I am a long-time paladin fanboy, and played it in raid environments in TBC classic and wrath classic. I also tried very very hard to make it work as anything but holy in vanilla classic. I played prot/holy in wrath, and almost exclusively prot in TBC. I’m not the best paladin in the world, but I know the class well enough to lead raids that clear all content and I am individually a 95+ parser.
The toolkit for Prot Paladin needs some love. There are a few glaring issues. Yes, we’re not level 60 yet, there are lots of unknowns, etc. Bear with me as I explain some of the common concerns amongst those of us who love this class.
The WoW Forever iteration of prot paladin is lacking in several aspects. I will rank these in order of importance to me personally. I recognize these are largely opinions, not facts. I will, however, provide meaningful examples/math where I can.
Holy Shield is a weak capstone talent. It provides only 30% increased block chance, bringing the chance to block of a paladin at 440 defense (crit cap) to 40% before block chance increases from other gear. It provides reflective damage only if a block occurs. In order to get full value on average (4 blocks within 10 seconds) the boss would need to be attacking every second (assuming thunder clap is applied). This is much faster than most bosses. Against a boss with a 2.0 seconds swing timer, we would expect only 1.67 blocks per 10 seconds. This means that the threat component is unlikely to be fully utilized. Since the block chance is only increased by 30% (compared with a Warrior’s Shield Block, a level 16 baseline ability which provides the same number of charges per 10 seconds if used on cooldown, but with a block chance of 75%) it also fails to allow paladins to be immune to crushing blows without investing in a huge amount of gear to reach crush immunity, thereby sacrificing other stats warriors will not need to forego to reach the same goal (crush immunity). Feral druids do not require crush immunity due to their larger health pools and armor. You may assume that as we increase our chance to block through gear in later phases, the chance we will be able to take full advantage of Holy Shield’s reflective damage (as in, the chance we will actually block four attacks within 10 seconds) increases. Recall, however, that block is 4th on the combat table. Meaning that as we gain more avoidance, the chance the boss will miss or that we will parry or dodge also increases. If the boss misses or is parried or dodged, we will not be able to block and therefore not be able to take advantage of the threat that is built into our capstone talent. Thus, even at higher gear levels, it is unlikely we will ever get to fully utilize it. In summary, if boss damage is meaningful and crushing blows matter, paladins will be in trouble due to our lack of combat table coverage. Even if boss damage is not meaningful and we can ignore crushing blows, our capstone talent still provides unpredictable amounts of threat and scales poorly with higher levels of avoidance.
Mitigation - I am going to assume bosses hit hard enough to threaten tank deaths, because my hope is that the game will not be so easy that tanks are never in danger of dying. If this assumption is true, tank mitigaiton matters. Paladins have the weakest mitigation of all tanks. We can talent into 6% damage reduction with Improved Righteous Fury, compared to the baseline 10% damage reduction warriors get from defensive stance and the massive HP pools and armor enjoyed by feral druids. We can get additional mitigation from Iron Creed, however the maximum uptime of this ability is only 60%. Devs have suggested this is by design to give paladins some sort of choice as to when we use one of our main abilities, Holy Strike (which triggers Iron Creed’s mitigation on use). This would require paladins to forego using one of our core abilities on cooldown, in the hopes that we can predict incoming damage accurately enough to use it just prior to that damage occurring, while also not losing threat by foregoing the use of that ability. Even if used on cooldown, our damage intake will be higher for 40% of the encounter. This will result in more spikey damage intake and less predictability for our healers.
We still need warriors to provide Thunder Clap. I recognize devs may not want to allow other tanks to provide this debuff themselves to avoid homogenization. That is a reasonable design choice. If that’s the route we’re going, however, then warriors should be allowed to cast it in all stances. It otherwise results in dps warriors having to change stances - which they never want to do - and causes unnecessary headaches for raid leaders and other tank classes.
Templar’s Bulwark is a weak defensive cooldown. It is mathematically inferior to a warrior’s shield wall, and in most situations is even worse than a warrior’s Last Stand. The only time it may be better than Last Stand is if there were one single enormous damage spike, which is predictable, and which occurs only once every 4 minutes. In all other situations, Last Stand is better despite having lower overall HP scaling. A warrior who uses Last Stand increases their HP pool by 30%, allowing healers to have a buffer to keep them alive during periods of heavy damage intake. Templar’s Bulwark, by comparison, provides an absorb shield equal to 100% max HP. During periods of heavy damage intake, this will provide a buffer for perhaps a few seconds, but after that the shield is broken the HP pool remains the same and if damage intake is still high, the chance of tank death is unchanged (no buffer for the healers, tank death delayed by a few seconds instead of prevented).
Taunt tied to judgment. I recognize the goal is to avoid class homogenization. There are, however, certain things each role needs to have in order to function. Druids got a res spell in WoW Forever (rightly so) because its ridiculous to have a healer who can’t res when needed. Bears and warriors both have a taunt. For some reason, it was decided that THIS is the point on which Paladins need to differ to avoid homogenization. Because we don’t want to homogenize tank classes, Paladin taunt must be tied to an ability we need to use on cooldown as part of our rotation. All tanks can have a taunt. There is no reason to intentionally make it janky for paladins. Is it game breaking? No. Does it needlessly increase the tedium of playing a prot paladin without providing any real benefit? Yes.
In summary, we need a new capstone that provides predictable threat and is not so heavily affected by RNG. There are numerous options - some form of instant cast single-target Avenger’s Shield (maybe it even provides an attack speed debuff? In my dreams?), Shield of Righteousness, single-target Hammer of the Righteous, something new entirely. Any spell that allows me to hit the boss on press with something that provides a meaningful threat increase and can be part of my rotation. We also need to stop being forced to save core rotational abilities for certain situations - looking at you, Seal of Fury and Iron Creed. Our casts per minute is already laughably low. Nerf Iron Creed to 6-8% and increase its duration to 10s so I can keep 100% uptime and not have to forego one of the main abilities in my rotation. If boss damage is meaningful enough that tanks actually have a chance of dying, we may need better mitigation - would not be sad to see Templar’s Bulwark reworked into something better.
Paladin can’t even be mana sustaining in the current state, it will miss 20mana/s unless you have Seal of Wisdom on a target, if you do, it’s 7mana/s you miss.
This goes so far beyond just abilities at this point. It’s that
Zero interrupts
Zero mobility
Terrible active mitigation
1 defensive which is not bad, not great.
Not able to sustain it’s rotation
Worse threat scaling as SP is going to be far less available than AP.
Worse threat than Druid and Warrior - in both AoE and Single Target
No functional taunt
No range pull
A talent kit that gets worse as you get more dodge, parry and miss.
No stats that increase your defensive capabilities
There is zero reason to bring a protection paladin for anything related to end-game. Bring 2 Rets and a Holy if you must have 3 buffs, but honestly, a ret and a holy will do just fine too.
My druid does 16000 threat in 1min 10s, mind you without being able to spam Maul to ensure Primal Bite uptime
My Warrior does 14500 threat in 1min 10s. spamming all it’s stuff, because Heroic Strike is only used for dumping
My Paladin does 8000 threat in 1min 10s, face rolling the keyboard and still not able to keep up and runs out of mana after 40s
Fun fact:
My Ret Paladin does 10000 threat in 1min 10s, and does not run out of mana.
It’s a super sad state to be in for Paladin, having so far less tanking capacity in terms of defensive, mitigation etc. and it does not even keep up with the other two tanks in threat.
I agree with everything you said but none more than this.
Taunt and Judgement being tied together is just bad design. It feels bad, it plays bad. Paladins have only not had a proper uncomplicated taunt for the first 3 years of WoW. In 07, TBC gave us one. One with a 40 yard range,and a 3 mob AoE taunt. We have now had a stand alone, uncomplicated taunt over 6 times longer than we didn’t have one
We aren’t asking for that in Forever. We’re asking for our taunt to be separated from Judgement, permanently, and made into its own ability. On that has the exact effect as Taunt and Growl. 5 yard range, 8 second cool down, off GCD. Done. Listen, I’m willing to need to spec into it to have it. Take Swift Judgement away, since thats the bandaid currently for us not having a proper tuant on the same level as Warriors and Druids, and give us a Paladin themed taunt. Call it Reckoning, Hand of The Righteous, Deliverance, Hammer of the Willing, whatever you like. Just so long as it is it’s own ability on it’s own button.
By removing Taunt from Judgement, we can have one of the 2 halves of the coin that is our actual unique class defining feature and play style back. The Devs have recently said the the Seal and Judgment system is unique to Paladins, yet they also made it so we *cannot use Judgement *by tying it up with our taunt. As a keystone ability to our class we should be able to use it on cool down, when and where we need it or want it. Not holding it back as the “Just in case” button that a Taunt is meant to be. It’s always been one of our best threat generating spells for single targets that we can pick and choose where its spent. Taking it away during dungeons and raids not only flips the spell on its head but additionally just sucks to have to do, is unintuitive and not fun in the least bit. It doesn’t matter that we may or may not get more abilities later. Judgement is too core to the Paladin class identity both in the fantasy/lore and in gameplay. Changing that now, when so many other classes are getting spells and abilities added from other expansions from years past vanilla is nothing short of baffling
I can understand the disinterest. I think all of us have things we wanted to see.
I still consider the pinnacle of the game to be Lich King, not Vanilla. I have no metrics to back that up though.
I’m simply butt-hurt now because I do not have my favorite race and the classes I enjoy most are some mutated version of Classic, but without the utility of TBC or WOTLK.
So the question will become. Can Forever hold my interest, until they improve some of this or do I end up bailing the moment something like WOTLK Classic is re-added. I hate that things had to move on to Cata, zero interest.
This is not considered homogenization of the healers but a proper taunt that functions exactly the same across the board is for whatever reason.
And they touted the trade off was that Judgement is further range than Taunt/Growl. Yeah by 5 whole yards woooo
Both Warriors and Bears have in combat charges that nullifies that point entirely.
The biggest thing that bothers me is that there’s just been no acknowledgment of the nearly unanimous dislike for the spec’s design.
I get a full redesign would take time but communication that they are aware and working on it would help. As of right now I’m not even going to play my favorite spec. If they at least acknowledged it I’d feel a lot better about playing it.
Some specs are in much worse places like Ele Shaman, but Ele just had a recent shakeup in their talents. And while it may not be the answer to solve their issues, it’s at least an answer and proof they are aware of and working on the problems.
Very well put. The connection of healing spells from each of the healing classes to the lack of a standard Taunt ability for all 3 tank classes even more stark by comparison.
5 yards is nothing. Certainly not something worth losing Judgement and having our Taunt be a clunky, unrefined mess. Even if it were a not unsubstantial range, I don’t believe the majority of Prot paladins would take the trade off. I certainly wouldn’t
Yeah, ranged taunt would be nice but definitely not worth over the functionality.
Taunt and Growl function identically. Just make a taunt for Pally that functions exactly the same; single target, 5 yard range, top of threat, 3 second fixate, and 8 second CD.
Nothing more, nothing less.
They can even give it a wild name like Hand of Reckoning.
Righteous Defense in TBC isn’t perfect and suffers from some of the same issues of jankiness but at least it’s its own ability. RD’s biggest issues are that it doesn’t actually taunt your target (only really an issue if more than 3 targets) and it does not have a fixate portion.
Yet again we agree. Even just a “Hey we hear you and we’re working on something” would go a long way. I’ve also thought about not playing my favorite spec, I’ll probably be Ret until the fix Prot. I was even thinking of going back to Elemental Shaman again, until I saw the state they’re in too
Precisely. Paragraphs and paragraphs in different threads saying how much we hate this change and just want parity and not to have something head and shoulders better than the other two. Just the same, and for our Judgement to be our high threat/damage single target ability again
Better, but as you said I’d rather have our taunt be standalone and the same effect, same wording, same effect, down to the ability description with a Paladin themed name
Yup. Nothing more, nothing less
That’s a fantastic idea for a name. Wherever did you come up with it?
I would take TBC’s Righteous Defense in half a heart beat, completely unchanged from what it was then. 15 second cool down and all in exchange for getting Judgement back again, whole and unshackled. Hell, you can even knock the range down by 35 yards and I won’t bat en eye
I’m going Prot Warrior for launch. Fortunately Warrior is my 2nd favorite class and Prot Warrior is looking amazing.
I’m going to level a Paladin either 2nd or 3rd so I can make a quick switch to it if they ever fix it to a state I enjoy.
I would take it as is too over this but I have a love-hate relationship with Righteous Defense lol
TBC Prot Paladin was the first tank spec I ever really played. Picked it up in TBC Classic in 2021 and absolutely loved it and have been a tank main ever since.
Was playing Prot Paladin in TBC Anni too at a very high level (until my guild died from Forever’s announcement).
Still playing it pretty casually in hopes of Wrath Anniversary.
The overall design issue with Prot Paladin in Forever is that Classic and TBC’s Prot Paladin is focused on tanking many mobs at once both with high AoE threat and high mitigation to high-volume, low-intensity attacks.
They removed Prot Paladin’s offensive toolkit for AoE without changing the total design to compensate. Wrath does this perfectly by moving Prot from an infinite target tank to a 1-5 target tank by nerfing Consecration but adding other tools in the overall toolkit to compensate.
I keep going back and forth on this. Not going prot pally would feel so weird to me. I’ve been a prot pally since TBC (the first time around, not anniversary)
Fortunately for me it doesn’t really matter which I play for now because I’d be rerolling characters as soon as Quel’dorei High Elves come out anyways lol (they soft confirmed them in an interview)
And I expect them to be able to be both Warriors and Paladins