Friday, July 16, 2010

Paladin Talent Trees - The Beta Version

I was perusing the Paladin talent trees courtesy of MMO Champion, and here are a few quick thoughts from the Ret and Holy Trees:

  • The boost to INT and STR are gone.  I wonder how that's going to work out.
  • Eye for an Eye indicates a chance at an automatic Judgement if someone attacks you.  I wonder if that is independent of your current CD or not.  Additionally, that means that if you have aggro and all you want is auto attack (like, say, for the Zombiefest achievement) there's a good chance that you're going to be hitting a lot harder than you intend.
  • Judgements of the Wise seems to have been boosted to 1-3% of base mana.  Nice increase.
  • Repentance will take longer to gain access (20 points in Ret talents = 40 levels, up from 30 points = 30 levels currently).
  • Righteous Vengeance is now way early in the Ret talent tree.
  • Aura Mastery is now waaaay down in the Holy Spec (20 points = 40 levels, up from 10 points = 10 levels).
  • Judgements of the Pure is far up in the Holy Spec, essentially swapping places with Aura Mastery.
  • Beacon of Light is also way up in the Holy Spec (only 10 points = 20 levels!), so you can fling that bacon around a lot earlier, and only taking a 6% bite out of your mana pool (as opposed to 35%).  Having it earlier in the game means that the Pally had better concentrate on INT even more heavily than before.
  • There's a new healing talent, Inspired Judgement, which extends the healing of Beacon of Light from a Judgement you bring to bear to the Beacon's target. (!)  I wonder if that includes Judgements from an Eye for an Eye as well.
  • Enlightened Judgements are now farther away (30 points = 60 levels as opposed to 45 points = 45 levels currently).  For those tanks who love to push the boundaries of where a Holy Spec Pally can heal, take note that the Healadin might be within range of those blasted silence spells.
  • Improved Concentration Aura is now way down in the tree, reflecting when most people pick the darn thing up, I suppose.

All in all, interesting stuff.

3 comments:

  1. Beta latent trees are beta.

    This is why I don't post about them.

    Apparently you guys are getting a whole new mechanic.

    http://www.wow.com/2010/07/18/the-light-and-how-to-swing-it-healing-from-the-front-line/

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  2. I saw that, and I'm not convinced how well this will work. At lower levels especially, Holy Paladins are susceptible to being silenced/slept/whatever due to their need to get in close to Judge Wisdom to keep their mana up. Now, the encouragement is to wade into the fight --probably needing to skip the occasional Cloth/Leather armor that might work-- and mix it up with everyone else.

    I'd rather if they were going to do that, they would instead of having Aura Mastery invoked from Concentration Aura, use it with any aura. In a 5-man, the largest number of Pallys you'll see using the LFD tool is typically two; one Paladin takes Retribution Aura and the other takes Protection Aura. The only other time you see different auras is when you need a boost with protecting against Frost/Fire/Shadow damage. I can't say I've used Concentration Aura in months, because there's no need for it.

    It seems that the emphasis on "Hawly Pawar" points is raid centric, while I'm not so sure how those points will play out during leveling or 5-mans.

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  3. My only opinions thus far on the trees is as follows:

    - I despise having to put 31 points into your chosen tree before going sideways. The cookiecutter specs will be even moreso for the low level toons. BORING.

    - Like many (Chas in particular) I don't like losing stuff at level 80 that I already fought for and now have to grumble my way to 85 for.

    But, as mentioned, this is still beta, and they haven't even worked out the ultimate Ret Pally talent yet. *shrug*

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