When Warlords of Draenor launches later this year World of Warcraft players are in for a big shakeup.  So many things are changing that it is hard to keep track.  One thing that we all come to love (or loath) with a new expansion is the addition of new talents for our characters.  So, with that in mind I am going to look at the new Paladin Talent tree that is coming in WoD and take an even closer look at the new level 100 talents.

PLEASE NOTE: All talents and abilities are as in the Warlords of Draenor Beta
and therefore subject to change (maybe drastically) before release.

Warlords of Draenor Paladin Talent Tree Changes

As you can see, other than new level 100 talents it appears that nothing has really changed in the Paladin talent tree.  However appearances are deceiving.  While the names remain the same, at least one talent has changed so much that the only thing that is similar between the old and new is the name.

Divine Purpose – This talent has changed completely. 

  • MOP talent – Grants a 25% chance when using any ability that costs Holy Power to trigger the Divine Purpose effect, which allows your next Holy Power ability cast within 8 seconds to cast as if you had 3 Holy Power, but costs no Holy Power.
  • WoD talent – Word of Glory, Shield of the Righteous, or Templar’s Verdict has a 25% chance to allow your next Word of Glory or Light of Dawn to cast for no Holy Power but count as if 3 were used.

The change is significant since it no longer boosts any specs main purpose, but instead only boosts healing output.  Since healing is being scaled back across the board this will likely be a very useful talent as it will allow Paladins to help out healing (even if only themselves) while still doing what their chosen spec should.

In addition to the drastic change to Divine Purpose, several other talents have seen some minor changes.  These changes are mainly to the percentage benefits they provide and not to the base mechanic of the talent, but are important to note.

Eternal Flame, Lights Hammer, and Holy Prism all have had their effects boosted significantly. Execution Sentence now heals for much more at the start of its effect rather than at the end.  Sacred Shield and Execution Sentence have had the way that their effects are calculated change.

Warlords of Draenor Level 100 Paladin Talents

In Warlords of Draenor the talents that you gain access to will depend on your spec, which means that there are more than 3 talents to look at for each class.

Holy Talents

Starting with Holy Paladins they will gain access to the following talents at level 100:

Beacon of Faith – Mark a second target as a Beacon, mimicking the effects of Beacon of Light.

This is an amazing talent as it essentially doubles your Beacon of Light.  Even better than simply being able to pick a second target for your Beacon of Light, it is called something different, meaning you can control which one you put on a player and which one you replace.  It could have been much less useful if it just replaced the oldest beacon that you had applied.

Beacon of Insight – Places a beacon of insight on an ally, increasing their healing received fro your next direct single-target heal within 1 minute by 30%.  When consumed or the target reaches full health, it moves to the most injured ally within 40 yards.

Another amazing talent for Paladin healing if you spend your time healing tanks.  If you do, it can end up bouncing between your main and off-tank for most of a fight providing extra healing and extra holy power.  If you spend your time group healing though this probably is not your best choice.

Saved by the Light – When your Beacon of Light target drops below 30% health, you instantly grant them a protective shield that absorbs up to 30% of their max health over 10 seconds.  This shield can will only be applied once per 60 second time span.

While a great passive save ability, I am unsure how useful this will actually be since allowing a tank to drop below 30% health usually means a wipe is coming.  However with all the healing and tanking changes also coming into the game, it may be a solid choice, we just don’t know yet.  I like the idea of a passive save, but it will depend on how hard it is to keep a tank healed in the expansion as to how good or bad this talent is.

Protection Talents

Next up we look at my favourite spec, the Protection Paladin and their new level 100 talents are:

Empowered Seals – Your seals also cause your Judgments to empower you with an additional beneficial effect which persists through changing seals.

  • Judgment of Justice boosts movement speed by 20% for 20 seconds.
  • Judgment of Insight heals you for 5% of your max health every 2 seconds for 20 seconds.
  • Judgment of Truth boosts your attack power by 30% for 20 seconds.
  • Judgment of Righteousness increases your attack speed by 15% for 20 seconds.

This is a really tricky talent to evaluate and to use.  To get the best effect from it you will need to twist your seals like you used to have to in the old days.  You will need to swap a seal, attack, swap a seal, attack, etc.  Since we do not know if seals will remain off of the GCD it makes it hard to evaluate this talent.  If you can automate the seal twisting and just worry about attacking, this could be an amazing talent.  However if you have to manually manage your seals, the pain in the <blank> factor may not justify the benefits.

Seraphim – The Light Temporarily magnifies your power, increasing your haste, crit, mastery, multistrike, readiness, and bonus armor from gear by 30% for 10 seconds (on a 30 second cooldown).

This talent will be an extremely strong choice for many Paladins as the boots to all of those stats, especially mastery, adds a lot to your character.  In addition to a 33% uptime for added survivability, it also allows you to attack more often, hit harder, hit more targets, and reduce all your cooldowns.  What isn’t to love about this talent!

Holy Shield – Increases your block chance by 10% and when you block you deal Holy Damage to your attacker.  Additionally, you can now block spells.

This talent is likely to be the go to tanking talent at level 100, or at least for me it will be.  The other two talents are pretty good, but they focus more on all around ability as they boost survivability a bit, damage a bit, haste a bit, etcetera. 

This talent however provides a big boost to overall survivability, which is what a tank is there for.  As long as you are keeping agro on an enemy your damage shouldn’t matter that much, of course more is better, but really as long as you keep threat it’s enough.  This talent grants a flat up 10% boost to blocking chance, as well as provides the ability to block spells!  That alone is worth a lot of mitigation, as normally you have a 0% chance to block them and now you get to block them like you would a melee attack.  Top that off with dealing holy damage back to whatever hits you as long as you block it, and you can see why this talent is my favourite for tanks.

Retribution Talents

Lastly we look at the Retribution Paladin and their new level 100 talents.  Retribution Paladins share both Empowered Seals and Seraphim with the Protection Paladin, so make sure you read the Protection Paladin section first if you skipped right to this section.  They also have access to a new talent though called:

Final Verdict – Empowers your weapon with Holy energy and performs a devastating strike, dealing 280% weapon damage as holy.  Costs 3 Holy Power and is an instant.

This attack seems like an upgrade from your Templar’s Verdict since it deals slightly more damage, but is holy damage and therefore bypasses resistances.  It is a pretty basic DPS boost, and while nice, leaves a little something to be desired to me.  It seems too simple of a talent compared to some of the other cool effects and mechanics.

Comments

There you go, all the new Paladin Talents as they stand currently in the Warlords of Draenor Beta.  What are your thoughts on them?  Let us know in the comment section below.

 

 


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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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