Blizzard has released some of the class changes to all the classes for their upcoming expansion Catacylsm.<\/p>\n
I’m going to repost the Blizzard announcement (and any clarifying comments made afterwards), and then provide my thoughts.\u00c2\u00a0 First up for us (and, last up from Blizzard)…. the Paladin:<\/p>\n
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Original release here<\/a>.<\/p>\n In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be making several changes to class talents and abilities across the board. While this list only outlines some of our plans for the paladin class, we want to give you a look at the new high-level abilities and an overview of how the new Mastery system will work with each talent spec.<\/span><\/p>\n New Paladin Spells<\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n Blinding Shield (level 81):<\/strong> Causes damage and blinds all nearby targets. This effect might end up only damaging those facing the paladin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s shield, in a manner similar to Eadric the Pure’s ability Radiance in Trial of the Champion. The Holy tree will have a talent to increase the damage and critical strike chance, while the Protection tree will have a talent to make this spell instant cast. 2-second base cast time. Requires a shield.<\/span><\/p>\n Healing Hands (level 83):<\/strong> Healing Hands is a new healing spell. The paladin radiates heals from him or herself, almost like a Healing Stream Totem. It has a short range, but a long enough duration that the paladin can cast other heals while Healing Hands remains active. 15-second cooldown. 6-second duration.<\/span><\/p>\n Guardian of Ancient Kings (level 85):<\/strong> Summons a temporary guardian that looks like a winged creature of light armed with a sword. The visual is similar to that of the Resurrection spell used by the paladin in Warcraft III. The guardian has a different effect depending on the talent spec of the paladin. For Holy paladins, the guardian heals the most wounded ally in the area. For Protection paladins, the guardian absorbs some incoming damage. For Retribution paladins, it damages an enemy, similar to the death knight Gargoyle or the Nibelung staff. 3-minute cooldown. 30-second duration (this might vary depending on which guardian appears).<\/span><\/p>\n Next you will find a list of some of the paladin spell and ability changes, followed by our intentions for improving each talent tree for the release of Cataclysm. There will be further changes, but those revealed below should offer some insight into our goals. <\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n Changes to Abilities and Mechanics<\/span><\/strong> <\/span><\/li>\n <\/span><\/li>\n <\/span><\/li>\n <\/span><\/li>\n <\/span><\/li>\n <\/span><\/li>\n <\/span><\/li>\n <\/span><\/li>\n <\/span><\/li>\n <\/span><\/li>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses<\/strong><\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n Holy<\/span> Protection<\/span> Retribution<\/span> Meditation:<\/strong> This is the spirit-to-mana conversion that the priest, druid, and shaman healers also share.<\/span><\/p>\n Vengeance:<\/strong> This is the damage-received-to-attack-power conversion that all tanks share.<\/span><\/p>\n Critical Healing Effect:<\/strong> When the paladin gets a crit on a heal, it will heal for more.<\/span><\/p>\n Block Amount:<\/strong> We want to keep the kit of the paladin as a tank who blocks a lot. So by contrast, the warrior tank will sometimes get critical blocks, but the paladin will absorb more damage with normal blocks.<\/span><\/p>\n Holy Damage:<\/strong> Any attack that does Holy damage will have its damage increased.<\/span><\/p>\n This concludes this Cataclysm preview for the paladin class. The development of these changes will continue to evolve in the coming months. Please be sure to provide any feedback and thoughts you might have on what was covered here.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n And here’s the additional clarification information posted by Nethaera:<\/p>\n Here’s a bit more clarification on some of these changes. Also, please keep in mind that this is merely a preview and we’ll still have more to go in testing up to and including any other changes that aren’t listed here in the preview.<\/span><\/p>\n We’ve updated the Flash of Light reference to make it a bit more clear in the original post as follows.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n In addition we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re changing the paladin heal design to match that of the other healers. Holy Light is the middle heal. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very efficient, but not particularly fast and doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a lot of throughput. Flash of Light will be the faster heal that costs more mana. (Currently paladins sort of flip the model around by having a fast, efficient heal.) Holy paladins can talent into an additional heal that is like a giant Holy Light. It might take three of these big heals (or two crits) to get a tank from death\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s door back to 100% health. <\/span><\/p>\n Currently on live, Beacon of Light is a tool that allows paladins to target more than just the main tank. In Cataclysm if it just doubles their healing, it is going to be overpowered. We have two ways we might handle this and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll experiment to see which feels better. The first is that Beacon only works on some heals, such as Flash of Light or Holy Light (but not the big one). An alternative idea is that Beacon increases the mana cost of a heal cast on a beaconed target, since you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re essentially getting a double heal. Under this model, Beacon itself would cost no mana. <\/span><\/p>\n Also on the live realms currently, paladins have huge mana pools and massive throughput. The trade-off is that they are excellent single target healers and much weaker in other roles. We want paladins to be slightly more interchangeable with other healers. In Cataclysm, you should be able to have a Holy priest on the tank and a Holy paladin on the raid. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not sure we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll back off of the current healing roles completely, but we definitely want to add more breadth to those whose roles are currently too narrow. <\/span><\/p>\n As for the Guardian of Ancient Kings. First, it’s important to understand that this is not a pet nor does it have a pet bar associated with it. Second, it’s also not meant to last for very long. So, it’s not a pet in the traditional sense. It’s a friend in need when you need it, but not a permanent companion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n There’s a couple other posts from Blizzard in the original thread, but none of them add anything relevant (in my opinion), they’re just answering little things “Am I being made into a Pet class” etc..<\/p>\n Overall, I think that Blizzard has released some decent information for the Pallies, but they’ve kept a lot of it intentionally vague.<\/p>\n I like the concept behind Blinding Shield, it works ok for Eadric the Pure in 5 man ToC, the final implementation of it will be interesting.\u00c2\u00a0 I also like that they’re giving different specs different talents to modify the same spell (in the case of Blinding Shield and the new Guardian spell).\u00c2\u00a0 Hopefully, as they revamp the skill trees they’ll continue that trend.<\/p>\n I don’t think any of the other changes listed are significant, they’re interesting – some (like make Crusader Strike a baseline spell) should have been done long ago, and it’ll be interesting to see how they finally get implemented (and then, how quickly they get nerfed since they’ll go in as OP to begin with)… I am concerned by this one though:<\/p>\n We want to ease off the defensive capabilities of Retribution and Holy paladins slightly. We think the powerful paladin defenses have been one of the things holding Retribution paladins back, especially in Arenas. One change we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re considering is lowering Divine Shield\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s duration by a couple of seconds. Having said that, Retribution does pretty well in Battlegrounds, and Battlegrounds will be a much bigger focus in Cataclysm since they can provide the best PvP rewards. Furthermore, the healing environment of Cataclysm is going to be different such that a paladin may not be able to fully heal themselves during the duration of Divine Shield to begin with, so this may not be a problem.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Every other time Blizzard has tried to ‘ease off’ on the survivability\/defensive capabilities of Ret or Holy, they inadvertently nerf Prot Pallies resulting in them undoing their changes.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe this time, Blizz will have learned from their past mistakes and get it right… I doubt it, but it could happen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Blizzard has released some of the class changes to all the classes for their upcoming expansion Catacylsm. 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\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\nNew Talents and Talent Changes<\/p>\n
\nHealing
\nMeditation
\nCritical Healing Effect<\/strong><\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n
\nDamage Reduction
\nVengeance
\nBlock Amount<\/strong><\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n
\nMelee Damage
\nMelee Critical Damage
\nHoly Damage<\/strong><\/span> <\/span><\/p>\nFlash of Light remains a fast heal, but will be more expensive to justify the cast speed. Holy Light will be the go-to heal that has average efficiency and throughput. Beacon of Light needs to be changed so that its benefit is letting the paladin heal two targets at once, not letting the paladin get two heals for the mana cost of one. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s intended to save GCDs and targeting time, not mana.<\/span><\/ul>\n