A LOT of people told me that I was stupid for doing that. Some pointed out that I should have waited until I accrued enough money to level JC from 1-375 in one day. I can agree with that last statement, I probably should have waited.

But I was excited about jewelcrafting! The exciting part for me is the JC only gems and trinkets. Being a ret pally, I was very excited about equipping the +27 strength gem (Bold Dragon’s Eye). When I go holy, I’ll very excited about the +27 int (Brilliant Dragon’s Eye) and +32 spell power gems (Runed Dragon’s Eye). If I ever go prot again, I’ll be even more ecstatic about the stam bonus from equipping the JC only trinkets and slapping on some +41stam (Solid Dragon’s Eye) and +27 defense (Thick Dragon’s Eye) and +27expertiese (Precise Dragon’s Eye) gems.

The excitement faded though. I spent a lot of gold leveling it from 1-285. I got stuck at 285 for a long time because I was being pig headed about buying the Azerothian Diamonds off of the AH for 25g. I needed a bunch and didn’t have the funds to support it, mostly because of all of the gear upgrades that I was getting from running heroics needed to be gemmed and enchanted. I am unable to complete a bunch of dailys due to having a wife and two kids, both under 5 and one is only 9 months old.

Since I was stuck at 285 for so long, JC became a major drag for me. I took a few days off from running heroics and started questing again. I amassed a small fortune in gold and off to the AH I went, buying the Azerothian Diamonds and the Huge Emeralds that I needed. Now that I was over that hump, I started to get excited again! I had a few green gems saved up from back in BC.

I used those gems to get me to where I am now, happily sitting at 337. The next milestone for my JC is 350. At 350375 (see update below), I can begin doing the JC dailys and start buying the Dragon’s Eye raw gems from the NPC in Dalaran, Tiffany Courtier. As of patch 3.0.3 (current version of the game as of this writing), I have to wait until my JC is at 375 to begin using the Dragon’s Eye gems. When patch 3.0.8 is finally released, I can begin using the Dragon’s Eye gems when I get JC to 350!

3.0.8 is turning out to be a nice patch (read: buff) for my ret pally!

Update: Your JC skill has to be 375 in order to start the JC daily. I learned that the hard/disappointed way this morning. I have my JC up to 350, but now I need 375…unless the patch is released today while I’m at work!

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2009. | Permalink
Post tags: 3.0.8, dailys, dragon's eye, gems, jc, jewelcrafting, pally, patch

The old, 3.0.3 version looks like this:

AP: str 113 => 259.9 AP (str x 2.3)
Crit: 66 => 1.27% crit (agi/52.08, it takes 52.08 agi to give you 1% crit)

The 3.0.8 version looks like this, (image courtesy of WorldOfRaids.com):

AP, JC pally:  97str+27str (from JC gem, see below) = 124str  => 285.2 AP (str x 2.3)
AP, non-JC pally:  97str+8str (from Soverign Twilight Opal) = 105str  => 241.5 AP (str x 2.3)
Crit: Crit Rating 52 => 1.13% crit

Overall effect of change (for JC pallys) = +25.3 AP, -0.10% Crit
Overall effect of change (for non-JC pallys) = -18.4 AP, -0.10% Crit

The nice part of the change is that there is now a blue socket in the helm. That will help my pally by freeing up the gem slot that I added with the Eternal Belt Buckle. Currently, I have a blue gem in there, the Perfect Sovereign Shadow Crystal. I will be able to move that gem from my belt buckle to the helm and replace it with either the Bold Scarlet Ruby (+16 str, blue quality gem) or the Perfect Bold Bloodstone (+14 str, green quality gem, perfect cut). Eventually, when my JC is high enough, I’ll probably just drop a Bold Dragons Eye (+27 str, prismatic) so that I can make the most of this helm.

This is going to be a major buff for my attack power but a slight nerf to crit rating.  Overall, I’m calling this a buff, for pallys who happen to be jewelcrafters and a nerf for non-JC pallys.

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2009. | Permalink
Post tags: 3.0.8, gear, math, patch, spiked titansteel helm, titansteel

Judgement bug fixed
Okay, we think we have been able to isolate this bug and put in a fix that prevents Judgements from failing any longer. Assuming a little more testing supports this conclusion we plan on hotfixing this.

Sorry you had to endure it for so long. (Source)

In case you didn’t know about the bug, here is what was happening. Sometimes, when casting judgement of *wisdom/light/justice*, the judgement would “fail”. By fail, I mean that no damage was caused to the mob and they would not receive the debuff but the CD on the spell would begin and the mana was consumed. If the pally was ret, the failed judgement meant that there was no mana returned (via Judgements of the Wise) and replenishment does not start ticking.

Hopefully, this bug is gone.

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2008. | Permalink
Post tags: 3.0.8, bug, fixed, judgement, patch

Protection

* Divine Protection The penalty has been removed.
* Divine Shield The penalty has been changed so that all damage done is reduced by 50% in place of an attack speed penalty.
* Hand of Protection now Cannot be targeted on players who have used Avenging Wrath within the last 30 sec sec.
* Avenging Wrath now Cannot be used within 30 sec sec. of being the target of Divine Shield, Divine Protection, or Hand of Protection.

Retribution

* Judgement of Wisdom now give each attack a chance to restore 2% of the attacker’s base mana. (Old – 1% of the attacker’s maximum mana) *NERF to Holy pallys*
* Judgement of Light now also procs from ranged attacks.
* Seal of Blood now deals 27% of normal weapon damage. (up from 22%)
* Seal of the Martyr now deals 27% of normal weapon damage. (up from 22%)

Talents
Retribution

* Seal of Command now Gives the Paladin a chance to deal {0.45*Min Weap Damage+0.45*0.23*SpellPower} to {0.45*Max Weap Damage+0.45*0.23*SpellPower} additional Holy damage. (Old – Didn’t scale with Spell Power)
* Vengeance now stacks up to 5 times. (Up from 3)

Holy

* Judgements of the Pure now Increases the damage done by your Seal and Judgement spells by 5/10/15/20/25%, and your Judgement spells increase your casting and melee haste by 3/6/9/12/15% for 1 min.

Protection

* Sacred Duty no longer reduces the attack speed penalty on Divine Shield and Divine Protection. Rank 2 now increases total stamina by 8%. (Up from 6%)

The Glyph of Holy Light was buffed as well:

Glyph of Holy Light — Your Holy Light grants 10% of its heal amount to up to 5 friendly targets within 10 20 yards (up from 5 yards) of the initial target. (yay!!)

While this isn’t the holy pallys answer for an AoE heal, it’s better than it was. The old glyph, effecting everybody within 5 yards, barely covered other melee. If melee dps are positioned where they should be (behind or to the side of a mob), then that put them out of the 5 yard range of the glyph (generally speaking of course, that would vary by boss encounter). The buff to 10 yards makes this a must have glyph for all holy paladins.

Edit (12/15/08): Two other glyph changes were announced on mmo-champion.com:

Glyph of Flash of Light - Your Flash of Light has an additional 5% critical strike chance. (Old – Your Flash of Light heals for 50% less initially, but also heals for 140% of its inital effect over 12 sec.)
Glyph of Hammer of Wrath – Reduces the cost of Hammer of Wrath by 100%.  (Old – Increases the range on Hammer of Wrath by 5 yards.)

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2008. | Permalink
Post tags: buff, holy, nerf, pally, patch, protection, ret

I made some clarifications to my initial post.

You can use Hand of Protection during the internal cooldown, just not on yourself. The idea is to prevent the paladin from being able to combo damage immunity. We want you to still be able to use it on others.

The change to Judgements of the Pure is in addition to its current haste effects.

The taunt is called Hand of Judgement. It has a 30 yard range and 8 sec cooldown. It does a bit of Holy damage so that you can break sheep or freezing traps to pull mobs.

The change to Judgement of Wisdom was so Protection and Ret paladins (and Feral druids and whoever else) didn’t feel like they were supposed to stack Int for mana, since there is none on their gear. We picked a number that shouldn’t be a nerf to most Holy paladins, though it will mean that it won’t keep scaling as your Int climbs, so I imagine it will be called a nerf anyway. We’ll keep an eye on this — perhaps adding an effect to a Holy talent or something to increase the return.

Ranged, holy damage dealing taunt FTW!!! Finally!!!!! w00t!!

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2008. | Permalink
Post tags: buff, pally, patch, ranged, taunt

Divine Shield: Penalty changed so that all damage done is reduced by 50% instead of a attack speed penalty.

1) Divine Protection no longer causes an attack penalty. Divine Shield‘s penalty was changed to 50% less damage done by the paladin.

This is fine in my opinion. I’ve always thought it was too OP to bubble and run into a group and still be able to DPS completely.

2) Sacred Duty: This Protection talent no longer affects the attack penalty of Divine Shield and Divine Protection, but grants additional bonus Stamina.

Yay – more stamina! How could this ever be wrong, good change. This already provides prot pally’s with 6% more stam, I’m guessing they might buff that number to around 10%.

3) Avenging Wrath, Divine Shield, Divine Protection, and Hand of Protection have a shared, 30-second cooldown. The Forbearance effect is no longer triggered by Avenging Wrath.

While it’s nice to see that Avenging Wrath no longer causes forbearance,  having all of these spells share a cooldown with Hand of Protection is bad. Paladins lose a lot of utility if this change goes live!

4) Judgement of Wisdom now returns a percentage of base mana instead of a percentage of max mana.

This is a HUGE nerf for Holy paladins, since they are the only pally’s that gear with intellect. For prot and ret paladins, base mana = max mana.

5) All mana drain effects now return a percentage of max enemy mana (making mana drains less punishing to paladins and other characters without large mana pools.)

This is a superb change for all of the mana-based classes with a low amount of mana *cough*ret pally*cough*. This is a PvP change.

6) Judgements of the Pure: This Holy talent now increases the damage done by Seals and Judgements.

This is a good change – I hope it significantly increases the damage by seals and judgements. This will help holy paladins solo and level much better.

7) All paladins receive a single-target taunt (name TBD) as a base ability.

This if f***ing awesome!! This is something that paladin tanks have been asking for for a very long time!

So for all of the changes going in, whenever they do go in, there is one major nerf (#4), one minor nerf (#3) and a slew of buffs!

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2008. | Permalink
Post tags: buff, holy, nerf, pally, patch, prot, ret

We have already announced or suggested all of these changes would be forthcoming in the next minor content patch. I thought I would list them all in one place for ease of use.

Divine Shield: Penalty changed so that all damage done is reduced by 50% instead of a attack speed penalty.

1) Divine Protection no longer causes an attack penalty. Divine Shield’s penalty was changed to 50% less damage done by the paladin.

2) Sacred Duty: This Protection talent no longer affects the attack penalty of Divine Shield and Divine Protection, but grants additional bonus Stamina.

3) Avenging Wrath, Divine Shield, Divine Protection, and Hand of Protection have a shared, 30-second cooldown. The Forbearance effect is no longer triggered by Avenging Wrath.

4) Judgement of Wisdom now returns a percentage of base mana instead of a percentage of max mana.

5) All mana drain effects now return a percentage of max enemy mana (making mana drains less punishing to paladins and other characters without large mana pools.)

6) Judgements of the Pure: This Holy talent now increases the damage done by Seals and Judgements.

7) All paladins receive a single-target taunt (name TBD) as a base ability.

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2008. | Permalink
Post tags: buffs, changes, holy, pally, patch, protection, ret, taunt

So instead of getting back approximatly 900 mana per judement, I’m getting back approximately 400 mana! After reading the forums this morning, I noticed that people are saying that ALL of the proposed nerfs were hotfixed last night yet none of the buffs were implemented!

To be honest, I didn’t mind the nerfs. So what I actually went out of mana once – I’m supposed to! Every other class does. Mana is not infinite in this game. My experience with this nerf is only based on doing dailies and not instances or arena. From what I’ve read, being a paladin in arena now is just about impossible due to going out of mana so quickly. I’ll try out the instancing part next so I can make my own decision.

So far, I’m still using my paladin as my main and the game is still fun. Maybe that will change if I get booted from an instance group as ret.

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2008. | Permalink
Post tags: 3.0.2, arena, hotfix, nerf, pally, patch, ret

First off, rank 3 of Judgements of the Wise (JoTW) reads as:

Your Judgement spells have a 100% chance to grant the Replenishment effect to up to 10 party or raid members mana regeneration equal to 0.25% of their maximum mana per second, and to immediately grant you 33% of your base mana.

For my level 70 paladin, every judgement immediately returned approximately 975 mana plus about 13-14 mana per second from the replenishment spell. The nerf on this talent reduces the amount of mana returned from 33% to 15%! That’s a huge drop!

The second nerf that I’m gonna bitch about is the 20% reduction to seal damage. Losing 20% of my damage from one of my staple spells is a huge decrease to my dps! This has adverse ramifications not only to retribution paladins, but to holy paladins trying to solo their dailies and also for the amount of threat produced by the protection paladins tanking bosses.

I am hopeful that these reductions will be changed but I’m not optimistic about it. The are bullshit changes.

I’m not ready to say that I’m quitting the paladin class altogether but that is only because I want to try out whatever changes make it to the live servers. If I deem the nerfs too severe, then I’ll either quit playing my paladin altogether (and switch to either my hunter or my warlock) or I’ll stop playing WoW completely.

It is a shame that Blizzard gave these amazing buffs to the ret tree and then removed them within a month of the 3.0.2 patch release. All of the changes have been available to the WotLK beta testers for months now. I don’t understand how these changes were allowed to go live and then dramatically nerfed between the 3.0.2 patch and the release of Wrath of the Lich King.

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2008. | Permalink
Post tags: 3.0.2, holy, nerf, pally, patch, protection, ret, seals

As I stated yesterday, we are happy with Ret’s PvE damage and sustatined damage in PvP, but were concerned that the burst damage in PvP could be too high. We discussed this for literally hours yesterday, which was certainly not the first time we have discussed the issue. Thus I hope these changes are not perceived as a knee-jerk reaction, but I am sure that will depend a great deal on which class you play.
Divine Storm — the damage was changed from Holy to Physical. As you know, Holy damage is almost never mitigated and this talent could pack a lot into a very short time. This is a nerf to the ability’s damage. This change is now active on Live.
Repentence — this ability now lasts for only 6 seconds in PvP (down from 10). Obviously this is also a nerf. This change is also active on Live.
Art of War — now affects all damage done by Judgements, Crusader Strike and Divine Storm (instead of critical strike damage). Net dps should be about the same but less bursty. This change will be made before Nov 13.
Righteous Vengeance — now applies a dot affect similar to Deep Wounds (instead of critical strike damage). This ends up being a significant buff to the ability to make up for the damage lost to Divine Storm, but is also less bursty. This change will be made before Nov 13.
Glyph of Crusader Strike — now reduces mana cost (instead of increased damage on stunned targets.) We thought paladins could stack too much damage vs. stunned targets. This change will be made before Nov 13.
We also fixed a bug with Seal and Judgement of Light that could sometimes result in too much healing.
In our tests, Retribution dps remains the same over longer periods of time, but they can’t do quite so much damage in the initial few seconds of a PvP encounter.
I know Ret pallies feel a little picked on since we’ve made this mistake before of having them come out the gate too strong and then had to correct them. For that I do apologize. It’s a difficult spec to balance since part of its design is to have large crits and stuns, which have obvious PvP implications. We are pretty confident this will not nerf pallies into the ground as I facetiously promised yesterday, but if we overdid it, we’ll be happy to back off some of the changes.
On the other hand, maybe we’ll see fewer BGs with 20 paladins on the opposing side and can get some reasonable feedback on all the other classes in the game.

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2008. | Permalink
Post tags: 3.0.2, nerf, pally, patch