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BluetrackerNew Test Realm patch
New version on the test realm, and this is the news:
- Divine Intervention now spawns a shield on the target for 3 minutes.
- Seal of Command is (most likely) fixed to proc at 7 PPM.
- Two-Handed Weapon Specialization has been buffed from 5% to 10%.
- IMHO the funniest and actually least expected change: Consecration and Sanctity Aura have been switched with each other. Yep, you heard that right.
- Divine Intervention now spawns a shield on the target for 3 minutes.
- Seal of Command is (most likely) fixed to proc at 7 PPM.
- Two-Handed Weapon Specialization has been buffed from 5% to 10%.
- IMHO the funniest and actually least expected change: Consecration and Sanctity Aura have been switched with each other. Yep, you heard that right.
posted by Mastgrr at 11:32:00 AM
43 Comments:
"- IMHO the funniest and actually least expected change: Consecration and Sanctity Aura have been switched with each other. Yep, you heard that right."
So now you can't get Sancitity Aura + Holy Shock?
God, they don't have a clue do they.
Yeah, but now consecration + holy Shock is now possible right?
Also consecration was never really a good ret talent. It does damage but costs a lot of mana that a ret paladin doesn't have much of. If possible they should move sancitity back over and keep consecration in the holy tree. Put reckoning in the ret tree as well and divine str and benediction should be switched (making benediction reduce holy spells instead). I believe from these drastic changes to the test realm versions just shows they weren't even close to finishing paladin talents. The only other "major" change on a test realm version that I can remember is moonkin being allowed to drink and use trinkets.
" Yeah, but now consecration + holy Shock is now possible right?"
Aye, that is true. However there is no real synergie between these two talents, and Sanctity went some way to improving the awful damage/mana efficiency. Couple that with the fact that consecration really isn't that good in a non-tanking role (apart from to annoy rogues of course ;) ) and you really have got to ask 'whats the point'. Essentially you'll see tanks take holy up-to consec and then Prot because Holy Shock has gone back to being pretty awful.
As Mastgrr said a while ago, the devs really need to motivate these changes if we are to have any real confidence in them. Oh, and don't just test the changes with full Judgement ffs.
In other news, the mana cost of Purge, Dispell and Cleanse has alledgedly been greatly increased with the new patch to around 150 mana. So whilst this makes things interesting in PvP, it is a huge PvE nerf to us really.
Confirmation on this change would be much appreciated. Getting on the Euro test realm is proving tough ;)
Sanctity Aura is a rather worthless aura anyways overall. I'm not sure why it wasn't changed to be made more useful. If it was holy and healing effects or something then it'd be more worth getting.
Speaking of auras, they did practically nothing to change any of the current ones we have now =/
Personally, it feels like they rushed this patch out more to test the new raid instance AQ. Rather than to reveal the new and improved pally. I feel like these "improvements" are quite possibly going to make me shelf my pally again for awhile.
This change was a nerf to Holy Shock, true. But I am pretty confident they will improve Holy Shock before 1.9 hits the live servers.
Having Consecration in Holy is even more weird than having Sanctity Aura in Holy tree.
But I don't see why all the "forum-paladins aka Whineadins" complain about moving Sanctity Aura to Retribution?
First they whine about wanting a buff to the retribution tree. Now they move a skill there that adds +10% Holy Damage, what the hell was this doing in holy tree anyway. I think Sanctity aura in its current state is better to have in retribution tree since it does have with improving damage to do. When they get this aura in the right tree they still whine, it is laughable.
But maybe still the best solution would have been reworking Sanctity Aura to include healing as well and keep it in Holy.
But in its current state it just got moved to the right place.
While I'm at it I also wanna mention about all pallies saying that retribution tree got nerfed in this patch. How? We got Vindication and Eye for an Eye which both are good PvP talents.
The new Vengeance is so much better than the old but it seems people have failed to recognize this. The 1.9 Vengeance procs of SoC crits and also refreshes on crits, the more frequently proccing SoC also gives more crits = more Vengeance.
Also today we got 10% extra dmg from 2h'ers in retribution tree.
// Paxx, one paladin happy with the coming changes.
paxx is happy but badly informed:
-2h specialization will only have mx 3 pts (6% boost)
- Vengeance does not proc on SoC crits
If consecration gets an HoT effect just like Holy Shock got a healing effect, then it fits. Otherwise it's still a nice change, 10% holy damage for retribution paladins will help offset the 30% less damage SoC does. With vengeace up, SoC should be hitting for about the same amount...this was a good change for retriubtion paladins, they will save that 480 mana from consecration to do judgements.
Paxx, you sound like an easily amused and boring person. I bet you would be highly engaged and entertained by a string tied around your big toe. The rest of us will roll classes that are actually fun and effective, especially in PvP.
Moron.
Anonymous>> I think you are the one mis-informed.
Yes you can currently only put 3 points out of 5 in the 2 hand specialisation. 3 points for 6% extra damage but consider this bugged. Probably bugged so that you are supposed to be able to put 5 in it thus having 10% extra damage. If they leave it at 3 points giving 6% extra damage it is still better. You gain 1% and 2 talent points. But I doubt this is how they intend it since it would leave even less talents to distribute our points in (we currently have few potential sites to put points in relative to other classes).
About Vengeance, yes it DOES proc of SoC crits. I am 100% sure of this, I have tested this on EU PTRs,
if you are playing on US testservers and not seeing this I suspect it might have to do with having your old talent points still distributed in the trees, maybe this cause a bug.
Anonymous nr2>> SoC intends to do same dmg in 1.9 as in 1.8. They only distributed the damage over more hits instead of few hits with burst damage. The +10% damage is thus a clearcut boost.
With 1000+ hits with SoC activated on every one of them I had 6ppm in 1.8 with 3.8 speed weapon, on test servers I had 7.9ppm with 3.8 speed weapon.
+2 ppm thus in 1.9
Addition to my post above;
It makes sense that 2h specialisation indeed is intended as +10% extra damage as this is what 1h specialisation got. And add to this that both these specialisations were put deeper into respective tree, thus a buff to them is warranted.
Anonymous nr3>> Good, the paladins are better of idiots like you giving us the bad reputation we already have.
Roll horde and see what for example rogues based upon crit feel about protection specced paladins.
The PvP'ing paladin that often is a reckadin got their buff with more useful talents in protection tree (imp Hoj, imp Conc. aura)on their way down to reckoning as well as having the useful pvp talents i mentioned within reach.
The Paladin was fine in PvP before, it will still be in 1.9.
sorry paxx you're wrong:
"Two-Handed Weapon Specialization - This has been reduced to 3 ranks from 5, now giving a 2/4/6% bonus.
The new PTR build allows 5 ranks for up to 10%. This is a bug and is not intended."
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-realm-test&t=93691&p=1&tmp=1#post93691
I think this makes holy an even better tree, sure the dps is lower than it was, but you can crank it up twards the end with conencration.
I don't think this move makes retribution more appealing at all, but I do think sanctity aura belonged there from the start.
They just made Ret worse imo. I don't see how anyone will spec it other than leveling up.
nemof>> Ok I was wrong, but it is still better than the old talent as I wrote; +1% damage and 2 less talent points spended.
Improvement.
I'm at it I also wanna mention about all pallies saying that retribution tree got nerfed in this patch. How? We got Vindication and Eye for an Eye which both are good PvP talents.
Vindication isn't worth the talent points. I saw a breakdown of this before, and it basically puts a 6 DPS decrease on rogues. Plus, did you have any trouble beating melee characters pre-patch? Kind of a useless talent. If it worked across the board (ie on int) it would be nice.
The new Vengeance is so much better than the old but it seems people have failed to recognize this. The 1.9 Vengeance procs of SoC crits and also refreshes on crits, the more frequently proccing SoC also gives more crits = more Vengeance.
But your soc crits hit for so much less, what does it matter?
The move of conencration to the holy tree just makes holy that much better. The number of paladins who will spec retribution is actually going to go down after this patch.
I don't have any hatred twards retribution either, if they put a good active ability to increase dps I would be speccing it. I tried it out on test and the tree is as random as ever with lower soc crits, which sucks. If I can get conviction for 15 points, why spec into ret?
They truly have turned ret into the 'auto attack tree'. I don't mind, I see the conencration move as a buff to holy.
Lord Vir>> SoC crits for less but more often giving you more periods of time with Vengeance up. Since it also refreshes from every new crit you can probably have vengeance up almost the entire durations of the fight with 25-30% critchance.
In any way you put this, 1.9 Vengeance is a great deal better than the previous mediocre/lousy 1.8 talent.
(note: I base this also upon SoC procrate and total damage really holds true)
Vindication from what I hear is also affecting (raid)bosses where it could be of somewhat use, but can always be argued if it is worth the debuff slot it will occupy.
Yes, it might not be the best thing you can get for 3 talent points but it is not worthless.
oC crits for less but more often giving you more periods of time with Vengeance up. Since it also refreshes from every new crit you can probably have vengeance up almost the entire durations of the fight with 25-30% critchance.
I'm mostly thinking pvp here, but I'd rather have the burst damage from SoC from 1.8 back.
In any way you put this, 1.9 Vengeance is a great deal better than the previous mediocre/lousy 1.8 talent.
It's better, I wouldn't say it's a great deal better. Considering how far up it is in the tree I don't think it's worth it. No conencration and being stuck with BoK sucks for pvp. I kind of look at things from a pvp only perspective.
(note: I base this also upon SoC procrate and total damage really holds true)
Vindication from what I hear is also affecting (raid)bosses where it could be of somewhat use, but can always be argued if it is worth the debuff slot it will occupy.
Yes, it might not be the best thing you can get for 3 talent points but it is not worthless.
I don't see much value in it for us.
I'm amazed at how good holy is at putting out burst damage at the end of a fight now. I just tried out the update on test..The further reduced mana cost of judgements is nice and having conecration in holy just seems too good for 1v1 pvp/duels.
In battlegrouds I think holy will be popular, with protection getting some attention for improved conentration aura and reckoning. Holy is just so nice now, I don't see how people can not spec it. It was my least favorite endtree pre-1.9, but now it seems a lot better.
Please don't bring a flame-war to this site. It's exactly why I read this site instead of the paladin forums. If you want call names and such, please do it elsewhere.
-KBG-
I recently rolled a shaman and am loving the raw versatility of the class, especially in the Battlegrounds. It's nice being an active part of the team that can deal significant damage and aid in flag captures and defense with snares and crowd control abilities. I can deal damage commensurate with the investment of mana, buff my team, or heal my team.
I was hoping that Blizzard would bring that same kind of versatility and effectiveness to the paladin class but I was wrong. I see many, including some voices within Blizzard, harping on about the paladin's survivability and using it as an excuse to keep their DPS attrociously low and not giving them any damage on demand abilities (such as strikes). But for the life of me, my shaman survives far more battles and hairy situations because he can so effectively deal damage, heal, snare, and crowd control. So why can't paladins receive these skills as well?
It's no secret that the Horde wins the vast majority of Battleground matches in the pre level 40 brackets. We actually joke about it, how we don't even need to bother with defense unless we feel like dragging the fight out for extra honor kills. It's the exact opposite when I use my Alliance characters. The Alliance has to bring an organized team to the BG with a good plan and solid defense just to stand a chance against Horde pickup groups. This is due to the wild imbalance caused by the sloppily designed and ineffective paladin class on one side, and a complete hybrid that can not only heal and wear chain armor with a sheild, but also CC and nuke. It's really a no brainer.
And 1.9, as it stands, will only make things worse. I think the only course of action that would fix the imbalance would be to scrap the seal and judgement system, re-implement strikes, give paladins a real snare, and nerf divine shield even further. Until then I'll enjoy winning 9/10 Battleground matches with my shaman.
Good stuff guys!
What I don't get is why Vengeance *isn't* proccing off of SoC. I remember clearly that sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. It's really weird. The first time I was trying out a purely "Retnoob" build on the PTR Vengeance went off constantly, and because I have such a crappy crit rate (around 5-6%) I concluded that it had to be due to SoC. But then when I was trying to confirm this during a debate with a friend of mine, Vengeance didn't activate off of the SoC procs! Really, really weird.
Yeah guys, please keep name-calling and stuff like that to a minimum. I really, really, really don't like censorship and it would pain me to actually have to delete posts here (I've done it only once before).
I also don't feel these changes are final. I think we will see 1 - 2 more test realm patches before this goes live.
I like the direction blizzard took, it was unexpected, but actually shows some insight on their part.
I was really miffed cause in order to maximise my ability to tank the few times my guild needs me to I would become a really bad healer all the time. This is no longer the case. I also have great PvP abiltiy, 10% resist fear, 15% resist silence/interrupts, reckoning, 45second cooldown on stun.
It's a great all around build.
according to someone in the test realm these are the new mana costs for cleanse/dispell/purge:
Cleanse: 120 Mana
Dispell: 150/250 Mana
Purge: 157 mana
Haven't had confirmation on that. With the greatly increased mana pools we are all gonna be working on which will be useful in both PVE and PVP 120 mana will be nothing really. Notice though that purge is much much more expensive. That's blizz-dev trying to make it too expensive for shamans to be a purge machine. Rather than listening to all of us clamouring for seals to be made weapon buffs.
Mastgrr>> Atleast on EU-PTR's Vengeance procs out of every SoC crit.
But seems like there might be a bug involved in this.
I like the dispel change. Now shamans will think twice about using 150 mana to purge rank 1 SoC. In PvE, the mana costs before barely dented my mana pool and now it will barely dent my mana pool 2x so it really isn't a big deal. Overall, paladins and warlocks should celebrate.
Mastgrr,
My experence on test with vengence was the same..it seemed like it was on a lot more, and I thought it was proccing off Seal of command crits...then sometimes it seemed like it wasn't. I have a 25% crit rate with all of my crit gear on, it did seem like vengence was on all the time.
I really think they need to buff vengence more. It needs to be proc'cing of SoC if it's not. They should do something else for it too, maybe make all damage holy damage, or a speed buff, or something while it's active. Even if they have to move it to the end of the tree. This would give the old critadins a reason to like this patch, and spec ret.
I don't think this patch should only favor one or two trees ^-^
On another note, exorcism definatly works on warlock pets. I took the little imp thing down with one exorcism and one melee hit. On top of that, an eye for an eye will make those shadowbolt crits tough on warlocks.
Poor warlocks. My only wish is that an eye for an eye somehow worked on sheep. lol
Looks like Holy is the new tanking tree as well. Rightous Fury works suprisingly well with holy shock as a taunt and with conviction as an ae taunt. Pretty mana intensive but it puts the two main talents paladins use for tanking in one place.
Lord Vir, any idea if Turn Undead works on Warlock Pets?
If so: Take that you seductive Succubus!
this thread seems to be a lot about vengeance. i have a rather technical question:
if you land a crit, vengeance goes off. Is the dmg-bonus applied to the crit that triggered it?
SCT seems to show that info, if i remember right the combat log doesnt. Any educated answers?
and a little homework on vengeance. if i rembember mathematics, the following holds true:
let x be the crit rate. If you use a slow 2h you can make 3 swings. lets further assume the vengeance bonus is not applied to the first crit.
- the probability to land a crit on the first strike is x
- for vengeance to stay active, you must land crits on the 2 and/or 3 swing. The probability not to land subsequent crits is (1-x)*(1-x), because both events are statistically independant.
Now to the numbers: if you have 30% crit (a unreasonable high number), 0.7 * 0.7 = 0.49, means that in 49% off all cases, vengeance is not up for at least 1 swing.
Only wanted to show that you cannot simply add 30% critrate up 3 times and say "wow, vengeance is always up".
sorry was too fast. the prob for vengeance not up is 1-0.49 = 0.51
You have to take into account that Vengeance procs out of SoC crits too now. :)
As I am 100% sure it does on EU PTRs, bug or not, I guess we will hear more about.
But I guess SoC goes under the category "special ability", as stated by the patchnotes should trigger Vengeance:
"Vengeance - Special ability critical hits can now trigger Vengeance."
Since SoC now procs about every 2nd hit you get more chances to crit there, same crit% since it crits is based upon on melee.
Thus the value is higher than 49%
why I also said you can have it on the majority of the fights with decent crit%.
Suppose a low crit% of 15%. SoC also procs off this rate. Suppose also that your weapon speed is 3.8+ (ie AR, TUF, CSM). That means you will have 2.1 hits to start vengeance again. At 7ppm, SoC will proc .9 times in the same interval. That sums to 3 chances to reactivate vengeance barring some other special attack. That's about a 39 percent chance you will refresh the vengeance countdown (although I'm not certain that vengeance's current mechanic refreshes the timer or still bugs and stacks). Were the crit% actually 30% as previously suggested, it would mean that the chance is 66 percent that vengeance would renew.
one mor question about SoC: when i did all that testing stuff in 1.8, my SoC critrate was always 5% higher than my melee critrate. Only explanation for me was, that soc profits of melle + spellcrit rate. did anybody of you notice similar behavior?
odb
Check the maths - changing vengeance to proc off SoC adds at the very maximum 2% to your DPS and that's with a 20% crit chance. I've always found it funny that paladins spend so much time (myself included here) worrying about a couple of DPS here, a couple of DPS there, when other classes quite plainly double, triple or quadruple our DPS...
vengeance do refresh at every crit now, also from other abilities that crit, JoC-crits for instance
Remember these changes aren't final: Tigole said that at least two more test builds are coming out.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-dungeons&t=254244&s=blizzard&tmp=1#blizzard
Sadly I seem unable to post in the paladin changes thread and I don't want to loose everything I typed out so I'll post here and see what you all think about these ideas.
As a paladin who was looking forward to a huge overhaul to my class to make it fun to play, I was initially dissapointed with what I saw but now I'm relooking at the class as a whole and I'm pretty impressed with what a couple of changes to the class have managed to accomplish. Overall the class is well on it's way to being workable and fun but it still has a couple major things it needs.
It's taken me a little while to figure out exactly what it is the class needs but this is my list of things that would fix a majority of the paladins ills.
1. Paladins wear plate, as a plate wearing class they should be able to tank. When tanking you need a taunt. Squishy's are going to grab aggro, that's just what they do. There is just no getting around it. The better ones do it less often but nobody is perfect and it's going to happen sooner or later. A group shouldn't wipe because it chose a paladin over a warrior as a tank.
2. Paladins are the only class in the game without a ranged attack. No horde class suffers this problem and no other alliance class suffers this problem. This is nothing more than an artificial restriction and really should be removed.
3. The paladins main problem in Battlegrounds is the prolific use of purge to reduce us to a mere autoattack. We have no strikes and all our DPS buffs are dispellable.
Solution #1 Kill two birds with one stone. Make holy shock a standard skill and rebalance the threat it generates as a taunt. It already works pretty good as a taunt with Rightous Fury but you just can't expect tanks to spend 31 points in the holy tree to get their taunt and you shouldn't expect all paladins to spend 31 points in the holy tree to get their ranged attack. The dual use of it as a healing and harming ability was a nice way to make it fit with the theme of the holy tree but it really does need to just be given to all paladins, it certainly fits in with the rest of our long timered abilities theme. This one change would go along way towards making the class more fun and versatile to play.
Solution #2 Replace Holy shock as the top of the holy tree with Blessing of Kings. Really, unless a guild really wants a Blessing of Kings paladin no one specs up to 31 points in Retribution to get this ability. The main reason is because this is a misplaced ability. You don't spec retribution if you want to be a healing buffing support class in raids no matter how good the 31 point ability is. However as the top ability in Holy it would see far more use, holy paladins are interested in being the best support characters they can be and every class in the game can benefit from Blessing of Kings.
Solution #3 Replace Blessing of Kings at the top of Retribution with a weapon enhancement that stacks with seals. Seals will still be purgable in Battlegrounds but the paladins who want to spend 31 points in Retribution could still have something that keeps our dps up while being purged. This would also make paladins a target you can't just ignore in the battlegrounds weather they have this ability or not, there is the threat of them having this ability.
Perhaps Rightous Fury could be turned into a weapon enchantment that would replace it so they couldn't be use in combination while tanking if that would be a problem.
I still have a number of other issues with paladins as a whole (mainly talents placed in wrong trees and our lack of any sort of strike, judgements aren't a bad idea but don't work in practicae since seal of command is the main damage dealing seal and it isn't worth the mana to judge it if the target isn't stunned which means you probably won't judge it but once every time you HoJ) but these three changes would go a long way toward making the paladin class enjoyable and useful the way warriors, druids and hunters were at the end of their rebalancing.
Holy Shock as a baseline ability that also taunts: good stuff.
Jade, while I agree with you on a lot of ideas, the part about tanking is the MOST vital imo.
I don't know if you or others were playing last year, but we USED to tank. We could hold aggro so well just through our heals. Then one sad day, warriors decided to cry, and they made our heals equal only 1/3 threat.
Needless to say, that "was" our taunt and they're not going to give it back. I rolled this class to tank, but unless they give us full aggro from our heals, we won't be tanking...ever...
Can you blame warriors? With concentration aura going we can't be interupted and if our heals generated full aggro were we could taunt pretty well every 1.5 seconds and really well every 2.5 seconds. Not to mention that is an AE taunt based on the way heals work. Holy shock is a single target ability that is usable once every 30 seconds. I would be happy if holy shock was our taunt and made one of our standard abilities.
Erm... just as a point of interest, a high-aggro talent is not the same as a taunt. A taunt ignores aggro levels of all players on its hate list and forces the mob to attack you for X seconds. High aggro skills, such as a large heal or Judgement of Fury holy attacks, effectively build hate, and argueably we could already do this in 1.8 with consecration and said Judgement on a maximum of 2 mobs at a time.
The problem comes with mobs that have an 'aggro-wipe' of some form, removing you - as tank - from their hate list. In such circumstances warrior and druid taunts allow them to regain the attention of the mob and re-build their position on the hate list. Without that Paladins are essentially unreliable as tanks, and without high-aggro heals Plate Armour is unnecessary in raid instances.
Don't expect Blizz to give Paladins a taunt though. Warriors will complain like the clappers, even though both the Rage dynamic and 10% DR right off the top (compared to Mana, self-healing and devotion aura) will allow them to remain far above Pallies in tanking. And it will serve to highlight the stupid ill-thoughtout endgame for both the pseudo-hybrid classes - Shaman and Paladin both.
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