Patch 3.2 NOT Today, and SoV Nerf

Nerfed again…for now

From the WoW Forums: [Source]

“Here is a cut/paste of the latest patch notes which can be found as a sticky at the top of the PTR forums.

•Seal of Vengeance and Seal of Corruption: These seals have been redesigned to deal substantially more damage. Now, once a paladin has 5 copies of the debuff from these seals on his or her target, on each swing the paladin will deal 33% weapon damage as Holy, with critical strikes dealing double damage. In addition, the damage-over-time effect is now considered a melee attack instead of a spell attack and the effects from these seals can only be triggered by auto-attacks and Hammer of the Righteous.

please note, I am not crying DOOM!! but this change is a big deal, please post opinions in the thread linked below

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=18600878857&sid=1

edit to add thread link and GC response

GC’s response in the Damage Dealing forums:

Only white attacks can stack the Sea of Vengeance / Corruption dot. However special abilities should still trigger the bonus weapon damage. I’m not sure the current PTR build you have reflects that last bit.

The goal was not to nerf Ret for PvE. We do want the ramp up time to be significant for PvE or it won’t solve the PvP problem we’re trying to fix. However, once you get the stack up, your damage should be pretty decent. On very short kills (say trash or something like Thorim arena) you won’t be able to get the full benefit from the dot, but any class with a finishing move typically loses that damage as well. Balance is important for both short and long fights, but it’s normal to use different rotations or abilities for those two extremes. (In other words, we’re okay with a long ramp up time for this ability.)

We will continue to monitor Ret numbers coming out of the PTR and even once the patch goes live and make changes if necessary “

So, that’s a pretty big nerf. The reasoning I am taking from this is that the SoV was adding the stacks to CC’d mobs via Divine Storm, thus breaking the CC. This was happening in both PvE and PvP.

The whole point of the damage revamp in 3.2 was to improve the quality of play for paladins and reduce the FCFS rotation as much as possible, as well as to increase our single target dps.

Well, the first objective is almost complete, though not quite as intricate as it probably could have been. They had the second objective right on, but we’re hitting a nerf now with the scaling back of the SoV. Early reports that I’ve read from the PTR are showing a lower DPS than currently is live. That’s not good.

I’ll be keeping an eye on the situation, but I have a feeling Blizzard will be tweaking us well after the patch goes live.

Patch 3.2 NOT today

I was really surprised patch 3.2 didn’t come out today. I’m betting Blizzard wants this patch live before Blizzcon, so maybe we’ll see it next week.

Khor