Late Night Blue Posts, DLST, Consortium Bags

Holy & Protection Paladin Thoughts

We are concerned that Holy and Protection may have lost too much dps as “collateral damage” from the Ret nerfs. It is something we’re working on now, though I do believe Holy dps is still a lot better than it was in BC. Healers will always level more slowly than dps specs since using your abilities may keep you alive but doesn’t always kill stuff faster. (source)

Healing Gear and Spell Power

There are still pieces which are more appropriate for one class or spec than another. Some of the changes we made, such as spell power, will blur the lines slightly more. Our goal with that was more to help say an undergeared paladin get healing gear or an undergeared warlock be able to benefit from the “healing” cloth rather than just sharding it.

I’ve played a priest enough (I’ve played every class) to know that it can be frustrating when a paladin wants to roll on a piece of cloth, but most of the time the raid leaders I have run with tend to let the cloth-wearers get first dibs. I agree that there is a big social aspect to loot distribution. To some extent, that is by design. (source)

11-Point Protection Talent Thoughts

We’re not sure if we’re going to do this or not. If we do it (make an 11-point Prot talent that is attractive to Ret) it would be for these reasons:

– It would be cooler if the talent was something fun for Prot and not something they “need” to tank.
– In our experience, Ret paladins who PvP often go down into Prot anyway to get Imp Hammer of Justice.
– I suggested we might offer Ret more PvP utility since we are stripping some of the burst damage, so PvE Retadins might not want this ability anyway.
– We wouldn’t want this talent to be something Prot would never get and Ret would always get. If anything we need to err on the side of something Prot definitely wants. (source)

Day Light Savings Time

Don’t forget that day light savings time comes to an end tonight. So at 2:00 a.m. on 11/1/08 you’ll want to set your clocks back 1 hour if you live a location that adheres to DLST.

Consortium Gem Bags

One final reminder, it’s the 1st of the month so don’t forget to pick up your consortium gem bag for this month from the NPC out in nagrand.

Retribution Paladin Nerfs Incoming

There’s no denying that retribution paladins are insanely overpowered and fortunately (or unfortunately depending…) the nerf stick was officially confirmed earlier this evening. While there are some needed changes to the class to bring its DPS in line with us mere mortals, it isn’t sounding like there are going to be massive wide sweeping changes

Since these threads seem to be proliferating, I figure’d I’d just start a new one. Here is a quick Q&A.

Q: Is Ret OP?
A: Perhaps. We think Ret’s dps isn’t abnormally high in PvE, and may not even be high in PvP over the course of a long fight. Where we are worried is how much damage Ret can do up front. It’s also Holy damage, which isn’t a big deal when you’re considering a fully sundered mob, but can turn into a lot of damage in PvP.

Q: Are we going to nerf Ret?
A: TO THE GROUND BABY. Okay, not really, but sometimes I can’t resist. We’ll see how much that quote comes back to haunt me. We will probably be making some changes soon, perhaps even hotfixes. We want to be very surgical about what we do. We don’t want to overdo it, and we don’t want to hurt their sustained PvE damage. When we’ve decided, I’ll make sure you all know.

Q: Why did it take us this long to admit there was a problem when EVERYONE knew about it?
A: A couple of weeks ago there were some bugs with weapon equipping that caused some problems that of course were being exploited. We didn’t want to nerf Ret TO THE GROUND BABY only to discover that the weapon problem was causing 90% of it.

Q: Enough about Ret. Unholy death knights are worse!
A: That wasn’t a question, but we think we have Unholy in a better place now. We made some changes to a few deep talents (that the DK community is already aware of, so don’t fret) to get Unholy’s dps more in line. Also, you aren’t going to see any PvP DKs for a long time, so we need to focus on paladins for now.

Q: Hi. Thanks for the update. While you’re here, can I ask you all these other offtopic questions about paladins or the game in general?
A: …

Source: Blizzard Forums