PTR Build [9733] Changes: JoB Toned Down, SoB Toned Up!
UPDATE: Perhaps unsurprisingly, the current build is a little buggy, especially with regards to SoB/SotM. SoB has the boosted Seal damage shown on the tooltip but it's Judgement damage is still at 3.0.9 level of scaling. Seal of the Martyr has correctly had it's Judgement damage nerfed but the Seal damage hasn't been raised to the levels on the tooltip as compensation.
Because of this, testing DPS levels with a SoB/tM Ret Paladin isn't going to provide accurate results unless the correct coeffs are hotfixed. Horde Paladins will be doing significantly more damage than they should, and Alliance Paladins significantly less.
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Just a mini-patch to the PTR today, probably to sort out a few Raid issues. Still, we get to see a couple of Paladin changes nonetheless:
Paladin Changes
* Seal of the Martyr now makes all your melee attacks deal [ 48% of min weapon damage ] to [ 48% of max weapon damage ] (up from 22%) additional Holy damage. Unleashing this Seal's energy instantly causes [ 11% of AP + 18% of Spell Power + 26% of min weapon damage ] to [ 11% of AP + 18% of Spell Power + 26% of max weapon damage ] (Down from 16/25/36%) Holy damage at the cost of health equal to 33% of the damage caused.
* Seal of Blood now makes all your melee attacks deal [ 48% of min weapon damage ] to [ 48% of max weapon damage ] (up from 22%) additional Holy damage. Unleashing this Seal's energy instantly causes [ 11% of AP + 18% of Spell Power + 26% of min weapon damage ] to [ 11% of AP + 18% of Spell Power + 26% of max weapon damage ] (Down from 16/25/36%) Holy damage at the cost of health equal to 33% of the damage caused.
* Crusader's Strike has been reverted back to normal - An instant strike that causes 110% weapon damage.
* Sacred Shield now properly scales with Spell Power from Sheathe of Light.
Protection
* Divine Guardian *New Talent* - Tier 4 - Improve the effectiveness of your Divine Sacrifice spell by an additional 5/10% and increases the duration of your Sacred Shield by 50/100% and the amount absorbed by 10/20%.
Source
Ouch, Seal of Blood will hit like an absolute truck, but the Judgement won't be nearly as damaging. Also, Haste just got a huge boost with this change and will be almost as good as Crit, making the Engineering Gloves Enhancement finally valuable! Other preliminary reports are that Hit and Expertise will now scale better than Strength, making getting Capped all the more important (though you will want to be Hit capped at least for JotW mana regen). So, all change for 'BiS' potentially.
The new Divine Guardian talent is great, purely because of the increased duration and power of Sacred Shield. At Tier 4 it is however a little deep for both Holy and Ret, not least down to Tier 2 and 3 having little of value for either build. This is partly down to Divine Sacrifice being such dross... but I think I've beaten that particular drum enough. For now.
One of the questions raised by the change of wording is whether or not the Seal recoil will be dispensed with. Unfortunately the realms are still down so we can't check the exact mechanics, but it is a nice thought to sleep on.
ADDED: 10% Seal Damage Recoil is still in. However the damage is enough for JoL alone to deal with as it procs. JoB recoil damage is still at 33%, but hopefully won't be quite so much of an issue (still wondering what purpose it serves though...).
Also, some good news. Sacred Shield scale with Sheathe of Light Spell Damage. With a 75% coeff I might add. Definitely not to be sniffed at.
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8 comments:
Very interesting, SZ. Probably an effort to give us more sustained DPS and less of a hellish firestorm of burst destruction.
Makes all the haste gear useful again, pretty much like in the last days before Wrath.
The revert of Crusader Strike is disappointing, I was looking forward to it in its new state. I hope they'll still do something nice to it, as it's once again rather bland. Here's to hoping!
thanks for the update. how did they boost haste?
Very simply, the only portion of our damage affected by haste is our damage through weapon swings and the Seal procs from those weapon swings.
By nerfing JoB damage and increasing SoB damage you increase the amount of damage your (Weapon Swing + SoB Proc) do as a proportion of your total damage. Hence your Haste scales more of your total damage, and so Haste is indirectly buffed.
In addition, this patch directly improves the conversion of Haste Rating to Melee Haste % by 30%, to 25.22 Rating per 1% from the current 32.79.
Hope that helps.
"JoB recoil damage is still at 33%, but hopefully won't be quite so much of an issue (still wondering what purpose it serves though...)."
I believe the purpose is to balance Paladin survivability with Paladin DPS in PvP. The recoil damage is mostly ignored in PvE, but in a competitive PvP encounter you do NOT want to inflict 3k damage to yourself while being attacked by 1 or 2 other players.
Damn, they need to hotfix SotM before I can obtain accurate testing...
ALSO: Very good point Dorgol, if SoB/tM didn't inflict recoil we'd have some pretty damned high damage in pvp.
This will make having a swing timer that much more important with the % of damage done my judgements shifting to auto attack.
are people still using quartz or is there a better or more class specific swing timer out there?
cheers,
@Dorgol
I've been thinking along the same lines, and I'm starting to feel it's possible I haven't been giving the Blizz devs enough credit. I've been pretty firmly in the camp of hating SoB/tM and the recoil mechanic, and wishing it was gone.
But if the idea is to adjust ret paladin PvE damage without giving us too much burst in PvP, I'm starting to realize that SoB/tM makes a great knob to turn. We almost certainly won't use this ability in PvP (unless the risk/reward calculation just got too damn tempting, but I don't think that will happen), so the devs have much more room to improve our DPS by boosting it. The remaining issue to me becomes balancing the recoil/damage such that PvP paladins won't use it, but PvE paladins aren't burdening their healers. Which seems possible.
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