Other testing results:

HotR is (still) AP-normalized.

Holy Shield appears to still be scaling only with spellpower, not AP and definitely not blockvalue.

JotP is still unimplemented. So is JotJ as far as I can tell.



As far as graphics and effects go.

HotR is the same. Very nice animation and sound once it leaves your hand, but the casting animation is still the same as chain heal.

ShR is still awful. Still no sound, and the only difference is that the gold glowy effect that comes out of your shield is more detailed looking. But your character still doesn't move or do anything physical. So it's still a shitty effect, just a more refined grade of shitty.

PC faces are all low res and ugly. Not technically a paladin issue, but it's annoying me.

Something to test if you get really bored:

How is Crusade behaving against Humanoid/Elemental/Undead/Demon mobs? Is it counting as a single 6% percentage modifier or two separate 3% damage modifiers (6.09%)? Given the incredibly small variance it will take hundreds of hours of testing and logging to determine, but it is worth knowing for theorycraft purposes.

EDIT: On live SS does apply to healing spells. I see nothing that indicates otherwise in Wrath.

Have to say this patch added so much of what we were hoping for, I'm very impressed Lets just hope they don't nerf it all to hell again :P

Also kudos on making the bottom half of the ret tree actually worth taking now.

I'm not so sure. It's probably like the 4 set T6 prot bonus: 10% of 10% is 1%. So SA is increased from 10% to 11% (not 10% + 10% = 20%) sounds pretty worthless to me unless you're seeing something I'm not :P

The tooltip is a typo. Check the attached images.

It feels almost perfect now. To be honest I'd rather they don't touch it again. We can just about get everything useful in ret like this.

Two concerns:

-Since tooltips don't update with talent points (and it seems that they never are going to fix this), it means BoK shows up as "2% increase" when you buff people when it really gives 10% improved. Expected, but counter intuitive for it to show 1/5th of the effect it actually gives (where as most talented improvements just add a little bit extra).

-SoR vs SoB (vs SoC). From running around and trying different things it seems SoB is doing more damage than SoR, however JoR still does more than JoB (all assuming SotP). Spreadsheet people it would be nice to nail this down considering all the changes so we know where we're at exactly.

What are people leveling with at the moment? With instant FoLs every now and then I usually just heal up the SoB damage, but I'd like to know what others are doing.

Interestingly (or strangely), JotW is still accessible to Holy paladins with a reasonable healing build. Something like a 38 / 0 / 33 build would provide access to IoL for instant HL's on a shock crit, along with JotW out of ret.

Until Holy gets some changes in the last three tiers the only thing I would miss is DI and the spellpower from Holy Guidance. Obviously DI would be less an issue if JotW were used. You would also have to be in judgement range, since Enlightened Judgements would be off the table, but that's a small price to pay for 20% maximum mana return on a judgement.

My gut says they didn't intend such a build and this is either an oversight or a result of top-tier Holy needing some attention, with the 20% return being meant purely for ret dps sustenance. If that's true I suspect they'll have to change it somehow, either by a) moving JotW higher in ret, b) changing the mana figure somehow to be functional for rets but not holies, or c) improving the last tiers of Holy so much so that JotW isn't an attractive option for healers.

Some interesting bits from a couple minutes of testing:

- Divine Plea's "healing reduction effect" is NYI, or bugged... i was able to pump out the same heals with it up as without.
- Art of War (AoW): spec into it, and you may/may not notice it adds a spell to the ret spellbook tab. I was able to activate it without critting, or even going into combat (!), though it did not give me the maxrank benefit when i did this, only .75s off (not instant). Intended, or bug... probably a bug
- Sacred Shield is still not functioning properly, though i can't explain why, it's behavior is inconsistent.
- Big, huge, massive thumbs up to the current JotW. I find myself unable to run oom unless i spam consecrate - that is, i can use a full skill rotation and freely use the new AoW flash procs without even having to glance at my mana bar. Tested with JoW on the boss test dummy (using SoCorr), and then with JoL using SoB, and didn't really notice a huge effect on my mana. I got down to 25% at one point, but then the new Divine Plea came into play... ret feels almost completed.

I have three complaints that still remain with this patch, that i hope will be seen by a dev reading this:
1) Holy is still underpowered, especially deep holy. I have not tested beacon quite yet (servers are a tad unstable) but JotW is a little too attractive for holy still. It feels like this patch was the 'ret patch', not the 'paladin patch'. Protection could also use minor work, which leads me to...
2) We (ret and prot) still lack an interrupt, or a charge/gap closing ability, or an actual snare. Crusader Strike is still a little underwhelming for a 41 point talent, could something be tacked onto it? An interrupt or 1 yard knockback maybe? Prot got a little light around the tier 3 section, could there be a charge or something worked in there?
3) Cleanse is still terrible; this might be tied into issue #1. When holy gets its' review, can this spell please get buffed either baseline or via decent talents?

@synbios:
- Benediction is not reducing the mana cost of spells that become instant via talents (art of war procs, infusion of light)
- Art of War does indeed make FoL instant, the tooltip is (assumed) a typo
- HotR seems to be ap normalized :/ Although, it was hard to tell for sure, because the premades only have access to a few 1h weapons.
- Holy Shield i did not check i forgot :|

i'll do some testing when i'm awake tomorrow, hopefully the servers are a little more stable. Looking good so far though folks...

The 4-piece set bonus was unintended though. I remember seeing something about the intent of the bonus to bump up SA regen to 20% but because of the way their multiplicative system works it only gave 1%.

I doubt they'd make that kind of mistake again.

Remember that Avenger's Shield base damage is like 1000 and there's a glyph that increases its damage 100% in exchange for only hitting one target. It's instant cast now, so right after you SoR them you can Avenger Shield them for ~3500 damage noncrit, and then swap to a 2H and HoR them for 120% weapon damage.

I don't think it's that overpowered, though. Prot has a VERY low mana pool and no way to get it back in PvP. You can do this like twice and then you're worthless.

Admittedly, I see things slowly - but I'm just not seeing the point of moving Improved Ret Aura. Though I guess I'm still finding it difficult to imagine a build with E4aE. No reason to pick it up as holy - as prot, it makes 0 sense - and as ret, I'm spending at a minimum 32 points in the first 6 tiers - that's not counting the tasty pvp talents. Even shockadin builds, I just can't work those points in.

I guess it just makes more sense to yank the E4aE talent than it does to move Ret. What I'm definitely not complaining about is the much better fluidity - they talk about wanting a slight amount of bloat so that you have to pick and choose what you really want, and for the first time (ever) Ret really feels like that. There's several builds i wanna fool around with - all in ret. Very cool.

Question -
So with AoW and Righteous Vengeance, we're looking at a 2.45 damage multiplier for crits, plus the ability to sprinkle some Flash of Loving around.

I guess at this point, Fanatacism has found a way to make it into pvp builds?

Bah - I guess not. This is the best I can do for my first shot at a pvp build at 80. I think 3.0 is going to make me cry.

I think Shield of Righteousness would be the best way to test this because of its very predictable damage (no range variance, unaffected by armor). Spec into something like this, then slap on some tanking gear.

For example, 750 BV would produce a 1.35 damage gap between a 6% Crusade and a double-dipping Crusade.

I'm currently using SoC simpyl because that's what I expect to use while soloing. I'm also using GBoK because 18% stats is significant enough to forgo the AP from Might imo while leveling. I'm also Judging Light because....I....I don't need the extra mana back from JoW. It's amazing.

Also for everyone excited about our hybridity(should be a word), keep in mind that while instant FoLs are certainly exciting and powerful in solo and small group play, that spells made instant by spells and talents still reset the swing timer, so tossing them of willy-nilly in raids will hurt your DPS, by quite a bit if you aren't careful about timing it. It certainly adds a little burst healing in emergencies, but I can't see using it every time it's up.

Crusader Strike remains underwhelming as well. IT is now the lowest priority spell in my rotation, which now looks like HoW(when possible) > DS > Judgement > CS. That seems odd and unsatisfying for a 31 point talent.

This situation is only aggravated by the fact that it isn't included in the increased scaling of Righteous Vengeance, which remains a terrible talent (comparable net DPS increase to Fanaticism, 2 tiers lower when Judgement DPS = DS DPS - I'm fudging numbers a bit because they obviously differ in effective cooldown by 1 sec and one is physical while the other is holy damage, so their DPS on any given target is likely to vary wildly).