Yes, but take into account the benefits of improved devotion aura (that might be usefull if no prot pal, or in 5 / 10 men), Divine Guardian, BoK... 5% spell crit sure is nice for holy paladins, but I'm not really sure if it will be worth the trade off if you're not certain to have a prot pally able to provide thoses benefits.
But the mixing of spell and melee hit / haste / crit surely leaves some space for nice hybrids builds that may prove themselves efficient.

We need some figures to sort it out, but I feel it might be the way to go for paladins in the expansion. Even though there are nice things in the holy tree, I think paladin's main role will move towards tank / dps + support and occasionnal heal. Remember blizzard guys talking about balancing the content for only 5-6 healers in WoTLK ? When I see other classes talents, I feel the one class that has more to gain and less to loose to switch role may be ours.

Disagree with Altirias. With HS changes, insta HL and virtually 10% spell haste added via talents paladins will be the most powefull single target reactive healers. If now druids and shamans save NS for oh-shit moments each 3 min, paladins will have it up each 0.5min or so.

Only thing I could agree - there are extremely interesting 'support' builds, up to the point when supporter *could* be more viable in raid than 'pure' DPS/healing/tanking class.

Probably, there will be even a new role of buffer/debuffer in raids, taken by paladins. And no, it won't be simple reblessing like in MC times. It would be quite complex job of applying buffs and debuffs on mobs and raid members, throwing big insta heals or dealing some damage/OT on the way.

Looking at the new talents, especially Ret, puts me in mind of my early days as a paladin in 5-mans way back in the first 3-4 months of the game, playing the role of group-utility and problem-fixer. They aren't exactly reversing the specialization of roles that TBC brought, but they're definitely trying to bring all specs back to the "center" a bit.

EDIT: Oh, snap: Hammer of the Righteous can be used with a two-hander!

Actually, I'm pretty sure (and quite excited) that looking at how WotLK is shaping up, we'll finally be able to call Paladins a complete class with this next expansion.

I am amazed that I want to put 66 points into Ret. There really are a lot of great changes, and I feel like our potential dps is definitely getting a boost as well as our utility. Divine Storm looks flipping amazing.

So I was looking at Spirit Link (the resto shaman tree capper) and it has an interesting little addendum that might apply to HoSac as well.

If any target takes a blow greater than 30% of their health, or shared damage would reduce a target's health below 20%, the link is broken.

It would easily prevent the "instagib" problem of throwing HoSac on a tank during a big damage burst. Maybe.

I will tell you what I will be doing: Tanking!

Let the warrior OT keep his protective gaze on me for 5% more dodge

With the AP->SP conversion it looks like SoCom will once again be the premier DPS seal for both Horde and Alliance. Although, the higher damage on JoB would make us more useful as a mana battery so its yet to be seen.

I'm interested to see how viable Seal Weaving will be with SoV and SoC, or better, yet, just seal rotation. The 18s DoT on the new SoV will make it much easier to keep a full 5 stack of that ticking at all times, and with over 1000 spell damage and the seal's relatively high coefficients it should be a nice steady source of damage on top of Seal of Command.

Thought you guys might like this.

If things stay the way they are ret is in terribly good shape for the expansion. Not only is that Judgement some crazy massive damage but Judgement of the Wise does seem to be restoring his mana.

Really nice changes overall, but i am wondering if mana efficiency is going a bit in the wrong direction:

Beacon of Light costs 2330 mana, assuming at lvl 80 we will have around 15k buffed mana

About Hand of Salvation, either justifies even more shamans spots in raid from tranq totem or us being hand-bots i am afraid.

All in all paladin desirability in raids will rename the same i believe with 2x holy paladins 1x retri/prot being the ideal option

It is nice to see that damage, but it should be made clear that this judgement is a rare one as its:-

a) affected by avenging wrath (1.2 modifier) only effects 1 in 6 judgements
a) affected by art of war (2.0 modifier) only effects 1 in 5 judgements
c) affected by Vengeance (1.15 modifier)
d) affected by retribution aura (1.02 modifier)
d) he probably has righteous vengeance as well which would mean the crit is 2.15 modifier

And unbuffed judgement based on this would be 1237 damage.

Assuming aura and vengeance applied to all, and crit rate was 40%, without resists this would work out as an average hit of 2118 or 264dps or 158mp5 from judgement of the wise

This is still pretty nice however considering what judgement of wise replaced gave about 21mp5

Would like to know how much SpDam he had so can work out the new coefficient.

Flyingtoaster. This wouldnt happen to be you would it? lots of things you could check :p