I thought that I should probably just edit this into one of our various “next patch” posts, but the elusive 11-point Protection talent has been announced, and it deserves an entire new post for it’s own discussion.
* Auras will now persist through death and affect a 40 yard radius.
* Hand of Sacrifice: The damage transferred by this ability is now capped by the Paladin’s health.
* Forbearance reduced to 2 min duration.
* Sacred Shield: This effect cannot be cast on more than one friendly target at a time.
Talents
Holy
* Aura Mastery: Now makes anyone affected by Concentration Aura to be immune to Interrupt and Silence mechanics and increases the effectiveness of all other auras by 100%. Lasts 10 sec. 2 min cooldown.
* Blessed Hands now reduces the mana cost of Hand of freedom, Hand of sacrifice and Hand of salvation by 15/30%, increases the effectiveness of Hand of Salvation by 50% and the effectiveness of Hand of sacrifice by an additional 5/10%
* Enlightened Judgements: No longer increases the range of Judgement of Justice. Moved to Tier 10.
* Infusion of Light: Now increases the critical chance of your next Holy Light by 10/20% instead of reducing cast time. Moved to Tier 10 (From Tier 8).
* Judgements of the Pure moved to Tier 9 (From Tier 10).
* Sacred Cleansing moved to Tier 8 (From Tier 9).
Protection
* New Talent: Divine Sacrifice: Causes all party/raid members affected by one of the paladin’s auras to transfer 30% of all damage taken to the paladin (maximum of 150% of the paladin’s max health). Lasts 10 sec. 2 min cooldown.
* Divine Guardian re-designed: Now increases the effectiveness of Divine Sacrifice by an additional 5/10% and increases the duration of Sacred Shield by 50/100% and the amount absorbed by 10/20%.
* Guarded by the Light: Now makes Divine Plea 50/100% less likely to be dispelled.
Retribution
* Righteous Vengeance reduced to 3 ranks for 10/20/30%. The damage done by this talent no longer receives modifications from effects that increase or decrease damage done by a percentage.
* Sanctified Seals: Renamed Sanctity of Battle. Now also increases damage done by Exorcism and Crusader Strike by 5/10/15%.
**Update 3/12**
Sorry for taking so long to update this guys, I sincerely believed that I had updated the post (I just glance at the front page, and focus on comments / forums every day). But here’s my take on the 3.1 Holy Paladin / Ret changes.
As quite obvious as it might seem, it still doesn’t hurt to comment on the obvious decapitation of the very popular 37/0/34 Holy build that currently dominates 2v2 matches. With key Holy talents being moved further (read : Infusion of Light) and key Ret talents (read : Divine Purpose / possibly Judgements of the Wise) (read the read : not covered in these notes, but I know for a fact that Divine Purpose is being moved down), it’s literally impossible to be able to spec hybrid and still use the spec. Whether or not the Holy Palotin is getting nerfed in the bracket is in discussion.
Losing Ret talents is quite the loss (Vindication, 8% crit, JotW, Repet, DP, PoJ, Benediction), but you do have to look at what the class is getting. HoSalvation reducing damage taken by 20%(Glyph), a second off of Holy Shock (Glyph), 11% (assuming Imp. Devotion) extra healing done, and 16% on the Palotin himself. Divine Sacrifice is a lackluster talent to most, but is actually far more useful in arena then most give it credit for. Aura mastery is a fantastic new addition that will utterly shatter most current team’s ways of being able to kill a target during burst time. Imp. Conc (as well as Imp. devo) are active while any other aura is up, so expect to see high resists on teams with Palotins.
Most (read : all) Palotins that 3v3/5v5 already go some variation of Beacon / 45+ in Holy, so the next patch will actually be an even stronger patch for the HPaladin in 3v3/5v5, at least in my opinion. As for 2v2, it really depends on what final fixes get pushed through and how much utility the class will gain in place of raw mana regen and offensive-nessess. With Exorcism usable on all types of enemies now, we’ll see what type of playstyle the HPaladin will have to pick up. When you go down Ret so much, it gives the Palotin a chance to do some rather crazy in-your-face things with minimal penalty, so maybe this is a way for Blizzard to make you do more then sit on hunters with 100% mana the entire time?
As for the Ret aspect, there isn’t much to comment on at all at the moment. Blizzard has left the tree rather bare, with places that are bound to be filled with talents soon enough. There is a rather large handful of points that Blizzard can play with to tailor the class how it should be, I highly doubt they’re going to leave PvEadins running around with 11 spare talent points with nowhere to put them whatsoever. The day those changes are announced, I’m sure the class will take another 90 degree turn (for better or for worse!).
**Update, 3/13**
With the MMO-Champion talent calculator released, it’s a lot easier to see what they’ve done to HPaladin PvP specs. This build here shows what probably the majority of HPaladins are going to go in the patch, it certainly isn’t far off from the build that most go now for 3v3 and 5v5. Ideally, making the class even stronger in those brackets. And this build here shows how it’s not possible to get deep Ret talents without sacrificing Infusion of Light. Holy/Ret is still a viable spec, though I forsee people sticking to the basic 51Holy/20Prot at all times just for the sake of it. Vindication is still an insanely powerful tool, but you can’t argue that goings down Prot isn’t too shabby.
- Megaphone
March 6th, 2009 - 9:14 pm
I wonder if Aura Mastery will effect the haste and increased damage from ret aura.
Will also be neat for prot when using a resist aura.
March 6th, 2009 - 9:59 pm
I nice start but we still need to spend 15 extra points. Perhaps Make seals of Pure Ret friendly and add some flavor in holy t2 while picking up aura mastery.
March 7th, 2009 - 1:43 am
* Sanctified Seals: Renamed Sanctity of Battle. Now also increases damage done by Exorcism and Crusader Strike by 5/10/15%.
FINALLY. Crusader strike getting SOMETHING at least. Frankly I don’t know if 15% more dmg on CS will be enough - since it is very low as it is. We’ll see what happens when it goes live
But more damage for exorcism would not be bad.
I can see some holy/ret specs in pvp with this, grabbing the extra crit for Exorcism with Sanctity of Battle would be rather deadly, combined with a holy shock the holy paladins would actually get quite some burst damage.
March 7th, 2009 - 1:48 am
On a different note..I just noticed that they’ve changed the Purifying Power talent in the holy tree, instead of extra crit it has a reduced cooldown..oh well..could still work for a holy-PvP spec.
March 7th, 2009 - 3:58 am
Wow, a damage increase talent for Crusader Strike. It’s indeed better than nothing, but still very uninspired. I don’t really consider PTR builds concrete, finalized patch data, but it does give you an idea in roughly what direction Blizzard wants to go with the patch. And if a CS damage modifier is that direction, I really hope someone there will step up and say “hey guys, we’re developers, surely we can design something more interesting than this without making it imbalanced!”.
March 7th, 2009 - 5:09 am
The 10 point prot talent is just as crappy as the one it used to be, DOESNT BELONG IN PROT (fits better in holy since they cant aoe heal), and doesnt really have a practical use? Unless you like suiciding. I liked the one guy in the forums that changed his sig to something like “patch 3.1, now i have 3 ways to kill myself!”
Crusader strike and exorcism damage is ok i guess, at least it is in the right tree. Doesnt help our inability to spend talent points for damage. Doesnt help or address our crappy mana regen. Basically promotes the use of exorcism in our normal rotation despite us probably not having the mana to use it every time it is up. Why is there no hit or expertise talents?
*I wish* they would have just made crusader strike or divine storm do holy damage, fixed our crappy mana regen and reduce or remove self damage. Then come up with a fucking original 10 point prot talent, not just a re-make of some shitty fucking talent. I mean come on, fucking deathknights have the anti magic bubble in unholy for everyone in the whole fucking group (that doesnt do damage to them), but paladins get 1 shitty talent and then a re-make of a shitty talent that isnt even as good as the deathknight one? Possibly even kill the paladin in the process?
Even if we had an infinite mana pool with seal of blood not doing damage to ourselves, im pretty sure the sanctified seals change still wont give us competitive hybrid dps. They could probably do a reverse fury nerf to us and give +10% damage on everything and we still would suck in Ulduar.
March 7th, 2009 - 6:11 am
Still holding out on a secondary effect for crusader strike, and one thing is for certain, we WILL be nerfed. Exorcism will not last with its new glyph and this talent. People are already doing 8k exos on ptr BEFORE this.
March 7th, 2009 - 1:49 pm
Well, the new Warrior baseline ability should be mentioned here too.
They can now break bubble, reduce armor and cause damage all in one for 25 rage…
March 7th, 2009 - 3:36 pm
Less the cost of shifting to Battle. You can tell when they’re doing it, it takes a lot longer than a priest dispelling it.
March 8th, 2009 - 12:08 pm
It’s still an ability warriors do not deserve to possess. We get get no hamstring, no MS, no short cooldown pummel, no intercept, nothing, yet everyone gets everything around us, even if they don’t want it.
March 8th, 2009 - 12:18 pm
If by “everyone” you mean the only one class that has been able to remove our bubble since it’s creation, and now warriors who are indeed fairly weak in arena right now. This is a direct warrior vs holy pvp nerf, and it’s really not a big change. Unless warriors start pvping in battle stance, on their own they can’t break the bubble and do an interrupt.
March 8th, 2009 - 4:43 pm
Did you see me say anything about everyone getting mass dispel on a stick? No, I said everyone is getting, or rather has been getting for years, every ability under the sun, but paladins are 99% of the time left out of this loop. We have the same utility abilities we always had, and some of them are are nerfed from their starting power. The one new notable utility/survival tool given paladins is not that great, and is a rip off of a priest ability. Divine purpose affected HoF only helps ret, and even then it forces a terrible choice because we are susceptible to kiting from both sources of hampering. JoJ is loltastic, especially now that it has been nerfed in duration.
Hunters struggled, they tossed MS, instant traps, reverse blink, pet stuns, and probably a few more abilities I am forgetting at them on the drop of a hat.
Warriors weren’t even struggling when they got spell reflect, and then the stance changes.
Rogues couldn’t even spell the word ’struggle’, and they got cloak of shadows, deadly throw, and worst of all, cheat death.
Druids struggled and they got 2 of the most broken abilities in the game: cyclone, and lifebloom. Combined with swiftmend, they promptly rocketed into ‘lol-land’.
Prists struggled, and they became invincible mana burning machines that did 100% of their healing on the run with PoM and renew.
Paladins struggled, and we got…nerfed. And ignored. And left to ride on the backs of rogues and druids to try and get some rating. Shaman are the only other class I can think of that has had it as bad as us for as long as us, and we STILL have them beat in terms of suffering.
March 8th, 2009 - 10:03 pm
* Righteous Vengeance reduced to 3 ranks for 10/20/30%. The damage done by this talent no longer receives modifications from effects that increase or decrease damage done by a percentage.
Hmmm… this tells me that we are going to see a new talent in the Ret tree. Or else, why the heck include the fine print on this talent? Especially, since just a few days ago we were told that Ret Pally DPS is lacking and they want to increase it.
March 8th, 2009 - 11:48 pm
Kierlak everything you’re talking about for the game being imbalanced are the seasons past. Everybody knows it, and that’s not how it is now. Ranting about it and using it as a basis to argue that a class shouldn’t get buffs because it was extremely strong last year isn’t really valid. Buffs classes got through the second and third season happened for reasons that back then were generally valid.
The changes that warriors are getting now, is because right now they are struggling in pvp. And it really just doesn’t affect ret all that much.
March 9th, 2009 - 3:49 am
Well, i really like the patchnotes.
I think it’s mentionable, that you can get a Libram of Sacred Shield (http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2009/march/libramofsacredshield.jpg) in Ulduar. It’s a placeholder atm, but im begging for a nice effect, maybe like the priest’S PWS.
But as a protpally it scary. You get a few of dmg buffs (sotr +30% more blockvalue-scaling), a lot of mana (unlimited DP + undispellable) and even more CC. Maybe we can see a few protpally arenateams coming, at least, it would be special.
BTW:
I will put my input of all of the here changes shortly!
im waiting Mega
March 10th, 2009 - 3:54 am
I’m perfectly fine with warriors getting a bubble breaking ability now, just so I can say “I told you so” later in 3 seasons when they steam-roll paladins as they did in S4. I would expect us getting an MS-type debuff now?
March 10th, 2009 - 4:18 am
The ‘new talent’ is just a separation of the divine guardian talent, changing it to 10 seconds instead of 12, and forcing you to cast it instead of automatically working when you bubble, and they also nerfed it to 300% of your health absorbed, its a big nerf if you ask me, and a meaningless change, as far as I can tell.
Moving one prior talent and making it a new talent, doesnt really count as a new spell in my eyes.
Nothing great this patch.
Woo More dps, but adding a new spell to our rotation for pvp is totally gay.
March 10th, 2009 - 10:34 pm
Still, getting a ranged attack against all targets with a 100% crit on undeads is a joyful day for all of us.
As for mana control. We will do what whe alwasy have done, Adapt. Sadly this is all we can do. even though we had got a fun few weeks after the pre-WotLK patch launched. We could pretty much crush whatever class we felt like. And i was thinking “Yay, blizzard is paying us back for all the hardship we had to go through when BC launched.” which was pretty much a nerf to oblivion and becoming the least favourable class to invite, even for heroics. (i still claim the reason we got “overpowered” was that we pretty much did all we could to play good with a class that had no chance of success, and give a player who excel in his/her class you will see effect immediatly. Nothing like hemo,hemo,hemo,hemo rogues)
Never respecced from retri and never will.
March 11th, 2009 - 10:17 am
Are they going to modify exorcism to be a type of physical dmg?
March 11th, 2009 - 3:27 pm
How would that even make sense lore-wise? Exorcism being a physical ability? The whole deal about exorcism is spiritual. Then again, if they’d do that, it’d be an expensive spell that gets mitigated by armor - will never happen.
March 11th, 2009 - 6:38 pm
“Then again, if they’d do that, it’d be an expensive spell that gets mitigated by armor - will never happen.”
Divine Storm isn’t exactly cheap mana wise, and it’s mitigated by armor.
March 11th, 2009 - 8:51 pm
/equip Cattle Prod
/target Megaphone
/cast 50k Volt (Rank 9)
March 12th, 2009 - 7:18 am
Strange.. I actually have the rest of this saved somewhere, guess I just thought that I edited it onto here.. maybe I should get onto that and all.
After class I will!
March 12th, 2009 - 4:22 pm
@Kierlak
True, but DS was overpowered at release, that’s why it got nerfed. Besides, the fact that it can crit itself, and proc a critting seal effect is good enough. Nothing awesome in arenas granted - but very useful in PvE.
March 12th, 2009 - 6:05 pm
“As quite obvious as it might seem, it still doesn’t hurt to comment on the obvious decapitation of the very popular 37/0/34 Holy build that currently dominates 2v2 matches. With key Holy talents being moved further (read : Infusion of Light) and key Ret talents (read : Divine Purpose / possibly Judgements of the Wise) (read the read : not covered in these notes, but I know for a fact that Divine Purpose is being moved down), it’s literally impossible to be able to spec hybrid and still use the spec. Whether or not the Holy Palotin is getting nerfed in the bracket is in discussion.”
Whilst your point that the very strong 37/0/34 build will no longer be possible it should IMO be noted that the two most powerful deep-holy talents for PvP, IoF and Enlightened Judgements, have been smacked down hard. IoF no longer grants -1 sec on HL cast time and Enlightened Judgements no longer increases the range of Judgement of Justice. In effect, this has disincentivised deep Holy vs deep Ret and may well have the effect of making 31+x/0/40-x more popular.
P.S. I still thinks that Aura Mastery and Divine Sacrifice should switch places.
March 12th, 2009 - 6:35 pm
Yes looks to be some interesting new holy builds giving you a range of new playstyles, i beleive things might focus more on chaining cooldowns of salvation, aura mastery, Divine sacrifice, Hammer of Justice, Divine illumination, Freedom and Holy shock to make it through various situation. Especially aura mastery.
Check some of these out
HOLY PVP
51holy/20Prot
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?paladin=5035215030221305310051021150321130230000000000000000000000000000000000000000&glyph=000000000000&version=9684
51Holy/20Ret
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?paladin=5035215030221305310051021100000000000000000000000005032050203000000000000000&glyph=000000000000&version=9684
44holy/27ret
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?paladin=5035215030221305310021000000000000000000000000000005032250223001020000000000&glyph=000000000000&version=9684
33holy/11prot/27ret
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?paladin=5031215030011305210000000050320100000000000000000005032250223001020000000000&glyph=000000000000&version=9684
HOLY PVE
51holy/5prot/15ret
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?paladin=5035005002201305310051522150000000000000000000000005032050000000000000000000&glyph=000000000000&version=9684
March 12th, 2009 - 6:36 pm
Didn’t mean to break the forum
March 12th, 2009 - 6:37 pm
and i forgot another cooldown, hand of sacrifice…
March 13th, 2009 - 9:45 am
Looks like Spiritual Attunement is going to be axed for all builds.
March 13th, 2009 - 1:31 pm
lol at your holy builds that dont have aura mastery mega. have you even looked at the change? or are you just not taking it? if thats the case then you need to look again at what it does now.
and more importantly when did this become holypaladin.com? or am i lost?
March 13th, 2009 - 2:10 pm
99.9999% sure that I just forgot to put a point in there, you can’t blame me (since it used to be so useless afterall)! I know exactly what the new version does, and look, I moved a single point around to get it!
The site might be Retpaladin.com, but seeing as there is almost nothing to cover with Ret at the moment that our forums aren’t talking about, do you expect me to not cover changes that completely change how a class you play functions?
Heavens forbid that we might talk about Paladins in general a couple times every three months!
March 13th, 2009 - 10:13 pm
Heaven forbid blizzard letting us be able to be useful as RET on the ptr instead of low damage, suicidal maniacs that dont even get mana back from SA now! [Because it’s no longer a base talent or a ret talent.]
Divine plea dispellable and still inflicts mortal strike upon us as ret. Yay. Judgement of light/divine storm/instant flash of light procs will suck if we somehow get an extended version of divine plea, in pve and especially in pvp.
Seriously, they left us hanging, in a worse state than the week before. WTF. Couldnt they have waited to change spiritual attunement until after they give ret some mana regen shit? Self-sustainable, competitive dps rotation plz? And in the patch notes it still says glyph of seal of blood grants 30% bonus from SA, lol.
Also the “new” “prot” talent that was supposed to have zomg awesome utility is just a pos sucky remake of and already bag of poo. Most of us wanted an intercept/interrupt/snare or something cool like that, that “favored” classes get for free. Like deathknights, who already have chains of ice/deathgrip/interrupt/silence, getting snares for every spec for just using their normal dps rotation…still no secondary effect on crusader strike.
They better fucking have something for next week. Time is running out. If they release the ret paladin changes a week before the patch comes out there wont be enough feedback time. PTR servers are crap too so it will be worse.
P.S. dont diss megaphone, too much
March 14th, 2009 - 7:53 am
Don’t get me wrong Unstable, Ret is in a pretty bad situation right now. I just happen to be waiting for the changes that come in and save the day, I don’t want to automatically start pointing fingers and raging without seeing what Blizzard has instore. If they don’t fix any problems and just give us minute fixes that barely help with anything, then there’d be something extra to put in our long list of ridiculous treatment.