wowPaladin.org

Summary of Paladin changes:

• Art of War: No longer increases critical strike damage on Judgements, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm, instead increases all damage done by those abilities by a smaller amount.
• The Avenger’s Shield bounce distance has been reduced to 10 yards (from 15).
• The epic ground mount is now available on the trainer at level 61, requiring 150 riding skill, and the non-epic mount learned.
• Blessing of Might: Rank 8 points increased slightly to prevent from being overwritten by BattleShout 8 that has a shorter duration (also applies to Greater Blessing of Might 3.)
• Blessing of Sanctuary: It is no longer possible to have both Blessing of Sanctuary and Greater Blessing of Sanctuary active on a target at the same time.
• Crusade: No longer applies damage bonus twice to critical strikes.
• Divine Plea: This spell’s duration is no longer affected by haste.
• Divine Purpose: Rank 1 of this ability will now correctly determine its chance of remove stun.
• Enlightened Judgments now increases range by 15/30 (was 10/20).
• Eye for an Eye: No longer breaks crowd control effects.
• Hammer of Justice: The interrupt from this ability will also be redirected when the stun is redirected. In addition, the interrupt will now work on targets immune to stun.
• Hammer of the Righteous: Tooltip corrected to indicate it does 4 times weapon dps instead of 3.
• Infusion of Light (Holy) now affects Flash of Light too, reducing its cast time down to zero and can be used while moving.
• Judgements: The debuffs from Judgement of Light, Judgement of Wisdom, and Judgement of Justice will no longer be applied if the Judgement spell itself misses.
• Judgements of the Pure: Haste increased to 3/6/9/12/15%.
• Repentance PvP duration reduced to 6 sec.
• Righteous Defense cooldown has been lowered to 8 sec (was 15 sec).
• Righteous Vengeance: No longer increases critical strike damage on Judgements and Divine Storm, instead applies a DoT effect similar to Deep Wounds.
• Seal of the Martyr: Tooltip for Judgement damage was incorrect and has been fixed.
• Sheath of Light: Now correctly benefits Judgements of Command, Blood, and The Martyr.
• Shield of the Templar now also reduces all damage taken by 1/2/3%.

Source:
- WOWWiki
- Patch Notes (WOW Insider)

With the recent changes to the paladin class, particularly the nerf to retribution paladins, has Blizzard restored balance to the game…or made the paladin class less playable?

We would like to hear your opinions and ideas on keeping the paladin class playable. How would you define the paladin spec?

Now the dust is settled from the Blizzcon last weekend, has anyone hear any news about the direction of the Blizzard properties, particularly Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2?

As a fan of the Blizzard franchise, I really like how the original Starcraft was easy to pick up, and you can transition to a multiplayer version online. It’s less of a commitment upfront than WOW.

Some nice eyecandy pictures from the WOW Tournament.

Patch 3.0.2 is out this week, and should be live on all the servers. The updated skills and talents list has been posted at mmo-champion:

Major nerf for ret paladins, and there’s a lot of talk in the forums about how ret paladins are OP. What do you think about the change?

There’s a WOW gamer using 36 World of Warcraft accounts on 11 different computers to run a 36 shaman raid..anyone come across this guy (prepared) yet?

“It costs me exactly $5711 in subscription costs per year with 36 accounts on the 6 month pay schedule. Not bad considering I’m looking at it like it’s a hobby and there are more expensive hobbies out there than World of Warcraft.”

He can’t wait to get his hands on the upcoming Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King.

“I plan to be at the store when it opens and will purchase 36 copies of it. With tax, it should be about $1500 for all of them.”

I hope he’s able to keep up the financial and lifestyle commitments. If you check his setup, he could be trading stocks or commodity and making a living at it…

When I first saw the changes posted by Ghostcrawler days ago regarding the Holy tree, it seems like a very nice buff, particularly the changes to Infusion of Light. I mean now you get an extra instant ability because of the change, how nice is that? And I’m pretty sure many other healadins will agree with me too. Mainly because for a lot of the healadins, healing is just spamming the buttons and keep the health bars full. The others? They do it differently.

You see not having Flash of Light tied to Infusion of Light has its advantages. How so? You get to save up a fast Holy Light for emergency. Now, having Flash of Light tied to Infusion of Light isn’t that ideal anymore when you think along this line… you can’t decide when to use your fast Holy Light anymore! Everytime Holy Shock crits, and given that Flash of Light and Holy Light are the only healing spells that you will use (I know, there’s Beacon of Light too, but you don’t really spam that me thinks), you will always use up that Infusion of Light effect. Not cool.

Without control, the talent suddenly becomes very situational. At times where it’s critical and Infusion of Light pops, allowing you to instant cast FoL or to cast HL faster, it will be a life savior! Other times where it pops and nobody is in danger yet, you have to use it up anyway to keep the health bars in check.

Perhaps a better implementation, is to have it like Rampage. It will be an extra button that you can press given that Holy Shock crits. By pressing the button, Infusion of Light will activate, and your next spell will grant you the increased casting speed on FL and HL.

Ultimately is it a nerf or a buff? I would say about 50-50. I do not think that it’s a good idea to campaign against Blizzard and asks for such changes to be reverted. Having FoL instant has its uses. Rather, I believe my proposal is a good idea. Have it manually activated for use through a button so that we can all have more control. And more control = happy Paladins!

If you have noticed, I am running a few polls on the bottom right of the blog. On this poll where I asked, “Coming WotLK, what will you be playing?”, I see 42 people voted.

60% voted that they will continue playing Paladins.
14% voted that they will play a Death Knight instead.
14% voted that they will play some other classes.
12% voted that they will play Warhammer Online.

60% is barely more than half. I would have thought that with all the efforts Blizzard put in, we will be looking at something like 70%, with the remaining 30% being disgruntled Holy Paladins whose problems haven’t been addressed much until a recent update recently.

Granted that, not all visitors who voted are playing a Paladin so the underlying assumptions might be incorrect. Those who have voted that they will play some other classes, may very well be already playing those classes at the moment.

On the other hand, 12% wanted to go for Warhammer Online? Woah… Quite a big percentage. Is it that good? I mean I like a lot of the features I read from there, ie Realm vs Realm battlegrounds etc, but the character designs is a bit ugly. I’m too used to Blizzard’s beautified Orcs compared to their version. Then again I wouldn’t say that it will be great concern if the game turned out to be a winner. I shall probably start a Warrior Priest blog too soon lol.

Anyway, just thought it’s interesting to share the poll results. These results are in no way conclusive, so just take them with a pinch of salt.

Finally some updates to Holy tree. Obviously Blizzard still has a lot to address, but it’s good to see them taking the initiative and heading the right direction. I mean seriously, now that we are sure that they really are looking at Holy as claimed right? The other fixes will only soon follow. :)

Highlights in this update will be Infusion of Light and Enlightened Judgements. Judgements of the Pure is still not quite desirable, and I can foresee many Paladins skipping it for other talents. Many Paladins have expressed that they are not quite sure increasing the haste value is good enough. The talent in nature is just not very attractive.

Infusion of Light now also affects Flash of Light, a freaking awesome change! Not only that it now affects an additional ability, it allows Flash of Light to be instant cast. While Flash of Light wouldn’t heal as much as Holy Light in one go, instant cast = unstoppable = good. I had always wondered why Blizzard didn’t just swap Holy Light for Flash of Light in Infusion of Light if they were worried about too many big instant heals throwing around in Arena. Now that they changed Infusion of Light this way, I can’t complain. :)

Enlightened Judgements has now changed to allow a max range of 40 yards. This has significant impact on Healadins because they can now judge and heal without moving too much. For Healadins, moving is very bad since we truly really have 1 instant heal which isn’t too many efficient. PVP wise, Holy Paladins will also find this very useful, finally being able to be a ranged from 40 yards away judging for damages. Blizzard should consider changing Holy Shock to 40 yards too just to give more synergy to the Healadins and Shockadins.