Monday, March 05, 2007

Thoughts on the Forbearance Nerf

For the upcoming patch, Blizzard was planning on making the Forbearance debuff (gained when you use Divine Shield, Avenging Wrath, or Blessing of Protection) give a -15% penalty to damage. They withdrew the nerf in the face of the large outcry.

I'm not too thrilled with the nerf, as it does hit paladins hard, but I do see the problem. Using BoP on a mage, who gets 12s to freely nuke a melee class, is insanely powerful, especially in Arenas where it is to the first death. So that could stand to be nerfed. But by hitting Forbearance, you hurt paladins--who already have the lowest DPS--even more. Especially when you consider that the debuff lasts 3 to 5 times longer than the ability you used. It's really over-kill, and I think that a more targetted nerf would be more appropriate.

Here's what I would suggest:

1. Blessing of Protection grants the Forbearance debuff, which gives -20% to all damage and healing spells.

2. Avenging Wrath and Divine Shield do NOT grant Forbearance.

3. Avenging Wrath and Diving Shield share the same cooldown. You can't use both of them back to back, or at the same time.

I think this restores some balance to the situation. It returns Blessing of Protection to an emergency cast, and does not allow multiple paladins to chain BoP. A paladin can now chain BoP and Divine Shield, but her healing and damage will be significantly reduced for a full minute. A heavy price, in my opinion.

5 comments:

  1. I dunno, I just dont think it needs a nerf at all. I haven't played a paladin in a long time (retired him June 2006), and I haven't played at 60-70 for a bit (stopped playing at 10/06 and have been leveling). But so far, to both my mage and warlock, paladins are still the joke class they always were. They're fearable, kite-able, seducable..killable. I don't see AW changing anything if they can barely TOUCH me. The only classes who are effected by AW are
    1.druids
    2.rogues.
    3.warriors

    1. druids have 17k armor, ok
    2. rogues have evasion, ok
    3. warriors...well, warriors are already in a really bad shape and you cant blame it on the paladin

    I just think the nerf is unnecessary. maybe they can have it so you cant use AW/DS right back to back and separate them by saying that if you use one, it puts a 30 second cooldown on the other...but a nerf? come on blizz, let the suckers have some fun.

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  2. I like your suggestion but I'd also ask that the shared cooldown be reduced from 5 min to something like 3 min. It seems a little too harsh to say you can use AW OR DS once every 5 min.

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  3. Wow, a lot of great stuff in this blog, I'm definitely going to link here from my blog. For now I've written up a bit of an entry that leads up to a link to your guide for Paladin melee in raid situations, great stuff!

    Valdesta
    WoWGrrl's player blog and newbie guide

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  4. To the first poster, I don't think that the Paladin needs nerfing, but I do think that the Paladin's effect on a Mage needs a bit of nerfing.

    Small, but important difference. This suggestion is my attempt to have the nerf, but have it not affect the paladin. Now, maybe linking AW and DS is too much, but I think being able to use AW and DS at the same time would be a bit overpowered, especially with the Protection talent that gives you full attack speed.

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  5. Blizzard isn't nerfing paladin/mage combos, its trying to nerf paladin burst. BoP/Mage is balanced because any smart shaman comes, sees the sphere of protective doom, purges, mage dies in 2 hits. The combo is fine, it was never a problem and it shouldnt be considered one.

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