Divine Plea hope

Score! Let's hope this change goes live!

We changed it so Divine Plea will generate 3 Holy Power when used so you can start with Holy Power on the pull.

No reason to be a Prot Paladin in Cata

Well, I have to say (irregardless of the death of 25 man raiding which I hate) that I don't hold much enthusiasm for my paladin in the coming expansion. Ret is looking good, but that's not really what I want to play as. Holy is a new beast but with a little work could be something fun (really, don't cut illumination, find another way to nerf regen). But Prot is really, really aweful on beta right now.

A large number of talents we're forced to take are unwanted. Massive amount of loss in terms of mitigation and actual abilities (yes, seriously, we have less tools to use to tank with and a lot of the ones we kept just do less - like HoR not doing damage anymore). A clunky and unfun Holy Power mechanic (Ret and Holy make it a lot more fun) -- which btw when we play the stuff for a month before Cata we won't even get Inquisition (level 81) which is really the only useful ability for Prot Holy Power (we'll be forced to use shield which is less useful and even more clunky).

But worst of all, is that there's just no reason to play Prot Paladin when you could be something else. DKs and warriors just blow us away in terms of tanking ability, tools, and talents. Druids bring better hp and mitigation as well as having that healing dual spec with better utility (paladins now only have hand spells--last build judgement of light in addtion to wisdom was dead--while druids have innervate and battle rez). I honestly feel like Cata is worse for prot paladins than vanilla. I was a prot paladin for one of the first Nefarian kills anywhere--back when I had int, mp5, and agi forced on my gear--and Cata Prot Paladins are in a worse position.

New holy power bar

Well, then new holy power bar is on beta, but when I played with it wasn't working correct yet. It does however look real nice, heh. The power auras that mmo-champ previewed look pretty good in the screenshots. So far holy and retribution seem to be shaping up nicely with holy power, but protection still feels awkward and underpowered.

BlizzChat Developer Chat on Twitter

Interesting...

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.
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New Talent System Unveiled

Well, the new talent system is on the Cata-beta server... and I'd tell you how much holy/prot talents suck (ret actually looks pretty sleek), but I would prefer to play them first and currently some talents are broke so you can't actually learn them. O_o

I'm sure they'll get some changes before release; but the removal of redoubt and reckoning makes me very sad. They weren't the most powerful talents; but they were very unique, flavorful, iconic, and historic prot paladin talents.

Slow

Boring few months for paladin news. Still waitin' on Cataclysm infos, which will likely change a lot when Beta goes live and the NDA is lifted.

Death of 25 man raiding

We'll bury you next to 40 man raiding.

10- and 25-player (normal difficulty) -- Very similar to one another in difficulty; drop the exact same items as each other.
10- and 25-player (Heroic difficulty) -- Very similar to one another in difficulty; drop more powerful versions of the normal-difficulty items.
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Now, I don't mind the shared lockout. But more abundant loot isn't going to be enough reason for most people to go through the hardships of organizing more people unless it's like 1 to 6 or something overpowered. Our current 10 and 25 set ups have the problem of 10s having too good of loot already and forcing 25s to do them as well; so Blizzard thinks they'll force 25s to not do them as the answer, when really the answer is not make the loot worth the time for 25s people.

Cataclysm Class Preview: Paladin

Nerfs, nerfs, and more nerfs. Their intentions are not honorable. Also pretty clear that someone doesn't have a good grip on paladins as they called flash the expensive heal. I wonder if prot/ret will get to use Holy Shock as offensive or if they'll take that part away. And I don't know why they haven't noticed but bonus crit healing amount isn't very popular; it's definitely a slap-in-the-face from the cool things other classes get.

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

Protection
Damage Reduction
Vengeance
Block Amount

Retribution
Melee Damage
Melee Critical Damage
Holy Damage

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.

Vengeance: This is the damage-received-to-a

ttack-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.

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

Um, holy shield... Really, GC? Really?!
It's so damn obvious that GC only listens to whiners about paladins and doesn't actually know anything about them. Oh, you say your paladin friends are out aggroing you? Nerfed. What's this about paladins and cooldowns? Meh, whatever, you can have a crappy glyph on an ability that dunks your threat.
Personally, I enjoy the holy shield mechanic; I like having buttons to press that make me a tougher tank (I often Sacred Shield myself too). I enjoyed the old shield block on my warrior, but it's also nice having it as a nifty cooldown useful in unusual ways (perhaps because my paladin just lacks cooldowns).

If you don't think Shield Block is interesting enough today, that's a fine discussion to have. I'm a little surprised to see any nostalgia for the old model though. Hitting a relatively common dps button that plays into other talents and abilities is one thing. Having to constantly mash "make me slightly more survivable" is another. I'll grant you that it was fun on Illidan, but it took that mechanic specifically to make it fun.

Imagine how you'd react to this scenario:

GC: Good news, everyone! We lowered the cooldown of Shield Wall to 5 sec and balanced assuming you hit it every 5 sec.

Tanks: Um.... Thanks? Could you maybe just make it a passive at that point?

GC: But hitting buttons is fun!
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Paladin HP Nerf

Already the lowest hp tank and nerfing us some more. It's just retarded. After the armor change and this, I no longer have any faith in the designers to actually balance the tanks instead of listening to a small minority of big ego whiners.

We are making some adjustments to tank survivability based on what we’re seeing in Icecrown Citadel. We feel this is particularly important in preparation for upcoming Heroic attempts. This is tricky and occasionally subjective, so we might very well make more adjustments as we get even more data.

Paladin:
• Sacred Duty now provides 2 / 4% Stamina, down from 4 / 8% Stamina. The cooldown advantages of the talent remain unchanged.
Death Knight:
• Frost Presence now provides 8% Stamina, up from 6% Stamina.
• Icebound Fortitude now provides 30% base damage reduction, up from 20% damage reduction. For a geared tank with high defense, this translates to 50% damage reduction, up from 40%.

It’s important to note that we aren’t trying to single out paladins here. We like the tank balance of warriors and druids at the moment, and we have a larger sample size of warrior tanks that we can compare. Another solution would have been to buff warriors, death knights and druids and then increase boss damage accordingly. Obviously, that would have been a much larger change with greater risks and a longer delay.

Though Ardent Defender is always a possible target for changes, we like that this talent provides such a distinction between warriors and paladins. Rather than have all the tanks have the same health, armor, avoidance and cooldowns, we’d rather have four unique tanking classes rather than just superficial or artistic differences. Yes, that design is harder to balance, but we think class distinction is ultimately more interesting, which is better for the long term health of the game. The goal remains to have all four tanks be viable for any encounter, assuming sufficient gear and skill, and any differences in performance on individual encounters to be minor. “Minor” is obviously a subjective term.

Please note that the death knight change will result in a small survivability increase in PvP, which we think is appropriate. We chose it partially with that in mind.

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