New Patch and Improvements for Prot

This latest build has brought many new talents and tree changes that are very needed with the way current tree stands.

Holy
* Divinity is gone, moved to Protection
Great change, swapping this and PotI gives us a survivability option without having to spec into Eternal Glory.
* Protector of the Innocent is now a Tier 1 Holy Talent and has been revamped - Casting a targeted heal on any target, including yourself, also heals you for 1240.83 to 1427.62. (Multi ranks, but currently all with the same value)
An interesting little change that most probably won't take but may be useful in soling or PvP builds.


Protection
* Guarded by the Light additional effect - In addition, your Word of Glory will also cause Holy Shield.
This is a very nice change give us a reason to use WoG now at least a little, the heal might still suck but at least we won't have to worry about dropping HS now for it.
* Judgements of the Just now also reduces ranged attack speed.
Probibly won't have much effect in PvE but will defiantly make Prot more dangerous in PvP, Healers here I come.


Retribution
* Crusader Strike now causes 120% weapon damage, up from 100%.
Simple boost to CS cementing its place in single target rotations.

Over all some nice changes to help with PvP and make WoG more useful, still waiting on the proc based second HoPo generator though Blizzard.

More Cataclysm Changes

Since my last failed post on the "new" talent tree for Paladins there has been a lot of new information coming out. I have decided to leave the full review of the new face of the class for later when things have settled down more and were not having spells and talents redesigned every few days.
I will however talk a little about my thoughts on a few of the changes and worries we have seen recently.

Firstly Ardent Defender, I'm still not sure what to make of this. While something deep inside me want me to have it, the though of waiting till 35% health even off the GCD makes me worried. We still of cause need to wait and see how it interacts with raid bosses and or 85 health pools but until then I'm looking to skip it in my builds.

Another thing that has me worried is Holy Shield, the current evolution of the spell giving us 0-15% block based on Holy Power(I have to go with the majority here to and sign the partition for the name Zeal). This seems quite low for our short CD and particularly lacking for the "Block a lot" tank class we're meant to be. On top of that it has been announced that it will be exclusive with Inquisition.

Just today the stats for our CD's have nearly been all released and now look as follows;
Divine Protection-20% for 10 Sec-1min CD-No restriction on other spells.
Ardent Defender-20% for and unknown time-3min CD-Only usable below 30% health.
Guardian of Ancient Kings-Unknown amount for unknown time-My guess is on a 10min Talented CD 30min Base-Seems a long CD for our level 85 spell particularly for those who don't spec Prot.
Divine Guardian-20% for everyone but us for 6sec-No CD given-Sad that this no longer effects us but understandable with all the other CD's we have.

While its nice that we have some more flexibility with CD's and no longer lock ourselves out of AW or Bubble by doing so it seems od that we don't have a high reduction CD anymore(baring the change that GoAK hits 50%).

The next issue GC addressed was that Paladins had 5% less Stam bonus than Warriors.

Since I am sure it will be asked based on that info, paladins and warriors have the same Stamina curves now. A naked warrior and paladin of the same race will have the same health at 85. Both Protection trees get the same amount of Stamina as a passive. That number will likely be something like 10 or 15% Stamina depending on tuning. (In our current build it is 15%.) In similar gear, their health should be very similar. We’ll provide the differences in their cool downs and how they tank. DKs and druids are likely to have different amounts of health as well.

While this sounds very good the thing concerning me it that if were all equal Warriors will top out ahead due to their "Stat Stick". That is of cause assuming that Relics stay without stats which we have had hints that they will be getting stats.

My finally concern for us is in class equality. While they are trying to make classes
balanced it seems to me that they are just staying the same distance just a little more advanced. While we get more procs and a balancing of Stam, warriors get Consecrate and a few more nice gadgets. The issue is warriors are getting more of our utility than we are of theirs. In AoE they now have Consecrate, and an AoE DoT, an instant AoE attack, cone AoE attack a cleave and a Revenge cleave. On our part we get Consecrate, and AoE attack, a HoR cleave and if you count it AS as a cleave.
That leaves even counting AS us an AoE DoT and Cone attack behind. On top of that they still have their mobility in charge/intercept and an interrupt which we only get in deep Ret tree inaccessible to Prot.
We do of cause get our own nice tricks that Warriors don't but I'm not sure they compensate for how much utility they have over us.

That's a lot of negativity out of my system now I can keep an eye on the news and look forward to the next news release.

Scrap That Post

Seems that Ghoastcrawler has taken to show me dead wrong on my comments for the previous post. I'm not going to delete because hey I spent a while typing it but consider the whole thing null and void.

I'm going to regret saying this, but the paladin trees are the most changed in the game. There are only a few of the current beta talents that survived the, um, cleansing.

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.

One of These Things is Not Like the Other

The talent tree bonus's for taken your chosen tree are release and I was very excited to first start looking over them. My first thoughts on Paladin trees were that they looked very good until I took a look into the other tanks ablilitys.
Lets start with us.

Paladin - Holy
Invokes the power of the Light to protect and to heal.
Holy Shock
Meditation
Healing Bonus

Paladin - Protection
Uses Holy magic to shield himself / herself and defend allies from attackers.
Avenger's Shield
Touched by the Light
Vengeance

I have added holy in here to show that Holy Shock is no longer baseline and therefor we have lost our OP 6sec Healthstone and one of our single target attacks.
The rest from Prot is rather self explanitory as its right out of our current trees.

Now for Warrior and DK's, I will list what they do incase you are unfamiliar with the class.

DK - Blood
A dark guardian who manipulates and corrupts life energy to sustain himself/herself in the face of an enemy onslaught.
Veteran of the Third War (+stam/expertise)
Death Rune Mastery (To do with rune use)
Heart Strike (Single Target attack with a cleave and no CD)
Vengeance

Warrior - Protection
A stalwart protector that uses a shield to protect himself/herself and his/her allies.
Shield Slam (Just like Shield of the Righteosness, 6 sec CD)
Vitality (+stam/expertise)
Vengeance

Druids at the moment are not listed due to tool tip errors.
As you can see we get a ranged pull thats very mana intensive on a 30sec CD and a talaent to increase damage done by a small amount. The other two tank get a short or no CD spell and a +Stam talent. Im not sure how these will play out at lower levels but as it looks to me the other classes will have more health and possibly more damage because of the far lower CD's on their spells.
On top of this Prot Paladins will still be lacking anyway to restore mana before we get Sanctuary possibly late in the tree.

Some judgement is ofcause still reserved uintil we see the new tree's but at the moment It feels as if Paladins will be doomed to run solo and OOM for the early levels.

The New Face of Mastery and Trees

After the upset of the new Real ID change we needed something to once again lift our spirits and the great and wonderful Zarhym has brought it with the announcement of a HUGE overhaul to Mastery and the Talent system.

It was a very long post so rather than pull out alot of big quotes I will just sum up each change and give you my thoughts as we go.

The first and largest change is that Talent tree will be trimmed down to 31 points as opposed to the 51 we have currently.
Their goal with this is to help in the removal of boring and passive bonus talents.
To go with the reduction in talents they are also reducing the number of points we have to spend giving us our first point at level 10 then alternating every level after that between a new spell and a new talent point.
I am very happy with this change, it solves the problems Blizzard were having with bloated trees, much larger trees due to increased level cap and helps give us more interesting talents all in one swoop. Also the alternating rewards as you level will help keep each new level rewarding while making sure that its not just another "Ding".

The next change in line for Talent trees is that once you choose your tree you will not be able to take points in the other two trees until you reach 70 and take your 31st talent.
I have mixed feelings on this one as we have yet to see the new trees. My biggest worry is if mandatory talents for two specs lay in one tree for example Meditation in the Discipline tree for leveling Holy Priests currently. However if they can get around this issue then this will help with new players choosing a working spec rather than spreading their points around as some do currently.

The next change takes a grey area halfway between Mastery and Talent Tree's and its goal is to help define the separate trees early. To do this they have set in place a new system where upon setting your first Talent point you will automatically be given a trademark spell for that tree and at least one passive ability. For example a Ret Paladin might be given Divine Storm and Art of War.

Next up are changes to they way Mastery works. They have removed the slow scale of the first tier bonus's and instead made it so the bonus is automatically given in full upon reaching a certain point.
The second change to Mastery is that you must buy the skill "Mastery" from your trainer at 75 before you can use the stat when it appears on gear at 78. This will be similar to buying Dual Weld or Plate Armour and wont make much difference to how the stat is planned to work currently.

Overall these are some very large and very positive change for Cataclysm and now we also have the promise of a showing of the full Talent Trees for all classes some time in the near future.
Di spite what may be happening on the forums Cataclysm just keeps getting better and better.