Paladin PTR Changes & Ardent Defender v2

Paladin PTR Notes Update via MMO Champion.

• Judgements: Some of these attacks were considered ranged and some melee. They are all now considered melee attacks that can't be dodged, parried or blocked.

• Righteous Fury: No longer has a duration, remaining until cancelled or death. Also cancelled when a Paladin activates a different talent specialization.

• 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.

Protection

• Ardent Defender: Redesigned. Any damage that takes the paladin below 35% health or below is reduced. This reduction applies only to the portion that pushes the paladin below 35% health (example: a paladin at 50% health takes a 40% hit; the first 15% hits as normal while the next 25% is reduced). In addition, once every 2 minutes an attack that would have killed the paladin will fail to kill, and instead set the paladin's health to 10/20/30% of maximum.

Retribution

• Crusader Strike: Damage reduced to 75% weapon damage to match the new 4-second cooldown. Mana cost reduced to 5% of base mana, down from 8%.

• Judgement of Vengeance now Deals [ 14% of AP + 22% of Spell Power + 1 ] Holy damage to an enemy, increased by 10% for each application of Blood Corruption on the target.

(Blue notes are changes from previous PTR notes)

Understanding the Ardent Defender Changes v2:

With credit to testing done by Maintankadin members (Modus) on the PTR.

Previous

Ardent Defender: Redesigned. Currently, any damage taken by the paladin while at 35% health or below is reduced. Instead, any attack that would reduce the paladin to 35% health or below has its damage reduced. In addition, once every 2 minutes an attack that would have killed the paladin will fail to kill, and instead set the paladin's health to 10/20/30% of maximum.

• Ardent Defender reduces damage taken by 30%.
• Here basically said any attack that actually took the Tank below 35% health whatever the size of the hit taken is reduced (30% reduction). Most in the maintankadin community believed that was somewhat a bit overpowered or would be if it actually went live.
• You get to cheat death with a guardian spirit like effect once every 2 mins as long as you did not have the Ardent Defender debuff that auto proc and kept you alive previously. 2 mins cooldown on debuff called Ardent Defender. Healer not paying attention watching TV can gib the tank and proc Ardent Defender.
• The damage reduction component of talent no longer works one you proc Ardent Defender and now while the Ardent Defender debuff is active for the 2 mins cooldown duration.
• Ardent Defender does seem to takes precedence and proc over Priests Guardian Spirit.

Current

Ardent Defender: Redesigned. Any damage that takes the paladin below 35% health or below is reduced. This reduction applies only to the portion that pushes the paladin below 35% health (example: a paladin at 50% health takes a 40% hit; the first 15% hits as normal while the next 25% is reduced). In addition, once every 2 minutes an attack that would have killed the paladin will fail to kill, and instead set the paladin's health to 10/20/30% of maximum.

• Basically means that Ardent Defender should now work as it was suppose to all along below 35% health and not getting leap frogged for damage like on live servers currently.
• Means only the part of the damage hit that actually takes you below 35% health, that part of the entire hit as a whole is actually reduced by 30%. Or any hit size taken below 35% is reduced as well by same if you have enough health left.
• If the hit can actually result in death then that's when Ardent Defender auto proc kicks in and cheats death for the paladin and heals you back to 30% of maximum health and debuff you for 2 mins.
• The damage reduction component of the talent will still work if you do take a hit that lands you below 35% as previous stated. But too large a unlucky hit again below the threshold while the debuff is still active for the 2 mins duration can and will be your death sentence.

The propose change seem more in line as what it should be and what the live version never quite was. Even if Ardent Defender proc on some bad timing of damage you cheat death and live with the 2 min debuff and still get to keep the damage reduction component of the talent. Will have to see if this makes it live from the PTR testing or if any more changes takes place to the talent before patch 3.2. Ardent Defender never been more popular!

With a Major Talent like that wonder if Blizzard will implement a Glyph for it like they have for most class abilities I wonder?

Hmm just Musing a bit WTB:

Glyph of Ardent Defender

Major Glyph

Classes: Paladin

Require level 40

Use: Decreases the cooldown of Ardent Defender by X sec.

Musing a bit, too OP probably. Never hurt to dream a bit, its a major talent yet without a Glyph.