PTR 2.1.0 Class Changes

Plankeye

New Member
The 2.1 patch has some interesting changes. My main is a Paladin so I will focus on some of those but you can view the rest in the PTR Patch 2.1.0 Notes thread by Drysc.

Paladins
  • "Ardent Defender" (Protection) now reduces damage taken by 6-30% when below 35% health.
  • "Avenger's Shield" no longer has a minimum range. It may be used on any target within 30 yards.
  • "Avenger's Shield": The damage portion of this ability will now be applied even if the victim is immune to snare.
  • "Divine Shield": This ability no longer removes or prevents the "Weakened Soul" debuff.
  • "Eye for an Eye": Some spells did not trigger "Eye for an Eye" correctly. That has been fixed.
  • Fixed some data errors that caused "Seal of Command" and "Seal of Blood" to generate more threat than intended.
  • "Forbearance": It is no longer possible to use a macro to gain the benefit of "Avenging Wrath" and "Divine Shield" at the same time.
  • "Greater Blessing of Kings": The cost for this blessing is now twice the cost of "Blessing of Kings", instead of a fixed cost of 150.
  • "Greater Blessing of Sanctuary 2": The range on this spell was incorrectly set to 30 yards. It has been changed to 40 yards.
  • "Greater Blessing of Wisdom 3": The range on this spell was incorrectly set to 30 yards. It has been changed to 40 yards.
  • "Hammer of Wrath": Rank 4, damage increased.
  • "Holy Concentration": This talent now affects "Binding Heal".
  • "Illumination": This talent now only gives 50% of the mana cost of the critical heal. It also now returns the correct amount of mana when used with ranks 4 and 5 of "Holy Shock".
  • "Improved Seal of Righteousness": The percentage increase in damage from this talent is now applied after all bonuses from items and effects which increase your spell damage.
  • New Protection Talent added: "Improved Holy Shield", 2 ranks: Increases damage caused by "Holy Shield" by 10/20% and increases the number of charges of "Holy Shield" by 2/4.
  • "One-Handed Weapon Specialization"(Protection): Now increases all damage caused by the paladin by 1-5% while a one-handed weapon is equipped.
  • "Sanctity Aura" now increases all damage caused by affected targets by 1/2% and no longer increases healing done to affected targets.
  • "Seal of Blood": This seal will no longer cause additional chances for weapon procs to trigger.
  • "Seal of Righteousness": This seal will no longer cause additional chances for weapon procs to trigger.
  • "Seal of the Crusader": The rank 7 tooltip has been fixed to read the same as other ranks of this spell.
  • "Spiritual Attunement": First-aid generated healing will no longer trigger this ability. However, "Lifebloom", "Earth Shield", and "Improved Leader of the Pack" will now trigger it correctly. The tooltip has been adjusted to indicate it only works on healing from spells. It will also now work correctly when you are mounted or sitting.
  • "Spiritual Attunement": Mana is no longer healed if the paladin is at full health.
  • "Stoicism" (Protection) should now properly affect all magic effects cast by the Paladin and no longer applies double its intended benefit to "Blessing of Might" and "Blessing of Wisdom".
  • "Vengeance" (Retribution) now increases Holy and Physical damage by 1/2/3/4/5% for 15 seconds following a critical hit, but the effect now stacks up to 3 times.
  • Vindicator Aesom at Blood Watch will now correctly train a full range of paladin spells.

I am torn on the ardent defender change. It is now harder to leap frog it completely but now it reduces less damage. The original was at 20% health reduce damage by 50%. For grinding, that is just awesome as I could hit that sweet spot of below 20% health and seal/judge light was all I needed to stay alive while my ret aura, sanct bless, consecration and other damage return did all the messy work. Looking at it, I think it is a good that is over 20% now but I hate the randomness of 6-30%.

Improved holy shield is an awesome addition. I will probably drop guardians favor for this (reduces Blessing of Protection cool down by 2 minutes). The 4 additional charges and additional threat though holy damage is awesome. On single target fights it would guarantee me 30% additional chance of block. This makes the gear sacrifice a little less painful to ensure pushing crushing blows of the table as we will now be able to spam holy shield and guarantee the additional 30%. There are not that many bosses that hit more then 8 times in 10 seconds and if they do, they are probably proccing redoubt up the wazoo too.

Illumination now only returns 50% of mana could be a huge nerf for pally healing. I wonder how many healadins that geared for spell crit now have to rethink their gear and try to find +heal, int and mp5 gear. It will be interesting to see how this plays out and if it goes live.

The one hand weapon specialization is another nice buff for threat generation. Not sure why we are getting so much threat generation buffs but all the better. It will go nice when I get into my spell damage gear and AOE grind.

Any other thoughts?
 
The 2.1 patch has some interesting changes. My main is a Paladin so I will focus on some of those but you can view the rest in the PTR Patch 2.1.0 Notes thread by Drysc.

Looking at it, I think it is a good that is over 20% now but I hate the randomness of 6-30%.
Any other thoughts?

When I read it, I was thinking the 6-30% was based on how many points you had spent into the talent. I may be wrong, but I was thinking 1 pt = 6% and 5 pts = 30%. If that's the case, that is a really nice buff for us.
 
When I read it, I was thinking the 6-30% was based on how many points you had spent into the talent. I may be wrong, but I was thinking 1 pt = 6% and 5 pts = 30%. If that's the case, that is a really nice buff for us.

I hope it is fixed too. Extremely nice buff. Makes me feel a little more comfortable with my HPs being lower then the average warrior and druid bear. Are you going to get improved Holy Shield?
 
I'm really not sure about that. As it is currently in raids, very rarely are all four of my "shields" spent. Plus, my stock blocking, dodge, parry, and miss percentage is already pretty high.

If I do get it, it will be for the added damage and threat done to the mobs, but not necessarily for the extra blocking. But.. I have no idea what talent points I'm going to sacrifice to spend into it. Possibly Guardian's Favor.

I also really like the One Handed Specialization buff. I currently don't have points in it,a nd instead have points in Precision (a similar talent). I may change that if this patch goes into affect.
 
Oh trust me you want it! So far you have been facing slow hitting mobs But as you get deeper into the end-game tanks are reporting many fast hitting bosses (a few in Kara) that eat up the shield count in no time. This new talent is very important for end-game tanking pallys. Once you stack your avoidance high enough to get "uncrushable with Holy shield" this will keep you uncrushable that much longer.

What no one is gong crazy over is the stealth buff that we got. Only the "forum-combing-theory-crafting" Pallys knew that when you do any skill that uses an animation (concencrate, exorcism, etc) during the animation where your shield is on you back, you have a 0% chance to block this is a massive bug and it looks like it is being fixed in this patch. This will make a major improvement in mitigation during your AoE tanking and no longer do you have to time your concencrates to the bosses, hits (for those that were doing that ;))
 
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