WotLK Beta Paladin ChangesAuthor

These changes keep taking place daily and these are the latest notes as of today. At some point, you get overloaded with Wrath of the Lich King Beta changes even though it's exciting to see the direction the Devs are making to the class as a whole. So far it's exciting many the changes the class is getting. Cross fingers many these changes make it officially live into Wrath of the Lich King when it is all said and done or we sure will all be disappointed. But if it matters to you this is what's new. Only thing worst is not being in it.

There are not much for Paladins changes right now, they've gotten a massive redesign in Wrath of the Lich King and through their new spells and talents it seems many of the class issues have been solved. Although a second flyby from the developers has yet to happen like it has for many of the other classes.

Probably we are able to consider this patch the nerf patch, which is an essential part of the tuning process. In tradition, the developers start from a high power scale and fine tune it downwards -- we mean, look at the poor Death Knight. Still this is the Wrath Beta, and while there is a chance, these numbers might stick through to live, which test these lowered numbers are vital to getting everything right for release. If you're in Beta, log in, play with it for a while, and give feedback. If you're not in Beta, hold back a bit from making a ruckus and exercise a little patience until the testing is done. Let's take a deep breath.

It ensures that Holy is much more dynamic now and actually feels like something that you can think through. Retribution got some more love and can now have a less random burst feel to it. Finally protection has managed to get more direct threat abilities other than simply stacking up damage and holy shield blocks./p>

The Holy Guidance talent was nerfed to a 20% increase down from 35%, and Blessing of Kings was nerfed to 2% from the 10% we all know and love. Of course, it's now on Tier 1 and you can take talents in Improved Blessing of Kings to get it back to the old version. Confused? You're not the only one. Let's take a look at everything else and realize just how much we dodged the nerf bat. All classes got nerfed even harder this build and we are confident that it's a tuning patch.

Apart from this, those niggling nerfs aside, we have to say we're pretty excited about the changes to the class. We'll go through some minor buffs before we move on to the juicier stuff -- Divine Storm's cost was reduced to 12% of base mana from 20%. Vengeance now stacks three times for a total of 9% damage increase, which is a nerf from the live realm's 15% but a buff from last build. In addition to the old effect for a total, Crusade deals 1/2/3% total damage for the most part. Shield of Righteousness now deals Holy damage equal to 240% of your block value up from 200% and Righteous Defense's cool- down has been reduced to 10 seconds from 15.

The nerfs are rather minor and we are not too worried about them as they're mere number changes. The buffs are pretty good, too, but similar to the buffs we know they're just tuning them. What's exciting this patch is the juggling of the talent trees and the reworking of some talents that spell pretty good things for Wrath of the Lich King Paladins.