Yesterday was Patch Day in the World of Warcraft and besides the still-shitty (although improving!) patching system and besides the fixes/nerfs/changes that weren’t disclosed in the patch notes, everywhere the talk was about the Paladins and their unfortunate collision with the nerfbat.

Here is the *intended* fix, per the published patch notes (erroneously dated for 2/04/05, the original patch date. I just won’t even get into it because I tire of the buffoonery):

Paladin

Seal of the Crusader: Fixed a bug where damage per swing was increasing instead of decreasing when Seal of the Crusader was active. This resulted in a dramatic increase in damage per second (DPS) that was unintended. The tooltip for the spell displays the intent of the spell:

“Fills the Paladin with the spirit of a crusader, granting additional attack power. The Paladin also attacks faster, but deals less damage with each attack.”

The overall increase in DPS from Seal of the Crusader should only result from the increase in attack power and not from the increase in attack speed. We understand this is a significant decrease in the power of this spell, but was a necessary bug fix to ensure both overall game balance and the viability of different Paladin Seals.

Ok, I guess. Seems to be some conflicting wording there … but I’ve learned to just nod my head and pretend I have some (any) idea what Blizzard is up to.

From what I gather, on the paladin-dominated forums and from Ironforge chat, Paladins were expecting SotC to put out less of a DPS boost than prior, but they’re now seeing reduced overall DPS, even without specials.

Blizzard’s Tyren, obviously losing a coin toss (or did he lose a /random? heh), asked for detailed information about reduced paladin base DPS. (Stickied Part 2 of Paladin DPS thread.)

I would assume that mostly PALADINS would participate in the discussion, but oh no … here come the hunters, warriors, warlocks, et al to add their thoughts. Worst is the rogues. If there is a single class in Warcraft without much to complain about, it’s rogues.

Once, in jest, I told my guildmates that I wish my rogue had a self heal, but that a self-rezz skill wouldn’t be as desirable because I’d rarely, if ever, use it. I caught some heat for that, but it’s not that far from the truth.

A few interesting points raised by some of the respondents: this reduced base DPS was reported on the Euro servers (which were similarly patched a few weeks prior), doesn’t Blizzard have a server loaded up with the pre-patch game so they can cull their own figures?, and isn’t it about time that a test server was slapped together?

Some player anecdotal DPS figures are detailed here, if you’re a numbers person.

I’m curious to see if the paladins get a quick response (read: any response). Doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of followthrough going on over at Castle Blizzard.

Like with warrior issues.

Or, more complete and accurate patch notes.

Or, the search function for the forums.

Or, the mystery sales tax.

Or, the possibly exploiting tactics.

Or, the character transfers for players on hi-pop servers.

You get the idea.