Long time no post, so, time for some 3.2 Q&A (Part 1)

So what's happening? Yeah, been a while since I've posted but, I've been busy with other things as usual, and my PTR testing has been spoiled due in part to speed hackers in battlegrounds, arena, and even dueling sometimes. Funny thing is, I ended up killing 3/5 of the guys who didn't know what they were doing with the hacks, but that's another story.

I decided to make a Q&A about the PTR, using some questions that I've received from people on the PTR and live, asking my opinion on the new changes, here goes

Q: Vidication, should I really invest my points into this talent? It only affects attack power now, therefor making it worthless to 3 classes in the game totally, and 5 specs of the hybrids.
A: It's a hard choice really, and I see it coming down to personal preference, or what setups/brackets of arena you'd be playing in. Seeing as how most 3v3 arena right now is cleave, it would be good. However, with 3v3 and 5v5 getting all the attention now, don't count on tons of cleave comps. I more than likely will not be specing into this, hypocritical from my last post, but further testing has made me not really care for the talent.

Q: Pally damage is going down, how do we kill stuff? I've been reading in forums everywhere that Ret damage is pretty "lol" now, and that we'll rely on a MS class to kill things.
A: This isn't true. Yes, seal damage is lower, and Crusader Strike's damaged was lowered. The difference here though is the re-addition of Exorcism back into the Ret rotation and the four second cooldown of Crusader Strike allows for less of that "waiting on cooldowns" dps feel that the current Crusader Strike can have in certain situations. That's just from a PvP stantpoint, our PvE damage from what I understand is quite a bit higher, but I'll adress seals later. Overall, I'd say our damage is a little higher than it is now.

Q: How's Ret's survivabilty now? With the removal of Seal of Blood/Martyr, does it really feel different? And Art of War?
A: First, Art of War is different, but some people got this wrong for a while on forums, and even I did (I think) on my first PTR post. It is now being activated by all melee crits (this includes Judgements), allowing for a pretty reliable (if not up the whole time) stream of AoW procs. Also another change to note is that you choose now, you either cast an instant cast Exorcism (1.5 sec cast now, forgot to mention, sorry holy and prot) or the usual Flash of Light. Another change is Sacred Shield, and this is my favorite. If you have this active, and cast flash on a target, they get a HoT for 100% of the Flash of Light spell you cast. Combine that with a critical heal, and you'll have two HoTs rolling on your target with sacred shield, providing some very decent, if not borderline over powered self heals. Survial is up 75% I'd say, which is pretty high, seeing as we can survive pretty well right now if played right.

Q: The resilience changes seems to be a double edged sword...On one hand we benefit more from wearing mostly PvP gear, but the same can be said for the people we go up against with heavy resil, healers in particular. What's your opinion, stick with mostly PvE gear or migrate to PvP gear and give up some damage?
A: Well, I for one never liked PvE gear being so dominant in PvP. I really liked how it was in BC, when resil gear was usually always better than anyone rocking full PvE gear, especially in the case of Warriors, and Paladins. Only class back then that could get away with nothing but PvE gear were rogues, but that's blizzard's fault for making their PvP gear always bad compared to their PvE loots. If you must, you can maybe get away with wearing PvE gear as usual, but don't expect do be doing all the damage you are doing currently. With the nerfs in damage, and buffs in resil, the guys in full resil gear will be hitting you harder than you are hitting them. Since a Ret with around my resil (773), which comes out to be a 9.43% damage reduction and and 20% crit damage reduction (unless of course the static stacks with crit, in which case you're looking at a loss of 30% damage on crits, unsure on that at the moment). That gear vs someone with maybe about 150 more ap than what I have, but 100-200 less resil is substantial. If you wear PvE gear, you do so at your own risk.

Well, that's going to do it for this Q&A tonight, going to bed. I'll be back with some more answered questions. Hope it was helpful :)

The new Retribution, and hints at the future expansion

So we are on the verge of the next patch, and I have new revisions, and new thoughts after actually being able to play on the PTR. First of all, I LOVE my new charger, I also made it to the WoWHead database, see here. Anyway, moving on to actual mechanics.

First on the list, I have to point out the things in my last post that were proven wrong after some testing.

Righteous Fury: Probably bugged as of this last PTR build, the tooltip shows that it has no mana cost, sadly, it still does. So atm, no free six percent damage reduction.
Vindication: Actually a very useful talent at the moment, where as I said otherwise in my last post. Sadly, I think this talent will be almost useless come late season seven or early season eight, seeing as it won't scale, besides (what I think) with level increase.
Art of War: This procs off Judgement as well.

Now to talk about some fixes in the new PTR build. Well, there were really only two. The Crusader Strike previously was still costing the same amount of mana as it does on live. This was causing minor mana issues, this is has been fixed, now it's only five percent base mana, which helps out greatly. Also, thankfully, they fixed the proc on Seal of Command to proc off of Divine Storm. This helped out with the DPS on the seal.

So far, testing has been great, and I have been enjoying the new ret. It still is bursty, but not to the degree of killing people in a Hammer at fifty percent. The survivability has gone up considerably however. With the new resilience change, and the change to sacred shield, we are living longer, and fitting more into the defensive hybrid we are supposed to be. To be totally honest, I'm quite glad that I'm not getting destroyed by full twenty-five man Naxx, or Hateful Glad. geared Death Knights, other Ret Paladins, and Rogues, just because my resilience doesn't seem to matter.

I'll have some videos as soon as I can, at the moment however, I seem to be lagging worse on the PTR than live. Remember, on live, I'm running a completely overhauled UI, whilst on the PTR, I have no addons. Who knows.

Oh and on another note, seems like we might be seeing a third expansion to be announced on Blizzcon. Want to know more? Click me!

Until my next post, get on the PTR and find me, I was posted as Sunstrikesc, but now it's Sunstriker.

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.