Paladin changes for 3.1

Warning! Long entry ahead!

According to wowhead and numerous other sites, Paladins will have many changes. The ones affecting holy paladins are (my comments in red):

Skills:

• Sacred Shield: This effect cannot be cast on more than one friendly target at a time. (NO!!! Not my sacred shield!!! I love love love sacred shield!! I am one unhappy holy paladin -.-)
  
• Forbearance reduced to 2 min duration. (No real difference, just means I can use Hand spells on other people more often. I tend to only use DS on myself. )
• Warriors can now remove Divine Shield on paladins!!! (They are really bent on nerfing PVP for paladins -.- I guess holy paladins are now the new red headed stepchild of Blizzard instead of ret)
  
• Exorcism can now be used on all targets, but is now a guaranteed critical strike vs Undead and Demon type mobs. (This will make questing much faster)
• Hand of Sacrifice: The damage transferred by this ability is now capped by the Paladin’s health. (I guess this is to prevent people from taking advantage of this so that content won't be too easy, especially in combination with the next change)
• Auras will now persist through death and affect a 40 yard radius. (Since aura mastery got changed, about time they made our auras baseline 40 yards!)
  

Talents:

• Blessing of kings is now trainable at level 20. Removed from talent trees. (That frees up 5 talent points!)
• Purifying Power (Tier 6) now reduces the cooldown of your Exorcism and Holy Wrath spells by 17/33%. (Previously increased the critical strike chance of those spells by 10/20%) (They didn't want to make exorcism too strong.)
• Pure of Heart (Tier 5) now reduces Curse, Poison, and Disease effects by 15/30%. (Previously was 25/50% but did not include poisons) (I see this mainly for PVP, I doubt I will spec into this for PVE purposes)
• Blessed Hands: No longer reduces cooldowns of Hand spells. Instead, it improves the effectiveness of Hand of Salvation by 50/100% and Hand of Sacrifice by an additional 5/10%. (Hand of Sacrifice will be more effective in PVE this way)
  
• Aura Mastery: Now makes anyone affected by Concentration Aura to be immune to Interrupt and Silence mechanics and increases the effectiveness of all other auras by 100%. Lasts 10 sec. 2 min cooldown. (Wow they are really making this attractive so paladins will want to spec into this rather than ignore it. So I guess it is a new ability for us to micromanage?)
• Improved Concentration Aura: The resistance to silence and interrupt granted by this talent now becomes active when any Aura is used, not just Concentration Aura. (This means you can spec into 1 aura and have another aura up for benefits of both auras! This will be good for 5/10 mans where not all pally auras will be available along with some 25 man raids that do not stack paladins. Should spec into this if you spec into Aura Mastery)
  
• Improved Devotion Aura: The additional healing granted by this talent now becomes active when any Aura is used, not just Devotion Aura.
  
• New Talent Divinity: Tier 1 protection talent, increases healing done by and to you by 1/2/3/4/5% (For paladins that need more oomph in their healing spells, this can be great! It is slightly better for a prot pally to spec into this than a holy paladin imo though. Time will tell.)
• Enlightened Judgements: No longer increases the range of Judgement of Justice. Moved to Tier 10. (Another nerf -.- Now holy paladins are back to having to be in melee range again so we can proc our haste buff talent.)
  
• Infusion of Light: Now increases the critical chance of your next Holy Light by 10/20% instead of reducing cast time. Moved to Tier 10. (Nerf! This may have been introduced to counter the extra haste that will be on Ulduar gear so that Holy paladins have a higher "soft cap" for haste)

Glyphs:

• Glyph of Divinity -- Your Lay on Hands grants twice as much mana as normal and also grants you as much mana as it grants your target. (Old: Your Lay on Hands also grants you as much mana as it grants your target.) (They combined 2 glyphs in 1, what's not to like?! I will most likely revert to this glyph, I replaced this glyph with the FoL glyph after they changed it to extra 5% crit chance. I will most likely use this as a free mana pot on myself to increase my mana efficiency)
  
• Glyph of Lay on Hands -- Reduces the cooldown of your Lay on Hands spell by 5 min.(Old: Increases the mana restored by your Lay on Hands spell by 20%)(If you have this glyph, definitely use Glyph of Divinity and spec into Improved Lay of Hands. This way you can regain ALOT of mana every 11 mins.)
• Glyph of Beacon of Light *new* -- Increases the duration of Beacon of Light by 30 sec.(If you use Beacon of Light often, this will be a good glyph for you. Also, this means your mana efficiency will increase as you will not be using 1000 mana every min but every minute and half instead, thus decreasing your mana usage)
  
• Glyph of Holy Shock *new* -- Reduces the cooldown of Holy Shock by 1 sec. (This seems to be more for PVP but it could go hand in hand nicely with the t7 2 piece set bonus if you like to use HS alot, just not very mana efficient. Great for a shockadin I would imagine.)
  

Items (from MMO Champion):

• The legendary weapon! Me likey =)
• Emblems of Conquest belt: Compared to the blacksmith belt(if gemmed with Luminous and Timeless), you gain 19 int and 40 haste with a loss of 49 crit, 2 mp5, 3 spell power and 35 stam. I would prefer the blacksmith belt over this one if I had to choose.
  
• Emblems of Conquest legs: You only gain extra spell power and lose out on the 4 piece set bonus, so they are not an upgrade over t7.5. I would pass.
• Emblems of Conquest gloves: I wouldn't get them over t7.5 because of the 4 piece set bonus. You wind up trading off crit and the set bonus for more haste and spell power, I'd pass on this.
  
• Emblem of Conquest neck: More like a trade off or side grade than an upgrade at all, I would pass on this over my current neck piece.
  
• New Kirin Tor rings: Definitely would get upgraded version of the signet.
  
• Blacksmith boots: These are some nice options, I'm considering if they are better than the Poignant Sabatons though I do lose out on crit but they are a clear upgrade of the Malygos boots.
  
• Blacksmith belt: These are not a clear upgrade, you would have to play around on the gemming with this one and even then you would wind up losing a fair amount of crit and haste. I would pass on these for now

All in all, there are alot of changes but some of the planned changes like the change to Infusion, judgement range and sacred shield are big! That will make healing alot more difficult for paladins. On top of it all, it seems like Blizzard is planning more nerfs for holy paladin mana regen. I guess holy paladins are going to experience TBC all over again just because they dominated in the first season of arena of the expansion (S1 = S5). Sigh... I'm upset, I guess I got my hopes up that Blizzard was trying to allow paladins to be competitive in terms of healing but the QQ from other classes has brought us down. How disappointing.


Why is it my class is getting nerfed for PVE because of PVP again?


Here's to hoping that some of the nerfs get retooled a little better or not implemented at all. Till next time T.T