Honor's Code

“I don’t watch the News anymore; I think it makes me a happier person” – Honorshammer “Ret Nerfed again!” “Ret PVP is dead!” “Okay, which one of you pwned some poor GM so he had us nerfed?” “Reroll DK if you want to Arena as DPS, reroll Druid or Priest if you want to heal, or just roll Rogue/Mage/Priest and faceroll your way to Gladiator.” “Do you really need any more proof after this, anyone can see it cleary, Blizzard hates Paladins!” These are just some of the comments that have filled the forums since the announcement of the nerf to Vindication. For those not aware, here’s the official word from the Developers: “We are in the process of completing a hotfix that could go live as early as this afternoon that will make the Paladin talent Vindication no longer reduce Intelligence or Stamina from the target it is applied to. The talent will continue to reduce Agility, Spirit, and Strength as it currently does. We felt this change will help balance the ability out, especially in the lowe...

The Lead Developer for World of Warcraft, Ghostcrawler, has been posting quite a bit recently concerning the Block Mechanic. Block is a core part of how Paladins and Warriors tank. A lot of the tank balance problems we are having exist because we thought block would be a better mitigation stat than it has turned out to be. I say "we" because the druids and DKs were also convinced at the time that they would be mana-sponges and everyone was quoting "The unblocked hit is the new crushing blow." For a variety of reasons, reality didn't work out that way. For one, we underestimated how much removing crushing blows would change the landscape. In fact, you can argue that the big magic hits (the dragon breaths and plasma blasts) are really the new crushing blows, and block does nothing to them (modulo 4 piece bonuses and the like). DKs were given amazing cooldowns, high armor and high avoidance to make up for them not being able to block. Druids were given even hig...

Our stance hasn't changed since Lich King. Originally (pre-LK) we tried to keep hybrid specs at 40% or more behind the pure damage-dealers, but then we also treated warriors as pure damage-dealers. If you really know your class, and I mean really know it, and if you have good gear, the right buffs, and a group that backs you up, then you are fully capable of topping the damage meters on certain fights. Overall we do want to make sure the pure dps classes are slightly higher when all things are equal, otherwise there is no point to those entire classes existing. Do warriors beat mages on some fights? Absolutely. What's the issue?I'm not sure what you're getting at with that last part. Ret paladins were not a serious raiding option for many players pre-LK. Now they certainly are. - Developer Ghostcrawler ( Source ) I'd like to concentrate on his first sentence. This bothers me on a couple of levels. First off, I'm pretty upset that this design wasn't communica...