Thursday, January 06, 2011

UPDATED: 4.0.6 PTR Paladin Changes

UPDATE: Full Patch Notes here. Added Crusader Strike and Repentence notes.

UPDATE 2: Added Rebuke (happy Tankadins) and Sacred Shield (Happy PvP Ret) changes.

MMO-Champion has all the gossip on the class changes in the 4.0.6 PTR Build. As Boub rightly says many of the changes are tooltip changes reflecting the hotfixes of the past few months, but it looks like the promised changes to Retribution's Mastery and Divine Purpose are in.

Paladin Changes

General

  • Inquisition is now undispellable
  • Rebuke is now a baseline skill available to all Paladins at level 54. Retribution Paladins gain a new Talent in Rebukes position.
  • Crusader Strike base damage increased from 115% Weapon Damage to 135%
  • Seal Of Truth: All single target attacks (including Judgement, Hammer of Wrath, Exorcism, and Templar's Verdict) can now trigger this seal. Seal of Truth will no longer Proc Seals of Command twice from one attack
  • Forbearance
    • The duration has been lowered to 1 minute, down from 2.
    • Lay on Hands now causes Forbearance on the target. It used to only cause it when cast on the paladin. This was an old design from when Divine Protection caused Forbearance and the paladin didn't want to prevent a tank from using their defensive cooldown.
    • Lay on Hands cannot be a critical effect and will not be affected by most abilities which modify healing (such as Beacon of Light).
    • Since only Divine Shield, Lay on Hands and Hand of Protection cause Forbearance, the tooltips have been adjusted to better explain the mechanic.

    [It's difficult to understate the impact of Rebuke being moved to baseline for Protection Paladins. Where once it was brushed of as a 'Quality of Life' issue for tanks, not having an interrupt has more an more often been exposed as a genuine weakness for Tanks and DPS. Moving it to baseline makes a lot of sense, and the cheers can already be heard. Crusader Strike being buffed is good for everyone - more threat, more DPS.
    Inquisition, Zealotry and Righteous Fury now being undispellable make me suspicious that dispelling mechanics will be returning to PvE Raids in 4.1.]

    Holy
  • Divine Plea now gives you 12% of your total mana over 9 sec, up from 10% of your total mana over 15 sec.
  • Light of Dawn base healing has been reduced by 40%, from 1008 - 1124 to 605 - 675.
  • Tower of Radiance no longer affects Holy Light.
  • [The latter two changes are tooltip clarifications. I wasn't aware of any Hotfix to Divine Plea though, so that's a significant buff to a fairly ropey skill]

    Protection
  • Blessing of Kings now costs 19% of base mana, up from 6% of base mana.
  • Shield of the Templar (Rank 1) now reduces the cooldown of Guardian of Ancient Kings by 40 sec, down from 45 sec. Other ranks unchanged.

  • [I'm pretty sure that the SotT(r1) change was hotfixed in a while ago. Blessing Mana Changes are pretty meaningless in the main unless new encounters have a magic buff dispelling effect, implemented to maintain parity with Mark of the Wild apparently.]

    Retribution
  • Blessing of Might now costs 19% of base mana, up from 5% of base mana.
  • Divine Purpose:- The following attacks now have a 7/15% chance to cause your next Holy Power ability to consume no Holy Power and to cast as if 3 Holy Power were consumed. - Divine Storm, Exorcism, Hammer of Wrath, Holy Wrath, Inquisition, Judgement and Templar's Verdict.
  • Hand of Light (Mastery) - Your Crusader Strikes, Divine Storm and Templar's Verdicts deal 20% additional Holy Damage. Each point of Mastery increases this value by 2.5%
  • Censure no longer breaks Repentance
  • Templar's Verdict tooltip now shows 35%/104%/270% weapon damage for 1/2/3 HP.-Lack of confirmation for one week, removed note
  • Rebuke moved to Baseline
  • New Talent: Sacred Shield - When reduced below 30% health, Paladins gain the Sacred Shield effect. The Sacred Shield absorbs [1+2.8*AP] damage and increases healing received by 20%. Lasts 15 seconds. This effect cannot occur more than once every 30 seconds. Undispellable.
  • Zealotry is now undispellable
  • [see Below]

    Glyphs
  • Glyph of Divine Plea - now adds 6% mana, for a total of 18% over 9 seconds.


  • Professions
  • Meta gems with the Chaotic and Relentless prefixes now have a requirement of 3 red gems.
  • New meta gems have been added: Agile Shadowspirit Diamond (Agility/3% critical damage), Reverberating Shadowspirit Diamond (Strength/3% critical damage), and Burning Shadowspirit Diamond (Intellect/3% critical damage). These new recipes are unbound and can drop from any Cataclysm creature. The new meta gems have a requirement of 3 red gems equipped.
  • Synapse Springs now increase Agility, Strength, or Intellect (whichever is highest for the character).
  • Bracer Enchantments with +50 Agility, +50 Intellect and +50 Strength have been added to the in-game files


  • The new Retribution Mastery greatly increases the value of Mastery Rating, probably placing it above Crit and Haste Rating in the stat pecking order by some margin. TV, CS and DS deal more damage per cast, though I think that only Templar's Verdict will have changed positions in the rotation (to more important that Hammer of Wrath and Exorcism). All round, it's VASTLY better than Live's Mastery in absolute terms and scaling.

    Somewhat disappointingly the change does little to make Divine Storm more attractive over Crusader Strike in AoE situations unless the Hand of Light mechanic has a more subtle interation with CS and DS than we're seeing from the tooltip. Similarly, the Glyph of Crusader Strike (+5% crit rate to CS) will still be the 4th best Prime because it's unlikely to increase the crit rate of the HoL portion of the damage.

    Finally new Divine Purpose, on the face of it, is slightly better than Live Divine Purpose (15% chance of +3 Holy Power rather than 40% change of 1 HP), though GCD conflicts could have an impact which makes them more similar in their DPS contribution. Interestingly Zealotry should be a better fit with this incarnation of the talent than Live as proc'd Holy Power isn't wasted.

    -There's going to be an impact on rotations as and when it goes Live. Three HP Inquisitions will likely be the order of the day until you get 4 Piece Tier 11, but some analysis needs to be done.

    All in all, good changes. But remember, this is the PTR and things can change between now and when it's pushed to Live.

    ADDED: First impressions of the new Mastery, tested as a level80 premade on the PTR, from Ronark on the Elitist Jerks forums:

    Hand of Light is classified as an additional damage source. It cannot be dodged, parried, or miss as long as the initial attack lands. Hand of Light damage is calculated after the initial attack swing, and thus will deal no damage and will not be reflected in the Combat Log against targets that were killed by the initial attack (Example- Killing a Critter will only yield in Crusader Strike damage, and no Hand of Light damage).

    The damage done is based off the damage of the initial attack, and remains constant, meaning that damage boosting effects such as Avenging Wrath does not cause Hand of Light to "double dip" and deal 44% extra damage.

    Finally, because it is a technically a separate attack, the damage dealt by Hand of Light from using Divine Storm does not contribute to the healing component- The heal is still based on solely the physical damage of Divine Storm.

    (Source)


    Hence talents, glyphs and abilities which scale TV, CS and DS directly (noteably Glyphs and Raid Buffs) will increase the Hand of Light damage but HoL shouldn't double-dip. This, couple with the buff to CS, may cause Glyph of CS to edge out the Glyph of Exorcism. Interaction with Inquisition hasn't yet been tested.

    --

    Sacred Shield could be a massive boost to Retribution Paladin survivability in PvP, though to a certain extent it's dependant on the amount absorbed by the Shield. It seems to be utterly passive, which is pretty nice in the same way that old Ardent Defender was pretty nice (see: will get a lot of nerf calls). 2.8*AP doesn't strike me as overpowered, but it is a pretty healthy amount of damage absorbed. I imagine that it'll be present in most 4.0.6 PvP and PvE builds.

    That it cannot be dispelled is a nice boon for a class used to being nullified in PvP due to over-reliance on Magical buffs.

    --

    One last thing to note is that sane Meta Gems requirements will be returning in 4.0.6 and new +Str/3% Crit gems will be added which will have 3 Red requirements. It goes without saying that this will be de-facto Best In Slot.

    1 comments:

    Anonymous 07/01/2011, 15:25  

    Thanks for the write-up. I visit many blogs pertaining to ret pallys and this is the only site I've found so far with info on the new patch (aside from some sites simply providing a link to another site).

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