2.1 PTR Paladin Changes

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Protection
Overall threat buff from the talent changes and an increase in damage mitigation in the sense that Holy Shield won’t proc off as easily with 8 charges instead of 4. Nerf to tanking duration. Talents aside, what about reitemizing our gear? WTB more stamina, damage mitigation, and spell damage…NOT int and mana/5. Threat buffs are nice, but threat really isn’t our problem at the moment.

  • The Spiritual Attunement nerf shouldn’t be that much of a problem in raids due to the amount of healing recieved, but I worry a little about our tanking duration in the 5-mans. I have to budget mana as it is…
  • The Improved Holy Shield talent is very nice. More damage means more threat and more charges means that Holy Shield won’t likely expire unless you are fighting a mob that attacks extremely fast.
  • Avenger’s Shield changes are good. Though dead zone elimination is a buff, given the high cooldown, mana cost, and tendency to break nearby CC, how useful will AS be? …and will we have enough mana to cast this with the Spiritual Attunement nerfs.
  • I’m not sure that 5 points is worth 5% more damage from all sources (and aggro for that matter), but then again, deep deep down in the tree, there might not be anything else worth spending 5 points on.
  • Argent Defender: Even with the reduction from 50% to 30%, the threshold increase from 20% to 35% should be nice, need to crunch some numbers to see for sure. It’s still pretty easy to leapfrog though…


Holy
Illumination nerf, spell crit has been effectively devalued by 50%. It’s not completely useless, but it’s going to force many healadins (and devs?) to re-examine their healing gear and healing style. Itemization wise, the nerf sucks hard, being a class that’s very much dependant on gear. Are they going to change the stats on T4 and T5? The spell crit on level 70 healing plate items ain’t lookin’ so great at the moment.

Flash of Light duration isn’t that super affected; stacking on mana/5 still means that you can chain FoL and almost never run out of mana. You can’t do that with Holy Light…unless they add UNGODLY amounts of mana/5 on our sets, HL spam duration still depends on getting crits and getting mana back. So, what about being the main healer in heroics? It’s not as if you can heal heroic instances on Flash of Light alone…not with mobs hitting for 2 to 4k on plate.

So again, itemization: Nearly ever paladin is going to have to take a look at their healing set and gearing goal. It’s not a devastating class-ending blow, but it will hurt a lot…

Retribution
The Vengeance change is interesting. Does it refresh with each crit (in the same way that SoV does)? How does this affect the ideal 2H DPS weapon speed? Slower weapons mean larger crits (3.8 is "ideal" for SoC), but it also means less of a chance to refresh the buff within the 15 second time frame. So, is this a buff, debuff, or sidegrade?

 

Full Paladin Patch Notes

  • "Ardent Defender" (Protection Talent) now reduces damage taken by 6-30% when below 35% health.
  • "Avenger’s Shield" no longer has a minimum range. It may be used onany target within 30 yards.
  • "Avenger’s Shield": The damage portion of this ability will now be applied even if the victim is immune to snare.
  • "Divine Shield": This ability no longer removes or prevents the "Weakened Soul" debuff.
  • "Eye for an Eye": Some spells did not trigger "Eye for an Eye" correctly. That has been fixed.
  • Fixed some data errors that caused "Seal of Command" and "Seal of Blood" to generate more threat than intended.
  • "Forbearance": It is no longer possible to use a macro to gain the benefit of "Avenging Wrath" and "Divine Shield" at the same time.
  • "Greater Blessing of Kings": The cost for this blessing is now twicethe cost of "Blessing of Kings", instead of a fixed cost of 150.
  • "Greater Blessing of Sanctuary 2": The range on this spell was incorrectly set to 30 yards. It has been changed to 40 yards.
  • "Greater Blessing of Wisdom 3": The range on this spell was incorrectly set to 30 yards. It has been changed to 40 yards.
  • "Hammer of Wrath": Rank 4, damage increased.
  • "Holy Concentration": This talent now affects "Binding Heal".
  • "Illumination": This talent now only gives 50% of the mana cost of the critical heal. It also now returns the correct amount of mana when used with ranks 4 and 5 of "Holy Shock".
  • "Improved Seal of Righteousness": The percentage increase in damagefrom this talent is now applied after all bonuses from items and effects which increase your spell damage.
  • New Protection Talent added: "Improved Holy Shield", 2 ranks: Increases damage caused by "Holy Shield" by 10/20% and increases the number of charges of "Holy Shield" by 2/4.
  • "One-Handed Weapon Specialization" (Protection): Now increases all damage caused by the paladin by 1-5% while a one-handed weapon is equipped.
  • "Seal of Blood": This seal will no longer cause additional chances for weapon procs to trigger.
  • "Seal of Righteousness": This seal will no longer cause additional chances for weapon procs to trigger.
  • "Seal of the Crusader": The rank 7 tooltip has been fixed to read the same as other ranks of this spell.
  • "Spiritual Attunement": First-aid generated healing will no longer trigger this ability. However, "Lifebloom", "Earth Shield", and "Improved Leader of the Pack" will now trigger it correctly. The tooltip has been adjusted to indicate it only works on healing from spells.
  • "Spiritual Attunement": Mana is no longer healed if the paladin is at full health.
  • "Stoicism" (Protection) should now properly affect all magic effects cast by the Paladin and no longer applies double its intended benefit to "Blessing of Might" and "Blessing of Wisdom".
  • "Vengeance" (Retribution Talent) now increases Holy and Physical damage by 1/2/3/4/5% for 15 seconds following a critical hit, but the effect now stacks up to 3 times.
  • Vindicator Aesom at Blood Watch will now correctly train a full range of paladin spells.

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