If they want to combine abilities, why don’t they allow SOTR to to drop consecration with there being so much competition for being global locked w/ generators and WoG?
And what is the rationale still behind Avenger’s Shield not generating holy power, even off of Grand Crusader procs?
So TLDR for you since you missed Dragonflight.
You edited out the part where you were saying it’s been a few expac but nonetheless.
Blizzard wanted to reduced SoTR spam and uptime, queue Avenger Shield not giving HP.
Feels like crap, the playstyle was never supported by any other talent save 1 and worst all the talent encouraging the spam stayed and we got new ones.
Uptime stayed the same just felt worse to play.
As far as Midnight goes.
It’s hard to have an idea of the direction until we get the Apex talent direction.
But from the reports, there’s is not defensive advantage from consecration anymore tied to mastery.
There’s a single talent that gives 5% DR but the main pain is gone, IMO.
The main benefit of talents targeted at consec are damage and healing oriented, it seems to make it do much more damage.
So whilst you’re still incentivized to tank in it, it’s not longer a requirement to not get trucked.
So it does compete on GCD but you’re not stressed of leaving it and dropping it again to not die.
Personally, I really like the shift AWAY from the “CDR” gameplay where everything you did reduced the CD of a defensive and.
We still have some but I think it’s much more balanced.
I also like the option to have wings on the minutes with reduced uptime.
One of the nice thing to have for M+ is also the SoTR charger.
That’s really a boon to round up a pull.
WoG is interesting, you’re now really incentivized to heal others but there’s no defensive benefit outside of the heal itself, so you can just sit on it for emergencies.
Yeah that wasn’t important to the prompt , shorter is better.
I did catch that, It was nice I saw they gave BDK bone charges on their blood plague pull.
What was the change exactly? I think I read that WoG no longer costs mana self cast? I need more information there.
On live WoG can give you 15% block on use (edit 15% block per point on that talent so 30% block). So you want to keep that buff up as well defensively, but if everyone is max health or you’re on a pull, you’re just using it for the buff which is weird.
Also healing allies can only heal you for 50%. (That may still change TBH).
So did they do something to compensate the removal of that talent?
To be seen, they are instating a new “normal”.
It will need to be tuned but the idea is that, if they are removing power from consecration and side effect like that, the baseline defensive power should be higher.
What is compensated right now is more less relevant because we’re going through pruning and stat crunches.
The important part is the direction.
Less defensive power in consec, less different buttons for obtaining the defensive strengths.
Which means more focused gameplay.
I would encourage them to give back AS holy power and have a third damage oriented spender allowing Prot to identify the moments for damage and the moment for SotR uptime but this is promising, to me at least.
yes I would enjoy a spender with good single target threat.
Prot having so many mini-damage cleaves b/t blessed hammers, consecration, SoTR wave, and refining fire and AS cleave is so split up it’s not satisfying.
30% Faith in the Light, 15% per talent point invested.
The wording of the notes is that you will be refunded the mana on self cast, which isn’t quite the same as a free cast as you do have to have enough mana to begin with. You could still OOM yourself and die based on the wording, but you won’t if you are only healing yourself.
Also, the new talent tree changes Seal of Charity from 50% to 100% and moves it up near the start. You can still skip it, but its easier to pick up now.
It’s not just that talent but also 10% block from Barricade of Faith, and 8% spell block from Improved Holy Shield. Notably Mastery is getting changed fundamentally to be block% baseline and 2xSpellBlock%. How Mastery scales will heavily affect tuning, but as was already said new tuning will be done. This is just Alpha, so its the very rough draft of the changes they want to make.
30% Faith in the Light, 15% per talent point invested.
The wording of the notes is that you will be refunded the mana on self cast, which isn’t quite the same as a free cast as you do have to have enough mana to begin with. You could still OOM yourself and die based on the wording, but you won’t if you are only healing yourself.
Also, the new talent tree changes Seal of Charity from 50% to 100% and moves it up near the start. You can still skip it, but its easier to pick up now.
It’s not just that talent being removed but also 10% block from Barricade of Faith, and 8% spell block from Improved Holy Shield. Notably Mastery is getting changed fundamentally to be block% baseline and 2xSpellBlock%. How Mastery scales will heavily affect tuning, but as was already said new tuning will be done. This is just Alpha, so its the very rough draft of the changes they want to make.
Some feedback for Blizz as of the alpha Oct 8th 2025
You said in Midnight that you wouldn’t be removing skill expression from classes and yet you are across each role and many different specs. I understand you wanting to make the game more approachable but you need to be able to bring lower skill players up without bringing higher skilled players down. Right now you are just squishing the ceiling to lower the floor when you need to leave the ceiling alone and lower the floor.
Except it wasn’t.
The only thing it contributed to is making Prot Pally feel like a sheet of paper because you always had to have multiple different defensive gimmick going on stacked onto each others.
Like to not get trucked you need to have SoTR up, stand in consecration, use wog to get to block cap and then have either wings or another defensive running and parry buff from AS.
It feels like crap, it’s not fun.
I’ll give you that the minigame of extending wings was enjoyable, but if it comes in a package deal with all this CDR BS on every single defensive and it keeps the current design?
No thanks.
I think you’re getting mixed up in allegories. “You need to bring lower player up” followed by “you need to lower the floor”?
Those are opposite things.
And to note, it’s impossible to make something more “foolproof/simpler” and not incidentally lower the skill ceiling.
Making something “foolproof” by definition means removing the skills needed to do it in the first place.
That’s like those meal boxes you can get that give you instruction and the exact quantity to make the meal.
You made it very easy on someone to make a great meal where as they would have need culinary experience to do the same without the box because they wouldn’t know outright the quantity to use or even the ingredients that pairs well.
Moving on…
Continuing the discussion from Midnight Alpha Test Development Notes:
This seems like a very convoluted way of bringing back HP to Avenger shield, just give it back to it with no weird gimmick like this attached.
Apex are supposed to enhance 1 of our crucial ability and here this doesn’t seem to be able to decide which between Judgement, AS and SoTR it wants to focus on.
Not sure where you think I said this but interesting interpretation of my statement. I said they should not bring higher players down just to also bring the skill floor down. I.e lower the floor but don’t also lower the ceiling.
Nope! Srry 
I don’t even mention SoTR, WoG, cons at all so not sure why you are bringing that into my argument. Removing the CDR aspect of the class IS skill expression whether you want to believe it or not. A better player will get more defensive uptime, it’s just how it works. In my opinion this makes good design. The game rewards you with a tangible result for being good. I do not see how the CDR portion of our kit contributed to what you describe as not being tanky
Are you kidding?
Do you know what lowering the floor means in this context?
It’s to bring it lower, so the floor would be doing worst…
Which is the complete opposite of what you ask in your previous sentence…
Maybe you’re trying to say to lower the barrier to entry but that’s not what was typed.
That’s not what’s in contention.
You said it was “good design”
To which I say it wasn’t.
And I say it wasn’t because there was no advantage to this gameplay since it’s a 0 sum game.
It was always going to be tuned so that you’re not any tankier than any other tanks.
Even with max stats and perfect play you can’t bring this gameplay to it’s extreme aspiration because it would be broken.
Point in case, it was made to be “good” in season 1 and then they nerfed the CDR and uptime for S2 because by the end of S2 and S3 the amount of stats on top of the initial tuning was always going to lean toward being broken.
That’s a gameplay that always need to be finely tuned for current content which
All tanks need to be able to accomplish loosely the same level of content difficulty.
If you have a Tank that is based on CDR and juggling many CDS at the same time, you need to make sure it always has some available but can never stack multiple of them at all times.
That’s a fine line to thread.
The more haste they get, the more CDR they have, the more uptime they get, the stronger it becomes.
If at your lowest point of stats in an expac (S1) you already have a complete coverage then the next step is overlapping CD’s.
Which you’re not made for, you’re made to have “complete” coverage, not to start overlapping them.
So you nerf from seasons to seasons if necessary to not let that spiral out of control.