3.1 Changes announced.

Ok, so some of the proposed changes to the Paladin class in 3.1 have been announced. It's a weird mixed bag:

* Blessing of Kings – this spell is now a base ability trainable by all paladins.

I'd like to say: Finally! But I'm curious about what our new tier 1 5-pointer will be.

* Exorcism – this spell now causes damage to all types of enemy targets. However, it always critical strikes undead or demon targets. This change should make sure paladin damage doesn’t drop when going from Naxxramas to later tiers of content.

Another awesome change! Giving Paladins another ranged, on-demand damage ability is great. Combine it with the Glyph and we have another interrupt with a 15-sec cooldown. I'm curious about it's use in PVE though, and how one would go weaving it into the normal 969 rotation.

* Shield of the Templar now causes your Avenger’s Shield and Shield of the Righteousness to silence targets for 3 sec. The old damage bonus of this talent has been folded into Holy Shield, Avenger’s Shield, and Shield of the Righteousness.

The change to Avenger's Shield is awesome, it's something we've been begging for since the WotLK beta opened. The change to Shield of Righteousness is beyond awesome, so I'm not sure if it'll stay.

* Ardent Defender, Improved Hammer of Justice, One-Handed Weapon Specialization and more have had their ranks reduced.

This, plus Baselining BoK removes a lot of the bloat from the Protection Tree. It might actually be possible to get all the "necessary" talents for 51 points now.

* Guarded by the Light – no longer reduces the mana cost of shield spells, but now has a 50/100% chance to refresh Divine Plea duration.

Sounds good, but a 50/100% chance on what? On refreshing Holy Shield? On Block/Parry/Dodge? On taking damage?

* Judgements of the Just – now also reduces the cooldown of Hammer of Justice by 10/20 seconds and increases the duration of the Seal of Justice stun effect by 0.5/1 second.

Adds some primarily PVP utility to Thunderjudge. Doesn't make the talent any less mandatory, but it, like the Shield of the Templar change and the Exorcism change makes it more fun to be a Protadin in PVP.

Interesting changes. I didn't think there was anything particularly "wrong" with the state of Tankadins, but the new changes will allow us to pick up more fun talents from other trees at less sacrifice. I might actually be tempted to take Ulu into an Arena again as well.

Now we just have to wait and see how many of these changes make it to live!