Vengeance back to 3 stacks
Vengeance back to 3 stacks
Vengeance posed a delicate problem for Blizzard. On one hand, the talent provided an amazing 15% damage increase for 5 talent points, which was cheap enough but offset by the fact that it relied on crits in order to be kept up. On the other hand, Vengeance scaled too well with gear because as the Paladin’s gear got better, his crit rating got higher, and it came to the point where Paladins could keep Vengeance up indefinitely.
The problem was two-fold — first, Vengeance in that regard was overpowered because it was never intended to be a permanent buff; second, most Paladins felt that they needed to have Vengeance up permanently in order to be competitive in raid DPS. Blizzard nerfed Vengeance to two stacks totalling +10% damage for five talent points. Of course, as they mentioned in a thread, a stack of two isn’t much of a stack at all.
Ghostcrawler also says that they’re looking at bringing the stacks back up to three, “because that just feels more fun than 2.” I like Blizzard’s repeated use of the word ‘fun’ throughout Wrath’s development cycle. This indicates that their design is geared primarily towards making the game fun for people, something that can easily get lost in all the number crunching. The proposed change to reduce Vengeance to three talent points would be extremely welcome — even though it’s an effective nerf — because it frees the tree further from bloat.
Filed under: World of Warcraft