So we know part of the reason that DF Paladins are not in a great spot is that Blizzard is having a difficult time figuring out how to build a Paladin. In this thread I will be giving feedback and suggestions regarding the class fantasy and ideas I’ve had over the years regarding ret pally. I don’t know Prot or holy well enough so I just have to take a back seat to those with more educated opinions.
The Paladin fantasy, in my opinion, is being the rally center for the entire group. We’re the hope in the darkest hour. Which is mildly reflected by “if someone dies we do more damage” – in an ideal circumstance no one is dying though. So it’s a moot point among the higher rankings of players. So, my suggestions are the following:
Holy Fire Build We can take a page out of the Holy with a shockadin build but instead of focusing on holy shock, it’s more about keeping and maintaining stacks of holy fire that burn the enemy. Maybe there’re sub builds where it’s both a huge burst of holy fire or a slow burn. But I think the idea of holy fire is to slowly burn away at your enemies.
Crusader So the idea is to take Crusade’s general power increase over time and build the whole specialization off of that to some extent and add a bit of the idea of when a member dies you do more damage. So the idea is when people aren’t at full health they do more damage around the paladin. Maybe to balance this it can be only affecting 4 to 5 people in the raid. So whoever is near the Paladin is inspired to be better and what they do is heal more, take less damage, or deal more damage depending on what they are. This is a more utility focused build overall but it’s in service to everyone around them and includes themselves.
Dark Paladin Garithos and pre-fall Arthas are the idea behind the dark paladin and the idea is a more selfish Paladin. Instead of helping the group get through hard times, they create a sense of gritting your teeth and helping them. The idea here is the longer you are in combat and the more damage your party takes, the more damage you do.
So how do you get these three builds? Well, I think you can kinda play the Holy Fire Burning Build into either of these but I think the main for would be a selection between the new “retribution aura” – which is the one that makes it so when people aren’t at full health they deal more damage, take less damage, or heal more – and then there’s the “Fallen Aura” – which is the one that makes it so when people aren’t at full health you deal more damage.
Anyways I’m ready to get raked over the coals. Good luck with Dragonflight fellow Paladins
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Hard to care after the Preach Blizz HQ interview sets. The blizzard side asserted they have people combing over channels of feedback and relaying it to the developers constantly.
Nothing has changed in months only gotten worse. If we accept that they have all our feedback, we have to assume they fine with how terrible paladin talent trees are so they can move on to other crap.
It’s obvious after looking at all the trees and its nothing but % modifiers or modifiers of modifiers that near two decades of paladin talents were almost never good in the first place.
Prot is the only spec semi coherent but holy and ret need in depth reworks or reiterations and we were just told they know we think that.
So where is it? It’s nowhere and doesn’t feel like it’s going to be.
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Wait really? They said they had people “combing the channels” that’s the fattest lie I’ve ever heard in my entire life.
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Not their exact words; but it’s basically what they said.
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So they are purposefully leaving paladins like this? So it is sabotage I knew it wasn’t negligence. I knew it had to be purposeful
You sound like me in 2008, doing the Does Blizzard Really Hate Paladins series on youtube. Except that, even back then, I concluded that they didn’t (though Alex Afrasiabi might’ve).
My understanding is that Blizzard has a very small class design team with limited resources; they couldn’t ship Dragonflight on time and give paladins the revamp we deserved. Though if the class design team is small, it makes me wonder what kinds of resources they’re putting into collecting feedback in comparison to the team size…
That said, I figure caster holy paladins like me need a few things:
- Denounce unpruned, full stop—it’d look amazing with the spellbook casting animation, and we could use a filler spell
- Either Beacon of the Lightbringer brought back at a bare minimum, or better yet a complete rethinking of our mastery: as casters, we belong in the back with the squishies. As someone who’s played Holy since 2005, I can tell you that we can make ourselves plenty useful back there, and don’t necessarily need to be in melee to feel good. Don’t get me wrong, I’m fine with melee being a playstyle option, but our current mastery doesn’t work well with caster playstyles, right now.
- A definite nice-to-have while soloing as holy would be a satisfying-to-press finisher like a buffed Glyph of Harsh Words; SotR is something I was glad to get back after losing it at the end of WotLK, but come on: it deals less damage than Crusader Strike! Finishers are supposed to be big-number, satisfying-to-push buttons, and SotR is anything but. If it weren’t off the global cooldown, it wouldn’t even be worth pressing while soloing as Holy, except as filler—and Denounce would be far better as a filler, anyway.
My hot take was that it’d be better if we had Holy Radiance back, but let me level to 70 and do some dungeons and LFR before I decide whether our current group-healing kit is sufficient or not.
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But they have no problem with taking our money and not serving us what they advertised.
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I’d love for them to use the talent system to allow building some of the old playstyles of the specs. I’d love to be able to build a MoP/WoD ret paladin, for example.
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Looking at our talent trees, does it look like any of the developer have any experience with paladin other than Exile’s Reach?
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