Of course as he is saying not everyone is a "very good player".

It's not from "blue posts", it's partially from the released Talent Calculator* (see Tier 2 for the SoJ hamstring and Tier 3 for the SS/AD/BL thing). As for Flash of Light, can't trace that one down...might be from the Blizzcon class balance panel. I assume he means "tied to spec" and not talented, since there are no heals in our new talent tree.


*Linking to Wowhead since it's still greyed out on the battle.net MoP page

Take the info about the heals with a huge grain of salt, Retribution and Protection still has access to WoG, as confirmed in the Q&A when they asked if they were removing the CD on it (which they are), and for Holy and Divine Light, I personally haven't seen any official info on it.
As for the rest it's all in the talents they previewed at blizzcon, except it's not really hamstring, as you need to choose between damage (SoT) or a slow (SoJ).

Current description is on "direct attacks". Seal twisting will be an option, with no risk of losing SoT stacks and only having one attack without the full SoT effect. Personally, I'm just hoping SoJ has competitive-ish damage (i.e. not so low that it's token damage and not really notable in and of itself), since SoT prevents being able to easily CC and target switch.

Actually after posting that I went to take a closer look at the original blizzcon pictures to make sure the wording was the same, and while it may just be an oversight since talents are no where near done, SoJ does not mention that is lasts 30 minutes, nor that we can only have one seal active at a time, it may, or may not of course, indicate that they might be reworking seals.

They may, but I hightly doubt they are. The seal system is a paladin's "poison", and our complexity comes from the rogue mainframe. In all honesty, it seems they almost completely gutted the Ret tree to give to anyone who wants it, without giving Ret anything back in return. The rumor is we get HotR for AoE, but I hardly believe that's enough. Until we get a full view of abilities, there's no way to speculate where Ret is going come 5.0. If the only change is we're getting access to HotR, we'll probably have some very severe problems, unless HoPo is in such abundance it pushes our rotation to near-Wrath complexity.

They have "confirmed" (I use that term loosely, mind you) that HotR will be our AoE ability, and will most likely act as DS does now (HP gain on 4+ targets). The reason for this was that DS would become the AoE finisher. So you'll have CS --> TV for single target and HotR --> DS for AoE.

Even in the preview they gave, they mentioned a L22 Paladin class ability called "Supplication"-- A good indicator that (if anything) we're getting new revamped abilities.

Source: Blizzcon '11: Class Talent System

Random thought of the day regarding the new talents and spec choice:
From Vanilla through Cataclysm, you start a new toon of any class, level from 1 to maximum and gain the vast majority of abilities. In the past there was typically one or two abilities granted only via talent tree. In Cata there can be an ability or two granted by specialization. Regardless, you gained access to the vast majority of the toolkit at max level - there were just a few extra things to learn/practice if you changed spec.

In Mists the idea seems much more in line to have each spec with a slew of spec-only abilities. So you level from 1 to maximum - let's say as a DPS spec. You'll gain all the baseline abilities, plus the DPS abilities for that spec. You now respec to tank or healer. You instantly lose the portion of your abilities that were DPS-only, and gain new abilities that are tank- or healer-only.

Thus a respec nearly becomes a new class entirely, as your mechanics and a good portion of your toolkit changes. The idea that leveling trains you on the class gets chucked entirely out the window. Each class could become nearly twice as complex (say 50% baseline + 50% per spec * 3 specs = 200%). That is potentially a greatly increased learning curve.

This also vastly limits hybrid situations. It would be extremely hard to spot heal the last 10% of something when a healer dies, if you only have 1/2 or 1/4 of the basic healing abilities. Just short of mana for FoL? Tough, you have no smaller spell, burned HP on WoG ,and are generating no more HP since you're not attacking. Same goes for throwing on a shield and tanking without any of the proposed new frequent-use active mitigation (not talking 2-3 min CDs).

Historically and generically (i.e. not just specific to WoW), but the only thing that gains more complaints than "you made it too easy" is making it 'harder' again after making it 'easy'.

I think this way they have a much better control of how much offheal a non healing spec can actually do.

Remember, we don't have a clear idea what the cooldowns will be like, what abilities will make it into the final Retribution/Prot package, what mana costs will be like, how much the different talents will affect said abilities.

They also said (concerning druids) that they want to have some kind of hybrid functions, why shouldn't that be the case for the other "hybrid" classes.
The inherent problemthereof is of course the old argument of hybrid vs. pure classes. If you see the Ret-Spec as a pure damage class per se, there is no way of not letting it compete for damage top spot.

Of course, the fact that one class plays out like three classes adds to complexity, mainly for beginners. On the other hand, you get your second spec relatively early on ingame, giving you at least the possibility to explore the other specs, if you want to.

Looks like the MoP calculators are adapting:

Talent Calculator - Game - World of Warcraft!

Basic Talent changes:

Tier 1:
* Due to Judgement's 6 second cooldown, LAotL is now a 45% speed burst for 2 seconds, averaging for a 15% increased movement speed bonus before Haste* (see below)
* Speed of Light now has secondary bonuses based on spec:
Holy: Reduces damage taken by 20%
Prot: Increases damage done by 10%
Ret: Heals targets within 10 yards for 12 seconds

Tier 2:
Seal of Justice is remove, replaced with Burden of Guilt with causes Judgement to slow movement speed by 50% for 12 seconds (unknown if limited to 1 target)

Tier 3:
No changes.

Tier 4:
Eternal Glory works with Light of Dawn, in addition to WoG.

Tier 5:
No change.

Tier 6:
No change.

"New" Class skills (Note: Tooltips are relative to level, presumed to be level 1. Also note, these are for all specs.):

*Seal of Command (L3)-- Deals 26 additional Holy damage to direct attacks (Note that seals have no limited duration, nor wording on tooltip if they are mutually exclusive).
*Judgement has a 30 yard range, 6 sec. cooldown.
*Word of Glory has no cooldown.
*Supplication (L22, Passive)-- For 15 sec after killing an enemy that yields EXP/Honor, your next FoL heals for 300%.
*Seal of Truth (L26)-- Direct attacks cause Censure: Deals 64 Holy damage over 15 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times, at which point each attack deals an additional 15% weapon damage as Holy (No interaction with Judgement, unclear if any attack or only melee attacks cause the bonus weapon damage).
*Seal of Insight (L33)-- Improves all healing spells by 5% and gives direct attacks a chance to restore 107 health and 4% base mana.
*Seal of Righteousness (L42)-- Direct attacks cause 26 additional Holy damage to all targets within melee range.
*Heart of the Crusader (L44)-- Increases mounted movement speed at all times by 20%, does not stack with other effects.
*Avenging Wrath (L72)-- Increases all damage and healing by 20% for 20 sec. 3min CD.
*Blessing of Might (L81)-- Places a Blessing on the target, increasing Mastery by 5.
*Blinding Light (L87, Instant Cast, 20% base mana)-- "Emits a dazzling light in all directions, blinding enemies within 10 yards, causing them to wander disoriented for 6 seconds". 3 min CD.

For Ret-specific changes:

* Loss of Holy Wrath, Holy Light, Light of Dawn, Divine Plea, and Holy Radiance. These are now Holy-exclusive.
* Loss of Auras. Auras are no longer a Paladin mechanic (nor Shaman or Priest, for that matter).
* Loss of Zealotry. Its effect has been folded into the T6 talent Holy Avenger. Changes on/made to GAnK is unknown as the tooltip remains as if you were spec-less.
* Shealth of Light now gives a 10% increased mana regeneration, as Judgement no longer gives back mana (this is expected, due to mana pools remaining stagnant across all specs). Time will tell how this impacts our Mana-based skills.
* Divine Storm has been moved back to a HP Finisher, and no longer has any healing mechanic attached to it.
* Hammer of the Righteousness always gives Holy power, and reduces physical damage done by the target by 10% for 30 seconds.
* Judgements give 1 Holy Power and increases the Physical damage taken by the target by 4%.
* Crusader's Zeal (L34)-- Your normal (white swing?) melee attacks have a chance to increase your attack speed of your next 3 attacks by 25%,
* Hammer of Wrath is exclusive to Ret and grants 1 Holy Power on use. (Note: If used on its 6 second cooldown during AW with the Sanctified Wrath talent, this equates to 1 additional Holy Power per minute, which is drastically below the Holy Power generation from the Holy and Prot bonuses).
* Seal of Justice is exclusive to Ret, and causes all direct attacks to reduce the target's movement speed by 50% for 5 sec and deal 12 additional Holy damage.
* Exorcism always grants a charge of Holy Power, but can no longer be hardcast as it only activates on autoattacks.
* Sanctity of Battle causes Haste to reduce the cooldown and global cooldown on CS, HotR, and Judgement.
* Inquisition is exclusive to Ret, and increases all Holy damage by 30% for 10 sec. per charge of Holy Power.

Not sure if this is just how I am reading this but from the tooltips it looks like TV and DS require 3 HoPo to use, you cannot use it at any other point.

Not really an issue but makes me question the 3 point mechanic.