Patch 3.2.2 Live

Nerfs to talents. Trying to make people use Command, sometimes. And some item fixes.

- Righteous Fury: The bonus threat from Holy spells caused by this talent has been reduced from 90% to 80%.
- Seal of Corruption and Seal of Vengeance: These seals will now only use the debuff stacks generated by the attacking paladin to determine the damage done by the seal and by the judgement.
- Ardent Defender: This talent now reduces damage taken below 35% health by 7/13/20% instead of 10/20/30%.
- Blessing of Sanctuary: This blessing now grants 10% strength in addition to its current effects. Also, the strength and stamina bonuses from this blessing will no longer be lost when Blessing of Kings is removed.
- Judgements of the Just: The reduction in cooldown to Hammer of Justice provided by this talent has been reduced to 5/10 seconds instead of 10/20 seconds.
- Touched by the Light: This talent now provides 20/40/60% of the paladin's strength as spell power instead of 10/20/30% of the paladin's stamina.
- Seal of Command: This ability now chains to strike up to 2 additional targets when it is triggered by an attack that can only strike a single target.

- Libram of Obstruction: The buff to block value from this relic is now exclusive with the buff to block value from Libram of the Sacred Shield; it is impossible to have both buffs at once.
- Libram of the Sacred Shield: The block value buff from this relic has been increased to match its item level.
- Paladin Tier-9 DPS 2-Piece Set Bonus: Now grants the correct chance for Righteous Vengeance ticks to be critical strikes.

- Hand of Freedom: This ability now correctly removes the snaring component of Infected Wounds and Frostfire Bolt.
Source

Holy Wrath nerf

I wondered why in the world they would bring 3 holy paladins to heal something...

We just deployed a hotfix to modify Holy Wrath so this spell has the same diminishing return mechanics that other player stun spells and abilities currently have. This will prevent Undead creatures that we wish to be susceptible to stun from being permanently stunned if you include enough Paladins in your raid who then rotate their Holy Wrath casts.

This will affect the difficulty of Anub'arak, but we didn't want the "right way" to defeat this fight to involve bringing five Paladins who glyphed their Holy Wrath spell.
Source

Apparently they used it to keep adds stunlocked down. And I'm betting having several divine sacrifices didn't hurt either.

About Healing and Tanking

If we just chilled out tank damage, then healing would be a lot easier. While I know it's popular in this forum to claim that we only want to make life hard for the healers, I think in reality many of you would get bored or risk losing your spot when the raid didn't need as many healers.

A better answer, in our opinion, is to increase tank health and have bosses hit hard but not as often. The end result would hopefully be that it took several big heals to bring a tank back up rather than a single Holy Light crit. Currently overhealing isn't particularly scary because mana is cheap and the risk of the tank (or anyone dying) on a given GCD is very real.

If you currently put say 3 healers on the tank that isn't because it requires that much healing per second to keep the tank alive. Instead, it's because with 3 healers hopefully someone will be always casting and can land a heal after big hit one but before big hit two, which would kill the tank. If a few hots or shields get stomped on along the way, oh well.

Ideally, you put 3 healers on the tank because it takes 3 big heals to get the tank back up. If you don't coordinate well or use a big heal when a medium heal would do, then you'd risk too much overhealing and ultimately running out of mana. You'd need to heal smart as well as just healing fast and big, which is what the current design really encourages.

I predict health pools of all players will go way up in Cataclysm relative to player damage and healing. Everything (meaning PvP too) would be slowed down just a little so that making the right choice would sometimes trump making the fast choice.

I'll also add that many players think 10-player raid healing is currently more fun than in 25s because you are often splitting duties with just one other person -- "You heal the tank. I'll heal the raid." In 25s you get more of that whack-a-mole feeling where you're competing just as much with other players to heal someone first and nothing feels very organized or efficient.
Source

While I agree that giving tanks more hp in this current environment is would be a good thing, there's a lot here that I very much disagree with.

First off, you can design healing to not be as hard and still use a lot of healers. This is entirely a failing of the development team, and pretty much a cop-out.

Forcing players to use healing strategies where "hopefully" someone lands a heal at the right time is horrible. The current system encourages spamming the *@#$ out of the tank, it does not encourage smart healing. Divine plea with a 50% heal reduction is bad; clearly they don't see how the vast majority of paladin healers use it. Beacon of Light is bad for the game; it very much encourages spamming and not smart play. Problems with healer mana stem from requiring stupid amounts of healing in order to keep people alive with luck rather than smart healing. AE just for AE sake and rediculously hard hitting bosses are new bad gimmicks; WoW didn't always have these on every boss. In my mind, this is more fun than heal-chain/rotations and smart healers still play better, but it could and should be designed better (and perhaps the current state of it's design now is a product of PvP influence?). It would be nice to even see a system where it was possible to see a boss that hits very fast for medium damage for variety.

10-mans are more fun to heal because the damage isn't as ridiculous, though it's also much easier to stack 3 healers for stupid healing fights and still meet dps requirements. Also, anyone saying "more fun" means that they have run both 10 and 25 which means that they are probably over-geared for a 10-man. I feel very strongly that our current 10-mans give out far too high itemlevel of gear in relation to the 25 man progression.

Nerfing Prot More

More prot nerfs. Clearly giving into the forum whiners again. I don't see these as warranted at all after the seal nerfs.

We don't think "high threat tanks" is a fun niche for the game. We don't mind some variation depending on the specific situation, but paladin OTs were accidentally pulling off of MTs an awful lot. That isn't a L2P issue. That's just the numbers being off and frustrating everyone.

We didn't want to nerf threat until community perception had turned around that paladins could survive while tanking hard modes.

Try out the hard Coliseum fights (once available) or the tougher ones in Ulduar and let us know how it feels.
Source

They must have gotten the patch notes from the test realm download, as there aren't 3.2.2 patch notes posted on the official websites that I could find.

• Righteous Fury: The bonus threat from Holy spells caused by this talent has been reduced from 90% to 80%.
• Judgements of the Just: The reduction in cooldown to Hammer of Justice provided by this talent has been reduced to 5/10 seconds instead of 10/20 seconds.

• Touched by the Light: This talent now provides 20/40/60% of the paladin’s strength as spell power instead of 10/20/30% of the paladin’s stamina.
• Seal of Command: This ability now chains to strike up to 2 additional targets when it is triggered by an attack

MMOChamp

Prot healers in PvP

I haven't actually seen any Prot healers in PvP myself, so I can't really judge if they're overpowered or easy to shut down. However, I have an overwhelming sense of dread for the nerfs they're going to drop on us that end up hurting PvE Prots just like those Ret PvP nerfs hurt them more than Rets. =(

We are going to fix the specific scenario where a PvP paladin with a Prot build but spell power gear can heal for more than a Holy build in the same gear. We want to do this without messing up the Prot paladin trying to tank in PvE.

We will probably not make this change before the end of the current Arena season, but you can be thinking about your teams for season 7 with this change in mind.

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Touched by the Light helps to solve a specific problem which is that paladins do both physical and magical damage and Prot paladins need both for threat (and damage). It works fine when the paladin is in tanking gear, and in fact was designed so that paladins wouldn't need to mix tanking gear with caster gear as they did in the past.

It is not balanced for a Prot paladin who decides to wear spell power gear. At that point you're double-dipping.

We have no problem with Prot paladins in PvP, but they need to be there because their survivability is an asset, not because they can out-heal an entire tree dedicated to healing.

There is a fine line between creative use of game mechanics and something that goes against our vision for the game. It's always going to be subjective. If the Retribution tree ended up being better at tanking than the Protection tree, or the Shadow priest was a better healer than the Disc tree, or the Marks hunter had a more powerful pet than the BM hunter, we'd take similar action.

Source

HoR hotfix

Nerfing the functionality even more for Prot Paladins because of Ret Paladin PvP. I'm already very unhappy with the new seals and exorcism. This really has to stop.

Hand of Reckoning is no longer able to be used on targets that are immune to taunt, including players.
Source

Patch 3.2.0

Patch is going live today. Oddly small download for a content patch though...

• Agility: The amount of agility required per percentage of dodge has been increased by 15%. This change required recalibrating the amount of dodge a player has with 0 agility by a slight amount as well, so all players will see their dodge percentage vary a small amount.
• Block Value: The amount of bonus block value on all items has been doubled. This does not affect the base block value on shields or block value derived from strength.
• On-Use Block Value Items: All items and set bonuses that trigger temporary increases to block value have been modified. Instead of increasing their block value amount by 100% like other items, they have all had their effect durations doubled. This applies to Glyph of Deflection, Gnomeregan Autoblocker, Coren's Lucky Coin, Lavanthor's Talisman, Libram of Obstruction, Tome of the Lightbringer, Libram of the Sacred Shield, the tier-8 paladin Shield of Righteousness bonus, the tier-5 paladin Holy Shield bonus, and the tier-5 warrior Shield Block bonus.
• Dodge Rating: The amount of dodge rating required per percentage of dodge has been increased by 15%. This is before diminishing returns. Combined with other changes, this makes dodge rating and parry rating equally potent before diminishing returns apply.
• Parry Rating: The amount of parry rating required per percentage of parry has been reduced by 8%. This is before diminishing returns. Combined with other changes, this makes dodge rating and parry rating equally potent before diminishing returns apply. Parry still diminishes more quickly than dodge.

• Blessing of Sanctuary: This blessing now also increases stamina by 10%. This effect is not cumulative with Blessing of Kings.
• Charger: Can now be learned at level 40.
• Crusader Aura: This ability now also grants its flying speed increase to a druid's Flight Form and Swift Flight Form.
• Exorcism: Now has a 1.5 second cast time, but can once again be used on players.
• Hand of Reckoning: Redesigned. Now does damage only when the target does not currently have the caster targeted, but damage done increased to 50% of attack power, occurring after the taunt effect is applied.
• Judgements: Some of these attacks were considered ranged and some melee. They are all now considered melee attacks that can't be dodged, parried or blocked.
• Judgement of Light: Now heals for 2% of the attacker's maximum health instead of a variable amount based on the spell power and attack power of the judging paladin.
• Lay on Hands: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 10/20% instead of increasing the target's armor.
• Righteous Fury: No longer has a duration, remaining until cancelled or death. Also cancelled when a Paladin activates a different talent specialization.
• Sacred Shield: When a paladin casts Flash of Light on a target with this buff, they also now place a heal-over-time effect on the target, healing that target for 100% of the Flash of Light amount over 12 seconds.
• Seal of Blood: This ability has been removed.
• Seal of the Martyr: This ability has been removed.
• Seal of Vengeance and Seal of Corruption: These seals have been redesigned. Only auto-attacks and Hammer of the Righteous can place the debuff on the paladin's current target(s). However, while the seal is active, each melee swing or ability (excluding judgements) that lands on the target will deal a percentage of weapon damage as Holy damage to the target. This damage maxes out at 33% weapon damage with 5 applications of the debuff and scales upward evenly based on how many applications of the debuff are active. This Holy damage deals double-damage critical strikes. In addition, the damage-over-time debuff is now considered a melee attack for the purposes of determining its chance to hit, miss, be dodged or parried.
• Shield of Righteousness: Now deals 100% of shield block value as damage instead of 130%. In addition, the benefit from additional block value this ability gains is now subject to diminishing returns. Diminishing returns occur once block value exceeds 30 times the player's level and caps the maximum damage benefit from shield block value at 34.5 times the player's level.
• Warhorse: Can now be learned at level 20.
• Talents
  • Holy
    • Beacon of Light: The healing amount on the Beacon of Light target is now based on the total healing done (including over-healing) instead of the effective healing done. Radius increased to 60 yards. Multiple Paladins can now have this active on the same target. Buff indicating a player is within range of the Beacon target is no longer displayed.
    • Divine Intellect: This talent now gives 2/4/6/8/10% increased intellect instead of 3/6/9/12/15%.
    • Illumination: This talent now returns 30% of the mana cost of the spell instead of 60%.
  • Protection
    • Ardent Defender: Redesigned. Any damage that takes the paladin below 35% health is reduced. This reduction applies only to the portion that pushes the paladin below 35% health (example: a paladin at 50% health takes a 40% hit; the first 15% hits as normal while the next 25% is reduced). In addition, once every 2 minutes an attack that would have killed the paladin will fail to kill, and instead heal the paladin for up to 10/20/30% of maximum health depending on the paladin's defense rating (example: a paladin with defense equal to only 5 times his or her level will receive no healing from the talent, while a paladin who is immune to critical strikes from boss creatures through defense will receive the maximum amount).
    • Guarded by the Light: This talent will no longer cause Divine Plea's duration to be refreshed by using Judgement of Wisdom, Judgement of Justice, or Judgement of Light.
  • Retribution
    • Art of War: Now only applies to melee critical hits, but will make your next Flash of Light or Exorcism instant. In addition, this talent now provides notification in the floating combat text when it activates.
    • Crusader Strike: Damage reduced to 75% weapon damage to match the new 4-second cooldown. Mana cost reduced to 5% of base mana.
    • Seal of Command: Redesigned. This seal now deals 36% weapon damage on every swing, and deals substantially less judgement damage.
    • Vindication: Redesigned. Now lowers target attack power, is consistent and does not stack with Demoralizing Shout.