It begins!

The NDA was lifted, Beta has opened, and two Prot Pally changes have already slipped through the net.

First, Blessing of Sanctuary is just “Sanctuary” now. We no longer have a cast a separate blessing on ourselves, the actions of Sanc are now baseline. This is in-tune with blessings in general being streamlined–ie, might and wisdom combining to just Blessing of Might.

The other big thing you might have noticed is the change to the Holy Shield talent. At the moment, it’s poorly worded, because the description easily misconstrues itself as saying that our 6% crit reduction is only active when Holy Shield is active.

Thankfully, as Ghostcrawler has illuminated, this is not the case.

The crit immunity is a permanent passive for spec’ing that deep into the tree.

Also, I think the Wowhead tooltip is wrong. What I’ve seen is Holy Shield only increases chance to block by 5% now, rather than 30%. For what it’s worth.

Of course, the Prot tree is no where near finalized. This is all very much subject to changing. Including what talent gives us the crit reduction.

Hold onto your hats.

Edit: Suicidal Zebra has a great roundup of changes thus far.