World of Warcraft PTR Patch 3.2.2 Paladin changes
by Zach Yonzon 
Aug 14th 2009 at 3:00PM
Righteous Fury: The bonus threat from Holy spells caused by this talent has been reduced from 90% to 80%.
First of all, Righteous Fury isn't a talent but a baseline ability, so the patch notes just might be worded weirdly (wouldn't be the first time). Second, the nerf is probably just to bring Paladin tanking threat more in line with other tanks' threat generation. With only a week or so in to Patch 3.2, I'm not certain it was too palpable, but the changes to block value and Judgements must've pushed Protection DPS and consequently TPS a little above the threshold.
Seal of Command: This ability now chains to strike up to 2 additional targets when it is triggered by an attack.
Whoo! An actual buff to Retribution! Who would've thought, right? It's a much needed one, considering how Seal of Command was simply inferior to Seal of Corruption / Vengeance for PvE, particularly with full stacks of the DoT component and Seals of the Pure. The only thing Seal of Command (aka The Seal Formerly Known As Seal Of Blood, or TSFKASB) had was the fact you could pick it up sooner... at the cost of a talent point. So yeah, that kind of sucked.
The change is a DPS boost in PvE and gives Paladins a competitive seal for multi-mob trash. Because Seal of Corruption / Vengeance takes six and a half years, thereabouts, to get going, it was a massive DPS dip for short fights and against groups. The buffed Seal of Command is now an excellent choice for trash pulls, AoE, or both. What this also means is that Retribution Paladins must always be mindful of having the right seal up. Rule of thumb? Long boss fights? Seal of DoT. Trash and lots of mobs? Seal of Command, otherwise now known as Seal of Cleave.
Judgements of the Just: The reduction in cooldown to Hammer of Justice provided by this talent has been reduced to 5/10 seconds instead of 10/20 seconds.
PvP nerf. Don't even think about the interrupt component lost - Protection already has plenty of that. It was just that some juggernaut unkillable Paladin stunning everything silly every 20 freaking seconds is just plain sick. Add to that the fact that Protection was sneakily becoming the PvP healing spec and you've got a problem on your hands.
Touched by the Light: This talent now provides 20/40/60% of the paladin's strength as spell power instead of 10/20/30% of the paladin's stamina.
Protection dominating in PvP isn't so much of a problem as the fact that Protection Paladins dressed in spell power plate (what a silly concept!) were out-healing Holy Paladins. That's just plain wrong. So hey, why not base it off Strength, instead? Tank gear has gobs of it, so it peters out to about the same value for a PvE tank. This was the solution that Ghostcrawler promised that needed to be implemented before Season 7 started.
Nothing much to cry about in this minor patch. Everything is essentially aimed at maintaining the status quo. We can cry just a little bit for the loss of stun-a-thons, but hey, let's throw a party for the sexier Seal of Command!
Filed under: Paladin, Patches, Analysis / Opinion
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Blackone Aug 14th 2009 3:08PM
That buff to Seal of Command is gunna be great.
nyctef Aug 14th 2009 3:20PM
I dunno about you guys, but our retadins have been buffed in 3.2, once they had a week or two to figure out the changes.
John Aug 14th 2009 4:41PM
"Don't even think about the interrupt component lost - Protection already has plenty of that." Like what exactly? That is our only interrupt and untalented the CD is even longer.
"So hey, why not base it off Strength, instead? Tank gear has gobs of it, so it peters out to about the same value for a PvE tank." No it doesn't. It's a SP loss.
Brownjohn Aug 14th 2009 3:35PM
"No it doesn't. It's a SP loss."
Yes, but its minor in the grand scheme of things. Our overall TPS will take around a 5% hit, which really isn't too bad.
Seal of Command has been buffed to work well for trash. I'm still not spending a point on it.
John Aug 14th 2009 3:41PM
Didn't mean to reply to the Seal of Command comment, meant to just reply to the post. I don't put points in Seal of Command.
PodPeople Aug 14th 2009 4:10PM
no Brown, it's a 15% cut in threat, since we lose 10% off of Righteous Fury. was pally tanks tps really THAT far above DKs, durids or warriors? i just have a feeling that after these changes there will be a flood of pally tanks on the forums crying that they just Can't hold aggro, no matter how hard they try.
so much for having some Fun in PvP as Prot spec, back to being an annoying flee that takes a while to kill after being ignored and getting to watching the rest of your team be smashed.
at least SoCom is getting a buff, since most ret pallies figured out that if you talent and glyph SoRighteous you get better DPS on trash than the "new and improved" SoCom. it'll be interesting to see which one is better with these changes. i just get the feeling that no, it won't, because SoCom is just destined to be broken and useless.
Heilig Aug 14th 2009 4:19PM
"SoCom is just destined to be broken and useless."
The new SoComm will hit a total of 12 enemies per Divine Storm, 3 per Crusader Strike, 3 per white hit, etc. Its damage on trash pulls and in big melee scuffles in PvP was just TRIPLED, and you say it's broken and useless? I will be taking this seal as prot or trash pulls. With my glyphed HotR i will proc a seal hit on 16 enemies every 6 seconds. I call that a pretty massive buff.
Smithson Aug 14th 2009 4:22PM
As a Protection Paladin, my first thought on the change to Touched by the Light was, "Aw man, I never go for Strength over Stamina - my spellpower is gonna get slammed!"
But, as it turns out, with my current gear I have 1293 Stamina and 682 Strength.
So, I currently get 30% of 1293, which is +387 Spellpower.
I will soon get 60% of 682, which is _409 Spellpower.
So if you have at least half as much strength as you have stamina, this is actually not a reduction in spellpower at all, and may even be an increase!
Shrike Aug 14th 2009 5:26PM
@John: It's an SP loss if you've been taking advantage of the oversight and double-dipping one stat for threat and survivability. Paladins only had to think about one stat, Stamina, which gave them both threat AND survivability. Every other tank had to balance threat stats against survivability. Welcome back down to the "thinking about your gear" club with the rest of us, and regem/rechant your gear accordingly.
Dave Aug 14th 2009 5:49PM
Nuts to that. With Ulduar bosses hitting for up to 60% of your health at times, the only stats pretty much ANY tank should be thinking about are the ones that keep them alive. If your threat takes a hit, let the DPS pay attention to Omen for once since 3.0. God forbid a hunter actually feigns death ONCE in Wrath.
Every patch I get progressively more miffed about Blizzard trying to balance talents for both PvE and PvP, invariably it just means nerfs to my specs for a part of the game I don't even do. Thanks for making the interminable CD on Hammer of Justice even longer again.
Tankadin Aug 14th 2009 3:17PM
This just means that we're one step further away from getting rid of spell power on plate. GG pvpers.
Kvothe Aug 14th 2009 3:24PM
I don't see why you say this at all. What it's doing is making spell power plate WORSE for Prot Pallies, thus making it LESS prominent.
Hasjarl Aug 14th 2009 3:27PM
I've heard all this talk of just outright removing spellpower from plate. Are you trying to say holy pallies should just wear mail spellpower gear, or what?
BitterCupOJoe Aug 14th 2009 3:52PM
@Hasjarl
No, the idea is that holy paladins will use DPS (or possibly tanking) plate instead of spellpower. Ideally, the paladins would get a new resource instead of mana, and all their spells would scale directly off of AP, with the various trees giving heavy multipliers deep in the trees for each type of paladin (extra AP for ret's damage abilities, extra healing for holy, etc.). It would allow the devs to get rid of the last type of single-spec gear. which would decrease the chance of sharding gear. As a bonus for paladins, it would make them somewhat more flexible; instead of hauling around 3 bags of gear, they could trim it down to two with a few pieces to swap in or out for things like hit or armor penetration.
Tankadin Aug 14th 2009 3:54PM
"I've heard all this talk of just outright removing spellpower from plate. Are you trying to say holy pallies should just wear mail spellpower gear, or what?"
No, I didn't say you should wear mail spell power. They could scale spell power off another stat like they did for prot with stam and str. If they take spell power off plate (which they should), spell power will obviously be gained somewhere else. Don't be myopic.
"I don't see why you say this at all. What it's doing is making spell power plate WORSE for Prot Pallies, thus making it LESS prominent."
For the minority of PvP pallys that are cheating by speccing prot and wearing spell power to heal, this is a sub-standard "fix" that also affects PvE tanks. If they made spell power scale off of str for holy pallys deep in the holy tree we wouldn't be having this conversation as there wouldn't need to be a set of plate that only one spec can use and prot PvE wouldn't be getting nerfed.
ylebox Sep 1st 2009 10:22AM
@Tankadin
"For the minority of PvP pallys that are cheating by speccing prot and wearing spell power to heal..."
I'm not sure if you should jump to the term "cheating." It may seem unfair as far as game mechanics go, but so does not having PvP gear for your favored spec at all. Prot pallies can't capitalize on PvP gear in the same way Ret or Holy paladins can. They have to choose one or the other type of gear so some who enjoy PvPing as Prot were pushed to use SP gear or fall by the wayside, while others leaped at the chance to climb arena ladders any way possible. So "cheating" may be a bit strong.
"If they made spell power scale off of str for holy pallys deep in the holy tree we wouldn't be having this conversation as there wouldn't need to be a set of plate that only one spec can use and prot PvE wouldn't be getting nerfed."
I have a feeling that if they Holy Pallies started stacking Str instead of SP you might just QQ about when one whacks you in melee as well, eh?
revan Aug 14th 2009 3:17PM
well, finally a buff to all the Retadins out there!
Para Aug 16th 2009 8:00PM
Sorry but i dont ever see this idea of using other stats for holy paladins EVER working or even happening. They would need to go back and change the whole talent tree in some way to not only give SP but also INT and trying to balance that off dps gear would make the problem worse sooner or later.
One more thing i keep seeing people talk about "give paladins a new resource system instead of mana" HELL NO. That is just the single most craptastic idea ive heard in a long LONG time, hell im even hearing lots of hunters talking about the same damn thing.
IF YOU DONT LIKE MANA PLAY ANOTHER CLASS, if i wanted to be a mele class that uses a 2H and didnt use mana as a resource warriors and dks are -> way.
Many people including me like the way mana works and always have, it does its job fine dont try to fix what isnt broken.
RIchard Nissen Sep 22nd 2009 4:23PM
@Para
Uuuh you are aware that Blizzard actually said they're gonna give hunters a new system called Focus... right?
Aedilhild Aug 14th 2009 3:27PM
I see it less a buff than a feature unique to Seal of Command — between 3.1 and 3.2, PvE Retribution had little reason to use Vengeance, let alone Command or Righteousness.
One seal for single-target trash pulls and some motile boss encounters, another for groups and possibly differing boss-encounter circumstances, and a third for straightforward boss encounters? With some latitude between each? Yes, please. Seal activation is now a real tactical consideration, rather than a chore.