Le sigh.

We don’t feel there is a need for [a tanking QD.] We aimed to make sure that every class had something to gain from the Quel’Delar series, but that doesn’t mean every spec of every class. Could a tank use the one handed dps version of Quel’Delar? Yes, it may give them more threat. Is this ideal for surviving while tanking? No, but there are other items available for that.

Does there need to be a tanking QD? No. Would it be nice if there was one for our spec when there’s one for just about every other spec? Yes.

For starters, the base Ashen Verdict ring is iLevel 251 which is an encouraging sign of its progression. The exalted version will probably be iLevel 277 if the rings follow the same formula as the Hyjal ones. And I’m very excited it has hit on it. Will be a staple of my gear set for sure.

Actually, overall I really like the itemization of the ICC gear I’ve seen. Some pieces with hit, nice chunks of stam, no accursed expertise.

And can we talk about this trinket? 228 stamina and a pretty nice Use effect to boot! Commence /drooling, friends.

Despite having a totally badass name, this Libram is garbage. Maybe as a purchase later on, but it’s ultimately worth 19 more dodge rating than the Libram of Defiance, so it’d be silly to waste Emblems of Frost on it.

This chest is the only badly itemized piece I’ve seen so far. Totally for the threat set. (Correction! Yours truly is a dope–the bonus armor actually more than makes up for the odd stats, making this a very awesome chest piece.)

Most annoying thing I’ve seen thus far: either Blizzard hasn’t finished designing a tanking Quel’Delar or they don’t intend to include one. I’m leaning toward it being the latter. Sigh.

But, let’s focus on the positive! So far lots of well itemized gear and no deluge of expertise like what we had to suffer on ToC pieces. Hopefully Blizz keeps that pace going as they fill out all the loot tables in Icecrown.

Divine Intervention: This ability now also removes Exhaustion and Sated from the target. In addition, the cooldown on this ability has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.

Definitely a good fix to an annoying oversight.

The updated patch notes also just say that LoH gives Forbearance when self-cast but not when cast on others. Looks like they’re skipping the Infusion of Light change and just making LoH baseline able to cast on others with no threat of Forbearance. A welcome change.

A welcome clarification.

The change we’re thinking about now is that LoH only causes Forbearance if you cast it on yourself. A paladin healing a paladin tank wouldn’t run into the Forbearance problem.

We don’t think the paladin tank needs to be able to stack both tools at once. If you know big damage is coming you can use Divine Protection. If you managed to take the big damage, you can use Lay on Hands.

Fair enough.

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.)

Revenge of Sunwell Radiance!

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:

• 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. In addition, the duration has been changed to 6 seconds, however the effect does not terminate when Divine Sacrifice is removed before its full duration.

3.3 is such a kick in the teeth.

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.

This makes me want this set all the more. Sans dress, of course, no matter how unlikely that is.

And how awesome is that shield, tilted diagonally on the back?

/drool