***PALADINS READ***

[Elsington]

I found a really interesting post on the European boards. This is a summary of what the developers believe is the problem(s) with the paladin class via our input on the class boards.

http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-paladin-en&t=47062&p=1&tmp=1#post47062

I won't copy all of it so please hit the link provided above. I will quote a few of the things I found interesting from that post:

The class is considered boring to play, because people feel it is a class that is mostly suited for PvE. This may be due to the fact that Paladins do not really have a “button smashing” combat style like some other classes do. They cast a seal, judge, recast a seal, stun, and let combat go. Players feel that all a paladin can do is to stay alive, and not much else. They feel the class does not provide enough damage, and because of that, in addition to the heavy survival skills, the class often looses gained aggro, which often leads to attacks on cloth wearing classes.

Replace some defensive abilities with more offensive skills (more melee damage, more strength, DPS burst spells)

DPS is too much based on luck and players feel it is uncontrollable. Make DPS more controlled similar to the Warriors’ rage system, or the rogues’ combo system.(Maybe make seal of command add damage over time instead of chance based damage)

Change some seals into strikes

Paladins’ buffs are only 5 minutes which makes buffing a group quite tedious. Make the buffs last 10 minutes and double the mana cost.

Make the talent trees more specialised:

- Holy specced paladins are better healers.
- Protection specced are better tanks.
- Retribution specced paladins are better fighters/damage dealers.
- Make the class feel less like a hybrid, but more as a choice of specialisation

The Paladins ‘McDonald’s’ gear isn’t much appreciated.
Players usually prefer the old Lightforge design and demand it back

Introduce Class-specific "Ranged Slot" Items. For Paladin, for example, that would be Prayer books, (The Paladin in WarCraft III carried around a 2-Hand Hammer and a book). These could exist with different attributes, starting at level 20


Keep in mind this is just a summary of what the developers believe *we* think about our class. This is not a list of expected changes but hopefully with some luck, this will be a basis for the upcoming class review.

I'd like to know what you all think about this as well, as I am hoping for some serious changes to the class soon. :hmm:

[Gionnelles]

Honestly it sounds like they could make some neat changes for Pallys. I think that Paladins are the most broken class in WoW as far as matching what the developers intended, but I also think it is a truly amazing secondary healer/buffer support class.

The majority of Paladin's didn't really want a support class when they made their characters though.

My biggest concern is that they will up Paladin melee dps, take away the low/no aggro heals, remove Blessing of Salvation and call the class finished. That would make the class utterly WORTHLESS in PvE. We don't need a survivable medium dps class. We do need support characters who have low aggro healing, and powerful buffs. It would be cool if they changed the buffing/seals concept to be less annoying and more exciting...but honestly I'm scared that Blizzard is going to screw the class up even worse than it already is.

[Sigurd]

I rememeber reading a post a long time ago, before WoW was even in beta. Blizzard said they did not want to make any classes that are only really support to other classes. This was in reference to priests. So instead of making the class healing/buffing only they added the shadow talent tree. But they failed to stay true to there word on the paladin class.

We are at best a healing/buffing/cleansing machine. Hopefully Blizz will make use a true hybrid class, and let us choose if we want to be tanks, healers, or damage dealers.

[Grunthor]

"Paladins sometimes prefer the Warriors’ set instead of the Paladins’ set as they rely on Agility more than on Intellect. Also, Spirit is under classed in players’ minds, so they’d rather make more critical strikes to compensate for the poor luck based combat.

Paladins feel class sets should take players’ talent specialisation into account, i.e.: More intellect on Holy Paladins’ set, more Attack Power on Retribution Paladins’ set, etc.

Make spells targeted for Undeads only, to compensate for the fact that Undeads are now immune to some of the Paladins’ spells, making them extra dangerous for a Paladin.

A “Divine light” spell that blinds the enemy for 5-10 seconds plus de-selects any targeted enemies (unable to acquire new target while blinded?), similar to the flash bang effect from Counter Strike."

That right there makes me wince>>Flash of Light from EQ used in WoW, w00t where do i sign up. Spirit useless, agility the primary stat for paladins via those quotes? Guh i hope in this case the devs disregard anything suggested by the moron masses.

[Elsington]

I disagree with the need for a low aggro healing class. Horde healers are equal in their hate generation, including shamans. This way you have an even distribution of aggro from heals most of the time.

The problem with paladin healing is that we DONT get enough aggro from it. If I am going to be a plate wearing cleric on raids then at least let me use my 9k armor for deflecting blows from healing aggro. It also doesn't help that we have two sheilds that remove all aggro we have gained in a said fight, that is a pretty bad move on blizzard's part there. The way it stands right now, we are funneling our healing aggro to priests and druids who die very quickly. If I was to change anything about the aggro generation on paladins I would at least make it less if not more generation than priests. Of course this creates problems with tanking by healing but I won't go there =P.

The main concern we have with our dps (dps = damage done per second, not dps = high damage for those who think paladins have no dps) is that we have no control over when we get our big strikes in. I for one, don't need an increase, just a button that says "weapon strike" for me to hit whenever I want, not when chance decides such.

The way paladins have traditionally been played, is a heavy melee and buff/aura class. I miss where most rpg paladins have even moderately strong heals. I know right now, every 2 minutes I can cast a 3k heal, or a 2k heal whenever I wanted. I know priests flash heals are close to that, which shouldn't be the case. The paladins I have seen before are those that protect their party with huge defensive auras, attack power auras, healing auras, buffs, etc. It's more of a holy fighter than what blizzard has put into this game.

Blizzard had paladins right for the most part in beta. We had strikes that used mana, but dealt a considerable amount of damage. This forced us to pick whether we should heal or hit our target with damage.

Right now our talent trees are also a mess. Talents are scattered and some are in trees where they are of no use, for example a strength increase talent far into our holy tree, and a + defense talent in our melee (retribution) tree.

I could go on all day about gripes I have with the current paladin layout but it does nobody here any good =P This wasn't directed solely at you Gio, this is more of an addendum to my previous post. I want to get more feedback on this to see who really cares and wants to see changes made.

[Gionnelles]

Of course... I mean, don't get me wrong; I'm 100% behind any improvements they can do to the Paladin class. I'm just worried they will jack you guys up worse than you are already in the process. God knows Blizzard has done it before.

[Aza]

I disagree with the need for a low aggro healing class. Horde healers are equal in their hate generation, including shamans. This way you have an even distribution of aggro from heals most of the time.

The problem with paladin healing is that we DONT get enough aggro from it. If I am going to be a plate wearing cleric on raids then at least let me use my 9k armor for deflecting blows from healing aggro. It also doesn't help that we have two sheilds that remove all aggro we have gained in a said fight, that is a pretty bad move on blizzard's part there. The way it stands right now, we are funneling our healing aggro to priests and druids who die very quickly. If I was to change anything about the aggro generation on paladins I would at least make it less if not more generation than priests. Of course this creates problems with tanking by healing but I won't go there =P.


Yeah. :(

[Sillia]

I wonder about the aggro-reducing capabilities of Blessing of Protection. Does it really remove all aggro? Or is it more like how Ice Block works?

A Mage's ice block doesn't remove aggro, it just activates a section of the mob AI that forces them to attack another target since the mage is immune to stuff. If somebody does not get on the hate list higher than the mage before the ice block wears off, the mob will go right back to attempting to mash the mage into paste (and often succeeding).

From my own paladin play (yay, hit 60), I've noted that BoProtection seems to function like ice block does.

--S

[Elsington]

In my experiences I have never seen what you are referring to. For example Razorgore, I use Divine Sheild and BoP a lot when I train a pack of mobs to the corner of the room but most of the time with BoP, they never come back.

Maybe I don't pay enough attention to BoP to realize that but I'll make sure and check that out from now on :D

[Dracon]

BoP and DS are aggro suppression. They don't wipe aggro but instead delay it until you are attackable. Of course alot of the time the only thing we can do effectively while under those are heal and healing has very low aggro. Thus when you come out of them you usually tend to be much lower on the aggro scale compared to others.

[Sillia]

In that sense, it seems like it works exactly like Ice Block... except you can move.

Kind of sad actually; it would be interesting to have a blessing that could instantly wipe away *all* hate.

--S

[Elsington]

In all honesty, I'd trade Divine Sheild AND Blessing of Protection for something more useful, say... instant holy damage attacks or neat auras.

[Artanis]

I really like the sound of this. If they turn me into the Holy Knight they said I would be instead of the Holy Bitch that I am now (I still like playing Artanis in his current state, don't ask why), I'll be very pleased. Unfortunately this will only make the wait for the changes to come even longer due to excitement.

[Elsington]

Latest word on the upcoming talent review as stated in this thread on the general forums:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=5267942&s=blizzard&tmp=1#blizzard

We are currently reviewing each of the three Paladin talent trees, along with conducting a comprehensive review to their Seal and Judgment system. What we're keeping in mind during these reviews primarily concerns healing speed, cost and efficiency, along with DPS control and burst damage. In addition, we're looking into Aura versatility and Blessing duration. When we have more information on the specifics of change, we'll post the information for everyone to view.


So as quoted from Eyonix look for changes in the healing department, and dps control. Two things I thought should be looked at extensively, although I don't know how much they will look into healing aggro. So far at least from this quote, it's looking okay. :thumbsup:

[Elsington]

Getting closer. Just found an update from the Euro site. This is a list of concerns the Devs have, and the most likely course(s) of action they will take when reviewing our class.

http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-paladin-en&t=48602&p=1&tmp=1#post48602

For those too lazy to click on the link:

The developers will be looking into providing more controllable DPS for the paladin. This is a concern that is brought up by many players and the designers will look to devise methods to give paladins more options in combat and base combat damage less on "luck"

Blessing Durations have been brought up time and again. Usually it is in the context of raid dungeons, with paladins disappointed in the fact that most blessings do not have a very long duration. Once they have completed buffing the raid party, they must recast all buffs. The developers are quite concerned about making blessings more effective for a raid setting.

A large part of the paladin review should consist of adjusting the Seal/Judgment mechanics. This should touch on a number of points, such as efficiency and the "fun factor"

And, of course, no class revision would be complete without a talent review. They plan on going over these again to provide better balance for the class.

Still looking good :thumbsup:

[Grunthor]

man after the last week of fangtooth parroting the lines of "Squack we dont have anything yet, Squack im a retard". i wish we had the european devs.

[Annah]

Same Devs. diffrent community representatives.

[Grunthor]

read devs as CM's. was a typo

[Sigurd]

Although this is quite possibly BS, it seems the most believable of any of the tons of fake changes floating around the paladin forums these days,

Healing -
Flash of Light will now heal for ~700 base, and Holy Light will heal for ~1650 base.
Mana costs have been slightly increased and Blessing of Light has been removed.
He also said they are going to add 2 more levels of improved Holy Light and make it so that Flash of Light can be reduced to a 1s cast.

We will still have most of our seals, but they are converting a couple into attacks (SoC). He says we will now have 3-4 combat moves in addition to our Seals. The skill that replaces SoC will be much deeper in the tree than it is currently. They are working on a talent for retribution that significantly increases your DPS for a time period but uses your divine shield cooldown.

Supposedly its going to work soemwhat like mixing grenades with sapper charges, the cooldown on the ability will extend your divine shield cooldown to 1 minute, however if you use divine shield it will be 5 minutes before you can use the ability again.

Also he said dispell, counterspell, lack of a real snare, and lack of a spell interupt are all being addressed, but they aren't 100% sure on how they will handle it

I didn't grill him much about Protection changes but he said the primary changes coming were attempting to make heavily protection specced paladins a better choice for a tank than an arms/fury warrior. He also said reckoning was being looked into for balance issues, they feel with our increased power, abilities like reckoning would be game breaking.

He said they are shooting for paladin talent previews the week of thanksgiving, and test servers up the week after, hope to have the patch live before christmas.

[Law]

I have no idea what the post means about grenades and sapper charges, but the rest of it seems to be legit.

So, paladins are getting a Mortal Strike ability that shares the Divine Shield cooldown? MS every 5 minutes, or can you MS whenever you want but it'll stop us from using DS?

I don't see our raid role changing at all. We'll be able to bless people easier and they'll last longer. We won't need Blessing of Light and our talents will probably end up making us heal more overall. This won't change our raid role at all. Buff before pulls and spam heals/cleanse. I was hoping they would allow us to Heal and Melee at the same time, since our class is supposed to be a hybrid, not Priest, Jr.

Take the Judgement of Light and expand on it. Let's say we're raiding and whenever we can Seal of Light on ourselves, every time it procs we heal our group for 500. Balance it by making it cost more mana. Something like that would let us be true melee/healer hybrids. Not the same bullshit of standing out of range of AE's and spam heals like a priest. We didn't become paladins to be Priests.

[Sigurd]

Taken form a thread about the class panel at blizzcon,

The first question asked from a level 60 pally involved Blizzard’s design of the paladin around the WC3 pally. “That paladin,” he states “was a front line unit so when is Blizzard going to place the paladins at the front of combat once again, and not sitting with the cloth wearers in the back of raids?” Now this comment got a lot of cheers from the paladins in the crowd. Chilton fields the question, paladins he explains will getting an upgrade to DPS and some of the spells will be reworked to allow for a greater amount of front line combat and DPS output

Later on another question asked by a paladin concerned what Blizzard will do to make paladins more desirable to groups as currently they are considered back up healers at best. Chilton again fielded this question, he stated that there will again be drastic changes in 1.9 that will make Paladins valuable in groups with DPS and seals. Also he commented greater aggro control will be included, also I believe he said an instant aggro ability might be considered

[Sigurd]

Purity dug this up a while ago, but some of you may not have seen it.


http://www.thottbot.com/?sp=24224

[Elsington]

wow that looks like something that will never see my spell bar

[Sigurd]

I dunno bro, it could prove usefull in pvp. And that is only a lvl 36 rank 1 spell, it could become more usefull at 60 if theres additional ranks or possibly even a talent. But I see no use for it really in raids.

[Elsington]

Yeah good point, I missed the level of it. I don't mind the buff but it sucks that if you don't use it you can be punished =p Like if you are chasing someone and end up killing them... then you have nothing to judge it on and you are owned by slow running speed.

[Sigurd]

Although i'm sure this is completly fake, there is a few interesting ideas for talents listed.

http://homepage.mac.com/galganog/Paladin%201.9%20Talents.html

[Ramorous]

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=5832290&p=1&tmp=1#post5832290

Enjoy

[Elsington]

I like the ideas, but of course its fake. Just seems like everything that everyone wants is in these trees. Reckoning, if still around after 1.9, will be in the protection tree, and not retribution. That's a defensive talent through and through.

[Synapse]

Our time is at hand!

[Gionnelles]

15 minute raid wide buffs = godsend. The new aggro producing self-buff sounds nice too, giving pallys a chance to off-tank and deal some dps. Looks like a fantastic start, hopefully the talent changes will go as well.