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.

Daily Blue and PTR Changes Wrap Up

The past few days have been a whirlwind of class changes and blue posts. Make sure you haven’t missed any of the past few days worth of updates.

Daily Blue Wrap Up

• Mage Mana Longevity Buffed
• Death Knight Changes
• Feral Druid Changes
• Hunter Arena WotLK Discussions
• Protection Paladin Buffs, Ret Paladin Nerfs
• Resto Shaman Changes and Spirit Wolves Buffed

Other Important Posts

• WotLK PvP Changes
• Patch 3.0.2 - Build 9038 Class Changes
• WotLK Profession Perks and Bonuses Summary
• WotLK Enchanting Guide

Protection Paladin Buffs and Retribution Paladin Nerfs

Minor buffs to protection paladins, nothing too major though. The biggest and most unknown changes are going to be centered around retribution. There’s no denying that ret is currently out of control, so it’s definitely going to get beat with the nerf stick. I’m very interested to see what type of changes Blizzard has in store for the class, it’d be a real shame to see retribution nerfed back to nothing.

The ret changes will likely be introduced in the build following PTR 9038.

Blessing of Sanctuary
We like Blessing of Sanctuary as a buff you can put on anyone. However, we might do something like let it benefit the paladin more than other targets. (Self buffing gives a better result than buffing someone else.) Or we might just add more paladin mitigation somewhere else in the tree. That all assumes you are deficient. If 2-5% makes a big difference for you (I don’t think it will make that much of a difference, but for sake of argument), then buffing paladins 2-5% when they didn’t need it could also make the other tanks non-starters. We’ll keep testing it.

Shield of the Templar
Okay, here is one change you don’t have. Shield of the Templar now also reduces all damage taken by 1/2/3%.

Critical Block
Critical Block is something we’re still keeping our eye on. I’m not going to promise a paladin version, but it’s totally something we’ll consider if paladin blocking starts to fall behind.

Whoever said it, yes it’s absolutely going to be a challenge trying to get parity among 4 classes with totally different mechanics, and in some sense the warrior to paladin comparison is the easy one. But we don’t like having only one MT class, and we don’t like giving everyone very similar gear, talents and abilities to tank, and we don’t like the situation where you need a different tank for every fight because they all excell at certain types of encounters and suck at others. So the option we’re left with is to have 4 who are different but relatively equal.

Retribution paladins
I can’t imagine too many people think that DKs (Unholy I presume) and Ret Pallys are balanced. We won’t leave things like that.