“Lay on Hands can no longer be cast on yourself.”
Wat?
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.
Armory Feed
I just want to know if this is a PvP inspired nerf or a PvE inspired nerf… either way it sucks, but I’m sick of PvP causing PvE nerfs.
I thought this was a joke at first….I am shocked. O_O
It’s not fair. Pallys are getting nerfed too much. If they want to kill our LOH, they should replace it with some other useful spell, maybe a bubble shield number 2 !
@Orthien
27 October 2009 at 11:00 pm #
Im also really anoyed at this, but only alittle because I almost never use it.
What really grinds me is the change to Sacred Shield that means it can only be cast evey 30sec and to be viable we need to spec into the holy tree. A class shouldnt have to pick a spacific tree to make their level 80 talent usefull.
I have a bad feeling that were getting back on the nerf slide that were pushed onto for the first few years of WoW.
Were you really all that much of a fan of Laying your Hands on yourself?
You’ll go blind. Or get hair on your palms.
Sorry, it had to be done.
Let me just state that this change to LoH was datamined from the newest PTR build, and is NOT in the official notes for the new build. This was datamined as a spell comparison, and as such, we can’t guarantee one way or the other as to whether or not this will go live. Even if it does pop up on the PTR, it still has to survive the PTR before it comes to the live servers.
Fear not, brothers and sisters, there is still hope. =)
You should read GC’s explanatory post:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=20677861597
Basically: “Paladins have been buffed a lot, and now solo too well. We need to tone them down a little, to prevent them from being one-man armies. The PTR changes aren’t set in stone, but are some things we’re testing along that direction.”
@Orthien
28 October 2009 at 1:04 am #
While I assume that the change wont go live this is Blizzard and we are Paladins and the history doesn’t leave much hope.
Yet still I pray to one day get a developer that understands Paladins and not just know us from the forums.
Ghostcrawler posted on the forums with this
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/27/20677861597-recent-33-ptr-paladin-changes.html
Thought you guys should know. =)
i can in no shape or form accept the changes.
first they nerf sacred shield for prot and ret. specially after prot pallies have a certain talent called divine guardian that ENHANCES that spell tenfold.
then they nerf lay on hands like that? really? we NEED an explanation for this damn change. why is it going through? or a more important question: why was this change proposed in the first place?
just one thing to keep in mind however, this is just a datamined spell comparison and not in the official notes yet. so i guess we should wait on that.
ignore my comment…
i hadn’t refreshed the page until i read some of the other comments. but i still do not see why LOH was getting such a massive overhaul.
@ lanaka
thanks for that link!
Removing it entirely is crazy, I agree that the PVP > PVE thing is annoying,
But I could see mana required 100% or something similar.
@Rhidach
28 October 2009 at 8:20 am #
Good point hpavc, I’d see that as a reasonable change if they’re really concerned about there being no penalty to self-LoHing.
Still, in a game where a Warlock can SS themselves or a Shaman can pop right back up from the dead, it’s a little silly to single this ability out for Paladins.
I still don’t understand why Blizzard doesn’t just completely separate PVP and PVE. One nerfing the other has gotten way out of hand. It’ll make their lives easier, our lives happier, and they can finally leave well enough alone.
@Rhidach
28 October 2009 at 10:07 am #
I agree, just make it so LoH can’t be used in BGs or something. I’m sick of them hurting me in pve encounters because someone can’t kill a Ret pally.
You can’t use it in arena, so taking it out of BGs seems like a semi-easy change.
Either way, this is a warning shot. They’re going to nerf something.
It kind of sucks, AD was a tad OP when it was recently updated, but after they nerfed it, I can honestly say it doesn’t feel like it’s doing shit for me unless I’m going to die anyway. Hard mode Mimi? Useless. Thank god I have another tank that can taunt after I blow DP and a Guardian Spirit.
This is why I hate doing “AMG THE SKY IS FALLING PTR!!!” posts – because all the napkin math we did about DS/DG is now gone.
It’s ok though – I can now focus on a post regarding Sacred Shield.
@Rhidach
28 October 2009 at 1:27 pm #
I can see it now…
Next PTR build: Sacred Shield is now an 11-point talent in the Holy tree.
Adgamorix: OH COME ON.
haha
poor adgamorix
It’s true. Look how many people went ape over the LoH change – and that wasn’t even LIVE! That was just dataminded (I swear Blizzard devs do that to mess with us) and the community was in an uproar. I like theorycrafting as much as the next guy, but really – you have to admit that they are getting better about not making class breaking changes – even if we don’t like the change they make.
If they really want to nerf someone in PVP i know a few more appropriate candidates.
Undead racial 2 cc breakers?
Warlock = fear? re-fear? more fearing !?!?!?
Mage = Sheep ? blink ? invisible ? frost ?
Rogue = stun lock , stun stun stun your dead…. oh blink hide /heal stun repeat your dead for sure this time
Druid feral = dps , stun, change bear stun, change cat dps dps… your dead….