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Protection

• Righteous Fury: The bonus threat from Holy spells caused by this talent has been reduced from 90% to 80%.
• Ardent Defender: This talent now reduces damage taken below 35% health by 7/13/20% instead of 10/20/30%.
• Blessing of Sanctuary: This blessing now grants 10% strength in addition to its current effects. Also, the strength and stamina bonuses from this blessing will no longer be lost when Blessing of Kings is removed.
• Judgements of the Just: The reduction in cooldown to Hammer of Justice provided by this talent has been reduced to 5/10 seconds instead of 10/20 seconds.
• Touched by the Light: This talent now provides 20/40/60% of the paladin’s strength as spell power instead of 10/20/30% of the paladin’s stamina.

Retribution

• Seal of Command: This ability now chains to strike up to 2 additional targets when it is triggered by an attack that can only strike a single target.
• Seal of Corruption and Seal of Vengeance: These seals will now only use the debuff stacks generated by the attacking paladin to determine the damage done by the seal and by the judgement.

Items

• The Black Heart: This item’s animation has been changed and no longer resembles Hand of Protection.
• Libram of Obstruction: The buff to block value from this relic is now exclusive with the buff to block value from Libram of the Sacred Shield; it is impossible to have both buffs at once.
• Libram of the Sacred Shield: The block value buff from this relic has been increased to match its item level.
• Relics: All buffs provided by relics (idols, librams, totems and sigils) now share an exclusive category such that gaining a buff from one of these items will remove all other buffs gained from items in this category.

There were only a few changes that differed from the previous notes I posted. Righteous Fury is still getting nerfed, but I’m not sure if it’s going to be a nerf over all. The 10% threat loss being made up by the bonus strength from the new Blessing of Sanctuary.

Ardent Defender got a much needed nerf. It was insanely powerful last patch and the 1/3rd reduction isn’t too bad. It certainly reduces the effective health gain, but I don’t think anyone is going to think twice about it being part of their build. It’s just too good of a get out of jail free card that I’ve had proc on many an occasion.

Touched by the Light and Blessing of Sanctuary I think make this patch a wash in buff/vs nerf. Blessing of Sanctuary now gives 10% strength as well as stamina. That 10% strength is going to increase our damage output and threat. Holy damage and subsequent threat is slightly reduced by the new Touched by the Light, due to most protection armor sets having more than twice as much stamina as strength. Still, while that equals a slight reduction in spellpower, the extra damage/threat from the bonus strength from Blessing of Sanctuary about evens it out. I’m sure we’ll start seeing more Strength gems in red sockets instead of Stamina gems if threat becomes an issue.

I tanked a few instances post patch and it does seem like my DPS is greater than before the patch. No one has been able to peel a boss or a trash mob off of me (except another Paladin that forgot to turn of Righteous Fury while ret spec).

Overall I don’t feel like much has changed. This has to be one of the lighter tweaks Blizzard has done to the class, though to be honest, lately all of the tweaks have seemed slight. There haven’t been sweeping changes like in the early days where entire talent trees were scrapped and people had to relearn how to play their class. If you think I’m completely wrong… well there’s a comment section here for that reason.