Paladin modification suggestions 2.0

General Discussion
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Holy Light

Modification: allow self-casting and self-casting increases attack speed by X% for X seconds

Reason: The Paladin currently has low offensive capabilities which impacts his ability to creep or deter early aggression. Rather than duplicating Deathcoil, Holy Light allows self-cast and only when self-cast provides a substantial DPS increase. This tweak provides a trade-off that allows the Paladin to both tank and deal increased damage at the cost of healing another unit. The trade-off is also important when considering the Undead matchup i.e. you cannot use Holy Light to nuke something and get the attack speed bonus on the same cast

Note: the suggestion that Holy Light should provide the attack speed or a damage buff to the Paladin on cast is more elegant. This would mean the more overpowered aspect of making the ability self-cast could be removed.

Divine Protection (aka Divine shield)
This to me is the most important consideration. Complete invulnerability is a crutch that limits design space for the Paladin.

Modification: reduces all incoming damage by X% (no longer provides complete immunity)

Reason: Complete invulnerability is incredibly powerful and limits the Paladins offensive capabilities due to the cheese factor (especially against the undead). This change still provides the Paladin with a powerful defensive cooldown, while still allowing damage to matter. It also removes his invulnerability to magical effects (slows, hexes etc). An important tactical consideration is that damage mitigation means the Paladin can now be attacked and therefore be used to soak damage like a real tank.

Devotion Aura

Modification: tweak armor bonuses

Reason: From a competitive ladder perspective the current amour bonus from the aura is very underwhelming.

Resurrection

No changes needed

Reason: not every hero needs to have a game breaking ultimate ability. Resurrection is solid as it stands now. The only consideration is whether or not the cooldown is too long?

Summary

I have thought very hard about how to make the Paladin a more viable early game hero without breaking the game, removing his utility or completely reworking the hero. The biggest crutch for the Paladin is that Divine Shield provides an overpowered cooldown that IMO limits design space (especially in the Undead matchup). By modifying this talent to provide damage reduction it still leaves a powerful defensive cooldown, removes the ability to ‘cheese’ and allows the Paladin to soak damage like a tank. Holy Light goes from being a very good talent to an incredibly powerful (possibly OP with self cast?) talent in exchange for the significant ‘nerf’ to Divine Shield. What this does is provide a meaningful trade-off while greatly improving the Paladins early game creeping and defensive capabilities. The change to Devotion Aura is long overdue and while it will never be the best aura it is still useful when involved in large scale battles. Overall, these changes maintain the Paladins traditional place as third pick support while also making him viable as an early pick if desired.

Thoughts?

  • Noted self-casting would be OP, however a passive attack speed or damage buff for the Paladin when casting Holy Light would go a very long way.

  • List item

More radical approach:

Holy Light:
Heals a friendly unit, empowers the next 5 melee attacks to deal increased damage and heal a percentage of damage in a small AOE

Heal X, increase damage by X% and Heal X% of damage in an AOE

They could then remove the ability for Holy Light to deal damage against the Undead (solves that issue). The extra damage and AOE healing increase would make the Paladin more useful as an earlier pick and as a higher level hero. As third hero pick it would only be a marginal difference.

3 Likes
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Hi Gibs. Nice post and explanations. Here is my feedback to that.

(1) Paladin’s first aura that provides +2 armor is a fair one, because it gives 10.71% damage reduction to all your army (including heroes and casters for which there are no armor upgrades available). Compare it to Warsong Battle Drums that give +10% attack damage to all the units. The L2 aura is 3.5 armor. It is not double the amount of L1 aura, but recall that it applies to the whole army and you get it towards late game. Getting more upgrades in the late game have diminishing impact. That is, you get less bonus percentwise, but it is still powerful. My take on this that recent buff 2/3.5/5 is a pretty fair one and there are no big reasons to make it 2/4/6. Also, if you noticed, armor upgrades are costlier that attack upgrades, and that’s for a reason.

(2) Paladin (like DK) is meant to have some vulnerability. That is why he is designed to have Holy light that doesn’t heal himself. The divine shield is meant to resolve this breach. I suggest you to have
Holy - Aura - Holy - Shield - Holy as a sequence of abilities picked. It is quite strong.

(3) I understand your desire to make Paladin to have more DPS and be playable as a first hero. But, if we make changes that you’ve suggested, then nobody will pick divine aura, because Paladin will heal himself anyway. He is a strength hero, like TC, and is a great support to the army rather than a damage dealer.

(4) What is possible to do, based on what you’ve suggested, is to grant Paladin:
either +X% more or +X more damage for N seconds
once he uses Holy Light. But then you will have to raise its mana cost a bit.

2 Likes
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Self heal bad idea would be op with divine shield.

Paladin needs an attack speed buff (minor) because he gets ignored once mana is low.

He needs to right click better. (Not dmg but ats)

Resurrection should have a faster cd than Reanimate.

This is because dk has better ability/synergy with Undead.

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I can see the argument regarding the self-cast issues with Holy Light and it may very well be too powerful. An alternative solution as pointed out could just be to give the Paladin a passive attack speed buff when cast, or just buff his attack speed in general. (amended the OP to make note of that).

Regarding the change from Divine Shield to Divine Protection. This to me is the most important change. This allows the Paladin to actually soak damage, not cheese in the undead match-up and pave the way for more damage buffs. This IMO would allow the Paladin to creep and defend much better.

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I don´t understand the obsession with increasing even more his atack speed, he is a freaking mauler for heavens sake. An increase in mere damage would make a lot more sense.

1 Like
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Either or would be nice :slight_smile:

Basically its code for deals more melee damage so the Paladin can creep and defend better.

To make that viable I first think they need to rework how divine shield works. If they do a good job of that it would open up design space to allow for improved damage and the ability to actually soak damage. Done right this would make the Paladin more appealing early without taking away from his existing role as third hero ‘healbot’.

Someone mentioned TC. TC is actually a good front-line hero that can soak damage, disrupt and deal damage and provides a very strong aura. Not to mention he can reincarnate himself at level 6…The current Paladin has pathetic damage, a decent single target heal and a moderately useful aura. Divine Shield is a very powerful crutch, but not all that useful when you want to tank damage.

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the paladin is fine as it is

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Current Divine Shield should be changed a little. There’s almost no reason for going lvl 2 or 3 DS.

I think duration should be 10/20/30 secs, and give Pally around 6 more attack damage to compensate

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Meanwhile I think the spells are ok, all I want is for him to have the half long hair and big beard he had in War3 and not that short quirky haircut… ugh

2 Likes