I’m not in the beta yet, but beta invites have definitely gone out and the various WoW sites, like MMO-Champion, are going nuts with info.
So I went digging through the Curse/MMO database site at wowdb.com and dug up some interesting paladin-related stuff. Bear in mind this is JUST data-mined stuff. This is stuff that may not be implemented, etc.
Battle Healer: This appears to be a glyph. And it appears to encourage paladins to stand in melee range with Seal of Insight up. Interesting. Is this Blizzard saying “hey, holy paladins! YES, you! YOU have been designed to heal in melee range. For real. Here’s the proof.”? Or is it allowing our prot and ret cousins to help out? Or something in between?
Beacon of Light: This also appears to be a glyph. No GCD on Beacon? Well, now. This speaks to lots of beacon swapping? Perhaps?
Blinding Light: A new ability at 87. Meh?
Boundless Conviction: A new passive at 85. Whee? I mean, I can see the benefit here, but I’m afraid they are going to throw this out because we will be totally imbalanced. :P
Cleanse: Looks normal, right? WRONG. Hello, 8 second cooldown!
Cleansing: Appears to be a glyph. Interesting.
Divine Plea: Appears to be a glyph that will reduce the healing penalty AND the mana return on Divine Plea? Would love to see what the actual numbers end up being.
Divine Protection: Looks as though the current glyphed Divine Protection is going to become the standard…
Divine Protection: And it looks as though the glyphed version of Divine Protection returns the physical damage portion. This makes a lot of sense, actually, because I almost never remove my Divine Protection glyph.
Divinity: Interesting! Looks like the standard glyph BUT, instead of just returning mana when you cast Lay on Hands, this glyph will increase the cooldown as well.
Double Jeopardy: Looks to be a ret glyph.
Frugal Blessings: Finally, those two minors are combined into one.
Holy Shock: Oh boy. A glyph that will, single-handedly, convince people out there that being a “shockadin” is finally viable. Or something.
Illumination: This *appears* to be a glyph that returns to us our dearly departed Illumination, albeit in a different form. 1% mana return on every critical Holy Shock, but 10% less mana through Meditation. Interesting. The return of crit stacking?
Improved Judgement: This appears to be a passive. And I’m so confused. There are SO MANY ways to get mana back…
Supplication: Some kind of ability. This would ostensibly replace part of the Crusade talent in the ret tree.
The Mounted King: Apparently a glyph. I do not see the use. At all.
Turn Evil: Looks like they’re changing this ability of ours to double the fear duration. Perhaps the Sha are “evil”? Hm.
And that’s about all I’ve found with tooltips thus far. More soon, I would imagine. :)
I really do like the idea of Battle Healer, but the fact that it heals for an cetain amount, based on the damage you do with a melee hit, makes me wonder about the usefullnes.
At this point, my melee hits do around ~900 to ~1000 damage per hit, so a percentage of that would be a reeaaly small heal. On the other hand, I already like standing in melee range for Seal of Insight mana returns, so this is a nice (if very small) bonus.
>The Mounted King: Apparently a glyph. I do not see the use. At all.
I thought the same thing at first, then I heard someone mention for causual PvPers. You die a lot and almost instantly mount and I know I always forget to buff before doing so, now that will just be automatic. That is really its only purpose.
The only thing I’ve been concerned about with MoP is the solo viability of a Holy Paladin. I don’t care about Shockadin viability. I just care that I can do 1/4 to 1/3 the DPS of a Ret or other DPS specialist. I was originally worried because of the removal of Exorcism because it is currently the only way for Holy to do anything other than wait for Shock to come off cooldown. From that perspective, I’m pleased to see some of the things like the new Shock glyph. I don’t care if people laugh at me. I just want to be able to solo to 90 at a reasonable rate. And lol-DPS in LFR. :P
The Beacon glyph looks really cool for tank swap fights.
It really looks like Cleanse mechanics are getting an overhaul in the game. That’s great for the future, but I wonder how this will work for people heading back to bosses like Sinestra or Heroic Spine.
The dev interviews seemed to indicate the Divine Plea glyph might give us the same mana return, but turn Plea into a spell with cast time. So no self-nerf but you have to stand there casting or channeling.
I really hope Battle Healer is viable for Holy, and it could be now that Holy’s DPS toolbox is restricted to Judgement, Shock, and Holy Wrath. Those Monks need to be shown their place!
Improved Judgement does look like a passive. The cool part about it could be that Holy could still get some mana returns without running Insight, assuming Holy gets any other useful seals.
The Mounted King glyph is a silly minor. Combine with Glyph of the Luminous Charger and you’re a one man light show when it’s time to mount up. Not sure if I’ll use either, but I really love the idea.
The new spells and talent/glyph systems are very interesting. I got my beta invite last night and left the client downloading so I can get a look after tonight’s raid.
Mounted Kings is essentially just a way to ensure that the buff is always applied outside of raids. Since people tend to mount up pretty frequently (assuming this applies to all mounts), it’ll always get a refresh. If it applies ONLY to pally mounts (Charger, argent charger, argent hippogryph, etc.) then it’s just an incentive for paladins to start using their awesome class-specific mounts again.