Here is my question for RET

given the new skills / aura / talents -

Is there a justifiable reason why you would have more than 1 Ret paladin in a raid in WoTLK - like Hunters / Locks / Mages / rogues?

2 3% crit judgements, 2 people granting 60% of their damage to 3 people's mana pool on judgements.

but no not really.

Depends on how much damage Ret can put on in relation to other classes. We are a limited mana/health battery now, but nothing on the scale of shadow priests.

I am guessing probly not, as our DPS will be lower than a pure DPS class ceteris paribus. I assume the auras wont stack as the dont right now, and I also assume that imp judgments will stack crit.

Judgements playing a much larger part is also a double edged sword as holydins will have more encouragement to keep judging as often as then want. So a raid wont necessarily need a retadin to keep judgments on a boss.

I am thinking that one will still be the norm.

For those who are concerned about Divine Guardian, don't be.

Try looking at the wording again: When Divine Shield is active, 15/30% of all damage taken by raid or party members within 30 yards is redirected to the Paladin.

It doesn't say 30% of all will be done to the pally, just that the damage is shifting who it targets (or at least a portion of it.) The pally's bubble will absorb all that damage...at least, so long as Blizz doesn't change things.

So for fights like Naj'entus, where the entire raid is taking a tremendous blow all at once, what this will give raids is a bit of breathing room. The flip side of that is Blizz can expect all 25mans to have at least one pally, so there might actually be fights tuned to the point that if a pally does NOT blow DG at some point, the raid wipes...or at best is surviving by the skin of their teeth. It'll be interesting to see what Blizz does with this in level designing.

Edit: beaten to the punch. Ah well.

So you are saying that Heart of the Crusader Stacks? 2 crusader judgements is now 6% crit?

Quick thoughts....

Sheath of Light.... This really needs to be lower in the tree. Swap it with Crusade or (better) PoJ.

Beacon of Light... Does this effect stack like Lifebloom? There's no CD....or would a Raid Pally toss this out on a few folks over the whole Raid?

I actually like Beacon of Light more than some folks...I was just hoping for a Pally version of Heroism. Something that would increase AP and Spell Power substantially with a 10 min. CD

...and I know it's real early but comparing Holy Pally talents to Resto Shammies I can't see why (given the choice) a Raid leader wouldn't take a Resto Shammy over a Holy Pally still at this point. Especially with the change to Salvation.

What changes were made to our Hals to offset the loss of Blessing of Light?

I was also hoping for a new Seal that Healing Pallies could use. Especially with the new Judgement talents we will have.

Looks like there's a seal I don't think anyone mentioned yet:

Seal of the Martyr - Spell - World of Warcraft
Seal of the Martyr
Races- Human, Dwarf, Draenei

Seal of Corruption - Spell - World of Warcraft
Seal of Corruption
Races- Blood Elf


The old switcheroo?!

I was thinking for the Sheath of Light build that it would be good to put 5 points into Divine Strength to get the AP increase which in turn would boost my Spell Power.

The changes made to Holy Shock and Beacon of Light alone are enough to give Paladins more viability when raid damage > tank damage. With us getting a free Holy Light every time a Holy Shock Crits, and with a targeted AE HoT, it'll help us be able to also focus more on the melee side instead of just tanks specifically. If we get the changes that were just put out today, and don't see a huge nerf within the first few content patches in Wrath, Paladins in general just opened up a whole new can of whoop ass.

Knowing Paladins and their history in WoW, half of this stuff MIGHT make it through, the stuff that does make it through will get nerf'ed because of QQ from PvP and other classes. We'll see...

I wonder how a high threat AOE Tanking Build, ala 0/48/23 would work when combined with warrior/pvp gear with lots of stamina and AP using those new 'light' talents:

Combining:

Sheath of Light (23 pts RET)
Rank 3
Increases your spell power by an amount equal to 30% of your attack power and your critical healing spells heal the target for 60% of the healed amount over 12 seconds.

+

Touched by the Light (Deep PROT)
Rank 3
Increases your spell power by an amount equal to 30% of your Stamina and increases the amount healed by your critical heals by 30%.

+

Guarded by the Light (Deep PROT)
Rank 2
Whenever you parry or dodge an attack you have a 20% chance to reduce the mana cost of your next Consecration, Holy Wrath or Avenger's Shield spell by 50%.

Sort of like this:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...15002152312020

I'm kinda concerned how you would remain uncrittable in AP/STA gear though, and have been trouble deciding where to sacrifice those 3 points for max Sheath of Light, but still need to think a lot on the fillers I used, but you gusy get the idea.

But AOE farming with this build would be insane, theoretically.

I see this as more a Holy Pally talent TBH. For the Holy Pally going for Beacon of Light and Kings.

A Build iike this -

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Do you think that means we will have a permanent BoLight effect on our Heals or is it the combined effect of the new talents?

I'm really unsure how to value our new skills and talents. A holy build with sheath of light just looks strange for me and I would prefer a more conservative holy build, something like:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...00000000000000

Maybe leave out the protection talents and get conviction and a few remaining holy talents. But the thing that concerns me the most is the complete lack of any new mechanic of manaregen for holypaladins. In sunwell I'm often jealous of our priests and druids and their near endless mana. If there wouldn't be so much raid damage and thus mana regain through spiritual attunment I'm sure paladins would not be able to keep up with them healingwise. I have hoped they would buff illumination to maybe something like 75% or so or would give us a talent which regenerates mana equal to x % of our Intellect every 5 seconds. But without these changes I fear we will be starved for mana.

I can't see this used in pve at all. Holy Shock uses a GCD and isn't very mana efficient. IF it crits, Holy Light will still take 1-1.5 seconds for the GCD (depending on Haste) so it isn't actually free, just uninteruptable. Perfect for pvp imo.

I agree. It's strange that we went from the Healers with endless mana to the Healers who need Innvervate the most.
I still have hope that Illumination will return to 100% before the Beta is done.

Look at the new mined Holy Shock versus the new Holy Light. That's right, HS is more efficient. Not only that but it has full range, full crit and +heal talents (Healing Light and Sanctified Light apply to it) and it can be used while in motion. Holy Shock could very well be a very important ability for holy paladins.

And you're forgetting a very big difference.

Holy Light still "takes" 1.5 seconds if it is instant, but the heal is frontloaded, making it much more powerful for emergency reactive healing in both PvE and PvP.

As for holy builds, I'm still guessing something akin to 51/20/0 will still be the norm. Gaining some crit and a marginal HoT from Sheathbot spec isn't worth losing the activated AoE HoT, haste and utility and survivability offered from the extra prot talents.

Well, going by the patch notes themselves, the effect moved into the abilities, not 'elsewhere'. This would imply the former, mkultra.

Except all of the gear (which has been seen so far) that has Spellpower on it has 0 strength. 15% of baseline isn't much, and 30% of that 15% is even less.

If you have like 200 strength, baseline, then you'd only be getting an additional 30 strength from Divine Strength, which gives 60 AP (66 with kings, whatever). That in turn is 20 Spellpower.

It may actually be worthwhile, but... it depends on how much spellpower is readily available at 80 gear. If you have 2k spellpower (which I've heard someone guesstimate), then that's 1% more spellpower for 5 talent points.

We have no clue about the coefficients, though, and I will bet big money that Holy Shock doesn't have that great of a coefficient, compared to Holy Light.

Hopefully it'll be buffed enough though that it'll hold over our target long enough while we're moving, for us to pop off a Holy Light when we stop.

...Actually, Divine Favor + Holy Shock -> Holy Light, all while moving, is very possible, and sounds very fun.

The activated AoE is awesome. Looks pricy mana-wise, but awesome. Haste is also a definite draw. Utility? Judging from 30 yards, I can see, but what other types of utility are you talking about?

With the Sheathebot spec, you get 5% more crit, free 15% movespeed, and a HoT that kinda seems like Ignite to me. And Ignite ain't bad.

Both sides have their ups and downs, is what I'm trying to say.

Edit: Grammar good.

But a sheathbot build gets you the extra raid dps from Sanctified Retribution and Heart of the Crusader. You're going to want both really, so the optimal build depends on whether you have a prot paladin and no ret paladin, or a ret and no prot, or neither, or both. If your only pallies are two healers, you want one with Kings and one Sheathbot.

I'm impressed that there seems to be a lot of room for variation in "optimal" builds depending on what else you have in your raid.

EDIT: Dammit, sorry about the sequential posts. My fault.

If you're going for a deep-holy + sheath build then you'll be wearing standard holy gear (int/stam/spellpower/crit/mp5) and Divine Strength won't count for squat. The str->spellpower conversion in the sheath talent is meant to give some healing power to full-ret builds without forcing them to skimp on physical dps stats.

Yeah good point. After reviewing I'm thinking a more traditional Holy/Prot Build is still going to be better for raiding. The HoT is great as well as our Divine Swiftness ;-). Plus I'm pretty excited about Divine Guardian TBH. I'm thinking for times when there's crazy Raid wide Damage I can pop my Wings and throw some Beacon's around then DS to absorb 30% more of the Raid damage.

I'm leaning this way now....

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft