Also at 20 on a Protection Paladin. Done a few dungeons, some pushing deep into the 20s just for fun.
I don’t mind Holy Strike as a mana dump, and it’s very useful for solo, but yeah, the threat is bad. I think the intent is to make it have bad TPS to balance out the blanket threat that makes Classic Trilogy Prot so powerful, but in general it is a flimsy spell without Judgement of the Crusader, which Prot Pal generally can’t afford to cast outside of boss fights. As far as I can tell, the spell lives and dies on Spellpower, JoC has been incresing the damage by 2x for most of my time on the character. Most of Prot Pally’s TPS comes from Spellpower at the moment, and I feel like there should be a bit more value on AP or weapon. Not much more, but more.
Seal of Fury is broadly a success, but I wish it had better scaling with slower weapons, and I wish SoR had a place in the prot pally arsenal. Seal of Fury is dramatically better with a 1.9 speed weapon than a 2.8, and there’s not really an alternative to use while tanking with a slow 1h weapon, because Improved Seal of Fury is strictly non-optional. SoF offers shielding, your taunt, and mana regen, so even if SoR edges out on damage for your weapon, you still shouldn’t use it on any kind of sword-and-board setup. I’d personally like to see SoR get some additional interaction somewhere in the pally kit, because SoF and SoC are both interesting. SoF may be slightly too pushed, but SoR is just too boring and milqtoast at this point.
I definitely feel much, much stronger fighting Demons and Undead. Exorcism feels very good when I have access to it. Exorcism and Holy Wrath being extremely powerful and exclusive is very flavorful and cool, but I’m also somewhat unsure on how I feel about Paladin looking like it’s going to be dramatically better into evil creatures than non-evil. It’s very, very thematic, but I am concerned about the gap in effectiveness beween standard play into humanoids or beasts, and Paladin’s ideal targets. Paladin w/ Holy Wrath and Exorcism will be an entirely different class than Paladin without these spells. It makes a weird tuning situation, if Ret and Prot pally have their damage and threat tuned around non-evil targets, against Evil, they’ll be extremely strong. If Pally is tuned around their ideal targets, then against non-evil, they may suffer in effectiveness. I love the thematic element, but WoW players are lizardbrained optimizers, and I’m not sure how this will actually feel relative to the overall tuning of the class, and how the community engages with World of Warcraft, on both a social and gameplay level. I hope that a good balance is struck here. I’m generally unsure if a class having an extremely strong set of silver bullets into specific creature types is good or bad, or how the tuning needs to go for these abilities, and I don’t know how the community will respond to that hyperspecialization.
I agree on the Hands vs Blessings and Righteous Fury duration points from the OP. With 60m blessings, there’s some intent for buff micromanagement to be less of a thing, but if I have to BoP somebody for aggro control, I don’t enjoy needing to rebuff them during or after combat. If I BoP a healer in a tight and compromised situation, and don’t reapply Wisdom, it can potentially be a wipe or player death (which drops camp buff) for what feels like a dumb reason. Maybe Freedom/Protection being Blessings adds an element of skill expression and crunch, but the interaction feels weird to me, given that buff management is much less of a thing in Forever compared to Vanilla. Righteous Fury should always be up when it needs to be on, so the duration feels pointless. A toggle would just be better. The RF duration is a problem you fix with a tracker addon that yells at you when it’s not up, and to me, that’s not skill.
Dungeon tanking feels relatively feast-or-fammine. If a pull goes well, I have everything absolutely locked down, but if stray mobs are loose, autos and Holy Strike aren’t really enough, and without Retribution Aura or reliable Consecrate ticks hitting the stray mobs, the only tool for loose threat is Judgement. I expect even 2 charges of Judgement may not be enough against non-evil packs to feel super comfortable if DPS players decide to blast, or hit targets you’re not fully established on. Part of this may be the reported Consecrate debuff bug. When I do have access to anti-evil, snap threat is not a problem on any level at all, and the experience is extremely fluid.
My damage is very high between AoR thorns and Consecrate, and SoF mana regen typically allows me to keep a sustained pace without drinking when things are going well. Things feel hectic on the gather comapred to Classic Trilogy Warrior, but once I’m established on threat, threat is locked down hard. I’d trade some of the reliable heavy damage and win-more TPS out for a bit more control over the pulls, because I’m not sure how tanking for Enhance or DPS Warrior will go once they really come online. I’m planning on sticking to spellcleave comps throughout leveling, because huge burst like Stormstrike and Sweeping Strikes seems awful for Prot Pally to deal with. I don’t feel like prot pally is numerically weak at all, but I also feel notably weak at controlling mobs and pulls. It seems way too good in the places where it shines, and absolutely sucks when it’s out of its element. I like the asyemetrical class design, but the design is prompting me to come up with a short list of classes I just don’t want to play with.
