My first thoughts:
– Thank God I don’t have to waste 5 talent points for Spiritual Focus anymore. Yay for only needing 2! Less bloat, hooray!
– Yay Divinity in Holy!
– Judgements of the Pure is going to be available to any paladin and HOLD THE PHONE. HOLD THE PHONE. That reads NINE percent haste. Not 15. NINE. Check that, 9 percent. And so the nerfage begins.
– … Divine Light is the name of our big-ass heal? Seriously? Could you really not think of a better name?
– Beacon is only good for Holy Light and Holy Shock redirects. Okay. So basically, I’m going to use it the same way as I use it now; on a tank who is also being healed by someone else.
– WTF, Inspired Judgement heals my beacon for the amount of damage the judgement caused? Really? Is this a “fun” talent?
– At least Illumination returns to the less-bloaty. I still want that 30% bumped back up to 100%, Blizzard. I have not forgotten the Great Illumination Nerf of Burning Crusade.
– Again, Improved Concentration Aura looks fairly lackluster, assuming they don’t change the pushback mechanics again.
– Aura Mastery stays the same. Still want this back to 10 seconds. :P
– Great. I have to spend a talent point to ensure my Cleanse remains as awesome as it is. Thanks.
– Selfless Healer is… blah? I’m saying this with no experience in terms of healing in Cataclysm, obviously, but why not switch this to 3% crit and it buffs you with 3% haste each time you heal someone else? Or something? THAT would be fun.
– Oh, there’s Divine Illumination, sitting at the bottom of my tree. It’s almost like it’s Burning Crusade again! And… WAIT ONE SECOND HERE. 30% extra crit? What?! WHERE IS MY MANA SAVING TALENT, YOU BASTARDS?!
As if that’s not bad enough, we cannot get Divine Sacrifice in Prot.
I suspect most holy PVE paladins will have something like this.
But the ret support tree for us is dead and we can’t even grab Divine Sacrifice in prot.
Totally underwhelmed. I don’t even know if I want to play the paladin in Cataclysm. Then again, I looked at the hunter tree. I don’t know if I want to play a hunter, either.
Do not want.
Do not want Holy Priest tree either.
AFK leveling resto shaman.
Gawd I so hope that those talent trees are *far* from done. I love my pally, but this… I have no words for.
To be honest, some of the new talents in the 3.3.5 preview calculator (mmo-champion) looked so much nicer. Why not keep those? /sadface
I know that we’re supposed to do more damage in raids to feel more useful. This is reflected in those talent trees, but damnit, I’m a frickin’ healer! I *am* useful!
“We are in the process of overhauling many paladin talents, spells and abilities. Expect updates in upcoming patches.”
I suspect that we will see very big changes to paladins, especially to holy paladins. GC has made a number of vague comments about holy paladins, specifically focusing on:
1) They want to diversify them, as the system in Wrath was far to narrow. Yes, they were the BEST single target healers, but in Cata’s raid environment you will not see tanks die in 2-3 hits, thus making that paladin’s ability to put out a constant stream of high powered healing on a single target not so useful.
2) They don’t want to simply turn them into priests.
3) Beacon needs lots of adjusting.
Generally when GC starts making vague comments about something (think “no, only enh shamans will be dualwielding”) it means that they have a number of big ideas that they are working on, and anythign out atm is probably going to change drastically.
As it stands, yah it looks sucky, but I wouldn’t be overly worried yet.
Side note:
Resto druids are hit just as hard, there is basically ZERO room for choice in our builds as it stands :P
*wibbles a bit*
It’s still in beta, nothing is set in stone. It’s still in beta, nothing is set in stone. It’s still in beta…
One synergy between the talents that I thought was interesting was Purifying Power and Inspired Judgements. I like this for PvP especially, where you can be on the offense, while cleansing your team. Also, I wonder if they would link, meaning you do the damage AND get a heal out of it.
It’s still unpolished obviously. I’m not going to stress yet. I’ll have an 80 of each tank/healer come Cata, so I can pick the one I really want.
Weeeell, GC did say very specificly that Holy Pallies are changing A Lot, followed by Paladins in general NOT being very done for the first pass.
Hopefully better things will come of this. (Because I’m not very sure I want to heal next expansion with things as they are currently.)
I laughed SO HARD when I saw DivIllum back at the bottom of the tree. But then I saw they took out the mana reduction and cried. In general? Yeah, I’m probably switching mains. :P
I dunno, I’ve thought about it and I kinda like it. I think, even in PvE it will be interesting to heal people through judging the boss. There are all kinds of damage buffs for Judgement, hit rating and you even get a heal off when you judge. Should there be cleanse-intensive encounters (we don’t know this yet, of course, but it’s a possibility) then we can even get heals off while cleansing this way. And the new Beacon of Light works with those Judgement heals, so.. yeah.. I don’t think it’s all bad. Besides the fact that those trees are FAR from done yet.
Boo to the new talents! They will take Flash of Light out of my cold, dead hands… I really enjoy the FoL playstyle… :( With this tree and the Druid talent trees, looks like my main will forever remain my Disco Priest.