so, i know some of this will change several more times before WotLK goes live. however, the direction this build is going is great for prot, possibly good for holy, and meh for ret.
prot pallies have 3 main changes this build and all 3 are great changes imo.
blessing of sanctuary doesn't seem to do threat anymore, but being 3% damage reduction it scales better with the content you're at and is useful to anyone that might take any damage including AoE. on top of that the mana/rage/energy/runic power return on blocks, parries, and dodges will help ease the mana starvation pallies have had. 2% max mana means every time we block, parry or dodge we'll get around 100 mana (assuming around 5k mana pool with warrior tanking gear).
toughness now reduces the duration of movement slowing affects by 10/20/30/40/50% in addition to increasing armor by 2/4/6/8/10%. i'll gladly take a free 50% reduction to things that slow me down.
shield specialization now increases shield block value by 10/20/30% instead of increasing the amount absorbed. this should mean the same amount blocked as before, but on top of that more threat from ShoR.
holy is just getting a redisigned Beacon of light that may or may not be better than Sheath of Light for group healing/tank healing. now instead of a 10yard AoE HoT it makes that target the beacon to everyone in 40 yards healing the target for 100% of the effective healing you do to those party/raid members in 40 yards. this allows us while tank healing to watch raid health and throw heals out there to keep your raid up too while not sacrificing your primary target to do so.
retribution pallies didn't get so much love this patch, however....
Improved Blessing of Might now only increases BoM by 5/10/15/20/25% putting it only 5% ahead of the current talent but half what they had been tempting us with in the beta up till now. and it doesn't stack with warrior Battle shout so its even more limiting for us and especially for warriors since theirs is only 2 mins.
Judgements of the Wise now is a similar mechanism to that of Hunters and SPriests. it now causes our judgements to increase the mana regeneration of up to 10 raid members by .5% max mana per second (2.5% max mana MP5). this means instead of keeping 3 nearby mana users topped off on mana (ok, so maybe it was a little OP... i still liked it) we now give up to 10 mana users between 125MP5 (for 5000 max mana pool) and 250MP5 or higher (for 10k max mana pool). really its not a bad talent, but far less attractive than it was before. Ret pallies will likely still be OOM long before many other classes (although Divine Plea will help with this too and GC posted saying they know its not fun to always go oom in the first minute so they're gonna work on it). also i have yet to figure out how this stacks with a shadow priest or hunters abilities.
one other indirect nerf to ret is rogues master poisiner talent or whatever it was called. no longer will you want a ret pally in your raid when a rogue can give the raid the same (non-stacking) 3% crit debuff so likey a raid will have a rogue for their dps (what good raid doesn't) and a hunter cause there's soo many of them and they are also great dps. there's the 3% crit, MP5 and AP buff that used to be the reason to bring a ret... that and scaling back ret dps (which again, was admittedly OP) and no longer being needed to keep up other pallies judgemnts means there'll be less reason to bring a ret as it stands now.
i realize much of this may change, as a pally i'm excited about our tanking (they've addressed my biggest frustrations with it),
curious to see how our healing will be (SoL build still seems very intriguing and even a BoL build now seems like a valid possibility) and just a little concerned about the direction the last couple beta builds have seemed to be taking retribution. Bliz's stated goal for retribution and balance for all class/spec combo's gives me hope for some change in the next 2-3 months before release. but at the same time i can't help seeing the directions they seem to be going and it worries me as a ret pally at heart. its bad enough that i've resigned myself to specc'ing prot for Kara/ZA runs and just being Ret for 25mans in TBC. unless blizz has something in the works to give ret a use in raids or keeps us at our current dps i'll likely end up prot for everything besides leveling/grinding... nice to know my healer will still be useful though.
Edited, Sep 4th 2008 4:46pm by toolofjesus