Every new expansion brings changes to the classes of World of Warcraft, and Warlords of Draenor will be no different.  With the expansion looming ever closer it is time to start looking at the pending changes for the classes and how they will affect them.  This article covers the pending changes for the Paladin class.

Important Note:  These changes are based on the Beta for Warlords of Draenor and as such could change dramatically before the actual release of the game.

New Paladin Talents

Unlike the talents in the first 6 tiers of the talent tree which are pretty much the same for all three Paladin specs, the level 100 talents are different for each spec.

Holy

  • Beacon of Faith – Allows you to mark a target as a Beacon of Faith, essentially mimicking your Beacon of Light.
  • Beacon of Insight – Places a Beacon of Insight on a target, boosting the next direct heal you use on them by 30% in the next minute.  When used or the target reaches full health it moves to the next more injured ally within 40 yards.
  • Saved by the Light – Provides you and your Beacon of Light target a shield that absorbs 30% of their health in damage over 10 seconds, when either of you are dropped below 30% health.  It cannot protect the same player more than once in 60 seconds.

Protection

  • Empowered Seals – Your seals also cause your Judgement to empower you with addition effects, which last even when you change the seal.  These benefits include extra movement speed, healing over time, haste, and attack power.
  • Holy Shield – Increases your block chance and provides you the ability to block spells, along with dealing damage to the attacker when you block an attack.
  • Seraphim – Boosts your Haste, Crit, Mastery, Versatility, Multistrike, and Bonus Armor for 10 seconds.
  • Shining Protector – Healing you receive has a chance to heal you for an additional 30%.

Retribution

  • Empowered Seals – Same as above in Protection section.
  • Final Verdict – Replaces your Templar’s Verdict ability, empowers your weapon and deals significant Holy damage on strike, and boosts the damage of your next Divine Strike by 100%. 
  • Seraphim – Same as above in Protection section.

Paladin Talent Changes

In addition to new level 100 talents for the Paladin class, many of the existing talents from Mists of Pandaria are changing as well.  They are as follows:

  • Divine Purpose – Now affects only Word of Glory or Light of Dawn.
  • Eternal Flame – Heals over a shorter period of time, was 30 seconds, now 10 seconds.  1.5 second cast for Holy Paladins, instant for Protection and Retribution.
  • Execution Sentence – The healing is now front loaded instead of end loaded.
  • Holy Prism – The % of spell power is greatly increased for the AOE portion of the heal, about 2.5x what it was.
  • Selfless Healer – No longer works with Holy Radiance, effect from other heals is increased though.
  • Light’s Hammer – Spell power co-efficient boost.
  • Sanctified Wrath – Protection Paladins now gain 1 Holy Power and deal more damage.
  • Sacred Shield – Spell power co-efficient boost.

New Paladin Glyphs

As with most expansions Blizzard is abbing serveral new Glyphs to each class, here are the new Paladin glyphs:

  • Glyph of Ardent Defender – No longer reduces your damage taken, but if Ardent Defender is not consumed, the cooldown is reset to 60 seconds.
  • Glyph of the Consecrator – Your Consecration effect moves with you.
  • Glyph of Divine Wrath – Reduces all mana costs by 25% while Avenging Wrath is active, but Avenging Wrath provides 50% less bonus healing.
  • Glyph of the Liberator – Hand of Freedom’s cooldown is reduced by 5 seconds when not used on yourself.
  • Glyph of Hand of Freedom – Hand of Freedom immediately reduces the remaining duration of all effects that cause loss of control by 25%.  Any addition effect within 4 seconds also has its duration reduced by 25%.
  • Glyph of Judgement – Increases the range of Judgement by 10 yards.
  • Glyph of Merciful Wrath – Reduces the cooldown and effect of Avenging Wrath by 50%.

Changed Paladin Glyphs

There are a huge number of glyphs that are changing with Warlords of Draenor for the Paladin class.  At last count it was over 15,  however a lot of them were just changes to who could take them, as several glyphs can only be taken by certain specs now.  Thos will not be covered here.

  • Glyph of Avenging Wrath – Healing  is done every 4 seconds instead of every 2.
  • Glyph of Divine Shield – The healing effect has been reduced from 10% to 7% per time, and the max amount reduced accordingly as well.
  • Glyph of Divine Storm – Healing effect dropped to 4% from 5%.
  • Glyph of the Battle Healer – All melee attack while Seal of Insight is active now heal a random injured player for 45% of the normal amount.
  • Glyph of Cleanse – Cleanse now has a maximum of 2 charges but its cooldown is increased by 4 seconds.
  • Glyph of Protector of the Innocent – When you use Word of Glory to heal another target, even from multistrike effects, it also heals you for 20% of the amount.

New Paladin Specializations

Specializations are all of the different abilities that you gain when you choose a spec.  With Warlords of Draenor there are many new abilities coming to each spec.

Holy

  • Sanctified Light – You gain 5% more of the critical strike stat from all sources.

Protection

  • Resolve – Increases your healing and absorption that you do yourself, based on the damage taken (before avoidance and mitigation) in the last 10 seconds.
  • Riposte – You gain 100% of your Critical Strike (from gear) as Parry.
  • Sacred Duty – You gain 5% more of the haste stat from all sources.

Protection

  • Sanctity Aura – You radiate holy energy, granting all nearby party and raid members 3% Versatility.
  • Righteous Vengeance – You gain 5% more of the Mastery stat from all sources.

New Paladin Draenor Perks

Perks are a new reward that players earn as they level from 91 – 100 in Draenor.  This is instead of earning yet more new abilities and increasing ability bloat of the classes.  Each spec will earn an addition power-up to one of their existing abilities every other level while levelling up in the expansion.

All Specs

  • Improved Forbearance – Reduces the duration of Forbearance by 30 seconds.

Holy

  • Empowered Beacon of Light – Your single target heals heal your Beacon of Light target for 10% more.
  • Improved Daybreak – Increases the healing from Daybreak by 100%.
  • Enhanced Holy Shock – Your Holy Light and Flash of Light have a 10% chance to cause your next Holy Shock to not trigger a cooldown.

Protection

  • Empowered Avenger’s Shield – Avenger’s Shield strikes 2 additional targets.
  • Improved Consecration – Increases the damage done by Consecration by 50%.
  • Improved Block – Increases the amount of damage you block with your shield by 10%.

Retribution

  • Empowered Divine Storm – Holy Power consumers have a 25% chance to make your next Divine Storm free and deal 50% more damage.
  • Enhanced Hand of Sacrifice – Reduced the cooldown on Hand of Sacrifice by 30 seconds.
  • Empowered Hammer of Wrath – Hammer of Wrath can now be used on targets below 35% health.

Paladin abilities that have Changed

Almost every ability has been changed, at least slightly, due to the dramatic changes to stat values on everything.  Therefore I am going to ignore listing all the coefficient changes, since that would cover pretty much every ability the class has.  What is listed here are the core abilities that have changed in a meaningful way.

  • Seals no longer cost mana to use
  • Judgment now costs 5% mana down from 12%
  • Free for Holy Paladins
  • Generates 1 Holy Power for Retribution Paladins

Paladin abilities, spells, talents that have been Removed

There has been a lot of cleanup going on in preparation for Warlords of Draenor.  One of the things that players complained about in Mists of Pandaria was that the many years of expansion had lead to having too many different abilities per class.  There really was no way to keep them all straight and to have them all ready to go at any point in time.  Blizzard listened and has started a fairly large cleanup of  abilities, talents, glyphs and more from the game.  Here is a list of the Paladin ones that have been removed.

Removed from All Paladins

  • Blinding Light
  • Evil is a Point of View
  • Guardian of Ancient Kings
  • Judgements of the Bold

Removed from Holy Paladins

  • Divine Light
  • Divine Favor
  • Divine Plea
  • Tower of Radiance

Removed from Protection Paladins

  • Vengeance

Removed from Retribution Paladins

  • Inquisition
  • The Art of War

 


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Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

About The Author

Byron has been playing and writing about World of Warcraft for the past ten years. He also plays pretty much ever other Blizzard game, currently focusing on Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone, while still finding time to jump into Diablo III with his son.

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