There are some new changes for the talent system in Mist of Pandaria, New talent system With the intention of cutting down on cookie-cutter builds, Blizzard redesigned the talent system so that it was based around player preference and situational usefulness. Players now receive their core abilities automatically when selecting a spec, and talents serve to supplement different styles of gameplay.
Blinding Light Reminiscient of Eadric the Pure's ability in Trial of the Champion, this AoE CC is our level 87 ability and will probably see more use in PvP than PvE, though it could have some usefulness in controlling large packs of mobs, provided you have a tank ready to pick them up after the CC is over.This passive allows us to carry up to 5 holy power at one time. With the increased cap, we don't have to worry as much about "wasting" holy power when we use Judgment or Exorcism from range.
Devotion Aura No longer just the domain of holy paladins, this revamped version of Aura Mastery carries a little more oomph than before with the addition of 20% magic damage reduction. Keep this button handy.
Hammer of the Righteous Protection was kind enough to loan us their AoE holy power generator. Divine Storm will be our new AoE holy power finisher.Higher holy power generation The holy power system has been improved upon for Mists, with Judgment, Crusader Strike, Hammer of the Righteous, Exorcism, and Hammer of Wrath all generating the resource. Hopefully this will make our playstyle more proactive and engaging than before.
As previously stated, talents are now primarily situational in nature. Therefore, instead of giving you a cookie cutter to use, let's briefly discuss each tier. Level 90 At our final level, we have three cooldowns to choose from. Holy Prism has a dual functionality, either damaging an enemy and radiating healing, or healing an ally and radiating damage. Light's Hammer is a targetable, AoE attack, creating a zone that does both damage and healing. Finally, Execution Sentence is a single-target ramping damage (or healing) cooldown.
Similar to Cataclysm, retribution's rotation is a combination of priority and combo point systems. Holy power generation and expenditure remain our primary concern, but it will be much faster and smoother than ever before.
Maintaining Inquisition uptime remains priority number one. The rest, however, may require some explanation. The reasoning behind waiting until we are sitting at 5 holy power before we use TV is described quite well by Meloree in Maintankadin's ret beta thread:If you have 3HP and CS and J are both off cooldown, and you use the TV, then you've pushed back your holy power generation by a GCD. If you do that continually over the course of an encounter, you generate significantly less holy power, and thus use less TVs (and have more empty GCDs, and do less damage).
