Paladins and 1.9

[savaughn]

Pally thoughts on the changes?  Note, I've only ever seen one person use Repentance.  Nice little spell sometimes, I guess.
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Honestly?

I love them.

Lets talk about why. Repentance in and of itself isn't brilliant. A 6 second incapacitate gives you enough time to throw another heal on yourself under 1.8 and gives the pally another "life". Also cuts down on running that kind of thing.

Under 1.9 it's an entirely differnet story. Look at the whole retribution tree now. The 11 point talent (Seal of Command) is enhanced by the 21 point talent (sanctity aura) and triggered by the 31 point talent (Repentance). That's right - you can get the high bonus damage on SoC judgement from Repentance.

What does this mean?

A paladin with engineering (should be all of them) can now pull off the following combo:

- SoC
- Hammer of Justice
- Judge
- SoC
- Grenade stun
- Judge
- SoC
- Repentance
- Judge
- Hammer of Wrath

It works differently and it's on a significantly longer cool down, but Paladins can get shock level damage now in retrib.

So we have nice synergy for Holy Warriors. Holy Power enhances divine favor and illumination (and stacks with divine intellect) so we have synergy in the Holy tree for Clerics. Lastly, we have redoubt, Sanctuary, and Holy Shield stacking in Protection. This gives a lot more focus to the trees than they've had before.

Now, Holy and Retrib are fine as they are. The problem is that there's no compelling reason for a Pally to wear a shield most of the time. No snap aggro means no effective tanking or off tanking (and note: pallies have lost the snap aggro that judging seal of fury generated so they can't really off tank that well anymore) and the lower DPS means it's not great PvP.

Paladins need a justifiable reason to wear that shield in a raid (I'd say they need a taunt on a long cooldown) and in PvP (imagine something like Eye for an Eye but requiring a shield). Put those two pieces in place and the Paladins are fixed and it's time to talk about Holy Priests and improving Divine Spirit.