Words of Replicant Jesus

Patch 3.1 is shaping up to be a very interesting overhaul of the classes.  Eyonix listed some of the changes coming and they are at least on paper, amazing.

Paladin

· Blessing of Kings – this spell is now a base ability trainable by all paladins.

· Exorcism – this spell now causes damage to all types of enemy targets. However, it always critical strikes undead or demon targets. This change should make sure paladin damage doesn’t drop when going from Naxxramas to later tiers of content.

· Shield of the Templar now causes your Avenger’s Shield and Shield of the Righteousness to silence targets for 3 sec. The old damage bonus of this talent has been folded into Holy Shield, Avenger’s Shield, and Shield of the Righteousness.

· Ardent Defender, Improved Hammer of Justice, One-Handed Weapon Specialization and more have had their ranks reduced.

· Guarded by the Light – no longer reduces the mana cost of shield spells, but now has a 50/100% chance to refresh Divine Plea duration.

· Judgements of the Just – now also reduces the cooldown of Hammer of Justice by 10/20 seconds and increases the duration of the Seal of Justice stun effect by 0.5/1 second.

The Blessing of Kings change will be awesome and free up five points for both Protection and Retribution; hopefully we will see an 11 point talent in the Protection Tree. The Exorcism change is interesting and should paladin DPS/TPS from dipping after we move into Ulduar.  Should also help with leveling as well and give Retribution an additional pulling ability besides Hand of Reckoning.  The Shield of the Templar change gives us a much needed low cooldown silence and allows us to pull casters from range.  This is a huge change, and I can’t wait to make use of it; might actually make Less-Rabi easier to do for those that have not done it yet. I like how they are consolidating the tree down, maybe we will get some new toys in the near future. I can only assume that we will have some fun talents to work with hopefully for Protection.

The Guarded by the Light change was hinted at in the Mana Changes post and should hopefully help to ease our mana consumption but it has an interesting side of effect of making us want to use Judgement of Wisdom instead of Light since Divine Plea will have a larger Healing reduction post patch, from 20% to 50%. The Judgement of the Justchange gives Protection more PvP utility and another interrupt silence on a low cooldown as well.  I am not sure if these will all stick but these all serve to make Protection very difficult to deal with for casters.  I might actually get some PvP achievements done now.

I really like the changes I can’t wait to see the rest and the overall Ulduar patch, this poses to be a very exciting update for the game.

Oh and Happy Birthday to me.