Well, it’s been up for a few days now, and – restarts and server downtime and terrifying bugs aside – I’ve had a chance to put 3.2 through its paces. Some thoughts:
- Isle of Conquest is great fun, although frantic and confusing at first. It’s a lot more fun when people aren’t just rushing to zerg the other faction’s end boss.
- There are seriously not enough glaive throwers. >:(
- The Wintergrasp changes are very disappointing; I don’t want to have to sit on a character for quarter of an hour waiting for WG to pop, only to miss out, and the new numbers cap gives the whiners some grounds for complaining about other people’s contributions.
- The mount changes might be just what my poor languishing alts need. Riding at 20? Flying at 60? I’m sold.
- The nerf to my mana regen is fairly tragic, although I haven’t had a good test of it in a progression raid because…
- …the Deconstructor-spawns-a-squillion-adds bug is hilarious, but kind of raid-stopping.
- (And having a half-hour downtime in the middle of prime raiding time doesn’t help, either.)
- Epic gems are awesome, and just about made up for the giant nerf to Divine Intellect.
More intelligent thoughts to come when a) it’s not 6am after a hard night o’ Isle of Conquests, and b) I’ve had a chance to take the Holy/Prot Bubble Spec for a proper 3.2-style test drive.
Hearing you re downtime – I raid from good old Australia so Wednesday night was restarts, Thursday maintenance.
I’m running that bubble spec at the moment in CC – its pretty damn harsh on mana for a fight that doesn’t have extreme damage (except when your tank likes to get 8 stacks of that damn debuff…)
The mana regen nerf is pretty big. I know I was feeling it in Ulduar (got the achievement for killing the 9 million scrapbots that spawned). The MP5 boost helps but doesn’t really match imho. So I am now focusing on int stacking even more. I thought Blizz was trying to get us Paladins to not stack int?
Also the beacon changes are huge and I expect them to be nerfed. And the SS + FoL is very underwhelming in most cases since it overwrites and if you shield your tank and end up beaconing them it is wasted.
Really looking forward to seeing how things go with your Holy/Prot Bubble investigations. I’m sorely tempted now that I have the t8 4-piece bonus, but looking for some slightly more empirical evidence than “hmm, why not!” before I actually take the plunge.
Incidentally, mana seems to be a bit of a pain when healing in Ulduar now (perhaps as it should be? Discuss!), but at least it wasn’t as uncomfortable as playing the Ret off-spec; the constant oom and the cast time on exorcism has seen my dps plummet through the floor! Could we be seeing the return of the Shockadin…?
I’m currently test driving that bubble spec atm. I agree its fairly harsh on mana but it is manageable.
Let us know what you think of it.
The transportation changes for my alt babies is honestly what I’ve been most excited about.
Heh, I haven’t changed my spec from good ol’ 51/3/18 and I haven’t had any mana problems.
Could be the mp5 gems, dunno.
And I agree, the new beacon is sexy.
@mally
as far as ret goes, use judgement and divine plea every time it’s off cd and you should have few to no mana issues. don’t cast exorcism unless your art of war proc is up. and make sure you’re using the right seal for the right situation, that can make a huge difference.
I have really run the new nerfs out on hard modes and a serious algalon 10 run (if you want sheer single target healing, there is a good test). I was running with about 500 MP5 10man buffed.
on the whole, I found that the MP5 changes are not enough to keep up with the healing required from the fights.
I found that setup time now is increased as there is more required GCDs to throw up before you start healing effectively (bubble, judge, bacon, first heal to get your HL haste rolling) For fights where the boss really hits hard in those first couple of blows, I recommend setting up before the run in not as you run in or your tanks go splat.
The Bubble spec is great.
I have been holding on to some MP5 gear and switched over.
I have not hurt as bad as I thought I would.
The FOL/Shield HOT SUCKS. Its useless. Never has time to tick.
The Beacon change is incredible.
I suspect they will nerf it.
The bubble spec is alot of fun and has so far worked really well.
“The FOL/Shield HOT SUCKS. Its useless. Never has time to tick.”
Yes the FoL HoT isn’t that great, but as for not having time to tick… you shouldn’t be casting directly on your tank except to refresh it, so you shouldn’t be having a problem with ticks. That’s what so great about the new beacon. They made it fool proof to heal the raid while healing your tank all at the same time. Before you had to hope your heal landed before someone else, now – who cares? you are still going to land the heal. :)