A Look at Wrath of the Lich King Paladins, Part I

I'd like to take a moment to thank Blizzard for not sending me a Wrath of the Lich King beta key. I've already spent hours poring over new data from MMO-Champion, Deathknight.info, and Wowhead, who knows what sort of abyss I'd fall into were I actually playing the damn thing. I was frighteningly close to giving my account information up to some sketchy website scam. Fortunately for me, I can't even begin to consider something like this, seeing as how I'm dead broke.

My primary character being a Paladin, I was excited to finally get some information on what's going on with Warcraft's holy warriors. Starting with the general and moving to the specific:

- Seals and Judgments: Details seem sketchy at the moment, but it seems like this system has been reworked. Based on some Wowhead entries, it looks like we might be trading in our standard Judgement spell in for 3 seperate Judgements: of Light, of Wisdom and of Justice. If my guesswork is right, you'll be able to keep your primary damage seal up, and the new Judgements will grant the standard damage burst as well as the appropriate utility effect. Then again, the data files for the normal seals of Wisdom, Light and Justice are still in the data files for WotLK, so it's tough to say for sure.

- Blessings and Hands: Sacrifice, Freedom, Protection and most interestingly Salvation have been converted to a new type of spell called Hands. Seems the primary reason for this to allow the use of these spells without overwriting the current Blessing, which is a good start. In PvE, Hand of Sacrifice will likely see more use than it's forebear - the old blessing was rarely used outside of PvP or a few specialty fights. The new version might allow a Pally to mitigate some of the damage coming to a tank during a particularly nasty phase of a boss fight.

The change to Salvation no doubt shocked and dismayed a lot of DPSers, but from what I understand threat in WotLK is generally being reworked. This is a sensible change, since as it currently stands Salvation is almost a necessity. If a DPS class can never afford to forgo Salv, then the ability only exists to punish those without access to it. The new Salv looks more like an emergency button that hopefully will only need to used during tank transitions and the like.

These improvements are pretty minor, but they are improvements (if not necessarily buffs). I'll get into the real good stuff with and give you my take on some of the new Pally talents and revamped trees next pass.

-- Schmitty