Winter, it goes on
I was enjoying above-freezing weather and seeing grass in some places. 'course, last night I went to be to a light dusting of snow and woke to a couple inches of fresh powder on everything. The road in to downtown was slick as . It's still cloudy/snowy/breezy out.
I'm tired. I can't say that I slept well over the weekend... or much of last week really. Last week the 8 am phone calls for the culprit. Over the weekend, I'm less sure. Stuck on my night-shift schedule? I wasn't really able to get to sleep much before 4, and just didn't feel rested when I got up. Ugh.
It looks like we'll try getting folks together to play Magic next Saturday. Social activity is good, yes? Though I've grown accustomed to having weekends to rest and relax rather than "doing" something. Ah well, we'll see how it goes.
My paladin hit level 80 and underwent a transformation. Titansteel this, titanium that... poof, over 540 defense, around 25k health - pretty much entry-level raid stats right off. Hurray for planning ahead. I was hoping for, at least, a level 80 dungeon run of some sort over the weekend, but that didn't pan out.
And now there are patch notes talking about a number of changes to paladin abilities. Most of them elicit a "what the hell?" response from me, but most of them are also good.
Patch 3.09 is apparently due this week. Duration on Seals will be bumped up to 30 minutes. Really? Uhh... well, that's better than less than a minute... or better than the 2-minute duration it is currently. I don't really understand why, but I don't mind not having to refresh that before each fight.
The other changes there matter less to me. Tweak to Holy Light glyph? Okay, I don't use it the glyph anyway, being a tank. Increasing the healing penalty to Divine Plea? Fine, again I don't usually heal when I have that up. Seals can't be dispelled? Fine, it doesn't come up much, but that's good.
These announcements actually came after what they're working on in patch 3.1. Blessing of King is to be made a baseline spell rather than a talent. I'd swear they've said before they didn't want to go that far. I've already seen it bumped down from a third-tier Protection talent to a first-tier (and it was deeper in the Retribution tree before, as I understand). It's unclear whether talents will still be required to get it up to the full 10% boost, but... if they're actually going to make it a base spell, it doesn't make sense to do it halfway. This is good, though. For me, it potentially frees up five talent points, and means the possible introduction of a first-tier replacement that might be desirable.
Exorcism can hurt all creature types and auto-crits on undead. Um... yay. That gives a single-target spell to drop in the rotation when Consecrate is too inefficient and means another high-threat spell usable in the non-undead-heavy upcoming raid(s).
Shield of the Templar will give Avenger's Shield and Shield of the Righteous 3-second silence side effects. That makes AS an even better pulling tool, as it works well when casters are involved. I would assume they'll take the daze effect of AS, but I don't know that. The damage bonus from the talent is being rolled into the base spells - that doesn't really mean much as the end result is the same.
Judgements of the Just is reducing the cooldown of Hammer of Justice. There's some talk about this. If other things don't change, this could potentially mean a 6-second stun on a 10-second cooldown. Against anything that's not immune to stuns, that's pretty brutal. It sounds more like a PVP-boost, but it's still kinda crazy.
Several Protection talents are having ranks removed. This is scary. If they maintain their full benefits with fewer ranks, that means a fair number of talent points freed up for other things. If they lose their benefits... well, that'll suck as some pretty important talents are on the list, so I don't think they're going that route.
All-in-all, it sounds like paladins, especially Protection paladins, will come out of the next month or two even better. I already feel pretty buff. And that is what makes all these potential changes scary. If a class becomes too good, they start getting reduced in power, and some of this stuff looks "too good" from where I sit. Still, Blizzard is taking a wider view than I - I, for example, don't really look at the balance of classes in PVP combat, since I don't do that.
I'm tired. I can't say that I slept well over the weekend... or much of last week really. Last week the 8 am phone calls for the culprit. Over the weekend, I'm less sure. Stuck on my night-shift schedule? I wasn't really able to get to sleep much before 4, and just didn't feel rested when I got up. Ugh.
It looks like we'll try getting folks together to play Magic next Saturday. Social activity is good, yes? Though I've grown accustomed to having weekends to rest and relax rather than "doing" something. Ah well, we'll see how it goes.
My paladin hit level 80 and underwent a transformation. Titansteel this, titanium that... poof, over 540 defense, around 25k health - pretty much entry-level raid stats right off. Hurray for planning ahead. I was hoping for, at least, a level 80 dungeon run of some sort over the weekend, but that didn't pan out.
And now there are patch notes talking about a number of changes to paladin abilities. Most of them elicit a "what the hell?" response from me, but most of them are also good.
Patch 3.09 is apparently due this week. Duration on Seals will be bumped up to 30 minutes. Really? Uhh... well, that's better than less than a minute... or better than the 2-minute duration it is currently. I don't really understand why, but I don't mind not having to refresh that before each fight.
The other changes there matter less to me. Tweak to Holy Light glyph? Okay, I don't use it the glyph anyway, being a tank. Increasing the healing penalty to Divine Plea? Fine, again I don't usually heal when I have that up. Seals can't be dispelled? Fine, it doesn't come up much, but that's good.
These announcements actually came after what they're working on in patch 3.1. Blessing of King is to be made a baseline spell rather than a talent. I'd swear they've said before they didn't want to go that far. I've already seen it bumped down from a third-tier Protection talent to a first-tier (and it was deeper in the Retribution tree before, as I understand). It's unclear whether talents will still be required to get it up to the full 10% boost, but... if they're actually going to make it a base spell, it doesn't make sense to do it halfway. This is good, though. For me, it potentially frees up five talent points, and means the possible introduction of a first-tier replacement that might be desirable.
Exorcism can hurt all creature types and auto-crits on undead. Um... yay. That gives a single-target spell to drop in the rotation when Consecrate is too inefficient and means another high-threat spell usable in the non-undead-heavy upcoming raid(s).
Shield of the Templar will give Avenger's Shield and Shield of the Righteous 3-second silence side effects. That makes AS an even better pulling tool, as it works well when casters are involved. I would assume they'll take the daze effect of AS, but I don't know that. The damage bonus from the talent is being rolled into the base spells - that doesn't really mean much as the end result is the same.
Judgements of the Just is reducing the cooldown of Hammer of Justice. There's some talk about this. If other things don't change, this could potentially mean a 6-second stun on a 10-second cooldown. Against anything that's not immune to stuns, that's pretty brutal. It sounds more like a PVP-boost, but it's still kinda crazy.
Several Protection talents are having ranks removed. This is scary. If they maintain their full benefits with fewer ranks, that means a fair number of talent points freed up for other things. If they lose their benefits... well, that'll suck as some pretty important talents are on the list, so I don't think they're going that route.
All-in-all, it sounds like paladins, especially Protection paladins, will come out of the next month or two even better. I already feel pretty buff. And that is what makes all these potential changes scary. If a class becomes too good, they start getting reduced in power, and some of this stuff looks "too good" from where I sit. Still, Blizzard is taking a wider view than I - I, for example, don't really look at the balance of classes in PVP combat, since I don't do that.
With respect to the buffs/nerfs overall, I'm a little disappointed with the Divine Plea one... being a Holy Pally on the Horde side, I can't NOT use it. But I suppose that right now I'm hitting 14k heals a lot of times when people are only down 7-10k and that means a lot of overhealing. A 50% nerf really might mean just I'm not overhealing as much and have to watch when I do the plea for mana return. As for Exorcism, I think the reasoning behind that is that Blizz is pretty happy with paladin performance in Naxx, but looking forward to Ulduar, there won't be undead. Exorcism is a normal rotation for dps and tanks really in Naxx that would be usless in Ulduar. If you're happy with the performance now, it makes sense to take the spell already in normal rotation and extend it to be useful in the next content patch. On the plus side I'm happy because my healer's damage will go up and dailies and such will take less time.
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