My opinion on the upcoming paladin changes
Divine Shield: Penalty changed so that all damage done is reduced by 50% instead of a attack speed penalty.
1) Divine Protection no longer causes an attack penalty. Divine Shield’s penalty was changed to 50% less damage done by the paladin.
This is fine in my opinion. I’ve always thought it was too OP to bubble and run into a group and still be able to DPS completely.
2) Sacred Duty: This Protection talent no longer affects the attack penalty of Divine Shield and Divine Protection, but grants additional bonus Stamina.
Yay - more stamina! How could this ever be wrong, good change. This already provides prot pally’s with 6% more stam, I’m guessing they might buff that number to around 10%.
3) Avenging Wrath, Divine Shield, Divine Protection, and Hand of Protection have a shared, 30-second cooldown. The Forbearance effect is no longer triggered by Avenging Wrath.
While it’s nice to see that Avenging Wrath no longer causes forbearance, having all of these spells share a cooldown with Hand of Protection is bad. Paladins lose a lot of utility if this change goes live!
4) Judgement of Wisdom now returns a percentage of base mana instead of a percentage of max mana.
This is a HUGE nerf for Holy paladins, since they are the only pally’s that gear with intellect. For prot and ret paladins, base mana = max mana.
5) All mana drain effects now return a percentage of max enemy mana (making mana drains less punishing to paladins and other characters without large mana pools.)
This is a superb change for all of the mana-based classes with a low amount of mana *cough*ret pally*cough*. This is a PvP change.
6) Judgements of the Pure: This Holy talent now increases the damage done by Seals and Judgements.
This is a good change - I hope it significantly increases the damage by seals and judgements. This will help holy paladins solo and level much better.
7) All paladins receive a single-target taunt (name TBD) as a base ability.
This if f***ing awesome!! This is something that paladin tanks have been asking for for a very long time!
So for all of the changes going in, whenever they do go in, there is one major nerf (#4), one minor nerf (#3) and a slew of buffs!