New WotLK Beta Build (8770) Released
While the rest of the world was busy watching Olympics Grand Opening, Blizzard quietly slipped in the new build of Wrath of the Lich King Beta. Not too much have changed with Paladins’ skills and abilities, which could indicate that the Blizzard is comfortable at where we are currently, or is gathering more information before they proceed. However, the biggest updates of the build are in the release of Glyphs for us, the Paladins. This is truly exciting because while we are not getting certain abilities as baseline skills and talents, Glyphs provide another mean of adding abilities into our arsenal. Ie Glyph of Exorcism now silence the targets, which is a skill cried and demanded by all Paladins for a very long time.
In this patch, Retribution Paladins will find it shocking that Crusader Strike no longer refresh Judgements anymore. This is perhaps the most notable change in this build (then again I’m pro-Ret so I could be biased :P). Like what I have discussed in the Judgement is not refreshing article, Blizzard seems to be tending towards in the direction of removing the refresh of Judgements by removing the Judgement refreshing utility of Crusader Strike. It’s unsure if melee hits refresh the judgement debuff on this new build, but I’m guessing that it’s a no. Will Blizzard add in extra utility for Crusader Strike in the future in addition to the measly 110% weapon damage currently? One suggestion that I really like, is to remove Vindication, but add its effect onto Crusader Strike.
Holy
- Illumination (Tier 3) changed to: After getting a critical effect from your Flash of Light, Holy Light, or Holy Shock heal spell you have a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to gain mana equal to 60% of the base cost of the spell.
Not sure why MMO-Champion listed this as a new change, I don’t see any changes with it.
- Holy Guidance (Tier 8 ) increases spell power by 7/14/21/28/35% of your intellect. (Previously increased spell damage and healing).
Protection
- Divine Guardian (Tier 4) now only affects Divine Shield. (Previously affected Divine Protection as well)
- Sacred Duty (Tier 6) now affects Divine Protection as well as Divine Shield. (Previously only affected Divine Shield)
- Hammer of the Righteous (Tier 11) now causes current weapon damage as holy damage. (Previously caused 100% of weapon damage).
Retribution
- Crusader Strike (Tier 9) does not refresh judgements anymore.
Next, also released in this patch are the Paladin Glyphs. I’m quite sure most of you are not familiar with Glyphs so let me try to explain a little bit. Glyphs are new items added in WotLK, that are created as the product of the new profession — Inscription. There are 3 types of Glyphs, namely Major, Minor and Lesser Glyphs. Major Glyphs add large improvements to skills; Minor Glyphs add small improvements to skills; and Lesser Glyphs add only visual effects to skills. Each player will get a new spellbook which looks like the picture below, and is entitled to 6 Glyphs — 2 Major, 2 Minor and 2 Lesser Glyphs.
Glyphs will further differentiate each player and make them distinctive from the others. A welcoming but also dangerous move from Blizzard. Just think of the possible nightmares of balancing down the line that they might have to deal with. It is believed that these Glyphs are binding and cannot be swapped as one desires. It is likely that it works like Enchanting, where a new enchant will overwrite the old enchant, but they are not interchangeable.
More information about Glyphs and Inscription are available from: Wowwiki (Inscription), Wowwiki (Glyph), WotlkWiki (Inscription).
Below is the list for the new Paladin Glyphs that are added onto Wrath of the Lich King. I believe more will be added soon. These Glyphs are currently unknown of their types. I will post a new update again once I get hold of more information. As mentioned above, you can only choose 6 of these. For all of you who wanted a silence so bad, Glyph of Exorcism will be exactly what you will want!
Also, what I would like to point out is, Glyph of Turn Evil sounds funny. Hasn’t the cooldown been removed quite a while back? I’m not sure if Blizzard plans to put the cooldown back into the game following this addition.
- Glyph of Seal of Command - Increases the chance of dealing Seal of Command damage by 20%.
- Glyph of Hammer of Justice - Increases your Hammer of Justice duration by 1 sec.
- Glyph of Blessing of Wisdom - Your Blessing of Wisdom causes your target to also regenerate health at the same rate as mana.
- Glyph of Hammer of Wrath - Increases the range on Hammer of Wrath by 5 yards.
- Glyph of Crusader Strike - Your Crusader strike deals 20% more damage when your targe is incapacitated or stunned.
- Glyph of Consecration - Increases the radius of Consecration by 1 yards.
- Glyph of Righteous Defense - Increases the chance for your Righteous Defense ability to work successfully by 8% on each target.
- Glyph of Avenger’s Shield - Your Avenger’s Shield hits -2 fewer targets but for 100% more damage.
- Glyph of Turn Evil - Reduces the cooldown on Turn Evil by 5 sec.
- Glyph of Exorcism - Your Exorcism also interrupts spellcasting for 0 sec.
- Glyph of Blessing of Kings - Your Blessing of Kings also increases attack power on affected targets by 3%.
- Glyph of Flash of Light - Your Flash of Light heals for -50% less initially but also heals for 196% of its inital effect over 1 to 0 sec.
- Glyph of Holy Light - Your Holy Light grants 10% of its heal amount to up to 5 friendly targets within 5 of the initial target.
- Glyph of Blessing of Might - Your Blessing of Might also grants offensive spell power equal to 10% of the attack power it grants.
- Glyph of Lay on Hands - Your Lay on Hands also grants you as much mana as it grants your target.
- Glyph of Seal of Wisdom - While Seal of Wisdom is active the cost of your healing spells is reduced by -5%.
- Glyph of Seal of Light - While Seal of Light is active the effect of your healing spells is increased by 5%.
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Ambershock said,
August 10, 2008 at 11:11 am
LOL… the silence is exorcism… so… it will only work against warlock pets.
J said,
August 10, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Crap. You may be right on this. I was thinking that it might alter Exorcism to be castable on everyone.
Rewind said,
August 10, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Now we just need “Turn Evil” to do what it actually says…turn anyone to Undead so we get more kill buttons.
Killsfercake said,
August 10, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Yah, this is not good news at all…. Silence on exorcism? Great… 100% useless..
O well looks like I will be bumping my “blizz, paladins still NEED viable interrupt” post on wow general.
Proudfoot said,
August 10, 2008 at 6:20 pm
[b]“Illumination (Tier 3) changed to: After getting a critical effect from your Flash of Light, Holy Light, or Holy Shock heal spell you have a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to gain mana equal to 60% of the base cost of the spell.
Not sure why MMO-Champion listed this as a new change, I don’t see any changes with it.”[/b]
Illumination was moved up one tier, that’s the change.
Proudfoot said,
August 10, 2008 at 6:23 pm
I guess you can’t use HTML. Anyways now that they’ve removed the refreshing of judgements from Crusader Strike (because it is pointless in WotLK) they should put some sort of PVP utility on it IMO.
J said,
August 10, 2008 at 7:30 pm
I’m pretty sure it was already in Tier 3 before this build. Then again I may be mistaken. Too many builds and notes made me rather confused sometimes.
After some re-consideration, I still think that the Glyph of Exorcism will most likely alter Exorcism to be castable on all. And it makes sense to be added into a ranged spell instead of melee spells so that it can be a powerful spell to shut down casters. We will just have to wait till someone in Beta get their hands on one of these, and we will see how it works out. Otherwise like most of you pointed out, it’s pretty stupid for Blizzard to add something in that’s not very useful.
Robert said,
August 10, 2008 at 10:38 pm
what the hell is wrong with blizzard? everytime i think they are taking steps foward to halp paladins, i see crap like this. it’s like they dont even know how a pally works.
example 1: Glyph of Avenger’s Shield - Your Avenger’s Shield hits -2 fewer targets but for 100% more damage.
do they not know that one of the nuances of a tankadin is front loading threat so that you can actually move through instances faster? take the moroes fight for example. a well geared tankadin can pull the entire group and front load threat on at least 3 of them. by the time you have the entite group within consecration range, the dps can go all out on the main target. if you like locks and hunters who like to cheat to boost their dps, they can throw a serpent sting or a corruption on the others and you can still hold them. this also helps the fight move faster, because by the time the mages and rogues retarget, the hp pools of the mobs are significantly reduced from your good friends, the mages and hunters, as well as all you reflective dmg.
example 2: Glyph of Consecration - Increases the radius of Consecration by 1 yards.
is this supposed to be a pvp glyph? a tankadin and his success is often dictated by the proximity of the mobs. an extra yard takes away some of our versatility with regard to sap and poly. when i am ready to break the sap u move with in range of the effected (affected?) mob and pick him up on my own. a larger circle means we are actually going to have to be more careful on distance. i might just be a little fatalistic here, but hardly a glyph i would invest in.
example 3: Glyph of Blessing of Kings - Your Blessing of Kings also increases attack power on affected targets by 3%.
BoK has alwasy been a standard buff up everyone as the tank. what the glyph is implying is that its really intended to be used on classes that use ap as a primary stat. guess what using this glyph does? it ignores all the casters in the group or would suggest that blizz thinks all casters need BoW. as a lock, i never run out of mana…EVER, i have an im to lifetap from and that imp also provides the tank and the rest of the group with a stamina boost. why pigeonhole BoK to hunters, rogues, ad enhancement shaman when it has long been considered the best buff in the game for all classes?
there are some good glyphs there, i really like the ones for the healadins.
Proudfoot said,
August 10, 2008 at 11:08 pm
So… giving Blessing of Kings a 3% attack power boost automatically makes it horrible for casters???? where’s the logic here? It’s still 10% stats to everyone… AND Blessing of MIGHT, the melee buff will give casters extra spell damage… it must be only useful for casters now huh? Try and think before posting sensationalistic trolling.
The avengers shield glyph is GREAT for paladin main tanks that want to have max threat on ONE target like a raid boss.
I agree that the consecrate glyph is pointless.
Robert said,
August 11, 2008 at 2:07 am
and why in the world would a pure caster class want blessing of might? it doesnt make it horrible, it jst doenst sync with the overall idea of the buff. lets go ahead and infer that since the years since the release, if there was supposed to be an intention of might being applied to casters, they would have adjusted that in ay of the patches.
oh ya, i can tell you my lock is gonna be giggity at the thought of a might blessing. the point here is, and you illustrated it so nicely, is that paladins seem to get things that are thrown together. does the blessing of might help a hybrid like a shaman or even a retidan? yes, but the overall utility of the buffs does not make sense when one of the best reasons to have pallys is for their buffs.
throw in that some people are gonna have some glyphs and others are not, it also will require that paladins be more available. its similar to the healthstones of a lock, with 3 locks in a raid, its more advantageos for each of them to offer a different kind of healthstone, and one that specs one point, one that specs 2 points and one that doesnt spec at all. although raid settings are often more organized, a lock with the improved curse of elements helps everyone and sacrifices his dps, but you only need one. the might glyph and the kings glyph are ingoring the overall utility of the blessings.
if you are willing to give up your avengers shield and the front end threat that it generates on multiple targets, thats fine, and the choices we will all face with glyphs means that i do not have to make the same fatal error, but we ahve been told repeatedly that we are intended to be the best aoe tanks, and that takes a significnat part of our initial threat away. a warrior says that his ability to generate threat is an iverse function of the dps ability to do dmg. with a pally its different, we and the dps run side by side and we stay just ahead of them. taking away the uniqueness of avengers shield for front end threat on one target is nice for maintanking, but harldy as utilitarian as the regular avengers shield that will also front load threat, abeit not as much, on the boss. the glyph causes it to lose its versatility.
if you have any doubts about the absolute insanity of where blizz places things for paladins, look at the revamped trees and the way they have placed talents in entirely different trees than they were before. look at the way the judgement system has beed revamped, and then look at the other classes. even the hybrids dont have the movements (that to some of us were obvious) that the paladin does. this kind of changes imply that paladins are often the last thought of the development team. and thats fine to me, after all everyone on the development staff wants the druids to function perfectly? pallys can get fixed in patches right?
Belisarius said,
August 11, 2008 at 11:04 am
Robert the BoM Glyph is for use with talent builds, more specifically Ret Paladins and Enhance Shaman and Death knights, they would benefit most from that glyph with their AP -> SD conversion, it’s not intended for ALL casters, only some who utilize both stats.
As for the BoK buff to AP, same deal.
I can see Glyph of Avengers shield being useful as well, it’s certainly not a rightoff glyph, it would help on bosses definitely.
We don’t fully know the mechanics of WotLK until we play it, so they would have specific reasons for going down these paths. We don’t know how health/mana is regenerated yet, we don’t know about threat etc etc. So only time will tell.
Shaun said,
August 12, 2008 at 8:35 am
For shockadins, I assure you we’re already eyeing the “sheath of light” talent points and considering upping our blessing of might and just wearing that for the spell power alone. Granted yes, that means no typical blessing of wisdom (we can’t get blessing of kings, wrong tree), but with our new evocation like ability… i’m not sure thats such a huge loss. Now, with this glyph what was once 30% will be 40% of our attack power turned purely into a spell increase….. I assure you, it just made the whole idea of blessing of might even tastier, no matter how silly it will look to have that on with a one-hander.
Zandie said,
September 23, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Imo the added effects to BoK and BoM are a little odd but when you think about it,
it slightly makes sense
some Retadins take BoK in their spec or at least use BoK,
which PvE wise doesn’t benefit them with more AP as BoM does…
also the way the last prot talent looks there will be more white damage output from tankadins
therefor ap on bok might be an advantage…we will have to wait an see what blizzard has planned for the paladin class, also it looks like they are trying to give more of a variety to paladins so they are counted in a raid as all 3 specs.
Also during raiding playing a paladin myself you can have a lot of paladins in your raid… which at some point on 25 man content you can have too many paladins for the amount of buffs they can give that are useful at least atm without the spell on BoM for casters…. that giving the ret pally in the raid a spell damage buff for the spell casters which isn’t totally pointless (maybe not alot) but its something…
i mean if you had every other buff would you turn down a BoM that gives you extra spell damage…