5/24/2011

25 man raiding dying

Here's an off-topic peeve of mine. WoW has lost 600k subscribers and I think much of it has to do with the new raiding model. The encounters themselves aren't that bad--there are actually a few interesting new mechanics--it's the raid model (and I also think loot has become unexciting and there are a few issues for that, but I'll leave that rant for another post).

I've very unhappy with the new raiding model and the difficulty of 10 and 25 man raids. The balance between 10 and 25 is very horrid on several encounters; and so far, only 10 mans have been nerfed to be easier. Fights like Ascendant Council and Al'akir are far, far more difficult on 25 than 10, and heroic Chimaeron--while not particularly hard overall--is a joke on 10 man.

A 10 man raid guild is easier to run and get the same loot. The ratio of 25 to 10 has gone from around 1:4 to around 1:10.

It's very depressing to see more and more 25 man guilds collapse down to 10 mans. There are only hurdles for people wanting to raid in bigger raids and no incentives.

And the new Zinstances are prety much 5 man raids for the loot they drop. It seems like Blizzard is moving the game into a non-raiding format. Personally, 10 people doesn't hardly even feel like a raid to me. I didn't mind the jump from 40 to 25 too much; it made loot and logistics easier. But killing 25 mans raids is pretty much the same as killing raids to me.

2/10/2011

4.0.6

Biggest news is Rebuke for all paladins (mostly protection as it has a melee range).

10/23/2010

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.

9/21/2010

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.

8/25/2010

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.

7/17/2010

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.
Source

7/14/2010

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.

6/26/2010

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.

4/26/2010

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.
Source


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.

4/14/2010

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.
Source

3/18/2010

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!
Source

2/04/2010

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.

Source

12/11/2009

Patch 3.3.0 Fall of the Lich King


  • Holy
    • Aura Mastery: This effect of this talent has been reduced in duration to 6 seconds.
    • Infusion of Light: This talent now causes the paladin's Flash of Light spells to heal the target for 50/100% of the Flash of Light healing amount over 12 seconds.
  • Protection
    • Divine Guardian: This talent no longer increases the amount of damage transferred to the paladin from Divine Sacrifice. Instead it causes all raid and party members to take 10/20% reduced damage while Divine Sacrifice is active. In addition, the duration has been changed to 6 seconds, however the effect does not terminate when Divine Sacrifice is removed before its full duration.
    • Divine Sacrifice: Redesigned. The effect of Divine Sacrifice is now party-only and the maximum damage which can be transferred is now limited to 40% of the paladin's health multiplied by the number of party members. In addition, the bug which allowed Divine Sacrifice to sometimes persist despite reaching its maximum damage has been fixed. Divine Sacrifice will now cancel as soon as its maximum damage value is exceeded in all cases. Finally, damage which reduces the paladin's health below 20% now cancels the effect early.
  • Retribution
    • Repentance: This crowd control effect will no longer break early from the damage done by Righteous Vengeance.
    ------
    • Divine Intervention: This ability now also removes Exhaustion or Sated from a target if the recipient is out of combat when the effect ends. In addition, the cooldown on this ability has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.
    • Flash of Light: This spell no longer causes a heal-over-time effect unless the player has the Infusion of Light talent.
    • Lay on Hands: This ability will place Forbearance on the paladin if used on his or herself. It will not place Forbearance on others.
    • Aura Mastery: The animation for this ability will no longer be extra bright when used with Concentration Aura active.
    • Beacon of Light: The effect of this ability will no longer sometimes continue past the duration of its buff. In addition, the duration when used with the Glyph of Beacon of light will now correctly be 1.5 minutes. Finally, the tooltip was corrected to indicate benefitting targets must be in the paladin's party or raid.
    • Blessing of Kings: It is no longer possible to have multiple buff icons from this spell.
    • Blessing of Sacrifice: Damage transferred via this ability can now be prevented by damage absorption effects.
    • Blessing of Sanctuary: It is no longer possible to have multiple buff icons from this spell. In addition, the tooltip has been corrected to include 10% increased strength.
    • Devotion Aura: When in a party with another paladin using a different rank of this ability, it is no longer possible to see two different Devotion Aura icons displayed as buffs.
    • Divine Sacrifice: This ability now properly counts all damage transferred against its limit, instead of not counting some damage.
    • Greater Blessing of Kings: It is no longer possible to have multiple buff icons from this spell.
    • Greater Blessing of Sanctuary: It is no longer possible to have multiple buff icons from this spell. In addition, the tooltip has been corrected to include 10% increased strength.
    • Guardian's Favor: Corrected a tooltip error in rank 1 of this ability.
    • Hand of Freedom: It is no longer possible to use this ability while under the effects of the druid spell Cyclone. In addition, disconnecting while rooted will no longer sometimes trigger casting this on oneself.
    • Hand of Reckoning: Tooltip clarified to indicate taunt immune targets will not take damage from this ability.
    • Hand of Sacrifice: Damage transferred via this ability can now be prevented by damage absorption effects.
    • Heart of the Crusader: The effect of this talent is now always removed when the target no longer has an active Judgement debuff.
    • Judgements of the Just: The effect of this talent is now always removed when the target no longer has an active Judgement debuff.
    • Judgement of Righteousness: The damage from this ability will no longer sometimes increase when the paladin's agility increases (only occurred with low strength and high agility).
    • Judgement of Wisdom: Corrected incorrect information in the combat log tooltip.
    • Retribution Aura: It is no longer possible under some circumstances for the UI to display buffs from two different ranks of this ability.
    • Seal of Corruption: Tooltip corrected to list the actual amount of damage done instead of a higher number.
    Source

    11/19/2009

    slow for news

    Seems like devs are working hard on that next patch. They keep changing LoH and Sacred Shield; who knows how they'll finish up being nerfed. They also keep saying they don't see people switching in paladins as main tanks like they saw with DKs.

    10/21/2009

    T10 paladin graphics

    MMO champ has datamined what they believe to be the T10 look for paladins. Looks pretty unfinished to me. Shoulders look more like something for a shaman set. Would be interesting if holy got a skirt and prot/ret got pants (robe look for all casters).

    http://www.mmo-champion.com/news-2/patch-3-3-ptr-notes-update-1020/

    9/22/2009

    Patch 3.2.2 Live

    Nerfs to talents. Trying to make people use Command, sometimes. And some item fixes.
    - Righteous Fury: The bonus threat from Holy spells caused by this talent has been reduced from 90% to 80%.
    - Seal of Corruption and Seal of Vengeance: These seals will now only use the debuff stacks generated by the attacking paladin to determine the damage done by the seal and by the judgement.
    - Ardent Defender: This talent now reduces damage taken below 35% health by 7/13/20% instead of 10/20/30%.
    - Blessing of Sanctuary: This blessing now grants 10% strength in addition to its current effects. Also, the strength and stamina bonuses from this blessing will no longer be lost when Blessing of Kings is removed.
    - Judgements of the Just: The reduction in cooldown to Hammer of Justice provided by this talent has been reduced to 5/10 seconds instead of 10/20 seconds.
    - Touched by the Light: This talent now provides 20/40/60% of the paladin's strength as spell power instead of 10/20/30% of the paladin's stamina.
    - Seal of Command: This ability now chains to strike up to 2 additional targets when it is triggered by an attack that can only strike a single target.

    - Libram of Obstruction: The buff to block value from this relic is now exclusive with the buff to block value from Libram of the Sacred Shield; it is impossible to have both buffs at once.
    - Libram of the Sacred Shield: The block value buff from this relic has been increased to match its item level.
    - Paladin Tier-9 DPS 2-Piece Set Bonus: Now grants the correct chance for Righteous Vengeance ticks to be critical strikes.

    - Hand of Freedom: This ability now correctly removes the snaring component of Infected Wounds and Frostfire Bolt.
    Source

    9/10/2009

    Holy Wrath nerf

    I wondered why in the world they would bring 3 holy paladins to heal something...
    We just deployed a hotfix to modify Holy Wrath so this spell has the same diminishing return mechanics that other player stun spells and abilities currently have. This will prevent Undead creatures that we wish to be susceptible to stun from being permanently stunned if you include enough Paladins in your raid who then rotate their Holy Wrath casts.

    This will affect the difficulty of Anub'arak, but we didn't want the "right way" to defeat this fight to involve bringing five Paladins who glyphed their Holy Wrath spell.
    Source
    Apparently they used it to keep adds stunlocked down. And I'm betting having several divine sacrifices didn't hurt either.

    9/04/2009

    About Healing and Tanking

    If we just chilled out tank damage, then healing would be a lot easier. While I know it's popular in this forum to claim that we only want to make life hard for the healers, I think in reality many of you would get bored or risk losing your spot when the raid didn't need as many healers.

    A better answer, in our opinion, is to increase tank health and have bosses hit hard but not as often. The end result would hopefully be that it took several big heals to bring a tank back up rather than a single Holy Light crit. Currently overhealing isn't particularly scary because mana is cheap and the risk of the tank (or anyone dying) on a given GCD is very real.

    If you currently put say 3 healers on the tank that isn't because it requires that much healing per second to keep the tank alive. Instead, it's because with 3 healers hopefully someone will be always casting and can land a heal after big hit one but before big hit two, which would kill the tank. If a few hots or shields get stomped on along the way, oh well.

    Ideally, you put 3 healers on the tank because it takes 3 big heals to get the tank back up. If you don't coordinate well or use a big heal when a medium heal would do, then you'd risk too much overhealing and ultimately running out of mana. You'd need to heal smart as well as just healing fast and big, which is what the current design really encourages.

    I predict health pools of all players will go way up in Cataclysm relative to player damage and healing. Everything (meaning PvP too) would be slowed down just a little so that making the right choice would sometimes trump making the fast choice.

    I'll also add that many players think 10-player raid healing is currently more fun than in 25s because you are often splitting duties with just one other person -- "You heal the tank. I'll heal the raid." In 25s you get more of that whack-a-mole feeling where you're competing just as much with other players to heal someone first and nothing feels very organized or efficient.
    Source
    While I agree that giving tanks more hp in this current environment is would be a good thing, there's a lot here that I very much disagree with.

    First off, you can design healing to not be as hard and still use a lot of healers. This is entirely a failing of the development team, and pretty much a cop-out.

    Forcing players to use healing strategies where "hopefully" someone lands a heal at the right time is horrible. The current system encourages spamming the *@#$ out of the tank, it does not encourage smart healing. Divine plea with a 50% heal reduction is bad; clearly they don't see how the vast majority of paladin healers use it. Beacon of Light is bad for the game; it very much encourages spamming and not smart play. Problems with healer mana stem from requiring stupid amounts of healing in order to keep people alive with luck rather than smart healing. AE just for AE sake and rediculously hard hitting bosses are new bad gimmicks; WoW didn't always have these on every boss. In my mind, this is more fun than heal-chain/rotations and smart healers still play better, but it could and should be designed better (and perhaps the current state of it's design now is a product of PvP influence?). It would be nice to even see a system where it was possible to see a boss that hits very fast for medium damage for variety.

    10-mans are more fun to heal because the damage isn't as ridiculous, though it's also much easier to stack 3 healers for stupid healing fights and still meet dps requirements. Also, anyone saying "more fun" means that they have run both 10 and 25 which means that they are probably over-geared for a 10-man. I feel very strongly that our current 10-mans give out far too high itemlevel of gear in relation to the 25 man progression.

    8/17/2009

    Nerfing Prot More

    More prot nerfs. Clearly giving into the forum whiners again. I don't see these as warranted at all after the seal nerfs.
    We don't think "high threat tanks" is a fun niche for the game. We don't mind some variation depending on the specific situation, but paladin OTs were accidentally pulling off of MTs an awful lot. That isn't a L2P issue. That's just the numbers being off and frustrating everyone.

    We didn't want to nerf threat until community perception had turned around that paladins could survive while tanking hard modes.

    Try out the hard Coliseum fights (once available) or the tougher ones in Ulduar and let us know how it feels.
    Source
    They must have gotten the patch notes from the test realm download, as there aren't 3.2.2 patch notes posted on the official websites that I could find.

    • Righteous Fury: The bonus threat from Holy spells caused by this talent has been reduced from 90% to 80%.
    • Judgements of the Just: The reduction in cooldown to Hammer of Justice provided by this talent has been reduced to 5/10 seconds instead of 10/20 seconds.
    • Touched by the Light: This talent now provides 20/40/60% of the paladin’s strength as spell power instead of 10/20/30% of the paladin’s stamina.
    • Seal of Command: This ability now chains to strike up to 2 additional targets when it is triggered by an attack
    MMOChamp

    8/11/2009

    Prot healers in PvP

    I haven't actually seen any Prot healers in PvP myself, so I can't really judge if they're overpowered or easy to shut down. However, I have an overwhelming sense of dread for the nerfs they're going to drop on us that end up hurting PvE Prots just like those Ret PvP nerfs hurt them more than Rets. =(
    We are going to fix the specific scenario where a PvP paladin with a Prot build but spell power gear can heal for more than a Holy build in the same gear. We want to do this without messing up the Prot paladin trying to tank in PvE.

    We will probably not make this change before the end of the current Arena season, but you can be thinking about your teams for season 7 with this change in mind.

    ---

    Touched by the Light helps to solve a specific problem which is that paladins do both physical and magical damage and Prot paladins need both for threat (and damage). It works fine when the paladin is in tanking gear, and in fact was designed so that paladins wouldn't need to mix tanking gear with caster gear as they did in the past.

    It is not balanced for a Prot paladin who decides to wear spell power gear. At that point you're double-dipping.

    We have no problem with Prot paladins in PvP, but they need to be there because their survivability is an asset, not because they can out-heal an entire tree dedicated to healing.

    There is a fine line between creative use of game mechanics and something that goes against our vision for the game. It's always going to be subjective. If the Retribution tree ended up being better at tanking than the Protection tree, or the Shadow priest was a better healer than the Disc tree, or the Marks hunter had a more powerful pet than the BM hunter, we'd take similar action.
    Source