Don't Nerf my Sacred Shield Bro! : )

Q u o t e:
I disagree. There is way too much effort involved trying to add new tools to every single class, trying to keep them balanced, making sure the ability is useful for every spec, making sure it's useful in PvE on every single fight and making sure it's useful in every type of PvP situation.

Where do you draw the line?

We agree with Communism. We often give classes situational spells as base class abilities rather than as talented abilities for the same reason -- you're really only out a little gold by learning the ability. This is particularly a problem for hybrids. Nearly every rogue can find a use for Fan of Knives. Balance and Feral druids have much less use for Nourish. Heroic Throw is clearly a tanking tool.

On the one hand, yeah it's cool if a hybrid class can make use of their ability regardless of role. However some of our balance problems currently are caused by hybrids being able to do too many things to well with the same spec. If the tool is good for the role that's intended to use it, there's a good chance it's going to be too good for the other roles. That's why we often prop abilities up with spec-specific talents. One of the problems with the Holy paladin tree is it doesn't grant enough healing focus for investing in the tree. At the same time, paladins can heal very well so it's not as simple as just going into the deep tree and smearing a bunch of +healing effects on existing talents everywhere.