Words of Replicant Jesus

Well after perusing some forums and checking out MMO-Champion and World of Raids it seems the major news of the day is this quote by Tom Chilton (Kalgan):

PC Gamer: What else is changing?

Tom Chilton (Kalgan) : We’re also going to be doing away with spell-damage only type gear. We’ll be moving to a system that, as part of your talents, will let players convert healing into spell-damage and vice-versa as part of their talents. That way they can use the exact same gear, but their talents just adapt what it does.”

Now what that statement means is up to debate though if you take it literally it sounds like Blizzard is going to do away with spell damage specific or healing specific system and more of homogenized system that allows a player through talents to enhance their spell damage or healing.

Although the validity of the statement is brought into question because the statement could be several weeks old and not include changes to the current Alpha build which we all know is currently underway.

But assuming that Blizzard wants to go a more homogenized system for spell damage and spell healing, I have to think that in the long run this strategy may improve the variety of loot and make it so that loot is always wanted and not sharded because a specific spec/class is not present; which helps to improve loot disbursal for the raid/party group. It fixes some itemization woes but for Protection paladins specifically which is what I care about it does bring up a number of questions of how paladin tank gear will be itemized; will we share gear with Holy paladins? That does not seem to promising considering we still need defensive stats to make ourselves viable tanks; are we back to wearing mostly warrior tank plate with some choice spell damage pieces? Protection paladins don’t need spell crit, but Holy currently is based around spell critical to make it effective and cost efficient. Holy does not need dodge rating or plus defense or even block rating, but these are staples of a paladin tank’s gear choices.

Hopefully spell hit will go away as has been rumored, and we will have a unified plus hit stat, which will make spell hit or hit in general a much better option for us since currently our spells are all over the place and not solely based on just spell hit or hit; this should also hopefully increase the effectiveness of Expertise for us.

With the crushing blow mechanic disappearing or at least diminishing in the future expansion it should allow tanks, especially paladins more freedom in making our gearing choices allowing us to focus more on threat, mitigation, and avoidance instead of spending more itemization points to replicate Shield Block and push crushing blows off the table.

Obviously much of this is speculation but big tanking changes are coming, and I am eager to see how Blizzard implements the changes and just how they will affect protection paladins in the future… will we still have to off-heal in the future or will our damage increase allowing us more viability when we are not tanking? I don’t see our AoE tank role diminishing, it should be enhanced, but I do agree that other classes should get some AoE love so that the tanks are closer in baseline with our few outstanding specialties.