The official Paladin talent discussion.

[BubbaJim]

Beacon looks pretty awesome to me..

Priest's new top-rank Renew: Heals the target for 1400 over 15 sec.
Instant cast, 720 Mana, 40 yd range

So a priest casts 3 renew's and with the GCD, that takes longer, it'll heal alot less due to being lower healing in the spell, and an absolute TON less as our's also heals the (base) 2k for all ppl within 10-yards of the Target. Sure it's expensive but looking at the cost of all spells for all classes in WoTLK it seems like we'll all be having huge mana-pools compared to now, im thinking like 25k+ mana at high end..

Also, why is every1 like glossing over the changes to Judgements for Holydins? 30 yards judgement to give urself 10% haste.. that's 1.35 second FL/Beacon and 2.25 (then 1.85 after 1st cast) HL's w/o even needing haste gear - awesome buff no?

[Gaeryth]

So, the paladin talents finally arrived. And, speaking as a Retribution paladin, I'm happy. Holy and Prot seems fine too, with some new and interesting ideas, but now I'll focus on Retribution.

Atm the usual PvE spec is 5/8/48, with 5 wasted Prot-points to reach Precision (3% melee and spell hit) and 5 holy points for 10% more strength and the rest in the right tree. With WotLK some talent changes will take place and the Divine Strength will be in Prot and the Precision will disappear(?). Well, at least it seems like that. This means we'll probably spec 0/5/x. And that's an improvement. The aforementioned Divine Strength is buffed from 10% strength to 15% strength. And then there's the Retri tree, but I'll leave that for a second and mention one of my favorite changes: <b>SoB/SoV for everyone</b>.

Currently only Blood Elves possess Seal of Blood – the best dps seal availible. With Sunwell gear the difference between Horde's Seal of Blood and Alliance's Seal of Command is almost 200 dps. Despite the unhuman amount of QQ from allys this injustice was allowed to prevail through all of the Burning Crusade, but now, we Humans get our Seal of the Martyr, the equivalent of SoB. Alliance's Seal of Vengeance (a tanking seal with a DoT) will now be availible for Belfs, named Seal of Corruption.

Now, some Retribution madness. Everything I wanted – except some mana regen – is here. The first change is Heart of the Crusader, previously known as Imp SotC, the thing that gives +3% crit for everyone after Judgement of the Crusader. Now, <b>Seal of the Crusader is gone and the 3% buff will be applied regardless of what seal you use</b>. That's not groundbreaking but you gain some gcd time and that's always good.

And as we know, crit in WotLK will be both melee and spell. So <b>Conviction – 5% (melee) crit – will boost our spells too</b>. Nice, nice. The next change is my beloved <i>Sanctity Aura. It's gone.</i> Apparently we'll use Retribution Aura instead and the Imp Retri Aura that's currently 100% unnecessary will now be good :O After all talents Retri Aura will; <b>increase the raid's damage by 2%, haste by 3% and deal damage based on spell power and scaling with gear</b>. And the damage made by the seals and CS will most likely increase to match the lost Sanctity Aura.

Then there's Sheath of Light. An AP > SP converter. <3! <b>30% of your attack power will now be spell power.</b> So with 3k AP that's 1k spell power. Goodie. And with Judgements of the Wise, <b>60% of the damage dealt by Judgements will be returned as mana to 3 raid/party members.</b> How good this is is yet to be known, if one of those people's always you then it might fix some mana issues. Otherwise it'll just be more godly group utility.

These things weren't too surprising, SoB for alliance, AP>SP, more damage, more mana regen, more raid boosting. But then, there's the huge Repentance buff. Currently it's a 6 sec sap. In WotLK <b>Repentance will be worthy of the name CC and sap the target in 1 minute, working on Humanoids, Giants, Dragonkin, Undead and Demons</b>. This means bringing a Retri to a 5-man isn't a complete waste. Wonderful. I never thought that would happen.

Now we're reaching the end of our tree, and are facing the fact that two old spells are being changed – Avening Wrath and Hammer of Wrath. <i>AW now only increases damage by 20%</i> but now also increases healing by 20% too. Happy holydin approves. But for retris, that's a nerf, so in our Sanctified Wrath talent <b>the cooldown [of AW] is reduced by 60 seconds and 50% of the damage caused will bypass damage reduction</b>. So, complete armor and resilience penetration? Nice, nice, nice.

Then there's good old Hammer of Wrath, buffed by our 4p t6 but still utterly worthless as it is because it's low damage doesn't justify it from stealing swing time. Basically you lose damage by using it, today. Is the buffs enough to make it good? We'll see. <b>HoW's missile speed will be increased, mana cost reduced, damage increased and it will have around 80% basic crit chance. And will be usable if the enemy has below 35% health</b>. But still, apparently, a casting time. May still be worth it, tho.

Swift Retribution buffs Retribution Aura as I stated earlier and The Art of War gives <b>judgements a 15% change to deal double damage</b>. 7k JoB crits aren't to be laughed at. Almost last, Righteous Vengeance <b>increases the damage of crits by 15%</b>. Very nice, too. I like big crits. And last but not least, Divine Storm, our 51-pointer. It's an <b>instant AoE that deals Holy damage to four nearby enemies and heals 3 friends for 20% of the damage caused.</b>

So, if our mana is stable Retri paladins are going to rule.

[Daedalon]

First news of fully tested Beacon of light in beta is ... Its sucks...

It does not scale like normal healing spell with +healing so ppl are talking about 135-150 healing per second... Oh wow thats alot isn't it ?

[Rawberry]

For anyone wondering what happens to Precision, come WOTLK it will not be needed anymore. Almost all PVE and PVP (this introduction has started even now with the late S4 release) items now have +hit rating applied to them.

[Aeline]

so why is it a dissapointment to you? it's a major HURREY for me.

Why? Read Daedalon's post above for starters. Though Beacon of Light may seem like a lot of healing, it's not much for being spread out over 15 seconds. People will have a lot more health in the expansion, so 8000 healing in the expansion could be about equal to say 3000 healing right now. The only upside to it, is that it doesn't have to be channeled like Flourish or Tranquility, or repeatedly cast like Prayer of Healing or Circle of Healing. And that the target can move around while under the effect. Everything else about it is horrible, I wouldn't say it's worth the mana or the cast time, unless maybe you're in pvp against a heavy CC team.

[Rawberry]

Why? Read Daedalon's post above for starters. Though Beacon of Light may seem like a lot of healing, it's not much for being spread out over 15 seconds. People will have a lot more health in the expansion, so 8000 healing in the expansion could be about equal to say 3000 healing right now. The only upside to it, is that it doesn't have to be channeled like Flourish or Tranquility, or repeatedly cast like Prayer of Healing or Circle of Healing. And that the target can move around while under the effect. Everything else about it is horrible, I wouldn't say it's worth the mana or the cast time, unless maybe you're in pvp against a heavy CC team.

Blizzard has stated a few times that players will not be seeing a huge increase in health (stamina) when WOTLK releases, with that said, 8.000 healing is still a very decent amount to be healing.

[Daedalon]

Blizzard has stated a few times that players will not be seeing a huge increase in health (stamina) when WOTLK releases, with that said, 8.000 healing is still a very decent amount to be healing.

We are not talking 8k per person. We are talking about 3k per person with current +healing stats. Thats very weak heal. Hots are ticking for 1500 -2000 atm. Basicly its a useless spell as it is.

[Khody]

Don't lose hope.

Let's just hope that they buff it and make it worth going 51 points down!

[olicon]

I think people are too obsessed with SoL to see the real use for Beacon.
Beacon is great for me because it means you are a speed caster.
I think Beacon is very synergistic with the old Holy/Prot build. That's because IMP Devotion Aura now grant raid wide healing upgrade (Even if it's just a few percent). The raider playstyle I would imagine with Beacon is dropping Beacon on multiple people. In 25 man, 3 targets for Beacon is 6000++ healing per 15sec per person (let's say 10 people). That's a shit ton of healing going on. If AoE damage is really high, then you can pop Divine Shield (talented) to reduce damage by 30%. With Holy Shock capable of dropping cast time for HL to insant, and Light's Grace, you will be sneaking in very fast, occasional heals. I suspect we are looking at 3 instant heals over the course of each 12 seconds, 1 being extremely potent while 2 are quite potent. And did I mentioned 10% spell haste from judgment at increased range? If anyone needs topping off--that's what FoL excels at. Who knows, maybe you'll even have some down time outside of 5 sec rule!
In PvP, I think we might see a much more aggressive use of Beacon--holy Pally popping it on himself and a friend, then rush into combat with occasional judgments, 10% haste to melee and spell. Holy Pally will have perfect tools for reducing incoming damage (DS & Blessing of Sac), and a bunch of pretty damn strong instant/near instant heals, and IMP conc aura.
Short of mass res, this is EXACTLY WC3 Pally.

[malkaviano]

What do you guys make of the new talents.

It seems for holy we're getting a hot with a 2300 mana cost, 1.5 second cast, and heals eveyone within ten yards for 2000 over 15 seconds.

They're also putting more emphasis on how important our cleanses are.

Blessing of salavation has been converted to one of the "hand" spells and seems like a major nerf from it's old form.

Retribution is actually going to be using retribution aura now because it's replacing sancity aura. It now scales with spell damage. Seems like by paladin lightning shield.

Prot now has it's own thunderclap type thing based off judgements.

I also saw something about a seal of corruption. No idea bout that for now.


Holy shock is a 6 second CD and is now a 20 yard damage spell and 40 yard heal.

Interesting.

What makes ur post official?

[Merin]

After doing more research and crunching, my optimism basically evaporated.

Beacon's range is incredibly short, people are rarely grouped up in such a regard.

It has to hit 11 people to provide the potency of Flourish even after it's (Flourishes) Alpha to Beta nerf. Keep in mind that's 11 people before Druids HoT talents and Tree Form cutting off 20% of the cost. Paladin's have no talents that offer an ounce of synergy with Beacon.

Beacon is a spell Paladin needed, a spell type that is. But what they kicked the class is a piece of underpowered garbage, it doesn't link with any talents, it needs to be buffed, badly.

On top of that, pretty much the entirety of the post-Divi Illum Holy tree needs to see some changes. Our weaknesses have not diminished in the least, all they really added were incremental upgrades and bloat to abilities that should be baseline or combined with others.

[Zarcob]

I know the first instinct is to get excited when looking at new stuff. Hey! WoW! It's new and neat and something that would be fun to use!

But unfortunately we need to scrutinize things more than that. We can't take things at face value.

Holy

I thought Beacon was a good idea but the raw numbers on it aren't very impressive. I'd be willing to give them kudos for the idea but not the implementation. If they cut the mana cost it might be useful as a type of raid AE heal spell to at least give paladins a little more versatility but as it stands the possible uses seem limited to say the least.

I'm far more impressed with the idea of speccing 20 points into Ret and getting Sheath of Light. "Your critical healing spells heal the target for 60% of the healed amount over 12 seconds." Woah. Free hots on a critical heal.

Holy seemed to get far more of a boost for pvp, when I consider all the various spell hastes and integration with holy shock, high resist chances, the movement of imp conc aura to the Holy Tree and the addition of Blessed Hands. However, it's still hard to anticipate how effective it will be in pvp without seeing how it compares to the gains other classes get. PvP talents can't be evaluated inside a vacuum.

Either way, be it pvp or pve, I don't see enough increasing paladin efficiency in light of having no HoTs, little mobility because of that, and no spirit or synergy with it.

Holy Grade: C

Protection

The bottom half of the prot tree didn't seem to receive any attention at all. Good ole useless Sanctuary is still tethered to holy shield. The tree is even more bloated than it was before. Reckoning still scales inversely. There is no Last Stand-ish type ability to equal the one druids received and the buff warriors got. Sacred Duty and Combat expertise still supply the same type of stam gain on different talents, and Divine Guardian, while sounding really neat, still can't be used while tanking. Plus the talent is easily accessible to Holy and Ret specs. In fact, the irony is, you'll probably see more Holy and Retribution paladins on raids utilizing Divine Guardian than you will Protection Paladins. The Prot tree continues to get talents that benefit other specs more than prot.

The best advantage thus far are the base changes to Holy Wrath, but how long before blizzard runs out of undead or demon raid zones to throw at their players?

In the end, the entire prot lineup looks pretty much like a warrior's list of abilities while leveling. The threat gains will be lost because there won't be any spell damage on plate, so everything will likely break even. It looks like the entire tree is being wasted in an attempt to turn paladins into mediocre warriors instead of focusing on their own strengths.

The only attempt at diversity, Touched by the Light, makes the least sense of all. Especially if paladins will be sharing prot gear with other classes providing them with no int and virtually no spell crit. It's nice to know the one heal in 20 that's a crit will heal for slightly more, since a tank has all that time to waste casting spells anyway.

Consecrate will likely continue to be their only saving grace for AE tanking. That single gimmicky role of the prot paladin, and not one talent improves it other than Guarded by the Light - extra mana efficiency that only applies when being struck, the one time the paladin doesn't need the efficiency.

Prot Grade: D+

Retribution

I admit that some of the talents in this tree are more impressive. Judgements of the wise is a nice idea and coupled with Swift Retribution, it's not bad. Now that they effect the entire raid there isn't any group benefit conflict. Unfortunately it still means the ret paladin spot is likely limited to one per raid, unless they plan to dethrone the shadow priests as kings of regen.

Righteous vengeance will be a colossal slap in the face for pvp though. But ret's pvp issue is not with burst damage. It still lacks the offensive utility required to pressure an opponent by reliably stunning / snaring / interrupting / debuffing them. Warriors love to cry and whine that paladins might get mortal strike, but the ret paladin is still the one melee class that's reliant on someone else to keep their opponent pressured.

However, the ret burst got the biggest benefit with Sanctified Wrath. If that 50% bypasses resilience too, ret will be quite a monster of an offensive force. Server lag still necessitates they'll need someone else to reliably snare or at least, interrupt, their target, but with the Improved Hammer of Justice buff, ret could find itself in high demand.

Ret Grade: B+

[Buttink]

Im going to make myn short lol

I love the direction in which blizzard is taking the paladin class. My only fear is....it was a bit to late. I do wish however they would have made a more drastic change to healing BUT hey you cant get everything.

P.S. Wish it came 2 years ago

[Gestalt]

I'm afraid I can't agree with your assessment on Prot, Zarcob.

I wish Reckoning "worked" too, but its problems aren't limited to scaling. Reckoning has long been discarded by the Tankadin community as a viable MT talent not because of its scaling problems, but because of being the best way to spend 5 points to get bosses to reliably Parry-thrash.

First, outside Prot, the redefined "Imp SoR" being expanded in function and accessible at the top of the holy tree is a direct buff to Tanks. A 15% boost to the two seals tanks use for threat generation is far from trivial, and synergizes well with the changes in the protection tree.

In protection itself, just looking at the new stuff:

"Touched by the Light" is huge. It's massive. 30% stam to spellpower breaks the Tankadin dependence on spellpower weapons and splitting item budget between actual tank stats and spellpower for threat. The healing buff is trivial, yes, and hardly worth taking for its own right, but the SP from Stam synergizes well with the stam talents in the tree and the damage multipliers now available to make gearing specifically for threat unnecessary. That's the big change we're seeing: we don't have to itemize around multiple mutually exclusive considerations to the degree that we did.

"Shield of the Templar", the revamped "Avenger's Shield", the new "Shield of the Righteous" spell, and "Shield of the Templar" synergize with "TbtL", "SotP", the stam talents, and "Hammer of the Righteous" (it's a weapon strike, no reason to believe it does NOT proc seals) to add up to massive threat generation (While "Guarded by the Light" shaves mana costs) without having to sacrifice Stam and Mitigation/avoidance stats. This isn't bloat: every one of these talents feed into the others, and they all feed into a gear scheme that leaves the Paladin free to stack tank stats to the exclusion of other considerations.

This doesn't "fix" all the problems Tankadins have.... just most of them.

[topfer]

Now, I'm a druid but that doesn't mean I don't look in to these things.

Anyways, this "hand" stuff is pretty stupid IMO. I don't like the Blessing of Salvation convert AT ALL. That makes the spell next to useless, and I'll be pretty angry if it goes through. I'll really start to hate tanking fights in Wrath like Brutallus (all out DPS), if there are any that can compare.

Have you seen what they've done with threat reduction talents? They've cranked them up quite a bit per class, justifying the removal of the buff. This is a good thing for everyone who generates threat.

[xano880]

Have you seen what they've done with threat reduction talents? They've cranked them up quite a bit per class, justifying the removal of the buff. This is a good thing for everyone who generates threat.

indeed but most ppl dont seem to realise that

[ph0en1xtk]

something else people need to realize is that this isnt how its going to be forever. if the past repeats itself, we've got roughly about 6 more months before wotlk is finished and ready to be sold, so you can expect to see a lot more work go into class balancing.

maybe itll get worse, maybe better, who knows, all i know is theres no point in QQ'ing until its finished.

and to throw in my 2 cents, i think that beacon is refreshing, it gives us something to do other than spam fol, and if im not mistaken, you could just call out over vent that youre casting beacon, people would collapse on the pally for raid heal, and once its up, you can still cast i believe. seems decent to me

[Aeline]

I agree with your thoughts on Holy and Ret Zarcob, however I disagree with your thoughts on prot.

Close inspection of talents and new abilities for Protection paladins will reveal blizzard is making them better single-target tanks, while their AoE tanking capability remains.

[Moar Pew Pew]

Before my post, I have to say I love the direction our talents are going. I am an experience Paladin and I have played many types of specs from each tree, and I see that blizz is trying to fix what each tree needs.

Retribution

PvP

We got another attack. That in itself pleases me very much. For pvp, it appears that blizzard does not want us to just be a new MS warrior, I believe they want us to be a group dmg mitigator through the use of our healing attacks and the occasional heal. This coupled with 30 second coolodown stuns, which is fairly rediculous, and even higher burst dmg from double judgements and another instant attack, we not only bring the hurt, we prevent it, too. I personaly like this, because its what Pallys were all about.

PvE

The fact that they gave us CC in the form of repentance, made me want to hug a blizz dev. For me, it came out of no where, and was greatly appreciated. On top of this, its a fire and forget CC, meaning we dont have to recast all the time. Very happy there. We with our group buffing and CC, we can finally be justified being brought to a heroic.

As a few final, general notes, fanaticism was buffed to 25% crit chance, if no one noticed. ^_^

Spell damage from attack power means our damaging spells wont be entirely useless, or our heals.

And, lastly, Rightous Vengance bonus to crit dmg, actually DID make me hug a blizz dev. >_>

Protection

Only PvE (For obvious reasons.)

I would like to thank blizz for giving every tank class equal opportunity in wotlk. Aggro will no longer be an issue for any of them, and I have been waiting for this for a LONG time. That said, blizz took it a step further and reduced the amount of stats we need to tank on equal grounds with a warrior, case and point: Touched by the Light. I know, some people are saying Blizz is doing this so the can make one set of t6 for cloth, leather, mail, and plate and that everyone will wear it. But I say certain classes will benefit. If a prot pally can wear the same gear as a prot Warrior, then stam will be less of an issue. They even gave us a sort of thunderclap effect, reducing the targets attack speed by 20%. Another nice little mitigation bonus.

That and "Guarded by the Light" made me a very happy boy. Although, I dont even consider us to have a mana bar, just a blue rage bar that starts out full. Dont let ANYONE tell you differently. Lol

Holy

PvP

It seems we are finally more mobile while healing. Wewt! The six second cooldown on Holy Shock means that in pvp gear, you can get an instant Holy light ever 18 or so seconds, and thats if you dont stack crit gems or enchants much. Although, considering nobody even attacked us in arena until everything else was dead since it takes so long to kill us, this seems like a cherry on the top of an awesomecream sunday. I dont know about placing Beacon of Light on two targets and then staying close together though. Yes, the healing would be nice, but you leave yourselves open to aoe attacks. No idea how this will pan out.

PvE

I just have one question, does the aura heal stack with others? If it does, then we are greatly underappreciating this spell. Many fights spring to mind that would make this spell easy mode for raid group dmg. But, then also, the same could be said where its almost useless. Enlightened Judgements is also something that should not be looked over, 1.85 second holy light anyone? Haste gear is not needed.

I think when the fix Beacon of Light, which they will, we all will be a lot more happy with our tree.

As a final question, does anyone know the exact radius of Beacon of Lights healing area? That, and do they stack? It seems trivial and obvious but I'd like to know for sure.

Final Notes

I know I spent the most time on Retribution, but I think it deserved the most. Protection could be summed up as more practical now, since we dont need practically every stat but spirit. Holy is still not complete in my opinion, so I really have more questions about it and dont feel right giving it a full summary and grade when it hasnt complete the paper! Lol

-And remember, guys, always Pew Pew Moar.

[Geboran]

They indicate in the spell description that Beacon of Light affects PARTY members; it doesn't specify or indicate that it will affect others outside of your party.