Cataclysm Beta: New talent trees for paladins
by Gregg Reece 
Jul 14th 2010 at 5:00PM
Last night, Blizzard released the new talent tree system onto the beta realms for people to take a gander at and test out. Each class is at various stages of done-ness, with some needing pruning, others needing tuning and still others just need another iteration or two before truly being ready. Paladins fall into that last category, along with three other classes.
Here are a couple of excerpts from the beta patch notes, with bold added for emphasis:
Cataclysm Beta Patch Notes - Build 12479While this is a first pass on all of the talent trees, death knight, druid, paladin, warlock, Arcane mage, and Assassination rogue trees are not as far along as other specializations.
...
Paladins
* We are in the process of overhauling many paladin talents, spells and abilities. Expect updates in upcoming patches.
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Paladins
* We are in the process of overhauling many paladin talents, spells and abilities. Expect updates in upcoming patches.
Things like more healing abilities for holy, Holy Shield moving from a maintained ability to a tanking cooldown, and three new planned but unimplemented attack abilities for retribution are all in the pipeline, as well as a shakeup of the talents we've already been provided. So, without further ado, I present a first draft of the paladin talent trees.
The Light and How to Swing It tries to help Paladins cope with the dark times coming in Cataclysm. See the upcoming Paladin changes the expansion will bring. Wrath is coming to a close and the final showdown with the Lich King is here. With Cataclysm soon heating things up, will you be ready?Filed under: Paladin, Analysis / Opinion, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Tapukimastra Jul 14th 2010 5:10PM
Whilst I certainly appreciate the effort to provide us with information and am impressed with the quality of the posts at such an early point (as far as paladin's are concerned), I have to put emphasis on the "early point" part. I feel that this sort of post for paladins should have been left until a later build, when there is hopefully a lot more information about what is going on.
RetPallyJil Jul 14th 2010 5:16PM
That's why it's an "early look."
Gregg Reece Jul 14th 2010 5:18PM
Just because things aren't close finished doesn't mean that the trees are devoid of information. Things like the change to Eye for an Eye and Sanctified Wrath give us an idea of some of the more interesting things that they are at least trying out even if they don't make it to the live realms.
Things like this might spawn player ideas which the developers might be able to build off of or at the very least show that the developers are starting to think outside the box a little.
There will likely be a lot more iteration through the course of the beta, but getting a baseline 'this is what they looked like back then' will be important going forward as it gives us something to compare against. Plus, some of the talents are pretty cool.
Tapukimastra Jul 14th 2010 5:24PM
The talents certainly are cool :p. I do kind of see what you mean when you put it like that as well. I didn't mean to offend you at all. :)
Kuro Jul 14th 2010 5:29PM
After playing around with the talent trees, trying to come up with workable specs for Ret or Holy.. looking desperately for the extra "fun talents" and the felxible specs all I have to say is that the cake was a lie.
For the moment, it looks like we can forgoe Sanctified Retribution / Swift Retribution
Saromez Jul 14th 2010 5:36PM
I know, I was looking for the "Fun Talents" also. I have yet to find them.
Kuro Jul 14th 2010 5:38PM
For the moment, it looks like we can forgoe Sanctified Retribution / Swift Retribution to get further down into the other trees -- Arcane and BM both have the 3% damage buff and a few others have the melee haste to try for and try to get Judgements of the Pure or Imp. Exo.
I'm gonna miss having a lot of the utility we had as ret-- no more Aura Mastery or Bubble Sac.
Yeah, they're not finished yet, but...
I am dissapoint.
Hivetyrant Jul 14th 2010 7:08PM
You've got to remember that a lot of the "fun" talents have been built in as standard spells and ablities for many of the classes now, so chances are you haven't lost everything, if anything they are easier to use now.
Grrr Jul 14th 2010 10:38PM
yea....gotta say, not very impressed...
I KNOW ALL SUBJECT TO CHANGE...
But unless its changes drasticly, i'm not sure i like the direction...
I'll prob keep playing my pally out of habbit and i've been a Ret aplly since before it was ok to do so....but i'm not sure i like the new direction....dont get me wrong i'm not a flavor of the month payer....
I used to love being a ret pally in Vanilla and TBC pre 2.6 (i think?!) b4 we went from Lolret to Wtfpwn Ret...
Back when the class was "crap" people would dismiss you as nothing, and then be suprised when somone who knew how to ret pwned them, it was almost and advantage to be though of as crap spec.
Just trying to show i'm pally all the way, and i WILL play it...just my 2 bits
Task Jul 14th 2010 5:47PM
Speaking as a Ret/Holy pally, these changes (so far) are pretty good.
I certainly will miss Seal of Command, pardon the original title, and all of it's umm... Uniqueness?
Though when I read the Protection changes, I was surprised that Improved Crusader Strike was moved there. I kind of expected it to be shared with the Ret side in terms of these 2 sharing it. I hope thru change it a little and have it moved up so that their melée swinging brethren can deal more pally smashing.
I'm only one in my guild at the moment who mentions all the changes to Cata, including the previous articles. It's kind of fun hearing their input since a few of the pallies in my guild are surprised and sometimes annoyed by either the additions/ removals of talents in their respective trees.
@Gregg Reece
Thank you for splitting up this article into thirds instead of 1 big article, makes reading it much simpler. /salute
Gregg Reece Jul 14th 2010 6:19PM
Yeah, that was essentially the only way I could have done it and keep my sanity.
Noyou Jul 14th 2010 6:29PM
I hope the Hallowed Ground talent stays. I would think in PvP that would be very OP especially when stealth is concerned. It also seems to go against the intended AoE tanking nerf. I also like the possibility of taking Righteous Vengeance from the Ret tree. Very interested to see what the new rotations will be like- even at the early stages.
Jez Jul 14th 2010 6:47PM
I kinda wish the trees were a little bigger... changing the functionality of some spells would be cool... like reducing the damage of consecration by 50% and allowing it to heal friendly players for 50% of the damage done, or something...
I often wonder why they don't take the Holy Shock idea and move it to stuff like Holy Wrath, Consecration, Judgement, etc... Imagine Judging a friendly target and them then pulsing heals... or Exorcising a player to remove all debuffs but you deal 100% of the exorcism damage to them (tricky for TKs, lol)
I dunno... just mix shit up... everything seems like it's been dragged through TBC, through Wrath and stuff is still hanging on from years ago. I would rather they wiped all the talents except the big points and started over.. actually think what they want the classes to do.
Syce Jul 14th 2010 9:51PM
personally, i dont like how they shortened the trees back to the way it was in Vanilla. it almost looks like you really dont have a choice on what to pick up in the trees. (yes i know its beta, im just saying at this very point)
and with abilities becoming baseline, eventually there wont be a point to have talent trees it seems.
Ullaana Jul 14th 2010 10:09PM
I wish they would explain how being restricted to 1 tree for 31 points is giving us viable options to our playstyle. I understand they want to have us get to our Mastery benefits but what if I want Divine Strenth early on for my Ret Pally. Sorry, get a potion and add to the in game economy just seems wrong to me.
Please, those of you who are thinking about accusing me of qq'ing, be aware that this is my opinion and respect it as I respect yours, even if I disagree. I am not trying to start a "verbal" war here.
Kuro Jul 15th 2010 11:53AM
Tear it up and throw it away. There's hope that we'll be saved from the crappy talents from this build... They're totally redoing the trees again.
GC wrote:
I'm going to regret saying this, but the paladin trees are the most changed in the game. There are only a few of the current beta talents that survived the, um, cleansing.
...
In the Ret case, we started with a basic question: what is it they should be managing? There are a lot of things they *could* be managing. Today it's cooldowns. It could be mana or procs or a lot of things. There was one Ret talent in particular we really liked, and we started building a rotation around it. Then we decided the mechanic was good enough to flesh out for Holy and Prot too.
We're not ready to share the design just yet, and like all changes of this sort, it will be controversial. Some players crave a more interactive rotation. Some like their paladins the way they are. Some are only attracted to the class because it can be overpowered and they like to feel like a superhero.