I believe the gripe is that the talents are buried so deep in the "wrong" tree. Sure, priests get a great damage reduction talent in the Holy tree, but, as you said, it's in the second tier. Question: would keeping both Blessed Life and Ardent Defender as deep, but swapping the trees they're in, make more sense?

I still think it's very unfortunate placement for blessed life - talent with low chance to proc on hit is more useful for someone that is hit often, not for healer that is hit from time to time. Improved Divine Shield talent (without attack bonus, but with cooldown reduced 45sec/1.5 min) would be arguably better here and blessed life would be awesome AoE tank help.

I fully agree with your opinion on 40+ protection though. Of course we can't possibly know big picture and maybe devs have something that will make such builds viable.

No, since thematically they're solid. Changing ardent defender to 50% reduction when above 90% health however, would.

I actually hadn't even considered that sort of adjustment to the talent. Pretty interesting approach; I like it.

My biggest gripe with the changes remains spiritual focus.

This is such a key talent, and what allows paladins to heal under fire, which is one of their biggest strenghts, but to get it you need at least a 9 point investment in holy, not that that 9 points is poorly spent but it really limits the places you can spend other points.

It is very much our TM, and it makes it hard to make other builds. Reducing its point cost, or moving it to protection would open up more protection builds, after all protection is the build that gets hit while healing, not the other two.

But eh, not a big deal, just my personal pet peeve.

If you were topped off and got hit by Hateful strike would the whole thing be 50% reduced. That could be an amazing soak talent. Perhaps unbalancingly good ;-)

Eh. Hateful strike type bosses a la patchwerk are something of a one-trick pony in terms of encounter design, regardless. If you have rapidfire damage spikes or aoe flying all over the place or your healers are all too busy to keep you topped off, you default to a warrior. The idea is to gain some synergy with the new taunt and allow for more creative boss fights not reliant on a pally's "hey, you can aoe tank adds slightly better than a war if you're 41 prot" niche. Aside from buffs and cleanse, a paladin in true tank gear really does shut down completely when it comes to healing/dps/utility (unlike shaman with the new bloodlust, etc.) and this fleshes out their role somewhat as a sponge but an unsustainable one. Change it to "The next source of damage is mitigated by 50%; this ability can only activate at >90% health and only every 10 seconds" and it will serve the same purpose.

Would diversify pvp some as well. Two-shot classes are increasingly common.

Not that it really matters; this is just theorist wanking in lieu of actual TBC data and numbers to play with. These forums are going to be overrun with layman dreamland visions all vying for superiority for the next couple weeks. Just thought I'd contribute to the madness while there's madness to be had.

The prot changes for redoubt and reckoning are both very nice.

Redoubt was counterproductive previously and now at least its effectively 15% shield block and allows the possibility for combo with good gear and holy shield to mitigate crushing blows in a way similar to shield block.

Reckoning is a burst damage nerf which although hurting the ability to kill sometimes in pvp i think is a good change. The real dps of reckoning went up ~100% on slow weapons but no becomes workable on fast weapons as well, increasing by up to 300%. Think of it as a weapon speed normalisation for paladins. It really frees up the gearing options available, makes it have more synergy with a shield and gives the designers more headroom in the sustained dps potential of paladins since burst dps is lowered. The one negative is ranged crits or kited crits could now be completely wasted but there are at least some options to close down distance or keep people close with daze.

Some musings on Seal of Vengeance. Here's the Retnoob Crit-Totem build I'm pondering for my paladin.

If you can stack SoV to 5, then every time you judge SoV, you're getting 86 holy damage per DoT, or potentially 430 damage per judgment.

Full Judgement would be 92 str, 155 sta, 148 int, 20 mana/5 sec, +153 damage/healing. Set bonus of +47 damage/healing, and 60-66 holy damage per judgment. Imagine you've got about +100 damage/healing from jewelry and trinkets. You have improved SotCrusader, of course, with a Libram of Fervor. That adds +194 damage. Total is, say, +500 damage/healing.

Unlike SoRighteousness, but like SoCommand, SoVengenace says it has a 'chance' to apply per hit. Let's say you get 7 procs per minute, 29% of your +damage/healing applied per hit (to the final DoT damage), and 43% of your +damage/healing applied per judgment. On a pure holy damage basis, you should be able to get the rolling holy DPS to 5 * (80 + 0.29 * 500 = 225 / 12sec = 18.75) or 93.75 dps - that's from the DoT.

Now, with Improved Judgment, you can judge every 8 seconds, and with Empowered Judgements, it costs you 52.5 mana per judgment instead of 105. The seal costs 250 mana, and needs to be refreshed every 30 secs. Each judgment does 430 + 0.43 * 500 or 645 damage, plus 63 from your full Judgement set benefit, or 708 holy damage total. This is 88.5 holy dps. Mana cost is 893 per minute.

You do white DPS, of course. I'm guessing you should be able to hit 100 dps just from auto-attacking, mitigated by mob armor. Total DPS is what, 282.25? Possibly a bit more from all the other talents like Fanaticism boosting crit chance of judgements and the like, or you can increase the holy DPS by turning on Sanctity Aura, at the expense of Devotion.

What do people think... Reasonable DPS figure for someone also boosting raid DPS with a 2% crit from JoCrusader? Where's the target mark at which a raid leader would say 'Bah, noob paladin, stop trying to attack and start healing melee, just swing to refresh JOCr'?