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Beta Patch notes released, imo some huge nerfs (salv much?). The nerfs are to great for me to take heart in any buffs.

source: http://www.mmo-champion.com/

"All Auras now affect all party and raid members within the area of effect.
Anticipation (Protection) moved to tier 1, now increases chance to dodge by 1/2/3/4/5%.
Avenger's Shield (Protection) cast time reduced to .5 seconds, duration increased to 10 seconds.
Avenging Wrath no longer causes Forebearance, damage increase reduced to 20%, now increases healing done by 20%.
Blessing of Freedom renamed Hand of Freedom. Only one Hand spell can be on the target per paladin at any one time. Now costs 6% of base mana.
Blessing of Light and Greater Blessing of Light removed. Their effects have been folded into all relevant abilities.
Blessing of Protection renamed Hand of Protection. Only one Hand spell can be on the target per paladin at any one time. All ranks now cost 6% of base mana.
Blessing of Sacrifice renamed Hand of Sacrifice, is now only 1 rank and transfers 20% of the damage taken to the caster, duration reduced to 12 seconds, cooldown increased to 2 minutes. Only one Hand spell can be on the target per paladin at any one time. Now costs 6% of base mana.
Blessing of Salvation renamed Hand of Salvation, now reduces total threat on the target by 2% per second for 10 seconds while also reducing all damage and healing done by 10%. Only one Hand spell can be on the target per paladin at any one time. Now costs 6% of base mana.
Conviction (Retribution) now increases critical chance with all spells and melee attacks.
Divine Intellect (Holy) moved to tier 2, increases total Intellect by 3/6/9/12/15%.
Divine Intervention cooldown reduced to 20 minutes.
Divine Protection and Divine Shield now cost 3% of base mana.
Divine Purpose (Retribution) now reduces chance to be hit by spells and ranged attacks by 1/2/3%.
Divine Strength (Holy) moved to tier 1 in the Protection tree.
Greater Blessing of Salvation removed.
Hammer of Justice now costs 3% of base mana.
Hammer of Wrath is now considered a Retribution spell, moved from Holy, mana cost reduced, missile speed increased, now usable on targets below 35% health.
Healing Light (Holy) moved to tier 2.
Holy Shield (Protection) cooldown reduced to 8 seconds.
Holy Shock (Holy) range changed to 20/40 yards when used on enemies/friends respectively, cooldown reduced to 6 seconds.
Holy Wrath is now instant cast, causes a 3 second stun, cooldown reduced to 30 seconds, radius reduced to 10 yards.
Illumination (Holy) moved to tier 3.
Improved Concentration Aura (Protection) moved to the Holy tree.
Improved Concentration Aura moved from the Protection tree to tier 4 in the Holy tree.
Improved Devotion Aura (Protection) moved to tier 4, reduced to 3 ranks, now increases armor of Devotion Aura by 17/34/50% and increases all healing done to units affected by Devotion Aura by 1/2/3%.
Improved Hammer of Justice (Protection) now reduces cooldwon by 10/20/30 secs.
Improved Righteous Fury (Protection) threat bonus folded into base spell, talent still reduces all damage taken by 2/4/6%.
Improved Sanctity Aura (Retribution) renamed Sanctified Retribution, now causes all units affected by Retribution Aura to cause 2% more damage.
Improved Seal of Righteousness (Holy) moved to tier 1, renamed XXX, now affects Seal of Righteousness, Seal of Vengeance and Seal of Corruption.
Improved Seal of the Crusader (Retribution) renamed Heart of the Crusader and the effects now apply to all Judgement spells.
Judgement of Justice will no longer prevent Fear effects, only prevent NPCs from fleeing (e.g. at low health).
Lay on Hands no longer drains all mana, cooldown reduced to 20 minutes.
Pure of Heart (Holy) reduced to 2 ranks, now reduces duration of Curse and Disease effects by 25/50%.
Redoubt (Protection) moved to tier 2.
Repentance (Retribution) mana cost changed to 9% of base, duration increased to 1 minute (10 second PvP duration), now usable against Demons, Dragonkin, Giants, Humanoids and Undead.
Retribution Aura damage increased and now gains damage based on Holy spell power.
Righteous Fury now increases threat caused by Holy damage by 90%.
Sanctified Light (Holy) now also increases the critical chance of Holy Shock.
Sanctity Aura (Retribution) removed.
Seal of Justice/Judgement reduced to 1 rank with all the effects of the previous rank 2, the Judgement effect no longer prevents Fear.
Seal of the Crusader has been removed. The effects of Judgement of the Crusader have been folded into all relevant abilities.
Seal of Vengeance damage over time effect duration increased to 18 seconds.
Spiritual Focus (Holy) moved to tier 1.
Stoicism (Protection) moved to tier 2, now reduces duration of Stun effects by 10/20/30% and reduces chance your spells will be resisted by 10/20/30%.
Toughness (Protection) moved to tier 3.
Turn Undead (ranks 1 and 2) removed. Turn Evil now granted at level 24, mana cost changed to 9% of base.
Unyielding Faith (Holy) moved to tier 2"

Noooo don't nerf my salvation :'(

Some of those seem like nice changes, but others are just weird.

Note* most my comments are done from a prot pala perspective.

Can't say I've done the numbers but from this re-shuffle a few things come to mind.

Imp Dev Aura now seems worthwile. Problem is that this is 3 more points into the prot tree. Good thing we get an extra 10 points as the prot tree is already heavy enough for lvl 70. Call me greedy, but I would have preferred to see some paladin only Sta or Armor skill. Though this may make prot tanks a better choice for OT ... if it wasn't for SoC going the way of the Dodo. Getting threat is going to be very, VERY hard even with the change made to Avengers Shield and Righteous Fury IMO ...

Holy shield looks better than ever with the CD reduced by 2 secs.

Anticipation I can't say for sure, haven't done the numbers ... Anyone care to do them?

Conc Aura off to the Holy tree where it belongs.

BoSalvation ... oh dear. Pros, I won't have to explain that NO they are not getting BoM to my DPS, they will and that's that, but PUGs are going to get nastier.

Still don't see what we're going to be spending 50 points in to get to the new 51 point talent, whatever it is. A normal 44 points in prot might go to 47 with the extra 3 spent in Dev Aura. I sure hope we get more tier 8-9 skills ...

Seems like a few signifigant buffs to PVP ret paladins as far as i can see. Imp. Hammer of Justice lets you have a 30 second CD on the ability, and if it still stacks with the gladiator set bonus..... combine this with Repentence duration buffed from 6 seconds to 10 and it sounds like we have vastly improved CC capabilities.

Heart of the Crusader now means i don't have to waste time at the start of the fight seal/judging SotC for the crit bonus.

Although i do lose 2% damage from Imp Sanctity, but i suppose it frees up two talent points, so meh.

The changes to mana costs, changed to a percentage of base means a lot of ability costs are just uniformly increasing though.

The Hammer of Wrath and Avenger's Wrath changes are tremendous buffs. Cheaper, more versatile HoW is fantastic, and the ability to bubble before during or after AW is amazing.

Oh HELL. I didn't see the part where it said "Sanctity Aura(Retribution) removed" Boooo! Well, i hope the buff to ret aura is worth talenting into it. Or i guess i could just aura dance for moar defence, shadow resist for locks, devotion vs warriors etc. Since ret paladins had to waste talent points to reach imp HoJ and precision anyway, the buff to Dev aura sounds pretty nice.

Also, regarding mana costs, i forgot that base mana = mana before gear and buffs, so spells aren't getting more expensive. I think....

Edited, Jul 18th 2008 9:03am by ArtemisEnteri

AP to SD conversion? How much strength will we see on our prot gear? With 3 plate-wearing tanks, it makes sense for them to be able to wear the same gear.



Well, with talented 20 minutes off, it'll be spamable... I'm sure this'll be expencive still. Or nerfed into oblivion...



And a very good reason to bring one ret to the raid.



Here we see a stam to SD conversion, so all our stam trinkets just became threat trinkets as well ;)

This will be very fun to watch in the coming months...

Imp RF gives 90% now. They just gave 90% to baseline RF. Imp RF still gives the damage reduction tho.

Salv is not really needed, as long as they give dps 30% less threat, or give us other options to put out more threat. And with the stam->SD conversion, we will be doing just that.

1k stam = 300 SD... And that is on top of what you already have. For me this will almost double my SD ;) So even with BoSalv going out, I'll still be ahead ;)

Ok, I see what you are saying... must have misinterpreted the RF buff a bit, but yah, with the stam --> SD conversion, our threat should be excellent, so the need for Greater BoSalv is still pretty much eliminated, just not for the reason I originally thought! Very helpful reply to my post! Rated you up :)

Well, frankly I'm quite happy that they removed Blessing of Salvation.

Let's be honest, 30% was a hell of a lot, and it actually ended up being a required Blessing around which all raid encounters were balanced. By nerfing it out of the game they can buff tank threat generation (something we've seen across the board), keeping the math the same but without erroneous percentage reductions.

I'm not sure about Hand of Sacrifice.... 20% for 12 seconds is a pretty huge amount of damage being transferred to a low-HP (comparitively) caster. Cast it on Gruul today at 8/10 grows and that Paladin will need the attentions of a healer just to keep him alive.

Removal of Sanctity Aura is lame, buffing of Ret Aura is nice (and makes more sense) but there havent been enough buffs to the tree to make up for it. Retadin DPS will suffer, and I don't like that.

I also love how I predicted proccable buffs from critical heals.... we have three seperate talents now for precisely that >:D

The really big buff is in Protection; Divine Shield now basically gives everyone 30% damage reduction. That is absolutely awesome, and opens the door nice and wide for RET/prot Arena builds. "Shield Wall for All!"

...and us Hordies get Vengeance. When I'm tanking, it's Vengeance that I really want. That steady stream of threat is exactly what the doctor ordered, and Blood is an equally PvE-oriented seal. Let em have it, I never see anyone using it in Arena or anything.

Nope - looks like there will only be a 4 min CD reduction with talents. Either way, I'm still interested to know new cost.

The thing about threat is...

All other things being equal (no abilities introduced to curb the effect) DPS are MUCH better suited for generating threat as they level and gear than tanks. We rely on certain abilities. The amount of threat that a DPSer can put out will scale MUCH better than the amount of threat that we can put out as we level passed 70 *until* the rest of our abilities are sorted out and balanced. We've seen massive increases in a Warrior's ability to generate threat so far, and modest increases in ours. Most of the spell damage changes so far just accomodate for the loss suffered during the conversion, but as the Beta moves on I expect to see things that will actually make these changes usable in the later-expansion.

Healers seem to have gotten a good sized buff so far but nothing groundbreaking. With Blizzard's attempt to make every class more like the others you'd expect some kind of ability that increases viability as a raid healer, especially for those nasty 10 man raids.

Ret's been buffed a good bit. Honestly, the most important change in my opinion is that Repentance is now 1 minute (PvE) and can target most enemies. Viable ret CC = awesome. You gain both CC and utility by taking them now, for a modest reduction in DPS (until that changes too). But then, Holy and Prot Paladins are *STILL* able to perform many of the utility functions that Ret offers. I'm looking forward to more deep-tree talents that make a noticable difference.

6 second recast on holy shock. HOLY CRAP! I MEAN SHOCK! spam spam sapm