Holy #$&@!

We interrupt our regularly scheduled guide to discuss upcoming changes for 2.3. They are awesome.

The list:
First, Improved SotC, the Tier 2 talent, is being made baseline. ALL Paladins just received a 15% boost to the damage provided by SotC. Improved SotC is now being replaced by Sanctified Crusader, so a 3% increase to Melee and Spell Crit for the entire raid is now easily gotten by all Paladin specs. This is a VERY good thing. Prot Pallies the only Pallies in your raid up front? Now they can judge Crusader and provide everyone a 3% crit boost. Excellent benefit.

Second, Crusader Strike's CD reduced to 6 seconds. Excellent benefits - now one Ret Paladin can keep as many Judgments as you have Paladins in your raid on the mob. Light, Wis, Crusader, all of them will be up if you have 3 Pallies in the mix. The only challenge will be mana drain - speccing for Sanctified Judgment to get the mana return would be a wise choice now - you will burn through mana like no tomorrow.

Also, it gives us a nice punch to our burst damage in PvP, which brings us to 2 major changes: Vindication and Pursuit of Justice.

Currently, Vindication reduces an opponent's strength and agility by 15%. It procs pretty frequently, and while I haven't used it since they made raid bosses immune (something on the order of a year and a half ago), I rarely would fail to apply it onto a mob. Now it reduces all stats by 15%, procs more often, and lasts longer. It should be a nearly guaranteed application, and will reduce your opponent's health and mana by a nice chunk in the arenas. It was kind of a meh talent for the arenas before, but now you must get this.

Second, Pursuit of Justice, which at 2 points currently provides an 8% running and mounted speed bonus. It will be a 3-point talent now that they're kicking up to 15% and it will increase your chance to resist spells by 3%. (Making PoJ quite tempting for a prot Pally to get as well)

Hoo boy.

Finally, we have the talent spot that Sanctified Crusader used to occupy up in tier 7. We got one weird thing and one very good thing: basically, it will still be a 3-point talent, but now increase our melee and spell crit by 3%. Why Ret Pallies just got a 3% spellcrit boost, I don't know. Perhaps they thought that Exorcism and Judgment of Righteousness would actually be even somewhat used, but hey, I'm not complaining. Just odd. What matters is we have another 3% melee, on top of our 5% from Conviction and the 3% from Sanctified Crusader. 11% crit on top of our gear? 30% melee crit should be do-able in PvP gear, no problem.

All told we're going to be rolling with a lot more damage, and some excellent PvP utility. The only glaring omission, a lack of threat reduction (to be discussed in a later post and one of our most critical weaknesses) a blue post even promised was being looked into. If they drop a 15 or 20% threat redux in our laps on top of all this, I will have no complaints. For once.