Beta tank set ups and initial thoughts:

[Lumenactio]

Ok.

Skills now are broken down into 2 category pages.

Active and Passive.

It's not paged out like it is on live depending on Prot/Ret/Holy abilities. It's all just clumped into things you press, and things that you don't.


Current Beta Build level 85 Protection Specced Paladin

ACTIVE Abilities

Page 1

Ardent Defender
3 Min CD, 20% DR for 10S, if killed heals you to 15%.

Auto Attack

Avenger's Shield
1400 Mana 15s CD 7477 Damage 3 targets Silence + Interrupt for 3S

Avenging Wrath
3m CD Increases Damage and healing by 20%.

Blessing of Kings
4460 Mana Increases Str, Agi and Int by 5%

Blessing of Might
4460 Mana Increases Mastery by 5

Cleanse
3280 Mana 8s CD 40yd Range Posion/Disease

Consecration
1400 Mana 9s CD 4180 over 9s

Crusader Strike
600 Mana 4.5s CD Attacks with your Weapon giving 1 charge of Holy Power

Divine Light
7000 Mana 2.5s Cast 40yd Range Heals target for 16647

Divine Protection
700 Mana 1min CD Reduces Magic Damage by 40% for 10s

Divine Shield
5m CD Reduces all damage you deal by 50%, protects you from all damage. Causes Forbearance.

End of Page 1.

[Lumenactio]

Current Beta Build level 85 Protection Specced Paladin

ACTIVE Abilities

Page 2

Flash of Light
7260 Mana 1.5s Cast 40yd Fast but inexpensive heals (seems to heal between 10K and 11.5K in my prot gear)

Guardian of the Ancient Kings
5m CD 50% DR for 12s

Hammer of Justice
700 Mana 1m CD 10yd Stuns for a short time

Hammer of the Righteous
2340 Mana 4.5s CD Hammers Current Target for 20% Weapon Damage, causing a wave hitting all enemies for 2897 damage and demoralizes the targets physical damage dealt by 10% for 30s. Grants a charge of Holy Power.

Hand of Freedom
1400 Mana 25s CD 30yd Immune to Movement Impairing for 6s, only 1 hand at a time.

Hand of Protection
1400 Mana 5min CD 30yd Protects against Physical attacks, can not attack. (Doesn't mention it, but does cause Forbearance if used on yourself at least)

Hand of Sacrifice
1400 Mana 2min CD 40yd Transfers 30% of damage to the paladin, lasts 12s or until causes 100% of Max health.

Hand of Salvation
1400 Mana 2min CD 40yd 2% threat reduction every second for 10s.

Holy Light
2800 Mana 2.5s Cast 40yd Inexpensive moderate heal. (seems to do about 6500ish)

Holy Wrath
1880 Mana 9s CD 2529 split between all enemies within 10yd. Stuns demons and undead for 3s.

Judgment
1180 Mana 6s CD Unleases Seal causing 6576 Damage and generates 1 charge of Holy Power.

Lay on Hands
40yd 10m CD Heals target equal to your max health. Causes forbearance.

End of Page 2

[Lumenactio]

Current Beta Build level 85 Protection Specced Paladin

ACTIVE Abilities

Page 3

Rebuke
2340 Mana 15s CD Interrupt and School lock out for 4s.

Reckoning
700 Mana 8s CD 30yd Forces a creature not attacking you to attack you.

Redemption
15000 Mana 10s Cast 40yd

Righteous Fury
1.5s CD Increases Threat generation while active, making you a better tank

Seal of Insight
3280 Mana Improves healing spells by 5%, melee has chance to heal you for 1872 and restore 4% base mana

Seal of Righteousness
3280 Mana Deals 5% Weapon Damage to all Targets within 8yd.

Seal of Truth
3280 Mana Deals 14% extra holy damage, and causes Censure. Censure deals 1832 over 15s, stacks up to 5 times.

Shield of the Righteous
Cost: 3 Holy Power 1.5s CD Causes 8665 damage. You block the next melee attack against you. Increases amount you block by 25% for 6s.

Turn Evil
2100 Mana 1.5s Cast 20yd Causes Undead or Demon to flee for 40s. Only 1 target at a time.

Word of Glory
Cost: 1 or more Holy Power 1.5s CD 40yd Heals 5874 Per Charge of Holy Power

End of Page 3

End of ACTIVE Abilities

[Lumenactio]

Current Beta Build level 85 Protection Specced Paladin

PASSIVE Abilities

Page 1

Armor Skills
Can wear plate at level 40

Boundless Conviction
You may store 2 additional Holy Power, you can still only spend a maximum for 3 at any time. (Adds 2 additional little boxes under the Holy Power UI under our Unit Frame)

Cold Weather Flying
Northrend Flying

Divine Bulwark
Increases chance to block melee attacks (I can't find anywhere that says how it works mathwise, mines currently 59% at 26.37 Mastery)

Flight Master's License
Cataclysm Flying

Grand Crusader
Crusader Strike and Hammer of the Righteous have a 20% chance to Refresh the CD on Avenger's Shield and causes it to Generate a Holy Power if used within 6s.

Guarded by the Light
Increases Stamina by 15% Reduces chance to be Critically hit by 6% and Word of Glory is no longer on the GCD.

Heart of the Crusader
Mount speed is increased by 20%, does not stack.

Improved Judgement
Grants Protection Judgements of the Wise

Judgements of the Wise
Our Judgements now Generate 1 Charge of Holy Power

Master Riding
Faster Flying

End of Page 1

[Lumenactio]

Current Beta Build level 85 Protection Specced Paladin

PASSIVE Abilities

Page 2

Parry
Grants a chance to Parry Melee attacks

Sanctity of Battle
Haste Lowers the Cooldown and GCD of Judgement, Hammer of Wrath, Hammer of the Righteous and Crusader Strike

Sanctuary
Decreases Damage taken by 10% and increases Armour Value by 10%

Supplication
For 15s after you kill an Enemy that grants XP or Honor your Flash of Light heals an additional 300%.

Vengeance
Each time you take damage, you gain 5% of that damage as attack power up to 10% of your Health

Weapon Skills
Axes, Maces, Polearms and Swords

End of Page 2

End of PASSIVE Abilities

[Lumenactio]

Sorry that took so long, I had to tab between the PTR and the forum.

Seal of Insight Test

605 Swings over 15 min or so.

334 Procs
271 NonProc Hits


No Glyph. One can't be made yet, and 1 that only does something if you're being hit. Which I couldn't test, so I didn't bother to equip it.

The procs seemed very frequent, the heal bounced between 1872 and 1873, always 800 Mana.

I imagine if I ran it longer, it would be pretty bloody close to 50% proc. Will re-run and do a combat log. I just saw the request for one in that Call to Arms thread. Will upload to World of Logs once authorized.

[benebarba]

Holy Wrath
1880 Mana 9s CD 2529 split between all enemies within 10yd. Stuns demons and undead for 3s.

wait - they decided to let us keep Holy Wrath? Or rather, gave it back compared to the previous update of the talent calculator?


Can it still be glyphed to stun dragonkin and elementals or has that glyph been removed?

Also, it seems like our heals haven't been removed like they were in the talent calculators? (IIRC, we only got FoL in that)

[Worldie]

We have Word of Glory, Holy Light and Flash of Light like in the calculator.

Holy is (apparently) getting this Denounce skill instead of Holy Wrath as "nuke". I suppose they thought Ret and Prot have too many free gcds and left Holy Wrath where it was.

Also interesting change for WoG not on the GCD.

[theckhd]

Thanks Lumenactio. Please post the log of the test in the Call to Arms thread when you get it uploaded.

So it looks like AS is back to 15s and a 20% proc rate on GC after all. That's not all that surprising, with a 9-second cooldown and 40% proc chance on GC, that'd be an awful lot of silences/interrupts. It was probably a problem in PvP.

In that light, Holy Wrath makes sense. My early sims using the abilities from the talent calculator were showing around 10% dead time (empty GCDs). The AS/GC changes would increase that pretty significantly, so we probably needed another filler. Denounce (Holy Tree) has the same icon as Holy Wrath did, and it's at the same point in the spec progression, so it looks like they took Holy Wrath from Holy, gave it to us, and gave Holy Denounce as a replacement. Now let's just hope they add some sort of AP scaling on Holy Wrath.

I don't yet know what to make of this:

Sanctity of Battle
Haste Lowers the Cooldown and GCD of Judgement, Hammer of Wrath, Hammer of the Righteous and Crusader Strike

It seems to me like this has to be an error, because (a) we know it's a ret talent, and (b) we don't get HoW. However, it may be that they're playing with it as a way to make haste attractive to us, or give us some benefit from Bloodlust.

[theckhd]

Also interesting change for WoG not on the GCD.

We've known that for a while - one of the earlier dev blogs mentioned it (I think - either that or a blue post somewhere). Which makes sense - survival cooldowns don't really belong on the GCD, and that's what WoG is in the active mitigation system. I believe they did that to Shield Block, Savage Defense, etc. as well.

[Skiddles]

Some quick notes from the Beta I don't recall having seen discussed on the site here yet:

- Holy Power generation is on Hit only (not on swing). This is offset somewhat by Judgment (they renamed it from "Judgement" for some reason) generating HP. The difference in HP generation is noticeable on bosses.

- The level 75 talent Holy Avenger is different on Beta than on the current posted talent calculator. On Beta it's an on use ability:

Holy Avenger
Instant - 2 min cooldown
Abilities that generate Holy Power will generate 3 charges of Holy Power for the next 20 sec.

- I haven't done a fully detailed comparison of stats between Live and Beta, but three things did catch my eye: per the in-game character sheet and wearing the same gear (sans Libram of course) I lost ~9% Dodge, lost ~4% Block, gained 1600 Spell Power on Beta compared to Live.

- As an aside, Dodge in general is dramatically reduced between Live and Beta. My Bear tank went from 41% Dodge on Live to 23% Dodge on Beta in the same gear (again, per the character sheet).

- WoG having no cooldown feels very powerful. This is no doubt exacerbated by the increased spell power. Holy Avenger as it stands in Beta now + no cooldown WoG basically made me no longer jealous of any of the other tanking cooldowns.

Overall first impressions: I very much like my paladin on Beta. I would rather play him than his counterpart on Live.

As an aside, by overall first impressions of my other tanks:
- Do not like my Bear on Beta. Rage starvation is a debilitating issue on Beta for me at least.
- My DK feels pretty much the same as on Live.
- My warrior also suffers from a bit of Rage starvation, but he "feels" better to play on Beta for me at least.


-- Skid

[KysenMurrin]

Gylph of Holy Wrath (makes it always single target) could be situationally interesting for us, now.

That new Holy Avenger is interesting... What're the alternatives again? The old Ret proc to not consume HP, and no cooldown on Judgment during AW?

[Sagara]

That new Holy Avenger is interesting... What're the alternatives again? The old Ret proc to not consume HP, and no cooldown on Judgment during AW?

Pretty much. What is rather important is that Judgment produces HoPo, which meant that we chose either to have some extra HoPo at random times, had an extra influx of HoPo on-demand on a 2 min CD, or a bigger influx when using our big defensive CD.

I was seriously hesitating between the last two, Holy Avenger being good for *huge* spikes, while Sanctified Wrath was tantamount to an extra defensive CD. But if Holy Avenger is just as big on a 2-min cooldown unlinked from GotAK, it feels to me to be almost a non-choice.

[benebarba]

We have Word of Glory, Holy Light and Flash of Light like in the calculator.

Holy is (apparently) getting this Denounce skill instead of Holy Wrath as "nuke". I suppose they thought Ret and Prot have too many free gcds and left Holy Wrath where it was.

Also interesting change for WoG not on the GCD.

Sorry - I should have been more specific. I thought Divine Light (IIRC, the big expensive heal) and Holy Light were going to be holy-only.

[Sabindeus]

We have Word of Glory, Holy Light and Flash of Light like in the calculator.

Holy is (apparently) getting this Denounce skill instead of Holy Wrath as "nuke". I suppose they thought Ret and Prot have too many free gcds and left Holy Wrath where it was.

Also interesting change for WoG not on the GCD.

Sorry - I should have been more specific. I thought Divine Light (IIRC, the big expensive heal) and Holy Light were going to be holy-only.

That's certainly what the calculator on the web says, but it's not reflected in the current beta build. Since the current beta build is explicitly for testing 1-10 Panda content I am not particularly surprised by this potential oversight.