New Beta Build, New Paladin Talents.

Well, the internetosphere is alive with the sound of new WoW talents being debated (though the 'blogosphere' is still playing catch-up). MMO-Champion yet again has the skinny, and here is a condensed list of Paladin changes.

General
* Judgement is now on the Global Cooldown.
* Seals now have a duration of 2 minutes.
* Forbearance: Now lasts 3 minutes. (don't forget, Avenging Wrath is now not tied to Forbearance)

Retribution

* Vindication: Gives the Paladin's damaging attacks a chance to reduce the target's attributes by 10/20% for 15 seconds (was only melee attacks and 3 Pts for 5/10/15%).
* Pursuit of Justice: Reduces the chance you'll be hit by spells by 1/2% and increases movement and mounted movement speed by 8/15%. This does not stack with other movement speed increasing effects (was 3 Pts for 1/2/3% reduced chance to be hit by spells and 5/10/15% speed increase).
* Eye for an Eye: All criticals against you cause 10/20% of the damage taken to the attacker as well. The damage caused by Eye for an Eye will not exceed 50% of the Paladin's total health (was 15/30% damage return for spell attacks only).
* The Art of War: Reduces all damage taken by 1/2/3% and gives your Hand of Freedom a 33/66/100% chance to remove Stun effects.
* Righteous Vengeance: Increases critical damage bonus of your Judgement and Divine Storm spells by 5/10/15/20/25% (was 3/6/9/12/15% for all damage criticals).
* Divine Storm: Mana cost changed to 20% of base mana up from 12%.


Holy

* New Spell: Divine Plea (5 Minutes cooldown, Channeled) - While channeling this spell, you gain 50% of your total mana over 6 seconds.
* Seals: All seal spells now last 2 minutes. This does not apply to special seals like Seal of Protection or Seal of Sacrifice.
* Holy Shock: Rank 1 mana cost reduced from 335 to 245. Healing increased from 351-379 to 481-519 (Blasts the target with Holy energy, causing 314 to 340 Holy damage to an enemy, or 481 to 519 healing to an ally).
* Enlightened Judgements: Chance to hit added (Increases the range of your Judgement spells by 10/20 yards and increases your chance to hit by 2/4%).
* Beacon of Light: Mana cost reduced from 780 to 675.


Protection

* Reworked: Divine Protection (118 Mana, 5 Minutes cooldown): Reduces all damage taken by 50% for 12 seconds, but increases the time between your attacks by 50%. Once protected, the target cannot be made invulnerable by Divine Shield, Divine Protection or Hand of Protection again for 180 seconds. [-this is a Holy Spell, but it makes more sense to place it in the Prot changes]
* Guardian's Favor: Tooltip corrected (Blessing of Freedom renamed to Hand of Freedom).
* Divine Guardian: This talent now affects Divine Shield and Divine Protection (While Divine Shield or Divine Protection is active 15/30% of all damage taken by party or raid members within 30 yards is redirected to the Paladin.).
* Guarded by the Light: Reduces the mana cost of your Consecration, Holy Wrath and Avenger's Shield spells by 15/30% (was "Whenever you parry or dodge an attack you have a 10/20% chance to reduce the mana cost of your next Consecration, Holy Wrath or Avenger's Shield spell by 25/50%").

Updated talents trees Here.

The extent and scope of these changes is why I tended to not comment on specific talents but rather mechanic changes. Key features are that Retributions' insane burst damage has been reduced through the change to the Art of War talent, many Holy Spell Mana costs have been reduced, Judgement is now on the Global Cooldown and Divine Protection has been significantly reworked. DP is now your Paladin Last Stand, on a 5-minute cooldown, at the cost of a new 3min Forbearance (boohoo) and 50% slower Auto-attack.

There's something I'm forgetting... oh yes... Divine Plea. Apparently this is a trainable spell at lvl71, providing 50% of your total mana over 6 seconds. That's a big boost as far as I'm concerned in PvP and PvE for Holy and Ret, and it also scales favourably with Haste. Yes, it's a channelled spell so at risk of interruption, but there had to be a downside of some form.

I think that all of these changes were somewhat predictable. Whether they survive unchanged into the final release is as always tough to say, but I'd expect a few tweaks over the course of the next few builds. Another look at Blessing of Sanctuary, Benediction and consolidating Prot talents would be a good use of their time IMO.

ADDENDUM:

From your friendly neighbourhood RetPaladins we have the new Divine Storm graphic:

Beta Paladin Changes: An Initial Commentary (2)

(continued from previous)

4a. Hands over Blessings

Utilitarian Blessings (BoP, BoF and BoSacrifice) are being changed to 'Hands', mutually exclusive non-Blessing Buffs, and therefore will not overwrite the longer Blessings such as Kings. I believe that should be greeted with a certain amount of glee, especially from those Paladins who like a bit of PvP. However the elimination of Blessing of Salvation (30% reduced threat) and creation of Hand of Salvation (Threat reduced by 2% every over 10 seconds) has caused some consternation. Quite apart from this nerf to raid-wide threat generation (and hence DPS and Healing) some commentators have expressed concern that Paladins become Hand-bots. At a 2minute cooldown I don't think there is much risk of this, and I have long been of the opinion that Blessing of Salvation was a crutch for Paladin entry to a raid when we should have been justifying our position on our active abilities rather than passive ones. If BoSalv never existed this spell would be a great one at baseline, and even now it remains pretty damn good. I believe that the changes to Aura's and talents make up for the loss of BoSalv from a Paladin raid viability standpoint, and if raids need to be more concerned over threat then so be it.

4b. Healing Changes.

Again, I want to stay away from specifics but it appears that Blizzard are no longer against Paladins having AoE or HoT heals, but you can’t have your cake and eat it too. ‘Sheath of the Light’ is a great talent for Healing Paladins but you have to spec as many as 23pts in Ret to get it (such a 48/23 build has already been dubbed the ‘Sheathbot’). Beacon of the Light is 51pts in Holy, so it’s one or the other. The talents themselves are obviously quite buggy right now and the scaling isn’t fixed, but they are well worth keeping an eye on for the next month of two.

In terms of PvP, Holy gets a big boost with ranged Judgements (gogo Ranged JoJ’s on Druids) and the ‘Infusion of Light’ talent, causing your Holy Shock Criticals to grant grant you an instant Holy Light. Sheathbot in PvP may well be the spec of choice. Put together and it certainly implies that whilst Blizzard want Paladins to remain relatively restricted in healing tools they are open to considering the tools of other healing classes if appropriate.

Gwaendar over at Altitus also has some interesting info on Healing rotations based on current information, and the 6-sec Holy Shock seems to be immensely effective.

5. Offensive AoE

Protection and Retribution Paladins are getting Offensive AoE. Hammer of Righteousness at 51pts Prot threat generator of the order of Swipe, hitting up-to 3 targets for weapon damage as Holy. This may also be a very interesting PvP effect for Prot Paladins. Retribution gets Divine Storm, a Whirlwind-style AoE hitting up-to 4 targets, and healing 2 party or raid members for a total of 20% of the damage caused, as Holy Damage. To go with this Consecration will also scale much better for both Prot and Ret, so whilst we won’t exactly be Kings of AoE we certainly won’t be dead weight offensively in such encounters.

6. A New Stat Focus?

When the changes to Warriors ‘Shield Block’ were announced many people where saying that it was the end of the Shield Block Value Stat. However there is a new resurgence towards this stat for Paladins.

The ‘Touched by the Light’ Talent increases your Spell Damage by 10% of your Stamina (Prot talents, now with added synergy), so it’s possible that Spell Damage on gear will become significantly less important. However both Holy Shield damage mitigation and the new Shield of Righteousness’ Damage scales with SBV. It seems more than likely that SBV will be, if not a premium stat, at least not the relative waste it is currently for Prot. Also look out for better scaling of SBV with Strength, further improving our scaling with ‘warrior’ tanking gear.

Well worth noting: according to both Rohan at BoK and Galo at Ardent Defender SBV is scaling at a rate of 2 Str = 1 SBV. Needless to say, this would amount to a boat-load of mitigation and threat from all from previously 'Warrior' Gear.

7. Honourable Mentions

Raid-wide Aura’s – Great change IMO, though with it Aura Mastery becomes something of a premium talent. Ideally I’d like to see a 40yrd range for Aura’s be made baseline. I also love each of the secondary effects of the auras, though it’d be nice if Concentration Aura’s were slightly better. They are competitive with both the Shaman Totems and DK Presences now, though pale somewhat compared to the Druid form aura’s (whilst being less limiting).
Talent Imagery - Okay, so it’s a minor point, but I like the look of the new talent icons. Check out the official talent caculators for them.
Prot Talents are still bloated – consolidation would be very nice, especially with some of the earlier talents.
Hammer of Wrath – no longer resetting the swing timer? Proper scaling for Ret? Usable under 35%? Unified Hit Rating? .5sec Cast Time? All total sex for a previously lacklustre skill… I know Dazanna will be pleased.
Divine Guardian - Why Blizzard, Why?.

I think that’s all for now. And bloody hell that’s long. I’ll add some links to the bottom of this post for further reading, but till then:

Blizzard, if you are reading this, please send me a beta invite. EU Account, so I wouldn't even be muddying up your pristine US Servers ;).

EDIT: Where to get your Beta Information:

Blessing of Kings. - Rohan's got a Beta invite.
Banana Shoulders. - So has Siha
Standing in the Back. - Valyre's got one too.
Elitist Jerks Forum. - Lots of people on here with the Beta, or de-constructing the Patch files.
WoW Insider. - And of course i'd be remiss if I didn't mention WoW Insider who are doing a great job collating a load of the more general Wrath information.

If you know of anywhere else to look let me know.