New & Updated Paladin Covenant Legendaries in Patch 9.1 PTR Build 38511 - Paladin Guide Writers Review Effects

PTR Posted 2021/05/02 at 5:13 AM by Jaydaa

New Covenant-Specific Class Legendariesbuild 38511 of the 9.1 PTR

Our Guide Writers have given their thoughts on the Patch 9.1 PTR Class Changes and new Legendaries for Build 38511. Check out all of our released opinion articles for the build below.

Class Tuning Opinions Build 38511

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Covenant Legendary Opinions Build 38511

Paladin Covenant Legendaries - Guide Writer Thoughts

Venthyr Paladin Legendary in Patch 9.1Warning

NEW (Venthyr) Ashen Hallow's duration is increased by 50%. If you leave its area, its cooldown is reduced by up to 50%, proportional to its remaining duration.

Retuned Paladin Legendaries in Patch 9.1Warningunconfirmed

Divine Resonance (Kyrian) Every 10 secondssec after casting Divine Toll you cast it again at 60%20% effectiveness. This effect lasts 30 secondssec.
Seasons of Plenty (Night Fae) Casting Blessing of Summer or Blessing of Winter grants Solstice to you and up to 4 allies, increasing Haste by 5% and increasing cooldown recovery by 10% for 10 sec.
Duty-Bound Gavel (Necrolord) Vanquisher’s Hammer now has 2 charges and empowers an additional cast of . Vanquisher's Hammer gains 1 charge. empowers twice.

Paladin Writer Opinions & FeedbackHoly Paladin Writer Opinion & FeedbackPelinalHammer of Wrath Paladin DiscordTwitterThe Night Fae and Necrolord legendaries saw some minor tooltip wording changes, so I won’t discuss them much.

Kyrian

The Kyrian legendary Divine Resonance unsurprisingly got nerfed (Is it really a nerf if it was not even testable?) but is in a more reasonable space. Keep in mind these aren’t even testable yet. Ultimately, we do not know exactly what “20% of a Divine Toll" means. is it just one extra Holy Shock? Is it 5 Holy Shocks at 20% power? Does it still generate 5 Holy Power? Does it proc Ringing Clarity? We don’t really know for sure. If it works as 5 Holy Shock at 20% effectiveness, it would still be good. If it's just one extra Holy Shock on a random target, it’s a middle of the pack legendary.

Venthyr

The real talk however is in Venthyr’s Radiant Embers. Previously when we spoke on the new Paladin Covenant legendaries, we did not know what the Venthyr one would look like. But now we have an idea, and from a Holy Paladin perspective, this legendary is very good. Venthyr Paladins are very common in high-end raiding and Mythic+ due to how powerful Ashen Hallow is. Having an extra 50% duration is massive, as on some fights this could cover an entire other damage event, or in raid-rot style encounters just increases a powerful cooldowns value by 50%. This also warrants the possibility of stacking additional paladins as the more paladins you have, the higher uptime you now have on this spell. What if you can cover every single damage event with an Ashen Hallow now? Combine this with the large damage potential of Venthyr Holy Paladin, though it seems hyperbolic, it's possible you could just run 4 Holy Paladins in a raid team for massive uptime using this legendary.

We have not even spoken about the other portion of this legendary effect which reduces the cooldown while not in Ashen Hallow. We are not sure how this looks because this legendary is not even available yet. The unlikely but drastic possibility is when you just leave Ashen Hallow, it disappears and you get a chunk of its cooldown back. I doubt this would be the case because it brings a ton of obvious issues. The more likely way this Legendary works, is that for every second you are not in your Ashen Hallow, your cooldown recharges slightly faster. This could very easily be abused to have even higher uptime on Ashen Hallow if you just forego Hammer of Wraths and stand outside of your Ashen Hallow. You would get a lot of cooldown reduction for it, at the expense of not being able to Light of Dawn or Hammer of Wrath. Or, depending on how it works, if you stand on the edge of the circle, you can dip in to Hammer of Wrath, then dip out to still use Hammer of Wraths. Either way, there is potential problems with how this cooldown reduction mechanic works in terms of gameplay.

It seems like the purpose of this effect is to minimize instances where you cannot be in your Ashen Hallow. For example in PvP people may run away from it, or if you have to run a mechanic out and miss Hammer of Wraths which is certainly a pain point of the spell. But currently it seems like the implementation of this (again I remind you, it's a not yet implemented legendary effect) is too open to abuse, or un-fun gameplay.
Protection Paladin Writer Opinion & FeedbackHammer of Wrath CommunityTwitterThe Paladin legendary items are still not available on the PTR but it looks like Blizzard is iterating behind the scenes before making them available for testing. Here are my impressions on the latest changes in build 38511. Just keep in mind that this is still speculative until they are actually testable.

Venthyr

It looks like Blizzard added their first iteration of the Venthyr legendary to spell data: Radiant Embers. We'll have to test how the cooldown reduction actually works. It's very possible that you have to trade uptime for cooldown reduction making this legendary generally net neutral in its effect.

However, taking the tooltip at face value, this legendary could be super toxic in terms of gameplay. A lot of the damage value from Ashen Hallow comes from the Hammer of Wrath damage bonus and that is definitely one aspect you'll want to take advantage of as much as possible. With this legendary, you'll want to try to min-max both the cooldown reduction of Ashen Hallow and the Hammer of Wrath damage bonus at the same time. That will involve very specifically placing your Ashen Hallow so you can be on the edge, moving out for cooldown reduction, moving in for Hammer of Wrath, then rinse/repeat until Ashen Hallow is gone. It will involve a lot of small movements to properly min-max. And as anyone who has dealt with the Pac-man of Combat Meditation can tell you, it's annoying to move so much as a tank. But the tooltip implies that you might have to do it because the cumulative CDR would be significant.

Numbers wise, if Radiant Embers actually works out to be a DPS increase over The Mad Paragon for single target is yet to be determined. My hope is that Blizzard will eliminate how gamey it sounds so it would have a clear role for high movement situations without creating potentially toxic gameplay you would have to do for min/maxing.

Kyrian

Divine Resonance was nerfed from 60% to 20% "effectiveness" on the extra Divine Toll casts. My instinct is that this nerf isn't an actual nerf for how this legendary might work for Protection. As I discussed in the last write-up, there is a lot more to this legendary than just the extra AoE damage you gain. There is a lot of value in the potential for First Avenger, Effusive Anima Accelerator, Holy Power or AoE Silence and any of these interactions will make this legendary top of the class for M+.

Night Fae

It turns out that Seasons of Plenty is worse than I expected! In my last write-up, I assumed it would last for 30s and that nets to 4s of cooldown reduction on your average two-minute burst cd. However, Blizzard updated the tooltip to show that the legendary will last a measly ten seconds! This makes it worth less than 1 second of cooldown reduction on average. It's just a very poor legendary and Night Fae Protection Paladins will not use it at this tuning as it has no clear niche.

Necrolord

It doesn't look like anything actually changed with Duty-Bound Gavel. They redid the tooltip and kept the functionality the same. My opinion remains that it will be surpassed by other legendary options.Retribution Paladin Writer Opinion & FeedbackTwitterHammer of WrathAlthough we still can't actually test the new Paladin covenant Legendaries on the PTR yet, they've had some changes nonetheless.

Kyrian
Divine Resonance - Since it was first datamined, the "effectiveness" of the extra Divine Tolls has been reduced from 60% to 20%. Although this might seem like a very large nerf, a lot of the strength of Divine Toll for Ret is tied to its Holy Power generation, especially on AoE, so this might not end up significantly changing its overall value. Same as before, the bigger questions are how it interacts with Ringing Clarity and Combat Meditation, and those interactions are more likely to determine how strong the Legendary ends up being.

Venthyr
Radiant Embers - This is one of the most bizarre Legendary designs so far. Rather than helping to improve some of the issues that Ashen Hallow has with its playstyle, it makes all of them much worse. It's not entirely clear how the cooldown reduction is supposed to work, but it seems that if you don't stand in it at all you'll end up with a 2 min cooldown on Ashen Hallow. If you can take full advantage of the cooldown reduction then it's an incredibly powerful effect, tripling its uptime. However, increasing its duration has negative gameplay impacts, since on many bosses it was already difficult to find situations to get full value from its normal 30s duration, and with double the cooldown.

The design of the cooldown reduction is also incredibly confusing - if you just place the ability so that it still damages an enemy but you're not physically standing in it, you'll get the bulk of its damage while only sacrificing the damage bonus to Hammer of Wrath. Even then, you could just walk into its area just before you cast Hammer of Wrath then immediately walk out to keep reducing its cooldown. If it goes live as is it could make Venthyr the best option for Ret for raiding, but due to the very unfun gameplay repercussions I think that it would be better if it were completely redesigned.

Night Fae
Seasons of Plenty - Equinox has now been clarified to be a 10 second buff. This basically leaves this Legendary dead on arrival, since a 10s duration 5% haste buff every 90 seconds or so is not going to come anywhere close to making it worth giving up a better covenant and Legendary to use. The cooldown reduction is also pretty laughable, since it only reduces cooldowns by one second each time it's applied. This Legendary and even Night Fae as a whole really need large buffs to be considered competitive at this point.

Necrolord
Duty-Bound Gavel - No actual changes this build, only how the ability is worded. This Legendary still seems somewhat underwhelming, and is pretty unlikely to suddenly make Necrolord a good covenant choice.

Comment by okta7Didnt Ion or someone mention something about Healer DPS and specifically Venthyr Holy Pallys essentially doing wayyyy more damage than any other healer and how thats a problem they are aware of/will address..?

And then they go ahead and make this legendary...? This just sounds like it could be incredibly strong, and make Venthyr Holy Pallys even more desired in high end PvE and just widen the gap between them and the other healers.Comment by AlakeiThancanDidnt Ion or someone mention something about Healer DPS and specifically Venthyr Holy Pallys essentially doing wayyyy more damage than any other healer and how thats a problem they are aware of/will address..?

And then they go ahead and make this legendary...? This just sounds like it could be incredibly strong, and make Venthyr Holy Pallys even more desired in high end PvE and just widen the gap between them and the other healers.Comment by belgaerDidnt Ion or someone mention something about Healer DPS and specifically Venthyr Holy Pallys essentially doing wayyyy more damage than any other healer and how thats a problem they are aware of/will address..?

And then they go ahead and make this legendary...? This just sounds like it could be incredibly strong, and make Venthyr Holy Pallys even more desired in high end PvE and just widen the gap between them and the other healers.Comment by TigerusI just wanted to say, that datamined venthyr rogue skill Flagellation was giving 6yd of additional melee range, 100% of Attack Power damage and no stacks.
For live servers we got better and fixed version of this ability, but the amount of shtstorm for datamined values was insane.Comment by SvielAt first i thought the Venthyr one is massive but then i remember you have to remove Mad Paragon to use it LOL.Comment by karpouzi
It doesn't matter how you will tweak it. Increasing duration of Ashen Hollow without touching spell itself (which is already OP and must have for both m+ and mythic progress) will extend Paladin meta for next patch and (good lord!) will make them absolutely dominant for the rest of expansion when they will let us use 2 legendaries.Issue here is that they are practicly no helping any other healers so far, they made this high dps from healers meta that puts almost everyone in at least B tier besides Pally, even disc is not doing that crazy good and with extended duration from Ashen Hallow (let it even be 25%) it will be way, way better to run 4 holy paladins in mythic progress than any other healing comp. Casue it's like you bring 2 extra dps and at the same time - they will be able to cover all healing.Comment by YulineLooks like they focus more on Legendary's than the game itselfComment by szutaoI have a Demon Hunter Tank, right now making a Paladin Tank due to this new legendary for next patch.Comment by szutao
It doesn't matter how you will tweak it. Increasing duration of Ashen Hollow without touching spell itself (which is already OP and must have for both m+ and mythic progress) will extend Paladin meta for next patch and (good lord!) will make them absolutely dominant for the rest of expansion when they will let us use 2 legendaries.Issue here is that they are practicly no helping any other healers so far, they made this high dps from healers meta that puts almost everyone in at least B tier besides Pally, even disc is not doing that crazy good and with extended duration from Ashen Hallow (let it even be 25%) it will be way, way better to run 4 holy paladins in mythic progress than any other healing comp. Casue it's like you bring 2 extra dps and at the same time - they will be able to cover all healing.Comment by Quanruon
It doesn't matter how you will tweak it. Increasing duration of Ashen Hollow without touching spell itself (which is already OP and must have for both m+ and mythic progress) will extend Paladin meta for next patch and (good lord!) will make them absolutely dominant for the rest of expansion when they will let us use 2 legendaries.Issue here is that they are practicly no helping any other healers so far, they made this high dps from healers meta that puts almost everyone in at least B tier besides Pally, even disc is not doing that crazy good and with extended duration from Ashen Hallow (let it even be 25%) it will be way, way better to run 4 holy paladins in mythic progress than any other healing comp. Casue it's like you bring 2 extra dps and at the same time - they will be able to cover all healing.Comment by StaticMack
It doesn't matter how you will tweak it. Increasing duration of Ashen Hollow without touching spell itself (which is already OP and must have for both m+ and mythic progress) will extend Paladin meta for next patch and (good lord!) will make them absolutely dominant for the rest of expansion when they will let us use 2 legendaries.Issue here is that they are practicly no helping any other healers so far, they made this high dps from healers meta that puts almost everyone in at least B tier besides Pally, even disc is not doing that crazy good and with extended duration from Ashen Hallow (let it even be 25%) it will be way, way better to run 4 holy paladins in mythic progress than any other healing comp. Casue it's like you bring 2 extra dps and at the same time - they will be able to cover all healing.Comment by QuadramDidnt Ion or someone mention something about Healer DPS and specifically Venthyr Holy Pallys essentially doing wayyyy more damage than any other healer and how thats a problem they are aware of/will address..?

And then they go ahead and make this legendary...? This just sounds like it could be incredibly strong, and make Venthyr Holy Pallys even more desired in high end PvE and just widen the gap between them and the other healers.a lotComment by DzonatanGavertI have a Demon Hunter Tank, right now making a Paladin Tank due to this new legendary for next patch.Comment by karpouzi

Karpouzi, you are right with most holy paladin are kyrian, and kyrian overall has better HPS than venthyr, the high end community has always said that and even discouraged people going holy paladin for that reason. The reason why the healer damage meta sucks IS because of ashen hallow, if you want proof look at the overall damage of a kyrian paladin and a venthyr paladin. Classes that are dps based arent a problem as paladin out of melee has it's healing and damage output greatly reduced and even being in melee paladin has holes in their toolkit (Cooldown Healer) and that is fine to me. also making the fights harder so that healers can't dps will never happen because paladin and Disc priests have to damage to heal. Paladin doing big damage isnt an issue it's the fact that the disparity between ashen hallow and everything else is massiveComment by ZairuI play holy paladin for all covenants(Yes I have 4 holy pally) and this is my though.

Necrolord legendary is garbage for holy paladin. Extra charge let's you use Vanquisher's Hammer more flexibly, but Vanquisher's Hammer is too weak that it doesn't really matter because in terms of throughput you are only getting extra Word of Glory every 30 second. That is only 630% spell power per minute. Even if you count Beacon healing you get from extra Word of Glory, it is still 945% spell power per minute. considering Shock Barrier can do 1500%+ spell power per minute this legendary is dead on Arrival.

Kyrian legendary is good even with nerfs because how it synergize with Glimmer of Light. If extra holy shocks applies and procs Glimmer it is still stronger than Shock Barrier. If it doesn't proc or apply Glimmer and only worth 3 holy shocks per minute than it's useless but I doubt this will be the case.

Night Fae legendary is just stupid and waste of resource. 5% haste and 10% cooldown recovery for only 20sec per 3min? Yes it does apply to 5 people, but even if you multiply 5 times that is still average of 2.777...% haste and 5.555...% cooldown recovery. First of all 10% cooldown is just trash because A. you are only reducing 2 sec per 3 minute which is nothing and B. cooldown recovery doesn't reduce GCD. cool down recovery only matters if it can reduce cooldown of spell more than 1 GCD but 10% just doesn't do that. So it's not even worth 5% haste(Basically you are not casting more of anything in that 10 seconds window). So this legendary is only worth or less than Soulbind Ability like invigorating-herbs which gives one member of group 5% haste. Legendary that is worth one single Soulbind is just waste of soul ash.

I mean seriously why waste you resource on covenants if you are not going to make it competitive. Necrolord and Night Fae holy paladins are already weaker than other two covenants. Why give them weaker legendary? Respecting peoples choice by removing other choices? than what is point of the covenants and why waste resource on things people won't play? I just don't understand it.