It sounds great to me too. 
In all seriousness, Avenging Leap could be iterated on in several different ways compared to what I specifically outlined in this thread, but it absolutely has the potential to be implemented. No other instant gap closer thematically would make more sense for Paladin than a leap. If this wasnât verifiably the case, Blizzard would not have chosen to portray Liadrin using a leap in their Hearthstone cinematic.
I appreciate your comment and support of this ability! My goals are to keep this post circulating around long enough for our Paladin class designer to seriously take a second look at the approach to Paladin mobility. I would even love to see a direct response comment to what they think about Liadrinâs leap in the Hearthstone cinematic!
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Iâm all on board with what youâve laid out, I just want to have some kind of unique style to what we are ultimately able to do (if anything ever changes.)
With new classes and new play styles releasing over the years, I feel that Paladin has lost a lot of what made it unique in the first place.
Everyone can heal, everyone can shield, everyone can protect their team. Itâs a strange place for Paladin right now and you can really feel it.
I will say that with proper healing and support on your team in arenas and battlegrounds, we can really rip people to shreds. Iâve been top damage or at least top 3-4 in most of the BGs Iâve played and our burst is phenomenal. We have GOOD defensives, but we canât really do anything if weâre focused by anyone. SOV doesnât last at all, Divine Shield can be purged. If your Freedom is on cooldown, youâre dead. And that feels really bad to play right now in a game full of hyper mobile classes with incredible damage output.
When everyone lines up and we can go nuts with wings, we wreck people. But give us even the slightest disadvantage and we crumble like tissue paper. Itâs weird.
But all that said, I do think the best thing for Paladins right now is some kind of mobility fix. That would ultimately make me feel like I have some kind of counterplay to everyone running circles around me. Avenging Leap is a good step in that direction and I support the idea wholeheartedly. I just would like for it to retain some unique Paladin flair. Give it a channel or make it require a wind up/charge mechanic like Evokerâs have, just give me a chance to escape or chase like everyone else can.
Is this whining? Probably. Are Paladins FINE as is? Probably? But it just feels bad to get rooted in place while someone /lols at you and flies away. So bad.
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I agree that tackling a fix for Paladin mobility is the best place to start for improving the class moving forward as well. Iâm also happy to see that you would be on board with Avenging Leap as the directional choice for Paladin mobility! Thematically and mechanically, this would address most major complaints for the class and surely for the players who dislike Divine Steed.
I of course am on board with some uniqueness that helps retain some paladin flair. And seriously a short channel or cast time of about 1 sec would be absolutely reasonable.
After reading the class updates released today, there is no reason not to believe that an instant gap closer for Paladin could be brought to the game during Dragonflight. We have endless posts about poor mobility on Paladin, but few actually take charge and offer up a practical and implementable idea. This is my best design attempt that checks off all the appropriate boxes.
We just need more support to this thread, or more players offering up practical detailed ideas of their own instead until something really starts to stick with the community.
With Blizzard showcasing Liadrin leap in the Hearthstone cinematic, I believe this is our best and only shot to make the case for an âAvenging Leapâ and have any chance of success. I would encourage anyone who has wanted something similar in any fashion to like the post. Hereâs to seeing what the future has in store for Paladin mobility! 
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Iâve never been a fan of copy paste gap closers from other clases, once you tasted Cata-WoD ret you know that was the ideal iteration of ret.
It looks like blizavision is keeping their pony though, speaking from a pvp point of view I think the pony is actually more useful than a leap that requires a target to function.
I guess we could copy pasty Eldruinâs Might (sry for spelling) from Tyrael in Hots, itâs basically Ripple in Space from Bfa, they would barely need to do any work and it actually would open the posilibity to make some decent plays.
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I wouldnât have minded divine steed being a measly 2 second boost if and only if it was 16s cd like the one from D3 crusader, with +150% move speed and unhindered (i.e. immunity to snares/roots).
Then add a choice node for either:
- extends duration to 3 seconds
- draw and quarter like the D3 rune
This fulfils paladins have a unique speed boost, it isnât spammable even with 2 charges (seriously 4-6 seconds of +150% speed unhindered is great in PvP, but PvE not so much), and solves ridiculous nonsense like sanguine weeks for ret/prot, since consecrate is a big portion of our damage/mastery. Also, draw and quarter would be pretty cool in PvP to single out targets like death grip does.
It isnât an instant gap closer like charge/death grip/heroic leap, but that kind of boost + freedom baked in would help kiting/gap closing in both PvP and PvE.
Honestly, the DF prepatch in SL felt great because steed reached up past 6 seconds, so even with the 45s cd it didnât feel so terrible. Compared to the idea of the D3 crusader they took it from, our cd is so long that it feels asinine to use as a mobility spell. I really wish Blizz wouldnât give us half-a**ed talents from another game.
P.S. horse being unwieldy in smaller areas like tunnels/doorways or just outright failing and going on cd are frustrating points that I just didnât cover.
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Literally just bring back Long Arm of the Law. Make it trigger off Judgment only (do not Divine Toll if talented) and you have a reliable gap closer on a relatively reasonable CD. If you wanna play fair make it so the Long Arm buff can be dispellable
Personally my two cents yes we need a leap. Every paladin npc that fights leaps into battle. Even when we defeated the lichking the blow that broke frostmorne was a leap attack so why are we the only ones unable to figure this out.
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The only reason I disagree with this is that this should be an addon to the tree alongside horse, not a replacement. Nearly every other melee class has more mobility than us (sorry death knights weâll get to you later). Monks, rogues, warriors, enhancement shaman (shamans?), feral druids, and demon hunters. They all have at least 2 movement options while we have 1 on a global cooldown. Why shouldnât Paladins have more movement when we donât have the defense or utility to back it up?
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This is spot on. We have seen paladins leap several times now. The most noteworthy instance in game was Tirion leaping to shatter frostmourne. But now with Liadrin leaping to attack Arthas in this recent Hearthstone cinematic, this one takes the cake.
Thereâs absolutely no reason to deny our in game paladins a similar ability. Many are not happy about Divine Steed or would like an improvement to our mobility toolkit in the shape of an instant gap closer.
It doesnât have to be Avenging Leap exactly as I have laid it out here in this thread. But taking into account this cinematicâs portrayal and mixing in the facts that many players dislike holy paladin mastery/dragonflightâs consecration focus, this was my best attempt at crafting an ability that is fully implementable!
The reality is you can take the script for Heroic Leap, apply it to Paladins, make us glow while we do it, or give us wings for the time weâre in the air, and call it a day. Itâs literally minimal effort to implement.
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Uhhh Iâd really by satisfied with my 7 second horse back with a reduced cooldown. 45 seconds is still too long even with extended horse.
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I could agree with you that paladin mobility, especially for Ret is far behind other melee specs. Given Blizzardâs track record with Paladin mobility, I canât see a scenario where we could have Divine Steed and Avenging Leap.
It would likely be too much mobility to have both. Divine steed, avenging leap, blessing of freedom with unbound freedom talented and the increased range on many of our abilities is pushing it too far.
Ultimately I believe having the option to instantly close gaps on a Paladin is essential. But it should come at the price of losing Divine Steed.
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No, just stop. I donât want a crappy warrior ability copy pasta. I donât think they could even get this right since they canât even fix what we do have.
Tyraelâs Eldruinâs Might from hots seems like a decent idea.
Paladins certainly could use help in mobility but that problem pales in comparison to the disasters that are our general talent tree, the rotational dumpster fire that is retribution, and holyâs reliance on DaD. I would much rather them focus on real gamebreaking problems then trying to tableflip our niche weakness.
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Just bring back LAOTL plz. Iâll switch back to ret for that.
Judgment cd is too long for it to be effective, it wouldnât solve much unless judgment cd is reduced.
As someone mentioned before, I also would prefer to have an actual talent tree and not a mess of unfinished ideas, both in the general talent tree and in retributionâs talent tree.
What about Avenging Leap exactly makes it a copy/pasted warrior ability? This design is different from Heroic Leap because it cannot be freely casted to any location. Only directly to a friendly or enemy target. The animation would be different as well the gameplay of dropping a consecration upon landing. So is it because the ability has âleapâ in the title or is it because the overall ability execution is too similar to Heroic Leap? If this is not unique enough for Paladins, why would Blizzard showcase one performing a leap in their Hearthstone cinematic? And what do you make of Infernal Strike then as well?
I edited this post earlier to include a one second cast time or channel time to this ability before leaping but decided to re-edit to remove this detail. While my original post has many edits, I felt this change specifically changed the gameplay of Avenging Leap too much from how I originally envisioned it. However, during this thread another player suggested adding some Paladin uniqueness to the spell like a cast time or channel. I may absolutely be on board for Avenging Leap to require a cast or channel time before leaping. This provides a soft counter to the ability, helps maintain a slight âdrawbackâ to Paladin mobility which seems to stay in line with their current design philosophy and reminds me of Hammer of Wrath requiring a cast time. Overall, the idea seems reasonable to add in addition to my original design description and helps increase its uniqueness.
All of this to say, if you still believe that this is a copy/pasted warrior ability because of its name or its overall gameplay execution, would adding in a small 1 sec cast or channel time to Avenging Leap help solve the problem of this being too similar to Heroic Leap for you?
If your answer still is yes, which is fair, are you against adding Avenging Leap in as a choice node with Divine Steed just so potential Paladin players who would love this ability could pick it up?
- It is the same leap regardless of whatever pretty crap you add to it. It is Heroic Leap.
- Making it interruptible with a cast time doesnât make it better or substantially different. Plus it makes it about as useless as most of our kit
- I would rather see them give our existing steed a buff back to say 6 seconds and add removal of movement impairing effects.
I donât necessarily think we should be able to just be on top of a target instantly. That isnât what our forte should be. It should be that we are constantly advancing and pushing on a target. Weâre paladins not warriors, we should be that ever advancing force that pushes back consistently. We have some limited ranged ability in terms of our judgement, stuns, etc. that we should use wisely in conjunction with Hinderance, Steed and BoF.
That is what is wrong with your want of a copy pasta from my point of view.