retribution-paladin
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Cataclysm Beta: Holy power questions
Holy power is the big conversation topic for paladins right now (well, that and mobility in PvP -- but that's always a topic of conversation for paladins). For those of you who have been out of the loop, Blizzard announced during its last developer chat that for the betterment of the class, paladins would be receiving a new resource called holy power. This would be used in conjunction with mana for a variety of new and existing abilities. So after having played with holy power on the beta realms, we decided to ask our Twitter followers if they had any questions or concerns about this new system for us to look into. Soranomaru asks: "How fast does it accrue? How do you spend it effectively? Is it a mechanic to empower spellcasts or another ressource like mana?" Short answers: Currently, every 3 seconds for ret, 4 seconds for prot, and 6 seconds for holy due to the abilities and talents they'd be using to earn it. Usually, three points is the most efficient. It's a secondary resource, like runic power is to runes on a death knight, and there are certain abilities that use it and other abilities that have nothing to do with it. Long answers: Holy power is a secondary resource that you'll have along with your current mana bar. As retribution and protection, you'll be using Crusader Strike to build up your holy power points (HPP). If you're holy, you'll still have access to Crusader Strike, but you will also be using Holy Shock to build up that HPP. The most HPP you can build up at a time is three, so you'll be earning and spending fairly quickly. Some abilities give a flat rate based on how much holy power you put into it (Word of Glory), while others get much more efficient with the more points used (Templar's Verdict).
Cataclysm Beta: New talent trees for paladins
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 soon, an entire flight of black dragons. Last night, Blizzard released the new talent tree system onto the beta realms for people to take a gander at and test out. Each class is at various stages of done-ness, with some needing pruning, others needing tuning and still others just need another iteration or two before truly being ready. Paladins fall into that last category, along with three other classes. Here are a couple of excerpts from the beta patch notes, with bold added for emphasis: Cataclysm Beta Patch Notes - Build 12479 While this is a first pass on all of the talent trees, death knight, druid, paladin, warlock, Arcane mage, and Assassination rogue trees are not as far along as other specializations. ... Paladins * We are in the process of overhauling many paladin talents, spells and abilities. Expect updates in upcoming patches. source Things like more healing abilities for holy, Holy Shield moving from a maintained ability to a tanking cooldown, and three new planned but unimplemented attack abilities for retribution are all in the pipeline, as well as a shakeup of the talents we've already been provided. So, without further ado, I present a first draft of the paladin talent trees. [ Holy ] [ Protection ] [ Retribution ] The Light and How to Swing It tries to help Paladins cope with the dark times coming in Cataclysm. See the upcoming Paladin changes the expansion will bring. Wrath is coming to a close and the final showdown with the Lich King is here. With Cataclysm soon heating things up, will you be ready?
The Light and How to Swing It: Retribution 101
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. This week, we're looking at retribution paladins. Retribution. This is what every paladin begins as. No shield to hide behind. Just a big two-handed weapon slung on your back and grim determination as your guide. And, sadly, the spec that took the longest to become completely viable. It's been a hard road for the retribution paladin. In classic era, you only used retribution to level up and then you were expected to heal or play blessing-bot for raids. In the days of Burning Crusade, retribution was a little better and could be okay if you stacked your raid the right way. However, they'd rather you be the adds tank or heal. Then Wrath hit and retribution came into its own... or should I say 'pwn' (bad joke, but absolutely true if you remember early Wrath). After some balancing, retuning, and all of those other euphamisms for 'nerf,' we're a still a fairly decent force along with the rest of the pack. Let's take a deeper look into the good, the bad, and the ugly of the ret pally.
Ashen Verdict strength ring in minor content patch
Bornakk popped onto the forums late Thursday to confirm that Blizzard is planning to add a +strength version to the Ashen Verdict rings in an upcoming mini-patch. The appearance of the four current rings with patch 3.3 caused a minor furor on the forums, with plate DPS being left out in the cold. While there are +strength DPS rings available elsewhere in Icecrown Citadel, there's no replacement for a reputation ring's valuable proc. One of the interesting things about the +strength ring's initial absence wasn't its absence per se, but the reason for omitting it. Apparently the Ashen Verdict choices were a reproduction of older reputation-linked quest items (e.g. Violet Eye and Scale of the Sands rings) that allowed only four choices, and Blizzard wasn't able to get past the programming issues to add a fifth option before 3.3 went live. Well, that's going to get fixed in the upcoming mini-patch, which will also see a few other class-related changes. The date of the patch is still anyone's guess, but we'll keep an eye out for you.
WoW Rookie: Leveling a paladin tank
New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the basics of a good start in the World of Warcraft. For links to all our tips, tricks and how-to's, visit WoW.com's WoW Rookie Guide. Want to level your paladin as a tank? You got it! Before the Dungeon Finder tool was launched in December, finding level-appropriate instance groups was well nigh impossible. Occasional knots of newborn death knights might putter about in a favorite Burning Crusade instance to scoop up some gear. The rest of the pre-Northrend instances remained ghost towns, populated only by speed-running level 80s who were farming or running low-level buddies through some quick levels. But the Dungeon Finder has re-invigorated the instances of Azeroth, Outland and beyond. What does that mean for leveling players? If you love to play in groups and instances or if you're looking ahead to raiding and want to lay down your skill base now, you can.
Patch 3.3 PTR: Ghostcrawler explains Paladin changes
You know how it goes. Blizzard nerfs Paladins, Paladins shake their heads in disbelief, then break out the pitchforks and scream bloody murder for a bit, beg Blizzard not to push through with the changes, and eventually run home and cry into My Little Pony sheets and staining pink underwear. Sure enough, when the recent PTR patch notes hinted at nerfs to the Paladin class, the pitchfork-wielding and bloody murder-screaming ensued. We're now about to enter the stage of bargaining. It's still on the PTR, after all. For those wondering what the bed-wetting ruckus is all about, Sacred Shield was nerfed to proc only once every 30 seconds (essentially proccing only once every cast of the spell unless augmented with talents), Aura Mastery was nerfed to 6 seconds down from 10, and Lay on Hands is being primed to be uncastable on one's self. Ghostcrawler said that he didn't "want to promise (they) won't change the spell for 3.3," but that players also shouldn't "worry too much on the Lay on Hands change at this point" since it didn't make it to the latest PTR build. He explains in the forums that Paladins are no longer just a support class (as they were for quite a long time), but that all the abilities over time have contributed to making the class feel like a "one-man army" that is able to play offensively, defensively, and essentially take on more challenges without having to change stances, forms, or even specs. In a rather snippy response to a troll crying (with My Little Pony blanket in hand) in the forums, Ghostcrawler simply said, "Dear OP, Bye. Hugs, GC."
Class Q&A: Paladin
Once again, it's time for a Class Q&A with Ghostcrawler! Today Paladins get their chance to shine (previously: Shaman, Mage, Death Knight, Warlock). As with the other Q&As, this one starts with a bit on what the idea is behind paladins, with a glance at their history and at their present. In the beginning: paladins were a "defensive buffing class...buffs were pretty much the entire reason you'd want to group with a paladin." End-game classic WoW: paladins were healers only. BC: paladins could tank, but were still mostly OTs. Wrath: "finally embraced all three specs." Paladins still have several unique facets: bubbles, strong dispels, plate armor as a healer, and the Seal and Judgment system. Itemization: so far in Wrath, MP5 wasn't particularly valuable, and they claim it wasn't inteded to be. They still think MP5 is undervalued right now, though, hence the buffs coming to it in patch 3.2. They also think Int/Crit based mana regen is a bit out of control, and furthermore than in patch 3.2, some Holy pallies might look into taking Haste.
Vindication hotfixed, no longer affects Stam or Int
A hotfix is in the works for the Retribution Paladin talent Vindication. When the fix goes live ("as early as this afternoon"), Vindication will no longer reduce the Intellect or Stamina of affected targets. It will continue to reduce Agility, Spirit, and Strength. As usual, tooltips will not immediately update to reflect this change; the tooltips will be incorrect until they can be fixed in a content patch. Bornakk says this fix was put in place to address Retribution paladins being "very prominent" in PvP, "especially in the lower Arena brackets," without hurting Ret PvE DPS. Nerfing a class based on performance in lower brackets seems a little weird to me, but whatever. We did have some rumblings that something like this was coming - a PvP nerf that doesn't affect PvE. This certainly covers those bases. It leaves Vindication a pretty lackluster talent, though. Will you still keep it in your talent spec?
The Light and How to Swing It: Retribution tips and tricks in Ulduar
I know, it's another Retribution post, but since we got hit with the nerf bat again (ever so slightly) I decided to devote one last column to the spec before I rotate back to Protection. Besides, my past month or so has been spent raiding Ulduar as Retribution (with the first few forays as Holy) so I think that's what I'll talk about for now. Rather than talk about specific boss strategies, we'll talk about the little things we can do to perform at our best in Ulduar. Flame Leviathan First up is Flame Leviathan. Obviously, none of the usual strategies will apply here but one key point players should remember is that the vehicles scale with gear. This means having to prepare an outfit set optimized for the encounter. One thing to note about vehicle scaling is that it doesn't look at stats, just iLevel. Optimizing a gear set for this means putting the highest iLevel item you have in every slot. For "pure" classes, this is usually their normal set-up, but for Paladins who keep several sets of gear, an iLevel-optimized outfit can be composed of healing items, a few tank items, some DPS items, and even PvP gear. Players can use AddOns such as RatingBuster to determine an item's iLevel and outfit managers such as Outfitter or Blizzard's new in-game equipment manager to quickly swap gear.
The Colosseum: Butteslol of Gorefiend
The Colosseum takes us inside the world of the Gladiator (Brutal, Vengeful, Merciless, and otherwise), to interview some of the top Arena fighters in the battlegroups. Our goal is to bring a better understanding of the strategy, makeup, and work that goes into dueling it out for fame, fortune, and Netherdrakes.A new season is on us, and new breeds of compositions are rising to the top. The first Colosseum interview of Season 6 is with Butteslol, the Discipline Priest in the team "idk im just so furious." Along with Retribution Paladin Carboncopy, Butteslol has blazed a trail to high ratings very early in the season.Retribution/Discipline has been a technical player's favorite for a little while, thanks to the vast toolbox the composition can bring to bear in several situations. Affected by the recent Replenishment nerf, however, it's going to be interesting to see what happens for Butteslol in the future.Check out what he had to say behind the cut.
Replenishment is mandatory and other buff discussion from Ghostcrawler
One of the major overhauls heading from Burning Crusade into Wrath of the Lich King was the consolidation of buffs and debuffs. In an attempt to keep raid groups from thinking they had to bring one specific class to get one specific buff or debuff, Blizzard switched some spells up, gave buffs to more classes, and made them unstackable, the result being that one can take one of a certain handful of class and specs to get the buff or debuff they desire, in theory giving a raid more choice about who they bring. Still, the buffs and debuffs remain, and Ghostcrawler has been having some pretty interesting discussions about them in the past few days. To start with, he came out and said it pretty plainly: Replenishment is Mandatory. Blizzard will balance fights under the assumption you have Replenishment much as they do under the assumption you have a tank. In the short term, this means your raid is probably going to want to find a Shadow Priest, Retribution Paladin, or Survival Hunter if they haven't already.
The Light and How to Swing It: Gearing up your Retribution Paladin for Hit
I know I was supposed to write a guide to gearing up for Haste, but some of you pointed out that Hit is way more important, particularly with the change to melee Haste in late Burning Crusade. You guys are absolutely right, as melee Haste no longer gives the same oomph in Wrath as it did back then. In fact, if we're looking at maximizing our DPS, it's important to actually land our hits. All that Strength isn't going to do jack if we miss our target.So first things first. We make out Hit cap, which frees up our gems and enchants for the all-important Strength. At Level 80, every 32.8 Hit Rating gives us 1% Hit, which means that we'll need a total of about 262.4 to reach the cap or 8%. Raid bosses are considered to be Level 83, three levels above max level -- hence the skull, so we'll need 8%, or 3% above the 5% base chance to miss targets of the same level. Fortunately, there's a whole lot of +Hit DPS plate in Northrend that we won't struggle to hit that cap at all. Here's a quick guide to gearing up our Retribution Paladins for +Hit.
The truth about Ret fixes
Rumors and unsubstantiated news have been floating through the ether like confetti since last night, when Ghostcrawler predicted Ret was going to be nerfed. Today he's finally out and said what they've hotfixed in and what's coming in the future: Nerfs: Divine Storm now does physical damage instead of holy (live). Repentance down to 6 seconds in PvP (from 10, live). Buff: Righteous Vengeance now applies a DoT "similar to Deep Wounds" instead of upping crit damage. GC calls it "a significant buff to the ability to make up for the damage lost to Divine Storm, but is also less bursty." The DoT will not break Repentance. (coming before Wrath) Update: "It should end up at something like 10% of the crit damage each tick for 4 ticks of 2 seconds each (+40% and 8 sec total)." Neutral: Art of War improves damage done by Judgments, Crusader Strike, and Divine storm, instead of upping crit rate. GC says "net dps should be about the same but less bursty" (coming before Wrath). Glyph of Crusader Strike now reduces mana cost, since the devs felt pallies were able to do too much damage on stunned targets (coming before Wrath). Fixed a bug with Seal and Judgment of Light that would result in too much healing. Technically a nerf, but since it's a bug fix I can't really put it in that category. (live) Overall, GC assures us that sustained Ret DPS remains the same as before this storm of changes; it's just less bursty at the front end of a PvP fight. He also says "if we overdid it, we'll be happy to back off some of the changes," so we'll just have to see how it works out, I suppose. One more thing. This isn't directly a Paladin change, but it will primarly affect Paladins, I think: the damage reduction Warlocks get from having their Felguard out with Master Demonologist is being extended to include Holy.
Divine Storm now less divine
As promised, it looks like Retribution has been nerfed, through a hotfix. The substance of the nerf is as follows: Divine Storm now does physical damage, not Holy. This means, among other things, it's mitigated by armor, which should obviously cut its damage significantly against certain classes. Many people have noticed a similarity between this sequence of events and something that happened back when 2.0 was released, right before Burning Crusade. Divine Storm is the 51-point Retribution talent. The 41-point Ret talent, Crusader Strike, was pretty overpowered at level 60, so Blizz nerfed it, only to have to buff it back up later in the expansion. The Divine Storm nerf is, similarly, in the context of level 70 balance. At level 80, where much of the Wrath balance testing has been done, Divine Storm may well have fit right in. Is an un-nerf coming when Wrath is released? Paladins can only hope. Update: I am also told that they may have reduced the health/mana returned from Judgment of Light and Judgment of Wisdom by 50%, and reduced the damage of Judgment of Command by 25%. There still isn't a blue post that I can find about any of this, so it's hard to confirm -- can anyone confirm/deny the Judgment changes? [thanks, Nyttyn]
Breakfast Topic: How hybrid DPS could still get screwed in Wrath
Recently a bunch of the writers here were talking about all the changes we're seeing to various hybrid DPS specs. Retribution in the beta is known to bring some serious pain, cat DPS has been given some pretty sweet buffs, and Shamans...well, Shamans seem to be in a state of flux, but when is that not true? With tank AoE threat buffed, the need for crowd control may also be a thing of the past, thus eliminating one of the more annoying roadblocks to hybrid desirability in 5-man groups. For 5-mans, at least, hybrid DPS should encounter significantly less difficulty (we hope) getting a slot.However, it was my contention that, for the purpose of raiding, it doesn't ultimately matter how much these specs get buffed. They could do amazing DPS, bring incredible buffs, have any number of raid-saving abilities, and fart gold on every crit -- but you're still not going to see a lot of hybrid DPS running around Wrath raids for one very simple reason: someone has to tank and heal, and neither job is sufficiently attractive to allow most hybrid players to come as DPS. When it's a choice between respeccing resto or the raid never getting off the ground, most players will respec resto -- and decisions like that tend to be fairly hard to escape. The next night rolls around and -- um, do you mind coming as resto again?
Insider Trader: Armorsmiths vs. weaponsmiths
I received a question over the tip line from an armorsmith this morning who is considering switching to weaponsmith because he is dissatisfied with his profession. Player regrets surrounding a chosen specialization, or even profession, are common and happen to almost everyone at one time or another.JDT writes that he is "extremely disappointed" with armorsmithing and what he is able to make, and that one of his reasons for possibly switching to weaponsmithing is that he theorizes it would be helpful to be able to pass down weapons to his alts that cannot wear plate. Unfortunately JDT, anything that you craft as either a weaponsmith or an armorsmith is not only bind on pick-up, but it also requires you to have that specialization in order to wield/wear it. That being said, there are blacksmithing plans for weapons and armor floating around that are bind on equip and can be passed along, but those can be made by any blacksmith regardless of specialization. This week I will begin comparing the various armorsmith and weaponsmith pieces to the first non-crafted upgrades in order to illustrate the value of each item and help each class and spec come to an informed decision when it comes time to choose blacksmithing specialties. Next week I'll finish out the comparison, as there is more than I can fit into this week's edition!
PvE winners and losers in patch 3.0
I'm putting together a class-by-class prediction post on how the changes we'll see in patch 3.0 and beyond will wind up affecting PvE gameplay in Wrath, but it's probably a bit premature to make specific guesses while talents and skills are still being overhauled in the beta. Still, I think a few general trends (at least for 3.0) are pretty clear.I'm calling it now; Paladins will fare best, but Shamans will be the hardest hit by the upcoming changes, especially with respect to raiding. I think this change is driven in no small part by Blizzard's realization that Sunwell-level raid guilds are hugely dependent on the party-specific buffs like totems and Heroism/Bloodlust that Shamans bring. The problem is that Shamans are still the least-played class, which has left raiding guilds desperate for a high-end population of Shamans that simply does not exist (especially Alliance-side). Making Shaman totems and Heroism/Bloodlust buff the entire raid (but heavily nerfing how often the raid can benefit from the latter) means the days of stacking Shamans (or trying to) are effectively over.Paladin changes, especially for holy and retribution, are equally driven by Blizzard's experience with Sunwell. With absolutely breathtaking amounts of raid damage occurring, encounters were disproportionately weighted in favor of: a). healers with more raid-healing capacity, like resto Shamans and CoH Priests (something we heard from SK Gaming months ago) and b). DPS who brought raid-wide DPS buffs to kill the boss as fast as possible (e.g. Retribution Paladins on Brutallus and M'uru). Given the new skills I'm seeing on other healing specs, I'll make another prediction; prepare to see that same level of raid damage rear its ugly head in Naxxramas again.I'll be launching a more extensive prediction post once talents and skills are finalized for Wrath, and then I'd like to do a follow-up post at some point after guilds start conquering level 80 raid content to see whether they were any good.
Outland reputation set- Paladin (DPS): Crusader's Scaled Battlegear
This is the PvP set for DPS Paladins. The Battlegear sets are of a superior quality and are equal to the Level 70 High Warlord gear that can be purchased with honor points. The pieces can be purchased by becoming honored with Cenarion Expedition, Honor Hold/Thrallmar, Keepers of Time, Lower City, and the Sha'tar. Complete sets require honored with all five factions as listed below: Crusader's Scaled Battlegear Slot Rep Crusader's Scaled Gauntlets Hands Thrallmar/Honor Hold Crusader's Scaled Helm Head Keepers of Time Crusader's Scaled Legguards Legs Cenarion Expedition Crusader's Scaled Chestpiece Chest The Sha'tar Crusader's Scaled Shoulders Shoulders Lower City Crusader's Scaled Battlegear Armor Str Sta Int Crusader's Scaled Gauntlets 728 28 25 12 Crusader's Scaled Helm 946 28 60 16 Crusader's Scaled Legguards 1019 36 42 16 Crusader's Scaled Chestpiece 1164 27 42 12 Crusader's Scaled Shoulders 873 25 33 8 Total 4730 144 172 64 Crusader's Scaled Battlegear Crit Resil Dur Gems Crusader's Scaled Gauntlets 12 12 45 Crusader's Scaled Helm 13 15 80 M, R Crusader's Scaled Legguards 16 16 100 Crusader's Scaled Chestpiece 13 14 135 R, R, Y Crusader's Scaled Shoulders 9 10 80 R, Y Total 63 67 440 Set Bonus 2: 35 Resilience Set Bonus 4: Reduces the cooldown of your Hammer of Justice by 10 seconds. Return to the complete Outland Battlegear list
