A lot of people would probably want to separate PvE and PvP as two separate worlds. But the sad reality is that PvP and PvE are both integral to World of Warcraft and cannot be separated. As a guy who doesn’t PvP all that much, I’m one of those guys who gets a bit ticked when something gets nerfed for PvP reasons and the spell has at least some use for PvE.. That’s the challenge in balancing not just among all the classes but for both PvP and PvE.

Vindication tooltip

One of the changes is coming in the form of a hotfix concerning the Paladin Retribution talent Vindication. Thankfully it’s a PvP change that doesn’t have a big change in PvE since Vindication is mostly a PvP spec talent. As it is now, Vindication reduces all the attributes of the paladin’s target by a certain amount. The hotfix will change it to reduce all attributes except Stamina and Intellect.

According to CM Bornakk, one of the reasons this change is being is because players who face Ret Pallies in the Arena pretty much automatically get handicapped by having their health points reduced at the start of the fight, something that could be powerfully annoying in a PvP setting especially in Arena. I imagine though that the stamina reduction that Ret pallies give would be at least a bit useful for leveling Paladins out there

I’m sure a lot of PvP-ing ret pallies are mad about this because one of the biggest PvP advantage of this talent was taken away. To make things worse, it seems like while this talent would still have some use against the melee classes like Warriors, Rogues and Death Knights it doesn’t do much to affect the caster classes/specs. But comes to think of it, before this change it probably didn’t anyway aside from the intellect reduction. There’s a suggestion to make this talent reduce spell power and attack power instead but I don’t know how powerful that will be.

ATTENTION ALL PALADINS!

If you’ve been doing some PvP and you’re Exorcism skill isn’t working, this is not a bug. There’s nothing wrong with your game or your interface. As the “Blues” in the forums would say, this is working as intended.

paladin using exorcism

Ghostcrawler came out with quite a lengthy post earlier about this matter and he said that they changed the Exorcism skill with patch 3.1.1 so that it wouldn’t work on players anymore and they didn’t have time to inform us all about this ahead of time. Their excuse is that they weren’t sure if they could get the tooltip changes up in time and changing the spell without changing the tooltip would just cause some confusion. Ghostcrawler insists that this isn’t a stealth nerf although I think that Blizzard should have at least said that they were thinking of making the change so as not to surprise a lot of people with the sudden change.

Obviously if you’re just concerned with PvE then this change doesn’t concern you at all, but for all those people who do a lot of PvP this change is a big deal especially since the new season of the Arena Tournament just started. Blizzard felt that using Exorcism in PvP the way things are now provides a certain mechanic to Paladins that they thought is quite overpowered. The good news is that Blizzard is seriously considering implementing new ideas to change the way paladins do their damage so that they will be less dependent on cooldowns and would make paladin damage less bursty and more interesting. Once they do this they do plan to remove Exorcism’s limitation on players. In the meantime, a lot of paladins are shedding tears on this matter.

Finally the missing piece of the new Ret pally puzzle has been released. The new Seal of Blood glyph has been reworked. If you’ve been following this issue, the removal of Spiritual Attunement as a baseline ability caused some stir in the Ret pally community since Spiritual Attunement served a pretty important purpose for them. It gave healers more reason to heal through the recoil damage of Seal of Blood at the same time it gave them mana back from the heals they receive. Now that SA will no longer be at their disposal, Ret pallies needed some sort of reworking to make up for this change.

seal of blood glyph

A short while back, I remember Ghostcrawler saying that they’ll have to rework the Seal of Blood glyph to give mana back some other way now that Spiritual Attunement is “gone”. Well the new Seal of Blood glyph does exactly that. According to MMO Champion, this is how it is in the PTR:

* Glyph of Seal of Blood — When your Seal of Blood, Seal of the Martyr, Judgement of Blood, or Judgement of the Martyr deals damage to you, you gain 11% of the damage done as mana. (Old - Glyph of Seal of Blood — Your Seal of Blood or Seal of the Martyr increases the mana received from Spiritual Attunement by 10% while active.) source

So they didn’t remove the recoil damage of SoB like a lot of paladins were hoping. So even if all the new changes gives enough mana back to match what SA gave, the presence of the backlash damage will still be a wee bit of an inconvenience for healers but this time without the incentive of giving the pally mana through SA.

Speaking of changes that give paladins more mana back, the idea to buff the initial mana gain effect from using Judgements of the Wise has been included in the PTR, according to MMO Champion, and in fact at a much higher buff than they first mentioned at a refund of 25% base mana instead of 20%.

The final piece of this puzzle to rework the abilities affected by the SA removal as a baseline ability is complete. It’s not what you were hoping for but if you think about it, it looks really decent. You win some, you lose some but it really could have gone a lot worse.

After all the ruckus about the removal of Spiritual Attunement as a baseline ability, which affects a Retribution paladin’s mana regeneration very erratically, the talk has shifted a bit towards their low damage output. Fortunately for all Retribution paladins out there, Ghostcrawler admitted that such just might be the case and he offered a possible solution too!

Retribution Paladin

When all that is said and done, Ret’s PvE damage is still probably a little low. Buffing Divine Storm or allowing RV to benefit from Crusader Strike are two possible places to add more damage.

Note that I made no promises. These are all just things we are discussing. The eventual solutions could end up different. source

While this is good news and welcome changes if they are implemented, there are still things that could use some work. As someone who doesn’t really play a Ret pally (holy paladin used to be my main and now it’s an alt I’m levelling), one of the things that hit me is that Seal of Command doesn’t seem to have much use anymore. It may be the greatest thing before you get Seal of Blood/Martyr as a Ret pally but once you do get it, Seal of Command gets pushed out of the spotlight. Maybe PvP is the only place you use SoC and even that I’m not sure. It needs a reworking or maybe even replaced with something else so that players could find more use for it even at higher levels. Of course, Seal of Blood/Martyr is still a big issue for Ret pallies since it just sucks to take damage out of your attacks. I know I’d be pissed if my mage took damage every time he casts a frostbolt or something. I don’t want to say anything more and comment on something I really don’t know much about but all I can say is that it seems like now is a pretty sucky time to be a Ret pally *sigh*

There’s some buzz in the Paladin community right now because of just one change listed in the 3.1 patch notes. In a pretty rare instance, though not the first, a baseline skill is becoming a talent (the first time I believe was when Desperate Prayer, a baseline skill for all Human and Dwarf Priests, became a talent in the Holy tree). This time, Spiritual Attunement is becoming a a deep Protection talent.

While this change might not really affect Prot paladins too much, it’s a change that got Retribution paladins quite mad. It was one source of mana for them (after all healers don’t just heal tanks) and it also made Seal of Blood less useful, especially since the SoB glyph made SA more effective. Without SA, Seal of Blood/Martyr’s backlash damage is just some annoying thing healers have to worry about instead of giving healers some incentive for healing them since the pally would get more mana back.. Ghostcrawler came out to mention that they might buff the talent Judgements of The Wise to make up for this.

Spiritual Attunement is a great mechanic for a tanking paladin who needs the mana and gets it from taking damage.

For other paladins it just complicates balance. On Patchwerk you get no mana from it as Holy / Ret and on Sartharion it gives you just a ton of mana. So you’re either bone dry on one fight or drowning in mana on another, totally depending on raid damage.

The best knob we have for tweaking Ret mana return is to up Judgements of the Wise from 15% to 20% or whatever it needs to be. (Holy has Illumination.) source

A 5% benefit increase from JotW probably won’t cut it as far as making up for the SA loss is concerned. I’ve heard about ret paladins having mana trouble even with SA at their disposal. There are more changes coming for sure since they’ll have to tweak the SoB glyph to make up for the SA removal. Hopefully a change to SoB itself will also be in the works so healers won’t need to worry much and hopefully a more reliable mana regen mechanic too. Knowing Bliz though, We have reason to be quite pessimistic.

CM Eyonix has posted that they are changing Mana Spring Totem for Shamans and Blessing of Wisdom for Paladins. This is part of their effort to provide raid wide buffs just like other buffs for Wrath of the Lich King. Similar buffs do not stack and Blizzard is making use of this to further deal with the mana regen issue which they are nerfing in 3.1.

We are making a change to these spells so that their benefits are exclusive in patch 3.1.0. The buffs will be equivalent, but will no longer stack. Mana Spring will affect the entire raid instead of just the shaman’s party. We felt that both paladins and shamans brought too many unique buffs to a group. Additionally, we have been trying to tone down mana regeneration in large groups, and were concerned raids would feel the need to stack paladins or especially shaman to have enough Mana Spring totems. We have also been trying to get more benefits out of the party and into the raid, and Mana Spring previously was still a party only buff. With this change, if there is only one paladin, he or she can bring Blessing of Kings while the shaman offers Mana Spring. If there are two paladins and the second offers Blessing of Wisdom, then the shaman can offer healing or cleansing with their water totem instead. source

So with this change, Blizzard killed two birds with one stone by making Mana Spring Totem a raid wide buff but also nerfed mana regen by making it not stack with Blessing of Wisdom. This announcement seems bitter-sweet since it comes at a cost. My understanding is that holy paladins who spec into imp BoW will make it better than mana spring totem so this will further reduce it’s effective ness since it won’t stack on those people who have the imp version of BoW. In a way it allows flexibility between the buffs that both classes provide but overall it just doesn’t come out right.

When we look back at patch 3.1 in the future, we’ll probably say that’s one of the biggest patches in WoW history if not the biggest. By that I mean not only will it feature Ulduar and dual specs but it’s probably the patch with the biggest revamp to all the classes that’s not a pre-expansion patch or an expansion itself. We’re not just looking at tweaks here and there since we see some major changes just like the removal of consumable ammunition for ranged weapons and the changes to soul shard management system to name a few.

The latest patch build not only has a bunch of changes (both buffs and nerfs) to existing abilities but it also has a few new abilities/talents as well, further increasing the count of new stuff in this patch. This is mainly a result of the drastic changes that is happening many talent trees, with certain talents reducing in ranks and even moving up and down and even going poof or baseline. Below are the new skills/talents that came with the latest patch build.

Priests

Body and Soul (Holy tree talent) - When you cast Power Word: Shield, you increase the target’s movement speed by 30/60% for 4 sec, and you have a 50% chance when you cast Abolish Disease on yourself to also cleanse 1 poison effect in addition to diseases.

This talent isn’t really great but I guess it’s one of those talents where it’s nice to know you have it if you want to use it. The movement speed bonus for shielded targets could be useful in certain occasions like when you need to move fast past the annoying mobs between Heigan the Unclean and Loatheb in Naxx. The dispel bonus isn’t really a big deal since it only worked on yourself. It also doesn’t help that it’s a bit deep down the holy tree.

Paladin

Divine Sacrifice (Protection tree) - 30% of all damage taken by party or raid members within 30 yards is redirected to the Paladin (up to a maximum of 150% of the Paladin’s health). Instant, 2 min cooldown

I never got why Divine Guardian did what it did since the only way I could think it was useful is if you’re an off tank or a holy or ret pally. I mean who bubbles while tanking? Guess that’s why it was changed to enhance this new talent.Tthis makes sense since you don’t need to bubble and you can help your raid in some AoE encounters by taking a bit more of a beating to ease the load on others. You’re already taking a beating anyway so there might be times when taking a bit more to help out can be useful.

Warrior

Shattering Throw (baseline skill) - Throws your weapon at the enemy causing [ 50% of AP + 12 ] damage (based on attack power), reducing the armor on the target by 20% for 10 sec, and removing any invulnerabilities. 25 Rage, 30 yd range, 1.5 sec cast, 5 min cooldown

Does Iceblock and pally bubble annoy you in PvP? Well once every 5 minutes, this is every warriors answer to both those abilities. If I’m not mistaken, the priest mass dispel ability was the only one that could take those out but now warriors can too. I guess the armor reduction of this ability could also help in both PvE and PvP but the real gem of this new skill is the invulnerability removal.

Healers like myself have been cherishing the remaining time we have until the mana regen nerf is implemented since we are the ones most affected and targeted by the changes. The aim of the nerfs is to make mana conservation and management a big thing and not just rely on our regen to tide us over while we heal endlessly.

Ghostcrawler came up with more details about this nerf in a post in the official forums. Based on what he wrote, there’s some cause for celebration since the nerfs don’t seem to be as bad as we all thought. I won’t go into detail with what he says but if you want to see the details then you can go ahead and read his post. The long and short of what he wrote is this:

Mana regen while not casting will be reduced by 40%

Mana regen while casting remains unchanged.

Talents that provide mana regen while casting (spirit tap, arcane meditation etc) will be increased by 67%

Paladins will have their Divine Plea healing penalty reduced to -50% and spiritual attunement mana gains decreased for non tanks.

It’s still sad for us healers to see our regen get nerfed but as you can see from the details, it’s not as bad as we thought. Sure we won’t be able to take much advantage of those big regen ticks when we’re not casting but at least the regen while casting still remains the same. In fights where we’re constantly casting our heals, this nerf won’t make a difference.

MMO Champion tells of a patch 3.09 that could be coming out this week. Since I haven’t tried checking the PTR or even if it’s up at all and the PTR forum is currently out for me, I can’t really check if this is really true. There isn’t even a patch 3.09 PTR notes so that makes the situation a bit worse. In any case, there’s something out there and it’s going to change a few things, even glyphs. Some of the change entries I’ve seen before as legit changes for the future so that might lend some credence to this. As always, you can find the latest PTR notes here so you can check it out if it eventually shows up.

Druid

* Ferocious Bite: This ability now only uses up to 30 energy in addition to its base cost.

Hunter

* Kindred Spirits (Beast Mastery): This talent now grants 20% pet damage at max rank.
* Serpent’s Swiftness (Beast Mastery): This talent now grants 20% pet attack speed at max rank.

Pets

* Lava Breath now reduces the target’s casting speed by 25%, down from 50%.
* Poison Spit now reduces the target’s casting speed by 25%, down from 50%.
Read more

The last installment of the class changes for patch 3.1 are here and like the first two parts, this one didn’t disappoint. In fact this final edition has some pleasant surprises that should be making a lot of people rejoice by now. In this final edition, we get to see the changes for paladins, mages, death knights and hunters. You can find the previous editions in the following links: Part 1 | Part 2

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.
source

Probably the most surprising change of all is removal of consumable ammo, because while this affects hunters the most, this also affects rogues and warriors since they use ranged weapons too, but especially warriors since they use ranged weapons to pull. I have a warrior friend who uses a throwing weapon since he didn’t like carrying ammo. In the next patch, he won’t need to worry about it. The removal of consumable ammo and the fact that they’re preserving the haste bonus quivers and ammo bags will give means that they’ll finally have space for another bag. This makes locks the only class that still won’t be able to have all their bags assuming they use a shard bag.

Paladins also get some surprising good news with the change to blessing of kings finally being made a baseline spell. There’s still no word about what talent will replace it but I’m quite confident it’s going to be something cool even if it might not be something as amazing. I’m thinking it’s going to be like when they replaced the mage iceblock with icy veins. Another surprising but needed change is the one to Exorcism (I wonder if it’s the same for the AoE version, Holy Wrath). Making this spell affect all enemy types with a special 100% crit chance to demons and undead is something that’s really going to make grinding easier and will help their dps.

we saw destruction locks will be a replenishment spec in the next patch and now frost mages will too. I think that they’ve really defended their stance stance that replenishment is mandatory quite well now. instead of just getting a replenishment like effect while the water elemental is up, now they get it even while it’s not up. It looks like death knights are going to get quite a mess of talent shuffling but it seems like it’s all for the best. The changes seems to be all buffs and will allow for more versatility in spec building.

There it is! Your chnages for the next patch have been unveiled and we now have a lot of reason to be happy in anticipation. This should make your game time a bit more pleasant while waiting for the patch to come.