* 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

I would assume they mixed this up a bit. Slide everything down one and it looks like it should be right.

At which point that talent would be the mandatory choice compared to the other two, however. Seeing how they're working towards avoiding that, it seems unlikely this was a mistake. Each spec can in a certain way use the bonus, and the tier is about movement speed, not another timer for one's main role.

Edit: beaten, redundant post.

Some of the tooltips seem off:
- Blessing of Kings still increases intellect by 5%
- no change to Rebuke's cooldown yet
- I guess our Mastery bonus should affect HotR, too.
- TVs 39% weapon damage seems quite low compared to CS (176%) and Divine Storm (100%). HotR has 39%, too. This may be the source of the error, although it's to early for real number crunching.

Aylen - why wouldn't BoK increase Int? Int is spellpower, that's valid. It simply does not boost mana pool. Value on TV is probably based on the old 1HP version, they haven't gone back and filled in the correct value for 3HP-only usage.

General
RIP Resistance Aura, you will be missed.
BoM will become Mastery? Interesting.
Only one new spell above L85? Blinding Light is cute, but is unlikely to be useful to Holy, unlikely to be used by Ret (GCD and huge mana sink), and only situationally useful even for Prot. Potentially its greatest utility is, oddly enough, battlegrounds.

L15 talents all increase movement speed, with some tiny flavour added. Underwhelming, especially when compared to Feline Swiftness (Druid), which is a flat 30% at all times in cat form. If Druids, Paladins, and Warriors need movement increasing talents (and the other classes do not!), then perhaps there's a flaw with the classes and they need something baseline. If there's not a flaw regarding movement speed... then why devote an entire talent solely to that purpose (well, Druids and Warriors have some PvP utility options).

L75 talents still all appear to be PvP-centric with no utility in PvE barring a gimmick boss. Other than Repentance, so do L30 talents. That's 1/3 of the total talents just for PvP, on top of our only new spell. None of which are even likely to catapult Paladin into flavor of the month, so I doubt even PvP Paladin are dancing in the street looking at these.

L90 talents still looks to be no choice for Ret. We'll run the numbers and one talent will uniformly win. Still possibly the most successful tier from a Ret perspective, since there would be desire for all 3 talents. Holy would probably be personal choice, good design for them. Prot will be able to increase their DPS on either of two CDs (Huzzah?), or randomly extend SotR from 5 seconds to 6.5 (as they hit it again when the GCD finishes since holding 3 HP is not a good thing - also, Huzzah?).

As a Hybrid class, designing good talents for us is no doubt extremely tough. You want multiple things that all 3 specs covet in each tier so it's a difficult decision - "I want x MORE than y, but I still really want y." This listing, like the last, is underwhelming. I know Blizzard hates classes being compared to each other, but Druids (the best comparison since they can perform all of the roles in the holy trinity) still appears to be the poster child of how to do this - their talents look interesting for all specs.

Ret
I think the most impacting Ret change is Sanctity of Battle. It reduces Judgement's CD (25% better for Judge than it is for CS) and possibly even more important it reduces the GCD of the attacks it affects. The shorter GCD on CS will smooth the 2 filler setup enormously and add gameplay. With shorter CS GCD you get the fillers out faster, which can leave a small window (0.1-0.4 seconds) before the next CS. Someone blindly following something like clcRet could be tempted to use a 3rd filler, since it was immediately available.

With Haste impacting 2 core attacks, which are both our HP generators, it could easily push Haste to top stat. Especially with Crusader's Zeal. More autoattacks means more chances to proc faster autoattacks. Factor in fewer TV (either no DivPurp, or vastly limited DivPurp that only procs off TV/DS) to drive down Mastery's value a shade. Also a Mastery raid buff pushes expected raid values of Mastery higher - the higher it gets, the more it makes Crit and Haste desirable.

Judgements of the Bold increasing physical damage by 4% for 12 seconds... with Judge at 6 seconds and its desirability as a HP generator, this should be effectively a permanent self-buff. Even on heavy movement we Judge at range unless there's absolutely nothing in range. The 12 seconds (which are what makes it effectively 100% up-time) makes it somewhat disappointing. With a shorter window there could be consideration of trying to arrange TV to fall within the window. A shorter window would have worked better with the old 8 sec Judge, however, as 6 seconds (less after Haste!) it would be hard to properly arrange it to be a short burst (4 seconds is still "huge" and 2 seconds "tiny").

So, first glance of JotB is neat, second glance is... passive buff, balanced at 100% up time. If it's gonna be passive, just make it a passive buff. Pretending it's something to work to maintain is rather silly and disingenuous.

If Speed of Light does increase damage by 10% for 12 sec as Ret, it's going to be a tough toss-up and potentially hard to math (in other words, precisely what we'd want to see from talents!). Is regularly occurring, ongoing movement buff more useful than a longer-term DPS cooldown? This would probably become a fight specific selection. Or it could be intentional that the buffs are slightly askew by spec.

Prot
Prot spec bonuses look rather bland, but I don't tank and could miss a mechanic that makes them very interesting. No extra CD - both bubbles are baseline and any spec could grab Ardent Defender. If SotR is the active defense, it's bland. At this far distant glance it looks very much like stand there and maximize your DPS, threat being irrelevant and defense being passive or pressed when HP hits 3.

SotR requires 3 HP. If this is supposed to be the "Bloody Tanking" active mitigation, it suffers a huge handicap. A Blood DK can reserve a Death Strike since their rune pool allows them to hold a full extra of each rune. Holding between 1 and 2 is fine, holding at 2 would be wasting future resources. However, our maximum HP pool is 3. If you reserve the SotR, it means you cannot earn further HP. So use every CD for more overall bonus block, or reserve for scheduled burst and deprive the future?

Also DK self-heal and shield is far more beneficial than 10% more chance to reduce physical damage by a portion.

I'd also compare SotR to Bears... but cannot. Savage Defense "reduces all physical damage by 60% for 3 seconds" for 20 rage, but Mastery increases "damage absorbed by Savage Defense ability by 15% +...". Sing with me: One of these things is not like the other, one of these things doesn't belong.

Warriors may get even shorter shrift in this snapshot. 80 rage for an extra 25% chance to reduce physical damage by a portion from the next incoming melee attack only. SotR may be 10%, but by affecting multiple incoming blows it's less at the mercy of RNG (more chances to occur means easier to reach the average).

Paladin also could (theoretically) block cap, while Warriors appear to be set that if this occurs they continue to boost Crit Block.

At an extremely undereducated glance, it's possible using all HP on Holy Shield (talent) and ignoring SotR could be more advantageous, since the shield would guaranteed absorb any sort of damage rather than chance at melee reduction. If Prot can and do block cap, then it would start beating SotR in every scenario.

Holy
No significant changes, which is acceptable. The HP mechanic, Beacon, and Divine Plea require interaction and at least a shred of active thought. Lack of increasing mana pool could be considered enough of a change to prevent the spec from feeling stagnant.

I know there's plenty of complaint that classes always change, especially at X-pacs, and that this change frightens and confuses people, potentially driving them from the game. On the other hand, plenty enjoy the revamps as the change can revitalize interest. Lack of great changes to Holy could be good, or could be bad.

Overall
Clearly a lot of changes still coming. Previews are never a time to panic (or rejoice), especially this many months in advance.

Also, I expect spell costs to be adjusted for all classes. Present values for % of base mana work because at max level you have base mana + mana from Int. When the mana-from-Int mechanic goes away, we only have base mana. Divine Light is cool, but I doubt a Holy wants to spend 35% of their total mana for one heal, even if it's big.

That raises a balance issue. Either FoL is vastly reduced so Holy could cast 10+, which also means Ret/Prot (same base mana!) could cast the same quantity (for less healing), or FoL remains 31% and Holy cannot afford to even consider it. 1/3 of your mana pool is excessive even as an 'oh shit button'.

Correct me if I'm wrong but won't you have more TVs with these new talents, considering you now get HoPo from CS, Judgement, Exorcism and Hammer of Wrath, basically giving every attack HoPo generation, even if you lose Divine Purpose?

Also, I think you are misunderstanding the purpose of judgements of the bold, it's not a buff for you, it's a raid (de)buff, combat rogues provide it now, and next expansion you can as well, saying it should just be passive is like saying that on Live, the aura benefit of Communion should not exist for anyone else and just be your own passive buff.

I had mis-read that, thank you. I saw it more along the lines of a Warrior's Colossus Smash, not Blood Frenzy/Savage Combat. In that case as a 100% up-time mechanic, it's fine. It's a raid buff that persists as long at that class/spec survives, which is a tried and true mechanic that seems to function as desired.

I also hadn't noticed that Exo and HoW generated HP. The latter is the more interesting, as under 20% (no HoW during AW unless you talent it) you're not only getting an extra ability (HoW), but increased HP generation. Regardless, we should indeed have more HP. Old (current) DivPurp is 15% chance of 3 HP = 0.45 HP per usage. That is significantly less than a guaranteed 1 HP per usage.

Based on my re-reading, this means every attack ability (button press, not autoattack) short of Consecration either generates HP or uses it. We may not even have time for Cons with the shorter Judge CD and potentially more TV eating GCD (then again we may have the time with no Holy Wrath).

This just emphasizes the need for the pool of HP to increase from a maximum of 3 to 6.

Edit:
I just realized our GCD are even more full than ever. I naively assumed HotR shares a CD with CS, but that is not documented anywhere. Therefore rather than "CS and 2 fillers" it becomes "CS, HotR, Filler"/"CS, Filler, HotR" with the Filler being Judgement or TV/DS. There's rarely any room to squeeze in Consecrate. Exo will have to do more than Judge to even fit in when it procs - this must be why it generates HP, otherwise we'd ignore it until we get an empty GCD, which wouldn't "shake up the rotation with a proc". Exo would need to do reasonably more than HotR/CS in order to bump them in priority (pushing back their CD). Likewise for HoW.

It's from Prot. Ret: Radiates 1000 healing to allies within 10 yards for 12 sec.

While I can see Seals not having a duration, just a quality of life improvement if that even, I really can't imagine several seals at once, if they wanted that they would just bake several effects into one and they actually did the opposite, even added a new Seal of Command, so now we have a DoT seal, SoT, a direct damage seal, SoC, a healing seal, SoI, a cleaving seal, SoR and a slowing seal, SoJ.
I also can't wrap my head around CS and HotR not sharing a cooldown as that would make very little sense, the fact that the tooltips don't mention means pretty much nothing since on Live, DS and HotR share cooldown with CS and there's nothing stating so in the tooltips.

But infinitely more over the course of a fight. Sanctified Wrath is more HP during AW, but that's only 20 seconds in every two minutes and we'd get no benefit from it during Execute phase when we can use Hammer of Wrath regardless.

Let's compare the three:

Crudely, Holy Avenger gives a flat 21 HP every 300 seconds, assuming GOAK is activated less than a second before TV is used for the first time and we spam HP abilities for the 10 seconds. It is automatically de-synced with GOAK stacks, but that's partially made up for by it guaranteeing we will have an ability to use in each of the first seven slots after popping - stacking will be slightly faster as a result. Also, it's 21 HP per whole or part of 300 seconds, so it's at its best in a 6-minute or 11-minute fight but suffers diminishing returns thereafter until the next breakpoint.

To beat Holy Avenger, Sanctified Wrath would need to allow 21 Hammer casts in 5 minutes. This is impossible, so Sanctified Wrath can be immediately discarded.

Divine Purpose generates 0.45HP for each HP ability we use. To beat Holy Avenger, we would need to use 47 HP abilities in the fight. DP procs will give another HP ability; at 15% chance to proc, we would on average get six procs from 41 abilities. With our being able to generate HP with Crusader Strike, Judgement and every fifth white swing (Exo), we will get about 8 HP every 18 seconds (I'm assuming HotR will share a CD with CS and be a DPS loss to use on a single target anyway). It will thus take 277 seconds to make enough HP for 41 HP abilities.

I don't have the tools at home to accurately graph y=(21x/277) against y=21*ROUNDUP(x/300), but I have more than a suspicion that the window in which DP beats Holy Avenger will not be wide enough to reliably hit.

It's actually quite reasonable. You could very easily design a system where CS and HotR were both independent HPGs. In fact, I already did. HotR becomes a weak single-target filler in that system, but turns into your go-to HPG for AoE situations.

That said, I don't think that we can assume anything from these talents. In all likelihood, they're still linked simply because they haven't done anything but tweak the cooldown. But that may not be the long-term plan. My guess is that they've just shifted around the abilities to the appropriate levels so we can see when they're obtained, but haven't finished changing all of them.

I hope they do un-link CS and HotR the way I suggested on my blog, because it creates a distinction between the AoE and single-target rotations. Hitting button B every 3 seconds instead of button A every 3 seconds is about as trivial a difference as you can get, and doesn't pass for a "meaningful difference between single-target and AoE" rotations.


Exemplar: I think your assessment of the level 75 and 90 talents for Prot is a little off.

75: Clemency lets you BoP two targets in rapid succession, which could easily be relevant in PvE (arguably too relevant: as it stands now, it's the 'no-brainer' choice in that tier for prot).

90: Prot has no DPS sink for Holy Power, so neither Holy Avenger nor Divine Purpose give us a DPS boost. HA and Sanctified Wrath both have survivability benefits, however. Holy Avenger will let you chain-WoG/HS during GAnK, which makes GAnK an even stronger survivability cooldown. Sanctified Wrath will let you increase WoG/HS throughput (J-J-J-WoG-J-J-J-WoG), which turns AW into a moderate survivability cooldown. DP is arguably weak for prot right now, because it's a total/effective damage reduction mechanic; it gives you an extra HS/WoG/SotR every now and then, which will reduce your overall DTPS (or increase your HPS, in the case of WoGs), but on-demand survivability has historically been a stronger choice.