Retribution Paladin Nerf in Patch 3.1

Yep, it looks like Bliz is again nerfing retribution paladins. At least that's what comes to mind when you read the patch notes for 3.1. It makes me sad because the ret pally had become a blast to play after Wrath of the Lich King was launched (well, around patch 3.02 actually) but they've been nerfing them constantly since then.

The biggest nerf is to Fanaticism which lowers the judgment crit chance from 25% (which was just right IMO) to 18%. Oh well, I'm gonna miss the old effect of this talent. On the other hand we only need to put 3 points to max this out so we can put the remaining 2 points somewhere else though I'll be damned if I know where at this point.

Then, there's the nerf to Righteous Vengeance which instead of getting a 40% DOT / 8 sec from judgments and Divine Storm, now only gets 30%. The 30% does require only 3 points but it's another one of those WTF nerfs IMO. So we get another 2 talents back.

Fairly serious nerfs for two of our bread-and-butter talents doesn't bode very well. Problem is, I'm left scratching my head on where to put those extra 4 points. As a retribution paladin I want to DPS. These nerfs lower my DPS but give me extra points that I can put in some utility talents which won't help me very much with kicking butt.

However, all is not lost. We do get a buff in the form of Exorcism being castable on any type of mob. This means that Exorcism will become a staple in the rotation of every retribution pally. Well, it's all good but the problem is, our DPS will still suffer when fighting undead and demons, even if it will be buffed for everything else. Hmm... maybe this will even out in the end.

In any case I'm gonna try to be patient before I pass more judgment on these changes and actually wait for patch 3.1 to be released. In the end things may not be so bad. On the other hand, I keep asking myself why should I play the pally since the death knight is so much more fun and they both use the same type of equipment.