Tier 8 looks to be a pretty mediocre set. No big surprise there. It's not as bad as Tier 3/Tier 7 (Redemption), but it's not as good as Tier 2 (Judgement) or Tier 6 (Lightbringer). Suicidal Zebra has pictures. The original concept artwork has a very completely-enclosed, Vorlon Encounter Suit motif. That headpiece serves as the final seal. You can imagine the headpiece coming down and locking in place, completely encasing the paladin in the armor.
This concept didn't transfer that well to the finished armor, oddly enough because the shoulders aren't big enough. So the headpiece lost its meaning, and now just looks like an weird affection. I think the armor would have been better served with a helm that completely enclosed the paladin's head. As well, the female armor entirely exposes the stomach, completely cutting against the point of the concept art.
Ah well, maybe Tier 9 will be the "good" paladin set for this expansion.
I did go poke around on the PTR server tonight. I didn't get a chance to see Hodir, but I went over to the Argent Tournament area and looked around. It looks pretty neat.
The only thing I really dislike is this:
The mount on the left is the Stormwind reward mount. It has the paladin warhorse (level 30 mount) model, but with the paladin charger colours. I think it's too close to the paladin mount. The Stormwind mount should use a different color scheme.
The Gear Manager is simple, but easy to use. It stores entire gearsets (all 16-slots). You can't do partial gearsets like in Outfitter, but it's very easy to set up and use. It's not enabled by default, but enabling it adds an icon in the top right corner of the character pane.
Dual specs look decent. Each spec gets its own glyphs and the bottom left toolbars. The other toolbars are shared between specs. Switching is essentially a five-second cast, but you can't switch in combat or in arenas.
I can't really comment on paladin trees. I think they're in an unfinished state. I built a PvE Retribution build as my second spec. I took all the talents I wanted, and I had 12 talent points left over! That's an awful lot of points for random utility.
So far, 3.1 looks like a pretty good patch.
Yeah, I felt the same way about tier 8 but other people seemed to think it looked nice. As holy, I'm still nervous because it doesn't seem like Blizzard has stopped yet with paladin changes...
ReplyDeleteStormwind's colours are blue and gold. Those colours are on their flag and everything. It wouldn't make sense for a representative of Stormwind not to have a mount in Stormwind's colours.
ReplyDeleteThe set, is okeyish. Minus the helm. Looks better with various gear equipped. The Stormwind horse is just a stupid - and bad- copy of the charger. They better leave it alone and use a different design...
ReplyDeleteGraphics wise I'm not overjoyed by this patch but at least it's better then the pink junk they gave us with tier 0.5. As for talent points, Ret is going to need some help after the nerfs they're implementing to our talent tree. Yes they gave us exorcism but I'm noticing a major decrease in my dps while also a sharing of my utility such as replenishment. Already my raid leader is asking me to consider respeccing come Ulduar
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised the Stormwind horse is a paladin horse. I had heard they were supposed to be recolored versions of the regular mounts. I assume it holds that only Alliance will be able to get the Alliance mounts and same for Horde? Or will we be seeing tauren death knights running around on paladin-esque chargers?
ReplyDeleteAlso, does the gear manager actually hold your gear so it's not taking up bag space, or does it just copy similar addons to let you switch quickly?
I really need to get around to checking out the PTR, but I've been so busy with work =/
Right now the gear manager only swaps gear from your bag. It doesn't add extra storage.
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty much just a built-in stripped-down version of Outfitter at the moment.
That's what I thought. The alternative is a little too much to hope for, I guess.
ReplyDeleteDamn, I was hoping that it'd actually hold our gear. Even with just one spec, my bags are pretty much full with gear, so I can't imagine how I'm going to hold enough gear to be able to swap between two specs. I really wish they'd at least give us an gear-only bag with more space than a normal bag (much like the profession bags are now).
ReplyDelete"So far, 3.1 looks like a pretty good patch."
ReplyDeleteAre we looking at the same patch? How could you possibly think that this patch is good patch (from a paladin perspective)? The nerf to ret is... strange. I do not understand how they think at Blizz? Gives us Exorcism, a spell, and then nerf other stuff? Look at this report:
Id deid see a wowwebstat (cant find the link now) where a retpally in almost best-in-slot gear did 6.1k dps on Patchwerk. The current build would nerf him alot. Why? Why do he need a nerf compared to other classes like warriors for example? Man, I'm getting so tired of the hole retpally rollercoaster....
I did say I thought the paladin trees were in an unfinished state. So I wasn't talking about them.
ReplyDeleteI did like all the other stuff. Uldar looks cool, the Argent Tournament is interesting, the Gear Manager and Dual-specs are very nice.
So yes, on the whole, it looks like a good patch. There's more to the game than just paladin effectiveness.
I want to point out something about redemption. I used to hate it back in classic when I was a human paladin, but I just finished my 4/5 holy set and it actually looks really good on blood elves. Blood Elves have a cocky stance, so the winged shoulders get pushed back more, so they actually look really good.
ReplyDeleteUgly T7 is an alliance thing.