Peak at Patch 3.1 Class Changes.

[Holyssa]

My, Eyonix has been a busy little beaver whelp. Three posts over the past day or so have given a peak at what's to come with the big Ulduar patch in terms of class changes. Some of them look sexcellent.

I combined all 3 posts into one big one. Oh, bear in mind - these may or may not make it into the final patch build when it hits in the next millennium or so.

Priest

* Divine Spirit – this spell is now a core ability available to all priests.

* Discipline has access to a new talent, Power Word: Barrier. (Think of it as Power Word: Shield for your whole group).

* Several area of effect (AOE) heal spells have been improved: Prayer of Healing can be cast on any groups in your raid party. Holy Nova’s mana cost has been reduced. Circle of Healing now heals for more.

* Shadow priest PvP survivability has been improved: Shadow Form now reduces magic as well as physical damage. Dispersion now removes snares.

* Penance – this spell can now be targeted on the priest.

* Serendipity – this talent now reduces the cast time of Greater Heal and Prayer of Healing when Binding Heal or Flash Heal are cast.

* We are also working to give Holy additional PvP utility.

Rogue

* Hunger for Blood – instead of a self-buff, this ability can only be used when there is a bleed effect on the target. However, it has no stacks and grants a 15% damage bonus.

* Adrenaline Rush – the cooldown on this ability has been lowered.

* Lightning Reflexes – reduced to 3 ranks. In addition to 2/4/6% dodge, this talent now also grants 4/7/10% passive melee haste.

* Killing Spree – while this ability is active, the rogue does 20% additional damage.

* Savage Combat – now causes 2/4% physical damage done.

* Mace Specialization – this talent now grants haste in addition to armor penetration.

Shaman

* Chain Lightning – now jumps to 4 targets but does less damage. We wanted to make the distinction between Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning more clear.

* Storm, Earth and Fire – this talent now increases all damage done by Flame Shock, not just periodic damage.

* Spirit Weapons – now reduces all threat, not just melee threat.

* Unleashed Rage – reduced to 2 ranks, now also increases your critical strike chance with melee attacks by 1/2%.

* Totem streamlining: The Mana Spring and Healing Stream Totems have been combined. The Disease Cleansing and Poison Cleansing Totems have been combined.

* We are also working on giving Enhancement and Elemental more PvP utility.

Warlock

* Improved Shadow Bolt – this talent now provides a 5% spell critical strike buff (similar to Improved Scorch).

* Improved Soul Leech – this talent now provides Replenishment (similar to shadow priests)

* Drain Soul now has a chance to produce Soul Shards even if the target doesn’t die.

* Siphon Life no longer as an active ability but the talent grants the old Siphon Life effect to Corruption.

* Curse of Recklessness and Curse of Weakness have been combined into one spell

* Consume Shadows – this Voidwalker ability is no longer channeled but has a cooldown.

* Several other warlock talents have had their ranks reduced, their effects changed or removed. This list includes but is not limited to Demonic Empathy, Shadow Embrace, Eradication, Suppression, and Pandemic.

* Additional new talents have been added.

Druid

* Savage Defense – this is a new passive ability. When a druid in Dire Bear form deals a melee critical strike, the druid gains a damage shield equal to 25% of their attack power. The next hit completely removes the shield regardless of how much damage was done.

* Survival of the Fittest has had its bonus armor reduced to compensate for the above increase in damage mitigation.

* Faerie Fire (and similar debuffs) now reduces armor by 5%. See Sunder Armor in the warrior update below for additional details.

* Thorns and Nature’s Grasp can be cast in Tree of Life form.

* Survival Instincts now works in Moonkin form.

* Replenish – to avoid confusion, this talent has been renamed “Revitalize.” It now also works with Wild Growth.

* We are also looking at increasing the sustained (not burst) damage of feral druids in cat form.

Warrior

* Changing stances now has a much reduced cost: you lose a maximum of 20 rage (10 with Tactical Mastery). For example, if you have 100 rage and change stances, you will have 80 rage remaining. If you have 10 rage and change stances, all of your rage is lost. In addition, we may change the penalties associated with some stances.

* You now gain rage when damage done to you is absorbed, such as through a Power Word: Shield.

* Blood Frenzy now causes 2/4% physical damage done.

* Sunder Armor (and similar debuffs) now reduces armor by 4% per application, and is now a single rank. Creature armor has been globally reduced so that debuffed targets should take about the same damage from physical attacks that they did before this change. The net effect should be that this debuff is slightly less mandatory in PvE and is not disproportionately more powerful against cloth targets in PvP.

* We are also adding increased damage to Arms, possibly through Overpower or Slam.

* We are also looking at granting rage when the warrior blocks, dodges or parries.

Mage

* Improved Water Elemental – this talent has been removed and replaced with a new talent that grants Replenishment (similar to Shadow priests).

* We are also working on a way to give frost mages Ice Lance “Shatter combos” in PvE.

* We are also working on more survivability for Fire spec in PvP.

* We are also working on making Spirit a more useful and interesting stat for all mages.

Paladin

* Blessing of Kings – this spell is now a base ability trainable by all paladins.

* Exorcism – this spell now causes damage to all types of enemy targets. However, it always critical strikes undead or demon targets. This change should make sure paladin damage doesn’t drop when going from Naxxramas to later tiers of content.

* Shield of the Templar now causes your Avenger’s Shield and Shield of the Righteousness to silence targets for 3 sec. The old damage bonus of this talent has been folded into Holy Shield, Avenger’s Shield, and Shield of the Righteousness.

* Ardent Defender, Improved Hammer of Justice, One-Handed Weapon Specialization and more have had their ranks reduced.

* Guarded by the Light – no longer reduces the mana cost of shield spells, but now has a 50/100% chance to refresh Divine Plea duration.

* Judgements of the Just – now also reduces the cooldown of Hammer of Justice by 10/20 seconds and increases the duration of the Seal of Justice stun effect by 0.5/1 second.

Hunter

* Consumable ammunition has been removed from the game. Arrows and bullets no longer stack, but are not consumed. Ranged attack speed bonus gained from quivers and ammo bags will be preserved in a different capacity.

* A new tier of hunter pet talents have been added. In particular, this allows Beastmaster hunters to improve their damage per second (DPS) with their 51 point talent.

* Hunting Party – this talent has been reduced to 3 ranks and also grants a passive bonus to the hunter.

* Piercing Shots – this talent has been changed. Your Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 10/20/30% of damage dealt for 8 sec.

* Sniper Training – this talent has been changed. After standing still for 6 sec, you gain a 2/4/6% damage bonus to Steady, Aimed and Explosive Shot.

* We are also looking to add additional trap functionality to Survival.

Death Knight

* Gargoyle and Unholy Blight have swapped talent positions. Gargoyle’s damage has increased and runic power cost per time has decreased.

* Pestilence – this spell no longer causes damage but just spreads diseases. Blood Boil is intended to be the general area attack, and has been changed to be castable on targets with no diseases on them, but does extra damage if diseases are present.

* Unbreakable Armor now absorbs a flat amount of damage that increases as your armor increases. It no longer boosts armor.

* The Frost tree has been shuffled. Among other things, PvP talents such as Endless Winter are closer to the top of the tree where Blood and Unholy death knights can access them.

* Sudden Doom – this talent now procs a Death Coil rather than requiring an additional button click. It works similarly to shamans’ Lightning Overload.

* Magic Suppression and Blood of the North have been reduced to 3 ranks for the same benefit.

* Blood Gorged now grants armor penetration instead of expertise.

Upon reading the paladin changes, all I gotta say is...

Baseline Kings? Exorcism being useful? Shield of the Righteousness actually behaving like a real shield bash? I think I need to lay down.

Hm...if I am reading right, Hunters only have to buy 1 bullet/arrow type and never have to refill again?

Baseline Spirit for priests is nice, but I can't help but wonder if it's due to all the mana-regen changes coming up.

[Perthes]

I think im having a hot flash.... I ... I ... No freaking way.... lol

**Starts to giggle and drool at the same time**

/Feign Death

[Gordantell]

OMG,

Hunters will get as many bags as everyone else! **Wrings his tauren hands with all the extra loot he will be able to carry**

-Gordantell

[Mali]

All those LW quivers I learned to make all for naught? How dare they nerf leatherworkers!!!! (kidding...I will be thrilled to have an extra bag slot for loot haulin').

[Zurg]

I will also be thrilled that Mali has extra room to haul my tribute!!

Edited February 7, 2009 by Zurg

[Jasena]

I am VERY unhappy with the Paladin changes. I actually wish they would scrap ALL of them. First I'll start with the exorsism spell. This is NOT what exorsism is, or was designed to be. And on top of that, I can smell a nerf coming from 10 miles away. In PvP this is going to throw "balance" off. One of the very reasons forsaken were moved from Undead to humanoid is because every nub paladin with Exorsism on thier bar was owning face.

Next we have Shield of the Templar, once again, great in PvE, but I'm sure it is going to be nerfed into the ground the first time anyone gets silenced by it in Arena

Then we have the wonderful Blessing of Kings being baseline. Great. More buffs for us to manage. I was perfectly content (as are many holy and prot pallys) leaving it to raiding rets to pick up. Now it is one more buff for us to juggle, and listen to people whine "Can I get kings instead?" ugh.

All in all, most of these changes are for the worst, and I really hope they reconsider all of them.

[Waldonnis]

I am VERY unhappy with the Paladin changes. I actually wish they would scrap ALL of them. First I'll start with the exorsism spell. This is NOT what exorsism is, or was designed to be. And on top of that, I can smell a nerf coming from 10 miles away. In PvP this is going to throw "balance" off. One of the very reasons forsaken were moved from Undead to humanoid is because every nub paladin with Exorsism on thier bar was owning face.

Next we have Shield of the Templar, once again, great in PvE, but I'm sure it is going to be nerfed into the ground the first time anyone gets silenced by it in Arena

Then we have the wonderful Blessing of Kings being baseline. Great. More buffs for us to manage. I was perfectly content (as are many holy and prot pallys) leaving it to raiding rets to pick up. Now it is one more buff for us to juggle, and listen to people whine "Can I get kings instead?" ugh.

All in all, most of these changes are for the worst, and I really hope they reconsider all of them.

Where to start...

• Shield of the Templar's effect is needed, period...and I wish warriors would have something similar on initial pulls. Dealing with groups of caster mobs is tough enough for any tank, including DKs, but at least a DK has some tools to help with it. Paladins do not. Warriors don't either on the pull, but at least they have a charge/intercept and shield slam (for during the fight). Line of sight isn't always available either. Paladins have nothing...well, had nothing. Their "shield slam" had no teeth aside from being a threat-builder while warriors had at least some damage mitigation/utility attached to the ability against casters. Again, good change and it makes protection paladins that much stronger as tanks rather than being the weakest against caster mobs. And seriously, use in PvP? How many paladins do you know that do serious Arena as protection? If anyone were to be grumpy about this change, I'd think it would be ret, who has been BEGGING for an interrupt outside of a stun for ages.
  
• Kings going baseline is GOOD. Right now, certain builds are almost forced to pick it up. Prot is much better off laying out BoSanc in many cases to the same classes that benefit most from Kings, and that puts Ret in the ugly position of having to dole out either Imp Might or Kings...both desirable buffs to many classes, making the buff assignments that much more limited. We have no details that I know of on whether or not Improved Kings will be baseline, but that's still out there as a potential talent point sink Kings-wise. Don't look at this as "oh wow, more buffs to manage"...we've been managing buffs since vanilla WoW, and it's not like we suddenly have a zillion new buffs to deal with. Having options is a good thing, not a bad thing. I'd think as a holy paladin that you would like this change since your untalented Might is overwritten by Battle Shout and you have nothing else to offer buff-wise to a non-paladin tanking class. This gives you more "buff depth" in smaller groups (e.g. 5/10-mans). Personally, only bringing improved wisdom to a raid is yawnerific and I like getting Kings back. As a tank, I like the change even more simply because I'd finally be ABLE to get Kings to begin with if the only paladin in the group is holy (I'd be happier with BoSanc, but it's better than the paladin not being able to offer me anything at all).
  
• As for exorcism, I've always felt that it's a silly thing that it only worked on undead targets at all (and demons, but that's splitting hairs). Bear in mind, the game is VASTLY different than it was way back when Forsaken were undead. I have no doubt that they'll need to alter the coefficient on the spell to not boost that aspect of paladin damage in Naxx, existing raiding paladins would've seen a rather large damage DROP once they got out of undead-infested instances simply because they couldn't exorcise any longer. If anything, they would've still likely seen this dps drop even after improving their gear in Ulduar. This also would've altered rotations, etc. It's a good change for PvE, but I'm unsure on its effect in PvP yet. It all really depends on what they do with the coefficient. Oh, and side note, it wasn't just exorcism that forced the Forsaken change...that was back when undead actually had a hidden vulnerability to holy damage and most paladin abilities did increased damage against them (which has also changed)....and I won't even touch Holy Wrath...you can fill in the blanks there.
  

Take a step back and think about it for a minute. If anything, I'd expect you to complain about Divine Plea's healing reduction, but even that's not a huge deal since healer coordination effectively works around that (or a simple cancelaura macro). Right now, the changes look to only strengthen the class as a whole, while others (holy priests and resto druids, notably) are taking a big one on the chin with the nerfs to OOFSR spirit-based regen and the change to holy priests' Serendipity. Complaining about what can only be termed as paladin BUFFS is akin to the priest forum claims that having Divine Spirit as baseline is a nerf...it's just hard to fathom how gaining abilities that were confined to just one spec in the past can be anything but good.

Other thoughts on changes:

• Warriors: FINALLY a priest or boss's damage-absorbing bubble won't neuter rage generation. Years late, but better late than never.
  
• Warlocks: Can we alter improved shadow bolt a few more times? I don't think the warlock community is confused enough and the theorycrafters certainly need more than just the incredibly complex affliction rotation to mull over *smirks* Seriously, though, some of the changes look interesting and I'm curious to see a full list when it's released (what they posted is too vague so far to tell good/bad). Still no clue how they're going to fix the PvP viability concerns...
  
• Mages: Looking into spirit usefulness? My suggestion continues to be to have it add either haste or crit in a spec-dependent fashion (mostly crit for fire and haste for frost). Arcane already benefits from spirit through talents, but they would have to move Student of the Mind and adding any of the crit/haste "boosts through spirit" boosts further down in the trees to avoid stacking the benefit. Pyromaniac was a nice change in 3.0.8, but I sure hope they don't think that's a solution for a fire-spec/spirit interaction. Shatter combos in PvE = good for frost, so no argument there assuming they can pull it off and making ice lance an attractive spell for it. And adding PvP survival to fire is ridiculous...I wish them luck, but if they don't understand why frost has it so well that way by now (and arcane to a lesser extent), they won't do a good job at this :-P
  
• Druids: *shrugs* Some of the changes look interesting for ferals, but no doubt that a further armour reduction won't sit well with existing feral tanks...even if it's been balanced out by a "shield" effect. The RNG nature of it makes it even less of an attractive trade-off compared to the stable mitigation benefits of armour. I really want to know where they're going with this in the long run. If the trend continues, druids will be tanking with rogue-like armour totals and about as much dodge. The mechanic of a feral tank used to be high mitigation and a certain amount of avoidance...now it's...I don't know....both of those have been reduced in Wrath with no compensating controls.
  
• Death Knights: Mixed bag, but mostly good. Without seeing the frost tree changes, I have no clue what to think that way. Personally, I can see a problem with the Blood Boil change that may not be very good in PvE...and the loss of damage from Pestilence will add another GCD cycle to AoE threat generation for unholy specs (which wasn't really needed). If the change goes through, expect the range on Blood Boil to be tightened to prevent proximity aggro problems. Ultimately the Blood Boil change is a good one for PvP, but there are some cases in PvE where it's going to suck. Lastly, I'm hopeful they didn't shuffle the frost tree too much...I'd hate to lose a few of the things that I use regularly from the frost tree tanking-wise.
  

To answer the other posts:

• Much love for the ammo change. Ammo cost is honestly what kept me from leveling Kelani (silly, but I have a ton of expences with a "large family" like mine and it really adds up).
  
• The change to add Divine Spirit as baseline is certainly part of the mana regen changes and is no doubt part of their attempt to buff regen to spirit-based-regen classes in a post-nerfed-OOFSR world (mainly holy priests, since playing the OOFSR game is part of what we had to do; druids not so much due to the large amount of IFSR casting they do).
  
• Gord: Don't you mean bijous and coins rather than loot? :-P
  

[Jasena]

I respectfully disagree with you on the exorsism V. I think they would be better in many different ways changing Holy Wrath as opposed to Exorsism. Holy Wrath is AoE, so it would help Prot more, and give Ret another weapon as well. Just make it so it only stuns undead as opposed to everyone, or make that stun into an interupt on humaniod mobs/players to give ret that interupt they've been craving.Rather then giving us another front loaded single target instacast for them to nerf. This is not to mention it is a bit ludicris from a roleplay standpoint to have exorsism work on anything and everything.

The act of exorcising; the driving out of evil spirits from persons or places by conjuration; is the definition of it. So to have that spell being used on oh say.. a Worg, or a Tallstrider, does that mean those beasts are evil?

Holy wrath on the other hand, has much more potential, and much less downside both from a mechanics and rp standpoint. And gives us much less to lose.

I saw the changes they plan to make in divine plea after my origonal post, and really I don't care much for that either. Mana conservation has always been a problem for Paladins, and now they are taking and gimping the tool they gave to us to help FIX the mana issues.

And I stand by what I said, i'd rather keep the set up we have now, and have BoK be taken by raiding rets and skipped by most others. Case in point, I pugged a UK heroic the other day.. I had to listen to the hunter whine the ENTIRE run almost, about how he did'nt have Kings. If I have Kings, it just means one more buff for me to have to figure out what people want. And that does'nt include things like raids where some classes like *coughs* druids.. *cough* Oriah.. hehe... are in different forms. So now, I'm buffing Kings on one druids, and wisdom on the rest. It's a pain in the ass. And one i'd rather not have. I'd rather keep my imp wisdom, and let a Ret take care of Kings. If it's not availible so be it. It's NOT a game breaker.

As for pulling caster mobs, I never have a problem with it with Jas, I just run in and use Arcane Torrent, granted humans and dwarves don't have that ability, but meh.. they're alliance they sorted it out this long I'm sure they can find ways to do it. :op

As a whole, I don't see how any of these changes are for the "good".

But that's just the way I see things. :o)

Edited February 9, 2009 by Jasena

[Zurg]

*scratches his head and drools* I...ummm...just kill things

[Kailand]

Mana conservation has always been a problem for Paladins, and now they are taking and gimping the tool they gave to us to help FIX the mana issues.

...

I had to listen to the hunter whine the ENTIRE run almost, about how he did'nt have Kings

...

I'd rather keep my imp wisdom, and let a Ret take care of Kings. If it's not availible so be it. It's NOT a game breaker.

I've ran with a few holy paladins since wotlk came out, and I'm still waiting for them to go OOM in 5 and 10 mans... unless you are spamming holy light (bad idea) there is literally no reason for holy paladins to OOM in 5 and 10 mans. As for other healing classes, sure Priests and druids have it a bit better, but shamans do go OOM alot more frequently, and even then it's only on longer fights from what I've seen. The change to divine plea is there to offset the changes to the 5 second rule, and also as a nerf to holy paladins in PvP. (The blues mention that divine plea was added mainly for ret and prot to regen mana, but was too powerful in its current form for holy). They've also mentioned that they are nerfing mana regen all around because it's near impossible to run out of mana (in raids) unless you activley try, and even then with judgement of wisdom DPSrs cannot run out of mana! Blizzard has stated they want players to play while thinking about mana conservation, just like warriors/druids/rogues/DKS have to think about thier DPS resource conservations.

With DPSrs never running out of mana as it is (except on extremely long fights), they probably do not want wisdom, hence Kings is the superior buff. If a ret is in the group, he should be giving physical DPS Might, not kings, and why should the ret paly spec kings just to satisfy your selfishness of not specing it...? it's in the prot tree, so prot should probably pick it up. The 3 prot palies that I run with regularly and semi regularly pick it up, and they have no issue with threat/mitigation, and that includes when they were still in blues. This change means they have 5 more talent points to spend. I could agree with your argument if they changed back kings to 1 talent point at the first tier in the tree, but in that case, why not make it baseline so that you wouldn't be forced to pick it up? (note at 1 talent point it would be a REQUIRED talent for all specs, and blizzard has stated they are against required talents, and now they can balance stuff around the assumption that kings is available). Note that kings is probably the MOST powerful overall buff in the game, why wouldn't you want it baseline? It gives you more utility, and you only need to assign buffs once (with paly power), and if you have 2 druids of different specs in 5 mans, just give them both kings: they both benefit from it! (making your life easier). As for the hunter whining about kings... did you give him might instead? (note: might is the better buff unless you are SV and half decently geared, even untalented might). If you told him that you didn't have kings and he still whined about it, you can do one of three things, ignore him, don't buff him period, or boot his whiney ass from the group. (note that I usually ask for kings myself if there is a paly, and if they say they don't have it, I ask for might or wisdom depending on if there is a DPS warrior or not).

Prot isn't really good in PvP (well, they do have their specialites in BGs - Flag carrier of OMG die already), so the shield change is a BUFF in PvE, and with you screaming at the RP invalidity of the excorism change, this actually makes sense from an RP point of view.... getting hit with a shield in the face would make me probably stop my spell casting for a bit. And having abilities balanced around RP... lol, when has blizzard ever done that. Excorcism is still going to be better against undead/demons than others (it will be a guaranteed crit), and it will effectively balance ret paladins in PvE for future content as Waldy has said. If you want RP justification, just assume that all beings have a hint of evil in their souls (and having a hint of evil, doesn't mean that you are evil, it doesn't necessarily mean that you are good either).

The changes to ammo.... now thats sexy, that will save me about 100+ gold a week. and the talent changes for Hunters are nice... not great but nice. I just hope they get around to implementing SV 41 point talent (which they have promised since 3.0.0), which used to be a 21 point talent. overall I'd say the changes are in the right direction, with DPS classes doing roughly the same DPS, healers having roughly the same mana regen/healing abilities (although, yes, holy doesn't have an AoE heal... but they have bacon which is A very nice talent that no other healer class has an equivalent), and balancing of the tanking classes seems in line. (druids got what they asked for, another stat to lookout for on gear (crit), unfortunatley for them it looks like they will be slaves to the RNG. I'm wondering if this shield will apply to magic damage, if so it probably is a nice buff depending on how much they nerf armor. and it will also mean that druids have more room to hit armor cap come with the new content).

[Holyssa]

By Eyonix:

In our 3.1.0 class updates post, we had announced plans to remove consumable ammunition from the game upon the release of the next major content patch. Our original plans were to change ammunition so that hunters would no longer need to utilize bag space, while adding some new functionality that would continue to make ammunition a compelling element of gameplay. Unfortunately, this intended change will not be completely ready in time for patch 3.1.0.

We still fully intend to move forward with this change when the additional functionality becomes available, and for 3.1.0 we still intend to remove the need for pouches/quivers by greatly increasing the stack sizes on arrows and bullets, and the haste bonus from the bags will be preserved in another fashion. We’ll be sure to inform our players with further updates once they become available.

*E.T. voice* Ouuuuuuuuuch.

Edited February 10, 2009 by Holyssa

[Perthes]

Son of a ......... SEA SERPENT!!!!

[Kieranna]

LOLZ....WHAT! An extra bag! OMG! /Feins death

[Oriahtundra]

I am VERY unhappy with the Paladin changes. I actually wish they would scrap ALL of them. First I'll start with the exorsism spell. This is NOT what exorsism is, or was designed to be. And on top of that, I can smell a nerf coming from 10 miles away. In PvP this is going to throw "balance" off. One of the very reasons forsaken were moved from Undead to humanoid is because every nub paladin with Exorsism on thier bar was owning face.

Next we have Shield of the Templar, once again, great in PvE, but I'm sure it is going to be nerfed into the ground the first time anyone gets silenced by it in Arena

Then we have the wonderful Blessing of Kings being baseline. Great. More buffs for us to manage. I was perfectly content (as are many holy and prot pallys) leaving it to raiding rets to pick up. Now it is one more buff for us to juggle, and listen to people whine "Can I get kings instead?" ugh.

All in all, most of these changes are for the worst, and I really hope they reconsider all of them.

Where to start...

[*]Shield of the Templar's effect is needed, period...and I wish warriors would have something similar on initial pulls. Dealing with groups of caster mobs is tough enough for any tank, including DKs, but at least a DK has some tools to help with it. Paladins do not. Warriors don't either on the pull, but at least they have a charge/intercept and shield slam (for during the fight). Line of sight isn't always available either. Paladins have nothing...well, had nothing. Their "shield slam" had no teeth aside from being a threat-builder while warriors had at least some damage mitigation/utility attached to the ability against casters. Again, good change and it makes protection paladins that much stronger as tanks rather than being the weakest against caster mobs. And seriously, use in PvP? How many paladins do you know that do serious Arena as protection? If anyone were to be grumpy about this change, I'd think it would be ret, who has been BEGGING for an interrupt outside of a stun for ages.

[*]Druids: *shrugs* Some of the changes look interesting for ferals, but no doubt that a further armour reduction won't sit well with existing feral tanks...even if it's been balanced out by a "shield" effect. The RNG nature of it makes it even less of an attractive trade-off compared to the stable mitigation benefits of armour. I really want to know where they're going with this in the long run. If the trend continues, druids will be tanking with rogue-like armour totals and about as much dodge. The mechanic of a feral tank used to be high mitigation and a certain amount of avoidance...now it's...I don't know....both of those have been reduced in Wrath with no compensating controls.

Now they just need to give Druid a silence as well since they seems to be the only tanking class lacking one.

Shield will at least give magical mit(if im reading it right), which is awesome. But you figure with if you can stack crit, with 4k ap and 50 crit you could theoretically keep a 1k dmg shield up half the time. There is gonna be some kind of nerf with AOE attacks i think. AOE pulls with swipe and maul spam its likely to be up nearly 100% of the time.

But where are the chicken changes.....

[Waldonnis]

I've ran with a few holy paladins since wotlk came out, and I'm still waiting for them to go OOM in 5 and 10 mans... unless you are spamming holy light (bad idea) there is literally no reason for holy paladins to OOM in 5 and 10 mans.

Spamming holy light is not necessarily a bad idea and, depending on gear, may just be better these days. It comes down to properly selecting heals for the situation. Should a standard holy paladin be spamming HL on every slight bit of damage? No, but if they're geared well enough now, there's hardly a reason to go back to FoL spamming in many situations, including 5-mans. Either way, it's largely unimportant as the changes are targetted towards raids rather than 5-mans, where healer mana isn't an issue currently with the amount of buffs and replenishment flying around. Does it impact 5/10-man holy paladins without the gear? Absolutely, but Divine Plea wasn't designed to be a "use on every cooldown" ability and that's been well-stated, so it's being changed to an ability that you'd have to think about before using for a change.

They've also mentioned that they are nerfing mana regen all around because it's near impossible to run out of mana (in raids) unless you activley try, and even then with judgement of wisdom DPSrs cannot run out of mana! Blizzard has stated they want players to play while thinking about mana conservation, just like warriors/druids/rogues/DKS have to think about thier DPS resource conservations.

This is pseudo-true. DPS can and will run out of mana in certain situations. High amounts of AoE will drain a mage dry pretty quickly, and judging on AoE situations is a tad ridiculous, if not prohibitive. Those situations are often offset in 25-mans by the fact that buffs, replenishment, other AoE'ers, etc are all present, but in 10-mans, it's really not as hard as you think to run out of mana. A mage in full T7 is less likely to run out of mana even in a 10-man, but if they're already wearing the gear, they probably wouldn't be running non-heroic Naxx. I'll concede that it's not typical to run out of mana as a damage caster, but it's more likely that is the result of the large amount of practice most of us have had with managing our mana in the past (nobody likes to wand). The changes to mana regen had nothing to do with dps in actuality. It's a well-known fact that encounters are balanced around healer throughput and mana...and if regen/efficiency/throughput is too good right now, then future gear and encounter scaling become much more difficult to accomplish from Blizzard's end.

With DPSrs never running out of mana as it is (except on extremely long fights), they probably do not want wisdom, hence Kings is the superior buff.

Untrue in many cases. It may benefit YOU more, but what does it do for a mage? A small amount of health, a very small amount of crit, a tiny amount of extra mana, and...that's about it. Most of the stat boosts do zip for us. As a FFB mage, spirit is useless to me, so ignore that too. Is it a good buff? Sure, but it's hardly superiour in every case to the collective amount of mana that wisdom will provide over the course of a 5min fight.

If a ret is in the group, he should be giving physical DPS Might, not kings, and why should the ret paly spec kings just to satisfy your selfishness of not specing it...?

Circular argument. You can't say a holy is selfish if they don't pick up kings and not say the same about ret. In fact, spec'ing for Kings *HURTS* a PvE raiding holy spec a great deal...unless you don't think 5% more spell crit is worthwhile by comparison. The reason ret is often the spec to pick it up for PvE is simply because of their talent distribution and what benefits them for PvE (unless you think it's okay for them to be capable of spec'ing for PvP for a raid, but holy has to lose PvE effectiveness and spec for Kings "for the good of the raid"...yeah, okay). Frankly, they have extra points, holy usually does not these days. This isn't BC...

Note that kings is probably the MOST powerful overall buff in the game, why wouldn't you want it baseline? It gives you more utility, and you only need to assign buffs once (with paly power), and if you have 2 druids of different specs in 5 mans, just give them both kings: they both benefit from it! (making your life easier). As for the hunter whining about kings... did you give him might instead? (note: might is the better buff unless you are SV and half decently geared, even untalented might). If you told him that you didn't have kings and he still whined about it, you can do one of three things, ignore him, don't buff him period, or boot his whiney ass from the group. (note that I usually ask for kings myself if there is a paly, and if they say they don't have it, I ask for might or wisdom depending on if there is a DPS warrior or not).

I at least agree that Kings is one of the top two buffs in the game overall (Mark of the Wild being the other) simply due to its versatility and effectiveness for most classes. The misunderstanding about managing buffs came from something that Jas didn't know about Pally Power...I explained how to handle single buffs with it the other night, so that part of the argument is largely solved, in my opinion. Anyone can go into a long-winded discussion about which buffs are superiour in which situations, but as I explained to Jasena, it gets pretty complicated sometimes. Lots of "if you have a <class/spec>, then this is better, otherwise.." in those discussions and frankly, none of it matters in the context of this discussion. Which buff is superiour isn't the relevant factor: it's a matter of whether or not Kings going baselines helps or hurts paladins as a whole. Personally, I believe it helps.

One thing I didn't mention about the exorcism change was that it has a secondary effect: shutting ret up. Glyphed, exorcism can also serve as an effective silence from range, which is what ret's been dying for. Short of introducing a new spell, which would arguably overpower some of the other specs, or adding yet another talent (which wouldn't be good for reasons I won't go into) in the ret tree, this was the best way to accomplish this.

(although, yes, holy doesn't have an AoE heal... but they have bacon which is A very nice talent that no other healer class has an equivalent), and balancing of the tanking classes seems in line. (druids got what they asked for, another stat to lookout for on gear (crit), unfortunatley for them it looks like they will be slaves to the RNG. I'm wondering if this shield will apply to magic damage, if so it probably is a nice buff depending on how much they nerf armor. and it will also mean that druids have more room to hit armor cap come with the new content).

The druid change is complicated and while I have no doubt that it will go through, I also have no doubt that it'll be tweaked a bit. I'm curious to see how it works out, but I'm concerned with what it will do to druids at various levels of gearing below "top end". Suffice to say, discussions continue on the forums. As for Bacon...it's nice, but it's also not hugely useful for many raiding holy paladins (most are *just* on tank duty, so meh). The HL glyph is far more effective in many cases and that's also why it's a heavily "hated and debated" glyph....and another reason why HL spam can be more effective and efficient at times (going back to the first part of the post).