Our changes:

- "Ardent Defender" (Protection Talent) now reduces damage taken by 6-30% when below 35% health.
- "Avenger's Shield" no longer has a minimum range. It may be used on any target within 30 yards.
- "Avenger's Shield": The damage portion of this ability will now be applied even if the victim is immune to snare.
- "Divine Shield": This ability no longer removes or prevents the "Weakened Soul" debuff.
- "Eye for an Eye": Some spells did not trigger "Eye for an Eye" correctly. That has been fixed.
- Fixed some data errors that caused "Seal of Command" and "Seal of Blood" to generate more threat than intended.
- "Forbearance": It is no longer possible to use a macro to gain the benefit of "Avenging Wrath" and "Divine Shield" at the same time.
- "Greater Blessing of Kings": The cost for this blessing is now twice the cost of "Blessing of Kings", instead of a fixed cost of 150.
- "Greater Blessing of Sanctuary 2": The range on this spell was incorrectly set to 30 yards. It has been changed to 40 yards.
- "Greater Blessing of Wisdom 3": The range on this spell was incorrectly set to 30 yards. It has been changed to 40 yards.
- "Hammer of Wrath": Rank 4, damage increased.
- "Holy Concentration": This talent now affects "Binding Heal".
- "Illumination": This talent now only gives 50% of the mana cost of the critical heal. It also now returns the correct amount of mana when used with ranks 4 and 5 of "Holy Shock".
- "Improved Seal of Righteousness": The percentage increase in damage from this talent is now applied after all bonuses from items and effects which increase your spell damage.
- New Protection Talent added: "Improved Holy Shield", 2 ranks: Increases damage caused by "Holy Shield" by 10/20% and increases the number of charges of "Holy Shield" by 2/4.
- "One-Handed Weapon Specialization" (Protection): Now increases all damage caused by the paladin by 1-5% while a one-handed weapon is equipped.
- "Seal of Blood": This seal will no longer cause additional chances for weapon procs to trigger.
- "Seal of Righteousness": This seal will no longer cause additional chances for weapon procs to trigger.
- "Seal of the Crusader": The rank 7 tooltip has been fixed to read the same as other ranks of this spell.
- "Spiritual Attunement": First-aid generated healing will no longer trigger this ability. However, "Lifebloom", "Earth Shield", and "Improved Leader of the Pack" will now trigger it correctly. The tooltip has been adjusted to indicate it only works on healing from spells.
- "Spiritual Attunement": Mana is no longer healed if the paladin is at full health.
- "Stoicism" (Protection) should now properly affect all magic effects cast by the Paladin and no longer applies double its intended benefit to "Blessing of Might" and "Blessing of Wisdom".
- "Vengeance" (Retribution Talent) now increases Holy and Physical damage by 1/2/3/4/5% for 15 seconds following a critical hit, but the effect now stacks up to 3 times.
- "Sanctity Aura" now increases all damage caused by affected targets by 1/2% and no longer increases healing done to affected targets.

Healing:
- How much is the Illumination nerf actually going to hurt our single-target sustainability? I know I've been up-in-arms about it today, but I'd kinda like some hard numbers.
- How does our sustainability post-2.1 compare with a holy priest ghealing?
- Is the VE+SA 'fix' really *that* bad for healing paladins? We still get the 5% from VT, just not the extra 2-3% from VE+SA (although I might take to using dark runes now ... *sigh*).

Tanking:
- Is Spiritual Attunement going to be enough for tanking 5mans now? In my 490-def gear I already only get enough mana for max threat if my healer is going full out (and I can think of about three non-heroic situations where a healer going all-out on me isn't overhealing). Guess it comes down to smart mana management, hoping they don't nerf consecrate r1, and drinking after every other pull.
- Avenger's Shield ... is this viable as anything bar an opener now? 1s cast makes it very dangerous on anything with a potential of one-rounding you, and if it doesn't have that chance you're not going to have enough mana to be fooling with AS anyway.
- Ardent Defender ... is this really much better than it was before? Still seems rather leapfroggable/irrelevant against hard-hitting mobs.
- Holy Shield ... awesome. Question is though with imp. HS coming in, does that finally mean we get rid of the sorry excuse for a 35pt talent that is Weapon Expertise?

Retribution:
- Is this Vengeance change a buff or nerf? I can't figure it out. One thing's for sure, 3.8 speed and slower weapons are actually possibly worse now (less chances to refresh vengeance = more drops - a 3.6 speed weapon gets four swings in a 15-second period, a 3.8 speed 3 swings, misses the last swing by 0.2 of a second).

I've read over the patchnotes several times now and wait for my char to be copied over atm, but does the buff for prot-pala items not come with 2.1.0? I remember a dev posting about something like "we're planing to implement useful paly-tanking-gear in the next content patch", but I can't see any by now. Same goes for our great "dare to cast consecreation while tanking and you're dead, dumbass"-issue.

By now I can't see anymore reason for tanking as a pala (at least stuff that hits harder than in Karazhan). Does the dream end here? :>

I run 21% crit unbuffed in my ret DPS gear, with 7 refresh-capable attacks in a 15-second span (which is probably an average after misses/resists), there's a 20% chance that Vengeance will drop. If I got to 25% crit (which would be pushing it and drop my AP quite a bit), it'd be 14% chance to drop.

So take a good healing spreadsheet to see the true effect of this nerf on our healing ability and mana regened.

http://wow-en.curse-gaming.com/downl...ng-calculator/

My current breastplate is Breastplate of Many Graces.
It's stats:
1135 Armor
40 Stamina
28 Intellect
+62 healing
+11 Mp5

I've thought about upgrading to the Arena Gladiator Healing set next week, since even though my guild has killed Gruul, we haven't killed Magtheridon yet, so Justicar is a little out of my reach.

Gladiator's Lamellar Chestpiece
1450 Armor
42 Stamina
29 Intellect
3 sockets (red red yellow)
28 spell crit rating
25 resilience
+35 healing.
Now assuming I put in 2 +18 healing gems, and 1 8 spell crit gem, My new item would have 36 spell crit rating and +71 healing

The problem is, with the way illumination is currently on the PTR, with only a 50% mana return, The Arena Breastplate is a significant DOWNGRADE to a blue breastplate from a non-heroic instance in any fight that lasts longer than 3 minutes which is every single raid encounter in the game.

Oh, but did I mention that I have to spend more 30 points in Holy Talents to get this great "Upgrade"? Oh and 3 1/2 weeks worth of arena points? I could drop 17 fucking points out of the Holy tree and Breastplate of Many Graces would heal JUST as well as it does currently. Which with the current state of affairs with 100% return, it still outperforms the arena breastplate on any fight lasting longer than 7 minutes or so in terms of mana returned..

But that's just 1 example. Mask of Pennance from non-heroic Steamvaults becomes better than Tier 4. Oh, and as a side benefit, it's better whether you spend 13 points in holy or 30. Either way it's better on anything but EXTREMELY short fights (ie not content that you'd be running out of mana even with zero points in holy anyways).


Seriously, I have no idea what they were thinking about with this particular change.

OK, starting with 21%. Add Mighty Agility, Add a weightstone. You're at 35 agi and 34 crit rating, for something like 3% more crit. Add your Sanctified Crusader. You're now at an effective 27% crit.

If you were focusing on ret really seriously, 30% self buffed crit with good AP and mana is not an unreasonable goal at all. Just put on a little hunter gear. That's what I've been doing for quite a while, actually, though my luck for kara drops in that regard is utter crap.

This is a Priest change but somehow it is in Paladin notes.
- "Holy Concentration": This talent now affects "Binding Heal".

Illumination: This change comes from completely out of left field. I always considered this to be one of the main factors that separated Paladins from other classes in the healing department especially since talents are, "were", based around crit heals. Due to the fact that the class only has essentially 2 single target direct healing spells makes this all the more mind boggling. Some sort of explanation as to why this might be changed would really be nice.

Even with above average gear, buff consumables (as they are now), trinket use on availability, mana potions when up and all the other tricks of the trade some raid fights are already a lesson in how not to run out of mana based on raid composition. This change will just make it even that much more stretched thin in some places.

I only find the items with pure healing and crit questionable actually, but I found them questionable before as well; probably a side-product of the fact that I lack the deeper talents in Holy, making my crit rate too low to really be able to rely on crits even if I were to gear for it... Well, I could gear for pure crits, but that'd come at too large of an expense to the strength of my heals.

-

The Vengeance change is interesting, and makes me feel tempted to try it out with Seal of Blood. With Seal of Blood I'd get an additional 3/4 attacks that could potentially crit and trigger Vengeance, which is quite nice. Of course, I completely lack gear for it, so whether I'll actually be able to try it properly is a different matter entirely.

Would be more interesting still if Vengeance were to also provide a damage buff to the rest of your group; not too large a buff if it increased all damage done, but something like 1% extra damage per stack. Perhaps change Vengeance to a prereq for Fanaticism, since that'd pretty much encourage any raids wanting the extra damage from a Paladin with Vengeance to grab at least 40 points in Ret; and Crusader Strike is just one more point at that point.

-

The Improved Holy Shield change is neat as well; that basically makes Paladins incapable of being crushed against anything but the fastest of attackers. Avenger's Shield no longer having a minimum range is alright I guess, the cooldown would be too long for it to be useful as a single target threat boost (That said, I already frequently find myself waiting for my tanking abilities to finish their cooldown, so when it comes to that it's something else to use, you'll have to weave it in between mob's attacks and your own attacks though), while the fact that it has a cast time means it's not really usable in a situation with 3 mobs attacking you, so I don't think it's something that will make a large difference.

The One-handed Weapon Specialization change also falls under the 'eh, fine I guess' part of the changes. More aggro is always good, but on the other hand how much more aggro do I need? For that matter, is 5 talents points worth 5% extra aggro?

The Spiritual Attunement change will be slightly annoying at times for tanking, especially in five-mans, but should still be doable. At least I'll have less mana issues with the Resto Shamans that don't overheal...

Now I just need to figure out a new way of getting in all the talents I want though... At least Illumination is less desirable now.

Horde got Paladins.

Cross-posted from the tanking thread is an important change:
Rank 1 consecrate ticking for 38-39 damage with 513 spell damage on and 5/5 Improved 1H spec. Looks like that downranking nerf finally caught up. Other ranks:
2 - 54
3 - 72
4 - 96
5 - 109
6 - 125

Illumination nerf is really dumb. I doubt it'll make it to live in its current form.

My concern really lies with the new ardent defender.

Even if it is *somehow* non-leapfrogable - which I dont really see how they could do - it is at best a 10% hp upgrade. non-leapfrogable means that if you are at 40% at grow 12 and you get hit you will live.

But it *probably* is leap-frogable and so it still is bad. This means that if you are at 40% at grow 12 and you get hit you will die.

I leveled my horde paladin to 70 to tank. I tanked well in 5 mans. I did ok in heroics, I did ok in kara. Then I tried to tank maulgar and I quickly went and respecc'd holy.

They have really nerfed holy very hard as well - atleast with current itemization. I need to now go and completely re-itemize my gear to go from +crit to +mp/5 and more +heal. The benefit from shadow priest to a paladin got nerfed and their buff to warlock damage got nerfed. So we will be having our shadow preists respec holy to help pick up the slack for the weaker paladin healing.

*sigh* this patch is going to change alot of raid dynamics.

I think its time to get my warrior to 70 if I want to tank.

I don't think this illumination change is the end all be all - it will just completely and drastically change our style of healing to FOL spam and HL for very, very few situations as it is too much mana to cast with any reliability or redundancy in any raiding situation with an expected return of 400 mana every 5-9 casts.

What this does do is force us to look at itemization alot differently, MP5 will be alot more tantalizing now, and hopefully Blizzard realizes this and looks at nearly all of the Raid gear currently in game focused towards Holy Paladins. Almost every single piece has a large amount of crit, and nearly none of it has any MP5. I'll be dumping various T4/T5 pieces for blues, as the blues are better in all situations for sheer longevity (which is all that matters to a Paladin as our burst healing is simply not cost effective now even with chugging pots.)

For those of you who think "Well now you have to chug pots like everyone else" - I used a Resto Flask and Chug Fel Manas + Philosopher's Stone buff with more gusto than anyone else I know. I exclusively live or die based on my Fel Mana Timers for some fights - specifically if I have to solo heal a tank, since the only spell I can cast to keep a tank alive currently is Holy Light max rank. I specifically would rotate DI Holy Lights until I got a crit, then use a DF Holy Shock for a return of ~400 mana just to squeeze out every point I could out of my mana and I'd still be running low at some points. (This is with 26%+ depending on fight Holy Crit, 1300+heal and over 60mp5). Its going to be an ugly readjustment period for all of us, and we're all going to have to regear to mail since that has much more attractive MP5 than plate does currently.

This will affect raids for a long time coming - specifically ours since we only have 2 Holy Priests, 2 Resto Shamans and 1 Tree druid in the entire guild - the rest of all healing is covered by 5 Holy Paladins. Granted we don't have everyone on every raid and generally end up with 6-8 healers for any given fight (5 for Void Reaver). Our longevity hasn't changed much as FoL is still ridiculously cheap, but this does completely crush any HP/S longevity we had, and I fear we're going to have to stack healers to compensate for this change unless itemization vastly improves, or Blizzard wakes up and realizes Paladins need more options now since our FTW button has been effectively cut in half.

Lets examine straight healing (assuming optimal raid heal spec - save the "utility" strawman arguements for another thread)

Priest : Most options. PW:S,Renew, POH, POM, Lightwell, Gheal, Flash, COH. Adaptable for any role and all situations - MT Healing, Multiple Target Raid healing, the only real viable party healing. Excels at them all.

Druid : Lifebloom, Rejuv, Swiftmend, Regrowth, HT, Tranq. Excels for passive healing on multiple targets, can single heal a target decently and fares well in nearly all situations albeit not optimal for single target healing unless out of treeform? (correct me if I am wrong, our only Tree Druid doesn't discuss his leetness.)

Shaman : Chain Heal, Earth Shield, Healing Wave, LHW, Healing Stream. Best multiple target raid healer in my opinion with Chain Heal, and spamming Earth Shield on the MT seems to be quite the mainstay in my guild - and Healing Way lets downranks of Healing Wave reach fairly recockulous levels of HP/M. Again versatile but not as much as a Priest - Chain Heal is the real winner with self sufficient logic for choosing the best possible target.

Paladin : Holy Light, Flash of Light, Holy Shock, BoP. Best (pre 2.1) single target healer for mana efficiency and HP/S. Post 2.1 still maintains the best mana efficiency but loses huge amounts of HP/S so solo healing viability drops considerably. Holy Shock has poor use considering limited range, small amount healed, poor coefficient.


Suggestion: Maybe move Holy Shock and give Paladins a new heal somewhere in Holy? Something similar to PoMending or a "buffed" form of BoSac where we take a portion of the targets damage? (after mitigation of course). It just seems to me that the allure of Paladin healing is now gone, and I'm going to be a viable albeit decent solo target healer, but a one trick pony with FOL spam and alot of MP5.

Another possible option is to double the amount of healing Holy Shock does, and increase its cooldown to 20 seconds? (leaving the damage the same)

As a side note, I was excited for a moment when I read Imp Holy Shield, since I thought that means they would be making Holy Shield a trainable talent, and Imp Holy Shield would be like Imp Shield Block for Warriors. It wouldn't do much for most things, but at least for some fights I could gear swap and OT if needed, or maybe grab an add for a few seconds and spam block.. but I guess I'll have to stick with my retinue of taunt and kite for now .


P.S I just realized I vendored the KZ Plate healing gloves with MP5 and 2 blue slots . Looks like its time to petition for my T4/T5 replacement!

Unintended buff : BoSac now has a raid role - put it on as many people as possible assuming you are the 4th or 5th Paladin, and group with a Shadowpriest for pre-nerf mana return levels .