I’ve been mulling things over for a while, because I think the state of the holy paladin is kind of sad in WoW Forever, but I don’t love critiquing something without bringing solutions. And then I realized, hey, if professional game designers seem to not have a good solution, I don’t need a good solution either! So I can attempt to throw some stuff at the wall and see if it sticks.
The Problem: Where to use talent points?
Back in Classic, this wasn’t a problem. A standard “all the buffs” build was something like this 33/11/7 build:
Improved Wisdom, Improved Might, Improved Devo Aura, Kings
I had been thinking that a 31/5/15 build to grab Conviction would work, but I’m remembering the Wrath of the Lich King version of the spell, which did affect spell crit. Conviction from Classic does not and so it will not in Forever.
So this leaves me wondering what the heck to do with some points. I have this build in mind:
But that leaves me with six unused points. And I don’t want to put those points anywhere in particular. And I have questions! If I have 3/3 Divine Precision, is it useless to grab 1 or 2 or 3 points in regular Precision in Prot?
So like… where do we go? There is nothing tempting for me in the ret tree except for Benediction (which is way more useful now than it used to be). There is nothing tempting for me in the prot tree except for Guardian’s Favor.
Ideas for Row 1 or 2 Talents in Prot/Ret for Holy
– Easiest idea first, let’s put the spell crit back into Conviction like it was in Wrath! It would be handy for every flavour of paladin, although not even fantastic for holy pallies because oh yeah ILLUMINATION WAS NERFED TO 50%. (ahem)
– How about extended range on judgement? We are ostensibly going to be judging for light and wisdom, so let us do it from 30 yards away. Maybe put this in row 2 of prot, because it would be really handy for tanks to be able to hit something from afar.
– Oooooh, how about this? Redo Redoubt in row 1 of prot to say what it usually does (increased chance to block) and also “when a shield is equipped, increase your mana regeneration by 2/4/6/8/10%”?
– Maybe something else in ret, like “when your judgement is a critical hit, your next Holy Shock or Holy Strike is free (can only occur once per minute)”?
Ideas for Deeper in the Holy Tree
– Maybe put an extended range on judgement deeper in the holy tree if you’re worried about balancing prot and ret against holy in PVP?
– Maybe instead of Consecrated Ground doing 5%/10% increased damage against the first 4 enemies in our Consecration, this deep in the holy tree, maybe it could heal instead of harm? Like maybe 0 damage to enemies and mild healing to allies, decreasing in efficacy the more people are standing in it?
Not sure what else to do here, frankly. What do you think?