A lot of hints and news on the upcoming
patch 3.0.4 have been dropped on the forums recently, so like other WoW Insider writers have mentioned on and off, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw it on the PTR in the coming weeks. Before we get ahead of ourselves too much though, there was a lot of neat Paladin stuff
announced by Ghostcrawler yesterday. A lot of it is simple stuff we've sort of expected would happen, but there's still some interesting new stuff in there.
- Divine Shield: Penalty changed so that all damage done is reduced by 50% instead of an attack speed penalty.
Interesting change, and admittedly a needed one. I think
Retribution Paladins being able to go immune and use the entire range of their special abilities at full damage was a bigger problem recently than their actual damage. Yes, even with the cooldown on Divine Shield. Their damage was way, way overpowered
before, but it's more in line now and I would rather see this change than another hit to their overall DPS.
- Sacred Duty: This talent no longer affects the attack penalty of Divine Shield and Divine Protection, but grants additional Stamina.
Again, good. While this means that Protection Paladins still suffer the the -50% damage 'debuff' or Divine Shield, that really shouldn't matter at all. Divine Protection is our bread and butter in groups, and it hardly makes a difference soloing.
This is good! This is what I believe was the plan originally, but they
couldn't hotfix this large of a change, if I understand correctly. I wish they had pushed this change a bit earlier, but we'll live. My only concern is that Hand of Protection is on the same shared cooldown. I suppose it makes sense from a PvP perspective, I can understand why you'd want things that way in Battlegrounds or the Arena, but it seems... off in PvE. You get the option of defending yourself or defending your groupmates. Funky.
Ouch, nerfbat. I suppose I can understand it, they actually want mana users to worry about their mana in
Wrath of the Lich King, and Judgement of Wisdom contributed to DPS classes still not caring. Only Healers felt the strain. Also, the way it is right now benefits high mana classes like
Mages moreso than low mana classes, like the very Retribution Paladins putting up this Judgement. This normalizes it a lot. It also has a negative impact on Holy Paladin soloing, but... hey, Dual Specs on the horizon. Just go Ret!
- All mana drain effects now drain a percentage of max enemy mana.
This is intended to help classes with smaller mana pools, like Retribution Paladins. This is good. Sapping half of a Paladin's manapool in one cast is stupid, stupid, stupid. I don't even PvP, and I know it was stupid.
I'm going to assume this is in addition to its previous effect, because it's an extremely silly change otherwise. Assuming common sense is correct, this is a nice boost for Holy Paladin soloing, running counter to the change to Judgement of Wisdom, but... hey, no big deal. If you solo as a Healer, more damage is always a good thing. You might have to drink a little more after this patch, but at least you'll do more DPS, too.
- All Paladins receive a single-target taunt as a base ability.
Yes.
Yes! Why did this take so long to happen!? Freaking
Death Knights got one before Protection Paladins did. But who cares, we finally have it. No more silly games with our taunts, no more dealing with Righteous Defense cocking itself up when your mob decides to change targets last second, none of that crap. I can just... push Taunt, and Taunt my mob.
Thank you. And we actually have
two taunts now, just like everyone else! We're not the murlocs of the Taunt world anymore. Ladies and gentlemen,
head on over to Dalaran and
buy yourselves a cake. It's on me.*
*It's not on me.
Update: Ghostcrawler
has elaborated on some of these things since this post was written. Go check it out!
Tags: avenging-wrath, cake, divine-protection, divine-shield, dps, ghostcrawler, hand-of-protection, holy, hotfix, judgement-of-wisdom, judgements-of-the-pure, paladin, patch-3.0.4, patch-3.0.8, protection, retribution, sacred-duty, seal-of-wisdom, taunt
Filed under: Paladin, Patches, Analysis / Opinion
Nov 25th 2008 at 6:00PM 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 6)
Shumina Nov 25th 2008 2:31PM
Judgement of Wisdom..."It also has a negative impact on Holy Paladin soloing, but... hey, Dual Specs on the horizon. Just go Ret!"
And you call yourself a paladin. You sound like anything but.
Shumina Nov 25th 2008 2:37PM
You know what? This does it. I've wondered about you and your ability to balance siding with the devs with siding with the class you're charged with blogging on here. I think that statement, along with the many decisions to pour praise on their nerfs in the past, finally disqualifies you to speak for/at us about the paladin class.
I'm done reading you.
Alex Ziebart Nov 25th 2008 3:23PM
My first main was a Holy Priest, waayyy back in the day. All sympathy for a Healer's inability to solo was drained from my soul years ago. ;) My Paladin respecs Ret, my Shaman respecs Elemental, my Priest solos Shadow.
Schadow Nov 25th 2008 6:46PM
Figured you were just another lolret. How else could you look at yet another JoW nerf and shrug?
As a prot pally, I often find myself starved for mana. Pretty much any time when there aren't multiple things for me to dodge/parry/block, I am blowing through mana and having issues. This includes mobs like casters and single bosses.
Worst of all are the fights that require two tanks, where a paladin finds himself charged with maintaining second aggro. In that position we are not being targeted (no dodge/parry/block mana from Sanctuary), and we are not taking much damage (the odd hateful strike and typical melee splash damage). Without mana it is extremely difficult to keep up with DPS classes for threat.
Now another nerf comes along that directly targets those cases, making them even worse for Paladins to tank, and you're OK with it.
You're looking at the issue only from the ret perspective, which as far as I am concerned is the least important aspect of a paladin.
Holy has long been the mainstay of Paladins. As of BC, Prot appeared as a viable alternative. Why now should all of those paladins be happy with changes made for the Flavour-of-the-month crowd who rolled retrinoobtion toons when ret was OP?
The other fundamental thing you missed is that it is NOT ok for Wrath and Divine Shield to share the same cooldown, because no tank in his right mind is going to use Wrath if it takes away his ohcrap button.
And to Blizzard: How freaking hard is it to grant us a deep prot and/or deep holy talent that buffs mana regen from seals and judgments and takes Wrath off the Divine Shield cooldown? It's only mechanics abuse from the ret clowns that took this away from us in the first place, so how about just nerfing their skills and leaving ours alone?
Alex Ziebart Nov 25th 2008 6:48PM
@Schadow
It will have no impact on Prot. Prot doesn't (or shouldn't) wear Intellect gear, so your max mana will be your base mana. It doesn't nerf you. Your mana gains remain the same.
Duck Knight Nov 25th 2008 6:49PM
Seems Zach would have been the better choice to write this article, since he is the primary Paladin writer around here and never would have shrugged off such a massive nerf to Paladin mana recovery.
Not like I have anything against Alex though.
Christos` Nov 25th 2008 7:38PM
Wow...something that doesn't nerf ret to the ground and you go after the author. Typical.
Look at your own playing weaknesses before blasting the messinger.
Naix Nov 25th 2008 9:27PM
To the ground.....
Jamien Nov 26th 2008 2:13AM
As a Prot Paladin (levelled from 70-80 as prot with about 5 hours inbetween as ret before respeccing very fast) I like the new changes.
That said, when tanking I'm MT. When soloing Divine Plea/Arcane Torrent is enough to use between mobs, and if I'm really low I just grab about 3-10 mobs, put on seal of light, sit there with Holy Shield up while spamming hammer of the righteous then swap seals to wisdom and finish them off when I'm at full or near full mana.
Frobishlumpkin Nov 25th 2008 11:12PM
I understand the discontent with shrugging off the nerf but, honestly, if you wont go ret come dual specs for soloing,
......
You're just #$@%ing retarded.
Kidsmoke Nov 26th 2008 3:40AM
You guys are retarded.
All Paladin specs are doing very well right now.
The last thing on the list was the single target taunt. Trying to do 4 Horsemen with 2 Paladin tanks was a complete nightmare. Had to have one tank taunt off me, then have a DK taunt off the MT, then I would have to taunt off of the DK. It was stupid.
I've been raiding all week (server first Sath and about to get server first KT kill Wednesday or by Sunday at the lastest, damn Holidays) and our Holy Paladins are DESTORYING the meters. It's just insane. They are invaluable on Loetheb. So Holy really has no worries. Waaaaaah we don't have a hot, waaaaaah. It's bologna. Holy is fantastic. If any healers need help its Shamans. They just can't keep up with how fast our heals are.
Retribution isn't just dominating Overall damage for the night, but performing very very well at single target boss encounters as well. I'm routinely getting 2400 deeps in blues and 70 epics with the BS mace and constantly placing top 4 on boss encounters and usually top 2 (along with another ret pally) in overall damage done for the night. And yes, hunters are still currently ridiculously OP atm. Volley is incredible for trash DPS, and their single target deeps is incredible even in pretty average gear.
I've also been running heroics as Protection to build my off-set and get badges while picking up some ret gear here and there, and it is amazing. If your having mana issues on single target boss encounters then I would suggest taking consecrate out of your rotation. There is enough threat from Shield of Righteousness, Holy Shield, and Hammer of the Righteous to keep crazy threat on mobs. I've tanked all of ten man Naxx with the exception of Saph and KT and haven't had DPS pull threat off of me yet.
As for solo-ing Protection has it the worst for the simple fact that the eat alot of mana with very little ability to return it, but with SoR, HS, and Judgements solo-ing is pretty easy for Holy despite the outcrys of our seals do no damage!!!! Now you get some buffs for that as well.
But when duel specs come out I seriously do not want to hear anymore soloing QQ statements from the community. Just spec ret and rip face to quest then go back to Holy or Prot.
Vendrill Nov 26th 2008 3:50AM
Pallies are still ridiculously overpowered. They could use a few more nerfs.
No offense meant. I have a pally myself.
Gareth Nov 26th 2008 9:17AM
To "Schadow", regarding the problem with mana regen as offtank its the same deal for warriors since we generate no rage while offtanking (even worse we cannot compensate for this with gear either really while a paladin could swap in some mp5 for a slight increase). Solution here has to be the DPS switching off auto
pilot and getting involved with the fight.
The changes so far look good to me, to be honest every class right now feels overpowered, an across the board swipe of the nerf
bat could put a bit more challenge back into WotLK.
Noirwolf Nov 26th 2008 10:09AM
"The other fundamental thing you missed is that it is NOT ok for Wrath and Divine Shield to share the same cooldown, because no tank in his right mind is going to use Wrath if it takes away his ohcrap button."
100% agreement
Argent Nov 25th 2008 3:39PM
yet another series of changes designed to make holy that much less playable.
hooray.
emptyrepublic Nov 25th 2008 2:40PM
I still think Divine Protection or Hand of Protection needs to be off the 30-sec cooldown they are implementing. I would personally favor Divine Protection since it still allows damage through and doesn't makes players immune to anything like Divine Shield (e.g. a PvP ret pally can still be CCed through Divine Protection).
I saw the JoW nerf coming, though I think its too severe I guess we can live with it now that we have Divine Plea.
Other changes sound reasonable and a baseline single target taunt is greatly welcome.
rinks Nov 25th 2008 2:40PM
So because ret was OP we now have to nerf Holy Paladins? What a bunch of BS.
crsh Nov 25th 2008 10:08PM
Are you new to WoW? That's how Blizzard rolls; cave in when whiners hit the forums, nerf something to keep the masses happy, and inadvertently scrap something unrelated when trying to fix the issue.
Shadow priests (among other classes/specs) know something about this, they got indirectly nerfed several times due to warlocks being perceived as OP for example. It's just one example among a dozen others.
Don't even get me started on nerfing PvE-centric abilities and talents to keep PvP "fair" and "balanced".
Manatank Nov 25th 2008 2:43PM
As a prot paladin I'm very happy about all of these changes.
I do wonder what this means though: "but grants additional Stamina."
I'm hoping this bumps us back to at least our 16% stam scaling that was nerfed down to 12% in 3.0.
Jason Nov 25th 2008 2:45PM
I guess I'd better get crackin' on leveling to 80 due to the upcoming BoW change, since I am specced Holy atm and leveling just fine solo with next to zero downtime.
They haven't said when or how they're going to implement dual-specs, but I should be thankful they're in the pipeline, eh Alex? I guess I'll shelve my Paladin until then because I really don't feel like wasting gold on re-specs whenever I need to run an instance or raid as opposed to doing dailys.
Sorry if this comes off as a QQ, I just find Alex's flippant attitude towards Holy Paladins annoying.