I'm not totally sold on getting Kings anymore. As a single rank talent it was easy to pick up for any charecter going deep enough in the tree. Now it's a total waste unless you can put all 5 points into it, and I've been messing around with the calculator for a while now trying to find the best way to get those 5 points: I'm not seeing it. Granted I'm most interested in a raid build while others may be more focused on a 5 man build, but this is what I've come up with:
This. I tried to take just the necessary talents and then spread the rest among "flavor" talents. With this build there were really only 3 points I'd consider floater talents that I wasn't really sure where to put: the 3 in Improved Hammer of Justice. At first I was putting these in Kings as a means to progress down the tree. I decided though that a 6% Kings wasn't worth it. There are some other options.
- Stoicism 3/3: seems more useful as a PvP talent, but the stun duration reduction could prove worthy for a tank as well.
- Guardian's Favor 2/2: could take this and be able to use your Hand of Protection more frequently. Again, more useful as a PvP talent, but with the removal of Blessing of Salvation this may or may not become a more used tactic: HoPing a DPS (C wut eye dud thar?) to save their *** from their own overeagerness :P This does leave one more point though to stuff somewhere.
- Reckoning 3/5: Can't max out Reckoning, but with the removal of crushing blows I don't think this talent will be frowned upon as much for a raid tank. There's still the issue of it proccing less and less, and only having 3 ranks doesn't help that at all.
Now a couple things on why I chose some of the talents I did:
- I think they are self-explanatory until tier 4. Improved Hammer of Justice: HoJ will have an interrupt component now, even on targets that are stun immune. One of our weaknesses has always been casters, Blizzard knows this, hence the change. Being able to put this ability on a 30 second CD I believe would be very valuable depending on the encounter.
Also with the removal of Sanctity Aura, increased viability of Ret as raid DPS, and Auras affecting the whole raid (within range), it looks like we are being pushed to use Devotion Aura more, leaving Ret Aura to the Ret Paladins. So, improving the Aura we'll be using just makes sense right? Particularly when it involves us being healed better :) Of course we'll probably still use Ret Aura in an AOE situation when no Ret is available, but Devo probably for bosses, larger trash mobs, etc..
- Redoubt simply for the block value to increase our damage reduction and threat from Shield of Righteousness. Still don't care about the block chance proc >.>
- Judgements of the Just: I know some people have said they'll skip it because "Paladins like getting hit more". Yes that's true, but this is only one mob, not many like Warrior's Thunderclap. On AOE this won't affect how much we are getting hit too much, but on bosses it can be a real boon to our survivability.
Comments, suggestions, counter arguments: all very much welcome :)