3.0.4 Paladin Stuffs

[Splishy]

Source

We have already announced or suggested all of these changes would be forthcoming in the next minor content patch. I thought I would list them all in one place for ease of use.

Divine Shield: Penalty changed so that all damage done is reduced by 50% instead of a attack speed penalty.

1) Divine Protection no longer causes an attack penalty. Divine Shield's penalty was changed to 50% less damage done by the paladin.

2) Sacred Duty: This Protection talent no longer affects the attack penalty of Divine Shield and Divine Protection, but grants additional bonus Stamina.

3) Avenging Wrath, Divine Shield, Divine Protection, and Hand of Protection have a shared, 30-second cooldown. The Forbearance effect is no longer triggered by Avenging Wrath.

CLARIFICATION: You can use Hand of Protection while under the shared cooldown. You just can't use it on yourself.

4) Judgement of Wisdom now returns a percentage of base mana instead of a percentage of max mana.

5) All mana drain effects now return a percentage of max enemy mana (making mana drains less punishing to paladins and other characters without large mana pools.)

6) Judgements of the Pure: This Holy talent now increases the damage done by Seals and Judgements in addition to its current effects.

7) Hand of Judgement - All paladins receive a single-target, 30 yard taunt on an 8 sec cooldown. This spell also does minor Holy damage in order to break CC and the like for pulling ease.

EDIT: Clarified HoJ, J o' Pure and taunt.

Dependent on the percentage of base mana in point 4 this could be the fix I'm waiting on. The single target, 8 sec cooldown on taunt for all trees is nice as well.

[Daffyd]

Dependent on the percentage of base mana in point 4 this could be the fix I'm waiting on.

Que?

It's not a buff to anyone, it's a simple nerf to mana using classes who don't have high mana pools.  The goal is for every single mana using spec/class (possible exception of prot palas) to go OOM if they don't manage their mana usage correctly, that wasn't happening for enhancement shamans or ret palas who could both just blow anything they want for eternity if JoW was kept up.  Holy will be pretty much unaffected at T7 raiding levels but GC did note that JoW no longer scales as mana pools increase so holy may get a talent to help with that if it proves to be a problem.

WoTLK caster design is that mana management is meant to be a problem for everyone, this is not something we can expect to change.

[Splishy]

Being as no percentage of base mana has been published I don't see how it's possible to say if it's a buff or nerf. As I'm not likely in a raid situation to be causing either melee or spell damage any change to the blessing has no impact on me anyways, I'm looking at being able to level without having to sit down and drink after every other mob.

[Daffyd]

Actually my bad, this is a buff to low mana pools.  Followup post from GC...

The change to Judgement of Wisdom was so Protection and Ret paladins (and Feral druids and whoever else) didn't feel like they were supposed to stack Int for mana, since there is none on their gear. We picked a number that shouldn't be a nerf to most Holy paladins, though it will mean that it won't keep scaling as your Int climbs, so I imagine it will be called a nerf anyway. We'll keep an eye on this -- perhaps adding an effect to a Holy talent or something to increase the return.

[Splishy]

Yep, I saw that - the figures will matter as they will determine at what point a mana pool goes from low to high, at which point it's more worth stacking int for the higher end content (where as I said, the mana return from spells and melee to a holydin is moot anyways). I was looking at it purely as a potential levelling buff.

[Choleric]

Gonna ask a noobish question but it's one that I have wondered about for a while.  Most of the Plate gear I come across on Gibbard looks like Warrior gear.  As a Prot Pala, should I forego Int. and Spell Power in favour of Stam. and Def. Rating to the point where I am basically in Warrior gear?  I am thinking mostly of the Cobalt gear from my Blacksmithing right now but it's a question that'll follow through to 80 as well.

[Splishy]

Int is essentially a useless stat for prot paladins with the new mechanic - stack stam and strength, as well as defence and all that gubbins. Your mana pool should be pretty much the base mana pool.