World of Warcraft Patch 2.4

[Mordekhuul]

TD and other pallies:

Righteous Defense now works by default very similarly to how the standard Paladin RD macros worked. If you are targetting a non-harmful target, it will be cast and taunt off of that target (including NPC's). If you are targetting a harmful target, it will be cast on the target of that target (assuming the enemy is targetting a non-harmful target).

Note I am specific to say "non-harmful" there instead of "friendly" or "help".

This is because what the spell will NOT do, by default, is if you are targetting a hostile creature, and the creature is targetting an NPC you are trying to save, it will not taunt the hostiles off of the NPC.

You can get around this with an updated version of the old RD macro though, according to a post in the EJ prot pally thread:

#showtooltip Righteous Defense
/cast [noharm][target=targettarget,noharm]Righteous Defense

That macro should do everything you'd want, whether the target is targetting an NPC or a friendly player, or not.

Edit: To explain further the problem with the non-macro'd RD post-2.4, NPC's dont seem to be considered "harm" or "help" by macros, and most old RD macros used [help].