Potential PvE Pally Buffs: Moving from good to great. Part I

So, after blasting people for making idiotic suggestions about what the class should look like, and how it should be changed, I suppose it is only fair to put my own ideas out there for criticism. In this two-part article, I will outline and explain my suggestions for how the three trees and playstyles we have should be enhanced. This is not intended as a "Blizzard: Follow this plan to the letter to fix paladins", but rather a set of suggestions for how to make the paladin perform as blizzard seems to intend, i.e. as a Tank/Heal hybrid which is focused on melee combat.

It is important to note that, as my title implies, the paladin class is really not all that bad. 2 out of our 3 trees are quite viable in a raid setting, and while (as Blizzard has acknowledged) paladin tanking needs some improvement, the tankadins who have MTd karazhan, Gruul's Lair, and are starting in serpentshrine demonstrate that paladin tanking is at least functional. The only tree in need of any serious work is Retribution, and even then, the main problem is not that ret spec brings nothing to raids (Sanctified crusader and improved sanctity aura are both amazing talents), but that the talents in ret do not sufficiently enhance the ret playstle of being not just engaged in melee combat (as all paladins should be anyway), but focusing heavily on melee combat, and so it is currently of dubious value to a raid leader.

This first portion of the article will cover the Holy and Protection talent trees. Retribution, given the larger amount of work required, will be the sole feature of part II.

The Trees

http://talents.unleashedgaming.net/?p=vt&i=16858
These are my rough suggestions for how the paladin talent trees should be re-structured. It is important to note three things:

A) These changes are mainly geared towards PvE, with PvP considerations being secondary. 2 years has soundly demonstrated that Blizzard intends for WoW to be primarily a PvE game, with PvP being a secondary option for endgame players. Perhaps if WAR ends up being as amazing as it promises, and blizzard starts losing a large amount of customers, this will change, but until then it is unreasonable to expect that blizzard will balance the PvP game at the expense of the PvE game. Also, since I am primarily a PvE player, this is more my area of expertise.

B) All numbers, and indeed all changes themselves, are pretty rough. The purpose is not to provide a set of talent trees and base abilities that, when imported into the game as-is, will make the paladin class 100% balanced. My goal is to provide concepts for talent/ability changes, and as such, most of my new talents/abilities will need to be tuned should they be implemented.

C) Instead of taking the time to create each talent individually, I used UG's preset paladin template, which has quite a few errors. I tried to fix all the ones I saw, but I probably didn't get all of them, so assume that all talents function as they currently do, unless I specifically sate that I changed the talent.

Holy

The first tree/playstyle to address is the Holy tree and the Healadin playstyle. For the most part, the talent tree is fine as-is. There are some weak talents that could use addressing, but overall, the holy tree is still a perfectly serviceable tree, and is, in my opinion, the strongest of our 3 talent trees. As for the playstyle, I would like to see some changes so that melee combat is more integral to a healadin than just saving mana on re-casting judgments (and potentially getting a little extra mana regen through seal of wisdom), but, truth be told, even that ought to be enough motivation to put your hammer to use in any encounter that you can.

Protection

The second tree/playstyle is Protection and the Tankadin. The changes required are not simply just fixing some of the weak talents, but also fixing paladin tanking itemization, as well as giving us some baseline tools so that a Holy or Retribution paladin has the same tanking prowess as an arms or fury warrior.

First off is the talent tree. There are 4 changes that I would make to the tree.
1) Combine Improved Retribution Aura with improved Devotion aura. Giving a little more punch to a talent that is often overlooked never hurt anyone, and I've always believed that improved ret aura should be in the prot tree anyway, since the aura is mostly employed by prot paladins.

2) Change Redoubt to "Divine Aegis", which increases shield block chance by 5% for 5 talents. (For those of you, like myself, who like redoubt, don't worry, it isn't going anywhere) One of the things that creates the "Avoidance Gap" between warriors and paladins is the lack of a +5% block talent. Not anymore.

3) Change 1-Handed Weapon spec. to "Guardian's Fury", which increases holy damage dealt by 10% for 5 points. Not only does this make more sense, given that melee damage is not a major source of paladin threat like it is for warriors, but this also gives prot spec a bit more oomph in pvp.

4) Changing Weapon Expertise to "Divine Precision", which increases chance to hit with spells by 5%, and reduces the mana cost of your non-healing spells by 10% for 5 points. This seemed like a good addition to counter the difficulty (in fact, the impossibility) of obtaining tank gear with spell hit, as well as helping out with the mana starvation faced by tankadins in non-heroic 5-mans.

The next step is itemization, which has been covered ad nauseum by the community, and is (theoretically) being fixed by blizzard in the next patch. The gist is more stamina, more mitigation, less intellect, no MP/5 (at least on raid tanking sets), and perhaps slightly less spell damage.

The final step is base abilities. I have often thought to myself how odd it is that the Tank/Heal Hybrid gets fewer mitigation abilities than the Tank/DPS hybrid (warriors). In fact, we get none whatsoever. The only baseline abilities given to assist paladin tanking are a taunt, and a spell that, when combined with our other abilities, allows us to hold hate. And while protection provides some of these "missing" abilities, the ones provided are inferior to the ones possessed by warriors, especially protection warriors.

The solution is to give paladins some of these tools, so that we can be the capable tanks that blizzard intends for us to be.

The first, and most important, should be a shield block of some sort. My suggestion:

Redoubt
4% of Base Mana
Instant Cast 10 Second Cooldown
Requires Shields

Increases chance to block by 40% for 10 seconds, but will only block 2 attacks.

This allows a paladin of any spec to push crushing blows off of the hit table, and thus, like an arms or fury warrior, be capable of tanking raid bosses without the constantly looming spectre of a string of crushings, leading to a dead tank and a wipe. Granted, it will be more difficult to do so, but is is also more difficult for arms/fury warriors to hold hate than a holy or ret paladin. You may have also noticed that I changed Holy Shield to work off of this ability as opposed to being a stand-alone skill, which is simply for convenience. You'll also notice that when redoubt is combined with Holy Shield and Libram of Repentance, using redoubt will confer the same 75% block, with 4 blocks every 10 seconds, as improved Shield Block. This will remove the avoidance gap between tankadins and prot warriors, thus removing one of the main obstacles to paladins being competitive raid tanks.

The second change would be to re-work the current Seal of Vengeance/Seal of Blood system, by making them both be essentially the same skill, but retaining their unique icons and animations, similar to Bloodlust/Heroism. Having faction-specific abilities was a bad move, as priest racials clearly demonstrate, and so it makes little sense to stick paladins with them. And for those horde ret pallies out there who like the current seal of blood, worry not, for I would give SoC the same sort of functionality.

Right now, I am torn between preserving the unique, yet dubiously useful functionality of SoV (While in typical single-target tanking gear it will do slightly more TPS than SoR, but it comes with a large drawback: random abilities are not good for tanking), and changing it to something like this:

Seal of Vengeance/Blood
250 Mana
Instant Cast

Fills the Paladin with holy power, causing melee attacks to apply the Holy/Bloody Vengeance debuff, which stacks up to 5 times and lasts 15 seconds. In addition, each melee attack deals an additional 8 to 11 Holy damage per stack of Holy/Bloody Vengeance on the target. Damage caused by Seal of Vengeance/Blood generates 40% additional threat. Only one Seal can be active on the Paladin at any one time. Lasts 30 sec.

Unleashing this Seal's energy will judge an enemy, instantly causing 36 Holy damage per application of Holy/Bloody Vengeance. Damage caused by Judgment of Vengeance/Blood generates 40% additional threat.

The idea here is to give the tankadin a seal/judgment combo that generates more single-target hate than SoR, without out-DPSing it, and while providing the same visual indicator for DPS as sunder and lacerate. The seal coefficient would work in the same way as SoR, but it would be 3/4ths as large, and there would be no extra benefit for 2-Handers. The judgment coefficient would be 55%.

Thus, once you got 5 stacks up, SoV/SoB would be doing 75% as much damage per swing as SoR, but would still cause 12.5% more threat. The judgment would cause ~15.6% more threat base, and would cause roughly 5.5% more threat from spellpower, making this the unquestioned seal of choice for single-target (i.e. raid) tanking.

Another potential ability, though not as crucial:

Guardian's Resolve
15% of Base Mana
Instant Cast 5 Minute Cooldown
Requires Shields

Reduces the damage from the next incoming attack by 90%. Lasts 10 Seconds. Causes Forbearance.

This is essentially the Tankadin "Oh Shit!" button. It is not nearly as powerful as last stand or Shield Wall, but it can be used more often, and when combined with Ardent Defender, it can potentially allow your healers to recover from your near death in the same way as last stand and shield wall do. The Forbearance effect is there to prevent it from being an un-needed buff for PvP Holy Paladins, and will have little effect on prot tanking, since the time when you need to save your ass is usually near the end of the fight, during an enrage, when threat is already firmly established (i.e. you don't need AW, and probably haven't used it within the last minute)

That's all for now, Retribution fixes coming in part II. Until then, flame on.