A recent
hotfix has reduced the health on tanking paladins. Meanwhile, devastate is being hotfixed as well to do 20% more total damage rather than 20% more weapon damage (from 100% to 120% total weapon damage presently). There are also some scattered reports that
DK tanks have gotten buffs to their Frost Presence as well, but no confirmation from Blizzard on that yet. Ghostcrawler posted that the change to Paladin health was intentional and that an announcement will be soon, and in the warrior thread said that they can't confirm when the hotfix for
devastate will drop.
The culprit for the paladin health reduction seems to be the paladin talent
Sacred Duty, although this has, at this time, not been confirmed by Blizzard so far as I can find. As soon as there's an announcement we at WoW.com will of course bring it to you.
Edited to include
this link to the official forum post explaining the change. Thanks to
ummeiko for the fast catch.
Tags: breaking, Death-Knight, Ghostcrawler, Hotfixes, paladin, Tanking, Tanks, Warrior
Filed under: Paladin, Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, News items, Death Knight
Feb 5th 2010 at 12:08AM 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
thafeara Feb 5th 2010 12:11AM
what did pally tanks do to deserve a stam nerf?
Masarah Feb 5th 2010 12:14AM
I'm wondering that myself, we weren't excessively higher than other tanks of equal gearing that I noticed.
ToyChristopher Feb 5th 2010 12:15AM
They rolled a paladin.
A lot of paladin tanks say this nerf was needed but I don't understand why paladins are hotfixed so often.
Updawg Feb 5th 2010 12:38AM
I saw a couple paladins walking around with 48k unbuffed, and they weren't straight gemmed for stam either. That's almost at the 60k raid buffed range, that's pretty ridiculous for a class that can block/dodge/parry.
(I don't have a paladin so I can be wrong)
Angus Feb 5th 2010 12:59AM
In that same gear I am thinking a warrior wouldn't be that far off.
And people need to stop acting like a block for 2.5K is something incredible. Seriously. It's not like the savage defense doesn't do similar, and DKs have more stam and armor on par with us.
We scale better with stam. I don't recall there being a warrior nerf when they outdid us on health, they added the scaling to get us close. Now that we are pulling ahead, they nerf all of us, not just the people at the top. Thanks.
Aedilhild Feb 5th 2010 1:05AM
STRAIGHT MAN: Have you ever healed a paladin tank?
FUNNY MAN: No. They don't need it.
(laughter)
Heilig Feb 5th 2010 1:42AM
"what did pally tanks do to deserve a stam nerf?"
They were misunderstood by Blizzard, again.
Paladins are being used on tough progression bosses, and idiot tanks on the forums are blaming it on health scaling, and Blizzard listened.
Hey Blizzard: IT'S NOT OUR HEALTH THAT'S THE ISSUE. IT'S OUR FREE GUARDIAN SPIRIT WHEN THE HEALERS HAVE TO RUN AROUND SO MUCH.
This change is going to make exactly zero difference in the issue they're attempting to address, that of non-paladin tanks not being brought to progression kills.
Marky Feb 5th 2010 2:52AM
It's another trickle-down nerf aimed at a handful of paladins representing the exception and not the rule that'll end up doing more damage to levelling/recently 80 paladins than it will to the target group.
Pretty much like the Titan's Grip nerf aimed at powergaming fury warriors that killed any interest I had in playing my warrior with her suddenly abysmal dps.
Avan Feb 5th 2010 4:23AM
@Heilig:
Please don't give Blizzard ideas. They'll be swinging the nerf bat around and end up taking away the single coolest healing talent that holy priests have.
Sterb Feb 5th 2010 9:28AM
Having your stam scaling knocked down to 4% better than warriors (instead of 8%, which is more than double) and the same as non-Blood DKs doesn't make sense?
You guys really did get spoiled by having the best stamina scaling for so long.
gatorfan Feb 5th 2010 10:51AM
Comments comparing Warrior stam to Pally's like the one above is just plain ignorant. Take the ever present difference of the Ranged slot for a warrior vs the Libram slot for the pally. You do realize that a prot warrior stuffs that ranged slot with an item that adds +1K more health that a pally tank CAN NEVER HAVE!?!?! Please give me a break on the comparisons and the stealth nerfing is really pissing me off.
Deadly. Off. Topic. Feb 5th 2010 11:37AM
Nerfs like that just annoy me. First they buff health so paladins can have comparably and close amount of health to compete with warriors' health and then they nerf it.
Give with one hand and take back with the other.
Sterb Feb 5th 2010 1:49PM
I'm the ignorant one? Instead of a talented mathematical advantage that SCALES with ALL OF YOUR GEAR'S STAM, warriors get a slot, the stats allocation of which are entirely out of their control. Then that slot can be used for something to further improve paladins.
And what of DKs if you're going to get into that game? Until these hotfixes, they both lacked that extra slot and the proper stam scaling to even have a shot.
If you're seriously suggesting that an equipment slot is a good trade for 8% stamina scaling (over double the amount) and a slot for a specialty item (Libram), then you're out of touch.
Sterb Feb 5th 2010 5:19PM
Just because I was bored: The two best tanking ranged weapons in game yield 77 stamina (the BoE trash epic) or 101 stamina (65 + 30 gem + 6 socket bonus) from the heroic Dreamwalker 10 encounter.
To find the magic stamina number that yields better results, I came up with this formula (where S is stamina):
S * 0.04 = 101 (I'll pretend all warrior tanks will get this weapon rather unrealistically)
S = 2525
That amount of stam is trivial to achieve with ToC gear (maybe even Ulduar gear)
Let's use the more realistic 77 from the BoE. S = 1925 Ouch. That might even be achievable by a Naxx tank. For fun, let's look at what it used to take.
101: S = 1262.5
77: S = 962.5
Wanna tell me again how that slot makes up for the scaling?
Sin Feb 5th 2010 6:59PM
@Sterb
You might want to recalculate that while taking into consideration the Warrior talent Vitality that gives you 6% stamina. We did have a 2% advantage but you had that weapons slot.
So now, if a warrior and a pally are each wearing the same plate armor and have 3000 stamina each, and you add your 77 stamina ranged slot. Then apply the increase from stamina boosting talents:
Pally has 3000 * 1.04 = 3120 stamina
Warrior has 3077 * 1.06 = 3257 stamina
when the pally was at 8% it looked more like this:
3000 * 1.08 = 3240
so if you are going to compare your apples to my oranges don't forget the ones in your pocket.
Teaspoon Feb 5th 2010 9:19PM
@Sin
You forgot that Paladins also get Combat Expertise, which is 6% just like a warrior's Vitality. Paladins had a *further* 8% on top of what warriors have, and Sterb's calculations are correct.
Meanwhile, the big reason to grab a pally for a tough fight is that they somehow scored themselves an ability that started out as a clone of Last Stand, but had a minute peeled off the cooldown and casts automatically instead of requiring the tank to try to cast it themselves during the horrible lag-spike that's preventing the healers from topping them up... I know which one I'd prefer. o.0
Sterb Feb 8th 2010 9:25AM
Exactly what Teaspoon said.
That pocket comment might have been clever if you'd come up with an argument that actually took everything into consideration.
It's rather funny considering how similar the talents that I simply left out of the stamina equation are.
The fact is that Paladins STILL have a mathematical stamina advantage despite the nerf and they're crying they've been gutted as a tanking class.
LiaG Feb 5th 2010 12:13AM
Hahaha, we are back at the age of "use a hotfix to nerf pallies 1st, explain why later". Woot - NOT!
Alden Feb 5th 2010 1:22AM
Back in the age of "the most overpowered class whining about nerfs."
Seriously. Its funny. You guys have got to be the #1 most whiny class.
Why? I don't really know.
LiaG Feb 5th 2010 4:24AM
@ Alden
I'm not complaining about the nerf, but about it being done in a hotfix w/ no previous warning in a talent that was "working as intended" (= not bugged). Ok, they released a statement and their point of view is valid, but they could have done it last Tuesday or next Tuesday instead of overnight (and we may be the #1 whinners, but a lot has happened in the past to create this behavior).
I always thought something was very odd, seeing players gemming for pure stamina in (all) their red and yellow sockets just to boost stamina and have those inflated numbers. Wondering what they will do now, hehehe.