part of the pre- patch?

No, they’ll unlock at 71, so not available with pre-patch.

Lightsmith Paladin Talent Tree

Comment by WowheadFan2008Using AI in the thumbnail hurts real artists! Please understand the dangers of this technology and the harm it causes to the artist community.Comment by SirGentlesharkGreat article, really excited for this premise of a seemingly super-support oriented choice for Prot and Holy Paladins!
Just unfortunate that the AI use makes the preview image so... unwarcrafty and fakeComment by LordavaruumUsing AI in the thumbnail hurts real artists! Please understand the dangers of this technology and the harm it causes to the artist community.Comment by PeacemoonPicking up stuff on the ground for buffs and power ups? This sounds like a M+ affix. Who the hell is going to tell all the non-paladins they have to stand on the glowie items for buffs, and better yet who is going to remind them to do it while juggling their own class mechanics and boss mechanics?Comment by O4MinisterIt sounds so weird to hear their design proces .. they skip steps to maybe later come back on it... Like what? I'm a industrial designer if I said that to my boss he'd be looking at me like I'm some sick fat cow. The question of will lightwielders finally get some more dept is so good it should've happened years ago and they are like... Meh... Not now maybe later... Like what? The class fantasy is based on it ...Comment by VerroquisI really strongly do not want an extra active button that I have to click a reticle for and then walk over to use.

If I macro into it and bind it into stuff that doesn't fix it either, as half of the talents want me to share.

This seems like extremely outdated design.Comment by O4MinisterWhy... Why couldn't they just make it cosmetic ...Comment by DaibakuhaIt would have been great if they didn't waste a bunch of times answering questions about lore and stuff we already know.Comment by ZugZuggiesUsing AI in the thumbnail hurts real artists! Please understand the dangers of this technology and the harm it causes to the artist community.Comment by knivkarinNone of these hero talents sounds good or fun at all so far. The design is just off.Comment by wieczmatiIn my opinion the main skill should split into two spells with shared cooldown instead of rotatingComment by TyrsenusWith respect to your opinion, this should be taken up with MarcellianOnline, as it is their video thumbnail.tweetComment by DeezcowsDoes anyone actually like picking stuff up off the ground? All the classes they have tried this on they have basically make a spell that picks them all up because moving as a tank is a bad mechanic and picking up stuff on the ground is the opportunity to cause you or another person be put into a mechanic unintentionally. Thinking of tank stack mechanics where you have to be close enough where the splash damage doesn't accidentally splash to a DPS instead. This is a possibility if DPS are trying to take an armament instead of you.

They tried this with monk and it failed (Chi and Health). They tried this with DH and it failed (Health and dmg with demons). Can we actually give more player agency and choice? This is basically the same game play as Dusk and Dawn which also failed in SL and was made to be automatic via a talent. If this was to work properly, it should work similar to Augmentation's prescience.Comment by dzinx0rseems like Blizzard has not learned their lesson and keeps going down that rabbit hole deeper and deeper by giving prot paladin more utility to keep teammates alive in m+ leaving other tanks dry.
U wanna balance all tanks in m+? The last thing u wanna do is to give ppallies another spell, that will have 2 charges and it will give any teammate a big shield ON DEMAND. They already have sac, bop, spellwarding, LoH, WoG.

Please Blizzard, stop ruining m+ balance even more, by adding this you are sealing a spot for a future god comp again.Comment by EdlarelUsing AI in the thumbnail hurts real artists! Please understand the dangers of this technology and the harm it causes to the artist community.Comment by ArchimtirosWith respect to your opinion, this should be taken up with MarcellianOnline, as it is their video thumbnail.tweetComment by SwinkyySo for me, I main a Ret Paladin, and I really like that Lightsmith has a signature ability that makes them FEEL like a Lightsmith. I myself am planning on playing a Templar so I really hope that remains the case for the Templar Tree.

Pros:
- As mentioned above
- Having the armaments disappear upon the start of the encounter is a great solution
- I like the idea of the Rite's choice Talent (really hoping for it to add a Holy weapon effect on our weapons)
- Love the Excoriation Talent, was really sad to see Hand of Hinderance removed.

I'm not going to have many Cons because most of them were addressed in the interview so I'll just emphasize some of them:
- The Stat Priority Concern on Hammer and Anvil
- For Blessing of the Forge, will the Armament casts come from the weapons YOU hold? Or also your Party Members. Also, When the weapons cast their spells, how will you determine which effect the Sacred Weapon will cast, Damage or Healing? Or will it be random?
- There should absolutely be a delay upon spawning the Armaments

Main Concern: You mentioned that you wanted feedback on talents that we feel scews gameplay too far into one direction. I think the emphasis on empowering Consecration further frustrates Protection Paladin players who already do not like the gameplay around Consecration. I Off-Spec Prot and I do not like how much I am restricted to the area of my Consecration. My main hope is that you can somehow implement a talent that allows your Consecration to follow you around that retains the same benefits, with a greatly reduced radius.

I'd also like a bit of clarification on the Divine Guidance Talent. Specifically on the "up to a fixed total" part. Does this mean that for every Holy Power ability we cast, do we get a stacking buff that increases the consecration effect with each stack, which gets spent upon casting Consecration?

That's all I've got for now, hope this was helpful and can't wait to get more info in the future!Comment by VittorinoBlizzard wasn't done dumping on Holy paladins, I guess. These hero talents are hot garbage. An alternating buff that rotates between damage and an absorb shield, that drops on the ground in a random spot around you after randomly being activated by any ability, and then other people have to walk over it to activate it. I also have the option of targeting where I drop one of them, but most of them will be randomly plopped around the fight area with no control over what it is or where it goes.

Good luck getting non-paladin players to even glance at those things. Anybody remember Lightwell? A good portion of the time, the paladin is going to have other stuff to worry about with all the other crap going on in a key. Or the armament is going to land itself in the middle of an area denial mechanic that I won't be able to move into without risking death.

I was wary of Hero Talents when they announced them, and now that I can see they're getting the same amount of love and attention as every other throwaway WoW system, I'm no longer wary. No I'm fully convinced that they're trash.Comment by FloatingBrainas others have stated, mechanics of picking things of the grounds have failed time and time again, and "holy armaments" is a ^&*!ty idea to being with.Comment by loveyoselfFfs I’m so tired of WOW PLAYERS #$%^&ING. Literally NOTHING the devs do is ever right. And yall are so emotionally stunted from being online your entire life that yall can’t even conceive how inappropriate it is to call something “hot garbage” WHEN YOUVE NEVER TRIED IT.

!@#$! How can the playerbase be made up of so many 40yo toddlers! Just shut up. If you don’t like the game, leave. Stop bringing it and everyone else down just bc your life is so pathetic and miserable that you forgot what happiness or joy is.

Just literally go away. No one wants you around.