Tuesday, June 30, 2009

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.

2 comments:

Argent said...

Interestingly, it could be argued that the old version of Ardent Defender is stronger in some cases than the newer version.

Basically, the old version could save you from death when under 35% if the damage taken wouldn't have killed you by very much. In particular, with a 2k absorb effect of some form and 35k maximum health, you could absorb a 15k hit and survive with 2k health; if you were healed and shielded again, it would be possible to get another "save" within two minutes. It sounds to me like the new effect would put you at 30% health on the first 15k blow, and then the second blow in that situation would kill you.

The particular situation I'm thinking of is that I main-tanked a Patchwerk-25 kill less than a month after WotLK release, and both the soak tanks (and all the melee) died by the 20% mark... I solo-tanked Patchwerk from 20% to about 2%, thanks to about 15 Ardent Defender saves. With the new AD, I'd be flat for the second save.

Ardent Defender said...

This version of Ardent Defender (AD) is clearly better than what's on the live server. Its pretty much what AD should of been all along but never was on live servers. The live server version of AD is clearly leapfroggable and not reliable. This version cannot be leapfrogged as compared to the live server version.

As for the PTR for 3.2 it could be said this new PTR version of AD is also somewhat a nerfed version of the first version which was felt to be OP by many. But imo a better reworked version all around for the talent since you maintain the damage reduction even if AD procs and the guardian spirit effect is on cooldown. You still have the damage reduction effect.

Can only hope it makes it live to 3.2 without any further nerf by Blizzard.

WTB: Glyph of Ardent Defender.