The problem with taking Sheath for Holy lies in Sheath's drawbacks. Primarily in that it doesn't stack/roll and that it ticks per 3 seconds (making it worthless for holy light spam). Finally, that it only counts effective healing and not overheals when calculating the HoT. Most of your crits (especially Holy Light crits) will most likely be overhealing. The talent works wonders for a retri spec, but it's a lot less good for holyspec raidhealing.

As to other pieces of raid utility, there's Judgements of the Wise. It's not much I'll grant you, but extra mana regen is extra mana regen.

(on a completely separate note.. /wave to a fellow Scarab Lord)

Having the prot paladin take kings and no other pallies taking it seems like it could be problematic. A prot paladin pretty much has to use sanc on themselves but if they use sanc on themselves they can't give themselves kings.

I have another issue with the haste from swift retribution, when we were discussing it in the druid forum.

Consider these patch notes taken from the beta:
As implemented now (in BC) - the haste coming from non-personal sources will not stack with other non-personal haste buff.

Quoting from World of Warcraft Client Patch 2.4.0 (2008-03-25) patch notes:
Since any shaman (resto, enh or ele) can cast Wrath of Air for 10% spell haste raid wide (30 yds talented), swift retribution would be useless to spellcasters as it wouldn't stack with it. That's more than 70% of the raid when you include the healers and ranged spell chuckers... Melee gets 20% haste from new Windfury totem, also covering the paltry 3% haste from pally aura.

I certainly hope the haste does stack, like it did in early BC days, before they implemented that nonsensical rule.

Sanctuary is not a good blessing. Notice the references in this thread to the fact that it hasn't been fixed or removed? Not that I (or others) won't use it, but if I have to choose between Kings and Sanc, I know which one I'm taking.

That said, changing Kings to a trainable ability would be great. If they can do it with Shield Slam, no reason they can't do it with Kings.

Judging by the amount of "increase haste by x%" abilities they're giving to most classes I would assume they're going to have some way to work it all out. If not they will have a good amount of angry plays on their hands.

sorry I edited my previous post to include the relevant quotes - didn't expect 2 replies so fast

The holy pally doesn't have Judgements of the Wise and Divine Storm. Both of which should add a bit of extra utility.
If we assume I judge for 1k (which is a fairly low amount even at 70), I restore 600 mana in total every 8 seconds. That'll be a lot more with the new scaling judgements and a -lot- more at 80 and fully raidbuffed.

There will also be a lot of other angry classes: Heroism will boost one group 10% (melee haste) or 20% (spell haste); Power infusion will be gimped; Ret pallies get 3 extra talent points; Etc.

I think you people are all looking at it the wrong way.

You're looking at ret pallys through a TBC mindset. In TBC a ret pallys primary focus was bringing hot raid utility action. Look at almost every new talent ret has. Everything is increasing personal DPS. The devs have drastically shifted how they want ret pallys to obtain their raid spot. The raid utility is there, it just isn't as pronounced as before in balance terms. The personal DPS though is getting a huge boost. So you can't take TBC balance and apply it here. Right now (TBC) we're brought to a raid assuming 60% of a rogue DPS and utility makes up the rest. I'm guessing in wrath they want us getting invites based on 80% of the DPS and utility covering the rest.

I've read a lot of comments about Enlightened Judgements and Judgements of the Pure being wastes of points because a Ret Paladin will be keeping up JoW/JoL. I say, how many Paladins do you take in a 10-man?

Small scale content is going to be a significant part of WOTLK's content, and is the impetus behind giving everyone all these shiny new tools: Moonkin and Shadow Priest AOE, Paladin AOE heals, Warrior AOE tanking, Paladin single-target tanking, etc. etc. etc.

You can't always guarantee that a Ret Paladin will be in your 10 man Naxx raid group to maintain your Judgements, which keeps both Crusader Strike AND the deep Holy Judgement talents relevant.

On the other hand, I've also read comments about Enlightened Judgements and Judgements of the Pure making Ret Paladins redundant because the Holy Paladins will keep them up. I say, how many Holy Paladins do you take in a 25 man?

Also, without getting a fix on the kind of damage output and mana expenditures we'll see in WOTLK, it's far too early to say you wouldn't want a Ret Paladin mixing it up in there, dropping 10k Judgements and returning 6,000 mana to the raid every which way.

Okay, I appreciate the response. I'm going to let this drop for now because I think everyone involved is tired of it (mostly due to me ceaselessly harping on it, so my apologies for that.) We've all stated our positions, and anyone interested in the arguments can get them well enough from previous posts.

And for what it's worth, two years ago I was firmly convinced that Divine Illumination was terrible as well.

EDIT: I actually had an idea for improving Beacon, but I think I'll sit on it for at least a day or two to let everyone get over their fatigue on the topic.

Not to mention how good the players in question are.

Right now on live it's pretty easy to raid without Crusader Strike for the most part if you have a holy or prot paladin specced into Imp Crusader. (I've been doing this since our Ret paladin left the game.) Even on Brutallus, we have a holy paladin who has no trouble keeping JoW up 95% of the time, only losing it occasionally when it expires during a stomp. What a ret paladin brings is:

• Extra convenience for other paladins
• Another set of blessings
• His own personal dps, his skill at using his other utilities, etc.

The first two by themselves aren't enough to cut it. What makes a Ret paladin worthwhile or not is the dps he personally brings. A good one won't have the same dps as a pure dps class, but he'll bring enough that the extra judgement convenience and the extra blessing make him worthwhile. A bad one will gimp your raid dps so much that he's not worth bringing just for CS and a blessing. Skill matters; as a ret paladin you have to earn your slot. And frankly, that's the way it should be.

The only time I've ever noticed whether I had Sanct up or not in BC was when I was farming the Dual-wielding blood elves on top of the Black Temple. It's pretty nice for that kind of AoE farming. In raids, I've never missed Sanct. I put it up when we have 4+ paladins just on the theory that it's better than an empty blessing slot, but I've never noticed the slightest difference when it's gone.

Now if they ever actually improved Sanct to the point where it was useful, then we'd have the annoying issue you describe of having both talented blessings in the same tree. So I guess the answer is that if that actually becomes a problem, then it means we're making progress.

I think judgements are going to be very strong in WotLK. Granted, there are probably some bugs in it now (the highest JoCo-ing Screenshot I've seen was 21K). With Art of War and the AP -> SD conversion we are seeing, I wouldn't be surprised if the average offensive Judgement was 3000 by the time lvl 80 rolls around. Putting that in mp5 context, we're talking 1125 mp5. I assume the way the Talent is worded, that 1125 is divided amoungst the three raid/group members, otherwise it'd be 5400 mana being returned every 8 seconds which quite honestly would be ridiculous.

Judgement of the Wise alone is enough reason for a Ret Pally to be in a raid, why people must take a negative spin on what has largely been an incredibly positive update is beyond me.

1h sword spec is pure 5% threat/damage and I can't see myself giving up on that easily. Guarded by the light, you are right, should be put in the same category as Redoubt/BoSanct - situational/aoe.

I mentioned before in that post that Deflection is vitally important for us (and, by lesser extent, Imp. Judgements too); what I tried to show with my tree is not a tanking build, but the volume of 'bloat' in primary tree as defined by amount of must-have talents. From what I saw, druids experience that to the same extent, warriors are roughly fine, and DKs - well, they are not finalized yet.

I don't want to see one build written in stone, but choosing between vitally important talent and other vitally important talent should not be forced on a tanking class competing for MT position. Choosing between small perks, like 2 points in Spell Warding and 2 points in Improved Seal of Crusader, on the other hand, is an example of 'good' type of choice.

EDIT:
On the topic of 1h weapon spec: I've seen some people proposing switching to 2h with Blood and judjing Vengeance on prepared stack to keep on threat while being 2nd tank - do you think that loss of 1h spec bonus might make this a bad idea?

Actually, you are right, it seems like they are. I'm not exactly OK with that, probably that's why I was surprised by no dps utility in the tree.

Is ardent defender considered a "must have" from a tanking perspective? If you are able to not take ardent defender or put less points there it makes things a little more manageable.

I couldn't find it anywhere in here, but it says Lay on of Hands doesn't drain all your mana in Wotlk, if that's the case, how much mana does it cost?

Currently wowhead still has it as draining all your mana. I'm pretty sure they'll probably just make it free, along the lines of a targettable Desperate Prayer.

As for sanctuary, there are no new ranks listed from 70-80, so I'm betting it'll be replaced. My personal hope is that they're replacing it for some kind of incoming magic damage -> mana ability, as other than bloat, that's really the only thing the tree is missing.

Incoming magic damage is converted to mana via Spiritual Attunement just as well as incoming physical one. What it does not converts into is threat, and adding 'long-distance retribution' utility could be nice. On the other hand, tanking magic is positioned as DK niche, so it does not seem right. I would welcome any useful thing replacing BoSanct though.

It's free. It even gives you extra mana if you cast on yourself. The tooltip has not changed, however.

I did some testing on Judgments. First of all, Seal of Justice and Judgment of Justice don't seem to be working right, so I'm going to ignore them. (Random holy damage, improper debuffs.) I was running around in Ret gear (0 SP, ~1700 AP) with zero talent points.

Judgements require an active Seal, have a cost (~140 at 70, I think), do not invoke a GCD, do not consume the active Seal, and do not refresh the active Seal.

If the active Seal is a damage seal Righteousness/Vengeance/Martyr, Judgement of Light has 2 effects. It places a Judgement of Light debuff on the mob and hits the target with a Judgment of Righteousness/Vengeance/Martyr. Judgement of Wisdom places a Judgement of Wisdom debuff and hits the target with JoR/V/M.

If the active Seal is Light or Wisdom, Judgement of Light only has 1 effect, placing the Light debuff on the mob. Judgement of Wisdom places the Wisdom debuff on the mob.

There are no other effects. Healing/mana gains are from procs off the Light/Wisdom debuffs.

Other notes on Judgments:
- Judgement of Light seems to be healing for quite a lot. I was being healed for ~300 health per proc in pure Ret gear.
- Seal of Righteousness scales with 10% of AP for 1H (not sure where the intercept is, though). I was wearing the SSO Aldor neck, and when it procced for 200 AP, SoR damage would jump by 20 points.
- Judgement of Righteousness appears to crit for 2x damage.
- AP does not appear to affect Seal of Vengeance. I could be wrong though, it's hard to match stacks with DoT ticks
- Seal of Vengeance is a 100% chance to apply on hit.
- Judgement of Vengeance may crit for 2x damage. I got a 2.2K JoV crit (5-stack) in pure Ret gear, and that seemed rather high to me.

- I can also confirm that your Block Value increases by 1 for every 2 Strength. (Intercept is not at zero, though. 646 Str = 313 Block Value)

Well, though magic tanking might be a DK specialty, but there should still be some kind of overlap. We are, after all, the only tanking class with no spell interrupt(and for that matter, now the only tanking class without a fear break ability.) I only suggested it as wishful thinking, but it would help a bit as a method of active mana regen, which is another one of the still unaddressed issues.

Thanks for your research. Interesting that SoV isn't scaling with AP, but SoR is. I'm not sure what to make of that. Is there anyway you could test consecrate for interaction with AP?

Also, I've heard rumors that JoL/JoW are now based on AP and SP. Sounds like the neck proc might be a good way to get some additional numbers on that.