(I originally titled this post “Divine Plea Nerf Ahead of Schedule” but I thought that sounded too bitter.)
At the end of last week, I posted about the changes Blizzard announced for 3.1, including a nerf to Divine Plea (changing the healing penalty from 20% to 50%).
Not content to wait until 3.1, Blizzard continues the fine tradition of hasty nerfs to paladins (I sound bitter, don’t I?) by implementing this change in 3.0.9, which is going live this week with no PTR test time.
The paladin-relevant part:
- The duration on all Seals has been increased to 30 minutes and can no longer dispelled.
- Divine Plea: The amount healed by your spells is reduced by 50% (up from 20%) but the effect can no longer be dispelled.
- Sanctified Seals: This talent no longer affects dispel resistance, but continues to affect crit chance.
Glyphs
- Glyph of Holy Light — Your Holy Light grants 10% of its heal amount to up to 5 friendly targets within 8 yards of the initial target. (Down from 20 yards, Tooltip text fix, was already hotfixed to 8 yards in game)
- Glyph of Seal of Righteousness — Increases the damage done by Seal of Righteousness by 10%. (Old – Reduces the cost of your Judgement spells by 10% while Seal of Righteousness is active.)
If you’re curious why I’m bitter about the Divine Plea change, this post provides some backstory. It’s not that I object to the nerf in principle; it’s the implementation. Blizzard has shown a tendency, lately, to nerf first and test later, and paladins have copped quite a lot of that. Rolling a significant nerf like this into an abrupt live patch release, weeks (if not months) ahead of the overall changes to mana regen mechanics for every other healing class, strikes me as unduly hasty. Again.
OUCH
Live is the new PTR.
I dont know what to make of it. I often only use Plea during low heal periods. Except for a couple mana intensive fights like Patchwork or Sath, i dont think this is huge. However the principal of instituting a major change without testing or feedback makes me think that the community friendly wow of the early days is gone.
Its knee jerk. Complain that Holy Pallies too strong in arenas (which we may be), fix imminently. No measured response at all. Never mind that once again a PVP change is here to screw us PVE people (let me not get started on that).
I’m… I’m just not going there this morning. I haven’t had enough sleep to process this in a calm, rational manner. (So you get a link, since you did already).
You would think all the “mana problem” fixes would be rolled into the same patch. It feels a bit hasty to get our nerf now when mages and warlocks aren’t getting their promised mana regen abilities to help us out yet.
Yes… I posted a thread in the healing forums called “Holydins: Scarificial lambs for regen nerf?”. I don’t know why they are rushing this out the door before the other healing regen nerfs. Probably arena. Sigh. Makes me want to not dual spec heals when 3.1 comes out (I’m a protadin who often respecs heals for 10 mans). I’m bitter too. And I’m, strictly speaking, not a healadin.
Well I’m bitter even if you aren’t Siha :P.
This makes me sad panda on the one hand, and kinda excited on the other – I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with my healing rotation in Naxx 25, so this is going to force me to pay more attention. But hopefully not at the cost of a tank dying. It also makes gemming for +int without question the way to go – I’ve gotten razzed for my insane mana pool (22,000 unbuffed, 31,000 when Greatness procs w/ raid buffs) but clearly this is going to be necessary for major fights. I may be switching out some of my haste gems now – bummer since I was trying to cap haste.
I just don’t understand why they toss healadins into the flames first (I do agree mana regen needed to be adjusted, btw, just not this way). I think all healers should be nerfed at the same time since it is a game mechanic issue (i.e. not a paladin alone issue).
I also think this is much more of a significant issue at end game (i.e. 25 man gear) than 5/10 man. I mean, do you really want to take a -50% healing penalty on a 5 man or 10 man Patch? My gear is mostly 5/10 man epics (i.e. ilevel 200 purples) and my average holy light is 10k…. 5k kinda sucks. And at less then 4k flashes… sub-2k if I want mana regen?
I’ll be bitter too, as the 5-person Heroic runs are my favorite thing to do in WoW at the moment and while I can eat a 20% penalty, 50% is risk I’m not willing to take unless we’re not in combat. In which case, I may as well drink/dumpling and get ALL my mana back, right?
Did I use Plea? Absolutely. I’d toss it on during trash pulls to avoid downtime, and it really made my dailies more manageable. I’m a bit nervous about our guild 10-person Naxx runs now too, as I was the go-to person for Patchwerk and Raz’s understudies.
This was the first change I was going to copy my character to the PTR to test out, too. So much for that plan. I’m weary of relearning how I play every few months.
Sorry for the long post, but do any of you see leaving the same seal up for 30 minutes straight?
Sure, I use seal of wisdom all the time while healing for the glyph bonus, and now with these changes I’ll be needing it even more. Really 5 or 10 minutes would be fine, the main problem is 2 minutes means refreshing the seal in mid combat for longer boss fights.
@Phizuol
Read all the notes. Seals now last 30 minutes and cannot be dispelled.
Sure, just replying to “Sorry for the long post, but do any of you see leaving the same seal up for 30 minutes straight?”
ugh ugh ugh. I too was shocked at how fast the changes went live. I had just began weening myself off of Divine Plea and learning when I could find little “breaks” here and there to use it. I seriously was not expecting this to come so fast and I am fairly disgruntled at how quickly it happened.
30 minute seals are a bit overkill imo, I think 10 would be sufficient enough. I just keep telling myself that since I use the SoW Glyph and often my seal runs off mid-fight without notice, perhaps that will just make up for my lack of Divine Plea.
Looking forward to it!
I have observed a long standing pattern with how Blizzard handles Paladins. We are the outcasts, the kids everyone picks on in school, ect. Why,I don’t know and wish I did. It dosen’t make sence, really, since they created the class to begin with.
this is just a continuation of that pattern…. ;(