Greetings, fellow pally nerds,
Today, I’d like to delve deeper into some additional concerns that have been weighing heavily on our Paladin community. These issues have significantly affected our gameplay experience, and it’s crucial that we bring attention to them for potential improvements. Let’s explore these matters further:
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Damage Nerfs and Inadequate Compensation:
The recent change to the Annulet has dealt a severe blow to our Paladin’s damage output. The subsequent 4% buff fails to adequately compensate for the substantial reduction we have experienced. This nerf feels disproportionate, and it’s essential for the developers to reevaluate the balancing adjustments, ensuring that our damage potential remains competitive within the game’s meta.
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Restrictive Mana Costs for Tanking Spells:
Mana costs associated with our normal tanking spells have become a significant concern. The current state of affairs limits our ability to replenish our mana pool during encounters effectively. This poses a challenge not only for resource management but also for sustaining our tanking role throughout demanding encounters. Finding a better balance in mana costs would greatly benefit our gameplay experience and allow us to fulfill our tanking duties without constant interruptions. Something like removing the mana cost on self-cast would be sufficient.
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Difficulty Dealing with Afflicted Affix:
While this hasn’t come about yet, the recent changes to the cost of Cleanse during the Afflicted affix have presented an insurmountable obstacle for protection Paladins. The combination of the affix’s mechanics and our spec’s mana limitation means we essentially have to ignore this affix now. This disparity in gameplay experience can be disheartening, and it is crucial for the developers to reassess the interaction between the Afflicted affix and our Paladin toolkit, ensuring a more reasonable and manageable experience not just for us, but our groups as a whole.
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Disruptive Mana Breaks in Dungeons:
As tanks, we play a vital role in dictating the speed and flow of dungeon runs. However, the current state of mana costs often forces us to interrupt the momentum by taking mana breaks between packs. This interruption becomes even more frustrating when faced with a ticking timer. It is crucial for our class’s gameplay design to allow for a more seamless experience, allowing us to maintain a consistent pace without sacrificing our core tanking responsibilities due to mana concerns.
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Restricted Talent Choices:
The recent change to Word of Glory, where it now consumes mana, has inadvertently limited the diversity of talent options available to us Paladins. This change feels constraining as it narrows down our viable talent builds, hindering our ability to adapt to different playstyles and encounter mechanics. It would be wonderful to see this aspect reconsidered to reintroduce the flexibility we once enjoyed.
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Challenging Cleanse Usage:
The introduction of mana cost to Word of Glory has created a significant hurdle when it comes to utilizing Cleanse efficiently. With mana being a limited resource, it has become exceedingly difficult for Paladins to prioritize Cleanse during crucial moments in encounters. This has hindered our ability to fulfill our support role effectively, and it’s disheartening to see a core mechanic of our class become almost impractical to use.
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Clunky Resource Management:
Having two separate and limited resources for Paladins feels clunky and counterintuitive when one can suddenly limit the other. While managing multiple resources can add depth to gameplay, the current implementation seems to impede the fluidity of our class mechanics. It would greatly enhance our overall experience if a more seamless resource management system was introduced, allowing us to focus on strategic decision-making rather than resource juggling.
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Self-Sustain Sacrifice:
One particular issue that stands out is the burden of Word of Glory’s mana cost when cast on ourselves. As tanks, our ability to sustain ourselves is vital for survival, and it feels unfair to be forced to sacrifice our self-sustain due to mana constraints. It would be ideal if Word of Glory could be exempt from mana cost when used on oneself, ensuring that tanks maintain their necessary survivability without being hindered by mana issues.
I totally agree that WoG in it’s previous state could not remain - but this was not the right move. Too much self-sustain was taken without any concern for the health of the group.
In conclusion, the concerns surrounding Paladins in the current meta extend beyond the initial issue of Word of Glory’s mana cost. The damage nerfs, mana costs for tanking spells, the difficulty posed by the Afflicted affix(as an example), and the disruptive mana breaks all contribute to an unsatisfying gameplay experience for our Paladin community. I urge the developers to carefully consider these concerns and make adjustments that ensure our class remains balanced and enjoyable to play.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this matter and any suggestions you might have to improve the situation. Let’s engage in a constructive discussion to advocate for positive changes for the class many of us have been playing for ages.
13 Likes
I agree that restricting access to Prot Paladin sustain (gating it to a combination of 10 WoGs/Cleanses a fight) is a terrible balance decision.
If this line of thought continues, I hope to see Ignore Pain/Shield Block gated to a combination of 10 per fight, and Death Strike gated to 10 per fight. Same with Iron Fur / Frenzied Regen. It pushed Paladin into a shield-slam bot, whereas other tank counterparts are not nearly as restricted in their sustain.
This change has single handedly made Paladin a non-viable tank, and removed a skill expression in Mythic+ around your ability to play well to help your healer who may not be doing well.
Things that directly remove skill expression, and skill caps are bad for the game as a whole.
5 Likes
I just don’t understand the thought process. We already had a lot of our passive tinyheals toned down fairly recently, only to be hit with this.
I did the megadungeon on Tuesday, and I haven’t felt the motivation to log-in since.
I would really like to see the mana cost removed when cast on ourselves, but I doubt that would happen - it would help so much, though.
2 Likes
Prot offhealing had to be nerfed everyone knew it, using mana to limit it was not a terrible idea if done correctly.
On the other hand self sustain should not have been touched paladin is already middle of the road below both BDK/Bear. Changing self sustain when the current balance design around high level m+ is having the majority of the healers attention being on keep dps alive is a bad idea. As you end up like prot warriors where healers have to babysit you as well as dps thus they are almost non existent above 20+ keys.
For talents both Shining Light and Bastion of Light should also reduce the mana cost of WoG to zero or else its not very free. On top of this the current WoG themed talents (Light of the Titans/Seal of Charity/Faith in the Light & Hand of the protector) are bloated and accessing them pretty much requires an all in approach which means the meta and vast majority of players just ignore them.
Remove or massively reduce WoG cost when self cast, make SL/BoL WoG reduce mana cost to zero improve WoG themed talents by reducing bloat like Light of the Titans and Faith in the light to one point talents and improve access by allowing direct access to Seal of Charity/Hand of the Protector.
2 Likes
It’s really disheartening to see how little movement there is on the forums.
The mana changes and seeing a tank go OOM brings me back to the pre-WotLK days lol
3 Likes
I still have never gone oom casting WoG, #1 problem for prot right now is low damage. they cut off our arms and gave us T rex arms back… gee thanks.
4 Likes
Thank you
This is very well written, and outlines very clear problems with the spec.
There are a few posts on the forums with similar concerns. At the bare minimum of the suggestions here I would say that mana cost on WoG should be removed for Protection.
We have the class fantasy of being a tank who supports allies.
We cannot do this in Prot’s current iteration.
2 Likes
I literally had to watch all my dps die in a +19 VP on the second boss because I had to save mana for myself. The feeling was horrible. Outside of Sac (single target), I feel I have 0 group utilities now. I can’t even freely cleanse because of the mana problem.
2 Likes
Also, after a week, I strongly feel the whole WoG mana change was made to force ppl play hpal so that they can tell their non-gamer managers how successful their revamp of hpal was.
1 Like
I still haven’t gone oom or close to it a single time, lowest I’ve gotten was like 50% I think. And it’s not like I have changed my playstyle or anything… I still dispel every time is needed without even giving it a second thought and throw WOG on my allies every time I see them spike and I have the HP available or Shining light up.
I’m also technically a healer main who just also likes tanking in M+, so II’m always very aware of dispels and off-heals (and my UI is also optimized for healing and quickly identifying who needs dispelling) so it’s not like if I was tunneling on the enemies and not using my utility to help my team, I use it a lot.
Can people who are having issues with it maybe share a log for the key we can go over? I genuinely don’t see it happening in normal gameplay, I’d imagine it would be a problem for non-healer comps but that was the goal I believe.
I ran a couple of +22s and +23s yesterday, again not once did I run OOM… Even in something like HOI where I was helping the healer a lot in the first and third boss or dispelling poisons in the gauntlet and frog boss.
Is it maybe something like trying to solo stuff? I haven’t tryed to like solo a big chunk of a boss…
Or maybe a low key you get a really bad healer and are trying to carry all the healing yourself?.
Notice I’m not saying it can’t happen, if people are reporting the issue I have to imagine is because they are experiencing it so genuine question.
2 Likes
I do not have logs, we don’t log them. I play primarily with a group of friends and we do casual mid range keys. We aren’t running a no healer comp.
I frequently have the playstyle of casting WoG on allies who are low, with or without shining light procs, so long as my SoTR uptime will not be affected.
The most egregious example recently is the last boss of Dawn of the Infinite. Heavy magic damage, heavy party damage, tons of movement. There were deaths happening from mechanics which previously I would have been able to prevent had this mana constraint not been present.
Towards the end of the fight I was the last one alive with no mana and could not finish off the boss from like 3ish % which literally any tank can do aside from paladin, maybe warrior, in a prolonged fight because we have this constraint.
4 Likes
At minimum I think the case can be made for Shining Light to remove the mana cost. We usually sit on them twice over the amount of SotRs it takes to generate them anyway, while also making it so we are assisting the healer not replacing the healer with the mana change.
Prot has so much chip healing and absorption effects during trash pulls that the cadence for generating Shining Light roughly matches our need for the self WoG (5-6 SotRs to the 1 WoG). Bulwark of Order tends to be either my first or second healing effect on Fortified weeks and is broadly speaking mana agnostic.
Cascading healer failures are more difficult to cover and I believe Dawn of the Infinites exacerbates this to a far higher degree than a mid to high level key where player mistakes just result in instant death regardless. Damn things just a pain to heal.
2 Likes
I do appreciate the sentiment of not replacing healers. The proportion of no healer comps was minuscule compared to the rest of the keys with a healer, and to my knowledge wasn’t even the most efficient comp.
With my experiences in keys, raid, and DotI, the reduction in both party support and self sustain caused by this mana cost is unwarranted and should be reversed. We already have a resource to manage, managing mana is something we haven’t had to do since WotLK.
3 Likes
Let’s keep this thread alive. There are four main end-game contents in WoW: Raid, M+, BG, Arena. I can’t speak for Raid as prot since I primarily play holy and ret in raid. However, for BG and Arena, ever since the end of SL S1, prot has increasingly becoming nonviable towards unplayable. Then with the WoG mana nerf, even in Random BGs, prot pally is a joke. So in addition to M+, prot pally players are paying our subs every month only to feel 3/4 of the game being horrible to play. This must change.
1 Like
Thank you for bumping this. I don’t want to be overpowered, I want to have my talent options still be viable, and I want to have some self-sustain.
I cannot speak for PvP, but even in higher keys if the healer dies, I likely cannot help much outside of a res for support/recovery - especially when it’s later in a fight.
The new 8% buff to prot’s overall damage unfortunately does nothing to remedy the pigeonholing of talent choices or sustain/survivability.
I wish there was traffic on these forums…
The mana change has been far more impactful than it should have been. With the FOTM rerollers moving on to bear, can we please put Prot pally back to the pug carrying swiss army tank it was before 1 group of high end players cleared some content most of us won’t see, without a healer.
2 Likes
imagine going oom as prot, legit skill issue
1 Like