To the ground baby!

Tanking and Survivability Changes - Wowraid

So today Paladins got a stealth nerf while DKs got a stealth buff.

Now my first reaction (of course) is to be pissed. I mean, who likes getting nerfed?

But let's look at this logically. Paladins do scale better with stamina than warriors or DKs. There is no denying that. But there is also a reason for that. Warriors, DKs, and druids have a base health (Warrior/DK=8121 at level 80, Druid=7417 at level 80) that is higher than a paladin's base health (6934 at level 80). As a side note, paladins actually have the lowest base health of *any* class in the game at level 80 (see for yourself http://www.wowwiki.com/Base_health). So before stamina is even considered, warriors, DKs, and druids have the upper hand in health. Another thing to consider is that warriors also have a slot for extra stats that paladins do not get. The ranged slot, also known as the proverbial "stat stick". So a warrior has more health to start with, and can equip extra stamina that paladins can never get. So Blizzard gave paladins a higher stamina modifier in our tanking tree. Seems like it should balance out.

Well, at ilvl245 (the original intended top end of this expansion) it was balanced. But as we all know, the top tier of gear is now ilvl277 (there are eve some ilvl281 pieces from heroic Lich King). Now, all of the sudden, the extra stamina on the higher ilvl gear is scaling too well for Paladins.

I first time I noticed things were amiss was when I noticed that I had more health than my bear co-tank.

Now I don't want anyone to think that I am QQing because I agree that this nerf was needed. But it really didn't have to be. Back during beta for WotLK, the paladin community screamed to have our base health brought in line with that of the warrior. The Devs refused, and opted to instead give us better stamina scaling to make up the difference.

Well, I guess this will teach them.

Or not.