Blade of Justice: Ugly and Stupid

I realize that someone probably designed this and are proud of the animation for this spell… but sometimes we’re proud of things we should actually be ashamed of.

Blade of Justice needs a new animation, badly.

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I kinda like impaling my enemies with a giant sword.

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I agree, it makes no sense - a blade springing up from the ground with an equally weird springing clang… Odd. To me that’s a spike of sorts. Has nothing to do with the fantasy of a sword or blade.

Just bizarre.

It’s weird; for most of my time in wow (wrath to bfa) i was an outsider looking in as i never had a paladin but you guys looked like the king of flash. Everything looked and felt great. Come BFA, i rolled a paladin, and the aesthetics are weird.

Prot is good but the effects feel very muted and small. For instance, Rebuke compared to Skull Bash or Disrupt is just sad and so easily missable. SotR, and HotR are totally interchangeable and barely have an animation. Like wtf.

Ret is a dumpster fire. I don’t play holy but i am guessing that are okay.

Overall, it feels like some where along the line, the genius that was responsible for the paladin aesthetic in Vanilla quit the company or switched departments.

The Paragon and Guardian from the GW franchises really nail “holy warrior” in both thematics and playstyle, IMO.

Sorry for the long rant. But aesthetics are important to me; i love my paladin as a character but I’m really sad at how let down I was.

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I’ll probably go against the masses on this, but that’s what I dislike about many Paladin skills. I get that “hammers” are our fantasy. But damn, it feels goofy having hammers flying around, throwing hammers, stabbing with swords out of the ground. Why do we just conjure a ton of different weapons?

I miss when Divine storm was a storm of light, and judgement was a shock of light.

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I like Light attacks being formless beyond some mists or zaps of golden light. I like weapon attacks being…well, weapon attacks. Hitting things with my sword. Old TV animation from back in the day was awesome.

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Real spicy take. Blade of justice > exorcism

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coolest spell in the game other than being piss weak. reminds me of fft

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At least a glyph to change it’s appearance or something definitely.
Personally I’d prefer a blade coming down from above than up from beneath.

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I had a section on DS as well, specifically the graphic of the hammers. I ultimately took it out as my post was already so long-winded and histrionic.

But I am with you - making the hammers actually hammers in DS with blue-white-silver hammer heads totally detracts from the overall look of the spell. It made the aesthetic, something that what was brilliant, furious and powerful, look odd and goofy (the proportion and coloring of the 3 hammers that weirdly fly in a fixed line on a circular path). That to me is not a “storm”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUPJooOnVkQ

Was much better when it was a storm of holy light around the character. the old hammers were a lot smaller to see, and totally gold. The lack of precision fed into the idea of a storm.

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I don’t hate it. I’d love a glyph to make it customizable. But like said above, makes me feel like Agrias or Orlandu from Final Fantasy Tactics.

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Don’t mind the animation, I dislike the new Judgment animation more…not to speak of the sound. xD
That said I am sure BoJ’s animation could be improved a little (more of a light blade), but that applies to nearly every animation in the game.

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I love blade of justice, i think it is extremely amazing. It reminds me of Final Fantasy Tactics with the holy knights / magic knights using their spells and swords coming out of the ground. I’d take blade of justice over exorcism any day and this comes from a Warcraft 2 player.

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I feel like the main problem with Blade of Justice is how often you keep casting it. Art of War proc’s make it so you are constantly raising your hand up in the air and couple that with Divine Storm proc’s which share the same character motion it gets kinda wonky. If blade of Justice didn’t have a way to reset itself I’d be completely okay with it.

All new animations are awful and BoJ specially. Summoning runed swords from the ground doesn’t belong to paladins at all. There’s already a class who’s fantasy is literally infesting/raising things from the ground and using blades with runes inscribed on them, and they are the antithesis of a paladin. Give BoJ to them.

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I kind of wonder if it was intentional sabotage, suicide, or trolling from some Blizzard employees. The universal downgrade we got on every single abilities’ animations that was changed, and how awful every new ability we got looks, really doesn’t make any sense.

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I think the sound is too metallic. One person in GD once described ret as “sounding as if it’s throwing pans and pots at enemies” and that’s a perfect description lol. Judgment too. Like you hit a steel wall with a hammer. Doesn’t exactly convey dealing damage, but rather being blocked or parried. It’s a sword of the light too, so it must do some hissing or something, because it’s the light that burns.

I also think that BoJ is kinda boring as ability too. Give it a DoT or something. Or 100% crit on demons and undead. Or maybe make it do Cleave. Imagine if it pierced entire group of enemies.

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Since the launch of Legion all my game sounds have been permanently turned off solely due to how horrible all the Retribution abilities sound. They should have an option to enable older sound files to play in place of the abilities, or revert them to how they looked previously (Exorcism) with the old sound files.

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Same here, I really enjoy ending fights with it looking like it impaled the enemy. It has to be one of my favorite attack animations, along with Final Verdict, Old Judgement and Wake of Ashes.

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Impaling an enemy is more the thing if Vlad the Impaler or Garrosh, rather than something a holy warrior would do.

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Y’all are really generous to even call Judgement’s “animation” an animation.

How limp-wristedly flicking one’s weapon like a fairy to spew forth a tiny glowing hammer a la Tinkerbell was approved for a spell called “Judgement” is beyond me.

Consecration is good, our mounting spell effect is good, and Wake of Ashes are good. The rest is either passable or grossly unfulfilling.

Like what on earth is Shield of Vengeance? Looks like a massive bubble with a weird, fiery spell effect more appropriate for a shaman. Look up “Guardian GW2 aegis” - those are proper shields. And Divine Shield - Heck, Warcraft 3’s paladins with their rotating, bright gold shields convey holy magic much better.

Inquisition… Why do our hands glow blue? Shouldn’t it be gold? And it’s too small an effect; wish the glow around our feet lasted during Inquisition.

As stated before, most of the spells don’t even register animation wise. SotR, CS and HotR cannot be “seen”.

It’s bizarre because WQs where you have to damage objects have this really cool, noticeable effect where the paladins shield has a bright gold, very noticeable glow. But that’s not used for any of our abilities. The comparison would be if DHs had eyebeam for the WQ but not part of their toolkit (btw, that is the case for DHs. Their “destroy X” animation is Eye Beam and it feels glorious).

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