20 Second HoJ's... /Mourn

It went undocumented in the latest PTR build but a 20 second cooldown Hammer of Justice is a thing of the past. The Ret PvP set bonus was altered in 9095 to match the PvE Set Bonus: 1 second off Judgement Cooldown. This is the case for all PvP sets, not just the lvl80 Savage gear:



This should come as no surprise to many who thought that a 20 second cooldown, 7 second stun was beyond the pail. The net effect is that, with an assumed nerf to the Glyph of Hammer of Justice mooted earlier, in a PvP build HoJ will be down to a 30second cooldown from the 35sec cooldown in 2.4.3. A 30 Second cooldown stun is still good, especially with the change to Stun Resist mechanics in 3.0, but it emphasises the need for the interrupt component to be brought to a different skill or effect. Hopefully we'll see a more useful PvP set bonus in the coming patches (-cooldown to Freedom plz), but I fear that like Paladin Aura Radius and 11pt Prot talent it's very much on the back burner now.

Is Paladin lvl80 burst and medium level control going to be enough to make Ret viable in Season 5? Only time will tell but frankly I don't think that burst is enough with lvl80 HP levels and skills. Cleaving idiots in BG's to finish top of KB's with no deaths was easy in 2.4.3 and will probably be similarly easy in 3.0 at lvl80, but as we all know Arena's is a very different beast. More on that coming up.