Daily Thoughts: Ret Gets Buffed in Patch 4.0.6

The above chart was featured in a WoW insider Scattered Shots article, you can see the full article HERE.

Notice retribution at the very bottom of the raiding dps specs. Now, this doesn’t include the traditionally low raiding performance “pvp” specs such as subtlety rogues, but ret pallies are still easily 25% below the top performing dps spec and also lower than the next lowest by almost 1,000 dps. Naturally, I’d love to run around topping the meters, but balance at least is much preferred to the current state of affairs. Did we paladins despair though? Of course not! We knew at some point the useless mastery would be reforged into something we wanted, at least a little, and boost our dps. Blizzard, in their infinite wisdom (is always wisdom when they’re buffing your class right?), also buffed our bread and butter attack, Crusader Strike. Check out the paladin class changes.

Paladins

  • The mana costs of Blessing of Might and Blessing of Kings have been increased by approximately 217%, making them roughly equal to the cost of Mark of the Wild.
  • Crusader Strike weapon damage percent has been increased to 135%, up from 115%.
  • Divine Plea now lasts for 9 seconds, down from 15. It grants 4% mana per tick, instead of 2%, for a total of 12% mana, up from 10%.

Talent specializations

Retribution

  • Divine Purpose: The chance for applicable abilities to generate Holy Power has been reduced to 7/15%, down from 20/40%, but instead of generating 1 Holy Power, the next applicable ability used consumes no Holy Power and acts as if the paladin has 3 Holy Power.
  • Hand of Light (Mastery): A percentage of the damage done by Templar’s Verdict, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm is done as additional Holy damage.
  • Repentance is no longer broken from damage done by Censure (Seal of Truth).
  • Glyphs
  • Glyph of Divine Plea now adds 6% mana, for a total of 18% over 9 seconds.

The two biggest changes we have here are the 20% more base damage to crusader strike and our mastery changing. Mastery is now a passive holy damage buff to key attacks and our old Divine Purpose talent has become the same as what Mastery was.  Depending on what this percentage ends up being, we could see a very significant boost to damage. This mastery also gives blizzard an easy knob from which to tune our DPS if it’s ever too low or too high. Holy paladins are also probably a little excited about the slight buff to divine plea which provides an extra 2% mana (3% talented) over a shorter time span.

I’m really excited to see ret damage come up to par with our other dps pals and for the first time was considering copying my toon over to a test realm to see the changes first hand before they went live, alas, the page isn’t currently loading. Maybe there’s a bunch of other enthused paladins clogging up the internet.

The rest of the 4.0.6 patch notes can be viewed HERE.

Daily Thoughts: Predictions Pt.1 – Deathwing

I first got the idea for this article while I was standing outside Gamestop on Cataclysm release night with a friend of mine, waiting to pick up my copy and for my significant other to return with some ‘tex-mex’ coney’s from sonic. Freakin’ delicious, let me tell you. I can’t quite recall the lead in to the conversation, but I decided to make some predictions on the deathwing boss fight come patch 4.3 or 4.4.

The Sure Bets: I’d actually consider putting money on some of the following, but this is easy stuff. First, there’ll naturally be multiple phases to the fight. There will be a tail to worry about and a cleave/breath mechanic to not stand in front of. There will be adds and fire on the ground or things falling from the air (probably all of the above). I think most of us can agree on this basics of a big dragon fight. Follow me after the break for how I think the phase breakdown will be and the long-shots I’m calling for this fight.

(more…)

Daily Thoughts: Good News About Dailies

A post over at WoW Insider regarding  Blizzard’s Lead World Designer Alex Afrasiabi’s interview on G4 has informed me that A future content patch will see Hyjal fully healed, and new daily quests”. Check out the other details and find a link to the full interview HERE. Two weeks ago I’d be pretty excited about this, but my main already has exalted here through the dungeon grind. At least alts will be able to pick up the leveling blues and entry-level epics easier.

Other good news in regards to reputation grinds is the addition of a repeatable reputation gaining quest for the Ramkahen in Uldum. We now have quest Fire From the Sky that grants 250 rep and some gold upon completion. This joins Thieving Little Pluckers which I believe only grants 150 reputation.

For information about all the cataclysm factions, their reputation dailies, and loot, check out my Cataclysm Faction Reputation Guide.

See you tomorrow! Probably.

Daily Thoughts: After the Break

Fear not, dear readers, I haven’t forsaken you. I mean that in the original context of the word, not that I might have raised you from the dead with the Vyr’kul, in case you were wondering. Like so many these days, I’ve been a little bogged down with the holiday rush, family get-togethers, and, well….the Cataclsym! Oh the wonders if the end of the world.

So far, my paladin has reached 85, my warrior is gaining more rested XP at level 84, and my shaman is starting to feel neglected at 81. The rest of my toons have barely seen me do more than log in to start the rested XP process. Yes, in case you have alts at the previous level cap, you have to log into them once before they’ll start accruing rested experience. I suppose my death knight has seen a little love, but only because I need some enchants. There’s a fair chance he’ll end up being my 3rd or 4th 85 due to the need of having max enchanting and inscription.

Toons

Although my paladin is still fun, and will likely remain my main (though ret spec instead of holy as primary), my warrior is just blowing through the quests. At 84, even with stat deflation caused by leveling and very few regular dungeons under his belt, the warrior can still break 10k dps without too much trouble. Victory rush, which heals 25% of my hp after getting a killing blow, helps me keep on keeping on as if I had a pocket healer following me around *insert any cataclysm zone here*. Ret paladins damage just feels a little gimped in comparison, not really bad mind you, just mediocre. Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer for WoW) did put a blog post which, among many other things, comments that ret paladins dps might be low and could be buffed, along with a re-imagining of our mastery. To read about that and a great deal of future balance changes to come check it out. Other highlights include, shockingly, survival hunter damage nerf. Despair hunters, despair!

(more…)

Daily Thoughts: The Cataclysm Paladin

I’ve spent a lot of posts recently talking about zones (and yes I’m still going to do that Twilight Highlands review at some point), factions, and other such things and not much time on the actual playing my class. The big changes specifically to Paladins in cataclysm (if you don’t count Holy Power from 4.0.3) are the new spells:

Inquisition is our new self buff. It increases all holy damage by 30%. Retribution gets a talent that extends the duration of this buff to 10 seconds per Holy Power used to trigger it. This is meant to be kept up as much as possible similar to Slice and Dice for combat rogues and is a pretty significant DPS loss if not used.. Holy Radiance is pretty much making us a moving healing stream totem, and does an AOE heal to nearby targets. I haven’t got much play testing with this spell, as I’m running ret main now, but I really haven’t heard anything too exciting about from those doing Holy main spec. Finally, Guardian of Ancient Kings is amazing. This buff has a long (5m) cooldown, but skyrockets a ret paladins DPS when used. From what I hear from the other specs, it seems it’s a better friend to ret than the other uses. Each spec gets a specific purpose, one for taking, extra heals for holy and more damage for ret. Follow me after the break for some more…

(more…)

Daily Thoughts: Busy

Unfortunately today I did not have time to finish the rep guide I mentioned in yesterdays Daily Thoughts, nor did I really get much time on WoW either. Real life, trumping gaming, well… trumped gaming for the day. I did have a chance to do my deepholm and twilight highlands dailies though, which is productive. I’m also doing a little AH playing while I write this up. Gotta keep the gold flowing. Farming ore and/or selling the prospected gems are making a killing now for those not too worried about leveling their professions. Selling greens was doing pretty well the first few days of cata but has now settled down into more reasonable amounts. I probably sold 2 dozen + random cata greens for 200 gold each in the first 3 days. Since that, I’m still averaging 1k gold per day profit on the AH just from the ore I am able to mine while doing daily quests and in between dungeon queues. It’s a good day to sell.