Paladin Cataclysm Changes (New Resource System and More)

[jere]

This looks really interesting!

Paladin (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Q. Any thought to having Retribution paladins use spell power plate to help put Holy paladins on equal footing as other healers?
A. We think Retribution paladins needs to use strength plate. Changing this would require a lot of funky solutions, such as how we handle Crusader Strike damage, and trying to control Retribution from being too powerful a healer. We realize it’s odd to itemize spell power plate for one specialization, but we think all of the solutions to this issue are worse than just living with it.

Q: What is the goal when re-designing the paladin class? How do you plan to change rotations, talents, etc?
A. All of the paladin specializations will make use of a new resource called Holy Power. Holy Power accumulates from using Crusader Strike, Holy Shock, and some other talents. Holy Power can be consumed to augment a variety of abilities, including:

    * An instant mana-free heal: Word of Glory
    * A buff to increase holy damage done: Inquisition
    * A massive physical melee attack for Retribution paladins: Templar’s Verdict
    * Holy Shield’s duration is now extended by Holy Power
    * Divine Storm’s damage is now increased by Holy Power


We also introduced several new heals for Holy Paladins including Healing Hands (an AoE heal-over-time that is applied to all players standing near the paladin), Light of Dawn (a cone heal with a 30-yard range), as well as a new heal called Divine Light, which is similar to a priest's Greater Heal, and the new instant heal mentioned above, Word of Glory.

Q: Are Protection paladins still going to refresh Divine Plea on melee hit (via a talent or trained ability)?
A. Yes.

Q: Can you give us a sneak peek at one or two of the new Retribution abilities or talents?
A. Templar’s Verdict: An instant weapon attack that causes a percentage of weapon damage. Consumes all applications of Holy Power to increase damage dealt:

    * 1 Holy Power: 55% Weapon Damage
    * 2 Holy Power: 125% Weapon Damage
    * 3 Holy Power: 225% Weapon Damage


Word of Glory: Consumes all Holy Power to heal a friendly target for a specific amount per application of Holy Power (0 mana cost, 0 cooldown, instant cast).

Q: If Judgement of Wisdom is being removed from the game, are paladins getting a new Judgement so we don't all have to use Judgement of Light?
A. There will only be one Judgement spell. This spell places a single debuff on the target with the effects currently associated with Judgement of Light and Judgement of Justice. The Judgement of Wisdom effect has been retired completely.

Q: Are the improved aura talents going away? They were still present in beta.
A. If you mean talents like Improved Devotion Aura, then those are gone. We still have talents that, say, increase healing on targets of your auras. Improved Concentration Aura still exists. In genera, though, you shouldn’t have to worry about having raid buffs of different power competing with each other.

Q. Are Protection Paladins still going to refresh Divine Plea on melee hit (via a talent or trained ability)?
A. Yes.

How will this be displayed on a paladin's UI? A new bar under the mana bar? Or a stacking buff?

A new bar.

[jere]

Wow you guys are quiet lately!.  This is a pretty big change for paladins.   Discussion Go!

[Chicane]

I'm withholding judgement until i can play around with it, hopefully it will be in the next build.  I am actually glad to hear that there are some big changes coming, as I was pretty underwhelmed when I saw the first stab at the shorter talent trees.

I healed the new blackrock instance pre-new talent trees, and it was definitely different.  I let a couple people die, so it was about normal for me.  Flash of Light is still 1.5 seconds, but heals for a lot and costs a shitload of mana.  Holy Light is 3 seconds untalented, and heals for something close to where it is now, maybe a bit lower.  Divine Light is also 3 seconds, but heals for a lot and will be our equivalent of the other classes' big heals.  It looks like they're moving all of the classes to a short big heal with punishment, medium heal, large heal play style.  I like the idea of healing hands but it wasn't available until they just raised the level cap.

Ret has been exactly the same so far, but it has some big changes coming.

I don't have good enough gear anymore to mess around with prot, but I'll probably roll a prebuilt paladin soon.

[Kenderthyu]

The changes to ret seem interesting.  Although having something else to watch out for may make things more chaotic.  As it is, since rotation is FCFS mostly, you have to watch CD's and refreshed CD's (IE T10 2 piece for DS) so having a new bar may take a bit more attention off of what's going on around you.  Seems like a massive melee nuke could could be cool though. 

I heard something about a short duration summoned holy beast of some kind in early beta talk, did they scrap that?  It was going to be similar to an untalented DK ghoul.

And no judgement of wisdom, huh?  It was nice to have though.. lol

[jere]

I'm looking forward to trying out the new resource system.  I think it will be nice to have something new to play with, though I am sure it will take some iteration to get to work.

I am hoping the changes to Prot will be nice.  The first pass of talents left it pretty bloated in terms of lack of utility choices and just tons of dps talents.

[Raist]

They should name the new resource Faith. Much more irony and puns.

"I don't have enough faith to cast that" "Need more faith"

[Leenah]

They should name the new resource Faith. Much more irony and puns.

"I don't have enough faith to cast that" "Need more faith"

"I find your lack of faith disturbing."

[jere]

lol

The bid disappointment (not listed there) is that Divine Intervention is no longer available, at least on the PTR

[Kenderthyu]

lol

The bid disappointment (not listed there) is that Divine Intervention is no longer available, at least on the PTR

[jere]

Specializations:

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
    * Stamina Scaling
    * Judgments of the Wise


Paladin - Retribution
A righteous crusader who judges and punishes opponents with weapons and Holy magic.

    * Two-Handed Weapon Specialization
    * Divine Storm
    * Sheath of Light
    * Divine Purpose
    * Judgments of the Wise

Here are the earlier changes. 

Holy

    * Healing Hands now has a 1 min cooldown.
    * Divine Plea is now trained at level 58. Down from 68.
    * Light's Beacon now affects each heal you cast on the target instead of just Holy Light and Holy Shock. Now heals the beacon for 50%. (Down from 100%)
    * Holy Wrath no longer scales from attack power and deals 2400 Holy damage divided among all targets within 10 yards.
    * Holy Shock now grants a charge of Holy Power.
    * Seal of Wisdom is gone.
    * Seal of the Pure now seems to have a chance to restore the Paladin's mana.
    * Holy Light is now trained at level 14. Up from 5.
    * Divine Light - A large heal that heals a friendly target for 7761.99 to 8648.14. Good for periods of heavy damage. / 30% of base mana, 40 yd range, 2.5 sec cast
    * Divine Favor now increases your chance to critically hit with your next Word of Glory, Holy Shock, Flash of Light, Holy Light or Divine Light by 100%. / Instant, 1 min cooldown
    * Denounce - You have a 50/100% chance when any of your Holy spells get a critical effect to make your next Exorcism spell instant and cost no mana.
    * Sacred Cleansing is now a Tier 4 Talent. Down from Tier 5.
    * Infusion of Light is now a Tier 3 Talent. Down from Tier 4. It now only affects Holy Light. (No longer affects Divine Light)
    * Blessed Life is now a Tier 6 Talent. Up from Tier 4.
    * Enlightened Judgements is now a Tier 3 Talent. Down from Tier 4.
    * Healing Light now affects Words of Glory.
    * Tower of Radiance (NYI) *New* - Directly healing the target of your Beacon of Light has a % chance to generate Holy Power.
    * Judgements of the Pure is now a Tier 1 talent. Down from Tier 2.
    * Sanctified Light now affects Word of Glory and increases critical chance by 6/12%. (Up from 5/10%)
    * Speed of Light *New* - Casting Holy Shock grants 5/10/30% spell haste for your next Flash of Light, Holy Light or Divine Light, and casting Healing Hands grants you 10/20/60% movement speed for 10 sec. Also lowers the cooldown on Healing Hands by 10/20/30 sec at all times.
    * Clarity of Purpose *New* - Reduces the casting time of your Holy Light and Divine Light spells by 0.1/0.2/0.3 sec.


Protection

    * Shield of Righteousness is now trained at level 44. Down from 74.
    * Sacred Duty now only Reduces the cooldown of Divine Protection by 1/2/3 min.
    * Improved Crusader Strike has been replaced with Grand Crusader - When your Shield of Righteousness and Hammer of Righteousness deal damage, they have a 20% chance of refreshing the cooldown on your next Crusader Strike and causing it to hit for 50/100% additional damage.
    * Ardent Defender is now a Tier 4 talent. Down from Tier 5.
    * Divine Guardian is now a single rank talent and has been revamped (but is probably NYI) - Party or raid members within 30 take 20% reduced damage for 6 sec.
    * Holy Shield has been revamped - Increases your chance to block by 30% for 10 sec, and deals 97.8 Holy damage for every attack blocked. Consumes Holy Power to extend duration by 10 sec per stack of Holy Power. / 10% of base mana, Instant cast, 1 min cooldown
    * Hallowed Ground is now a Tier 3 talent. Down from Tier 4.
    * Vindication is now a Tier 5 talent. Up from Tier 4.
    * Shield of the Templar is now a Tier 6 talent and has been revamped - Increases the critical strike chance of your Shield of Righteousness by 5/10%. In addition, your Shield of Righteousness critical strikes have a 50/100% chance of making your next Judgement a critical strike.
    * Spiritual Attunement is gone.
    * Divine Sacrifice is gone.
    * Improved Exorcism is now Wrath of the Faithful - Increases the damage by 10/20% and critical strike chance by 10/20% of your Holy Wrath spell.
    * Improved Devotion Aura is now Protector of the Innocent - Your Auras reduce your damage taken by 1/2/3% and the amount healed on any target by 2/4/6%.
    * Sanctuary Reduces the chance you'll be critically hit by melee attacks by 2/4/6% instead of reducing damage taken from all sources.
    * Sacred Oath is gone.
    * Reckoning now gives you a 10/20/30% chance after blocking an attack for your next 4 weapon swings within 8 sec to generate an additional attack.


Retribution

    * Divine Storm - An instant weapon attack that causes 20% of weapon damage to up to all enemies within 8 yards. The Divine Storm heals up to 3 party or raid members totaling 25% of the damage caused. Consumes all applications of Holy Power to increase damage dealt:
      1 Holy Power: 22% Weapon Damage
      2 Holy Power: 50% Weapon Damage
      3 Holy Power: 90% Weapon Damage / 20% of base mana, Instant cast
    * Crusader Strike now grants a charge of Holy Power.
    * Inquisition *New* - Consumes Holy Power to increase your Holy Damage by 30%. Lasts 10 sec per charge of Holy Power consumed. / 20% of base mana, Instant cast
    * Conviction is now a Tier 2 talent. Down from Tier 6.
    * Sanctity of Battle is now a Tier 3 talent. Down from Tier 6. Now reduces cooldown of Exorcism by 3/6 secs. (Up from 2/4 secs)
    * Swift Retribution is now a single rank talent increasing melee and ranged attack speed by 20%.
    * Fanaticism (Tier 4) is now Improved Judgement (Tier 2) - Increases the damage of your Judgement spell by 15% and decreases its cooldown by 3 sec.
    * Judgements of the Wise now grants you 40% of your base mana over 10 sec. (Old - immediately grants you 25% of your base mana)
    * The Art of War is now a Tier 4 talent, down from Tier 3. It now has a 15/30% chance to proc from any melee attack (Old - 100% proc from Critical) and no longer reduce the casting time of Holy Light.
    * Seals of Retribution is now a Tier 4 talent. Up from Tier 3.
    * Eye for an Eye is now a Tier 1 talent. Up from Tier 2. It now gives you a 5/10% chance to cause 30% of the damage taken back to the attacker.
    * Righteous Vengeance is now a Tier 6 talent. up from Tier 2.
    * Improved Judgements is now Improved Crusader Strike - Increases the damage of your Crusader Strike by 15/30% and decreases its cooldown by 1.5/3 sec.
    * Heart of the Crusader is now a Tier 3 (Up from Tier 1) single-rank (Down from 3 ranks) talent.

[jere]

Here are the latest changes.  They are pretty nice:

Holy

    * Divine Plea is now trained at level 44, down from 58. Now reduces the amount healed by all your healing spells.
    * Concentration Aura is now trained at level 42, down from 54.
    * Holy Wrath is now trained at level 28, down from 50.
    * Lay on Hands is now trained at level 16, down from 38.
    * Seal of the Pure is now named Seal of Insight.
    * Tower of Radiance - Directly healing the target of your Beacon of Light has a 33/66/100% chance to generate Holy Power.
    * Healing Light - Increases the amount healed by your Word of Glory and the damage and healing of your Holy Shock by 10/20/30%.


Protection

    * Hand of Protection is now trained at level 18. Down from 42.
    * Divine Protection now reduces all damage taken by 20% for 10 sec. (Down from 50% for 12 sec) Cooldown lowered from 5 min to 1 min. Spells restrictions (Divine Shield/Divine Protection/Hand of Protection/Avenging Wrath) removed.
    * Devotion Aura is now trained at level 18, down from level 22.
    * Blessing of Kings is now trained at level 22, up from 18.
    * Hammer of the Righteous now causes 160% weapon damage as holy damage. (Old - 3 times your main hand damage per second as Holy damage.)
    * Shield of the Templar has been revamped - Reduces the cooldown of Avenger's Shield by 2/4 sec, Guardian of Ancient Kings by 10/20 min, and increases the amount absorbed by your Sacred Shield by 10/20%.
    * Holy Shield now Holy Shield - Consumes Holy Power to grant 5% block per stack of Holy Power and deals 97.8 Holy damage for every attack blocked. Lasts 15 sec. / 10% of base mana, Instant cast
    * Sacred Duty has been revamped - Increases the critical strike chance of your Hammer of the Righteous by 5/10%. In addition, your Hammer of the Righteous critical strikes have a 50/100% chance of making your next Judgement a critical strike. /
    * Grand Crusader - When your Crusader Strike deals damage, it has a 10/20% chance of refreshing the cooldown on your next Holy Wrath.
    * Ardent Defender is now a Tier 7 talent (Up from Tier 4). Cooldown increased from 2 to 3 min.
    * Judgements of the Wise is now a primary skill.


Retribution

    * Inquisition is now Exclusive with Holy Shield.
    * Seal of Vengeance is now named Seal of Truth and its Holy Vengeance renamed to Censure.
    * Zealotry now has a 2 min cooldown, down from 30 min. Now lasts 15 sec. (Down from 30 sec)
    * Wrath of the Lightbringer gone.
    * Acts of Sacrifice *New* - Decreases the cooldown by 10/20/% and mana cost by 10/20% of your Hand of Freedom and Hand of Salvation.
    * Righteous Vengeance is now Inquiry of Faith - Increases the periodic damage done by your Seal of Truth by 20/40/60%.
    * Swift Retribution now also increases damage by 3%. Moved from Tier 6 to Tier 5.
    * Sanctified Retribution is gone.
    * Improved Crusader Strike is gone.
    * Heart of the Crusader is gone.
    * Sanctity of Battle no longer reduces the cooldown of Exorcism.
    * Templar's Verdict is now a primary skill of Retribution.
    * Communion *New* - Your Judgement grants the Replenishment effect to up to 10 party or raid members mana regeneration equal to 1% of their maximum mana per 5 sec for 15 sec.
    * Improved Judgement no longer decreases the cooldown of Judgement.
    * Judgements of the Wise is now a primary skill.
    * Selfless Healer (Tier 5) - Increases the healing of your Word of Glory by 30/60% when used to heal others.
    * Divine Purpose is now a Tier 4 talent - Your Templar's Verdict, Divine Storm and Inquisition have a 40% chance to generate Holy Power.
    * Divine Storm is now a Tier 3 talent.

The changes to Ret make spec'ing a lot better.  You no longer feel like you have to put all your points in the Ret tree, which is nice.  Still waiting to see what happens to prot, but it looks like it is shaping up nicely!

[Ironnfists]

Seal of the Pure now seems to have a chance to restore the Paladin's mana.

"Seems"?  Being that this is straight from Blizzard, shouldn't they be sure one way or another?   

[jere]

Well, Blizz isn't posting this stuff.  It is coming from MMO Champion so it is straight "what you see".  Some tooltips aren't updated and even some abilities have bugs, so it is hard to nail down some things.

Blizz did say they are putting both the mana and healing into one spell rather than splitting them now, they just haven't updated the tooltips so far.

[jere]

I can't find it at the moment, but there are some other holy changes I didn't list above.  Specifically:

A second "AoE" heal that fires like a conal wave in front of the paladin.  I think it was called Holy Wave or Healing Wave or something similar.  That in conjunction with Healing hands should make AoE healing at least bearable for paladins.

[jere]

Some blue posts

Crusader Strike
We have been trying Crusader Strike out at both 3 seconds and 4 seconds to see what fits the best. At the moment it is 3 sec (talented) for Ret and 4 sec for Prot and Holy. It all depends on how many other things are going on that you have to juggle. Inquisition, Zealotry and Exorcism and Divine Purpose procs in addition to the basics of CS, TV and Judgement with Holy Wrath filling in any holes can add up to a lot.

While we definitely want Ret to have an actual rotation in the sense that you aren't just hitting things when they come off of cooldown, we don't want to make it more complex than the other dps specs in the game. (Source)

Haste effect on Seal of Vengeance and Judgement of the Wise
Excellent question. It isn't a talent, but Seal of Truth (Seal of Vengeance) will tick faster with haste and Judgement of the Wise's periodic mana energize will tick faster with haste. A Ret paladin with enough haste might have enough mana to throw out the occasional Consecration, while a fresh 85 might not be able to afford it often. (Source)

Divine Guardian / Divine Protection
Divine Guardian doesn't affect the paladin. Otherwise we feared it would just get used as another tank cooldown instead of for the raid utility for which it was intended.

We're strongly considering changing Divine Protection into a short cooldown. It is currently a clone of Shield Wall. Considering the paladin 85 also offers strong emergency damage reduction, we thought they could use a short cooldown ability (say 30-60 sec). Shield Block for warriors is being repositioned more as a short cooldown ability. (Source)

Avenger's Shield
Avenger's Shield silences as a baseline effect. It no longer dazes, since all that seemed to accomplish was making pulling take longer. (Source)

Righteous Fury
Righteous Fury now affects all threat. (Source)

Holy Shield and Glyph of Salvation
I'm not optimistic that we'll keep the Salv glyph, but we'll see. As to Holy Shield, it is going through rapid iteration. Our current implementation has it providing 5% block per stack of Holy Power, up to a max of 15%. So you can use Holy Power for threat, healing or mitigation depending on current circumstances. You should be able to keep the 15% block up all the time with a very small amount of effort.

Warriors get 15% block baseline, so this means the paladin has to work harder for it. Seeing as how the paladin doesn't have to maintain Demo Shout or Thunderclap's debuff, this doesn't seem too great a burden. (Source)

Let Holy Wrath apply Vindication
This is, in fact, exactly what we did. (Source)

Is Paladin getting too complicated?
As a response to some of the sky falling rhetoric in this thread (not specifically the post I quoted, which was worded quite reasonably) and others like it, allow me to offer the following:

We have said many times in the past several months that we don't think paladins have enough going on. Now that we're starting to deliver on that, it doesn't surprise me at all to see some concern that things are changing. I'm sure there are some players out there that just really liked the 6969 rotation, but in a game as large as WoW, there are some players who like anything. We need to do what we think is right for the game, and that includes adding some depth to the paladin class. Our goal is to make the class more fun. We don't expect every forum poster is going to 100% agree that we're going about that in the same way they would. We think in the end though that the class will be more fun. (Source)

Holy Power:
Will this get a new UI element similar to the Warlock shards or Rogue combo points?
Yes. (Source)

Touched by the Light
Prot paladins get it as a passive. It converts Str to spell power but does not affect healing. Part of what we're trying to do is get paladins to specialize more and be less capable of doing everything with one spec. (Source)

Word of Glory and Inquisition
All paladins can use the heal (Word of Glory) and the self-buff (Inquisition). Prot paladins have a talent to allow them to get a defensive use (Holy Shield). Proper use of Holy Power will distinguish a good paladin from a bad, but the system is far more forgiving than combo points. Consider that if you totally ignored Holy Shield you'd be giving up 15% block. Decent, but not life-threatening. (Source)

[lightfather]

I am just wondering if anybody is in cataclysm beta?

if you are send me a message here and we can hook up there or something.
I just got into beta last night