Paladins
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Ret pallies to be improved
Retribution paladins are in strong contention for most ridiculed build in WoW as today. Personally, I'm sure they don't deserve all the scorn that's thrown at them, but it's probably true that Ret is not as strong as many other trees. Well, Blizzard seems to have (finally) noticed this, and they're taking a look at it: Hello again, I just wanted to let you know that the developers have taken part of your suggestions, and are looking into improving the retribution paladin spec. You can probably expect something along the line of more sustained DPS in a raid and more raid utility, but we are not ready to reveal any details. This is still work in progress, so please be patient :)Good news, eh? Or as one forum responder put it: "Hell, it's about time." So if Ret gets more sustained raid DPS and more raid utility, will you be happy with it? What would you change in the tree?
The Light and How to Swing It: Bugs or Features?
Every other week, Robin Torres investigates Paladin issues, interviews experienced Paladins and reports her findings in The Light and How to Swing It, formerly The Paladin Report.I used to work in Software Development and later tested Video Games. A prevailing joke in all software companies is "It's not a bug, it's a feature." Today, we are looking at some issues that Paladins have encountered and determining if they are Bugs or Features.Purging Divine Shield: Bug or Feature?Biggillard complained in the forums that his pally's Divine Shield was purged by a Shaman in PvP. He assumed it was a Nerf. Others who complained about the same problem thought it was a Bug. But Byzantine got it right. According to Hortus:Because of the Client-Server nature of the game it is possible for two mutually exclusive actions to occur at the same time resulting in some unexpected behavior. Although efforts are made to minimize these situations they will still happen on occasion.So, if your Divine Shield gets dispelled as soon as it is cast, rest assured that this is not a Nerf or a Bug, but in fact a Feature of WoW's Client-Server architecture.
The Paladin Report: What changes are needed for endgame Paladins?
Every other week, Robin Torres investigates Paladin issues, interviews experienced Paladins and reports her findings in The Paladin Report.After the release of The Burning Crusade, many Horde players raced to level a pally to 70. The addition of this new class prompted many raiding guilds to encourage this, looking to pallies to round out their endgame rosters. Sneet, guild leader for Grim on Daggerspine, was one of these players. He put aside his warrior, the Main Tank in most raids, to bring his new Belfadin to 70 as quickly as possible. This screenshot was taken in February, so, as you can see, he became a raid viable paladin pretty quickly.Some of the comments for Elizabeth's first Pally column stated that Belfadins were too new to the class to be knowledgeable enough about it. I think that's bunk. A raid boss doesn't stop the action to ask the paladin a question about pre-TBC talents. This isn't a history lesson. We are writing about the issues facing current paladin players. (Though history lessons are pretty cool, too.) Factions are now getting similar raid experiences because they have the same combination of classes, causing post-TBC information to be more universal and therefore more valuable.I asked Sneet what changes need to be made for endgame paladins to be more successful. I was pleased to discover that this was something he had analyzed extensively. Following are Sneet's views on endgame pallies and the changes he suggests to improve them.
Get in line! Rezzing order and you
So someone moved, someone pulled aggro, someone didn't heal fast enough, or you just don't have the DPS. It's a wipe. Everyone's dead on the ground, and the raidleader calls for a Shaman to pop, or for someone to use their soulstone. I'm a resto Shaman, so this happens to me pretty often: I Reincarnate and I'm standing over 24 dead people. Who do I rez first?Obviously, the first people I go for are those who have a rez to use, so we can do some chain rezzing. Priests, other Shamans, and Paladins. But after that? Caralynn lays it out: while your first instinct may be to rez your MT or your friends, you should really be rezzing pet and buff classes before melee.Which makes great sense. Warlocks and Hunters need to drink and resurrect their pets, and that's a lot of time wasted if you rez them last. Mages and Druids use all kinds of mana casting those buffs, so they usually have to drink, rebuff after a wipe, and then drink again. And Warriors and Rogues are easy to refill-- Rage doesn't refill, and I wish my mana filled up as quickly as Energy did.So it's Other Rezzers > Pet Classes > Buffers > and then Melee. There are other schools of thought on this (one player says to rez RL girls first, wink wink say no more), but this plan seems to be the best. Plus, Caralynn points out that this has the added bonus of not having melee standing around trying to pull while clothies are rebuffing. If you time it right, everyone can be ready to go again at the same time. And this time, watch that aggro!
PTR Notes: Fixing illumination
Over at Blessing of Kings, Coriel has a great explanation of how the paladin's to-be-changed Illumination talent -- which has been happily residing in the holy tree since the game's release -- became such a thorny problem. The talent (as it exists now) returns the base mana cost of a healing spell to the paladin when the healing spell crits. (It costs 5 talent points to bring it to this level of effectiveness and requires 15 points in the talent tree. So a fully maxxed illumination will cost you 20 talent points in the holy tree.) The end result is that, overall, the paladin receives a mana discount on their healing spells equal to their spell crit rate. Prior to patch 1.9, a paladin could boost his or her holy spell crit rate by 5% through talents (priests have a similar talent that boosts holy spell crit), but it was difficult for paladins to get any other spell crit gear. The plate itemization simply didn't exist and there was heavy competition for generic items that a paladin could use like the Azuresong Mageblade.
Breakfast topic: Hand out some buffs
theantipoet asks a great question over on Livejournal:If "you could buff any class -- any class but your own (your main or mains if you've got multiple) -- which class would it be and how would you buff them?"I'll say that if you want cool points on this one, you should stay away from any classes you play regularly-- for me at the moment, that'll be shaman, rogue, and hunter. I really like anti's answer of priests-- they are QQing a lot, but there is no reason they should be DPSing while paladins heal in raids.Personally, I'd hook up prot warriors a little bit-- right now, their DPS is such a joke that the only way they can really play is in instances. I'm not saying that we should give them tons of DPS-- that would mess everything up in PvP-- but just a little extra DPS would let them solo, and wouldn't unbalance PvE groups that much (since it's likely that if the group makeup is right, the prot warrior's DPS will still pale in comparison to your regular DPS class's hits).A buff like that isn't really necessary, but it's an interesting thought experiment to see where you might make positive changes that don't actually affect you. So if Blizzard suddenly gave you the chance to buff any class except your own, what would you say?
Number breakdown on classes in 5v5 arenas
Our good friends at Paladin Sucks point to this very interesting breakdown of classes in all the 5v5 area teams over 2000 arena rating. Can you guess which classes are winning the Arena PvP game?The answer surprised me: it's warriors. For all of their bellyaching, warriors are cutting through the opposition in the arena-- they make up almost 20% of all the players with teams above 2000 arena rating. And next on the list, surprisingly enough, is paladins-- with 33, they're 18% of the winning players. And maybe most surprising, Druids and Warlocks, the two teams who seem to dominate in PvP, are bringing up the rear in terms of players, with a measly 4% and 3% respectively.Now, this makes no distinction about what these players are actually doing in these teams-- when I go into the arena with my Shaman, it seems that all I'm doing mostly is trying to stay alive, and warriors with a healer behind them are very, very good at that. I believe the numbers came from the Armory (where you can sort by rating, but only by battlegroup), but whoever wrote it up didn't say where the numbers came from. I've reprinted the full list of classes with the number of players in teams with an arena rating of over 2000 after the jump, for the benefit of those of you at work.
Quiet paladin nerfing
After reading the patch notes, you may have come away with the impression that paladins made it out relatively unscathed. However, players hitting up the test realms have discovered that this isn't entirely the case. Paladinsucks is reporting that Forbearance (a debuff left for a minute after being affected by one of the paladin's bubbles) is also applying a -15% physical damage debuff (conflicting reports say this may be all damage). If this makes it onto the live realms, that would certainly put some hurting on the paladin class.However, not even Tseric seems to know if this is an intended change. On the forums he tells paladins that he won't be able to confirm whether this should have been in the notes or is a bug until after the weekend. Seems like a terribly odd bug, if it is...
BC beta paladin changes
More interesting beta changes popping up this weekend -- Paladinsucks has brought to my attention some interesting paladin changes. Good news first -- Protection buffs! In addition to increasing the thread provided by Righteous Fury, Improved Righteous Fury now also reduces damage taken by 2/4/6% while active. And in addition to reducing the cooldown of Divine Shield, Sacred Duty also increases overall stamina by 3/6%. Nice!However, one can't live on buffs alone... and these changes come with nerfs to the Retribution tree (previously reported, but just now going live in the beta). Crusader Strike's cooldown is once again 10 seconds and Vengeance once again provides only a 10% bonus to your physical and holy damage.Paladins who want to be tanks are thrilled, while paladins who want to do damage or PvP are discouraged. (Well, that's putting it mildly, isn't it?)Update: Clarified that the Retribution tree changes/nerfs had been announced, but were only now implemented.[Thanks, Lavis!]
