Paladins
Firstly Consecrate is no longer in the talent trees. Presumably it will be a base spell
Next it looks like there's some intention for builds with some Retribution to tank. There's a talent to boost healing done to targets with the Sanctity Aura on. Paladin tanking works by doing Holy damage so this boosts both the amount of threat the Paladin generates as well as the healing done to him. If you're using a Warrior to tank Improved Sanctity Aura would be a slightly odd choice since giving him Defiance or a resist aura would probably work better than boosting his heals and the healers' threat by 6%
Benediction and Improved judgment with the new talents of Empowered Judgement and Fanaticism seem to pave the way for a very nasty judgement spamming build, a bit more like a shock using shaman than usually seen from Paladins now.
For instance this
can be talented to be spammable every 8 seconds with -15% mana cost, +15% crit chance, 10% bonus damage from aura and 3% bonus damage from Crusade. That's in addition to Seal of Blood's normal effect (+30% weapon damage). Horde only, this particular kind of nastiness is not for the gentle souls of the Alliance
I'm expecting a lot of concern about Seal of Blood. The trade-off of considerably more damage for slightly less survivability is a good one for paladins since survivability is so high anyway. In PvP Blood Elf paladins are going to be nastier than their Alliance counterparts, in PvE other Horde classes may become frustrated with all the dps-adins who refuse to heal
In the Protection tree the changes seem oddly PvP-friendly rather than PvE friendly. You have a ranged daze at the top of the tree now - absolutely uber for anti-kiting on players but not really much use in PvE. Also you can slaughter people while bubbled, always good for a laugh. The tooltip should say this talent has a 1/2% chance per use of causing forum drama
In the Holy tree new talents help the raid paladin in the healbot role. Light's Grace is very much designed for a Paladin who is chain casting low rank heals, there's a +damage and healing one and two -mana cost ones. Changes are useful but not terribly exciting. Additionally there's the rather pointless Blessed Life which is a damage reduction talent deep in a tree which isn't otherwise tank or soloing friendly. Mind you small percentage increments to efficiency are probably the best new additions for raid healers, we don't really benefit so much from spectacular or single-use talents. (Give me +1% healing over Lightwell any day, although that's an argument for another day)
Firstly Consecrate is no longer in the talent trees. Presumably it will be a base spell
Next it looks like there's some intention for builds with some Retribution to tank. There's a talent to boost healing done to targets with the Sanctity Aura on. Paladin tanking works by doing Holy damage so this boosts both the amount of threat the Paladin generates as well as the healing done to him. If you're using a Warrior to tank Improved Sanctity Aura would be a slightly odd choice since giving him Defiance or a resist aura would probably work better than boosting his heals and the healers' threat by 6%
Benediction and Improved judgment with the new talents of Empowered Judgement and Fanaticism seem to pave the way for a very nasty judgement spamming build, a bit more like a shock using shaman than usually seen from Paladins now.
For instance this
Quote:Unleashing this Seal's energy will judge an enemy, instantly causing 445 to 488 Holy damage at the cost of 148 to 163 health.
can be talented to be spammable every 8 seconds with -15% mana cost, +15% crit chance, 10% bonus damage from aura and 3% bonus damage from Crusade. That's in addition to Seal of Blood's normal effect (+30% weapon damage). Horde only, this particular kind of nastiness is not for the gentle souls of the Alliance
I'm expecting a lot of concern about Seal of Blood. The trade-off of considerably more damage for slightly less survivability is a good one for paladins since survivability is so high anyway. In PvP Blood Elf paladins are going to be nastier than their Alliance counterparts, in PvE other Horde classes may become frustrated with all the dps-adins who refuse to heal
In the Protection tree the changes seem oddly PvP-friendly rather than PvE friendly. You have a ranged daze at the top of the tree now - absolutely uber for anti-kiting on players but not really much use in PvE. Also you can slaughter people while bubbled, always good for a laugh. The tooltip should say this talent has a 1/2% chance per use of causing forum drama
In the Holy tree new talents help the raid paladin in the healbot role. Light's Grace is very much designed for a Paladin who is chain casting low rank heals, there's a +damage and healing one and two -mana cost ones. Changes are useful but not terribly exciting. Additionally there's the rather pointless Blessed Life which is a damage reduction talent deep in a tree which isn't otherwise tank or soloing friendly. Mind you small percentage increments to efficiency are probably the best new additions for raid healers, we don't really benefit so much from spectacular or single-use talents. (Give me +1% healing over Lightwell any day, although that's an argument for another day)