Saturday, June 20, 2009

Patch 3.2, my thoughts.

So, here we are again, at the brink of a new arena season, more computer monsters to kill, and some fun new stuff. I would go into all the detail, but I'm going over what matters to me, paladin. Yes, I'm skipping holy and prot, because frankly, I don't really care. So the blue post...

Blizz

  • Exorcism: Now has a 1.5 second cast time, but can once again be used on players.
  • Hand of Reckoning: Redesigned. Now does damage only when target does not currently have the caster targeted, but damage done increased to 50% of attack power, occurring after the taunt effect is applied.
  • Judgement of Light: Now heals for 2% of the attacker's maximum health instead of a variable amount based on the spell power and attack power of the judging paladin.
  • Lay on Hands: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 10/20% instead of increasing the target's armor.
  • Righteous Fury: No longer has a duration or mana cost, remaining until cancelled or death. Also cancelled when a Paladin activates a different talent specialization.
  • Sacred Shield: When a paladin casts Flash of Light on a target with this buff, they also now place a heal over time effect on the target, healing that target for 100% of the Flash of Light amount over 12 seconds.
  • Seal of Blood: This ability has been removed.
  • Seal of the Martyr: This ability has been removed.

  • So, where to start. Ah, Exorcism, thank god they brought that back. Now...to the holy and prot paladins, the 1.5
    second cast just, this sucks to be honest, but for ret, it's quite awesome, I'll post that part later. Removing it from PvP was, in general, just cheesy, and bad design. No other class has a spell that doesn't work on players, or usable in PvP in general.
    Judgement of Light, a debuff that's been under quite alot of scrutiny, and it was warrented in all honesty. JoL was allowing melee heavy teams a great healing source, esp for my 3v, which is rogue/ret/shaman. Since the rogue hits so fast, he ended up healing himself to full unless being directly focused just by attacking whoever had the debuff.
    Now, this really caught my attention in the post about Righteous Fury, "...
    remaining until cancelled or death." This could be a great way to apply the talent in the prot tree for this, which decreases damage taken from all sources by 6%, although being negative because it allows an offensive dispelling class an easier time getting off my buffs, since they can't get to that one any longer. We'll see how it plays out, if it can't be dispelled though, you can bet I'll be applying Imp. RF back into my PvP build, tied with how resil will be working after the patch, I'll be taking 26% less damage *cheer*.
    Hmm, giving paladins a HoT, tied to Sacred Shield? Where does this sound familiar? That's right, when the shield is applied to absorb, any flash's cast during that duration of the shield have a substantial chance to crit, and being ret, you get sheath, which is a HoT. Now imagine that same flash putting up two HoTs, yeah, we'll see how long it takes for that change to not go live.