1.10 patch notes are up

The notes for 1.10 are up! While the servers aren't online yet, there are several interesting tidbits in the patch which will alter how you play the game completely: for example, UBRS now has a limit of ten people. Scholomance, Stratholme and BRD now has a limit of five people. Zerging UBRS is a distant past!

Here are the changes that involve the Paladin:

Paladin Changes:

Blessing of Light - Different ranks ... was never intended for them to be able to stack...
Judgement of Justice - This judgement will now always hit.
Righteous Fury - Righteous Fury will now ... generate the correct amount of additional threat...
Holy Shock - This ability now works with Divine Favor and Illumination.
Holy Shield - Mana cost reduced approximately 15%. The effect now has a small bonus coefficient from spell damage items and effects.
Eye for an Eye - This talent can now trigger while you are mounted.
Blessing of Sacrifice - This Blessing can no longer be used to prevent the death of a target...
Seal of Command - Will now be able to proc when the Paladin is silenced.
Improved Seal of Righteousness - Tooltip updated to reflect actual functionality...
Lay on Hands and Divine Intervention - Range increased.
Holy Shield - Tooltip updated to reflect that damage caused by Holy Shield causes 20% additional threat...
All Greater Blessings now have increased range.
Holy Shock - Mana cost reduced.
Most creatures that were previously immune to Scorpid Sting are now also immune to the Paladin Talent Vindication.
Fixed problem where occasionaly repeated casts of Consecration will not deal damage.
If a paladin avoids damage with Divine Shield, Eye for an Eye will not react.
Fixed stacking of paladin auras so they overlap, but only the best aura in a given category is in effect.

Relics:

Relics have been introduced to the game. These are class specific items for Druids, Paladins, and Shaman which can be equipped in the ranged slot. Currently there are a handful for each class which can be found scattered throughout Blackrock Depths, Blackrock Spire, Dire Maul, Scholomance, Stratholme, and The Temple of Ahn'Qiraj. We hope that you enjoy the first round of available relics and we will continue to add more in future patches.

Items:

- The Lightforge Set has had its set bonuses adjusted.
- The Lightforge Gauntlets have been moved.

Finally! Finally! No more dreaded Emperor runs!

Holy Shock's mana cost reduced. I wonder by how much.

Insert obligatory Protection rant here:

Notice that there were virtually no changes to Protection. So I guess until Naxxramas comes, Protection pretty much is dead (up to Blessing of Kings) for a large majority of Paladin players. I'm cautiously optimistic of the said improvements, because I have a real hard time figuring out any type of skill, talent or ability that would make it so much more attractive that it would persuade me to ditch more damage or more healing to get more tanking (or utility, if that is the case).

Protection used to really be grabbed for three things prior to 1.9: Repentance, Reckoning and Improved Blessings of Protection/Freedom. Now with Repentance in Retribution and the increased ability of burst DPS through Judgement of Command -- there really isn't any need for Reckoning anymore either for those who want to PVP. Beyond Guardian's Favor and Blessing of Kings, Protection, well, really isn't worth it -- unless you want to tank (which you will never be asked to do anyway, so stfu and bless and cleanse while the warrior is doing his shit).

I was hoping that when Caydiem said the changes were finalized for 1.9 she had hinted at that the developers would further develop and change the trees, so that by 1.10 we'd have whatever changes they didn't have time to put in for 1.9. But I think these patch notes now set it in stone that the developers either forgot about the tree during the process or simply didn't realize that Protection pretty much sucked ass from the players' perspective. They did their job, packed their stuff and moved on to the Priests.

That's too bad. The Hunter changes and the Druid changes were pretty good *. You can always speculate as to why they completely squandered up 1/3 of our talent review. It's really stuff like this that feeds the ego of those who say that "Blizzard doesn't care about Paladins".

There's even more stuff than just this to the patch notes, so don't forget to read them in its entirety!

* As a Druid I find all three trees very viable, with a slight decreased interest in Balance as you simply can not keep up in damage when it comes to raids due to the situation where you get out of mana relatively fast. Warlocks can trade their life for mana. Mages've got Evocation and gems. Druids don't have that which makes it less attractive than Feral and Restoration for end-game.