Friday, February 06, 2009

Patch 3.1 Now Known As Patch 'Kings to Baseline'

Yeah, I know, everyone and their dog has already posted this. TBH, this post if for one reason only...

Hate to say I told you so Josh :P

* Blessing of Kings – this spell is now a base ability trainable by all paladins.
* Exorcism – this spell now causes damage to all types of enemy targets. However, it always critical strikes undead or demon targets. This change should make sure paladin damage doesn’t drop when going from Naxxramas to later tiers of content.
* Shield of the Templar now causes your Avenger’s Shield and Shield of the Righteousness to silence targets for 3 sec. The old damage bonus of this talent has been folded into Holy Shield, Avenger’s Shield, and Shield of the Righteousness.
* Ardent Defender, Improved Hammer of Justice, One-Handed Weapon Specialization and more have had their ranks reduced.
* Guarded by the Light – no longer reduces the mana cost of shield spells, but now has a 50/100% chance to refresh Divine Plea duration.
* Judgements of the Just – now also reduces the cooldown of Hammer of Justice by 10/20 seconds and increases the duration of the Seal of Justice stun effect by 0.5/1 second.


(Source)

--

From Yesterday's post:

* Since paladins rely less on Spirit as a mana-regeneration stat, we have to address them in other ways. We don’t want to change Illumination or Replenishment. However, we are going to increase the healing penalty on Divine Plea from 20% to 50%. Divine Plea was originally intended to help Protection and Retribution paladins stay full on mana. It should be a decision for Holy paladins, not something that is automatically used every cooldown.

* In addition, we are also changing the way Spiritual Attunement works. In situations with a large amount of outgoing raid damage, as well as in PvP, this passive ability was responsible for more mana regeneration than we would like. We want to keep the necessary benefit it grants to tanking Protection paladins, while making it less powerful for Holy paladins in PvP or raid encounters with a lot of group damage.


Kings to Baseline. Thank goodness for that, it really was the only sane choice. The only question will be just what replaces it in Tier 1 Protection and whether or not Ret will be tempted to grab it.

Exorcism being usuable against all targets is a very interesting one. I was in the process of drafting a post about how the Ulduar raid could be a problem for Ret DPS due to the abscence of Exorcism, Holy Wrath and the Sense Undead glyph and it's actually nice to trash that one. It also provides for an interesting possible secondary effect for CS - Chance to refresh your Exorcism cooldown, but more importantly it also gives Holy a much needed mana dump for damage. Glyph of Exorcism will be an absolute stone-cold cert for first chosen in PvP - 2 seconds of interrupt on a 15 second cooldown? Yes please!

Shield of the Templar allows Prot some significant control against casters, though Silence effects are always a potential issue due to immunities. Linking it to Avengers Shield and Shield of Righteousness is an interesting choice as it has the potential to really screw with casters in PvP. Throw in Seal of Justice and pocket Prot becomes a real PITA :D.

Speaking of Seal of Justice, just when you thought they'd forgotton the spell completely it once again rears it's head. It's linked to Judgements of the Just which is a strange choice that deep in the tree, making me think it's yet another PvP bone being thrown at Prot. But what a bone - random stun proc plus a much shorter HoJ cooldown. However with the existence of this talent it's much more likely that Imp. HoJ will reduce in effectiveness significantly, down to -20 or even -10 seconds. Even I can admit that a 20 or even 10 second HoJ cooldown would be overpowered.

Does Protection need more Mana regen? Tough to say really, but the increased mana regen from Guarded By The Light would make off-tanking without high incoming damage significantly easier. Chalk this down as a talent I'm simply not sure about, probably because of my lack of tanking experience. Ret would probably murder small fluffy animals for it though ;).

Finally a lot of talent bloat, in the form of Imp. HoJ, Ardent Defender and One-Handed Spec amongst, will be reduced. Worries will be abound as to just how much the talents' effectiveness will be increased/reduced but a judgement on that will have to wait on the a PTR. Collapsing these talents into one for the 11pt talent could be an option.



Gosh, Baring the hit to Holy via DP and SA no nerfs announced. How refreshing. There is still no concrete word on the 11pt talent and no real idea what will replace BoK in Tier-1 Prot but nonetheless plenty to chew on. The devil is in the detail but there is nothing there to be too worried about and quite a bit to feel optimistic about.

Roll on the PTR I say, and some Holy love!

10 comments:

Gwaendar 06/02/2009, 10:14  

Sounds too good to be true. If most of these make it to live, I expect another round of to the ground hotnerfs which will leave us all very frustrated and unhappy.

Shwitz44 06/02/2009, 14:52  

/eats crow

I... I can't quite belive it. I stared at MMO Champ's front page for a good 45 seconds, fixated on the words "Blessing of Kings" and "trainable".

... yea...

BigFire 06/02/2009, 15:00  

They nerfed Holy badly with the new and 'nerfed' Divine Plea. The heal penalty for Divine Plea is now 50%, up from 20%.

Suicidal Zebra 06/02/2009, 15:06  

@ Josh

I hope this is a lesson to you: never doubt my nostradamus-like predictive abilities. ;)

@Bigfire

I noted that in last nights post, but it would be a good idea for me to put it in. Post updated in a sec.

Will Armstrong IV 06/02/2009, 15:55  

Finally, now that we've got BoK trainable we can start on the rest of the "Things Blizzard has overlooked for years" list.

Gonna throw a few ideas out there, at least.

1. Improved Devotion Aura will move back to the first Tier of Protection to allow Holy the benefit of it's bonus healing. It will remain 3 points.

2. A new two point talent will increase all damage (spell and melee) when a shield is equipped. This allows Prot to increase threat and Holy to increase spell damage (from shock, exorcism, etc), but because of the shield requirement, will not be as useful for Ret (who already wants Divine Strength).

3. Holy will receive a deep talent that causes Divine Plea's restriction on healing to soften slightly, allowing Holy to still maintain a degree of healing without Prot and Ret having access to it.

Not sure what else. Good news all around though.

Unknown 07/02/2009, 19:41  

so for PVP folks, we have another button to spam in PVP? exorcism? Do the same amount of damage? too good to be true. With this spell, we don't need HoR to interrupt capper in PVP anymore. Just too good to be true.

Regarding trainable BoK, is that 2% bok or 10%bok.. if it's 10%, it's just too good to be true.

Unknown 07/02/2009, 19:56  

Regarding stuns, " Judgements of the Just – now also reduces the cooldown of Hammer of Justice by 10/20 seconds and increases the duration of the Seal of Justice stun effect by 0.5/1 second. "

wow.. so you can basically stun lock someone like rogue?

HoJ to 10sec CD
HoJ : 6sec stun
JoJ : 7sec CD (8 if no 4 pieces)
JoJ to 1sec stun

Gazimoff 07/02/2009, 21:58  

SZ, I'm guessing that you're playing on your laptop now? :)

Suicidal Zebra 07/02/2009, 22:38  

It seems likely that Exorcism will get a mana efficiency nerf to bring it back in line with other Shock-type spells (18% rather than 8% per cast). Unfortunately that would increase our mana consumption by 40% of base mana per minute, which may not go well with a projected nerf to SA.

I think it's also pretty likely that a 10-sec Cooldown HoJ will not happen. It's almost certain that Imp. HoJ's cooldown reduction will be nerfed (for a lower point investment) so that the max Prot will be able to grab is 30seconds total. I'm not sure how you are doing your sums but I'm not sure how you are getting a stunlock out of a single HoJ and unpredictable SoJ procs. In theory you could well make a nuisance of yourself but diminishing returns will soon neuter the effect.

@ Gaz

Playing WoW on a Laptop over USB... not something I'd recommend ;).

Unknown 07/02/2009, 23:41  

Rogue only have cs 4sec, kidney 6secs with 20sec CD. gouge but that's if you face the guy (rarely since rogues do it from behind) and have no dot on him.

yeah if it's deep in protection tree to get 40 or 50sec off, then i guess it's not as bad since prot don't do as much dps.

even as of right now, i can almost stun lock someone to death with just a stun and a repentance without JoJ proc. (rotation: stun, judge,cs,ds...rep, wait for CDs, judge [by this time, they should be very close to or at HoW mark so cs,ds if not and/or HoW]. dead.)

Now, JoJ (which i almost always use in PVP) does stun/interrupt, exorcism does 2 second interrupt with glyph.. I'm sure those'll get nerfed before going live. Way too OP to put in rotation.

Imagine 3 huge hits (10k damage + chance to stun) + exorcism+silence with glyph..

if not dead, rep and repeat.

This prepatch info described a huge buff to pally dps and utility. i just don't see all that love from Bliz to paladins.

I think they should just keep everything where they are and give us back some mana or put DP off GCD.

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