The Fallout

Now that the patch has hit and Season 3 has begun I thought I'd take the time to post my thoughts on the changes and how they worked out. After weeks of debate with friends and myself I decided, like many arena Retribution Paladins, to go with the cookie-cutter 0/20/41 build. I had to give up some damage but gained utility in the process, even if that utility varies in reliability. I'll come right out and say it, I'm not thrilled about losing damage and the benefits, while good, are hit and miss in arena. Stoicism is nice to have but I'm still stunned virtually every time even with the meta gem for 18 stamina and 5% stun resistance. Totaling 15%, it still isn't much but it really makes me consider spending points elsewhere and even getting the 12 agility and 3% increased crit damage meta gem, considering the spell removal part of Stoicism isn't fantastic either with the variety of abilities that now serve that function (hello Arcane Shot). I find that with the talent I am stunned constantly and also stripped of my buffs in 1-3 removal abilities, so again it can't be banked on unlike Sanctified Seals (excellent talent).

Improved Hammer of Justice is another reason for this build and while reducing the cooldown by almost half on the spell (with the Gladiator set bonus) you have to invest deep in Protection to gain the benefit. In the matches I've had so far I can't say that having this talent either has made or broken anything, it's just nice to be able to use your abilities more often. In theory it can help to take out healers but between trinkets and Cleanse/Dispel Magic and all the passive healing a lot of these healers get (minus Paladins) it can be really challenging or impossible to kill a well geared healer as Retribution without assistance so Imp HoJ is a bit of a wash.

Moving backwards a bit to Improved Righteous Fury I find that while it's a good talent both in strength and in placement in the tree it fails in the same place Stoicism fails, as it is easily removed by many classes and thus useless considering the mana cost to recast (especially now with the double mana cost bug for the spell).

Blessing of Kings is a great all around buff to have even if it can be removed as there are still PvE concerns where it probably helps the most, but as Retribution I can even see this being let go from the build as you will most likely have Blessing of Freedom on yourself to keep in melee. This leaves Guardian's Favor and Precision, which again because our buffs are so easily removed, GF points could be spent elsewhere. Precision lets us compensate for +hit on gear while adding spell hit that is void from all plate armor in the game. This compensation also allows us to focus more on other stats to increase our longevity and offensive power. Having to essentially waste 5 points to get this talent though many object with and so do I.

As you can tell I'm being probably unfair to these talents because when they aren't removed by players they prove their worth, which is true of course but when your only means of preventing this from happening is a 30% chance then most of the time those talents will not shine and that's my complaint. They fixed this issue with Sanctified Seals, I'd love to see Stoicism buffed to maybe 60-80% removal resistance (they could remove the stun portion for all I care as it goes unnoticed 90% of the time) and place it for maybe 5 points in the Improved Devotion Aura spot and remove that talent entirely. For a class built around their buffs there needs to be more "Protection" for them to remain intact.

With all that said I'm still having a great deal of fun both in PvP and PvE despite not having the threat reduction talent and I'm looking forward to what other changes are in the works for our class.