Oh holy hell

Ok, so the rollout for paladins is out.

With that being said, I want to know, my pallies out there....what do you think?
I don't care if you are prot, ret, or even holy. I want to hear your thoughts. And even if you are not a pally, I still want to hear you!

I'll tell ya, you might get a post from my better half Ruh over at Holy Shock about this, but this is where I'm putting in my two cents.

F**k Blizz.

I've read it and I am so pissed it is beyond words. Those are the only two words I can use to best sum up.

Another thing, I want videos released that show how these ideas are implemented and how they work. Now, maybe I am overreacting but from what I am reading it is a big heaping pile of steaming bullshit.

I am a fucking flash build. Fuck your holy build and shove it up your ass.

Oh yeah, I went there.

For those of you who want to know what has Eus's panties in a bunch, here is the posting:

In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm we’ll be making several changes to class talents and abilities across the board. While this list only outlines some of our plans for the paladin class, we want to give you a look at the new high-level abilities and an overview of how the new Mastery system will work with each talent spec.

New Palaidin Spells
[Blinding Shield] (available at level 81): Causes damage and blinds all nearby targets. This effect might end up only damaging those facing the paladin’s shield, in a manner similar to Eadric the Pure's ability Radiance in Trial of the Champion. The Holy tree will have a talent to increase the damage and critical strike chance, while the Protection tree will have a talent to make this spell instant cast. 2-second base cast time. Requires a shield.

[Healing Hands] (level 83): Healing Hands is a new healing spell. The paladin radiates heals from him or herself, almost like a [Healing Stream Totem]. It has a short range, but a long enough duration that the paladin can cast other heals while Healing Hands remains active. 15-second cooldown. 6-second duration.

[Guardian of Ancient Kings] (level 85): Summons a temporary guardian that looks like a winged creature of light armed with a sword. The visual is similar to that of the Resurrection spell used by the paladin in Warcraft III. The guardian has a different effect depending on the talent spec of the paladin. For Holy paladins, the guardian heals the most wounded ally in the area. For Protection paladins, the guardian absorbs some incoming damage. For Retribution paladins, it damages an enemy, similar to the death knight Gargoyle or the Nibelung staff. 3-minute cooldown. 30-second duration (this might vary depending on which guardian appears).

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics
Next you will find a list of some of the paladin spell and ability changes, followed by our intentions for improving each talent tree for the release of Cataclysm. There will be further changes, but those revealed below should offer some insight into our goals.

[Crusader Strike] will be a core ability for all paladins, gained at level 1. We think the paladin leveling experience is hurt by not having an instant attack. Retribution will be getting a new talent in its place that either modifies Crusader Strike or replaces it completely.

[Cleanse] is being rebalanced to work with the new dispel system. It will dispel defensive magic (debuffs on friendly targets), diseases, and poisons.

[Blessing of Might] will provide the benefit of [Wisdom] as well. If you have two paladins in your group, one will do [Kings] on everyone and the other will do Might on everyone. There should be much less need, and ideally no need, to provide specific buffs to specific classes.

[Holy Shock] will be a core healing spell available to all paladins.
New Talents and Talent ChangesWe want to ease off the defensive capabilities of Retribution and Holy paladins slightly. We think the powerful paladin defenses have been one of the things holding Retribution paladins back, especially in Arenas. One change we’re considering is lowering Divine Shield’s duration by a couple of seconds. Having said that, Retribution does pretty well in Battlegrounds, and Battlegrounds will be a much bigger focus in Cataclysm since they can provide the best PvP rewards. Furthermore, the healing environment of Cataclysm is going to be different such that a paladin may not be able to fully heal themselves during the duration of Divine Shield to begin with, so this may not be a problem.
We feel Retribution paladins need one more mechanic which involves some risk of the player pushing the wrong button, making the rotation a bit less forgiving. In addition, we want to add to this spec more PvP utility. Right now the successes of the Retribution paladin in PvP seem to be reduced to either doing decent burst damage, or just being good at staying alive.
We want to increase the duration of

[Sacred Shield] to 30 minutes and keep the limit to one target. The intention is that the paladin can use it on their main healing target. That said, we would like to improve the Holy paladin toolbox and niche so that they don’t feel quite like the obvious choice for tank healing while perceived as a weak group healer.
We want to add to the Holy tree a nice big heal to correspond with [Greater Heal].

[Flash of Light] remains a fast heal, but will be more expensive to justify the cast speed.

[Holy Light] will be the go-to heal that has average efficiency and throughput.

[Beacon of Light] needs to be changed so that its benefit is letting the paladin heal two targets at once, not letting the paladin get two heals for the mana cost of one. It’s intended to save GCDs and targeting time, not mana.
Holy paladins will use spirit as their mana regeneration stat.
Protection paladins need a different rotation between single-target and multi-target tanking. Likewise, we're looking to add the necessity to use an additional cooldown in each rotation.

[Holy Shield] will no longer have charges. It will be designed to improve block chance while active, and will continue to provide a small amount of damage and threat.
Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses
Holy
1.Healing
2.Meditation
3.Critical Healing Effect: When the paladin gets a crit on a heal, it will heal for more.

Protection
1.Damage Reduction
2.Vengeance
3.Block Amount: We want to keep the kit of the paladin as a tank who blocks a lot. So by contrast, the warrior tank will sometimes get critical blocks, but the paladin will absorb more damage with normal blocks.

Retribution
1.Melee Damage
2.Melee Critical Damage
3.Holy Damage: Any attack that does Holy damage will have its damage increased.

Vengeance
This is a mechanic to ensure that tank damage (and therefore threat) doesn't fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will give them a stacking attack power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character's un-buffed health. For boss encounters, we expect that tanks will always have the attack power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Protection tree. These values will be smaller at lower levels. Vengeance will let us continue to make tank gear more or less the way we do today – there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly survival-oriented stats.


As far as I'm concerned the only good thing here is getting the whole Blinding thing. (Eus taps opponent on the shoulder) "Excuse me? May I have your attention for just a moment?" O: "Why sure." Eus: "BAM"

The whole Holy Shock thing does not need to go to any other spec of pally other than Holy. Sorry, but it makes us unique since we are not the typical fighting pally class, this was our "oh shit, it's coming right for me" button and my "oh shit I need to get that heal off quick" button. Why the fuck should rets and prots get it also? Sorry rets and prots, no disrespect but I'm sorry, no holy shock for you!

Another thing, take your BoL and FoL thoughts and stick em. When BoL first rolled out I thought it was something really special and gave us a chance to compete with other healers that have HoTs. Now they are gonna go and fuck that up, too.

I'm sorry Blizz, it just seems to me you are just pulling things out of your ass now and just feel like fucking with something that ain't broken. I thought when I heard that the tree form was being taken away from druids was nuts but this tops all. Trees are so cute. Nothing needs changed. If dumbasses want to see their armor, go out of tree. Nuff said.