Paladins nerfed on the beta
by Adam Holisky 
Oct 25th 2008 at 1:00PM
Most of the changes are centering around the Retribution tree. Some are pretty crazy, like Seal of Corruption dealing holy damage, and Divine Storm dealing physical damage. There is no indication if these changes will make it into patch 3.0.3 or arrive in a later update.
There's a couple of other changes that stick out for me.
- Seal of Command lost about 20% of it's overall damage
- Most other seals were reduced by around 13% to 21%
- Judgement of the Wise grants 15% of base mana instead of 33%
- Most other judgement effects are reduced by about 15%
- Art of War was retooled to increase damage of Judgement, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm instead of increasing critical strike damage
And finally, Blessing of Might now increases AP by 306. It used to be 305. So it's not a total nerf...
Filed under: Paladin, Analysis / Opinion, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 7)
Christos` Oct 25th 2008 1:09PM
Typical. Should've started building a healing set already. Naive on my part.
Reinard Oct 25th 2008 1:16PM
Delete your paladin.
Stop talking. No one wants to hear it.
Christos` Oct 25th 2008 1:24PM
GFY, douche.
Reinard Oct 25th 2008 1:33PM
lol. Pathetic. Fine, fine. Whine and complain and never spec ret again over *balancing* nerfs. Pretend it's actually not overpowered now in it's current state, pretend you're not two-shotting mobs and people in PVP. I'm wrong, you're right, yadda yadda. Don't forget to vote this comment down, too.
Sigh.
FuryDawg Oct 25th 2008 1:39PM
Seriously, Reinart...you are a real ass. Get out of mom's basement a day or two a month.
darian Oct 25th 2008 1:08PM
In before irrationality takes over.
The biggest change is the reduction in mana return from Judgements of the Wise. The issue being that it is now infeasible for a Retribution Paladin to sustain a full rotation for any significant period of time. That is to say, Raid DPS is going to take a hit because you can't spam all of your abilities on cooldown.
That isn't necessarily a bad thing, except that alongside the damage nerfs it's likely Retribution will be seeing a significant DPS loss that places them out of competition with other melee classes. Hard data will have to be collected to know for sure.
Adam Holisky Oct 25th 2008 1:10PM
That's how I see it playing out too, but we'll need to get actual numbers in a full raid group to see how it plays out.
I have a feeling having a shadow priest or some other form of mana regen might eventually equalize things out - but that's just speculation really. Numbers are still needed.
Giulls Oct 25th 2008 2:00PM
Having a Shadow Priest wouldn't increase our mana regeneration any, though, since Shadow Priests and Retribution Paladins share the same mana regeneration buff - Replenishment.
bumble Oct 25th 2008 2:05PM
With the increase in mana restoring buffs from other classes I don't consider this to be an issue for riads. At least not one which can't/won't be finetuned for in the future.
Debelak Oct 25th 2008 2:07PM
The mana issue is most definitely what I'm worried about. It's tough to balance because they don't want us to never have to worry about mana, but at the same time with our tiny mana pools if we do have to worry about mana we will run out very quickly.
gfh Oct 25th 2008 2:13PM
Am I the only one who is thinking 'Its about dam time!'
Ive been getting 2 shot by paladins since the beta was released, its absurd.
Mr.Duck Oct 25th 2008 2:29PM
oh well, i'm quite disappointed with these nerfs. I'm prot paladin as main spec, used to spec ret for some relax, however after patch, yes i can burst people a lot(not as much as mages but still:P), however these nerfs aren't really gonna change it too much imo. Seriously, my ret burst is pretty heavy even without seals, and if SoB hits for 500 or 400(which is probably what this patch does), it wont save the game.
I think this hurts holy solo and prot threat way more than ret burst. Devs said they like ret dps in pve, just wanna tone down ret burst, well this seems to me like nerf to sustained dps, holy dmg, prot dmg/threat, but definitely not ret nerf :/ Correct me if i'm wrong, but i fail to see points of such nerfs.
i'm not QQing about it, i don't think nerfing SoV threat by some 20% will make me lose aggro, 'cos in my roughly T5level gear (some prekara,badge,T5,T6) i can keep above sunwell geared dps even while offtanking (about 20% behind SWP tankadin and T6 tankadin with JoL), but these nerfs seem pretty weird to me :/
Ironside Oct 25th 2008 2:37PM
Paladins don't have a gap closer, snare, ms or kick. Our playstyle is based around hitting you with that stun and then exploding you, burst is our niche. Is that op? perhapes, but if you take the burst away and add no skills to compinsate we're lolret.
If paladins are once again lolret people simply won't play them anymore, I think the pally community has had more then enough and free lvl 50 deathknights are very appealing.
Aaronomus Oct 25th 2008 7:11PM
Every buff we've gotten in 3.0 is being removed one by one. Now we're back to relying on Sprititual Attunement for mana, meaning other healers have to give us special attention, thus reducing our desirability in raids.
To those of you who approve of these nerfs: everything here except the Art of War and Righteous Vengeance changes is a PvE nerf, and no one with half a brain ever thought our sustained DPS was OP, at least not at 80. Even GC himself said our PvE DPS is fine, then they turn around and slay us in a whirlwind of nerfs less than 2 weeks after 3.0, despite a "working as intended" at Blizzcon, after over 2 months of beta testing.
They claim they're being surgical. Nerfing every seal, killing our mana regen, AND completely reworking two other talents all in one build is NOT surgical.
They claim they're not nerfing people due to QQs. They hotfix our 51 pt talent 2 days after it goes live, without testing it on beta or PTR first, and after the tree had been extensively tested in beta for over 2 months and claiming the class was reasonably well balanced at 80.
In the process of Blizzard's zealous overnerfing of Ret, Holy has lost badly needed DPS for soloing and Prot has lost badly needed threat gen.
If these new changes go live, every Paladin will have been completely betrayed and lied to by Blizzard & Ghostcrawler. Thanks Blizz!
Heleth Oct 25th 2008 1:09PM
The Blessing of Might "buff" is there so Battle Shout doesn't overwrite it.
CursedSeishi Oct 25th 2008 1:13PM
pity buff :P
Heleth Oct 25th 2008 1:15PM
No, it was just stupid that a 2min buff was overwriting an equal 30min buff.
ver7 Oct 25th 2008 1:23PM
Yeah, that was annoying as hell during bg preparation when some warrior would just spam battle shout to overwrite my BoMight. I was considering putting a point into imp might just to stop that from happening.
Frobishlumpkin Oct 25th 2008 4:18PM
Imp migh doesnt seem to work anyway. Mine is still buffing 305 when the actionbar/spellbook tooltip says 381.
Andrew Welch Oct 25th 2008 7:05PM
Yeah that happens for everything