Top of the fold update: Blizz fixed the page. Originally they had what will probably be our s8 set up as t10. They’ve since corrected it.
Now what we have is just what we saw from mmo-champ, and the dress is confirmed as well.
Sigh, looks like another tier of offset legguards for me. (Not a huge loss considering how awesome those crafted pants looked.)
For Icecrown Citadel, we are implementing a spell that will affect every enemy creature in the raid. The spell, called Chill of the Throne, will allow creatures to ignore 20% of the dodge chance of their melee targets.
So upon stepping into Icecrown I will have 5.09% dodge. Oh my.
Not to mention block capping will also be impossible in there.
You know what that means, right? MOAR STAM! Rather than marginalizing effective health as a tank metric, they’ve made it just about the only tank metric left. Good job, Blizzard.
Oh, and even better! Because we’ll have more consistent, predictable damage–rather than the occasional 20k hits–block will become that much more potent a mechanic. Block tanks always thrive against smaller hits.
Funniest line in Blizz’s statement?
Going forward past Icecrown Citadel, we have plans to keep tank avoidance from growing so high again.
I’ve heard that before!
Edit: At second inspection, this explains the crazy dodge in our t10 4pc bonus.
Save this macro (from Theck) now, and just drop it on your bars once 3.3 hits:
/cast Divine Sacrifice
/in 0.5 /script CancelUnitBuff(“player”,”Divine Sacrifice”)
Click only once, and thanks to the recent PTR change to Divine Guardian you’ll put up a 20% raid damage reduction without taking any damage:
3.3 is such a kick in the teeth.
Edit: My rage has subsided a tad. Here’s my beef: LoH has been self-castable since day one of WoW. Now, all of a sudden, they decide it’s overpowered. Why?
The obvious answer is pvp QQ, of course. This has survived four years of pve without being considered a detriment to balance, and now suddenly at the fever pitch of anti-Pally QQ they decide to bring down the nerfbat? I don’t buy that the two are not connected.
And of course, the unintended consequences are legion. One: LoH has always been considered an unofficial Oh Shit button for tanking. One of our only two mainline clickable cooldowns, nerfed to the ground.
Moreover, this was used as a fake-innervate by Holy Paladins. No more.
A life saver while levelling? Ha! Nice try, you OP bastards.
Like they say, to the ground.
Edit2: lawl, this was an April Fool’s Joke once.
Edit3: Ghostcrawler weighs in. No nerf… for now.
I wouldn’t worry too much on the Lay on Hands change at this point. I don’t want to promise we won’t change the spell for 3.3, but our intent was to revert the others only change before it went out to the PTR, which is why we didn’t patch note it. We have already changed it back on our local builds.
The paladin class isn’t just supposed to be for support anymore, but at the same time, the original intent for many paladin abilities was to help the group. Over time however they have contributed into making the paladin into a “one-man army,” able to play offensively, defensively and heal without say the stance changing or shapeshifting or sometimes event talent specialization required of other classes. Many of the LK balance problems we’ve had with the class are because of that core issue.
With that said, we’re just not sure a Lay on Hands change really accomplishes much from a balance perspective, while it feels bad to lose such an iconic ability. We just don’t think the bang for the buck is there on this change, which is why we reverted it. But I’m not going to promise we won’t touch it.
I guess that’s reassuring(?). Nonetheless, we live to self-LoH another day.
This makes me want this set all the more. Sans dress, of course, no matter how unlikely that is.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gctz518frXQ]
And how awesome is that shield, tilted diagonally on the back?
/drool
I’m not going to ninja mmo-champ’s picture, but nonetheless, it’s kinda badass. I’m a fan. Especially of the whole “knight” vibe to it.
I’m hoping that pink part of the helmet isn’t textured correctly yet. Looks out of place.
Gets my thumbs up.
Edit/Update: I’m hoping this is the color/version that gets used in the end.
There’s a version floating around with a dress. I hope Blizz isn’t serious.
- Your Hammer of the Righteous ability deals 20% increased damage.
I’m a very big fan of this bonus. HotR is one the biggest contributors to our total threat in AOE situations (presuming we’re not talking about dealing with 50 whelps here, then obviously Consecrate is king) and any boost to the damage of our cleave will be a nice pad on the threat meters. I especially like the thought of having this as an opener at the beginning of a trash pack, giving dps a higher initial threat window.
- When you activate Divine Plea, you gain 12% dodge for 10 seconds.
There’s a pretty tedious debate roiling the tanking forums over this bonus, with all the Pallies saying it’s pretty “meh” when viewed in comparison to the damage reduction bonuses that the other three tanking classes get, and all the other tanks complaining about how overpowered Ardent Defender is. But then again, that’s the kind of intellectual discourse one can expect out of that hive of scum and whinery.
I’m not surprised that Blizzard didn’t give us a damage reduction bonus, because honestly the furor that would have risen up would have been deafening. All the various aggrieved DKs and Warriors would have whipped out their little calculators and furiously pounded out a myriad of numbers indicating that suddenly Paladins had widened the mystical EH gap (while Druids sat chuckling quietly to themselves in the corner). And so the effigies would be erected once more against us,
So much easier to just give Pallies a so-so avoidance boost (I say so-so because avoidance is still, when reduced to the lowest common denominator, RNG). Less trouble this way.
Don’t get me wrong, 12% dodge is nice, especially with no diminishing returns. But I’d prefer a damage reduction any day of the week. There’s just no comparison between the two kinds of bonuses.
- Divine Guardian: This talent no longer increases the amount of damage transferred to the paladin from Divine Sacrifice. Instead it causes all raid and party members to take 10/20% reduced damage while Divine Sacrifice is active.
- Divine Sacrifice: Redesigned. The effect of Divine Sacrifice is now party-only and the maximum damage which can be transferred is now limited to 40% of the paladin’s health multiplied by the number of party members. In addition, the damage transferred to the paladin is now reduced by 50% before being applied to the paladin. Finally, the bug which allowed Divine Sacrifice to sometimes persist despite reaching its maximum damage has been fixed. Divine Sacrifice will now cancel as soon as its maximum damage value is exceeded in all cases.
This is a lame change. While it may seem like an improvement over the old DivSac (ie, no longer needing to Divine Shield to use it for maximum benefit), it’s a pretty big nerf for all intents and purposes. To get the best version of this spell, Ret and Holy would have to go 17 points deep into the Prot tree, which I sincerely doubt is feasible at this point, so the pool of how many people will be using this will be severely shrunken.
Moreover, it went from a flat 40% raid damage soak to a 20% damage reduction. Again, huge nerf. The only upside is, like I said before, the removal of needing to burden yourself with Forbearance to use the spell, but just about everything else is a downside. Thanks Blizz, for crippling one of our best utilities.
Adgamorix did a great analysis about this change that was a bit more upbeat than my take. I suppose the buff to how damage you can nab from your party is nice, but I’d still prefer a 40% raid damage soak.
(Image ganked from mmo-champ.)
When I first heard of this sword, my initial thought was “Tank legendary!” (I am prone to delusions). Then, reports of a quest to purify it in the Sunwell further piqued my lust. And, then I read the chain of datamined quests.
Somehow you get the hilt, and then a series of quests occur where you learn about the sword and how to reforge it. Materials are gathered, the ghost of either Uther or the Blood elf that wielded the sword at the Sunwell visit you, depending on your faction. You then go to the Sunwell itself and dip the blade into the sacred font, making it pure oncemore.
And then you give it to the Argent Cruade.
Efff. What a tease.
While I wasn’t expecting a Legendary forged through five-mans and old raids (even though it looks like you won’t actually have to raid the Sunwell), some kind of usable item would have been nice. A new Quel’serrar-esque tanking weapon perhaps.
Nope, another toy for Tirion. I hate that guy.
So apparently 3.2.2 is dropping today according to mmo-champ. While it might make sense to spend the first night of this raid reset mourning the AD nerf, we tankadins are made of stronger stuff. Grab your boot straps and make the best of this down-tuning. Here’s what you need to know about the changes to our class in this patch.
1. Our threat nerf will work out to around a 5% tps loss
We’re going to lose about 100 spell power from the change to Touched by the Light and receive 10% less bonus threat from Holy damage thanks to the Righteous Fury change. This seems drastic, but smarter folks than I have calculated that out to “only” a 5-6% loss in tps. Not the end of the world. Might not even be noticeable.
To compensate be sure to get more hit so your threat is more consistent. Get expertise soft-capped too. And if you find your threat cratering, considering the Accuracy enchant for your weapon. (Don’t go overboard and gem for strength, though.)
2. Seal of Command is still not for tanking
I know the new aoe aspect looks tempting, but this is really a buff for Ret in trash–it’s not meant for us. You’re going to do more threat with SoV/C up and HotRing stacks on to a swath of mobs than hitting individual guys for a pittance and chaining two extra holy strikes on your single weapon swings. Avoid the temptation to go spec into SoComm.
3. Judgement Helm is awesome and you want it
Srsly. It’s freaking T2 and it has hit. I honestly don’t know which is better.
Oh. Right. The T2 part.
4. No more libram swapping
I don’t think many people did this anyway, but just in case, we can’t libram swap anymore. If you unequip a libram you lose its effect.
5. <35% is going to hurt a lot more
Ardent Defender received an annoying nerf that will make the sub-35% hp zone a little more dangerous for us. The change overall is about a 9% effective health loss, unfortunately. It doesn’t gimp us (the change was actually justifiable in terms of how powerful AD was) but it does mean that we’re not as “invincible” as we once were.
They nerfed AD on the latest version of the PTR.
Actually, this is a perfectly justifiable nerf, considering what a godly talent Ardent Defender is at the moment.
Nevertheless, I hope this is the end of the tweaks, though I’m not convinced it will be.
Ardent Defender: This talent now reduces damage taken below 35% health by 7/13/20% instead of 10/20/30%.
The change to HotR was taken out as well.
Exclusively by 
