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Patch 3.3 PTR: Patch notes updated
Horray! Another update to the patch 3.3 PTR patch notes. This one is nice and small. Usually, when the note updates become smaller and smaller, it's a good indication that the patch is getting closer to being done. But, we also haven't seen any itemization of this patch yet -- so there is obviously still a bit of work to do. However even then, items don't exactly change very much in the PTR, they are mostly set via formulas devised well ahead of time. So we'll see... nice to see things shaping up though. All the updates to the patch notes are as follows: Druids: Gift of the Earthmother: Redesigned. This talent now increases spell haste by 2/4/6/8/10% and reduces the base global cooldown of Lifebloom by 2/4/6/8/10% instead of its previous effects. (This was just reworded, nothing changed, according to Blizzard.) Paladins: Sanctified Light (changed reverted based on update to Lay on Hands) Murder: This talent now provides a flat damage increase of 2/4% against all targets, instead of only targets which do not appear in Icecrown. Victory Rush: This ability is now trainable at level 6. (This was just corrected, nothing new.) Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
The Light and How to Swing It: A little less hybrid
With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and helps with the puppet shows at the Argent Ren Faire up in Icecrown. Ghostcrawler has been doing a lot of talking pertaining to paladins and Blizzard's vision of them for the future. A lot of this has been spawned by some of the changes the developers have been toying around with on the public test realms. In the current build of the PTR, Lay on Hands causes Forbearance on its target which has prompted quite an uproar from the playerbase. This cuts a leg out from our two major defensive cooldowns making us choose either health or invulnerability during a fight. Holy paladins are getting some text tacked onto Sanctified Light which will allow them to reduce the chance it will cause Forbearance on others by 33/66/100% to allow it to still be useful when healing in groups. As this is the PTR, we don't really know how much of this will end up on the live realms. The developers have been toying around with several different ideas and at the moment we're not sure which one or ones they'll end up going with.
Patch 3.0.2 primer for Holy Paladins
This was supposed to go up before the servers did, but as you probably already know, Patch 3.0.2 wasn't quite what we all expected. Now that servers are starting to go back up online, I can better write up this handy guide for the brave new world. Let's try to get as much of this right as possible. If you were as excited as I am -- and you should be -- you probably logged on as soon as your Realm went up, picked out all those cool talents you've been drooling over these past months, and went off reveling in your newfound power.Good for you. Even though Patch 3.0.2 had a few hiccups, most of the important class changes made it through. I had to delete a lot of my macros and change a few. For one thing, Judgement and a Seal can no longer be cast within the same macro. This is because Seals aren't consumed by Judgements anymore, so they now share the same GCD. If you have macros for your Blessings of Freedom, Protection, and Sacrifice, you should edit them to cast Hands instead of Blessings. Lots of little things. I'll probably talk about that in The Light and How to Swing It. For now, we'll take a look at the talent trees and how we'll settle into the 3.0.2 world.
The Light and How to Swing It: For the love of all that's Holy
With all the love that Protection and Retribution has gotten, a lot of people might feel that Holy has fallen behind. To a degree this is true. It's important to understand, before anything else, that for the longest time Holy was the only truly viable tree for the class. Protection has come into its own in The Burning Crusade, while Retribution needed a lot more work. Now that Blizzard has done its homework and tweaked the trees to scrumptious, tempting playability, it's time for us to revisit the Holy tree. Exactly how good will Holy be in Wrath of the Lich King?The answer isn't a simple one. For one thing, Holy is still an incredibly powerful tree and Holy Paladins are still the best single target healers in the game, with Holy Lights critting for ludicrous amounts in the Wrath Beta. It is also now more capable offensively, with ranged Judgements, better coefficients, and a lowered cooldown on Holy Shock. Even then, there are many indications that Holy has fallen behind on many respects, and many Paladins are considering speccing Retribution or Protection because of it. That's not a good thing at all.
Wrath Beta patch notes: Paladin part II
When Ghostcrawler mentioned on the closed Friends & Family Alpha that Paladins were the last to receive changes because the entire class was being majorly reworked, he wasn't kidding. The patch notes from the recently opened Wrath of the Lich King Beta revealed massive changes to spells and abilities as well as a shuffling of talents among the three trees. I covered an overview of the changes as well as the new Hand nomenclature for old Blessings in the first part of our beta analysis. It's now updated with the new Paladin talents in all three trees, so be sure to check it out.Before we get into the really juicy things, namely the new Wrath Paladin talents, we'll take a look at the changes to baseline spells and current talents. In some cases, these were totally reworked, and in others they were significantly improved. The first spell that leaps out with a huge buff is the change to Avenging Wrath, which no longer causes Forebearance. Its damage increase has been reduced to 20% (down from 30%), and now increases healing done by 20% (up from 0%).
