Please make this change!

As far as rotations go, something I mentioned in the live forums is we are trying letting Shield of the Righteous (or whatever we decide to call it) consume Holy Power for more damage *and* refresh Holy Shield. So you would need to get Holy Shield up, but then you could just use your shield hits instead. If you were ever in a position where you couldn’t hit the boss, you could always fall back on just casting Holy Shield itself. We’ll see how that feels.

That would be an amazing change, it would make Holy Power less of a limitation and more of a bonus, remove the maintenance-y feel of Holy Shield, and bring back our old friend ShoR all at the same time. I sincerely hope they make this change and are happy with it.

Bonus: a hint of something else they really should do.

We’d like to give Prot paladins (Ret too) passive spell hit somewhere.

That’d be pretty necessary if our attack power reduction debuff (Holy Wrath+Vindication) is on the spell hit table.

The first thirty minutes

I was up until about 1:30, installing beta and then patch beta, and patching beta, and … patching beta. It took quite a lot of time.

Once everything was done, I copied a character onto the beta and then flew over the spires of Orgrimmar, sighed contentedly, and then passed out on my keyboard.

Then about and hour ago I finally got the chance to hop on again and began doing what I do best: obsessively, and compulsively, build the perfect sand castle before the tide comes in. I specced like so:

Then hit up the trainer to grab some skills:

Apparently there’s a fun bug where you can’t train anything at the moment. That wouldn’t fly for me, so I did the painful work-around of dropping a profession first and then was able to pick up Seal of Truth, Word of Glory, and the ability to Parry.

Once that was done, I larded up my bars with all the skills and attacks I could squeeze on them and keybound everything just right.

Once that was all done, something still didn’t seem right. I wracked my Belf-like noggin’ and decided I needed a tabard for some vain reason. So I tracked down the Tabard Vendor and purchased the snappiest number they had.

Alright, we’re golden, time to hit up some beta!

Dammit.

I did manage to check out one thing from my list (yes, I made a list of things to check out): what does the new Consecration interface look like?

Well it puts a little timer underneath your player unit frame that counts down how long you have left on the duration of your Consecrate. When you drop a new one, the timer resets. Pretty cool, especially if we’re going to be using 2/2 Hallowed Ground, it’ll be nice to be able to keep track on the full duration of a debuff that we just dump on the ground.

Once the server gets back up I’ll hit the dummies and run some logs and see what our “rotation” looks like at the moment and how much everything hits for.

By the way, if there’s anything you want me to check out–be it a location, an npc, how much Holy Light hits for in prot gear, whatever–just comment and ask. I don’t mind running around and taking screenshots!

Into the breach!

As I’m leaving work today (er, this being post-midnight I suppose it was yesterday) I noticed Rilgon tweet rather cryptically in a fashion that altogether hinted he had received a beta key. In short order, he confirmed this great news with a blog post and named his mysterious benefactor: Curse. In a fit of pique I tweeted them asking if they’d be so kind as to hit me up as well. I figured it was a shot in the dark, closed my computer for the day, and left the office to begin my weekend.

About 20 minutes later while in the grocery store with my girlfriend, I noticed my phone buzzing a few times as if I received a few emails. At the booze aisle I finally checked out what the hub-bub was, and spotted an email from Anafielle saying “YESSSSSSSSSS” and another saying that @cursenetwork was following me now.

I put two and two together and immediately began hyperventilating. “What, what is wrong?!” the gf questioned as I began foaming at the mouth. I stammered the word “b-b-beta” and launched Twitter to make sure this wasn’t some delusion of grandeur.

Yet, there it was. “Holy crap!” I then finally found the breath to spit out, “I’m in the damn beta!” The gf then congratulated me, though we both knew she had no idea what I was talking about. She means well though.

Anyway–you, gentle readers, you understand the magnitude of this! We’re about to embark on a grand journey of math, and screenshots, and endless hours spent in front of test dummies with World of Logs running. I’m going to bloat this blog to the seams with every manner of factoid and tidbit I can of the rollercoaster ride that our class and spec is taking this beta cycle.

I’m beyond excited that rather than just saying “this sounds bad, but I have no idea” or “I bet this would be great in person,” I can actually confirm these changes first hand. I’m also beyond honored that Curse deemed me worthy of receiving this beta key. I’ll do the community proud in presenting some amazing and in depth coverage to justify my presence there.

Build 12644: a few interesting changes

Build 12644. Some changes make sense, some seem like steps towards a different direction, like their reaching for something in the distance but don’t quite have it yet. Beta, and all. Ultimately just another step towards in the inevitable–though the question is: step forward, or step back?

1. Avenger’s Shield is getting all proc-y

So Avenger’s Shield has a base cooldown of 30 seconds. The talent Shield of the Templar reduces that down to 20 seconds. On top of that, Grand Crusader has been redesigned to give us a 20% chance to proc a reset on AS’s cooldown. This is great, but what’s the deal exactly?

Is AS supposed to be some sort of ghetto interrupt, on the global cooldown and suffering from the usual half-second delay in the application of the silence? I hope that’s not even half the intention of this change because that’s a depressing thought if they thing this makes a remotely plausible replacement for Rebuke.

My other thought is, how is Avenger’s Shield hitting on the beta? Is a powerhouse hit that would be worth using whenever the cooldown is up, or would it take a back seat to something doing a little more damage, like perhaps the new Hammer of the Righteous iteration? If Avenger’s Shield somehow becomes our heaviest hitting attack–a mighty big if–then that Grand Crusader proc will be something fun to watch for and immediately react to. Otherwise, it’ll just be a moment where we’ll have to stop and reassess our priorities midfight–”HotR is next, then Judgement… but AS just procced, so AS then judgement”–or something similarly annoying.

I really wish I was in the beta and could run some logs and work this out.

2. Holy Shield gets a little better

Up now to 20 seconds, which is good because we’re not as much in “one CS miss and you’re boned” mode anymore. However, two CS misses!

Personally, I think duration needs to get a little higher so that we can use Holy Power for something more than maintaining Holy Shield. Blizz wants the new resource system to be more interesting than stacking it to three and gaining a buff that other classes (I speak of our eternal enemies, the Warriors) get for free. I’ll return to this gripe shortly. In any case (or, as Anafielle would say, “irregardless”) Holy Shield is getting better but it’s not quite there yet. Need just a little more breathing room to make up for CS misses in early raid tiers and to give us a little more choice with Holy Power.

3. They want us to use Word of Glory, but I’m not buying it

Speaking of choice with Holy Power, the newest iteration of Guarded by the Light gives us a reason to use Word of Glory, giving us a protective shield worth however much we overheal ourselves with the ability. Doing on average 1367 per stack of Holy Power, and boosted by 20% by GbtL, it’s theoretically possible we’d get a shield worth 1640 per HP. At a max stack of 3 Holy Power, that’s a shield worth 4920 damage. Theoretically.

While that sounds interesting, I have two concerns: (1) who realistically is going to have more than one Holy Power to spend on a Word of Glory per Holy Shield cycle? And (2) how ridiculously hard is it going to be to time Word of Glory to maximize overhealing and thus getting as much shield as possible? I’d say close to impossible. Maybe at the start of the pull as a Holy Power dump, but I think I’d much rather have more block than a piddly 5k shield. A piddly 5k shield that doesn’t scale, and will still be 5k at the last raid tier.

Needs more work, send it back.

4. New Hammer of the Righteous, ShoR probably dead

The bell tolls for ShoR. Hammer of the Righteous now hits for 300% weapon damage on a single target, 150% damage on a second target, and 75% on a third. It’s not a single and multi-attack all in one. Good change–less clutter, makes HotR (presumably) our biggest gun.

5. Hallowed Ground not mandatory anymore

With the removal of the +damage component of this talent, it’s purely optional at this point. Also like if the Glyph of Consecration was made into a talent and given steroids. There’ll be no direct tps improvement for taking it, other than perhaps an indirect benefit by freeing up GCDs that would otherwise be spent maintaining Consecrate. I can’t see myself taking this talent in a hypothetical boss-only talent spec unless it really smooths out the rotation for us.

And, speaking of Consecration, a pertinent GC quote:

Currently we are looking really hard at AE damage abilities by all tanks. We tried Thunder Clap with no cooldown and didn’t like it. We also tried Thunder Clap with a Consecrate-like talent, but I’m not sure we like that either. At the moment we are thinking of nerfing any of the really passive AEs, including Swipe, Death and Decay, Damage Shield and Consecrate. All of those abilities (well, maybe not Damage Shield) would still be usable, but they would be more situational.

The bottom line is that we think all tanks need to be able to trivially handle the massive adds or straggling adds situations easily, or none of them should be able to.

Personally, I think it’d probably be easiest for the devs to move to a model where you can AOE tank, but until you severely overgear the instance, it’d be a fool’s errand to attempt to do so. It’s going to be impossible close Pandora’s Box at this point. Just let AOE tanking exist, balance it across the classes, and then make it deadly to do so right off the bat. People don’t want to CC in heroics when at the last raid tier, as much as they say they do.

6. Holy Demo Shout is go

I keep confusing Thunderclap and Demo Shout, which would be unfortunate, but this is warriors we’re talking about here. Anyway, Vindication is no longer an auto-debuff (which I cheer) and now an effect of Holy Wrath (which makes Wrath of the Lightbringer mandatory). I’m ok with this change. Less auto is good.

7. What the heck is our rotation becoming?

Someone observed we’re going from the easiest rotation in the game to the most difficult. In some respects, I think they’re right. Gone is the elegant simplicity of 969, and here comes a choppy priority system. We’re looking at a toolbox of HotR, Judgement, Crusader Strike, Holy Wrath, Holy Shield, Consecrate, Avenger’s Shield, and maybe Word of Glory. You’d want to Hammer before Judging, in case Sacred Duty procs, and you want to always get at least the three Crusader Strikes in every 20 seconds (though this basically being used every time off cooldown, since Holy Power is the foundation of our rotation), and you want to shield toss when proc’d (maybe), and you need to Holy Wrath every thirty seconds, and Consecrate at least every 15.

I deliberately made that paragraph as wall of text as I could stand, if only to underline how bizarre the rotation feels. And yet, the best part is: next build there’ll be something fundamentally different in there.

Roller coaster!

Her end was inevitable

It seems like a lot of guilds out there have stopped progressing really this summer, which makes me proud of my plucky little guild that we’ve continued plodding along in ICC 25 even in the middle of the summer doldrums. We racked up a latest progression kill last night, on heroic Lady Deathwhisper 25. Obviously the 30% buff is a big help, and helped us cheese a few aspects of the fight (I’m specifically thinking of making ghost explosions 30% less deadly than they could be) but ultimately I don’t think that diminishes our accomplishment. Just reduced how much wall-head-banging was required.

In any case, we started working on this mouthy lichess last week and put about 2 hours in before I switched it back to normal so we wouldn’t fall behind for the week. Our best attempt we got her to around 30%, which is not to shabby.

Then this week our very first attempt and we got her to around 23% before the raid wiped in a ghost-ignited explosion. I was filled with hope, but then on the second go we had some serious issues with ghosts and wiped at around 40%, which me start to Frank out a bit, like Bruce Banner after getting a paper cut. I reiterated my philosophy of “ghost=death” and insisted that melee get away as soon as they come up to prevent a ghost that was perhaps zeroing in on a tank from turning them into a puddle.

Third attempt was much, much better on the ghosts. It still ended ingloriously, but seeds were obviously planted. There was little to no tunnel-visioning and I heard very few tell-tale ‘splosions from the raid.

Fourth attempt we got it down to 7% before we were completely overwhelmed by adds and the raid was finished off. I was officially in full-blown “we can do this” mode.

Fifth attempt I set up a dedicated adds team of three ranged and two melee, rather than just assigning people on the fly based on their position in Omen. Adds as a result went much smoother, and ghosts were awesome, but it got really sticky at the end. As her health plummeted we had a really bad ghost explosion in ranged that took out a couple of healers and a few ranged. We steadily worked our way down to the 3% and I was holding my breath just doing whatever I could via Hands, Raid Wall, or screaming “GHOSTS” to keep the raid going. A cold sweat pouring down my face, we finally knocked her over dead.

We didn’t even have to do the first kill via bubbles post-enrage. I think that’s a first for progression.

In any case, another few seconds and we surely would have wiped, we were severely overwhelmed. So you can imagine how proud I was of the raid for holding it together in those crucial last seconds.

Next week I’m sure will see a much, much cleaner kill.

On a different tangent, I was also really happy with the two newest recruits we brought into raid last night. One was a DK who did great dps, and the other was the equally awesome Antigen of Haz Mace, Will Raid (I am collecting paladin bloggers it seems) who had a great first showing in his first 25man with us. I love when recruits click.

Great night over all, and the best thing is we’re ahead of schedule this week. I think we can turn that around into a full clear of ICC25 tonight.

ShoR, no more?

Sorry, I couldn’t resist using that awful title. A poet and I didn’t even know it.

To the beta outrage of the day, we go:

We have temporarily disabled Shield of Righteousness.

We’re working on the basic Prot rotations right now, and with Shield of Righteousness in addition to Crusader Strike, Hammer of the Righteous, Consecrate, Avenger’s Shield and Holy Wrath, there was just a lot going on. Shield seemed like the least interesting of those abilities — really Shield and Hammer just seem to be single-target and multitarget versions of the same ability, especially without block scaling. Shield also felt like a duplicate of Shield Slam, which doesn’t help in trying to differentiate the two Prot trees. Frankly, we’d rather make Avenger’s Shield and Hammer of the Righteous cooler than they are today.

It’s too early to call this a permanent change. We still have a lot to consider, such as the damage of Hammer vs. Shield, how different we want the AE vs. single-target Prot attacks to be, and how much Holy Power considerations occupy a Prot paladin.

If we keep Shield of Righteousness, we need to figure out its role relative to Hammer. We don’t want it to be just swap one button for another for AE fights, and we don’t want you to have to use both on cooldown since we are giving Prot paladins more things to manage in Cataclysm.

Back at the start of Wrath we were finally given something more than the stable of four or so attacks we had in TBC: Shield of Righteousness and Hammer of the Righteous. ShoR was in essence a carbon copy of a Warrior’s Shield Slam (minus the dispel), and HotR was basically Holy Cleave. in the beginning, ShoR has an amazing scaling curve with Block Value, to the point where it had to be nerfed because it was hitting for too much damage.

Since that snip job (and then the later indignity of being subject to dodges and parries), ShoR just hasn’t been the same. It’s been rather anemic in the last tier of content, no where near the oomph that HotR has had lately.

And frankly, if it was gone, I wouldn’t feel worse off. It had its time in the sun, and it’s time for us to let the old girl go.

In terms of pure flavor I’ve seen a lot of people defending the retention of the ability on the grounds of pure flavor. Granted, the animation of hitting something with your shield is cool, but I don’t really feel that justifies keeping ShoR on life support. If I can take the luxury of hopping in the mud for a second, when I think of a Paladin I see Uther trudging into battle with his hammer at his side. The idea of a Paladin striking with a shield seems anti-thematic, Paladins are about standing ones ground, hunkering down, and raining the wrath of the light down upon their foes through holy power and their trusty mace.

As such, if I had to sophie’s choice between ShoR and HotR, I would always choose the hammer.

But like I said, that’s just me. I wouldn’t expect a design decision to be made upon my pseudo-RP fantasies anymore than I would hope anyone would. You can’t balance around a day dream of what your class should be bashing someone in the face with it. At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter which animation delivers the tps, does it? There’s a reason they call it flavor and not, say, nutritional content.

In any case, if they want to do something meaningful with Shield of Righteousness they should make it more than just an instant attack. Maybe turn it into some kind of Holy Power “finishing move” that does damage based on how many stacks of HoPo (ha, Ana, HA) you have. That would make ShoR much more meaningful, and so much more than just another instant melee attack with a more fun animation.

Right now if ShoR goes quietly into that good night, I won’t miss it. It’s not the same attack we all fell in love with at level 75. And, like someone on the tanking forums said, you can’t make hamburger without slaughtering a few sacred cows.

Concerns about Holy Power and Holy Shield

Consider this to the pessimistic counterpoint to my previous, optimistic post. Let’s talk about a major issue in the latest iteration of Holy Shield’s design.

But first, two pertinent GC quotes:

So you can use Holy Power for threat, healing or mitigation depending on current circumstances.

We are going to turn both Holy Shield and Shield Block into short cooldowns. A short cooldown is an ability that you don’t save for an absolute emergency (like Shield Wall) but we also don’t want it to be on such a short cooldown that it feels maintenance-y. It’s a tricky number to get right, but something in the 30 sec to 1 min zone feels about right. Then you might use Holy Shield one GCD instead of SoR or you can choose to save it until the next big boss attack.

Right now as it is in Build 12604, Holy Shield could not feel more maintenance-y. It has a 15 second duration, apparently no cooldown, and is optimally used at 3 stacks of Holy Power. With Crusader Strike at a 4 second cooldown, you’re going to be using CS every 4.5 seconds.

For example, a possible single-target rotation is:

0.0 CS (1 Holy Power)
1.5 X
3.0 Y
4.5 CS (2 Holy Power)
6.0 Z
7.5 X
9.0 CS (3 Holy Power)
10.5 Holy Shield (get that 15% block up pronto!)

Then, moving forward, you’d do something like:

12.0 X
13.5 CS (1)
15.0 Y
16.5 Z
18.0 CS (2)
19.5 X
21.0 Y
22.5 CS (3)
24.0 Z
25.5 Holy Shield

With that in mind, I posit this to you: what happens if Crusader Strike misses? Or parried, dodged, blocked? It’s a physical attack, it can be countered with any of those (much like ShoR today).

Do we put up a subpar 10%–or 5%–Holy Shield and live with the possibility that we’re running sub-optimally for another 15 seconds?

How does this sync up with Ghostcrawler’s declaration that,

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.

Does work harder also mean “live with the possibility of not having the full benefit of a 15% Holy Shield”? Because, if you think at level 85 we’re going to be hit and expertise capped already, I have a bridge to sell you my friend.

The obvious solution is to extend the duration of Holy Shield. Even adding another 10 seconds to the length of Holy Shield’s buff would give you extra time to build up some make-up Holy Power stacks, if need be. And moreover, this would moreover reduce some of the tightness in the emerging rotation, where not CSing on cooldown means suboptimal survivability.

I am sure this is going to be fixed, but this is the worry du jour, for now.

Holy Wrath is a Holy Thunderclap

Sorry for the stubby post, but another pertinent GC quote from the bowels of the official tanking forums. Don’t say I never did anything nice for you guys after wading through much of that garbage and fit-mongering to find the gold.

When asked if Holy Wrath–now able to hit all enemy types–would apply Vindication, making it a Paladin version of a Warrior’s Thunderclap, Ghostcrawler replied:

This is, in fact, exactly what we did.

Likewise, the same person brought up that Thunderclap was upped in duration to 30 seconds and that Vindication might get the same treatment. Ghostcrawler confirmed this with a simple:

Ditto.

This doesn’t change that Vindication has a sub-100% uptime. I wonder if that’s on the block for being changed as well.

Overall though, it’s instances like these (or the stam modifier disparity being resolved) that keep me from overreacting to any negative beta news that arises. Now, let’s see if they resolve another obvious issue (Rebuke).

More clarifications from GC

Lots of insight from the crab!

On Holy Shield

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.

So much for a 66% Holy Shield. The new plan seems to be a return to the old “use Holy Shield as soon as it falls off” with the added twist of accumulating 3 HP first to push block chance up to 15%. I hope that the duration of Holy Shield will be long enough for us to accumulate at least 6 HP, 3 to either use Word of Glory or Inquisition depending on situation, and then another 3 to max out the next Holy Shield.

On Raidwall

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.

This makes sense, but saddens me.

On Bubblewall

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.

The mirroring of warriors continues a-pace!

On Grand Crusader

Grand Crusader no longer affects Crusader Strike. That was an older model we were trying.

I wonder what the new ability will be? Probably not Judgement, the cooldown is too short. Maybe Avenger’s Shield, or a free/instant Exorcism (Art of War: Electric Bugaloo)?

On 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.

Good change! Very good change!

On threat in general

Righteous Fury now affects all threat.

Also an excellent change. Needed to be done with Crusader Strike coming into our toolbox, and Vengeance affecting Attack Power.

On stamina

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 cooldowns and how they tank. DKs and druids are likely to have different amounts of health as well.

While I never freaked out about 10% vs 15%, it’s good to see–as rational minds suspected–that was not going to be anywhere near a final design.

Build 12539 brings a flood of changes

Finally we can begin to tinker with our talent trees. It looks like pieces are starting to fall into place and–as you might suspect–there has been much change visited upon the Protection tree. Some talents are gone, some are revised, some are new. I’ve broken down most of the changes into key themes or trends, rather than going tier by tier through the tree. I think it’ll be easier to give an effective overview of everything this way.

Mana

How we manage our blue bar is changing. To whit,

We also cut the Spiritual Attunement mechanic… Instead, Prot gets Judgement of the Wise (sans the raid Replenishment effect) as a passive, just like Ret. In essence, the melee paladins should rarely run out of mana, and if they do, they always have Divine Plea for emergencies.

So this is how things stand on the mana front: our mana will naturally regenerate, and should stay ahead of our consumption provided we don’t sit there and constantly recast Consecration. If we do run into a tight spot, we have Divine Plea as a mana “cooldown”. We probably won’t be as obsessed with keeping the effect up, because it will be overkill.

In light of this, I’m confused about Guarded by the Light. For 2 points, we get a no-cooldown DP coupled with an auto-refresh on hit. I would posit that if this talent made it to live, we very well might skip it. I just don’t see the point if DP isn’t going to be constantly used. Using it as a cooldown would preclude two talent points being spent in reducing cooldowns and extending durations.

I suspect the talent will be either changed or removed, but for now feel free to skip it in your drawing board builds.

Edit: Something I completely blanked out on that Kaelandros brought up in the comments was that GbtL autorefreshing gives us a constant 3% damage reduction via the glyph, which would be reason enough to go 2/2 GbtL. Assuming the glyph makes it to Cataclysm, you’d probably having to stick with GbtL, which is a particularly stupid design/reason to have to spec into a talent. I suspect the glyph will not make it to Cata untouched.

Rebuke, the greatest insult of all

Holy crap, Paladins get an interrupt! A real interrupt! … oh wait, it’s in the Ret tree. Four tiers down. Out of reach.

Dammit.

This needs to change. Call to arms!

Grand Crusader is our Sword & Board

Interesting, a proc! I like this, as you can imagine. I’m a sucker for procs.

I can forsee a future where Crusader Strike will only be used when proc’d by this talent (since as just physical damage it will be weak without the benefit of Righteous Fury upping threat, and we have harder hitting single target attacks), which will then flow Holy Power into our coffers.

Holy Shield is our primary Holy Power dump

Holy Power will now extend the duration of Holy Shield by 10 seconds per charge consumed. Baseline, Holy Shield increased block change by 30% for 10 seconds. So, generating 3 HoPo stacks (I feel dirty having written that) and then casting Holy Shield will dump our… HoPo… and push up a huge amount of block. With a 1 minute cooldown, that’s 66% uptime, nothing to sneeze at.

Combined with Mastery giving block, I wonder how much block we’ll have with this ability up. 45%? 50%? More?

We’ll also have the new skill Inquisition (which replaces Blinding Shield as our lvl 83 ability), that can be used to dump Holy Power. Increases holy damage done by 30% for 10 seconds per Holy Power charge.

Sacred Duty/Protector of the Innocent are beyond boring

1% or minute per talent point. 3 talent points to cap. Yawn. This is precisely the kind of talent we were told was going away in Cataclysm, and I expect these are just placeholders.

Raidwall survives the cut

A big sigh of relief from me, for now. I love the raidwall effect of Divine Guardian, and I’m glad to see it in our current tree. I hope it continues to dodge any further changes and stays just as it is from here til live.

… as does Reckoning

Rumors of this talent’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. And, color me surprised, I really thought this was the last we were going to see of this talent. The question now is, with its effect reduced to just blocks having a chance to proc it, how much threat will this talent be. If we’re blocking 35% of hits with Holy Shield up, it’s probably not going to be a lot of threat. At 50% we’re starting to see the chance of a more beneficial uptime.

This is definitely a talent that’s going to need to be mathed out to prove its worth. But, I have a nagging suspicion that because as gear gets better this talent will too, it’s eventually going to be worth it. The question is if it’s going to be worth taking off the bat or not.

How is AOE getting reined in exactly?

So, Blinding Shield is gone. Ok, that’s one less AOE spell. However, Holy Wrath now hits all enemy types. And Consecration is nigh-infinite when talented through Hallowed Ground.

I need to know exactly how the devs are planning to tone down AOE. Between our buffs and Warriors getting their own Consecration (oh yes), it seems like Cataclysm has the potential to become another massive AOE-fest.

I suppose mana costs can be tuned to make AOEing prohibitively expensive, and mobs can be designed that cannot be tanked in a huge pile–but the tea leaves seem to be pointing towards a different future.

10% vs 15%

From the linked GC quote above comes the news that we’ll be getting a +10% stamina modifier not from some talent, but rather

Prot paladins get +10% Stamina at level 10 for choosing Prot spec.

Believe me, unlike some delicate flowers on the official tanking forums, I understand that Beta does not equal final, so I’m not going to freak out in a glorious flash of italics and bolds and poetic similes. However, it is concerning that warriors at the moment have a 15% stamina modifier, while ours is down to 10%. And this is with classes have different initial stamina values.

This will probably change. I hope.

Ardent Defender still is gimped

I’m withholding judgement on this talent until we see what a more realistic/tuned iteration looks like. Obviously, I like the clickability,  but the timing in which is can be active seems off. There’s a lot of questions that need to be answered. The health range should probably also go up to 50%.

Subject to further balance tweaking of course.

Update! Ask and ye shall receive:

Ardent Defender – Activate to reduce damage taken by 20% for 10 sec. While active, attacks which would otherwise kill you cause you to be healed for 15% of your maximum health. 3 minute cooldown. Off the GCD.

Two specs, one tank: Trash and Boss Builds

While screwing around with wowtal.com I came up with two builds. One is primarily for trash tanking, 0/34/7, and has Wrath of the Faithful and Reckoning. The other is more boss-tanking oriented, 3/31/7, and has Divinity and only 2 points in Reckoning (because I can’t think of a better place of them).

I can definitely see myself just juggling two different prot specs in the next expansion. Even while dual specced now I barely ever use my Holy spec… or is it Ret? I haven’t switched specs in about four months and can’t remember while I currently have as my offspec. With only 41 in our pocket, talent points are a precious commodity, so it makes sense to me to have two different specs for two different tanking roles, and not “wasting” points on a talent that I might not need at that moment.

Likewise, I’m seriously considering dumping Pursuit of Justice if run speed enchants return in Cata. Doesn’t seem worth 2 points when an enchant can provide half the effect and those points could be spent on talents more directly affecting our threat.

All in all

I’m pretty happy with the tree. I’m not one for doom and gloom–er, generally–and I know none of this is final. It’s a good step towards the end game (and a huge improve over the last tree!) and I’m sure it’ll only improve and tighten up from here.