Update from the North 1

Kurn / / beta, cataclysm, paladins

Of course I go out of town and they drop a new beta build. Awesome. I’m on 24Kbps dialup, so I simply cannot share breaking news with you right now. This makes me sad.

However, MMO-Champion has a great round-up AND has this awesome image of the new Holy Power interface for paladins which is, in my opinion, FREAKING BADASS. :)

Holy Power interface, courtesy of MMO-Champion

Also, Kody from World of Raids/the Curse network says on Twitter that Divine Favor has been redesigned to provide 20% haste AND 20% crit for 20 seconds, with a three-minute cooldown.

I’m not sure I like that our forced crit button is gone, but I can’t really complain about the talent that they’ve come up with. Then again, I’m a haste fanatic, soooo…

Also, MMO is saying that Armor and Mastery specialties are in. Basically, our days of wanting to wear mail, leather or cloth are essentially over:

Increases your Intellect by 5% while wearing only Plate armor.

And our mastery:

Holy – Your healing spells also place an absorb shield on your target for 8% of the amount healed lasting 6 sec. Absorb increased further by mastery rating.

Technically, these were both in the game in previous builds, but these are apparently going to work, this time. ;)

Anyways, that’s all from the cottage for now. I’ll check in again later.

(Dammit, I really want to play with Holy Power now!)

6 Replies to “Update from the North 1”

  2. Rilgon – You lost me. Holy Priests get an additional HoT. Disc priests get extra absorption to things like PW:S and Divine Aegis and I guess Power Word: Barrier. Holy Paladins get a Sacred Shield-like effect for 6 seconds after every heal.

    Also, how did you know your healer was causing a lot of absorbs? Was it just by seeing damage absorbed on yourself? You’re not parsing anything, are you? :)

    I also assume this means that the Dungeon Finder now works for solo people again?

  3. I was wondering. Does the new armor specialim thing make you consider replacing your Earthsoul Boots for something else. If yes, then what would you replace them with? Crafted plate boots? Some Cataclysm quest reward or dungeon drop? Please be specific :-)

    Oh, of course, I’m also curious about the exact reasoning behind your decision.

  4. Kaboomski – I will absolutely not take Cataclysm (or 4.0 patch) stuff into consideration for live until we have a release date (and thus an estimation that 4.0 will happen about a month before that).

    I would need to replace more than just my boots, too. I’d need to replace my gloves (heroic Unclean Surgical Gloves) too.

    However, there is a plate upgrade to my boots that I am definitely looking at and those are the boots off either regular or heroic Halion in Ruby Sanctum. We haven’t done any work on heroic Halion, so it’ll probably be the regular boots off him (Foreshadow Steps).

    With regards to being in the beta, I’m getting to the point where I am slowly seeing quest rewards and instance blues matching the utility/strength of my mostly 264 gear. If I can find plate boots that are close to the Earthsoul Boots AND plate gloves that are close to the Unclean Surgical Gloves, then yes, I will replace them. I’ve already replaced my 277 cloak from heroic Dreamwalker 25 with a blue quest cloak.

    Last I saw, the Stonecore, an instance in Deepholm, was not itemized at all yet. There wasn’t any loot (or experience, for that matter!) when I was in there. I expect drops from there to be along the lines of the blue quest cloak that replaced my 277.

    I could be wrong, too, but I may have already come across some blue quest boots in Hyjal…

  5. Er, having said all that, I do believe that 5% extra intellect will be worth it at the level cap of 85. But at 80 and depending on how your gear is vis-a-vis the content you’re doing, it may not be worth it at 4.0 or even during levelling.

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