Here's what makes me boggle about 3.2.2...

#0 - Aug. 15, 2009, 12:27 a.m.

Two things, actually.

First, the TbtL nerf. Why wasn't it changed the same way they designed AD? AD does no healing when you are in healing gear, so it's useless for prot-in-spellplate PvPers. So why couldn't we have TbtL work the same way? It would actually be a more significant nerf in PvP (zero effect at baseline defense) and it would not affect PvE at all. I don't get this at all.

Second, they seem to be undoing one of the more welcome changes in 3.2.

In 3.1, paladin tanks had to choose between blessings of Sanctuary and Kings. Obviously, this was not a problem in 25-man raids, but in 10-man raids (and to a lesser extent in 5-man instances) it was quite a painful choice.

In 3.2, Blizzard made this pain a lot more tolerable by changing BoSanc to give a 10% stamina bonus. We still get more benefit out of the BoSanc + Kings combo in larger raids, but the difference isn't that bad in 10-man content.

And now, in 3.2.2, the painful choice is effectively back. Kings increases STR and thus spellpower via TbtL under the new rules. I wouldn't be surprised if the difference between the effects of the two blessings on tanking is even larger than it was in 3.1. So, um... why? Why fix something, only to change something else in the very next patch to undo that fix?

I don't get it...

Ghostcrawler

#43 - Aug. 17, 2009, 11:01 p.m.

We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal, and we might end up adding Strength to it to make it play better with the Touched by the Light change.

Edit: Blessing, not Seal. Clearly I don't know paladins either.

Ghostcrawler

#63 - Aug. 18, 2009, 12:07 a.m.

We don't want to make it literally an improved Kings. We don't like talents in general that just buff buffs and want to eventually prune them. We want the Prot tree to introduce a new blessing, one that is centered around tanking. If we just changed the talent to a passive buff to Kings, it will be that much harder to go back and change to a new ability.

The problem with buffing Sanctuary now is that paladin tanks are good (or overpowered, if you trust this forum) so we don't want to just buff BoSanc in order to make it good. Neither do we want to nerf paladins just so BoSanc can buff them back to their current status quo. That feels pretty lame mid-expansion, but is much easier to do later when it just feels like numbers being adjusted as you move forward rather than actually seeing your numbers decrease.

The Seal slip of mine above is actually funny because the two systems have had similar problems -- either they are niche, in which case the decision on which to use is made at the time of picking your talent spec, or they are situational, in which case nearly one always trumps the others. We hope Seals will be in a better place with the Command change. BoSanc might still needs some work, but we thought looking at paladin cooldowns was a lot more critical for 3.2.