I second that also. I am more of a conservative paladin and dislike the thought of basing my performance on % and depending on mainly crits from my healing spells to avoid going oom.

Does anybody have any updates on whether bol can be cast on multiple targets? because if that's the case, illumination + multiple bol with the option of the divine guardian sounds imba in hot situations.

(off topic) I've also heard there is a possibility in wotlk you can change between 2 builds free of cost? that would seem really good for all paladins i guess because due to the amount of talents we need to take which are needed in pve and costing our points it leaves us none to place in main pvp talents such as conc aura or unyielding faith. Anybody know of this?

3 paladins really doesnt seem excessive... Stacking 5+ shamans right now is what is ridiculous but given 25 raid spots and 10 classes, each class should get 2.5 spot, which ends up meaning some classes will get 2 spots and some will get three.

I could only find a single rank of Seal of Command/Blood in WoWHead's WOTLK DB, one that costs 14% of base mana - does this mean that the damage from Judgement of Command/Blood scales completely on weapon damage, without a base amount?

Base damage on the Judgements was the only reason to ever have higher ranks of these spells anyway, although 14% of base mana does seem a little pricey.

Given that the base mana for a Paladin (at level 70) is ~3000 we're looking at seals costs a bit over 400 mana at level 70. It is a lot more than live amounts (280 for SoC and 210 for SoB) but given the way all Wrath mana costs seem to be going it doesn't seem especially surprising.

So looking at these changes, my first impression was borderline disgust.

After really thinking about them, I realized that I was wrong, and pretty much everything added ranged from reasonably useful to jesus, but I still had a bad taste for reasons I couldn't really explain.

Then it hit me: Many of these changes miss the point.

-for Holy, the problem is twofold: Our mana regen is pitiful, and we have the fewest healing options of any healer. These changes enhance our current arsenal of healing spells in a huge way, but they only add one new tool to what is easily the smallest toolkit of any healer, and that tool is far too expensive to use on a regular basis, especially considering that our mana regen has not been addressed. Basically, these changes make us better at what we're good at, while changing little of what we're bad at. In PvP however, these changes look downright amazing, and it is possible that some form of shockadin could make a big comeback, finally giving us the offensive abilities we've needed (though I'd prefer a more indirect offense like the other healers have, anything will make a big difference)

-Prot paladins have very little control over their fate compared to other tanks. No shield wall, no fear/stun break, no last stand. Not to mention that this tree is still bloated as hell. However, the new tclap judgments and the BoSac change should help out with mana issues and overall damage taken, which is pretty sweet.

-Ret. In PvE, I can't find much to complain about. Alliance finally got their SoB, scaling looks like it got fixed, we got a real CC for 5/10 mans (!) and there's even more damage and group utility. Mana could be an issue depending on the mechanics of judgments of the wise and talents are a bit bloated, but overall PvE looks very good. However, in PvP, ret paladins still do not stand on their own, dependent on another class to interrupt, snare, and apply healing reduction.

Overall, I think that paladins will be much better off than they are now, but I can't help but feel like this could have been done so much better. Hopefully blizzard sees fit to address these problems after they apply the inevitable nerf to some of the more OP stuff we got.

We only have half of the picture here though.

Until we know what (5?) new abilities we get we have no idea exactly whether our major deficiencies are being addressed. Remember, we're getting at least 1 more heal (Hand of Purity) as well as a mined PW:S effect at the least (bringing our total heals up to 5 and all the utility you could ever beg for), and I'll be surprised if one new thing isn't Evocation given that it is our class' major problem for all three specs.

It is way too early to cry that we're going to fail.

Sacred Shield IS the hand of purity they were talking about. If you remember they said it would be "Like a single target prayer of mending" which if you think about it makes ZERO sense. Each class got two new skills, Sacred Shield and Shield of Righteousness are ours. We're not getting anymore new abilities.

Definitely not crying fail, just pointing out what I see as deficiencies. Also, there's no mention of hand of purity or sacred shield in any of the talents, giving me serious doubts as to their authenticity. But even assuming that both make it, that's still 5 to a druid's 8 or a priest's 8-9 (shaman are actually in the same boat numbers-wise, but the raw power of earth shield and chain heal mixed with earthliving weapon is nothing to sneeze at). And again, even if both of those make it, we're still stuck as essentially single-target healers with a limited AE heal. As I said, we become much better at what we're already good at, with minimal improvement in other areas.

It does seem reasonable to assume that some sort of mana management will hit as a trainable ability, but it is more of a stretch to assume that the other 2 abilities will be heals, and I'd rather not bank on assumptions at all

There's also a possibility that Holy Shock will have it's HPM tweaked such that it becomes a viable part of the Holy playstyle. If it's viable to cast Holy Shock whenever it comes off cooldown, there's some pretty neat possibilities with instant HLs.

I'm not as sure as you are. Every other class only got 2 new abilities. The fact that abilities are gained at 75 and 80 also leads me to believe that there will only be two new baseline abilities in this expansion (Shield of Righteousness and Sacred Shield).

Comparing:
Druid:
Nourish: Heals a friendly target for 1883 to 2187. Heals for an additional 20% if you have a Rejuvenation, Regrowth, or Lifebloom effect active on the target.
1.5 sec cast, 600 Mana, 40 yd range

Pally:
Flash Heal: Heals a friendly target for 785 to 879.
1.5 sec cast, 420 Mana, 40 yd range
Holy Light: Heals a friendly target for 4888 to 5444.
2.5 sec cast, 1880 Mana, 40 yd range

Priest:
Flash Heal: Heals a friendly target for 1887 to 2193.
1.5 sec cast, 775 Mana, 40 yd range
Greater Heal: A slow casting spell that heals a single target for 3950 to 4590.
3 sec cast, 1290 Mana, 40 yd range

Shaman:
Healing Wave: Heals a friendly target for 3034 to 3466.
3 sec cast, 1600 Mana, 40 yd range
Lesser Healing Wave: Heals a friendly target for 1606 to 1834.
1.5 sec cast, 965 Mana, 40 yd range
Healing Wave: Heals a friendly target for 2624 to 2996.
3 sec cast, 1355 Mana, 40 yd range

Add in all the + heal + aura + crit seed bonus for druids and nourish is easily now the best single target spammable healing spell in the game. Especially with the way druid mana scales with spirit. Not to mention gift of the earthmother gives back 5% mana per HOT on the target for nourish.

Don't get me wrong i actually love the changes because having to judge every 30 secs and having to use in combat blessings is a completely new direction, close to respeccing to something different. However comparatively it seems like were getting weak additions to what we lack while losing in what we excel at.


On a sidenote: I can see no reason why any guild would bring more than any 2 pallys unless Beacon of Light turns into something necessary to stack like COH is now.

One for might / wis (imp), conc aura (or ret if 1 of those is ret) and the 3% raid crit
One for kings / imp devo / imp divine shield.

SoR and JoR apparently now scale with AP, and JoR crits for 200% damage. I'm kind of surprised by this, because it seemed like SoR was supposed to be the spelldamage seal, where SoB/SoC were the AP seals.

This kind of question comes up for every class and spec, but it's actually a very silly question! Think about it this way... there are a maximum of 25 raid slots. In Wrath, we'll have 10 classes with three specs each.

If any class/spec combo was so good as to have reason to stack multiples, that would be tremendously broken, don't you think? Considering as how five class/spec combinations are left out by necessity as it is!

So, no, I should hope there is no reason to bring more than one Ret Paladin. Or more than one Prot Paladin, or more than one Holy Paladin, or more than one Beast Mastery Hunter, or more than one Destruction 'Lock, etc, because that would be incredibly bad design.

The best part of that post is where Coagtwo needs to define a grammar just to discuss Seal/Judgments easily.

This is so that Righteousness in Prot gets a boost, Prot Paladins will be using Warrior/DK tanking gear which will have strength and stamina on it. I'm pretty sure they're giving a lot more block value per point of strength as well, because the gear wont have Block Value on it on account of DKs not being able to block. That's why Divine Strength was stuck in Protection.

If that is true, trying to scrounge up another 5 points in the already bloated tree is going to be near impossible. I can imagine prot pallys respeccing depending on what they are tanking. Weather they need threat or survivability, weather they are tanking bosses or boss adds etc.

Attack power and spell power affecting SoR may be an oversight, or the devs wanted Holy Pallys to do more damage.

That is an issue that does affect people's choices. They may be willing to heal, but when solo they don't do a lot of damage, so they don't heal at all. Buffing SoR via two scalers may be a good idea.

If this entire thing isn't some bizarre bug, than Judgment of Light/Wisdom/Justice should have their names changed to a new naming system (like say Mark of Light/Wisdom/Justice) and their respective seals could gain some entirely new effect when using Judgment (like party healing and mana back with Light or Wisdom, and spell interruption with Justice) because right now the system is very confusing.

Also I trees being bloated isn't a bad thing, it means you just have a lot of nice talents to pick from.

I wonder if our other abilities, such as consecrate, are now affected by AP as well. That would seem to synergize with HotR., and make the Touched by the Light talent more a bonus for healing and a bit of extra threat, rather than the primary source of threat.

It is bad when you cannot even specialize for a specific task. I'll probably be dropping ardent defender, though I love that talent dearly, just because I'm not sure there's anyway to justify taking it over the non-proc based threat and mitigation bonuses. Other than BoSanctuary, I don't think any talent needs to be removed exactly, just a reduction of the number of points in things like expertise and 1 hand weapon spec. (maybe roll imp HS together).

I can't see scaling all our spells off AP instead of spellpower, I really can't. Especially not when you figure that Ret is also getting spellpower buffs. Besides, there's no reason not to have a solid spelldamage weapon and fill in the rest of your gear with "generalized" tank drops that cater to warriors and DK's as well. We can get some spellpower on our token-based Tier gear if it seems necessary to the designers, although probably not a whole lot. The healing bonus that deep in the tree is bizarre to me, really- I guess it means we're expected to heal when we're not tanking? Obviously if it were anywhere higher in the tree Holy builds would be designed around it, but still. I can't say I care all that much though, a stam -> spellpower conversion was certainly on my wishlist.

I've noticed a lot of classes complaining about too many vital-looking talents to choose from, and I certainly agree that some talents should be lesser in number. I'd like to think that beta testing will address this and tighten up the trees a little bit, but I really only want about five more points. That won't get me every talent I want, but my current 49/12 doesn't either.

I would even suggest un-linking Seals and Judgements entirely. They're about 90% of the way there already.

Don't require an active Seal; use a GCD; J* adds the correct debuff and and does some damage. The Seal loses the unleashed component, and becomes just a buff that lasts for 30s.

Right now, the only link between the active Seal and the Judgment is the amount of damage that is done when you hit a J*. (At least that's what we think.) Blizz could just make a J* do X amount of damage, scale with AP and/or SP.

I am not sure if is clear to people, here is how Seals work:

After you judge of X, you don't have to re-cast the Seal, so the Seal stays up the full 30 seconds, a nice mana cost reduction.