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[Rico]

THE BEST TROLL:

[Doom]

In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm we’ll 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.

New Paladin Spells

Blinding Shield (level 81): Causes damage and blinds all nearby targets. This effect might end up only damaging those facing the paladin’s 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.

Healing Hands (level 83): 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.

Guardian of Ancient Kings (level 85): 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).

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.


Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

    * Crusader Strike will be a core ability for all paladins, gained at level 1. We think the paladin leveling experience is hurt by not having an instant attack. Retribution will be getting a new talent in its place that either modifies Crusader Strike or replaces it completely.
    * Cleanse is being rebalanced to work with the new dispel system. It will dispel defensive magic (debuffs on friendly targets), diseases, and poisons.
    * Blessing of Might will provide the benefit of Wisdom as well. If you have two paladins in your group, one will do Kings on everyone and the other will do Might on everyone. There should be much less need, and ideally no need, to provide specific buffs to specific classes.
    * Holy Shock will be a core healing spell available to all paladins.



New Talents and Talent Changes

    * 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’re considering is lowering Divine Shield’s 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.
    * We feel Retribution paladins need one more mechanic which involves some risk of the player pushing the wrong button, making the rotation a bit less forgiving. In addition, we want to add to this spec more PvP utility. Right now the successes of the Retribution paladin in PvP seem to be reduced to either doing decent burst damage, or just being good at staying alive.
    * We want to increase the duration of Sacred Shield to 30 minutes and keep the limit to one target. The intention is that the paladin can use it on their main healing target. That said, we would like to improve the Holy paladin toolbox and niche so that they don’t feel quite like the obvious choice for tank healing while perceived as a weak group healer.
    * We want to add to the Holy tree a nice big heal to correspond with Greater Heal. Flash of Light remains the expensive, fast heal and Holy Light is the go-to heal that has average efficiency and throughput. Beacon of Light will be changed to work with Flash of Light. We like the ability, but want paladins to use it intelligently and not be constantly healing for twice as much.
    * Holy paladins will use spirit as their mana regeneration stat.
    * Protection paladins need a different rotation between single-target and multi-target tanking. Likewise, we're looking to add the necessity to use an additional cooldown in each rotation.
    * Holy Shield will no longer have charges. It will be designed to improve block chance while active, and will continue to provide a small amount of damage and threat.



Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Holy

    * Healing
    * Meditation
    * Critical Healing Effect


Meditation: This is the spirit-to-mana conversion that the priest, druid, and shaman healers also share.

Critical Healing Effect: When the paladin gets a crit on a heal, it will heal for more.

Protection

    * Damage Reduction
    * Vengeance
    * Block Amount


Vengeance: This is the damage-received-to-attack-power conversion that all tanks share.

Block Amount: 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.

Retribution

    * Melee Damage
    * Melee Critical Damage
    * Holy Damage


Holy Damage: Any attack that does Holy damage will have its damage increased.

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.

HOLY DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN PALADIN GARGOYLES

Hmmmm, I was expecting a super dynamic class rewrite, but then again.. Beacon of Light being redone, Crusader Strike baseline, Retribution and Protection rotations being taken off auto-pilot and Paladin defenses being nerfed a bit..

Holy Shock on every paladin and a ton more quality of life changes. Looks good!

[Envy]

Battlegrounds will be a much bigger focus in Cataclysm since they can provide the best PvP rewards.

 

[Büge]

HOLY DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN PALADIN GARGOYLES

Stone by day, warriors by night?

[Shinra]

HOLY DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN PALADIN GARGOYLES

Stoned by day, warriors by night?

[norn]

HOLY DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN PALADIN GARGOYLES

Hmmmm, I was expecting a super dynamic class rewrite, but then again.. Beacon of Light being redone, Crusader Strike baseline, Retribution and Protection rotations being taken off auto-pilot and Paladin defenses being nerfed a bit..

Holy Shock on every paladin and a ton more quality of life changes. Looks good!

I guess it's Blizzard not caring to risk forum wrath by announcing any nerfs, but what is actually in this preview amounts to a substantial buff to Paladin defenses... 30m Sacred Shield, Holy Shock to Prot/Ret, and Healing Stream Paladin. I don't really think there are enough seconds they can take off of Divine Shield to cover even Holy Shock, much less the other things.

So far the best thing out of the preview is the possibility of not running PallyPower in Cataclysm, with only two Blessings (Kings/Sanc will be merged, count on it). The worst thing is still no interrupt, but then the forthcoming Feral interrupt wasn't listed as a new spell in the Druid preview, only mentioned in a bullet point. Sure, we didn't even get the bullet point, but Blizzard eventually comes through with enough lead for everyone.

The most important thing that has not been covered at all is: what will the Tauren Paladin-specific mount be?

[Shinra]

Any paladin who needed pallypower to do their job in the first place was completely fucking retarded.

I never used pally power, and nobody ever hurt for lack of buffs in my raids. The only people who complained were the other paladins who needed a crutch to manage their buffs.

[Rico]

Petitioning for an, "Oh, Shinra," emoticon.

[Büge]

Any paladin who needed pallywhacker to do their job in the first place was completely fucking retarded.

[Bal]

Paladin blessings have been reverted to single target, five minute buffs. We feel this will make paladin rotations more interesting in long fights.

[Shinra]

Petitioning for an, "Oh, Shinra," emoticon.

30 minute buff that hits everyone in a class. Unless you're one of only two paladins in a 25 man raid (hahaha) it's not like this is a hard job. Even if you're one of only two paladins in a 25 minute raid, knowing your raid members and talents will tell you what spells to cast.

Mind you, I was doing this in TBC, when Paladins had more buffs to cast that people wanted. In wrath, you have what, Might, Wisdom, Kings and if the tanks want it, Sanctuary?

[Rico]

Itt, the 4754643th WoW player to conflate unnecessary inconvenience for difficulty.

[norn]

Any raider who needed boss mods to do their job in the first place was completely fucking retarded.

I never used boss mods, and nobody ever hurt because I failed to react to various boss abilities in my raids. The only people who complained were the other raiders who needed a crutch to keep track of fight mechanics while also maintaining optimal TPS/DPS/HPS.

Here's the thing, and it's so obvious I feel like I should be scanning a piece of construction paper with this whole post in either crayon or fingerpaint so you'll understand, but no one 'needs' PallyPower just like no one 'needs' boss mods. Not utilizing addons that allow you to focus your concentration and/or your effort better does not mean you are a rugged individualist who is ruggedly playing World of Warcraft from your rugged, isolated mountain shack while you grind rugged bear ass jerky between your rugged brown teeth. It means you are someone incapable of realizing that there is a finite amount of attention you can apply to the game and you can either channel that attention wisely or you can choose to feel superior to those people who rely on 'crutches'.

For my part, I run PallyPower because I occasionally am one of only two Paladins in a 25-man raid, because clicking little boxes is easier than targetting players and buffing manually, because having centrally, obviously located timers on each of my buffs is very convenient, and because it makes mid-combat buffing—say, after a battle rez—a hell of a lot easier.

Having said all that, you might be right, and maybe I am retarded. After all, I am attempting to justify myself to someone who once thought Death Knights wanted spell power. If only there was an addoncrutch that helped my self-esteem so I wouldn't feel so obligated to post things like this :(

[Rico]

Pretty sure your gs is high enough to cover that.

[Bal]

Look guys. This is Shinra, ok. I think we can trust his judgment. I mean, this is the man who innovated the staff shaman.

[Rico]

Hey guys this one hander does as much damage as a two hander so I can keep the same damage but WITH A SHIELD.

[Bal]

Q. Why are Restoration druids the only spec in the game not receiving a new spell?
A. Restoration druids are actually getting a fair bit. For one, Tree of Life is getting a whole new model (think Ancients of War) and will also “morph” some of your spells to do crazy things while in the form, such as cause Regrowth to be instant, or Lifebloom to apply two applications at once. Tranquility will be raid-wide. We’re also touching nearly every Restoration druid spell to make sure each has a niche and feels good. In general, playing a Restoration druid should feel a lot different (better!) in Cataclysm than it does today.

 

[Doom]

The best part of that answer actually was "Tree of Life is getting a whole new model THINK ANCIENTS OF WAAAAR."

Other notable devchat tidbits were suggestions of 310% flight being trainable/easily accessible and Cloak of Shadows definitely being made 100% resistance.

[Rico]

I read that as either people with a 310% get that new level and all their mounts are now 310, or people with a 310 get it for free and everyone else pays out the ass.  I am fine with either of those scenarios.

[sei]

Here's hoping for those 310 mount achievements properly going account-bound.