For those who did not check the latest update on the PTR, Prot Paladin got a fairly heavy nerf both performance-wise and quality of life-wise. I am really, really hoping this is simply an oversight and will be revisited with feedback.
So, performance-wise, Righteous Protector went from a 2-point talent that made holy power abilities reduce the CD of Sentinel/Guardian of Ancient Kings by 1.5/3 seconds, to a 1-point talent that only reduces the CD by 1.5 sec. This makes Sentinel go from roughly a 1-min CD to a 1.30-minute CD.
Why is this an issue? Well, the way efficient tanking works now in M+ is you chain your CDs one after the other (usually) to increase survivability. Adding an extra 30 seconds of downtime until our next CD creates a significant window where death can occur from anything with the amount of heavy tank busters + unavoidable dmg in dungeons that we have currently. There is already a 30-ish second window where you get exposed. This changes adds another roughly 30 to that.
Quality of life-wise, the new talent tree for Prot now forces the player to sacrifice talents which prior were all taken, because they were all really good.This is an average build you might find nowadays: https://www.wowhead.com/talent-calc/paladin/protection/DAAANVVFUgYSRRWAUUCVU
Out of these talents, the ones that are core more often than not are Soaring Shield, one point in Gift of the Golden Valkyr (it does enough on 1 point), Righteous Protector, and Bulwark of Righteous Fury. The ones that are "almost" core and are incredibly nice to play with because it makes the spec feel fluid are the following:
- Eye of Tyr (it provides a bridge between defensives. You go into a pack with Sentinel. That runs out, you use Ardent Defender. That runs out, you use Eye of Tyr, and then you are left with roughly 10-15ish seconds maybe where you are naked, but after that Sentinel comes back up.
- Crusader's Judgment - having 2 charges of Judgment just makes the rotation much more fluid and allows the paladin to gain holy power quicker, which means more Shield up time, which means greater survivability.
- Final Stand - having your paladin bubble as a 4th defensive, in the case of Oh, shit! moments is incredibly valuable and this is often used in those 10-15 seconds of nakedness to further bridge the gap until your next Sentinel.
Other talents are up for debate, like Inspiring Vanguard, Barricade of Faith, Crusader's Resolve, however, those don't really conflict with the choice problem we run into at the final talent levels (I just wanted to mention this as a side-note).
With the new talent build we have, Prot Paladins will now have to give up one of the aforementioned talents to get something else, which leaves them in a more precarious position, defensively.
https://www.wowhead.com/ptr/talent-calc/paladin/protection/DAAANVVBUgYSRRoEYQCVU
If you want Righteous Protector, you have to give up either Final Stand, Eye of Tyr, Bulwark of Righteous Fury, or Soaring Shield. This scenario gimps Prot performance a fair bit, since you either cannot chain CDs or will simply do way less damage (and less shielding, depending on what you give up). In addition to this, the new tree forces you to go 2 points into Gift of the Golden Valkyr, which gives very little for 2 points of investment, AND you also have to get Faith's Armor, which provides very little extra armor for the 2-point investment. Moreover, they moved Sanctified Wrath for Retribution, but Prot does not even get it, because you would have to give up even more survivability for very, very little in return.
There are easy ways to fix this, and the easiest of them all would be swapping the position of Righteous Protector with Strength of Conviction. Yes, it would still be the nerfed version of RP and SoC, but at least you could still get it together with the other survivability tools you had so far, while SoC would remain as just a 1-point investment which is still decent.
Other options would be to make Faith's Armor a 1-pointer (instead of 20% armor for 2 points, make it 10% for just 1), or make Gift of the Golden Valkyr a 1-pointer (since that's the most people invest in it anyways). In doing so, you get 1 extra point, which can then be allocated to Righteous Protector, once more allowing you to get everything you get now.
I'd understand such a change if Prot Paladin was the dominant tank spec like Warrior is right now. It would make sense to force them to choose, since all the other tank specs are forced to choose and do not get perfect talent builds....except warrior, which gets everything they want from their talent tree at no expense whatsoever. They get utility, damage, constant uptime on defensives, and survivability for no sacrifice.
I'd really like to understand the reasoning behind these changes. It legit boggles me, since Paladin is not even outrageously strong or anything. It's good and it's a sturdy tank, but it's roughly on par with most other tanks. It started to be a lil bit stronger now, since its good talent tree could scale off of higher ilvl gear, but it's still mostly equal to everyone else.
