Cataclysm Paladin preview
My comments below in the blockquotes!
Blinding Shield (level 81): Causes damage and blinds all nearby targets. This effect might end up only damaging those facing the paladin’s shield, in a manner similar to Eadric the Pure’s ability Radiance in Trial of the Champion. The Holy tree will have a talent to increase the damage and critical strike chance, while the Protection tree will have a talent to make this spell instant cast. 2-second base cast time. Requires a shield.
I’m torn by this spell. On the one hand, we’ve been told for month now that our aoe is too good and it needed to be toned down (and hell, it very well might), but adding another aoe spell to our toolbox seems counterintuitive. However, Blinding Shield does fill a much needed niche for us: a snap aggro aoe spell, like Warriors’ Shockwave.
Healing Hands (level 83): Healing Hands is a new healing spell. The paladin radiates heals from him or herself, almost like a Healing Stream Totem. It has a short range, but a long enough duration that the paladin can cast other heals while Healing Hands remains active. 15-second cooldown. 6-second duration.
Healing spell, meh. I guess it will be nice for crazy crunch times like Putricide Phase 3 where damage is just flying everywhere and every little bit helps. I’m sure it’ll be pretty weak baseline.
Guardian of Ancient Kings (level 85): Summons a temporary guardian that looks like a winged creature of light armed with a sword. The visual is similar to that of the Resurrection spell used by the paladin in Warcraft III. The guardian has a different effect depending on the talent spec of the paladin. For Holy paladins, the guardian heals the most wounded ally in the area. For Protection paladins, the guardian absorbs some incoming damage. For Retribution paladins, it damages an enemy, similar to the death knight Gargoyle or the Nibelung staff. 3-minute cooldown. 30-second duration (this might vary depending on which guardian appears).
Another damage reduction cooldown? Ok, I like it, and it’s a much better max-level spell than what Sacred Shield was at 80. Here’s hoping it doesn’t pop Forbearance, cause that would just be ridiculous. That mechanic needs to die a fiery death… but, I digress. I’ll always take new cooldowns, though this suggests to me a retooling of Ardent Defender, maybe, so we don’t have *too many* cooldowns.
Changes to Abilities and Mechanics
Crusader Strike will be a core ability for all paladins, gained at level 1. We think the paladin leveling experience is hurt by not having an instant attack. Retribution will be getting a new talent in its place that either modifies Crusader Strike or replaces it completely.
I like it. Makes sense. Probably will be part of our single-target toolbox.
Cleanse is being rebalanced to work with the new dispel system. It will dispel defensive magic (debuffs on friendly targets), diseases, and poisons.
Wait, is this baseline or just for holy? Cause it already dispelled magic debuffs on friendly targets. The wording confuses me.
Blessing of Might will provide the benefit of Wisdom as well. If you have two paladins in your group, one will do Kings on everyone and the other will do Might on everyone. There should be much less need, and ideally no need, to provide specific buffs to specific classes.
Finally, the death of Pally Power!
Holy Shock will be a core healing spell available to all paladins.
Will the damage component be baseline too, or will only Holy get to use it for damage? Having another ranged attack (RIP Exorcism) would be nice.
New Talents and Talent Changes (chopping this up –ed.)
One change we’re considering is lowering Divine Shield’s duration by a couple of seconds.
I don’t really care if they do this, aside from bubble hearthing, I seldom use Divine Shield for anything other than a fear break or debuff clear (eg, Impale).
[W]e want to add to this spec more PvP utility.
So give them an interrupt or gap closer guys. In Cataclysm, as far as we know, Ret will be the only melee dps class without an off-GCD interrupt. That doesn’t make any sense. Pass that to Prot while you’re at it. I’ll keep a candle lit for a gap closer as well.
We want to increase the duration of Sacred Shield to 30 minutes and keep the limit to one target.
As long as the remember to update Sacred Shield to proc more than once per duration, this will be a nice change. I wonder if it’ll be Holy only, though.
Protection paladins need a different rotation between single-target and multi-target tanking. Likewise, we’re looking to add the necessity to use an additional cooldown in each rotation.
So for single target we’re adding Crusader Strike, and for aoe we’re adding Blinding Shield. This probably implies they’re gutting HotR and Consecrate still, making you not wanting to use them on bosses/single target. Rotations would turn into:
Single – Holy Shield, Judgement, ShoR, Crusader Strike, (maybe Holy Shock?).
Multi – Holy Shield, Avenger’s Shield, Blinding Shield, HotR, Consecrate, with some single-target stuff thrown in the holes.
Holy Shield will no longer have charges. It will be designed to improve block chance while active, and will continue to provide a small amount of damage and threat.
Not having charges anymore would be nice, I approve. I wonder how they’ll balance this with our Mastery (see below).
Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses
Protection
- Damage Reduction
- Vengeance
- Block Amount
Vengeance: This is the damage-received-to-attack-power conversion that all tanks share.
Obvi.
Critical Healing Effect: When the paladin gets a crit on a heal, it will heal for more.
I know this is Holy, but this was so poorly written I had to highlight it. Heal for more, orly?!
Block Amount: We want to keep the kit of the paladin as a tank who blocks a lot. So by contrast, the warrior tank will sometimes get critical blocks, but the paladin will absorb more damage with normal blocks.
Again: obviously. Not much to say about this. I like our flavor of being the oft-blocking tank, so I approve.
Armory Feed
How many people read your blog but not any standard WoW news source? :P
@Rhidach
14 April 2010 at 10:59 am #
Ha! I’m just getting the placeholder up to add my comments afterwards. But yeah, good point.
Well I had the gut feeling ever since 3.2 that we would end up with a radiance ability. So much for my dreams of holy charge.
As Theckd calls it on MTadin, GANK, is a great spell and I approve of us getting something REALLY REALLY shiny. Eat THAT you DK’s, mages, locks who want more pets. mwahahahhaahahahha.
And still waiting on info on how HoTR and Consecration are gonna change.
No new ability for ret? sigh
CS baseline? woot
@Rhidach
14 April 2010 at 12:26 pm #
@Vorian: If it’s a damage reduction cooldown I don’t think our GAnK will be up for very long. Maybe 8 seconds or so. Random idea: they could remove the guardian spirit effect from AD, give GAnK a health bar, and make it when you summon it it absorbs all damage you take until it dies (including overkill). Then, it basically turns into a clickable AD save.
@DREADwin: Formatting ftw. >.>
@fobo: Yours and mine, friend.
I actually read this post because it was easyier on my eyes to read. ^^
The Holy mastery seems only slightly muddled. It really seems to be saying we could be healing for more than 1.5x on a crit. Details matter, of course, so we’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime I’m very worried about possible Beacon changes and that particular piece of prose is broken more than the mastery description.
Changing up the tanking abilities to better handle single vs multiple targets sounds nice. It takes a little willpower to hold back on ShoR to make sure it’s off cooldown at the right times. And getting something else to cast besides Consecration will be nice.
On a side note, my guild found out warriors can have problems with early threat generation. Oh well, at least they can’t blame the healers!
“Wait, is this baseline or just for holy? Cause it already dispelled magic debuffs on friendly targets. The wording confuses me.”
Actually, they are removing Prot/Ret ability to dispel. They want dispelling to be something that only healers do. So baseline will be no ability to dispel, while holy will get the ability to dispel defensive magic, disease and poison.
Off topic: Long time reader, first time poster. Thanks for the great site!
@Rhidach
14 April 2010 at 1:36 pm #
@Dan: Thanks for reading! :)
love changes, pala power remains!
:-)
more spells, more CDs, more nice effects…drool
Yeah the holy shock baseline kinda makes me wonder where they are going with that. I mean with divine plea up it won’t be worth casting on yourself but it definitely would make a nice pick up tool like exorcism used to be. Maybe that is what is replacing hotr for single target, or crusader strike?
Still surprised that ret doesn’t have any form of interrupt…. maybe they could add an interrupt effect to holy shock similar to the old school earthshock.
The 30 minute duration on sacred shield really surprised me… that ability is crazy in pvp as it is.
In general though… the changes to holy just seem to make things more confusing. Unless the holy hands thing is a strong heal I don’t see how it will put holy paladins on par with holy priests when it comes to group/raid healing. Plus I thought the idea was to move away from using fast expensive heals (flash of light) but if that is the only spell that works with beacon… it will be the only spell viable for group healing. But it looks like they have no clue what to do with beacon right now.
What’s my main Again?’s last blog ..Its been quite the journey
The first clarification helps understanding their issues with Beacon. I understand what they’re saying and we can just hope they find a more elegant solution than restricting it to just FoL.
I don’t think they intend to make us on par with Holy Priests for raid healing. I think they just want to make sure paladins can raid heal well enough that you’re not dreaming the impossible dream if you’re stuck with just two of them in your 10 man. It might require some adjustments in tactics, but it would be an improvement over today where I doubt anyone would seriously consider that healer comp in current content.
I see it like the BC to Wrath changes. 5 mans (*cough*MgT*) used to be extremely difficult to heal as a paladin. With Beacon in 3.0 they were just tough. After 4.0 I expect we might be able to fall asleep a little while farming Heroics.
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