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BluetrackerA Couple of Thingies
Spell Warding is in! Kinda...
Aelic reports that Improved Resistance Auras has been changed to Spell Warding. Instead of giving 3/5% of spell damage cut per aura, we get a flat 2/4% spell damage cut to all spells. It's an improvement to tanking but a slight nerf to support.
Micah wants you to check out this Ret PVP video from this thread.
Tier 4 set bonuses are out.
Fooled around with a Prot build all the way up to Avenger's Shield last night on the PTR. I forget who critiqued it a while back, but...it has too many trade-offs to make it really get that oomph! It's not bad. It's descent. I really wish the cooldown was lowered because it'd create a more interactive gameplay. When specced Prot all the abilities are based on semi-heavy cooldowns (shortest is 8/10 sec for Consecration and Judgement) so there's nothing we can really "do" between them. Found myself rolling my thumbs after Judging and Consecrating. Our taunt is great also, but it fails when you're trying to grab aggro from Horde.
Aelic reports that Improved Resistance Auras has been changed to Spell Warding. Instead of giving 3/5% of spell damage cut per aura, we get a flat 2/4% spell damage cut to all spells. It's an improvement to tanking but a slight nerf to support.
Micah wants you to check out this Ret PVP video from this thread.
Tier 4 set bonuses are out.
Fooled around with a Prot build all the way up to Avenger's Shield last night on the PTR. I forget who critiqued it a while back, but...it has too many trade-offs to make it really get that oomph! It's not bad. It's descent. I really wish the cooldown was lowered because it'd create a more interactive gameplay. When specced Prot all the abilities are based on semi-heavy cooldowns (shortest is 8/10 sec for Consecration and Judgement) so there's nothing we can really "do" between them. Found myself rolling my thumbs after Judging and Consecrating. Our taunt is great also, but it fails when you're trying to grab aggro from Horde.
posted by Mastgrr at 12:56:00 AM
5 Comments:
The 2/4% to all spells along with rightous fury will be nice in pvp. Sure it's not super, but along with a resistance aura and the increased stamina on items and via the divine shield talent, we might have an easier time vs casters in TBC.
hmm in pvp with ardent defender, when you go under 20% health, with rightous fury, spell warding, and blessing of salvation you will be at 60% mitigation + 24 against everything at level 60 on top of whatever resistance aura you have on. Never mind plate mitigation against melee....
I'm liking that idea. I must have something wrong, because that sounds very good.
I just spent a bunch of time in the arena, and I gotta say - Crusader Strike rules. But Fanatacism rules more. Critting 1 in 3 Judgements is gold.
With my Retnoob gear, which is mostly the old blue (crit) PVP set with Judgement helm and some select MC epics, and TuF (~3800 mana, 22% crit, 50 spell damage ) I was usually able to put out more damage in 2v2 arena matchups than my teammate, and win the match to boot.
Healing wasn't even a problem, since most of my damage came in 8-second burst intervals and I had time to spare in between. With Crusader Strike costing 152 Mana, Judgement 79 (w/ benediction) and SoC being effectively half-price at less than 100 mana, it was costing me about 325 mana to drop a big brick of hurt (about 400 autoattack + 400 SoC + 500 JoC + 440 Crusader Strike at minimum, I frequently counted over 3000 in the burst) on someone.
I only wish the Arena skirmishes awarded honor, because it's so fun in there I'd be GM-geared in a week. Paladins excel in that sort of small-scope combat.
Of course, nobody's really playing that hard, and to keep up competitively I need to learn to play all over again. Still, I think Paladins are sitting pretty well in the expansion thusfar.
I'm sorry for gushing, I'm practically giddy. I have a feeling I'm going to get addicted to WoW again.
My experence was similar to yours mchammar. I mostly played in the Arena for the time I've been on test (ie, when it's not busy crashing).
I spec'ced ret first, and I went at it with my semi-spell damage gear. (4100 HP, 3500 MP, 1008 AP, 21% to crit, 90 spell damage + 212 from JotC). I found myself still healing a lot, but being able to really jack someone up when I had crusader strike, a stun and JoC available.
I did find myself OOM a lot, because I was still healing and supporting my teamamtes quite a bit. My wins/losses were mixed.
I realized like you did that fanaticism is what makes the ret tree go. It is quite awesome. I switched to my crit gear (950 AP, 29% to crit, 4000 HP, 3000 MP), and fanaticism was just insane. JoC basically comes out to 47% to crit if you apply jotc with that. I basically had vengence up the whole time and I didn't miss the 80 spell damage as much as I thought I would. I was however, in a bigger hole as far as support went, 3000 MP isn't good for buffing faces. :)
Ret is quite good, and I don't think the 10 second crusader strike cooldown will matter all that much, since I didn't find myself spamming, but rather waiting to use it the next time I proc'ced vengence so I could stun -> Melee hit, JoC, crusader strike.
I saw some really, really good numbers for just pvp gear. 2000-3000 bust damage happened often for me. The build is a bit mana hungry for grinding when you will spam crusader strike every 6-10 seconds, but of course my gear was mana deficient.
I did get a Quad (melee, SoC, JotC, crusader strike) crit on a 55 elite I was grinding on, and his bar just melted. It's almost like reckoning on demand when your Hammer of Justice isn't on cooldown.
I still found myself healing more than doing damage, so I ended up spec'cing holy to see how that would play out in the arena. I lost two matches while spec'ced holy, and I must have won like 20. Really, there isn't any force equal to a support paladin in 2v2 arena.
Although, I still remember one that I lost was against an afflicton warlock. I think I cleansed that damn "You can't cleanse me" dot by accident. Ouch. :/
Anyway, holy is very good as well. I'm not sure what is going to happen with the SoR co-effecients (I believe they get nerfed again in a later version that is current on TBC beta), but holy is no longer gimp when it comes to burst damage either. My JoR was hitting for 450 with minimal + damage gear and holy shock being on a 15 second cooldown means it's around quite often. Sure it's only about 900 damage when put together, but it's damage on demand, and it's nicer than what holy did before.
As for healing, lights grace is a nice pvp talent, and Sanctified light + holy power means that with just lawbringer gear you will be getting around 20% to crit your holy light spells. This is awesome for 2v2 arena pvp, it's so mana efficent it's scary.
I'm kinda disapointed in blessed life. I scrolled all through my combat log to try to find it working, but I didn't see it. (ie, I didn't see any hits/spells that were obviously halved) There is no visual representation when it procs, and I have no idea if it's proc'cing. I'd like to see a brief glow, or something in the combat log.
The talent nobody is really talking about is Holy Guidance, which gives you 35% of your int as spell damage/healing. As someone who lacks good spell damage gear, I found this to be a nice effect. In lawbringer/2 pieces of blue pvp gear my spell damage was coming out to 199, which isn't too shabby. What is nice is the synergy with other talents (ie divine intellect), and the fact that basically all of your int gear becomes +spell/healing gear as well (20 int = +7 spell damage). Sure the bonus isn't a lot, but it's nice. It must be sweet if you have full judgement gear.
Finally, I only used divine illumination like twice in the arena. The problem I found is that there isn't a great time to use it. Typically I'd use it at half mana when I'm about to pop off a heal. After that I'd have to find something to do with it. I remember once casting and judging rightousness, then casting holy shock, then just standing there like duhhh I have nothing else I can cast since both of us had full life. lol. It probably wouldn't have been as much as a factor had I been playing a 5v5 and had other teammates to tend to.
I think divine illumination is a nice concept, but it would help if it had some secondary effect. Maybe an increase in +damage/healing during those 10 seconds? Faster casts might be nice, or something to give it a slight bit more oomph.
I'm looking forward to respec'cing to prot and trying it out in the arena, but I'm holding out until they patch test so I can try out the newer talents (ie spell warding).
I am bummed that the arena won't be giving honor or experence at 60. I really don't look forward to a pve 60-70 grind. I just want to pvp damnit. :/
I think my main plan now is to go with ret and some more balanced gear and learn to spend most of my time supporting, saving my face-crushings for opportune moments. Nobody ever expects the Paladin.
Crit is still a bit lacking in TBC but with a sample set of blue quest gear complete with +crit socketings I was able to get up to about 16% crit (at 70) with conviction, which isn't bad for the amount of strength, stamina and spell damage the gear had. This can probably be raised with the addition of new, more crit-focused ret gear. Overall though I think all the str/sta/int/spelldamage gear will do nicely for playing the hybrid role, ret or holy.
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