It could only hide for so long! In the 4.1 datamining that mmo-champ performed, they spotted a 20 seconds cooldown being added to Word of Glory.
There are two consequences for this, that I’m a bit worried about:
1. I fear this will probably lead to Holy Power hoarding, once Vengeance has safely ensconced you beyond the point where dps can realistically catch up with you. Consider that this change turns Word of Glory from an “always available” survival ability to an actual cooldown that you’ll want to use at the most optimal point to get the biggest bang for your buck. With full vengeance we’re talking about a ~30,000 hp heal, and banking that for a quick recovery from a big hit will be awfully tempting.
This is especially true for some raid fights where the bigger damage is a Big Hit(tm). In those scenarios you’re going to want to treat WoG like a mini-bubbleskin, rather than a means of keeping Holy Shield up. In these cases the primary danger to your life is that massive burst damage, as opposed to the slow pitter patter of wittle boss melees.
2. Eternal Glory will be neutered somewhat in its current incarnation. I’m hoping they’ll change the talent to have a chance to reset the cooldown on WoG. Otherwise, I can’t see much value in this talent since the prospect of WoGing and then getting a free ShoR is not as amazing as two WoGs in a row is. Not much of a survival talent otherwise.
The other prot-related changes:
- Divine Guardian now has a 3 minute cooldown, which isn’t unreasonable. It’s pretty powerful as is. However, at the same time, warriors are being given their own raid wall called Rallying Cry. I welcome this addition to my brother tanks’ arsenal, but if you’ll allow me some wine with these cheese: why does Rallying Cry get to self-apply to them but DG doesn’t self-apply to us?! Time to revoke that, maybe? (Update: According to official notes, this shares a cooldown with Last Stand. Objection withdrawn!)
- Lastly, Rebuke (along with other non-damaging interrupts) are no longer dependent on hit. So we can help with interrupts now while continuing to ignore hit and expertise.
It was bound to happen sooner or later…like i was saying to you its not that bad because of the ramp up time for Holy Power, and i am hoping for EG to reset WoG…interrupt change is awesome! and I hope that Rallying Cry doesnt stack on warrior that casts because it doesnt say yet if it will stack with Last Stand or not, cuz that wont be too Overpowered…lol….also that blue post : Word of Glory: We want Retribution and Protection paladins to have reasonable healing on themselves or others, but we know paladins sometimes feel like they can’t use their Holy Power on anything but their heals in some situations. We’d rather these two specs spend most of their Holy Power on damage-dealing abilities, with occasional healing. — i dont like blizzard telling me what i should use my holy power on…with threat being a non issue, why would i want to waste on shield when i can help with healing…were the swiss army tank…and if tank dps matters that much toward the boss kill then that raid has bigger problems.
At the end it sounds like your taunting a vengeance nerf. They always tell you what you should be using your talents for, that is why they adjust them.
At the moment, it looks like the warrior version of raidwall is superior to the paladin version. It lasts 4 more seconds (good for timing things), and for the paladin wall to stop as much damage, everyone in the raid will need to be hit for > their heath pool.
As an example, on an 80k crackle (Nef). Raidwall will reduce the damage 16k, while the warrior wall will reduce it by more for everyone who’s health is greater than 80k (should be all raiders). Also note that at the moment, the warrior raidwall acts as an extra tank cooldown for themselves, while the paladin raid wall doesn’t effect the tank.
full notes just came out on it, it does share a cooldown with last stand
The warrior rally cry locks them out of last stand so it is not an extra cool down for them. That is also why it affects the caster and all raid members. Personally I still like ours better.
Eternal Glory does look pretty bad now, for Prot. Theoretically it gives you some free threat after a heal, but that doesn’t strike me as very useful.
I doubt the talent will just remove the cooldown, however, because that is being added to Holy’s Walk in the Light Mastery. If it does anything to the cooldown it will still have to have an additional effect to make it of any use to Holy.
Apparently they’re backing off on Holy, too. Divine Light and Flash of Light are both seeing ~10% mana cost reduction, an apparent reversal of their recent increases.
Now if only they’d revert the Aura Master > Crusader Aura nerf…
The other issue this WoG change brings up is Prot leveling.
Until we hit SoR in the Tree WoG is our only HP consuming ability.
This will mean that any leveling Paladin tank will be running round with full HP and nothing to do with it.
Agreed on the Prot leveling. I’ve been leveling up my alt, and while he’s still well below even the BC level threshold, I can see where this would come up.
Although, all things considered, the only major thing you need to worry about while leveling Prot as far as this change goes is dungeon content. Normal quest mobs don’t actually tend to hit hard enough to require that you use WoG, even though having it does make the going smoother.
I am saddened about the 20 seconds cooldown being added to Word of Glory but the other, worse option imo, is to reduce the healing it is capable of (for Prot and Ret specs). And like you said, this change will also devalue Eternal Glory.
I am very interested in Rebuke no longer being dependent on hit; somehow I had missed that mentioned in the notes. It will make tank interrupts that much more valuable in raiding.
It really was inevitable. Goodbye, Wogging spec – we hardly knew you! Also, I have to agree with Orthien’s comment: Paladin tanks who are leveling will rarely be able to use their Holy Power, until they’re at a high enough level to get ShoR. Ret pallies get TV simply from being Ret, and Holy pallies don’t have to deal with the WoG CD, so unless Blizzard makes ShoR an ability you learn via choosing the Prot tree, then young prot pallies are going to be sad pandas.
WTB:
Eternal Glory – Your Holy Shock (Holy) has a 15% chance and your Crusader Strike (Prot/Ret) has a 10% chance to grant you a buff, making your next Word of Glory trigger no cooldown and consume no Holy Power.
Again, expertise is not required for interrupts. Casting mobs, just as players, are NOT, i repeat NOT able to dodge or parry. If you get a dodge/parry on an interrupt that is because somebody else interrupted it already.
I’m happy with this change. I’ve posted here before that I’d rather play a DK tank if I wanted to heal myself.
On another note, we seem to still seem to have a bit of clunkiness as prot and moreso as ret. I wish there was a better unified vision between the talent trees and Inquisition/HoPo.
Frankly, I’m really sick of Blizzard doing all this crap and not really addressing the real issues – Vengeance.
We said Vengeance was gonna be an issue and it is. And yet Blizzard continues to swing blindly at getting other balance issues under control and if they’d only fix the mess they created in Vengeance those other issues wouldn’t be a problem.
I’ve usually been pretty gracious to Blizzard but any back-ally theorycrafter knew Vengeance was gonna break more than it fixed.
So, they’re tacking holy power onto Grand Crusader, which gives us a reason to spec into it again, and probably a place to drop the eternal glory points.