One Day Out: Paladins

And here we come to the Paladin. Historically, Paladins have gone through a major revamp every single expansion. This time around, they’ve finally been allowed to retain something resembling the way they used to work. So, for once, it’s not a “back to the drawing board” situation for us.

The most noticeable change you’re going to see is the effect of Boundless Conviction. We now have our maximum Holy Power increased by two. Before you get excited at the prospect of ridiculously enormous finishers, you should also note that none of them can spend more than three HoPo. Additionally, some (not all) finishers now consume a set amount of HoPo (3,) rather than having varying strength.

Another thing you’ll notice is that Auras are gone. The only remnant of Auras is a new raid-damage cooldown called Devotion Aura, which is actually more in the vein of Divine Guardian and Aura Mastery, preventing 20% of raid spell damage and giving immunity to interrupts.

Seals then have moved into the bar where the Auras used to be. Your Seals no longer have a duration and they last through death, so there’s much less maintenance required (how far we’ve come! I remember when Seals lasted a whole 30 seconds and got consumed by Judgement – and yes, it was spelled that way.)

Never fear, though. Crusader Aura has been rolled in as a passive effect, though it only affects the Paladin.

As the only class that had racially-bound class mounts (they must love making Paladin mounts,) you will find that, sadly, those mounts are still restricted by race. So, no riding your Vindicator Elekk on your Human or your Sunwalker Kodo on your Blood Elf.

Despite the changes, the basic design from Cataclysm has been left more or less intact. We still use abilities to build Holy Power and then spend it for big effects.

Let’s go spec-by-spec!

Holy: Ooh! Ooh! I actually do know of one change here. Holy now has a regular ranged attack called Denounce (that uses Cataclysm’s Holy Wrath icon) that also buffs your next Holy Shock... I think. I think this is mainly for soloing and adding dps when you don’t need to heal, but it would be interesting if they found a way to give Holy Paladins the ability to do something akin to Smite-healing. I’ve always thought that if any healer should be able to get into the thick of it, it should be Holy Paladins. They are already by far the most armored healing class around, with plate armor and shields.

Protection: My main’s spec, so I might go into a bit more detail here. First off, block-capping is basically gone, with the separation of the dodge/parry roll from the block one. Mastery’s still pretty good, and has been given more effects to compensate with the weakening of the block mechanic. Two major things: Shield of the Righteous is now primarily a defensive ability. Instead of the absurd burst of damage, it now does a fair amount of damage while reducing the damage you take for three seconds, and grants a charge of Bastion of Glory, which is a buff to your next Word of Glory that stacks to five.

Still Protection: Your Mastery now buffs not only your block chance, but also the effect of Shield of the Righteous and Bastion of Glory, which should keep it useful even if block chance gets devalued by high avoidance. Shield of the Righteous is one of these 3-Ho-Po only abilities, but is off the global cooldown, allowing you to hit it quickly when there’s a big burst coming (if you have the HoPo saved up.) The ability is probably a bit less powerful than other active mitigation buttons, but the idea is that you want to maximize its uptime, rather than necessarily saving it for a big hit. I’d suggest saving the Bastion-buffed Word of Glory (which no longer has a cooldown, except for the ramp-up time of Bastion) as your “the boss just whacked me in the face for a huge amount) button.

Yet more Protection: Crusader Strike and Hammer of the Righteous now have a 4.5 second cooldown, which will take some getting used to. The good news is that Judgment (now with correct spelling) also grants HoPo. Consecration has had its cooldown and cost reduced, so we can now once again have it up constantly (the return of the Holy Pain Zone!) And Grand Crusader still causes Avenger’s Shield to generate HoPo, so despite the increased cooldown on CS/HotR, you’re going to see a decent flow of Holy Power, but you're going to have to re-learn the rhythm of your rotation. Weakened Blows, the standardized tank debuff, works on Hammer and not Crusader Strike, so even on single targets (if there isn’t another tank or a Shaman hitting Earth Shock) you’ll need to hit that every now and then. Tragically, Righteous Defense is gone, so while maintaining threat might be less burdensome thanks to Vengeance changes, getting it in the first place will require some effort. Also, we now have Sanctity of Battle, making haste reduce cooldowns of rotational abilities, so Bloodlust/Heroism/Time Warp/Ancient Hysteria will actually help us now.

Retribution: Whew, sorry about that, guys. Ret works pretty much as it has, except that more things generate HoPo. Exorcism, Judgment, and Hammer of Wrath all generate a charge, so you can expect to see a lot more Templar’s Verdicts (like Shield of the Righteous, this now has a flat cost of 3 HoPo.) On the AoE front, Ret no longer has Consecration. However, they have gained Hammer of the Righteous. You will now be hitting Hammer of the Righteous to build HoPo, and then paying it off with Divine Storm, which once again functions as a finisher. Templar’s Verdict has a new animation, too, with a cool kind of turn and smash, and you get a single glowy hammer like Divine Storm when it goes off.

Paladins can basically rejoice in not having to completely re-learn their class (even if they still got more changes than, say, Hunters.) It looks like Holy Power really gave Blizzard a framework to built the class around, and it’s something they will be able to build logical extensions out of for the future.

Now, all that said, as a matter of personal taste, I'm not entirely happy with the feel of the new Protection rotation. Perhaps Cataclysm spoiled me with its good flow, but even though Consecration has come back into the rotation, the 4.5 second Crusader Strike just feels weird. Often, people say that it's better this way, and that it was boring just hitting Crusader Strike every other global cooldown, but look at basically every other spec: they all have filler abilities you hit when other things are down, and that's every GCD, not just every other. Oh well. It's not like they won't tweak it with every patch.

Well, it’s been fun going through the ten existing classes and finding out what has changed. I’m sorry to any healers reading this – I just don’t really know much about your world. My job has always been “don’t let the bad things touch the healer, and then they can do their mysterious whack-a-mole game to keep us all from dying in three seconds.”

The game is, of course, in constant flux, and certainly by the time the expansion after Mists comes out, a lot of this will either be old news that no one would even think about, or simply inaccurate. And, of course, next time around we’ll have another class to talk about.