The most recent Cataclysm Beta build is up and running.  Lots of new changes, including the increased level cap to 85.  For those of you that don’t know, that is max level for Cataclysm. Also, some sad news for our soloing adventures…Zul’Gurub (ZG) will be removed as a raid instance in Cata.

In this most recent builds, we see some interesting things from Blizzard.  They continue to tweak our damage.  After reading as much as I could from blue posts and other websites, it appears Rets were just doing too much damage, often topping the damage meters.  To scale this down to bring us even with other classes, we got the heavy nerf several builds ago.

Now, it appears they are watching our DPS very carefully, and I fully expect things to be shaken up even more as the Beta trucks along.  Here are the relevant notes for Ret Paladins, and you can find the full notes on MMO Champion.

Retribution

• Selfless Healer now has a 50/100% chance to proc, up from 30/60%.
• The Art of War revamped – Your melee attacks have a 7/14/20% chance to reduce the cast time by 100%, reduce mana cost by 60%, and increase damage by 60% of your next Exorcism.
• Pursuit of Justice additional effect – You have a 50/100% chance to gain a charge of Holy Power when struck by a Stun, Fear or Immobilize effect.

Also, from the Holy Tree, we have these changes:

• Divine Plea now let you gain 10% (down from 25%) of your total mana over 15 sec. Cooldown changed to 2 min, up from 1 min.
• Consecration now scales from 22% of AP and 22% of Spell Power, down from 32%.
• Exorcism mana cost changed from 20% base mana (up from 8% of base mana). Cooldown removed.
• Lay on Hands cooldown reduced from 20 min to 10 min.

My Thoughts

Selfless Healer change continues to let me believe we may be functioning as a combat healer in a very, very small role.  I’m curious as to how that will play out.

Art of War only reaffirms that Blizzard is really trying to make Exorcism a staple in our DPS rotations.  Also, the cooldown on Exorcism has been removed, meaning it can be cast at any time.  You can expect Ret Paladins to be playing with Exorcism priorities after an Art of War proc.  I am excited about this change.

Pursuit of Justice was a passive talent that increased our movement speed, which helped on fights where we had to do lots of running around.  This added effect is a bonus to stack Holy Power.  This will be of much more importance in PvP, but it will see small benefits in PvE as well.

Divine Plea is a little discouraging, and I assume Blizz will change this up over time.  A meager 10% seems a little low, and though I know we won’t be having many mana concerns, I can’t imagine 10% will be helping us to the point that justifies doubling the cooldown time.

Consecration has fallen out of my favor, and has plummeted even further with the decrease in AP and SP%.  I take comfort in that I am not in Beta, so on paper it looks bad, but I am hoping the current state is still powerful, especially at such a high mana cost.

Exorcism, as mentioned above, continues to be changed to fit more into our DPS rotations.  At a cost of 20% base mana, it will not be spammable.  Yet still, it will be used often, and with this change, I wonder if our mana usage will have to be rethought by Blizz (see Divine Plea).

Lay on Hands to 10 minutes is great.  i wonder if its respective glyph will lower that down further, as it currently does on live.