Hail
Tharvolde here and I’ve got some more goodies for you that MMO-champion has clarified for us. Please refer to this post for the previous batch of updates as this post will build from that as a foundation. Here is the latest talent tree for your clicking pleasure: http://www.wowtal.com/#k=.9q4.paladin
- - Zealotry is now confirmed as a 2 minute cooldown (this is VERY good news and now makes it a viable, quality 31 point talent for us) but only lasts 15 seconds (down from 30).
- - Divine Purpose has returned as a talent with two ranks and causes your Divine Storm, Templar’s Verdict and Inquisition abilities to have a 40% chance of generating Holy Power.
- - Judgements of the Wise has been removed and is now called “Communion”. Since the main part of JotW is now passive for all Prot and Ret Paladins, Communion is a single point that causes the Retadin’s Judgements to replenish 1% of maximum mana every 5 seconds for up to 10 party or raid members.
- - Swift Retribution, in addition to increasing melee and ranged attack speed by 20%, now also increases damage done by anyone affected by any of your auras by 3%
- - Seal of Vengance/Corruption has been renamed to Seal of Truth and seems to work in the same way although a bit more streamlined. For each application of Censure (the new name for the SoV/SoC DoT) damage done by your Judgement is increased by 10%.
- - Seals of Retribution now named Seals of Command but hasn’t changed in effect.
- - Divine Storm is now a talent again but in the third tier. (yes you read that correctly so I’ll say it again). Divine Storm is now a talent again but in the third tier. What this actual means is that it is taking over for Templar’s Verdict and, I would be willing to bet (although I haven’t seen confirmation on this yet) that Templar’s Verdict is going to be taking Divine Storm’s previous place as a granted Ret ability at level 10!
- - Inquiry of Faith is a new tier 6 talent that increases the periodic damage of Seal of Truth by 20/40/60%.
- - Acts of Sacrifice is a new tier 6 talent that reduces the cooldown and mana cost of Hand of Freedom and Hand of Salvation (yes Hand of Salvation) by 10/20%
- - Selfless Healer is a new tier 5 talent that increases the effectiveness of your Word of Glory (our instant heal that consumes Holy Power) by 30/60% when used to heal others
- - Improved Judgement no longer reduces the cooldown of Judgement by 1 second per point.
- - Sanctity of Battle no longer reduces the cooldown of Exorcism.
- NEW UPDATE Haste now affects Censure (the DoT from Seal of Truth) and the replenishment effect of Communion
In looking at the talents and the abilities list for Retribution I can’t help but get excited at the clear intention of each tree that Blizzard is finally admitting to. What I mean is that now, more than ever in the past, it really seems to me that Holy is tailored towards healing, Protection towards defense and Retribution towards offense. Yet with this in mind, the early talents of each tree provide improvements in those very areas for the main spec. Here’s what I mean:
Let’s say we run a Retribution build that includes 2/2 Selfless Healer. Under this build, our Word of Glory would be quite effective as an instant heal. Now let’s presume we want to continue down this path so we opt for a 10/0/31 build. We wouldn’t even have to go 10 in Holy and we’d be able to increase the effectiveness of Word of Glory, when cast on someone else, by 60 + 6 + 30 = 96%. The implication of this is that, based on our spec of going at least 7 in Holy for our secondary tree, we now have an instant cast, mana-free heal that is doubled in effectiveness (when cast on someone else) and THEN increased further by Holy Power at the time of casting. To me, this sounds like one possible “Retmed” spec wherein Ret would sacrifice a bit of damage for the ability to really put out a heal at a clutch situation.
Moving on, it is also apparent (for the moment), that Blizzard wishes to continue with the trend of SoV vs SoR in that SoV does better damage at 5 stacks but that SoR does more right out of the gate. The interesting piece here, though, is that Retribution now has some talents directly tied to Seal of Truth (SoV) so it will be interesting to see if your auto-attack is still the only way to apply a stack of Censure (Corruption/Vengeance). Personally I would like to see them move SoR towards a primarily spell power-based formula and make it the preferred DPS seal for Holy while making SoT attractive for Retribution. The way to do this, of course, is to allow SoT to stack quicker than it would with auto-attacks.
Along the lines of my previous thought, something very interesting to point out is that Seals of the Pure is now first tier in Holy and still provides up to 9% casting and melee haste after a successful Judgement. Think about this for a moment. Grab Swift Retribution, throw on a little bit of haste gear and take 3/3 Seals of the Pure and what do you have? Well, you’d have 29% melee haste by default from talents and then as much as you can muster from gear. What would the implications of this be for Seal of Truth if our swing timer was cut down to something obscene like 2.0 seconds per swing? Interesting. Interesting indeed.
Anyway, I think I’ve chewed on enough tonight so I’m going to call it for the moment but don’t expect me to be away long. I’ll be back rather soon with more thoughts and considerations. For now, post your thoughts in the comments. I’m very happy right now. So happy that I just wanna say:

For those interested, if the current beta patch were to go live as-is, my build would probably be of the following variety: Tharvolde’s Build




