Okay, Heads We Keep the Changes, Tails We Re-evaluate

Despite my post the other day, another interesting Blue Quote showed up today:

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.

What does this mean? That, well, basically everything I posted the other day has been changed or slated for the next Beta build.

It is good to know though that they are actively working on talent trees.

~Ron

First! Lemme say that, at the time of posting this, nothing is considered finalized (or even official)- it is all data mined from my buddy Bibi over at MMO-C.

Anyhow, to what you came to see! I'll list each talent, what each one does, and my personal option on it. I'll also include the other 2 Tiers from Prot and Holy, since those will also be accessible.

Ret Tree
Tier 1

• Imp Judgements (Decreases the cooldown on your Judgement ability by 1/2 sec): I don't see this going anywhere, its a good damage increase and TPS increase, useful to all 3 specs.
• Heart of the Crusader (Increased chance to crit against the enemy by 1/2/3% when Judgement debuff is active): Placeholder- this debuff is going away.
• Crusade (Increases the Damage and Healing of CS, Holy Shock, and HotR by 15%. Increased 15% damage on Hum/UnD/Dmn/Ele/Drg): I can see this being reworked or gutted, as 15% is a hefty amount, and it will make it hard for us to be balanced on specific fights- Anything that is Mechanical or that is a Beast.

Tier 2:

• EfaE (10% on damage taken to cast Judgement on the target): Big improvement over the current version, and procing off of all Damaging attacks makes it interesting for Tanking- However, is it simply Judgement damage, or the debuff? Which Judgement debuff? Will the Judgement debuff still be on our intended target?
• Righteous Vengeance (Deals an additional 10/2030% damage of your CS/DS/Judge/HotR crits over 8 sec)- Same on what it is on Live, except Prot will beable to pick it up for more TPS- The wording does scare me, as it still only lists 3 attacks for Ret.
• Pursuit of Justice (7/15% non-stacking Movement Speed increase): Its a shame that it is the same thing, without any additional benefits- Moreso when the SAME 15% movement speed can be picked up by all Melee classes, save Warriors.

Tier 3

• Judgements of the Wise (Unchanged): Would still like for some passive mana benefit, incase Judgements are 100% absorbed.
• The Art of War (Reduces cast time on next Holy Light/Exorcism by 50/100%): Unchanged, in the sense that Holy Light will be the new Flash of Light.
• Seals of Retribution (SoRet) (All damaging seals cause an additional 15% weapon damage as Holy. SoR hits 2 additional targets): Basically makes SoR the new SoC, and adding a small damage modifier to it- So almost unchanged. It is really sad that an 11pt "new exciting talent" is a passive ability.

Tier 4

• Swift Retribution (Increases Melee/Ranged attack speed by 7/14/20%): Fold of buffs for 10m guilds/raids- Nice for single use, justifiable for PvP, but changes nothing for PvE.
• Sanctified Retribution (Seriously, RENAME SOME GODDAMN TALENTS): Placeholder for 21pt ability? Same as on Live, but for 3 points?
• Sanctified Wrath (Reduces AW cooldown by 60 sec. Increases HoW Crit chance by 25/50%. Allows use of HoW as if the target had 20% HP): Decent for PvP, and depending on how HoW is in terms of damage, maybe decent for PvE. Some nice potential for synergy with that currently useless Glyph of Avenging Wrath.

Tier 5

• Conviction (On Crit, gives 1/2/3% increased Holy and Physical damage, stacks 3 times): A renamed Vengeance (probably to prevent confusion with the Tank ability, Vengeance); Boring and Obsolete.
• Sanctity of Battle (Increases Exorcism damage by 10/20%, reduces cooldown by 2/4 sec): Instead of boosting CS damage, now reduces Exorcism cooldown. A big let down for PvE unless the damage on Exorcism is modified.
• Divine Ret: NYI, so no info here.

Other trees:

Holy
Tier 1

• Sanctified Light: (Increased Crit chance of HS and Judgement by 5/10/15%): Nice damage boost for both spells

Tier 2

• Judgements of the Pure (On Judgement cast, gains 3/6/9% Attack and Cast speed): Potential to go down the Holy tree- However, we'd have to give up 15% Seal/Judge damage.

Protection
Tier 1

• Seals of the Pure (5/10/15% Increased Seal and Judgement damage): With SoC removed, this talent is the same as live, but for 3 pts instead of 5.
• Imp HoJ (10/20 sec reduced cooldown): Nice to have higher in the tree for all PvP specs- Would be REALLY nice for HoJ to have a base cooldown of 30 seconds and a stun of 3 seconds off the GCD, to be used as an interrupt for Ret and Prot.

Tier 2

• Judgements of the Just (Same as Live): Still lackluster "benefit" for Seal of Lol- Nice to have since Vindication is out of reach now.
• Guardian's favor: Same as on Live.
• Sacred Oath (4/7/10% increased damage when using a 1 hander, 10/20/30% Sacred Shield absorption): While the damage boost is no good, Sacred Shield might be better for PvP a bit now. 

~Ron

We Know What We're Doing.... Sorta.

So it appears that they reversed the decision to make Divine Storm available at level 10. Personally, I think that it is fine as long as Seal of Command is baseline, because that should be enough AE ability until level 51 when Divine Storm will most likely become available through talents (as the 21 point ability).

In addition, Ghostcrawler also comment on how Divine Storm will not be given the "Meteor Strike" treatment- Divine Storm will be only used for AE purposes. With the information given so far, we will (most likely) try to skip over Divine Storm if it is not mandatory (depending on what else we have for talents).

~Ron

New Talent changes planned for Cataclysm

New changes are coming soon (tm)! Before I begin with anything, please read the following:

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/t/25626290449/cataclysm-class-amp-mastery-systems-update/

Did you read that yet? In all it's entirety? Good.

Here is a quick rundown of what we can expect for things to come

• At level 10, you choose a Specialization (Lets choose, hmm, I don't know, Retribution)
• Once you place your first talent point, you gain passive abilities and "standard" abilities that your spec needs to be viable. Going with our randomly picked example above, we'd gain both increased Melee Damage, increased Melee Crit Chance, and Divine Storm- ALL at level 10, in addition to our bonus from the first talent point.
• Talent points will be gained every even level, and new spells will be gained every odd level (roughly).
• Once you choose a Specialization at level 10, you CANNOT spec in any "off tree"- This means no talent points in either Protection or Holy- until level 70 (or, until you gain your level 31 ability).
• Most trees have 38-42 total talents.
• Mastery will be a level 75 (or 77, etc.) trainable ability- This is where the "third bonus" of today's trees come into play. I'll assume you get a slight passive bonus, as the Mastery stat does not appear on gear until later.
• You will have a total of 41 points available to spent at level 85, with a minimum build of 0/0/31 in this example.
• Duel specs will work just like they work on live.
• All of these changes are included in the Beta Build, and are ready to go! Yay!

In addition, 2 good Blue quotes by none other than GC popped up, when asked abotu Rets with the new Talent system:

Ret Paladins should feel like Arms warriors who trade off some of their mobility for healing and defenses, and do more Holy damage instead of bleed damage

Final ret talent is more likely to be "Adds 2% additional stats to your blessing of kings"

No, it will be Repentance.

Or maybe Lacerate (the Survival hunter one).

(No it won't.)

From these 2 posts, we can infer that:

1. We may or may not get a gap closer or snare.
2. We may keep some of our defenses, possibly Cleanse or Divine Protection.
3. There will be 3 more "interesting" talents for Ret (since 2 of them, Crusader Strike and Divine Storm, are "baseline" to the spec).

All in All, things look pretty good so far. It will be a very interesting an exciting week once these changes are shown. Stay tuned for more news soon, as well as a complete Talent point breakdown!

~Ron

NDA is lifted!

"Our focus with Cataclysm has been to build on the knowledge we've gained through the previous expansions to deliver the best, most compelling World of Warcraft content for our players to date," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "Gathering focused feedback during the beta test will go a long way in helping us reach that goal when we launch Cataclysm later this year", says Blizzard as they release the statement saying that the NDA has been lifted.

Quickly looking over the Paladin Spells/Tree, the following can be found:

Seal of Corruption/Vengeance:

Fills the Paladin with holy power, causing all single-target attacks to apply Blood Corruption[Holy Vengeance], which deals [ 13% of AP + 6.5% of Spell Power ] additional Holy damage over 15 sec.

We can infer that the Seal system is not going anywhere, which is kind of disappointing and is a lackluster mechanic. In any case, the key word here is that all single-target abilities will stack the debuff (which also benefits form haste and crit)- Meaning that currently, instead of taking 15 seconds to build up a 5 stack, it should take about 9 seconds instead (3 Melee hits and 2 Crusader Strikes).

Blessing of Might:

Places a Blessing on the friendly target, increasing attack power by 10% and restoring 1 mana every 5 seconds for 1 hr.

Blessing of Might and Blessing of Wisdom will be combined, however, it looks like the Ap gain is changed to a flat percentage, which is bad news for us overall. 1 hour Blessings are welcomed.

Vindication:

Gives the Paladin's damaging attacks a chance to reduce physical damage done by the target by 10% for 10 sec.

The current Vindication reduces Boss Physical damage by about 10-15% already, and the AP debuff was inconsistent with other AP using classes- This change should help to even the board (without reducing Magical damage dealt by Deathknights, Paladins, or Shamans in the process).

Judgement of Light:

Unleashes the energy of a Seal spell to judge an enemy for 20 sec, granting attacks made against the judged enemy a chance of healing the attacker for 1% of their maximum health.

A slight healing nerf- To be expected with scaled HP pools.

Swift Retribution

Your auras also increase your party and raid's melee and ranged haste by [7%/14%/20%].

More Buff homogenization for 10 man groups.

Crusader Strike:

An instant strike that causes 100% weapon damage. 5% of base mana, 5 yd range, Instant cast, 4 sec cooldown

Crusader Strike damage is increases across the board (this is the baseline version), however still no secondary effect keeps it as a boring 2nd auto attack.

As a whole, I would say that the Paladin class is mostly "incomplete" with it's changes. Hopefully this means news will be out soon!

Until then

~Ron