Paladin nerfs, part deux!

The patch notes for 3.2.2 are up and Prot/Holy definitely got nerfed.

Judgements of the Just: The reduction in cooldown to Hammer of Justice provided by this talent has been reduced to 5/10 seconds instead of 10/20 seconds.
Touched by the Light: This talent now provides 20/40/60% of the paladin’s strength as spell power instead of 10/20/30% of the paladin’s stamina.

How does this all play out? It means the stun (Hammer of Justice) now has a 30 second cooldown (up from 20 seconds) and spell power went down by about 450-500 depending on gear. A deep Holy paladin should now be able to out Flash of Light a Prot paladin. The question now is: do the benefits of being deep holy (instant heal, bigger heals, haste buff) outweigh the benefits of a 30 second stun cooldown, long lasting/undispellable Divine Plea and a 3 second silence? I suspect for 2v2, Prot/Holy will still be the preferred talent spec. In 3v3, the reduced healing and lack of an instant heal may not cut it. Since 2v2 ratings won’t count for the new top tier of PvP gear, I suspect the vast majority of top level Arena paladins will go back to a deep holy build.

Paladins weren’t the only ones getting a nerf next patch. Rogues got some too, which should make a lot of people happy. And by a lot of people, I mean everyone but rogues.

Fan of Knives: The damage done by this ability has been reduced by 30%.
Combat
Throwing Specialization: This talent no longer causes Fan of Knives to interrupt spellcasting.

Blizzard hates Paladins...again

Ghostcrawler recently announced that they will be doing something to "fix" the problem with deep Protection spec'ed paladins in healing gear. This one hits close to home because I found that the prot/holy spec was much better than any other Holy spec for 2v2 and possibly 3v3 arena. The main problem for Blizzard is the deep Protection talent Touched by the Light which when used with full PvP healing gear, can put a paladin's spellpower well over 2200 and I've had Flash of Light crits for 8000+. It's such a major problem for Blizzard that apparently they won't start the next season of Arena until they fix it.

I haven't done any serious Arena games in a while, but I was planning on getting back into it once things settled down post 3.2. Since I'm pretty much forced to heal in Arena because of the many problems I have with Retribution, I found the Prot/Holy spec to be incredibly fun. Lots of stuns and throwing shields meant I was doing more other than standing there casting Flash of Light over and over and over again, with Holy Shock thrown in every now and then. It was the perfect Arena healing spec for me and MANY others and now they're going to gut it. This, right after they gutted Retribution by giving it a completely lame Seal of Command. Some dedicated Ret players have figured out that a specialized Seal of Righteousness build gives better burst than the lame Seal of Command that Blizz force fed to us as the PvP seal. If the Righteousness build becomes popular, expect to see the nerf bat smash it "to the ground" just like everything else that was good for paladins.

I'm really getting sick of the constant nerfs to paladins. I don't know why they are in the cross hairs so often. I have a feeling that the top 100 teams next season will be nearly paladin free just like they have been for so long now (excluding this season). These kinds of changes aren't really doing much to motivate me to play the game and given my recent lack of motivation I'm not sure I'll be doing much in game other than trying to sell yetis and ammo. Oh yea, they nerfed ammo sales too....

For those who care to read, here's the source Blue posts:

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/19110155361-cannot-kill-self-healing-prot-pallys.html

Bloke in a dress

This past weekend, I did something I had not done before. I finally downed 10 man Emalon the Storm Watcher. I had been in about 4 or 5 fail raids in the past, before I just gave up on it. On Saturday, I got a group together and we got close to taking him down, but couldn’t do it due to a few players who had sub standard DPS. By sub standard I mean awful, e.g. less DPS than the bear tank. So, Sunday afternoon, I see we have plenty of good DPS and enough tanks and healers, so I get the raid together and we down him. I got a very nice upgrade to my PvE healing set, the 10 man tier 8 leg armor.

Once I put the new leg armor on, I realized something. I became a bloke in a dress. I suddenly remembered that some of the tier 8 leg armor looks like a long floor length skirt. Horror washed over me as I realized that now, not only do I have to deal with spiky power ranger shoulder armor for my DPS set, but I have to wear a skirt if I’m healing.

This is further evidence that Blizzard hates paladins.

On customer anger and stealth nerfs

A few quick items today. First, one of the guys we run Naxx 25 with on occasion got an in-game mail last night from an upset customer. What would a customer have to gripe about if all items in game are of equal quality (e.g. all flasks of endless rage are exactly the same)? Well the price of course! With flasks and glyphs going like hotcakes, herbs are also going up in price. Our PUG friend was selling frost lotus at about 18 gold each, where pre 3.1, they were around 8 gold each according to Cathy. This angry consumer basically told our friend that he was a jerk and shouldn’t rip people off. I say, good for you, PUG friend! Keep it up!



On another note, paladins got nerfed…again. This time it was a stealth nerf. No patch notes, no nothing. Exorcism before Tuesday was doing damage to enemy players, now it only does damage to monsters. I understand why Ghostcrawler and his coworkers at Blizzard did it, but not announcing it or including it in the patch notes is pretty crappy customer service. Remember, we pay for this game and are customers. I’ve quit WoW for another MMO before and I can certainly do it again. I was really excited to start doing Arenas with my paladin as Ret again too. Now it’s back to Holy.

And I heal and I heal and I heal and I heal and I heal and I heal. /yawn

I wonder how Warhammer is coming along…


*PS - I think Tom over at Blessing of Might said it best: http://blessingofmight.blogspot.com/2009/04/exorcism-can-no-longer-be-used-on.html