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.

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

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.

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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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

Woah, if SoV becomes a guarenteed proc it would make it a powerful ret seal as well to twist in. Start the fight with a fast 1 hander to get up 5 stacks rapidly, swap to your 2h with normal SoB and refresh it every 15-17 seconds to keep the stacks rolling. That would be a pretty nice DPS increase.