PTR Patch 3.2.2 Paladin Notes; Poor, Poor Rogues.

Well, that was quick. Nary a week into 3.2 and we have the first signs of the next mini-patch, 3.2.2. This of course is the Onyxia revamp and Prot/Holy PvP nerf patch patch, but there are quite a few things of interest. As usual MMO-Champ has the details, but here are the Paladin changes:

Paladin
Righteous Fury: The bonus threat from Holy spells caused by this talent has been reduced from 90% to 80%.

Judgements of the Just: The reduction in cooldown to Hammer of Justice provided by this talent has been reduced to 5/10 seconds instead of 10/20 seconds.

Touched by the Light: This talent now provides 20/40/60% of the paladin’s strength as spell power instead of 10/20/30% of the paladin’s stamina.

Seal of Command: This ability now chains to strike up to 2 additional targets when it is triggered by an attack.

The devil will be in the detail of course, but my gut instinct is that this is a fairly significant reduction in PvE Tanking threat which I'm not sure was wholly necessary. That said, this should only rear it's ugly head in the highest end PvE raids or more accurately when DPS is way above the curve. An increase in cooldown of HoJ by 10 seconds seems pretty harsh as it once again reaffirms the Prot Paladin as last in the ability to deal with caster raid bosses, and no matter how useful it was in PvP this seems like a heavy price to pay.

Will this kill the ProtHoly build choice for PvP healing? I'm not convinced to be perfectly honest but it certainly seems a lot less viable because it will no longer have any 'free' spellpower to compensate for Divine Plea's self-MS. However even with Touched by the Light taking a huge hit the myriad CC options and durability available to deep Prot may continue to make it a strong contender to those who can extract the most from their build. In any case, this is unlikely to make deep Holy that much more attractive to those PvP Healers who have shunned it in the past. The 34/0/37 build popular in Season 5 may well make another appearance in some form if the lack of Dispell protection can be worked around.

Healing with Prot/Ret gear should still be a no-go. It's unlikely that a shallow 7k mana pool will have the mana resources necessary to keep up even with permanent Divine Plea, and it goes without saying that the use of Divine Plea would have to be more considered.

The Seal of Command (now Seal of Cleave ;)) change is interesting. Very interesting. I'm not sure that the value in PvP is anything to shout about as any opposition team that chooses to clump together will probably be a walk-over anyway, but it definitely has very strong PvE applications in dealing with trash and add waves. One Divine Storm has the potential to deal up to 12 SoC hits in one cast, allowing Paladins to more than regain ground lost in 3.2 with the removal of Seal of Blood. SoC will not proc from multi-target melee attacks like DS and Hammer of the Righteous (see latest). Seal switching would still be required to make use of this though, and there is no indication that this has become a less expensive proposition (gogo SoC/SoV cost reduction minor glyph). SoC hasn't found its' niche quite yet and is still of limited value in PvP but it's good to see it get a little love.

In other news, Rogues got smacked hard. Very hard. No more interrupting Fan of Knives, lower damage FoK and an internal cooldown on Honour Among Thieves. Would not like to be an official board CM in the morning.