Wow! Crazy things are happening in betaFollow

I woke up to find a billion changes to the talents in WotLK.

Prot:
Kings now requires 5 talent points.

Redoubt is fixed, sorta. It was rolled into Shield spec and is only 3 talent points. +30% Block Value and the normal 10% chance to gain +30% block. Again, all for 3 points.

Avenger's Shield is instant. (Might not be new, but new to me)

Combat Expertise now buffs Crit by 6% and the bonus stam was nerfed to 6%.

1 handed weapon spec is now +10%

Spell warding and Guarded by the light were combined.

Rolled Improved holy shield into the base talent. *Maulgak

All and all, the bloat feels gone in Prot. I only had to spend 56 points to get the talents I needed in prot.

Ret:
Deflection is now Tier 1 ret.

Benediction doesnt suck. (Flat -10% to all instant attacks).

Sheath of light was moved further down in ret. It is now out of holy's reach.

Holy:
Holy guidance was weakened.'

Looking for more changes now. I am not as familiar with Ret and holy trees.



Edited, Sep 11th 2008 10:31am by ramera

Yeah I can see us catching up to them in health faster now.

Anyone see the change to Divine Plea? Its now on a 1 minute cooldown and regens 25% mana. It works like Blood rage. The down side is that it now nerfs your outbound heals by 50%. Its a huge boost to prot and ret but the ability is less useful to holy now.

thats an understatement.. lol. i like 90% of the changs.. just a few i didn't like. even fewer i thought were pointlessly bad...



sucks, but it IS just about the best buff in the game so i can kinda understand it. Tier 1 now so any pally can get it :)



sorta? i'm loving the change. they had put shield spec back to 30% increase amount absorbed which didn't help our threat from ShoR. now it does. and on top of being a threat boost again (like it was briefly a few builds back) and its a 30% chance now to gain 10% block, which means less advantage, but up more of the time and like you said, all that for only 3 talent points... this is an amazing change and unerstandable why its deeper now in the prot tree.



yep, reduced to .5 secs recently and now instant :) means it benefits from Benediction ;) which is likely why they did this.



the stam isn't my fav, but its not unfair either. in TBC this stam was added to close the gap between pallies and warriors due to gear itemization. nerfing it slightly now that we'll be using the same gear is fair so we won't have the advantage over them that this fixed in the first place. the crit is awesome for solo'ing/questing prot pallies in addition to better strike options. a little more threat too now that much more of our threat is from melee damage based abilities.



all very nice :) i'm a fan.



nice for prot, although taking benediction now will be standard for sure...



benediction is now awesome for everyone and holy got a nerf with SoL moving down in the tree like this.



the one change i really thought was completely unnecessary...

great changes for ret include:

Divine storm only 12% base mana now

Art of War now increases crit damage of judgements, CS and DS by 10/20% and when you crit with these your next FoL cast time is reduced by .75/1 seconds. (someone said 1.5 but i haven't had an opportunity to log in today since i'm at work...) this new AoW is a great change imo. for 2 points i'll definitely be taking this.

sanctified seals moved to tier 4 so holy can grab this after conviction and get the 8% crit that ret does and its good for spells too.

vengeance back up to 3 stacks, but only stacks of 3% each for a total of 9%. makes me sad, but i guess i'll have to deal :(

crusade now increases all damage by 1/2/3% and an additional 1/2/3% to those it previously affected.

SoC - stuns only double the base judgement damage and doesn't double the 30% weapon damage.

all in all the worst parts are Divine Plea for holy (change is better fr prot and ret now), Holy Guidance and the even further reduced damage of judgements. judgements are still scaling better than TBC and doing more damage than in live, though. Best part is the new Prot tree. I'm a huge fan of the changes to Prot. now we just wait for the rest of Holy's changes and the balancing of the classes DPS...

I think Redoubt and Reckoning in their current forms do exactly what they need to. At lower gear levels both will proc often: those gear levels need extra threat, Reckoning gives it to them, and they need more avoidance, Redoubt gives them that. At higher gear levels people spec out of those 2 talents (at least Reckoning, sometimes Redoubt), and with the change to Redoubt, it will be easier to skip Redoubt if you want to for some reason. Reckoning is not needed for the threat so that idea that "it can get you killed" isn't an issue since it won't proc much and people leave it out regardless. Redoubt isn't needed for it's mitigation as it'll most likely all fall off the attack table, so it could be dropped in that respect, but the additional BV is going to be really nice.

Don't get me wrong, if these were changed to be universally better, I'd be all for it. Though making Reckoning appealing to raid tanks would bloat the tree again. I don't know, I'm happy with what they did to Redoubt, and would be perfectly fine if they left these 2 the way they are in this beta build.

in PvP that Half second FoL is going to be awsome. you could use it every time you crit with little to no penelties. its a good thing i already have it bound to "Q". ^^

hopefully the pre patch comes out with enough time to try and attain my S3 shoulders. hopefully Ret will be Arena Viable. /pray

The new Beacon of Light is amazing. IMO should have been in the game since much earlier but, whatever.

Beacon of Light (Rank 1)
35% of Base Mana 40 yd range
Instant cast
The target becomes a Beacon of Light to all targets within a 40 yard radius. Any heals you cast on those targets will also heal the Beacon for 100% of the amount healed. Only one target can be the Beacon of Light at a time.

Meaning, the tank is beacon and you can heal the others because it also heals the tank. Allows to overcome the lack of AoE heals.

I can also think of this being extremely useful in BGs, put BoL on yourself and heal people. There's still the vulnerability to interrupts but it helps a lot to be able to self heal while continuing to keep mates alive. If this goes in and can be self cast I'm totally going to spec for BG healer.

Zero-downtime ret? In *my* WoW?

I have a question too, about Beacon though. If you make the tank the Beacon then heal the tank, do you get double heals? I think that would be a little OP, but if anyone knows for sure, would be nice to get that cleared up :)

I think That kings with 5 points is a bit early for a 10% stats increase, if you get my meaning.....