New Talent Trees

-EDIT- Ignore this post as it has been said that most of it is no longer valid.


The new 31 point trees are up and there is some very good new, some good news and some average news.
This is going to be a long post so hold with me, I'll try to make it as stream lined as possible.

--PROTECTION--
-Tier One-
Toughness-3/3-Increases armor from items by 10%.
Seals of the Pure-3/3-Increases damage of seals and judgements by 15%.
Improved Hammer of Justice-2/2-Decreases the CD of HoJ by 20sec.

So far nothing new but its nice to have SotP in the Prot tree now.

-Tier Two-
Judgements of the Just-2/2-Increases Seal of Justice effect by 1sec and your Judgements reduce melee attack speed by 20%.
Sanctuary-3/3-Reduced damage taken by 3% and when you block, parry or dodge a melee attack you gain 3% of max mana.
Guardian's Favor-2/2-Reduces the CD on HoP by 2min and increases HoF by 4sec
Sacred Oath-3/3-Increases damage while using one handed weapons by 10% and amount absorbed by Sacred Shield by 30%.

Some very nice merging of talents in this tier and the passive Sanctuary so high in the tree removes the issue of lacking mana in our tier bonus as mentioned before.

-Tier Three-
Spiritual Attunement-2/2-10% of heals received from friendly targets returned as mana
Divine Sacrifice-1/1-Instant cast-2min CD-30% of all damage taken by party members withing 30yrds is redirected to the Paladin. Damage which takes you below 20% health will break the effect. Lasts 10 sec.
Improved Exorcism-2/2-Reduces the cast time of Exorcism by 1.5 sec and increases damage by 20%.
Improved Devotion Aura-3/3-Increases armor bonus of Devo Aura by 50% and increases amount healed on all target effected by 6%.

Now we hit the big changes, most importantly the killing of "Raid Wall" and more importantly Exorcism will now replace Holy Shock in our single target rotation countering that note from the Holy tier bonus's.

-Tier Four-
Hallowed Ground-2/2-Increases the Duration of Consecration by 30sec and its damage by 20%.
Vindication-2/2-Your damaging attacks reduce physical damage done by the target by 10% for 10 sec.
Shield of the Templar-2/2-Your Avengers Shield has a 100% chance to silence your targets for 3sec.

The Hallowed Ground talent is an interesting one, with their new stand on AoE tanking it leads me to believe the untalented spell will be very weak. On top of that the greatly increased duration means it would possibly make it in as a filler spell for our single target rotation or a great flag defence in BG's

-Tier Five-
Ardent Defender-1/1-Instance cast-2min CD- Activate to reduce damage taken by 20%. While active attacks that would otherwise kill you cause you to be healed for 15% of you max health. Only usable when your health is below 35%.
Divine Guardian-2/2-Reduce the CD of you Divine Sacrifice and Divine Plea abilities by 60sec.
Holy Shield-3/3-Reduces the chance you'll be critically hit by melee attacks by 6% and deal holy damage for each blocked attack.

Here is the big talking point for our trees, while many other classes hated AD as it stands this if a big nerf. Not only is it now a CD but its only usable while you are under 35% health. I realise health pools are increasing but having to wait till 35% to use and "Oh S**t" ability seems rather risky to me.
Divine Guardian is very nice not only does it make DS more usable but the reduction on DP's CD will help for leveling and running Heroics so we no longer have to chain pull.

-Tier Six-
Sacred Duty-3/3-Increases stamina by 15% and reduces the CD of Divine Shield and Divine Protection by 3min
Improved Crusader Strike-2/2-Reduces the CD of Crusader Strike by 4sec and increases its damage by 100%

Its nice to have all our Stam bonus in one talent finally and the reduced CD on DShield and DProt are handy but still no word on how they interact with each other via Forbearance.
Improved CS is interesting as it makes the spell completely spammable and giving us a very full spell rotation. The increased damage will simply be to compensate for the lack of damage on single target weapons

-Tier Seven-
Hammer of the Righteous-1/1-Instant cast-Melee weapon hammer the current target and up to two nearby targets for 3x DPS as holy damage.

This was an obvious one however do note that while the damage done is reduced by 1x the CD has been completely removed making it our AoE spam attack similar how to CS will be for single targets.


--RETRIBUTION--

-Tier One-
Improved Judgements-2/2-Decreases the CD on your Judgements by 2sec.
Heart of the Crusader-3/3-Your judgements also increase the critical strike chance of all melee attacks by 3%.
Crusade-3/3-Increases the Damage and healing of your Crusader Strike,Hammer of the Righteous and Holy Shock by 15% and an additional 15% vs Humanoids, Demons, Undead, Dragonkin and Elementals.

Not much new here bar the obvious movement of Crusade into the first tier and the restriction on spells it effects however as two of those spells will be spammed by Prot it makes a very nice talent. Also note that it now works on Dragonkin as well which we will no doubt see much more of in Cataclysm.

-Tier Two-
Eye for and Eye-2/2-All damaging attacks cause you to strike the attacker with your judgement. This cannot happen more than once every two seconds.
Righteous Vengeance-3/3-When Judgement, Crusader Strike, Hammer of the Righteous or Divine Storm deal a critical strike, your target will take 30% additional damage over 8sec.
Pursuit of Justice-2/2-Increases movement speed by 15%.

There are some good talent choices here and with the way the new point system will work we will likely get to only pick one, this will no doubt be a big debate in the community over which will be the most useful.Particularly when you look at Holy and consider the new way healing will work.

--HOLY--

-Tier One-
Sanctified Light-3/3-Increases the critical strike chance of you Judgements and Holy Shock by 15%.
Spiritual Focus-2/2-Reduces the push back from damage while casting heals by 70%.
Divinity-3/3-Increases the amount of healing done and received by 6%.

The increased crit on Judgements is very nice depending on how often we will use them in our rotations and with healers prone to going OOM now the increase in healing received might be worth taking for those longer or progression fights.

All in all I think these new trees will definitely create a wider variety of specs for Prot Paladins and plenty of debate to go with it.

Also to note that Seal of Command is gone for good and it seems that a talented Seal of the Righteous will take its place as a Ret only cleave.


I'm very much liking the new trees and since Ghostcrawler has said that these are simply "rough drafts" I think we can expect even more good things to come,and I can not wait to get planning on what talents I will take as well as looking over the other classes.