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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsPaladins 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 3 of 7)
Clbull Oct 25th 2008 1:25PM
Most other seals were reduced by around 13% to 21%
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Does that mean that Seal of Righteousness is even crappier than before?
Imho, this was INEVITABLE. My guess is that Paladins will now be craptacular dps in WotLK
Soulink Oct 25th 2008 1:28PM
It was coming. Watching a decent geared warlock get Rofl stomped to half health with one Divine Storm was absolutely over the bridge. You got a class that can become completely immune to everything, immune to physical attacks, heal to full with a 1hr cooldown, AND add to that some of the most effective and mana efficient heals in the game (read: not HoTs) and for them to be punching out high end DPS over other classes is just overboard.
It was coming sooner or later, best it be now before they get nerfed further. After this they need left alone because they're finally getting closer to the balance they need between PvE and PvP.
And yes, this IS coming from an endgame Paladin on Crushridge. There is such a thing as too powerful.
...*goes back to working on Rogue* :D
Dave Oct 25th 2008 1:31PM
You should make the change to JoTW stick out more. Thats the only change that matters.
Nerfing JoTW like that means that we won't even have the mana to cast all our nerfed abilities.
BigFire Oct 25th 2008 1:32PM
In their attempt at quelling the anti-Ret QQers, Blizzard also nerfed Holy and Protection paladin DPS (already the lowest of their respective roles). The way Blizzard DEV is going, there won't be any paladin of any spec left.
Manatank Oct 25th 2008 2:10PM
I'm almost done leveling my warrior to replace my paladin as my tank toon. He is so fun to play, but I'm still kind of sad about it. It makes zero sense to me that a warrior would ever be able to complete with what is essentially a warrior that also has magical powers. In Warcraft 2, when you wanted to make your normal warrior knights powerful, you upgraded them to Paladins...
In BC prot paladins had their strengths in comparison to a warrior, but they certainly had there weaknesses too. Now that warriors are so strong at AoE, and caster control, and panic buttons, and moving about the field of combat easily, there is just nothing about my prot paladin that feels strong anymore. I'm not saying that prot paladins can't tank. I feel like if I stuck to prot I'd be "good enough" for any encounter, but a warrior just has so many more options.
The only cool thing we have in LK is seal of vengeance/corruption having a 100% chance to apply, and being able to roll a 5 stack on three targets with hammer of the righteous. If they keep nerfing the seals then it really isn't going to matter much. We need a 11 point talent to make up for this.
Rin404 Oct 25th 2008 1:33PM
I find the nerf to Judgements of the Wise to be a little too much. I mean, yeah, by all means lower our burst damage so we don't instapwn EVERYTHING before our Hammer of Justice wears off, but for god's sake let us keep one of, if not the only, way of us not going oom ten seconds into a match...
Matchu Oct 25th 2008 1:33PM
Everyone knew it was going to happen. I'll probably stick with Prot until 70/80 still.
Bloodletter Oct 25th 2008 1:41PM
The author doesn't have a damn clue about Paladins, I'm sorry.
These are MAJOR, MAJOR, MAJOR-mo Nerfs, dude.
Look guys, I can take the physical damage DS nerf, I can take the Avenging Wrath Nerf, I can take large beatings and damage reduction to seals, and finally, I can just about bear the HoW nerf...
But leave JoTW the FUCK ALONE. Our raid viability has been destroyed, thanks to this coupled with other mana regen and damage nerfs. Check out the patch notes... it's horrible.
Retribution Paladins are simply disgusting, broken and crushed. I really can't begin to imagine what Blizzard were thinking when they did this. (Or rather, what they weren't)
Thank you, end of rant.
Cow Oct 25th 2008 1:46PM
ITS THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT
Ayewyn Oct 25th 2008 1:49PM
They were thinking, "Man, we really need some talented players to switch over to Death Knights so our new class and biggest selling point of Wrath doesn't look like a complete joke when people who have no idea how to play a melee caster try it. I know, let's Nerf Ret back down to being a joke so they won't get groups again, then they will roll up DKs and everything will be fine."
That's what they were thinking, and it's going to work.
SgtBaker Oct 25th 2008 1:49PM
(of Warcraft)
Balius Oct 25th 2008 5:36PM
@Ayewyn: When I think talented players, people who chose to be Retadins aren't the ones that come to mind. On my server, they're right up there with NElf and BElf hunters for having a reputation for incompetence and bringing nothing to a group.
When all the sudden those same players whose specific reputations for incompetence were known serverwide were rolling over people in PVP and content in PVE, when they're doubling the DPS of any other class and outhealing healers, that indicates a problem.
I'm not saying all retadins can't play, I'm just saying that many can't and even those that couldn't were crushing other players in PVP without a care in the world. In one WSG, three retadins parked in the Alliance graveyard and kept alliance out of the game the whole time. Those that made it out of the immediate area were rezzing at their bodies rather than face the storm up there. THAT should be a pretty clear sign that the nerf was justified.
If the nerf is too much, they'll change it again. Believe it or not, the people at Blizzard aren't cackling to themselves and giving each other high-fives when a class becomes too weak to be useful. They don't hate ret pallies, or any other class, they just had to react to MASSIVE imbalance issues that rets were part of, and they had to do it too fast to get proper test realm testing. I'll say it again; IF this nerf goes too far, they WILL back off and buff as necessary.
Kanuris Oct 25th 2008 11:40PM
@Balius
Most Retribution Paladins are looking at this nerf and are thinking one thing only: They went too far.
They crippled the burst damage output and destroyed Raid Viability by making us go OOM. Melee dpsers do no go OOM. We go on forever, and were punished for that by having to avoid Cleaves all the time.
Blizzard nerfed these two aspects, hampered Prot Threat and Holy Solo dps at the same time, and didn't help the class in any way by sorting out some major issues, such as having:
No Interupt.
No -Healing Debuff.
No way of gaining ground aside from Pursuit of Justice and Judgement of Justice, coupled with the still Nerfed-from-season-1-Hand of Freedom.
The class has returned to it's status as it was when The Burning Crusade Released, a short fleeting moment of awesome, and then thrashed to death.
If Blizzard wanted all the decent Ret Pallys to reroll Death Knights, then they should make these changes go live and leave them, because we won't want to play it in this state.
RetDwarf Oct 25th 2008 1:43PM
I'm sure someone thought these were necessary... and eventually I'd love to see the run-down on the actual changes as far as the change to DPS is concerned.
But man does this hurt.
For once, I, like many other faithful ret-players, were excited by the changes in "Echoes of Doom", only to be shattered and crestfallen at the announcement of these nerfs.
Yes, we did need it.
Yes, we were too strong.
We do not need to be brutalized with all manner of nerf-armaments. Sublte tweaks and changes I can take, even large changes like Righteous vengance and some of the +crit loss. But I stand by my original statement by saying this is too far.
I'm not going to QQ, nor am I going to quit the game over this, but I may lose interest in playing my paladin main in favor of something that hasn't had this much "attention" in an effort to still have fun.
All in all, it was nice while it lasted, but its good to know that GC was nigh-prophetic in his "to the ground" joke.
/sad
I am curious though, if these numbers were so God-awfully OP, why did it even make it to live? Who dropped the ball on that?
It would seem to me that whoever thought these changes were good enough to go live had tested them at least to a point of semi-stability in balance with other players at level 80.
I also think that it should be a bad idea for your leather-wearing dagger-wielding rogue to stand toe-to-toe with my hammer-swinging Knight-of-plates.
You should get smashed. That's why you were given tools to stun me or attack me from a more sneaky/stealthy approach.
Likewise with other classes, there are trade-offs to the strengths and weaknesses of the class.
Things changed, and instead of realizing that paladins (ret specifically) were now behaving as they had been visualized, albeit a little high; everyone complained rather than make an attempt at adapting.
I have admitted that the numbers were too high, but now I state that the nerfs were far too high.
Revert it to 3.0.2 levels and let's re-examine how to scale it properly, not just an across-the-board spankfest.
What about scaling it to get back to these levels at 80, with my GD-Divine Storm and Crusader-strike still doing holy damage for PvE at least? I could care less about PvP.
These changes make ret-spec back into the Lolret joke it was post 2.0, which was eventually rescinded to increase the effectiveness of the class, only to be dropped back down.
/bah!
muffin_of_chaos Oct 25th 2008 2:31PM
And if the changes are too severe, ret pallies will be buffed, probably too much again, now that it's clear that Blizzard cares.
Of course, a lot of changes will seem too severe even when they weren't, for everyone who became used to wtfpwning absolutely everything on the battlefield. I was enjoying it myself, but in a guilty way. I'll probably be disappointed at the severity of some of the seal nerfs, and maybe they'll change 'em back.
JotW, now...that was just ridiculous in conception. 750 mana every 8 seconds, ad infinitum, on top of normal mana regen, Seal/Judgement of Wisdom and Spiritual Attunement...
Yeah. I don't understand how that happened. That nerf was well deserved.
RetDwarf Oct 25th 2008 3:07PM
@Muffin:
I am glad that you have been wtfpwning people on teh BG's, really I am. I'm glad that you honestly feel that these changes were necessary.
I agree to a point.
I also agree that we were OP, although I was a little power-drunk when it first happened. I don't really PvP though and I saw the change as bringing some much-needed damage to my under-geared guild and my solo play.
So Blizz made a mistake by upping the numbers... wait, they were already in place, the system just finally allowed us to take advantage of them.
I can see if I were a resillience-capped whatever getting facerolled by a "n00b in teh greenz" getting extremely upset. But I heard a rumor lately that said that the resillience system was bugged as well, does anyone have any info on this to confirm or deny?
If the resillience system was bugged, it would make sense that everyone's s3/s4 toon getting smashed would happen. That's what the stat was for, anti-crit. but with nothing to mitigate the crit, wtfpwning is sure to ensue.
JoTW, that made me scratch my head, but I did run out of mana on occaision in 5-man groups. I had to take up the healing after our healer went down due to a poorly timed AoE. I ran out of mana pretty quick actually, as I only had about 5k to start with. I honestly agree that the amount given back by the "insta-judge mana regen" was too high and the change, although scary on paper, might not be so bad.
The seals? ouch, that hurts everyone (all specs). I find it upsetting as I leveled off and on as holy/shockadin in order to take advantage of all of my abilities, but was still regulated to healbot. The only DPS I could do solo was maintained by my old seals, with all of the changes to the system, I don't know how that will effect everything.
Its too late for all of us to blame anyone for anything although the constant "Ha Ha you suck retn00b" that happens in the forums and from a couple of the comments around here does suck.
Yes, it was too high. I enjoyed it, it was nice to not have to drink after every kill. But when I'm running around Netherstorm killing 68-70 mobs 3 or 4 at a time with 75%+ of both health and mana at the end of the fight, it's too much.
BUT. the extent of the nerfs seems too extreme, and I feel that this is a reaction to too many people not being able to handle the change. Some of the ret players have spent countless hours trying to min/max their effectiveness only to be overshadowed by the "ret-tard" who was able to epic himself or herself out by staying just north of AFK in a BG.
When the buffs came, those of us who know what we're doing became extremely effective, if not nigh-godlike in out spanking ability. And it also became obvious that we were too well-off. So yes, the nerfs were bound to happen and it was OP, but I just don't want to see the whole class nerfed "to the ground".
Maybe I will check out DK after all.
Eternauta Oct 25th 2008 1:43PM
WARNING: Wall of QQ and unleashed anger and harsh language...
This is not fair.
I'm gonna delete my paladin right now.
The WoW community sucks, everybody hates paladins without a valid reason.
When we're buffed, they QQ.
Specially rogues, they don't want retridins to "steal their niche", neither do prot warriors and the other healing classes. You're hybrids, pallies: ergo, you can fill every role, but you must also suck at every role so 'pure' classes can shine.
A paladin must suck in order to keep the other classes appealing for people to play them, maybe because the concept of a Holy Warrior is too appealing to play anything else... (specially those Aragorn wannabes out there). Besides, the word "Paladin" sounds just awesome. We must compensate for this popularity by sucking as much as we can.
I agree that Retadins were OP, but these nerfs are excessive... It's like coming back to the Burning Crusade when we were "lolret u can't dps stfu and heal"
I know that "the pendulum of buffs and nerfs is constantly moving" but the Paladin class has seen only negative treatment from the Blizz devs since release. There's no reason to believe this is gonna change.
If I am wrong, don't hesitate to correct me, but I firmly believe these nerfs are very unfair.
Thank you for reading.
muffin_of_chaos Oct 25th 2008 3:09PM
You're wrong that they hate Paladins, considering how much they've buffed and streamlined Paladins since beta started. Trying to rebalance a broken class is their job. It's not like they're trying to do favors for anyone.
ver7 Oct 25th 2008 1:44PM
Some of the nerfs are just a knee-jerk reaction to all the crying about ret. Ret is undoubtedly op right now, no one's denying that. But to nerf the entire class because one tree is tuned too high is just not thinking sensibly. It seems like they're overnerfing to stop people from bitching until they can figure out how to tune the class properly.
Tumleren Oct 25th 2008 1:45PM
2nd post in thread:
And to the posters above. This is the beta. This is not going love yet, so don't poke your eyes out because we've been nerfed now. It was a nerf, they'll see how it plays out, and balance it accordingly. Relax