I am an idiot, but it's OK! (3.1 PTR Notes)

The Public Test Realm went live last night apparently. The official 3.1 PTR notes are a little hard to find, as Blizzard doesn't update them all that quickly on their official website.

What I will be discussing is information posted by MMO-Champion. The notes are either directly from the patch notes in the PTR or have been data-mined by MMO-Champion, check out their post here. All of this information is liable and likely to change.

Picture from MMO-Champion

So what's in store for paladins and prot paladins in specific? Well some things we knew about and have been discussed before, like Exorcism working on all mobs but criting on undead and demons. Others are totally new and interesting, here are the new ones:

The reason for the above title is this first point. Auras will persist through death. You know you've done it. You step into and instance and wipe on some boss, then you step back in and buff everyone. 20 minutes later someone whispers you and wonders about your Devotion aura or Retribution aura, or ANY aura at all. You've totally forgotten to turn it back on! In fact, I did this just last night in a Heroic Halls of Stone run. I tanked a boss without any aura on, and while it did seem a little harder we made it though. The other paladin in the group whispered me about it afterward -- oops how embarrassing.

Shield of Righteousness now deals 130% of block value + 520 at the highest rank. It no longer causes a high amount of threat. (Previously increased damage by a set amount)
This is what I like to call a nerfing buff. It nerfs our high threat on that spell, but gives us what could turn out to be a crapton more damage, so well, that's more threat built in. We'll have to see how testing goes to know if this changes much or helps immensely.

Blessing of Kings is gone, now a trainable skill and is replaced by: Divinity:Tier 1 protection talent, increases healing done by and to you by 1/2/3/4/5%. This is something nice that Holy pallys can pick up, but that will help out when you need healz, and you always need healz.

Guarded by the Light (Tier 9) now reduces spell damage taken by 3% and gives a 50% chance to refresh the duration of your Divine Plea when you hit an enemy. (Previously reduced the mana cost of your Holy Shield, Avenger's Shield and Shield of Righteousness spells by 15%.)
This is a good buff because Divine Plea will make it so if you were ever having trouble with keeping up your mana, now you won't. As usual though, you'll have to remember to hit this button before you're totally out of mana.

I'm not the biggest fan of Divine Plea, it's another thing that I have to remember to hit, but which is not part of my normal tanking arsenal. This is mostly me crying in my beer, but I wish that as a tank I never had to worry about mana generation, only mana management. Slight difference but more than just semantics IMHO.

• Glyph of Exorcism -- Increases damage done by Exorcism by 20%. (Old: Your Exorcism also interrupts spellcasting for 2 sec.)

This is a change that I kind of anticipated. When they announced that Exorcism was going to be able to be used against ALL mobs they were going to have to change this glyph somehow, otherwise it would have been too overpowered in PVP.

• Glyph of Divinity -- Your Lay on Hands grants twice as much mana as normal and also grants you as much mana as it grants your target. (Old: Your Lay on Hands also grants you as much mana as it grants your target.)

I'm gonna love this. I am often using LoH -- sometimes just to get mana back in a hurry and I really think this is a great buff for anyone using LoH. BUFFALICIOUS!

• Glyph of Lay on Hands -- Reduces the cooldown of your Lay on Hands spell by 5 min.(Old: Increases the mana restored by your Lay on Hands spell by 20%)

I like this too, and with the newly freed up points in the protection tree, perhaps I can shorten the cooldown to, what like 11 minutes? Can be used for every boss fight now. Neato.

• Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous *new* -- Your Hammer of the Righteous hits 1 additional target.

This is kinda nice. Just gives HotR a little added utility. 4 targets instead of 3 -- yes please.

Honestly there are so many new and interesting changes in this PTR its hard to really get through them all. I have a feeling that, just like the Wrath beta, there will be lots of interesting stuff at first, and then they'll get changed or nerfed as real players start using and abusing the talents and spells.