From the first preview, here’s what I got out of it:

Blinding Shield: another CC probably on a really long timer. Looks good for prot BG pvp. Very situational for the other two specs.

Healing Hand: PBAE heal? I’m sure this will get used as often as holy nova. oh wait, it doesn’t do damage. lol

Guardian of the Ancient King: A cool looking pet that does your job for you. Here I thought blizzard wanted to make paladin class more interesting to play, not less. But at least it looks cool.

Spec change:

Holy: we are going to nerf your best ability so you can use some of the crappy ones we made. But at least you don’t have to worry about refreshing sacred shield anymore. Oh, you’ll get a new heal, but we’ll figure that out later.
Mastery: When the paladin gets a crit on a heal, it will heal for more. (I literally lol’d here, sounds like an april fool joke)

Ret: We need to nerf your defense abilities and give you offensive abilities. Let’s nerf Divine Shield, take away Cleanse. Ok, we are done. What, offensive abilities? Um, we’ll get back to that. Hey, you got Holy Shock now, does that count?
Mastery: Any attack that does Holy damage will have its damage increased. (What holy damage? consecrate?)

Prot: You are going to have unlimited charges on holy shield, so you can finally tank h25 anub’arak lol. Just kidding, we are going to somehow figure out a way to make you press more buttons. That’s it.
Mastery: constant blocking. nice change

You sound pretty mad Glida :(

At this point I think blizzard doesn’t know how to balance paladin anymore. They addressed some of the problems other classes are complaining about, bubble, cleanse, beacon. and they fixed some really trivial issues like blessing of might/wisdom, holy shield charges. 

But they are afraid to make any major changes because they don’t know how. They don’t know how to change holy healing, so they give holy pally a even bigger single target heal, and a shitty aoe heal that’ll be marginalized by other AoE healer class anyway. They don’t know how to change ret dps, so they don’t even bother post anything, just saying ‘“we’ll make you screw up more.” As for prot, bliz probably doesn’t want to make any major changes, but “we’ll make you press more buttons” is far from something I would call a “preview”.

we are that class

I laughed also at the “when you crit it will heal for more” .... ooohhkayyy

I feel bad for holy pallies, I guess, then I remembered that I was told I was getting absolutely nothing new for cata, so then I don’t feel so bad anymore.

Should have at least given you a flying unicorn mount or something to offset the shit.

“When you stack mastery and crit heal, it will be HUGE”

The three new abilities are worth discussing tho. They are interesting for the most parts.

Blinding Shield: This will be great for prot pvp if they spec into instant cast. For other specs however, 2 second cast make it really unreliable. Any decent pvper can face away from you in 2 sec if they are paying attention. Basically H pally need to choose between this and a holy light cast in pvp. This being an aoe cc, probably only last 3 sec. Maybe this can be used offensively to chain cc on enemy healers, but the holy pally probably have to run over to their healer, stand there cast for 2 sec, and hope their healer wasn’t paying attention. For ret, It cost a total of 5sec to cast this between the 2 second cast and 2 GCD used switching to shield. I probably would never use this in pvp unless i’m in middle of a 10v10 battle. Maybe they can put the imp blinding shield really early in prot tree so any pvp spec can get the instant cast. I dunno, I can only hope.

Healing Hand: 15sec CD, last 6sec ? I hope this is a instant cast. PBAE heals are always very situational. For most fights healers would like to stay in range. If this is strong enough, it could make up for some of the h pally’s lack of aoe, but by no mean will pally be able to compete with other aoe healers from this. I do see this as a great tool for ret and prot to melee heal though if it’s indeed instant cast.

Guardian of the Ancient King: For tank, this is just another CD, probably like sacred shield mechanic, “absorb x damage every y second”. For healing, I really hope this avatar does smart aoe heal, so this can be a good CD for h pally to use for heavy raid damage. For dps, it’s probably just straight damage, nothing to it. But I can imagine how people will QQ about it being too powerful in conjunction with wings or w/e CD pally have, so Blizzard probably end up putting this on forbearance too.

Forbearance is like the robitussin of WoW. You got a pally problem? don’t worry, put it on forbearance and call it a day.

Glida - 14 April 2010 04:42 PM

You got a pally problem? don’t worry, put it on forbearance and call it a day.

hey that rhymes

The avatar will be a smart heal, it’s basically a cd version of the current shaman talent that “summons a spirit when you critically heal with x, y, z that heals the lowest health party member for 30% of the heal”

Well I loved right after they made first changes in this expansion. Bubble, avenging wrath and people qq. Yeah is fun, remember that we were the last class to have a cataclysm talent preview. They just did now what to do, they just want to create something new I guess. Imagine if the make a heal that when it crits it heals for less. It is like seal of martyr, oh you do more damage but you can kill yourself. Don’t forget all hot fixes, you log one day and you don’t have forbearance, then next day you have it. Anyway, palies are fun cause they have too many abilities that are useful in some cases.