Posts
Two weeks have passed since the 4.0.1 patch hit us. Changes are made to most classes, and paladins are not an exception.
So... are we at a better state now than two weeks ago? Well, some of my initial concerns have been addressed atleast.
Retribution:
The rotation is still very random, and it seems like Blizzard intends to keep it this way.
Ret damage was low, so they buffed several of our abilities. But numbers never really concern me, since they are easy to change.
Retribution is in the same place as two weeks ago.
Holy:
I was concerned about mana regen for holy paladins (at 85, at 80 nobody seems to have any mana issues). Blizzard added even more mana regen to Seal of Insight, in the form of 15% of the paladins base mana being regained when unleashing its judgement.
I complained about Holy Radiance only having a 10 yard range. It was buffed to 20 yards (which in turns seem to make it slightly TOO good). Edit: And yes, it has been nerfed.
Light of Dawn is still a situational heal, which requires the raid to group up. Most raiders are used to spreading out as much as possible during fights, so the need to group up to get healed will take some getting used to.
Word of Glory was buffed for Holy paladins, since it was too weak. Actually, ALL holy paladin healing spells were buffed. Again, numbers tweaking is easy to do.
Holy is in a better place than two weeks ago.
Protection:
The buff to Crusader Strike made it better for single target than our AoE move Hammer of the Righteous. For a while, tankadins used more or less the same rotation on single target as they did on multiple target. The buff changed that at least.
I was concerned about our ramp-up time. We need to build up three Holy Power before being able to hit the monsters hard enough for them to notice. Blizzard will address this by making Divine Plea generate three Holy Power when used. This means that tankadins can start a fight with three Holy Power every two minutes. This is a good change.
The prot rotation is still "939". It's not harder than the old "969", which, even though it was "easy", was an elegant and smooth rotation. "939" leaves a little bit of wiggle-room, since not 100% of our global cooldowns are used (but pretty darn close).
I was concerned about Grand Crusader. Our Avenger's Shield ends up low on our priority list, which means that we mostly ignore this proc, and just use our frisbee when it fits into our rotation. In AoE fights, the proc is more useful, since (unglyphed) the frisbee hits three targets in the face. Blizzard has stated that they will in some way buff the proc, since it is their intention to make it our signature proc.
Word of Glory is still a concern. I read about tankadins getting huge heals off when they have massive Vengeance stacks. This is broken, and will be fixed. Word of Glory is not supposed to scale with the attack power provided by Vengeance.
Blizzard is buffing Word of Glory for Holy, but keeping it as a modest heal for ret and prot.
I see the use of Word of Glory, but I still find it underwhelming. Compared to the self-healing on my death knight (Death Strike, Rune Tap, Bloodworms, etc), Word of Glory is really lackluster. And it still requires me to build up three Holy Power before it is strong enough to be noticed.
Of course, there wouldn't be patches and hotfixes without paladin nerfs!
Our blocking will be nerfed. As soon as I had installed the patch, I went to reforge my tanking gear. With very little effort, Arnax was block-capped (102.4% combined miss-avoidance-block). I know that ratings will suffer when we get to 85, but that was just ridiculous. Raid buffed, it turned out I had TOO much Mastery. When the block cap is reached, Mastery turns into complete crap for protection paladins (is there any other class that has a problem like this?).
Blizzard's solution to this was to nerf both Holy Shield (from 15% to 10%) and Mastery (from 3% per point to 2.25% per point).
Edit: I read the Holy Shield change wrong. Holy Shield no longer increases block chance, but increases the amount of damage blocked. So tankadins lost 15% block chance, but gained 10% block "value."
Blizzard also nerfed our Shield of the Righeous. It now scales a lot less with attack power (from 120% to 60%, ouch), but gets a bigger base damage. The issue they are solving is the massive damage that can be reached with full stacks of Vengeance up. I know some tanks got a hard-on when seeing 100k+ crits on Festergut, but that was obviously broken.
Our main damage reduction cooldown Guardian of Ancient Kings will also get nerfed (from 60% damage reduction to 50%). With a nerf both to our block mechanic and our main damage reduction cooldown, tankadin survivability just took a hit.
Protection is still on a rollercoaster ride, but is probably at about the same state as two weeks ago.
TL;DR Blizzard is still tuning paladins, and the tuning won't stop until we hit 85 and they see real numbers from a larger population than on beta. Holy paladins got buffed. Retribution paladins got slightly buffed. Protection paladins got mostly nerfed.
Showing posts with label Patch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Patch. Show all posts
Friday, October 29, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
State of the Paladin
Last night, I was enjoying the calm before the storm, flying on my Icebound Frostbrood Vanquisher across the land, and contemplating what was about to come.
Like everone else, I look forward to Cataclysm, albeit not as much as I looked forward to The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King. For some reason, those previous expansions seemed more exciting to me. Maybe I'm just getting tired of the game?
In both previous expansions, paladins were changed a bit, but that was absolutely nothing compared to what will happen in 4.0.
Very late in the development cycle of Cataclysm, Blizzard introduced a new resource for paladins: Holy Power. It is very obvious they introduced this to make retribution rotations more "involving" and "interesting", so that good paladins would distinguish themselves from bad ones.
The way things look right now, the day before the changes go live, it seems Blizzard has failed. I'm convinced that paladins will get major overhauls in future content patches to make this new design work well. Because now, it looks like Blizzard is trying to push a square peg into a round hole.
Now, you need to take my QQ with a grain of salt. I have not been playing on the beta or the PTR (which almost wouldn't matter, since there has been changes to paladins in every build that affects rotations and spell choices).
I won't go into details describing changes and new spells and so on. That has already been explained by better people than myself all over the blogosphere. I'm just going to make some general comments.
Retribution:
Paladins got a new resource system so that retribution would be "harder" to play well. In their tweeking and nob-turning during the last month, Blizzard has managed to screw that up.
Initially, the idea was that Holy Power would work somewhat like combo points do for rogues and kitties: One uses a spammable ability to build up combo points and then spend them on a finishing move, but with two big differences: The combo points [Holy Power] are bound to the paladin and not its target, and the spammable ability that stacks the combo points has a cooldown (and is thus not truly spammable). Just like a rogue, the paladin is now supposed to
(1) stack combo points [Holy Power],
(2) keep Slice and Dice [Inquisition] up, and
(3) slam-dunk a finishing move like Eviscerate [Templar's Verdict] with as many combo points [Holy Power] as possible.
Blizzard also introduced some more procs to make the rotation more "interesting".
So far, so good.
But in their tweeking they have made the generating of Holy Power almost completely random. There are procs that give more Holy Power, and procs that make the paladin use finishing moves without needing Holy Power. Blizzard has managed to make the retribution rotation a priority list that depends on several procs that are completely random.
In my world "random" means that skill has very little to do with things. If you are lucky, and press the right buttons, good for you. If you are unlucky, too bad. No pew-pew for you.
And therein lies Blizzard's failure with the new retribution rotation.
Holy:
Mana regen has been nerfed for all healers, and for a historically spamming class like the paladin, that will hurt. Divine Plea has been nerfed so hard it's useless, and suddenly, paladins have the worst mana regen of all healers. Congrats!
Paladins get loads of new healing spells, including a crappy aoe HoT (with a 10 yard radius, yey!), and a situational frontal cone heal.
But Beacon of Light is still imba, right? Well... no. But it is still useful.
I am in no way an expert on holy paladins, but it seems there will be two ways of healing with a paladin in 4.0:
(1) heal the beaconed target directly and quickly get Holy Power that you can spend on a free heal, or
(2) don't heal the beaconed target directly and use Holy Shock as your Holy Power generator to get a free heal.
With low mana regen, free heals are teh sex.
Is Holy Power well implemented for Holy Paladins? Maybe. With mana being valuable, a second resource to use instead of mana for "free" heals will be nice. Is it enough? Well, in any case, paladins will not be mindlessly spamming one single heal all night long anymore, and that is probably a good thing.
Protection:
Then we come to the redheaded stepchild paladin spec: Protection. Too bad this is the spec I've preferred for several years, eh?
The idea of making tankadins use different abilities for single target and aoe tanking is good, and something that I have missed on my paladin. Being forced to cleave and consecrate all the time to build threat was not a good design.
But.... forcing tanks to tank with combo points is just lame. There. I said it. Holy Power (as it is implemented right now) sucks for tanks.
With this combo points system, I need to first build up three holy power before I can hit anything hard enough to make them notice. And the only way to build up Holy Power is with Crusader Strike (or Hammer if aoe), which, up until last week, was on a 4.5 second cooldown. I also need to cast a finishing move to get my Holy Shield up (should I waste Holy Power early to get my shield up, or can I wait until I can use all three Holy Power?).
This is a big change for tankadins. Before, we had the advantage of always starting with a full "rage bar" (a.k.a. the blue rage bar), and could run into a fight able to hurt stuff right away. Then Blizzard slowly started to nerf paladin burst damage due to PvP QQ. So we needed to wait for some time to build stacks on the target, and our judgement hit like a wet noodle.
With Holy Power, this gets worse. The tankadin runs in, starts building Holy Power, starts stacking debuffs on the target, and after three Holy Power finally can slam a shield in the mob's face. That used to be 3x4.5 = 13.5 seconds into the fight. Not good.
Blizzard has claimed that the tankadin rotation has been too easy. The "969" rotation is mindless and could be performed by a trained monkey (yes, because the bear rotation is soooooo complex, right?). So they decided to introduce Crusader Strike to tankadins, and then, slightly later, the amazing concept of Holy Power.
With the new abilities, the tankadins of the world started to create a new rotation. And the tankadins were not happy. There were holes in the rotation big enough to drive a tauren and his six buddies through. Theorycrafters calculated that there would be 6 empty global cooldowns per minute. Tankadins would not have any buttons free to press at any given time like they did in the golden days (yesterday, that is). It was an uproar on forums. Ghostcrawler was called all kinds of names. And Blizzard caved in, with the brilliant solution of lowering the cooldown on Crusader Strike (and Hammer) to 3 seconds (but only for protection paladins).
Five minutes later, tankadins realized that their rotation with the new change turned into an even easier and more mindless rotation than the old "969". We now have the "939" rotation, where we spam Crusader Strike every other global cooldown and fill in the gaps with Judgement, Avenger's Shield, and Holy Wrath.
This change also made our "signature" proc: Grand Crusader, utterly useless. Since all this proc does is reset the cooldown of Avenger's Shield, and since Avenger's Shield sits so low on our priority list, nobody will care if this procs or not. Bad design is bad design. I expect a change. Hopefully soon (TM).
My last complaint is our so-called "emergency heal". Blizzard expects us to use Word of Glory as a self-heal when needed. They have even introduced talents that boost the spell, and even the potential to create a damage reduction shield from it. The problem is, as always: it requires Holy Power to be used.
We need to sacrifice a truck load of threat to use it, but that is probably a necessary trade-off. For a while, Word of Glory healed for so little is was pathetic. Then Blizzard made the spell scale with attack power and spell power, and the heal was actually noticed on the tank's health bar.
But the big problem is: How can an "emergency heal" be based on the tank having three holy power stacks on him? The Holy Power requirement means that the tankadin needs to plan up to 10 seconds ahead before casting the self-heal. Anyone else than me see a problem with this? How often can you plan an emergency heal 10 seconds in advance?
Anyways.... I will download the patch, install it, and relearn my class. In a week or so, I will know if the concerns listed above still are true when I've had some hands-on experience with the new changes.
TL;DR
Some changes are good, but the mechanics of our rotation and self-heal is poorly designed. I hope that is something that can be fixed without too much fuss, and that we won't have to wait too long for it to be fixed.
Like everone else, I look forward to Cataclysm, albeit not as much as I looked forward to The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King. For some reason, those previous expansions seemed more exciting to me. Maybe I'm just getting tired of the game?
In both previous expansions, paladins were changed a bit, but that was absolutely nothing compared to what will happen in 4.0.
Very late in the development cycle of Cataclysm, Blizzard introduced a new resource for paladins: Holy Power. It is very obvious they introduced this to make retribution rotations more "involving" and "interesting", so that good paladins would distinguish themselves from bad ones.
The way things look right now, the day before the changes go live, it seems Blizzard has failed. I'm convinced that paladins will get major overhauls in future content patches to make this new design work well. Because now, it looks like Blizzard is trying to push a square peg into a round hole.
Now, you need to take my QQ with a grain of salt. I have not been playing on the beta or the PTR (which almost wouldn't matter, since there has been changes to paladins in every build that affects rotations and spell choices).
I won't go into details describing changes and new spells and so on. That has already been explained by better people than myself all over the blogosphere. I'm just going to make some general comments.
Retribution:
Paladins got a new resource system so that retribution would be "harder" to play well. In their tweeking and nob-turning during the last month, Blizzard has managed to screw that up.
Initially, the idea was that Holy Power would work somewhat like combo points do for rogues and kitties: One uses a spammable ability to build up combo points and then spend them on a finishing move, but with two big differences: The combo points [Holy Power] are bound to the paladin and not its target, and the spammable ability that stacks the combo points has a cooldown (and is thus not truly spammable). Just like a rogue, the paladin is now supposed to
(1) stack combo points [Holy Power],
(2) keep Slice and Dice [Inquisition] up, and
(3) slam-dunk a finishing move like Eviscerate [Templar's Verdict] with as many combo points [Holy Power] as possible.
Blizzard also introduced some more procs to make the rotation more "interesting".
So far, so good.
But in their tweeking they have made the generating of Holy Power almost completely random. There are procs that give more Holy Power, and procs that make the paladin use finishing moves without needing Holy Power. Blizzard has managed to make the retribution rotation a priority list that depends on several procs that are completely random.
In my world "random" means that skill has very little to do with things. If you are lucky, and press the right buttons, good for you. If you are unlucky, too bad. No pew-pew for you.
And therein lies Blizzard's failure with the new retribution rotation.
Holy:
Mana regen has been nerfed for all healers, and for a historically spamming class like the paladin, that will hurt. Divine Plea has been nerfed so hard it's useless, and suddenly, paladins have the worst mana regen of all healers. Congrats!
Paladins get loads of new healing spells, including a crappy aoe HoT (with a 10 yard radius, yey!), and a situational frontal cone heal.
But Beacon of Light is still imba, right? Well... no. But it is still useful.
I am in no way an expert on holy paladins, but it seems there will be two ways of healing with a paladin in 4.0:
(1) heal the beaconed target directly and quickly get Holy Power that you can spend on a free heal, or
(2) don't heal the beaconed target directly and use Holy Shock as your Holy Power generator to get a free heal.
With low mana regen, free heals are teh sex.
Is Holy Power well implemented for Holy Paladins? Maybe. With mana being valuable, a second resource to use instead of mana for "free" heals will be nice. Is it enough? Well, in any case, paladins will not be mindlessly spamming one single heal all night long anymore, and that is probably a good thing.
Protection:
Then we come to the redheaded stepchild paladin spec: Protection. Too bad this is the spec I've preferred for several years, eh?
The idea of making tankadins use different abilities for single target and aoe tanking is good, and something that I have missed on my paladin. Being forced to cleave and consecrate all the time to build threat was not a good design.
But.... forcing tanks to tank with combo points is just lame. There. I said it. Holy Power (as it is implemented right now) sucks for tanks.
With this combo points system, I need to first build up three holy power before I can hit anything hard enough to make them notice. And the only way to build up Holy Power is with Crusader Strike (or Hammer if aoe), which, up until last week, was on a 4.5 second cooldown. I also need to cast a finishing move to get my Holy Shield up (should I waste Holy Power early to get my shield up, or can I wait until I can use all three Holy Power?).
This is a big change for tankadins. Before, we had the advantage of always starting with a full "rage bar" (a.k.a. the blue rage bar), and could run into a fight able to hurt stuff right away. Then Blizzard slowly started to nerf paladin burst damage due to PvP QQ. So we needed to wait for some time to build stacks on the target, and our judgement hit like a wet noodle.
With Holy Power, this gets worse. The tankadin runs in, starts building Holy Power, starts stacking debuffs on the target, and after three Holy Power finally can slam a shield in the mob's face. That used to be 3x4.5 = 13.5 seconds into the fight. Not good.
Blizzard has claimed that the tankadin rotation has been too easy. The "969" rotation is mindless and could be performed by a trained monkey (yes, because the bear rotation is soooooo complex, right?). So they decided to introduce Crusader Strike to tankadins, and then, slightly later, the amazing concept of Holy Power.
With the new abilities, the tankadins of the world started to create a new rotation. And the tankadins were not happy. There were holes in the rotation big enough to drive a tauren and his six buddies through. Theorycrafters calculated that there would be 6 empty global cooldowns per minute. Tankadins would not have any buttons free to press at any given time like they did in the golden days (yesterday, that is). It was an uproar on forums. Ghostcrawler was called all kinds of names. And Blizzard caved in, with the brilliant solution of lowering the cooldown on Crusader Strike (and Hammer) to 3 seconds (but only for protection paladins).
Five minutes later, tankadins realized that their rotation with the new change turned into an even easier and more mindless rotation than the old "969". We now have the "939" rotation, where we spam Crusader Strike every other global cooldown and fill in the gaps with Judgement, Avenger's Shield, and Holy Wrath.
This change also made our "signature" proc: Grand Crusader, utterly useless. Since all this proc does is reset the cooldown of Avenger's Shield, and since Avenger's Shield sits so low on our priority list, nobody will care if this procs or not. Bad design is bad design. I expect a change. Hopefully soon (TM).
My last complaint is our so-called "emergency heal". Blizzard expects us to use Word of Glory as a self-heal when needed. They have even introduced talents that boost the spell, and even the potential to create a damage reduction shield from it. The problem is, as always: it requires Holy Power to be used.
We need to sacrifice a truck load of threat to use it, but that is probably a necessary trade-off. For a while, Word of Glory healed for so little is was pathetic. Then Blizzard made the spell scale with attack power and spell power, and the heal was actually noticed on the tank's health bar.
But the big problem is: How can an "emergency heal" be based on the tank having three holy power stacks on him? The Holy Power requirement means that the tankadin needs to plan up to 10 seconds ahead before casting the self-heal. Anyone else than me see a problem with this? How often can you plan an emergency heal 10 seconds in advance?
Anyways.... I will download the patch, install it, and relearn my class. In a week or so, I will know if the concerns listed above still are true when I've had some hands-on experience with the new changes.
TL;DR
Some changes are good, but the mechanics of our rotation and self-heal is poorly designed. I hope that is something that can be fixed without too much fuss, and that we won't have to wait too long for it to be fixed.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Patch 3.3: First Impressions
I was prepared for the worst after hearing stories about crashing servers and immense latencies, but my patch day experience was only spoiled by one disconnect, and I wasn't lagging at all.
The first thing I did was to respec. I moved my three "filler points" in the prot tree from Reckoning and put them in Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian. Otherwise my spec stays the same as before.
I managed to do my cooking daily before someone in the guild needed a tank for the new heroics. I hadn't read much about the instances, and didn't know much more than that they were three and that we were supposed to run behind Jaina's skinny behind most of the time. Even though we had a full group, we used the Dungeon Finder feature to be teleported to the instance.
Even though I love the efficiency of being teleported straight to any instance, it kind of takes away the feeling of being part of a "big" world. When you had to fly to every instance, it gave you a feeling that you actually had to travel a distance from your safe haven to get to the place where the vile monsters rip brave adventurers to small pieces. Now you can spend all your time in Dalaran, just waiting for a teleport to the other side of the world (literally), and when you are done, you will be safe back at the inn, with a barmaid willing to please just within arm's reach.
Why would I want a fancy flying mount if I won't be travelling anywhere?
Anyhow, we got the the first instance, went inside, and started pulling. After a couple of groups, I realized that the healer had been AFK since we zoned in, so I took a break and drank some mana tea. Beware of the OOM monster when you tank these instances!
As soon as the healer came back, I pulled a new group, and we wiped. It was a bit surprising to be honest, but shit does happen. After that, we burned through all three instances up to the Lich King himself.
Spoiler alert: The Lich King fight consists of the entire group running away like little girls.
On the last ice wall, I managed to lose our healer to a stray mob, and after that, the Lich King caught up with me and killed me. The rest of the group ran away to safety, and got their heroic achievements, while me and the healer got nada. So I guess I have to run the last instance again just for the achievement...
Even though I didn't lag or disconnect much, there was a VERY annoying thing that screwed up my tanking: All mobs wanted to run through me and fight me from behind. It didn't matter how I pulled, the same thing happened all the time. So I had to constantly move around while tanking, which my rogue and ret pally companions didn't enjoy much. I really hope this is a bug, because it made tanking alot harder and very annoying. I can't even imagine how nasty tanking Anub'arak's adds on heroic will be if they keep running through you and attack you from behind...
After the heroics, I went to the new 25-man raid. I'll get back to that one in a later post.
So far, I'm impressed with the patch. The new dungeons are cool (at least the first time you run them), the Dungeon Finder tool seems nice, and the new raid instance is sexy. My first impression of the patch is that it's much better than the disappointing 3.2 patch. But it's only been one day, so I'll probably soon find something to complain about...
The first thing I did was to respec. I moved my three "filler points" in the prot tree from Reckoning and put them in Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian. Otherwise my spec stays the same as before.
I managed to do my cooking daily before someone in the guild needed a tank for the new heroics. I hadn't read much about the instances, and didn't know much more than that they were three and that we were supposed to run behind Jaina's skinny behind most of the time. Even though we had a full group, we used the Dungeon Finder feature to be teleported to the instance.
Even though I love the efficiency of being teleported straight to any instance, it kind of takes away the feeling of being part of a "big" world. When you had to fly to every instance, it gave you a feeling that you actually had to travel a distance from your safe haven to get to the place where the vile monsters rip brave adventurers to small pieces. Now you can spend all your time in Dalaran, just waiting for a teleport to the other side of the world (literally), and when you are done, you will be safe back at the inn, with a barmaid willing to please just within arm's reach.
Why would I want a fancy flying mount if I won't be travelling anywhere?
Anyhow, we got the the first instance, went inside, and started pulling. After a couple of groups, I realized that the healer had been AFK since we zoned in, so I took a break and drank some mana tea. Beware of the OOM monster when you tank these instances!
As soon as the healer came back, I pulled a new group, and we wiped. It was a bit surprising to be honest, but shit does happen. After that, we burned through all three instances up to the Lich King himself.
Spoiler alert: The Lich King fight consists of the entire group running away like little girls.
On the last ice wall, I managed to lose our healer to a stray mob, and after that, the Lich King caught up with me and killed me. The rest of the group ran away to safety, and got their heroic achievements, while me and the healer got nada. So I guess I have to run the last instance again just for the achievement...
Even though I didn't lag or disconnect much, there was a VERY annoying thing that screwed up my tanking: All mobs wanted to run through me and fight me from behind. It didn't matter how I pulled, the same thing happened all the time. So I had to constantly move around while tanking, which my rogue and ret pally companions didn't enjoy much. I really hope this is a bug, because it made tanking alot harder and very annoying. I can't even imagine how nasty tanking Anub'arak's adds on heroic will be if they keep running through you and attack you from behind...
After the heroics, I went to the new 25-man raid. I'll get back to that one in a later post.
So far, I'm impressed with the patch. The new dungeons are cool (at least the first time you run them), the Dungeon Finder tool seems nice, and the new raid instance is sexy. My first impression of the patch is that it's much better than the disappointing 3.2 patch. But it's only been one day, so I'll probably soon find something to complain about...
Monday, November 16, 2009
Patch 3.3 Badge Tanking Gear
MMO Champion has listed the gear that we will be able to buy with the new badges, Emblems of Frost.
The tanking stuff looks really nice, and all plate pieces have bonus armor on them. I assume the extra armor is there to compensate for the reduced avoidance that we are facing in Icecrown due to the Icecrown version of Sunwell Radiance.
This is what we can look forward to:
Cataclysmic Chestguard - expertise and block value on the same piece of gear isn't very usual, but considering Blizzard showers tanking gear with hit rating again in 3.3, maybe that expertise will be needed. The armor, stamina, and strength on this chest piece makes my mouth water.
Gauntlets of the Kraken - straight-forward tanking gloves.
Verdigris Chain Belt - straight-forward tanking belt.
Sentinel's Winter Cloak - very nice cloak with bonus armor in addition to the usual tanking stats.
Corroded Skeleton Key - trinket with loads of stamina and a damage absorption use effect. But isn't absorbing 3200 damage quite low?
We don't know the prices of these items yet, but I will most likely pick up the cloak and the trinket first, since I have gear of item level 245 and 258 in the other slots.
There is a libram as well, but I won't waste badges on that one, since it's such a minor upgrade from the current badge libram.
The tanking stuff looks really nice, and all plate pieces have bonus armor on them. I assume the extra armor is there to compensate for the reduced avoidance that we are facing in Icecrown due to the Icecrown version of Sunwell Radiance.
This is what we can look forward to:
Cataclysmic Chestguard - expertise and block value on the same piece of gear isn't very usual, but considering Blizzard showers tanking gear with hit rating again in 3.3, maybe that expertise will be needed. The armor, stamina, and strength on this chest piece makes my mouth water.
Gauntlets of the Kraken - straight-forward tanking gloves.
Verdigris Chain Belt - straight-forward tanking belt.
Sentinel's Winter Cloak - very nice cloak with bonus armor in addition to the usual tanking stats.
Corroded Skeleton Key - trinket with loads of stamina and a damage absorption use effect. But isn't absorbing 3200 damage quite low?
We don't know the prices of these items yet, but I will most likely pick up the cloak and the trinket first, since I have gear of item level 245 and 258 in the other slots.
There is a libram as well, but I won't waste badges on that one, since it's such a minor upgrade from the current badge libram.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Patch 3.3 nerf batch 1
The patch notes do not look good for paladins these days.
First, we had the changes to Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian:
These changes have been called buffs or nerfs depending on who you talk to. For a raiding paladin, they are downright nerfs. The old version of the talents had much better damage absorption, but did require the paladin to bubble to not kill himself. The new version makes Divine Sacrifice without Divine Guardian (which is the most likely case for retribution paladins) a lot less useful.
What's the deal here? We have a damage absorption talent that cannot be used by a main tanking paladin, but still exists all the way down in the third tier in the tanking tree, which is hard to reach for both holy and (especially) retri paladins.
Apparently, this "raid wall" talent was too powerful and they had to move the raid wide part of the talent down to the fourth tier Divine Guardian (which earlier "just" increased the amount of damage absorbed by the then raid wide Divine Sacrifice), where fewer people will be able to reach it.
While these changes annoys me, they do not come close to the feelings I have for the following changes:
I don't PvP much with my paladin these days, but by looking at the number of PvP nerfs that has hit the paladins in WotLK, paladins must have been completely dominating the PvP scene (and still I don't see paladins dominating in the top-rated arena teams...)
The nerf to Sacred Shield makes it totally worthless for anyone except the holy paladin. As a tankadin, I often cast this on myself (if I don't have a holy paladin casting it on me) to reduce the incoming damage, but that is pointless now.
Actually, I don't even see the point to keep Sacred Shield as a baseline ability for paladins anymore, since it is useless without Infusion of Light, which is deep in the holy tree. If Blizzard wants only holy paladins to use this ability, then just put it in the holy tree and remove it as a baseline ability. Now the untalented Sacred Shield is a joke.
The nerf to Aura Mastery is clearly also a PvP nerf. It's the exact same nerf that Hand of Freedom got a couple of patches ago.
And then we come to my favorite "change": Lay on Hands can no longer be cast on yourself.
What has Blizzard been sniffing this time? Gnomish Ultra Glue (c)?
Lay on Hands has saved by butt so many times, I cannot count them all. It has a looooooong cooldown, so I save it for those very special moments where my healer is dead and the boss is starting to chew my face off after I have been auto-ressed by Ardent Defender.
Removing the self-cast on Lay on Hands would remove one of the few tanking cooldowns paladins have. I have even suggested getting LoH off the global cooldown, so it would be a more reliable tanking cooldown....
What's the reason for this nerf?
PvP? I don't think so. You cannot use LoH in arena, and you will only be able to use it once in a battleground. That's hardly a reason for a nerf.
PvE? I can only assume that it is because of the extra survivability it gives paladins when they solo content. Is that really something you want to balance talents around? Or is it because raiding holy paladins sometimes use it to get mana back when they have the talent glyphed? We are still talking about an 11 minute (talented and glyphed) cooldown, guys!
I read a new post from Ghostcrawler where he says that they have removed the change to LoH in their internal build. That doesn't mean that we can rest assured that the change will not go live. It means that Blizzard considers this talent broken, and that they are not finished messing with it yet.
Personally, I don't like where these changes are going. I am also very tired of getting nerfed because of PvP.
Atleast Icecrown Citadel looks cool. Although I'm not exactly thrilled about that the first boss in there wipes raids by passing gas. Is Blizzard catering to the 6-year olds now?
First, we had the changes to Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian:
- Divine Sacrifice: Redesigned. The effect of Divine Sacrifice is now party-only and the maximum damage which can be transferred is now limited to 40% of the paladin’s health multiplied by the number of party members. In addition, the bug which allowed Divine Sacrifice to sometimes persist despite reaching its maximum damage has been fixed. Divine Sacrifice will now cancel as soon as its maximum damage value is exceeded in all cases. Finally, damage which reduces the paladin’s health below 20% now cancels the effect early.
- Divine Guardian: This talent no longer increases the amount of damage transferred to the paladin from Divine Sacrifice. Instead it causes all raid and party members to take 10/20% reduced damage while Divine Sacrifice is active. In addition, the duration has been changed to 6 seconds, however the effect does not terminate when Divine Sacrifice is removed before its full duration.
These changes have been called buffs or nerfs depending on who you talk to. For a raiding paladin, they are downright nerfs. The old version of the talents had much better damage absorption, but did require the paladin to bubble to not kill himself. The new version makes Divine Sacrifice without Divine Guardian (which is the most likely case for retribution paladins) a lot less useful.
What's the deal here? We have a damage absorption talent that cannot be used by a main tanking paladin, but still exists all the way down in the third tier in the tanking tree, which is hard to reach for both holy and (especially) retri paladins.
Apparently, this "raid wall" talent was too powerful and they had to move the raid wide part of the talent down to the fourth tier Divine Guardian (which earlier "just" increased the amount of damage absorbed by the then raid wide Divine Sacrifice), where fewer people will be able to reach it.
While these changes annoys me, they do not come close to the feelings I have for the following changes:
- Sacred Shield can now only occur every 30 sec. (Up from 6 sec)
- Lay on Hands can no longer be cast on yourself.
- Infusion of Light now also reduces the cooldown on the effect of Sacred Shield by 12/24 sec.
- Aura Mastery now lasts 6 sec. (Down from 10 sec)
I don't PvP much with my paladin these days, but by looking at the number of PvP nerfs that has hit the paladins in WotLK, paladins must have been completely dominating the PvP scene (and still I don't see paladins dominating in the top-rated arena teams...)
The nerf to Sacred Shield makes it totally worthless for anyone except the holy paladin. As a tankadin, I often cast this on myself (if I don't have a holy paladin casting it on me) to reduce the incoming damage, but that is pointless now.
Actually, I don't even see the point to keep Sacred Shield as a baseline ability for paladins anymore, since it is useless without Infusion of Light, which is deep in the holy tree. If Blizzard wants only holy paladins to use this ability, then just put it in the holy tree and remove it as a baseline ability. Now the untalented Sacred Shield is a joke.
The nerf to Aura Mastery is clearly also a PvP nerf. It's the exact same nerf that Hand of Freedom got a couple of patches ago.
And then we come to my favorite "change": Lay on Hands can no longer be cast on yourself.
What has Blizzard been sniffing this time? Gnomish Ultra Glue (c)?
Lay on Hands has saved by butt so many times, I cannot count them all. It has a looooooong cooldown, so I save it for those very special moments where my healer is dead and the boss is starting to chew my face off after I have been auto-ressed by Ardent Defender.
Removing the self-cast on Lay on Hands would remove one of the few tanking cooldowns paladins have. I have even suggested getting LoH off the global cooldown, so it would be a more reliable tanking cooldown....
What's the reason for this nerf?
PvP? I don't think so. You cannot use LoH in arena, and you will only be able to use it once in a battleground. That's hardly a reason for a nerf.
PvE? I can only assume that it is because of the extra survivability it gives paladins when they solo content. Is that really something you want to balance talents around? Or is it because raiding holy paladins sometimes use it to get mana back when they have the talent glyphed? We are still talking about an 11 minute (talented and glyphed) cooldown, guys!
I read a new post from Ghostcrawler where he says that they have removed the change to LoH in their internal build. That doesn't mean that we can rest assured that the change will not go live. It means that Blizzard considers this talent broken, and that they are not finished messing with it yet.
Personally, I don't like where these changes are going. I am also very tired of getting nerfed because of PvP.
Atleast Icecrown Citadel looks cool. Although I'm not exactly thrilled about that the first boss in there wipes raids by passing gas. Is Blizzard catering to the 6-year olds now?
Friday, September 11, 2009
Additional Changes in Patch 3.2.2
I already addressed the changes to tankadins in patch 3.2.2 in an earlier post, but Blizzard has added some more changes to the PTR since then.
Also, when looking at the QQ on the forums, and the blue responses to these QQs, I am quite sure we will see a nerf to Ardent Defender sooner rather than later.
- Seal of Corruption and Seal of Vengeance: These seals will now only use the debuff stacks generated by the attacking paladin to determine the damage done by the seal and by the judgement. [This is actually a bug fix. It was discovered that several paladins using SoV ended up using the same stack of debuffs on the mob. Apparently, it was the smallest stack of debuffs that was used to calculate the damage, which both hurt the dps of retris and the tps of prots.]
- Blessing of Sanctuary: This blessing now grants 10% strength in addition to its current effects. Also, the strength and stamina bonuses from this blessing will no longer be lost when Blessing of Kings is removed. [With the changes to Touched by the Light, Blizzard had to add the strength multiplier to BoS to make it comparable to the almighty Kings. Just losing 10% agility, spirit, and intellect in exchange for 3% damage reduction and mana regen is finally starting to look like a nice deal.]
- Hammer of the Righteous: The damage from this ability is now considered physical instead of Holy. The threat generated by the ability has been increased such that it will continue to do approximately the same threat it did when it was Holy damage. [This is a change I do not like. It is obviously another PvP nerf. I assume plate wearers were whining about getting hit hard by holy damage that ignored their armor. The main reason I do not like this change is not because I think it is a threat nerf (it is a dps nerf actually, but hopefully not a threat nerf), but because it is another step away from the signature spell damage tank paladins used to be. I liked the fact that we were doing holy damage to mobs, and that we got threat multipliers from casters. Now we are just as dependent on Sunder Armor or Faerie Fire as warrior or druid tanks (but we do not have an ability like that ourselves).]
- Added a recipe for Drums of Forgotten Kings. These drums increase all stats by 8% for all players in a raid. Does not stack with Blessing of Kings. [All leatherworkers can now bring Kings to the raid.]
- The Black Heart: This item’s animation has been changed and no longer resembles Hand of Protection. [I think many of us got a heart attack when we first saw this animation on the tank. I really do not know what Blizzard was thinking when they picked this animation for the proc of the trinket.]
- Relics: All buffs provided by relics (idols, librams, totems and sigils) now share an exclusive category such that gaining a buff from one of these items will remove all other buffs gained from items in this category. [No more libram swapping, which I think is good since it was a stupid exploit.]
Also, when looking at the QQ on the forums, and the blue responses to these QQs, I am quite sure we will see a nerf to Ardent Defender sooner rather than later.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Patch 3.2.2 Changes
Yet again, I'm getting the news late. Taking the weekend off made me miss the announced changes in patch 3.2.2. Anyway, here they are:
Patch 3.2.2 is already up on the PTR, so adjustments to these changes will surely pop up during the coming weeks. Even though the changes so far are nerfs to tankadins, I don't cry myself to sleep at night.
- Righteous Fury: The bonus threat from Holy spells caused by this talent has been reduced from 90% to 80%. [Straight-forward nerf to tankadin threat. Maybe we should have seen this coming, with the recent buffs and all. Even though I don't enjoy being forced to pump out less threat, I think this is a good change in the long run. Blizzard has had problems with scaling tankadin dps since our threat modifier was so big. I'd prefer to get threat from pure dps than from a modifier that won't help me actually kill stuff.]
- 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. [PvE nerf due to PvP. Ever heard that one before? Apparently, a stun on a 20 second cooldown was too good to be true in PvP, even though it was barely useful as an interrupt in PvE. For me, this is the final nail in the coffin for Hammer of Justice as a tankadin ability. I didn't put points into the Improved Hammer of Justice talent since I believed the cooldown was still too long, and now Blizzard has made it even worse. Just face it: They don't want us to be able to interrupt.]
- 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. [Another PvP nerf. Protection specced healing paladins decked out in spell power plate in Arena was the latest Flavor of the Month, and Blizzard decided to crush that spec hard and fast. With the nerf to Judgement of the Just AND Touched by the Light, that spec is now dead. For the normal tankadin, it is a small threat nerf, since we still have more than twice as much stamina than strength. But the change still makes sense. Stamina shouldn't be a threat stat, and Strength now got even better as a threat stat. In the long run, I think this also is a good change.]
- Seal of Command: This ability now chains to strike up to 2 additional targets when it is triggered by an attack. [Seal of Cleave! Yes, sounds good! Since Seal of Vengeance sucks rhino balls on trash, this will make up for it. However, Seal switching is quite expensive these days. Having to switch seals between trash, bosses, and AoE packs will drain one's mana. Just imagine the Onyxia fight, when switching between the Broodmother and her whelps. That would require a seal switch every time.]
Patch 3.2.2 is already up on the PTR, so adjustments to these changes will surely pop up during the coming weeks. Even though the changes so far are nerfs to tankadins, I don't cry myself to sleep at night.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Tankadin changes in patch 3.2
These are the changes (so far) that the tankadin will face in patch 3.2:
Overall, these are some very nice buffs. Paladin tanks will be stronger than ever in patch 3.2.
- Block Value: The amount of bonus block value on all items has been doubled. This does not affect the base block value on shields or block value derived from strength. [Blizzard is desperately trying to make block useful again. The first "fix" is to increase the block value of items, thus increasing the mitigation block gives warriors and paladins. In addition, it will increase the threat these two tanks can dish out.]
- On-Use Block Value Items: All items and set bonuses that trigger temporary increases to block value have been modified. Instead of increasing their block value amount by 100% like other items, they have all had their effect durations doubled. This applies to Glyph of Deflection, Gnomeregan Autoblocker, Coren's Lucky Coin, Lavanthor's Talisman, Libram of Obstruction, Tome of the Lightbringer, Libram of the Sacred Shield, the tier-8 paladin Shield of Righteousness bonus, the tier-5 paladin Holy Shield bonus, and the tier-5 warrior Shield Block bonus. [The amount of block value would have been too high if these items would have had their block value doubled. Making the duration longer gives the desired mitigation buff without insane spikey threat. The duration buff makes it possible for several of these items and set bonuses to have a 100% uptime.]
- Blessing of Sanctuary: This blessing now also increases stamina by 10%. This effect is not cumulative with Blessing of Kings. [Blizzard wants Sanctuary to be THE tanking blessing. The problem is that Kings is still better. I prefer 10% more agility (avoidance, mitigation, and threat), 10% more strength (mitigation and threat), and 10% intellect (mana) over the 3% damage reduction and mana regen.]
- Righteous Fury: No longer has a duration or mana cost, remaining until cancelled or death. Also cancelled when a Paladin activates a different talent specialization. [Thank you, Blizzard. Finally!]
- Seal of Vengeance and Seal of Corruption: These seals have been redesigned to deal substantially more damage. Now, once a paladin has 5 copies of the debuff from these seals on his or her target, on each swing the paladin will deal 33% weapon damage as Holy, with critical strikes dealing double damage. [Threat buff? Thank you!]
- Shield of Righteousness: Now deals 100% of shield block value as damage instead of 130%. In addition, the benefit from additional block value this ability gains is now subject to diminishing returns. Diminishing returns occur once block value exceeds 30 times the player's level and caps the maximum damage benefit from shield block value at 34.5 times the player's level. [The reduction from 130% to 100% is understandable since the amount of block value has been doubled on items. I don't really understand how the diminishing return works, though.]
- Ardent Defender: Redesigned. Any damage that takes the paladin below 35% health is reduced. This reduction applies only to the portion that pushes the paladin below 35% health (example: a paladin at 50% health takes a 40% hit; the first 15% hits as normal while the next 25% is reduced). In addition, once every 2 minutes an attack that would have killed the paladin will fail to kill, and instead heal the paladin for up to 10/20/30% of maximum health depending on the paladin's defense rating. [Wonderful and interesting. The first implementation Blizzard put on the PTR was too overpowered. But even this nerfed version is still good. In a way you could call it a passive Guardian Spirit on a 2 min cooldown.]
- Guarded by the Light: This talent will no longer cause Divine Plea's duration to be refreshed by using Judgement of Wisdom, Judgement of Justice, or Judgement of Light. [I assume this nerf was introduced to stop protection-specced PvP healers to keep mana regen up indefinitely. It's still lame. I find it very useful to be able to judge to refresh the Divine Plea timer in fights that require a lot of moving or tanking of several roaming adds.]
- Vindication: Redesigned. Now lowers target attack power, is consistent and does not stack with Demoralizing Shout. [Blizzard nerfed the heck out of Vindication recently, due to its effects in PvP. When they realized that the nerfed version was completely worthless, they decided to redesign it to a paladin version of Demoralizing Shout. I like it. It frees up rage/mana and a global cooldown for DPS warriors and warlocks. And it's yet another passive buff/debuff that the paladin can set up without interrupting his/her rotation.]
- Agility and Dodge Nerf, Parry Buff: The avoidance gained from agility and dodge will be nerfed by 15%. The avoidance gained by parry will be buffed by 8%. [This is just me simplifying the changes made. I'll let the math champions battle this one out. I think Blizzard's intention is to make parry more attractive and also to slightly nerf avoidance overall. They don't want another Sunwell Radiance aura "fix".]
- Exorcism: Now has a 1.5 second cast time, but can once again be used on players. [The only real nerf for tankadins. Blizzard is trying to make it up to us with the changes to Hand of Reckoning (see below). I will miss being able to pick up mobs with Exorcism. Single target pulls, I always use Exorcism. Multi-target pulls, I use Avenger's Shield and Exorcism. Picking up new adds at Thorim or Yogg-Saron, I always use Exorcism. When I want to push for threat over everything else, I use Exorcism instead of Holy Shield in my rotation. I will still be able to pull with Exorcism, but I won't be able to do it will running in or while fighting something else. I will surely miss Exorcism.]
- Hand of Reckoning: Redesigned. Now does damage only when target does not currently have the caster targeted, but damage done increased to 50% of attack power, occurring after the taunt effect is applied. [This is a nice change, since it makes it a much better taunting tool. The old version often failed if the person with aggro kept dpsing the mob, and I didn't have the cooldown or range to attack the mob directly after the taunt. It will be nice to be able to just cast this, and not have to follow up with a judgement or something. But while having the mob's attention, this does not bring the extra threat Exorcism did.]
Overall, these are some very nice buffs. Paladin tanks will be stronger than ever in patch 3.2.
Patch 3.2 is sneaking up on me!
I'm back from my vacation, and when I take a quick look at my usual WoW-related sites I get a minor shock. What happened while I was away? I was only gone for three weeks!
Patch 3.2 turns out to be alot bigger than I initially thought it would be. A new Tier set? Already? I only have 4/5 of Tier 8.5 (I won't be wasting dkp on the shoulders anyways, but I haven't even seen them drop yet), and they already are prepared to release a new Tier set?
I barely know where to start to digest all this new information.
Patch 3.2 turns out to be alot bigger than I initially thought it would be. A new Tier set? Already? I only have 4/5 of Tier 8.5 (I won't be wasting dkp on the shoulders anyways, but I haven't even seen them drop yet), and they already are prepared to release a new Tier set?
I barely know where to start to digest all this new information.
- Tankadin Tier 9 looks amazing. Truly amazing. No more block rating, which is useless to almost everyone these days. Especially if you get the amazing stats from Tier 9 :) The amount of defense and stamina on the gear is insane. All the socket bonuses are +Stamina. There's a mix of block value, dodge, parry, hit, and expertise. I really like it, and it also looks better than both Tier 7 and Tier 8.
- The Coliseum raid instance can be run in both normal and heroic mode, for both 10- and 25-man raids.
- There's a 5-man instance that drops Naxx-25 level gear.
- There's no trash in the raids. It seems to be just a series of encounters.
- Loads of new recipies, designs, patterns, etc. New craftable BoE items.
- Epic gems are introduced.
- Raid ID extensions allow players to extend the raid lockout period.
- All instances will drop Emblems of Conquests to make it easier for new players to gear up.
- Some major changes to the paladin class. All three trees are affected by the changes.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Epic gems are coming!
In the next major content patch, we will get access to epic gems. That means a lot of regemming of gear, and a major upswing in jewelcrafters' income (for some time atleast).
We will be able to get raw epic gems from the following:
I still have a stash of Emblems of Heroism, but I can imagine that people will start grinding some heroics again to get more emblems to trade in for gems.
I better start doing the JC dailies again on my shaman, so that I can buy all the new designs I need... Oh, the day does not have enough hours for all this grinding...
We will be able to get raw epic gems from the following:
- Prospecting Titanium Ore
- Alchemy transmutations
- Purchased with Honor
- Purchased with Emblems of Heroism
I still have a stash of Emblems of Heroism, but I can imagine that people will start grinding some heroics again to get more emblems to trade in for gems.
I better start doing the JC dailies again on my shaman, so that I can buy all the new designs I need... Oh, the day does not have enough hours for all this grinding...
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Patch 3.1.3
I took a week off from raiding and spent only little time online, mostly doing dailies with my alts. I have four level 80s and they all need that darn Sons of Hodir reputation.... (two exalted so far)
This week it seems like we are getting a new minor patch. For paladins, it's all about PvP nerfs (again...)
Mimiron
This week it seems like we are getting a new minor patch. For paladins, it's all about PvP nerfs (again...)
- Eye For An Eye: This talent now deals 5/10% of the critical strike damage taken by the paladin back at the attacker.
- Hand of Freedom: The base duration of this buff has been reduced from 10 seconds to 6 seconds.
Mimiron
- The flight time of Rocket Strikes has been increased, and Rocket Strikes will try to prefer players at range.
- The Leviathan Mk II component of the V-07-TR-0N will become stunned during Phase 4 when the VX-001 component begins to cast the P3Wx2 Laser Barrage ability.
- Proximity mines now deal less damage and have a lower duration. A small arming time has also been added so proximity mines will not immediately detonate on creation.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Patch 3.1.2
Patch 3.1.2 should hit live servers this week. Not much of interest in this patch, except the Wintergrasp honor grind nerf (daily quests are changed to weekly quests) and the introduction of Equipment Manager.
It will be interesting to compare Equipment Manager with addons such as Outfitter, ItemRack, and ClosetGnome.
For paladins, there are only two minor changes:
When Blizzard changed the mana totems to not stack with BoW, it was like going back a few patches to when Battle Shout removed Blessing of Might.
If I may ask: Why are things like these not caught during testing?
The second change is a down-right PvP nerf. Apparently, paladins were "one-shotting" hunter pets (I don't see that happening when I look at hunter pets' health pools and the damage I do with Exorcism with a loooooong cooldown, but whatever...).
Blizzard is constantly trying to nerf the burst damage of retribution paladins, a class that is designed around burst damage. It's an interesting dilemma.
It will be interesting to compare Equipment Manager with addons such as Outfitter, ItemRack, and ClosetGnome.
For paladins, there are only two minor changes:
- Blessing of Wisdom and Greater Blessing of Wisdom: Now grant 92 mana per 5 seconds to prevent being overwritten by Mana Spring Totem.
- Exorcism: Can no longer be used on player-controlled creatures.
When Blizzard changed the mana totems to not stack with BoW, it was like going back a few patches to when Battle Shout removed Blessing of Might.
If I may ask: Why are things like these not caught during testing?
The second change is a down-right PvP nerf. Apparently, paladins were "one-shotting" hunter pets (I don't see that happening when I look at hunter pets' health pools and the damage I do with Exorcism with a loooooong cooldown, but whatever...).
Blizzard is constantly trying to nerf the burst damage of retribution paladins, a class that is designed around burst damage. It's an interesting dilemma.
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