Palados

Exactly. If stuff won't change much we finally become viable as hybrids aka people who could do different jobs, adapting to environment and raid needs.

 

Lopaka

I am amazed that I want to put 66 points into Ret. There really are a lot of great changes, and I feel like our potential dps is definitely getting a boost as well as our utility. Divine Storm looks flipping amazing.

 

flyingtoastr

So I was looking at Spirit Link (the resto shaman tree capper) and it has an interesting little addendum that might apply to HoSac as well.

If any target takes a blow greater than 30% of their health, or shared damage would reduce a target's health below 20%, the link is broken.

It would easily prevent the "instagib" problem of throwing HoSac on a tank during a big damage burst. Maybe.

Save Atlantis!

 

Strom

I will tell you what I will be doing: Tanking!

Let the warrior OT keep his protective gaze on me for 5% more dodge

 

• frmorrison

New info:

Ok now this is interesting. Judgment has been broken into three spells:

Judgment of Light
Judgment of Wisdom
Judgment of Justice

They all work like the original Judgment spell, but also automatically judge the named seal. So you can put up JoW, JoL or JoJ for free on a target in addition to judging whatever seal you have active (Righteous, Corruption, Blood, Command, etc).


What this means is a you just start out just Judgement of Wisdom, then use your normal Seal. This is really nice for Holy, since you save a GCD not having to load a Seal first.

 

Gevlin

With the AP->SP conversion it looks like SoCom will once again be the premier DPS seal for both Horde and Alliance. Although, the higher damage on JoB would make us more useful as a mana battery so its yet to be seen.

I'm interested to see how viable Seal Weaving will be with SoV and SoC, or better, yet, just seal rotation. The 18s DoT on the new SoV will make it much easier to keep a full 5 stack of that ticking at all times, and with over 1000 spell damage and the seal's relatively high coefficients it should be a nice steady source of damage on top of Seal of Command.

 

flyingtoastr

Thought you guys might like this.

If things stay the way they are ret is in terribly good shape for the expansion. Not only is that Judgement some crazy massive damage but Judgement of the Wise does seem to be restoring his mana.

Save Atlantis!

 

Razr

Really nice changes overall, but i am wondering if mana efficiency is going a bit in the wrong direction:

Beacon of Light costs 2330 mana, assuming at lvl 80 we will have around 15k buffed mana

About Hand of Salvation, either justifies even more shamans spots in raid from tranq totem or us being hand-bots i am afraid.

All in all paladin desirability in raids will rename the same i believe with 2x holy paladins 1x retri/prot being the ideal option

 

Atep

Does "Heart of the Crusader" stack, now that every judgement ist affected by it?

 

bellator

It is nice to see that damage, but it should be made clear that this judgement is a rare one as its:-

a) affected by avenging wrath (1.2 modifier) only effects 1 in 6 judgements
a) affected by art of war (2.0 modifier) only effects 1 in 5 judgements
c) affected by Vengeance (1.15 modifier)
d) affected by retribution aura (1.02 modifier)
d) he probably has righteous vengeance as well which would mean the crit is 2.15 modifier

And unbuffed judgement based on this would be 1237 damage.

Assuming aura and vengeance applied to all, and crit rate was 40%, without resists this would work out as an average hit of 2118 or 264dps or 158mp5 from judgement of the wise

This is still pretty nice however considering what judgement of wise replaced gave about 21mp5

Would like to know how much SpDam he had so can work out the new coefficient.

Flyingtoaster. This wouldnt happen to be you would it? lots of things you could check :p

 

bellator

Tranq totem has been removed also and classes threat reworked around threat changes

Very unlikely, as it would encourage paladin stacking on dps races much like the heroism effect.

 

Corronach

Now that is really fantastic news, thank you. I was cautious about getting excited by the judgment talents deep in holy, but no more.

 

gia

Does this mean Seal of Light/Wisdom/Justice are removed? If they aren't then how do these skills interact?

 

Cathela

It's unrealistic to expect that one talent spec will always be 100% necessary for every single raid encounter (it does happen for some specs, but it's not the rule.) That said, if you're specced prot and stuck not-tanking, you can:

• Off-heal (and spec 8 points into holy for SF/HL if you expect to be doing this often)
• Keep up a +3% crit judgement (with 8 points in Ret, and you can spec into this if you don't often have a Ret paladin around)
• Melee with Seal of Blood/Martyr in physical dps gear, using Hammer of Righteousness as an instant strike with a two-hander.
• Keep up the -20% attack speed debuff, relieving a warrior of having to do that.
• Use Imp. Devo if your holy paladin doesn't want to go 17 points into Prot (and with all the new goodies they probably won't).
• Divine Guardian: two in a raid doesn't hurt.

Sure, it's not quite the same as having catform, but it's still very nice and its a damn sight better than what we have now.

Tranquil Air Totem is going away, as has been noted several times elsewhere. All tanks are getting threat buffs and all dps/healers are getting threat-reduction buffs to compensate for the loss of TA/Salv.

Holy Light 13 is 1880 mana, well more than twice the cost of Holy Light 11 (840 mana) so it would look as though mana pools are going to increase a lot, or like the healing situation will be moved in the direction of fewer, larger heals.

Interesting stuff.

------

If I were Blizzard, I'd be balancing things so that SoC is the best Ret dps seal, and the best dps seal overall, but so that Blood/Martyr do good dps for non-ret specs in physical dps gear, and so that SoR remains the best choice for spelldamage-heavy gear.

Also, I've been bitching since the 1.9 patch about Spiritual Focus being too deep in Holy, so good on Blizz for finally moving it back where it should be.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

bellator

Can someone please explain this new judgement thing to me please as i'm being thick. Does it mean you can just keep judgeing light/wisdom/judgement without ever having a seal on?

Cath,

I'm not expecting prot paladins to be 100% necessary on all encounter, but if you want, as a raider, to be a prot paladin (as opposed to a holy paladin who respecs when it's ideal), you need to be beneficial when not needed to tank.

Whilst there are things a prot paladin can do, they are not the in the same league as say a feral druid who can dps when not tanking. If you have an instance where half the bosses only require 1 dedicated tank (naxx being a prime example), all raids will much prefer to take a feral druid who can dps when tanking is not required instead of a paladin who's worth is greatly reduced, and instead get paladins to re-spec as and when is beneficial.

It thus still leaves us with the problem we have now where prot paladins are more a re-spec job than a full time job.

 

Prinsesa

It means instead of going:

1) Cast Seal of Wisdom
2) Cast Judgement to apply Judgement of Wisdom

You can go:

1) Cast Judgement of Wisdom

Seal of Wisdom in and of itself is still there, if you want to cast it for the self-mana regen (and so on for the other Seals)

The question is if this still consumes a GCD, otherwise I'd do something like pre-Sealing SoB prior to the pull then casting:

/cast Judgement of Wisdom
/cast Judgement
/cast Seal of Blood

http://armory.mmo-champion.com.nyud....63815BffMm.png

 

bellator

Thanks Prinsesa,

So paladins can now easily keep judging sol/w without it buggering up their healing

Just need judgement of light/wisdom to last 30 seconds, as its a bit out of sync that the buff we get lasts 30sec, but will have to rejudge every 20 sec unless we have a retadin in raid

 

zenos

A very interesting portion of the talent Sanctified Wrath. "...and while effected by Avenging Wrath, 50% of all damage caused bypasses damage reduction effects."

What does this entail? Is it effectively 50% armor pen? Does it effect the priest bubble? Does it effect a warlock sacrifice bubble? Depending on how its implemented it could have some serious effect in pvp.

 

Cathela

But original Naxx was pre-BC. The design philosophy for 40/25-man raids has evolved since then, to the point where it's rare to have a single-tank encounter in a 25-man raid. I count 26 boss encounters in T4/5/6 and only Winterchill, Naj'entus and Gorefiend are truly single-tank encounters. (Omitting Sunwell because I haven't seen all the fights, but the three I have seen all require 2+ tanks.)

The fact that ferals can be useful in catform does make them very useful as raid tanks, but it also helps us because it means that on a fight where you need either your prot paladin or your feral to tank, the paladin is the logical choice.

For me, being a prot paladin has been a full-time job, and holy is my "respec when needed" job -- and it's never been needed since we finished T5, and not very often even then. Granted I'm the GM and raid leader, so to some extent I could force whatever I wanted on the guild. But I wouldn't stay prot permanently if I believed it was hurting the guild or our progression. (And there was a time in Kara/early T4 where I thought seriously about just going holy fulltime, but I stopped that as soon as I saw the T5 encounters.)

In short, I guess I disagree with you about whether this will be a problem in WotLK, but I also disagree with you about whether it's a problem in TBC, so it sounds like you and I are just coming from very different experiences and backgrounds.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

DdarkDdemon

And chain- intervening for -60% damage taken for 6 seconds every intervene cooldown.

 

pope master

Yup, Paladins have made great second tanks and ferals have made fantastic third tanks. I'm sure death knights will be pretty decent third/fourth tanks as well. I don't think Paladins have any reason to be concerned about losing their jobs...

 

Darian_TruBlade

What happens when you use Seal of Light and then use Judgement of Wisdom, do you get both? Would the raid get 6% extra crit chance from this, or even just from two Ret Pallies judging different effects?

So many questions.

 

Kaincael

1) I'm assuming you would keep the Seal of Light buff on you, and Wisdom would be judged on the mob.

2) I think that's been talked about already. If Heart of the Crusader stacks, that's probably overpowered.

Now, what I'd like to point forth are the numbers for Holy Light and Flash of Light so far.

(with 0 spellpower, of course)

(new)Holy Light 13 : 5166 average heal, 1880 mana cost, 2.74787(..) healing per mana.
(new)Holy Light 12 : 4438 average heal, 1585 mana cost, 2.8 healing per mana.
(TBC)Holy Light 11 : 2978 average heal, 840 mana cost, 3.545 healing per mana.

(new)Flash of Light 9 : 832 average heal, 420 mana cost, 1.98(..) healing per mana.
(new)Flash of Light 8 : 723 average heal, 350 mana cost, 2.0657(..) healing per mana.
(TBC)Flash of Light 7 : 623 average heal, 180 mana cost, 3.461(..) healing per mana.

and for fun, Holy Shock.

(new)Holy Shock 7 : 1490 average heal, 650 mana cost, 2.29(..) healing per mana.
(new)Holy Shock 6 : 1290 average heal, 650(!?) mana cost, 1.98(..) healing per mana.
(TBC)Holy Shock 5 : 950 average heal, 650(...what.) mana cost, 1.46(..) healing per mana.

On a side note, it looks like Holy Shock damage (not healing) has been increased.

I lifted these numbers from mmo-champion: Wrath of the Lich King - Paladin - Holy Skills

So far, it looks like the numbers are not right whatsoever, or they've retroactively increased some healing values like Flash of Light 7 and Holy Light 11 and want people to downrank like mad.

So, I would handle any numbers mined (for spells at least) so far with a lot of skepticism... not that they shouldn't have been already, but more so than normal.

Edit: The healing values being increased is most likely how they rolled blessing of light into the spells, so... those are most likely correct. Either they've changed how downranking works (which might have happened alongside the coefficient changes they hinted at), or downranking like mad will commence.

 

• Theras

I have to admit that I was kind of expecting it, but I'm still kind of shocked at how bloated Protection builds are going to be. I count about 82 points I'd like to invest in tanking - 17 of which are split between the Holy and Retribution trees - and I've only got 71 points to give. It's currently looking like I'm going to have to dump Deflection, Precision, and Blessing of Kings to pick up some of the new toys (and I still won't have Guarded by the Light).

I really feel like there could be some consolidation inside the Protection tree. Some good candidates include:

• Swap Redoubt and Shield Specialization
• Swap Benediction and Improved Blessing of Might
• Roll Spell Warding into Improved Righteous Fury
• Roll Improved Holy Shield into its parent talent
• Shuffle Sacred Duty's stamina bonus into Combat Expertise, and shuffle Divine Guardian's effect into Sacred Duty

If only two or three changes were made there, it would go a long way towards making builds involving a lot more reasonable choices (like for example, not having to choose between 5% to Parry and 15% Seal/Judgement threat).

----------

Also, has anybody noticed the slight wording change on Seal of Vengeance?

Live: