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

The standard holy damage dealt by Judgement spells is 20% of attack power plus 32% of spell power; some seals may increase this amount (source).

Judgement of Light restores is 18% of the casting paladin’s current attack power plus 18% of the paladin’s current spell power. The effect cannot trigger more than once every 4 seconds.

Judgement of Wisdom restores 2% of the attacker’s total mana. The effect cannot trigger more than once every 4 seconds.

Judgement of Justice will no longer prevent Fear effects, but will only prevent NPCs from fleeing (e.g. at low health).

For example, if you have Seal of Command up it stays up for 2 mins. During those 2 mins, you still have “chance to proc” Seal of Command. If you judge with Judgement of Wisdom, it will put a wisdom debuff on the target and judge for the damage of Seal of Command.  If you have Seal of Blood up, each swing you do for 2 mins will do damage to you and the mob. If you judge with Judgement of Light, it will put a light debuff on him, and judge him for the damage of Seal of Blood.

There is now a talent in the retribution tree, called Judgements of the Wise that replenishes mana when you judge a target.  If fully talented, this occurs every time you judge!

With the new changes, a retribution paladin should never run out of mana or health, unless your taking on a lot of mobs all at once! When I played this morning, I had a bad pull of 5 mobs and 3 were casters. When I killed them all, I had 43% health and 48% mana! Ret pally’s should have very little downtime while grinding now!

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