flyingtoastr

Yes, HoW has a cast time, but it also gains scaling through AP>SP as well as a massive 50% additional crit from talents. I'm willing to bet it will be worth the pushback.

Exorcism, Holy Wrath (instant cast now), Consecration, Judgements... It scales almost everything for us.

9% as there are only 3 debuffing Judgements (Crusader is removed), but I doubt it.

Sanctity is removed. They clearly want 1 aura for each tree; Conc for holy, Devo for Prot and Ret for Ret. Look at the talents and you'll understand.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

◊ Cathela

I'd be really surprised if Heart of the Crusader stacked with multiple judgements on a single target.

Speaking as a prot paladin, I really don't want to have my threat vary by 10% just based on the presence or absence of a ret paladin in the raid. That way lies a balance nightmare.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

Highborne

Heh forgot JotC was removed.

Hmm Didn't think about Holy Wrath; though our mana is going to be stupid low in WotLK using DK/Warrior gear...our spells may get mana cost lowered like by half?

1 aura is fine, what if I want to change auras? Like a resist aura.

I still believe it should benefit all auras as that would be more 'hybridish'

 

flyingtoastr

Hm, completely forgot about resist auras.

Make the shamans do it.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Prinsesa

One thing: Based on current itemization, but with the STA to spell damage conversion, how will our threat look like assuming we switch to a "Warrior's" high white DPS tanking weapon?

Since Hammer of Tanking is based on weapon damage, I get the feeling Blizzard just wants to create one line of tanking weapons for all three classes, but I'm on the fence on how it might work out if we lose our primary source of it.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Highborne

Hell ya, considering they get everything rolled into 2 totems or something strange like that


I do wish we had more condensed trees, as of now Druids can spec any 1 spec easily with points in all talents relevant without losing almost anything.
Shamans same thing.
Priest same thing.
Warriors...DPS yes, prot always can use more
Rogues are going to be interesting specs.
Warlocks look solid and easily speccable.
etc


Ours looks like 60+ into Ret, or Holy, or Prot...leaving us little to work with outside of our single tree...

 

Feanor73

I have to say I am not as enthusiastic as some other posters here about Ret tree.

Sure, there are some good things : the consolidation of Sanctity aura in Retribution aura, Swift Retribution which seems a major "Hire me" point for Ret paladins, and generally end of tree talents including Divine Storm.
Repentance duration increased for PVE is useful for small scale content too.
Divine Strength in the protection tree is a good thing too to reach Precision or even BOK without wasting talent points.

However :
- I will wait to see how the whole mechanic of Hands will unfold : I think none of us would like to see the return of bad old MC days as a handbot instead of a blessingbot even if Hand of Sacrifice seems useful for Ret to regenerate some mana.
- Hammer of Wrath seems as useless as ever for PVE DPS.
- The DPS loss of the suppression of Sanctity Aura and toning down of Avenging Wrath (even if this toning down is justified considering its added benefits) will have to be analysed.
- We have not yet a clear picture about Seal of Blood : will it (or some counterpart) at last be usable by Alliance paladins ?
- Still no AP or STR to MP/5 or int conversion : this is the most important factor for solo/ 5 man/ 10 man viability in my view.

 

Aeverius

Well, they're currently panicking about not being needed in raids because of the loss of Tranquil Air totem, so that should work out nicely.

On a more relevant note regarding the possible mana issues- since they're bringing spellpower back to Ret in some form or other, and we know that healing gear is going to have Int and Crit on it, I could certainly see a situation where Ret paladins end up with what otherwise would have been Holy plate. Doesn't do much for Prot (I don't think, but maybe we want Int and Crit now too), but we'll just find a way to take more damage or something.

It's what I do now, so yeah, that was the implication. I have edited in a little wink to perhaps clarify that.

Improved Lay on Hands is really fucking good:

 

Tuesasinus

I'm even more curious after seeing the rest of the talents released why they wanted to put the Str bonus in the first tier of the Prot Tree. My best guess is to the benefit Ret Paladins moving into the tree to get the talents like Precision. I suppose it "could" help out on the 51pt talent as well.

You can put Hand of Sacrifice on the tank/person taking a lot of damage sir.

 

burghy

The only problem being that ret aura's baseline effect for ret is kinda meh compared with devo for prot and conc for holy. I hope they'll revise it.

 

Lamaros

Where is ret getting mana? All this is well and good (and very good) for raiding. But soloing and small group stuff is still needing a boost. Am I missing something? Any word on new spells or abilities?

What?

 

Pazgaz

One good thing is that now you can judge wisdom and still get that +3% crit. Wisdom will alway be up which is very nice...

 

Prinsesa

The Ret thread has always maintained that the way to make HoW useful for Ret was to:
1. Make it not reset the swing timer (simplest approach)
2. Make it do an assload of damage: Losing that swing timer is not a DPS loss if the HoW cast you used it on is powerful enough

Between Sheath of Light providing spell power increases to HoW, plus Sanctified Light (and Conviction and Sanctified Seals) pushing the crit chance to ... 60%+? they seem to have taken option #2.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Aeverius

@Lamaros:

There were some screenshots floating around of plate drops featuring Stam, Int, spellpower, and crit. Normally, I'd think of that as Holy plate, but with all the changes, maybe it's something a Ret paladin will be able to use. Now, I think Int will still be, at best, meh for Ret as a stat, and I don't know what's happening with spellpower yet either. It's just speculation that Ret may have some use for plate that's heavy on crit and mp5, once the changes get sorted out.

Improved Lay on Hands is really fucking good:

 

Zaroua

Hold on to that until you see the coefficients on it. With the AP > SP conversion I could see a raid buffed Ret Paladin hitting 1500 spell power and even at 2-3% coefficient per hit, that's an immense threat buff to Prot Paladins; also a decent threat buff to AoE tanking for non-prots and a bit of single target TPS.

Dogma also claims that God has a sense of humor and at times presents Him as a joker of sorts, thus again lowering Him to human level. While I am certain God has a "sense of humor" since He gave it to us, I find it most difficult to believe He finds humor in sin since He will cast the unforgiven sinner into the lake of fire for eternity. Not very funny at all.

 

Prinsesa

Stop the presses! Stop the presses!

http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?paladin

Just when we were all wondering about mana regen, it looks as if Sanctified Judgement was replaced with:

Judgements of the Wise

Your Judgement spells restore mana to up to 3 group or raid members totaling 20/40/60% of the damage caused

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Mode

You wouldn't want a warrior weapon and we wouldn't want yours either. Warriors want really fast weapons so we can dump rage as fast as possible through heroic strike. Paladins will want a really slow weapon for more damage from seal of righteousness, hammer of tanking, and reckoning. Basically, we steal rogue off-hands, you'll steal rogue main hands.

There's so much spelldamage on caster weapons that I'm not sure it'll be worth giving up for better white damage, seal of righteousness, reckoning, and hammer of tanking. We wont know until someone makes a spreadsheet and has some gear assumptions to work with.

 

burghy

Yeah, the ret aura is good for another spec not for ret. Also I'm not sure the +dmg coefficients are calculated from your spell damage for other persons affected by the aura.

 

Jarlyn

I'm pretty excited about the Prot changes. The loss of defense on Anticipation seems a bit odd, considering how closely paladins flirt with the defense cap, even at high gear levels. Divine Guardian seems interesting in a kind of totally bizarre, unexpected way, and I love everything in deep Prot. I was honestly hoping for a kind of paladin version of Shamanistic Rage (the mana return) tucked away somewhere in deep Prot, but at least they acknowledged that mana is frequently a huge issue for protadins.

 

burghy

Divine Guardian is that talent that will make you feel holy and ret are very bloated when you'll try to spec for pvp :p

 

Stardusty

Is it just me or have they removed precision in that tree?

 

• Chicken

I think this will make the Alliance Ret Pallies amongst us pretty happy: Seal of the Martyr - Spell - World of Warcraft

A direct Seal of Blood clone, this one marked as exclusive to Humans, Dwarves and Draenei.

For the worried Blood Elves, the Seal of Corruption mentioned in the Patch notes is our cloned version of Seal of Vengeance.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

Aeverius

Yeah, that was commented on in the Ret thread as well. No way to tell at this point if that was an oversight or that's actually the case (I lean toward the former, but who the hell knows right now). Given that other classes with +hit talents have seen them modified (in some cases) but not completely removed, I don't think they'd do that to our tree. But again, who knows.

[e] Chicken- thanks for pointing out new skill data on Wowhead, didn't know that was there yet.

Since we weren't sure about this, I'll add that new Hammer and Shield abilities list as 6% of base mana cost: Prot spells

Oh, and- Sacred Shield? Hadn't seen this yet. Looks like a lvl 80 trained spell, but 35 mana? That doesn't seem right at all.

Improved Lay on Hands is really fucking good:

 

trismegistus

I have to say the number one thing that excites me the most is more useful talents in the primary tree for your spec.

With Improved Righteous Fury and Touched by the Light (is this real?) It seems Paladins will no longer have to search out 1H weapons with Spellpower or possibly even use the +Spellpower enchant on the weapon.

My first spec just playing around was 5/66/0. Is anyone else finding more useful skills in the primary tree, or is it just me?

 

Tharia

I don't think that removing preciscion will be a problem, Paladins gain a lot from the new hit attribute working for spells and melee. eg a ret or prot specced who is hit capped for melee (which is fairly easy and which MS and Prot Warriors have to be too without any talent and the same available gear) is only 7 % off from spellcap, which is closer than before.