Blizzard: In Dragonflight, please restore Paladins

Classes Paladin
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Hello Blizzard,

I’m sorry to start this way, but I feel that modern Paladins are Paladins in name only.

More than any other class, we’ve had our class identity stripped bare over the years. When our Blessings, Auras, Judgements and Seals disturbed the ‘competitive play’ paradigm, unique Paladin gameplay was either chopped to bits, watered down or thrown out. Modern Paladins feel like paint-by-numbers sprites; our specializations simply meet the necessary RPG Trinity requirements.

That said, I have seen recently that you ARE responding to feedback for the incoming Trees; your work with Shamans has given me a lot of hope. So, I wanted to make a few suggestions for Paladins. I don’t expect for my following ideas to change the world (of Warcraft), I just hope beyond hope that some of my sentiment gets through.

Below, in the ‘Summary’ section of each category, I’ve created a few concepts for Paladin abilities. The following is lengthy, there was no way around it. However, I’m passionate about Paladins, and I refuse to restrict this to a Twitter length post.

Blessings

  • Blessings go hand in hand with being a Paladin. They’re fun, and they just feel good to give out. Though we still have some in-game, they’re designed more around gameplay modes, and I wanted to delineate between those and actual Blessings:
Summary

Combat Blessings – momentary duration - most of these we already have in-game.

  • NEW – Salvation – redirects your party member’s threat to you (Causes Forbearance): this is a Paladin’s Leap of Faith…Protection Paladins everywhere will thank you).
    Protection – resist physical (Causes Forbearance)
    Sacrifice – transfers damage (Causes Forbearance)
    Freedom – pulsing CC removal every three seconds, and speed buff

Greater Blessings – one hour duration - these should have NEVER gone away. I’ve re-designed them all. Don’t let them auto-buff the entire party, let us handle that.

  • Kings – 10% Primary stat, and a random buff to Haste or Crit.
    Might – Buff to Class Specialization primary damage source (Holy for Paladins, etc.)
    Sanctuary – Buff to Racial resistance buff and Versatility
    Wisdom – Increases class Resource regen. and Mastery

Auras

  • This is where I really began the re-conceptualizing of our Paladins. The primary concept I’ve had for Auras, is that they will not only have their standard effect on you and your party, but they will now affect your Consecration, your Judgements, and also the Forbearance status (another fairly forgotten aspect of Paladins).
  • I’ve added concepts for the Crusader Aura, revolving around the Paladin who uses it as a Cavalier. I want it to stop being the ‘click-and-forget’ Aura.
  • I’ve added concepts for a new Aura as well, the Justiciar. Pen and paper RPGS are full of ‘sword and board style’ Paladins who focus more on their physical prowess than their spells. These are my Justiciar, and they’ll be included throughout.
Summary

EDIT: I initially said that I wasn’t going to recreate Auras in this concept. Recently, I’ve read numerous things describing how designers treated the Paladin class since WoW’s first launch. And, having seen how we’ve been treated since then…Blizzard, you owe Paladins their due.

Again, I’m designing the following to work specifically with my concepts in this thread, and I’m designing them specifically with class fantasy in mind; I’m not an M+ player. The italicized portion is the personal effect for your Paladin while your Aura is active.

  • Retribution Aura: Everyone sharing your Aura gains +10% Critical Damage. Your Holy and Radiant attack critical hits immediately follow up with a Holy Strike for 10% additional damage (cannot chain off itself).

  • Crusader Aura: Everyone sharing your Aura gains 10% moving speed, 20% when mounted. Every second Crusader Strike charges you forward 6yds, and has a 15% chance to trigger once more on the same target, for 75% normal damage.

  • Devotion Aura: Everyone shares their Racial Magic Resistance modifier with each party member, adding +4% to it and to Versatility. If a race does not have a Racial Magic Resistance modifier, they share an additional point of Versatility. Your Paladin gains +5% Block and damage reduction.

  • Concentration Aura: Interrupt, Silence and Fear effects are 30% shorter on those who share your Aura. Enemies entering or within your Consecration are prevented from causing critical effects for 4 seconds.

The following is my concept for a new Aura, for Justiciars, more physically oriented Paladins.

  • Justiciar Aura: Everyone sharing your Aura gains a chance to Parry equal to your Block or Dodge (whichever is higher). When you successfully Parry, you immediately riposte with a Holy Strike, returning 10% the Parried attack back on the target as Holy Damage.

Auras: Forbearance

  • Face it: Paladins will never be rid of this game mechanic. So, to enrich the gameplay with Auras, I want to redesign the Forbearance status. Forbearance is supposed to represent a Paladin’s exertion with channeling their Holy spells. In essence, they have to fall back on minor effects and their physical prowess until they recover. With my concept, Paladin Auras will always provide the backup we need.
  • For my conceptual design, the following spells would cause Forbearance:
    – Divine Shield
    – Lay on Hands
    – Blessing of Protection
    – Spellwarding, and
    – Blessing of Sacrifice.
  • Justiciar’s would get a slight bump here, as their concept revolves around them NOT being standard spell slingers.
Summary

The following Aura effects would take place so long as you, or a party member, has Forbearance:

  • in Retribution Aura (while Forbearance is active, all your Physical damage deals an additional 5% of its damage as Radiant damage.)

  • in Devotion Aura (while Forbearance is active, gain either an Avoidance & Parry, or Block & Dodge buff.)

  • in Concentration Aura (while Forbearance is active, your Judgement has a % chance to bless you with a HoT that heals for % of the damage dealt [6 second duration].)

  • in Crusader Aura (while Forbearance is active, gain +% to resist incoming CC, and casting Blessing of Freedom on a party member casts it upon you as well.)

  • in Justiciar Aura (while Forbearance is active, or whenever you are Holy Locked, your Physical damage is increased by 5%.)

Auras: Consecration

  • I’m going to be as forthcoming as possible on this point: we shouldn’t need talents to transform our Consecration. This is space wasted in our Talent Tree, where other, cooler talents should go.
  • As my concept revolves around Auras defining our gameplay style, Auras should also define our Paladin’s most basic engagement postures.
Summary

  • in Retribution Aura – while standing in your Consecration, your Haste and Radiant damage you deal are increased 5%.

  • in Devotion Aura – while standing in your Consecration, you gain an additional 7% damage reduction, and Shield of the Righteous and Holy Shield effects are improved by 10%.

  • in Concentration Aura – each pulse of Consecration heals party members standing within for 1% of their max health per pulse. Consecration also reduces the cooldown of your Combat Blessings and Forbearance on other party members by one second per pulse.

  • in Crusader Aura – A Holy echo of your Divine Steed lends you support, allowing your Consecration to move with you, and increases the duration of Consecration by one second.

  • in Justiciar Aura - when an enemy dies in your Consecration, you gain +10% healing and damage for 10 sec.

Auras: Judgements and Seals

  • This will likely be the most controversial point of my post, but so be it. Judgement and Seal play should have NEVER been discarded. The recent return of ‘Seals’ in the General Paladin Tree…is kind of insulting. I’m sorry, it is. That said, I’ve conceptualized Auras to accommodate Seals.

  • The concept here is to play our Specializations to our own liking. To promote this hybrid style, I’ve made sure to add attacks and abilities that ALL Paladins can access in each Aura, making them all attractive, no matter what your current Specialization may be.

  • To be fair, with a concept such as this, changing Auras may likely require a few seconds cooldown now. It’s a worthwhile trade-off.

  • Basically, Aura Dancing will be the way we hybridize our individual game styles. And, if someone wishes to stay in one Aura, then that will define their Paladin’s identity. Either way, we all win.

Summary

  • (in Retribution Aura) - Seal of Righteous Vindication – Judgement seals your target, reducing their key stat by %. Your subsequent
    – Judgement
    – Hammer of Wrath
    – Templar’s Verdict, and
    – Holy Shock spells increase this % reduction by 2, to a max of %.)

  • (in Devotion Aura) - Seal of the Eternal Vigilance – Judgement seals your target’s fate, giving your Shield of Righteousness and your interrupts a % chance to transfer a debuff or DoT from yourself to the target. DoTs transferred this way have 60% of their normal duration [once per target per 20 sec.; diminishing returns ].

  • (in Concentration Aura) – Seal of the Dawnbringer – Judgement seals your target, causing it to suffer 5% of your healing from:
    – Consecration
    – Word of Glory, and
    – Light of Dawn spells as Radiant damage.

  • (in Crusader Aura) – Seal of the Highlord – Judgement seals your target, causing it to suffer a % to be charged by a Holy echo of your Divine Steed, which deals Holy damage. This summoning chance is increased by any subsequent Judgement and / or Crusader Strike.

  • (in Justiciar Aura) – Seal of Light’s Conviction – Judgement seals your target, reduces their armor by %.
    – Crusader’s Strike
    – Blade of Justice
    –Justicar’s Vengeance, and
    – Eye for an Eye spells increase this % reduction by 2, to a max of %.

Talents

  • Before I begin, a word on Guardian of Ancient Kings. Blizzard, I’m sorry to be negative here, but it must be said: the modern version of Guardian of Ancient Kings is the definition of hyper focused Trinity gameplay, and it is commentary on your current Paladin gameplay: useful for a few seconds, every five minutes. Please, banish this spell to the deepest point of the Maw, and never speak of it again.
  • Bastion of Light…should go to Revendreth. It knows why.
  • I’ve come up with a few new Talents with the Crusader and Justiciar gameplay designs in mind, as they could stand one or two abilities to really help them stand out. Also, I’ve created these with past Paladin suggestions in mind:
Summary

  • Ramiel, Spark Rekindled – If a party or raid member falls during combat, the angel Ramiel empowers your Lay on Hands, allowing it to revive your fallen comrade to 20% of their maximum health. The revived player gains Forbearance, and Ramiel cannot empower your Lay on Hands again for ten minutes.

  • Avenging Destrier: activating Avenging Wrath summons your Divine Steed, which periodically charges or stomps your current target for 80% of your Physical damage. Avenging Destrier increases Avenging Wrath by duration by 5 seconds per charge of Divine Steed.

Conceptual Talent Tree End Caps

  • This portion I just had fun with, as I really wanted to create some Tree Caps that focused on Paladin identities and their individual ideals, while respecting their Specializations. Also, I was lowkey jealous of the Priests getting help from Ancient Ones; Paladins should get some angels in the mix.
  • Again, I’ve focused more on the Crusader and Justiciar identities, as they would be the ‘new’ introductions. Also, I focused way more on ‘fun’ and ‘neat’, reasons to get happy about pushing our Big Red Buttons, as it were. In the end, they’re all just concepts.
Summary
  • Qaphsiel, Divinity’s Lance – during Avenging Wrath, Divine Steed becomes an instant cast charge attack (25yd range, 8 sec recharge), slamming you and your Divine Steed into your target for simultaneous Physical and Holy damage. This charge may interrupt casting and has a % chance to knock the target back 5 yds.

Qaphsiel’s conceptual look: https://www.artranked.com/images/b4/b4a71c8c211354f409ae09b6d030fa08.jpg

  • Pyriel, Flame of Heavens – Pyriel brands you with the Light’s Crucible, a Greater Blessing. While you have Light’s Crucible gain +10% Mastery, and 15% of Mastery: Hand of Light applies to all Radiant Damage as well. Your:
    – Exorcism
    – Wake of Ashes
    – Turn Evil and
    – Hammer of Wrath spells have a small % chance to outright destroy Undead, Aberrations or Demons (does not affect Bosses or Rare types). Lasts 1 hour.

Conceptual look for Pyriel: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b1/3a/c4/b13ac428c19dd2a2517ca695882d15c3.jpg

  • Yofie, Glorious Radiance – at the start of your Avenging Wrath or Avenging Crusader, archangel Yofie blesses the battleground, spreading Glimmer of Light on eight combatants (prioritizing you, party, and raid members, before distributing the remainder to the nearest foes). She then casts Holy Shock on you and your target before departing.

Yofie conceptual art: https://www.wallpaperup.com/uploads/wallpapers/2015/02/15/622623/9e7c2f3fc23881e2676595cc68e0e109-700.jpg

  • Sidqiel, Empyreal Sentinel – Ardent Defender becomes Eyes of the Ophanim. Your Holy Shield now has a chance to block incoming loss of character effects, and whenever Eyes of the Ophanim saves you from death, the angel Sidqiel appears to riposte your attacker with Justicar’s Vengeance. If this blow slays your enemy, Eyes of the Ophanim’s cooldown is reduced by 45 seconds.

Sidqiel has actually been a meme lately, Be Ye Not Afraid!: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/b0/ab/7f/b0ab7f87fa539898fb215b2d81f2822d.jpg https://64.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lekgz2zXvU1qg2koco1_500.png

Conceptual art for Briathos: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/6vQSAd6ROCU/maxresdefault.jpg

Please note: I OWN NONE OF THE ARTWORK ABOVE, ALL CREDIT GOES TO THE CREATORS, AND ARE USED HERE ONLY FOR CONCEPTUAL PURPOSES.

That’s what I have for now.

EDIT: my mate tells me I should add a TL;DR (boo). So, TL;DR - Read what I wrote :stuck_out_tongue:
Seriously though: Paladin’s should have more robust Blessings. Cavaliers and Justiciars need to join our class fantasy. Auras need to be updated, and their individual class fantasies should change the effects of our Consecrations, Judgements, and the Forbearance status. Finally, there are Talents that need to be addressed, and I’ve created a few Angelic flavored Talents, because current Paladins are inexcusably bland.

Blizzard, and fellow Paladins, I thank you all for reading through my post. Again, my concepts are more in the way of creativity; my goal is definitely not to pinpoint hard numerical values and the like. This would skew the conversation in the wrong direction. It’s the same for M+; it isn’t a concern for me, so I’ll not bother with it in this conversation.

At the end of the day, I want to play a Paladin. Not just its skin, with a handful of memories sprinkled unceremoniously over my Trees. I want more to my character than just rotations and cooldowns, I want the RP concepts and unique gameplay back. Thanks for your time!

Edit: Here are a few other threads that advocate a better approach at Paladins as well:
[Dragonflight Paladin Thread]
[Paladin - Do we need a rework?]
[How to bring back Seals in Dragonflight]

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I could not agree more. I want to be a paladin in WoW retail again. I have not felt like a Paladin since the end of legion if not much earlier.

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Agreed. Paladins since Legion are more of a warrior in a holy suit.

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Well written and while i see some balance issues, for the most part its fair and not overly overpowered.
I do miss being a Paladin of old in wow, we are a shell of what we were and I’d love to see if not these, atleast concepts derived from this post to make the class feel like that Holy Avenger / Protector / Healer we once were.

If we look at Legion, we lost Hammer as they said it was a warriors thing to execute and then gave us the collosal smash mech as our mastery in the same xpac.
Ret paladins are now at the point of “Are they a rogue or a warrior?” in playstyle and as it stands we do both terribly, as both mentioned bring alot more to a group than we do.

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Thanks for reading, and for the input. I won’t hold my breathe waiting for Blizzard to lean into my ideas, but I just wanted to say something, and offer something. Paladins have way more concepts that can be used, beyond the Holy Power combo points and Avenging Wrath.

As I’ve said, I’m really happy to see that they’re communicating, but they’re really only communicating on their terms (understandable). The thing is, as soon as they DO engage, they’re immediately overwhelmed by players with questions on totally different topics and game modes.

I feel that one solid week of feedback between Blizzard and Paladin players would be helpful. It’s just a matter of getting that week. It’s so wrong for them to leave us in the state that we’ve been in for like a decade or so now.

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I’m not sold on everything but I enjoyed reading your ideas.
They are something that has been lacking on Pally design for a while now, creative.

There are risks taken, bold ideas and strong theme.
They contrast heavily with the flaccid and timid maintenance of paladin. (It’s been more than 3,5 years since we last saw a blue post on pally forums)
They feel engaged in the paladin theme, passionate.

Keep it up. I don’t know what you do for a living but pally need people like you at Blizzard.

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Pass, if anything Forbearance should be deleted.
Why every other classes can use all their kit without any drawback and Paladin is the only class that has a forbearance type effects sharing on multiple spells.

Why the mage debuff don’t apply to cauterize aswell?

This mechanic for Paladin is outdated and should be deleted.

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I truly appreciate you taking the time to read them. I’d love to know what didn’t work for you, I’ve been tweaking my ideas lately. I really don’t want Blizzard to slide past us this time.

The lack of creativity with our General Tree and the Protection Tree was the last straw for me. They feel super lazily thrown together. The “Seals” they have in there are just weak lip service.

Thanks again. I’m in astrophysics right now :smiley: I’ve been a DM for ages now though, so I thought I’d throw some ideas at Blizzard for the heck of it.

I’m not the biggest fan of Forbearance either, but truthfully? I highly doubt Blizzard will get rid of it. That’s why I wrapped Forbearance into the whole thing; since it’s unlikely Blizzard will ditch it, we may as well benefit from Forbearance SOMEHOW.

I would like some insight from you on what you did like, or think should be added / modified? I’m definitely open to suggestions, and I’ve been working on more Talents lately.

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Seals used to be a thing when we had very few other abilities (not taking spell ranks into account). Seal WERE the gameplay via seal twisting, as flawed as it was.
You do a good job at bringing them back without contribution to button bloat but they aren’t part of the gameplay, so to speak, since they are mainly passives through the auras.
They also seem very PVP oriented which is not my thing personally. Blizzard did away with obscure stat like armor pen/armor reduction on player in Cata if I remember correctly and I think it was for the best.
As far as coherence goes though, they are very thoroughly following the theme of your other ideas.

I feel like if seals were ever to comeback, it would have to be in a core redesign of how paladins plays. Which is why I suspect some people would like it to see it, just the class getting redesign overall.

If this coming expac is a miss on pally, there would be a point to be made in a Light Vs Void expac (that seems to be what they are hinting to) to revisit Paladin.
Turalyon is a most likely protagonist/antagonist (raid encounter) and if he ends up with awesome abilities that paladin never ever got, it’s gonna feel pretty bad.
Kind of like the Paladin from Champion of the Light in BFA, clearly they are able to design cool and thematic idea for pally, they choose not to and I don’t know why.

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I love the passion here. I’m imagining myself binding these auras to my hotkeys and in M+ or Raid slowly getting better at utilizing them as my fight knowledge increases. I think there’s some really cool ideas here, of course I worry about the second to second gameplay but with the right implementation these concepts could be exceptionally rewarding to a player like myself.

I am a ret diehard, I like to earn my keep and do damage, but unlike a “pure” I’m also paying attention to frames, always looking for moments to intervene and either put a stopper on the enemy or rip my teammates from the jaws of death with a clutch save.

Again, I’m not saying this would be perfect as is, but neither are you! You put forth some really creative concepts that show an understanding of what a Paladin is, or could be, and even gave room for a more martially focused Paladin! Well done!

My enthusiasm is only tarnished by my cynicism. Ideas like this, I can only speculate, were likely not on the table when they made our trees for Dragonflight.

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I would be ok with seals returning so long as there are clear definitions and doesnt bloat my addon list and keybinds.
One seal for damage, one for cleave, one for slow amd one for healing/manaregen.

I should not have to be changing seals (other than st/cleave) in a m+ dungeon because I am a dps but the seals are a great adition mainly for pvp and solo play.

Blessings and greater blessings yes bring them back.

And Im not even asking for seals to return, I think current paladin is close to a great state but needs serious changes. Need real defensives, better mobility and UTILITY, and variety of damage builds.

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Love these ideas, I could say the same for a lot of classes, which is why I find myself going back to classic often, even if its just to level a toon I played already multiple times just to feel like that class again because retail is so different.

Like someone else said, multiple damage builds would be awesome like a slower, more proc based build like using seal of command (how good did it feel when vengeance procced and you got a sweet SoC crit and then slammed consecrate on top of that :smiley: ), a more modern bursty fast type of build, just more variety in general would be nice

And YES YES YES to blessings! Just being able to put them on people felt so good and useful

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That’s actually the design of my concept.

Say you’re a Ret Paladin. You turn on your Retribution Aura. Doing so automatically gives you the following:

  • Retribution Aura: Everyone sharing your Aura gains 5% Critical Damage. Your Holy and Radiant attack critical hits immediately follow up with a Holy Strike for 10% of the same damage (cannot chain off itself).
  • Retribution Consecration – while standing in your Consecration, all sources of Radiant damage you deal is increased by an additional 5%.
  • Seal of Righteous Vindication – Judgement seals your target, reducing their key stat by %. Judgement , Hammer of Wrath , Templar’s Verdict and Holy Shock increase this % reduction by 2, to a max of %.)
  • Retribution Forbearance buffs (while Forbearance is active, all your Physical damage deals an additional 5% of its damage as Radiant damage.)

No new spells on your bars whatsoever. Changing your Aura changes your Consecration, your Judgment, and gives you a buff whenever you have Forbearance. So, your Ret Paladin decides to change to Crusader Aura for a while? Well, you’re Specialization remains Ret, but your Aura, Consecration, Judgement and Forbearance Buffs all change to the Crusader sets I have in the OP.

Yeah, changing Auras will be the main way to dance between Judgement and Consecration types. But, doing it this way keeps our bars clutter free.

First up, thank you for your critique, I really appreciate it! I quoted the above, because I actually didn’t catch the fact that the Retribution and Justiciar Auras were more PvP oriented.

That really wasn’t my intention with any of the abilities, as I don’t do much PvP. I wanted to give some creative ways to do damage whenever a Paladin selected Retribution and Justiciar Aura, regardless of their Specialization. I’ll give those another pass. Thanks again!

Hey, I really appreciate the feedback, thank you! I wanted to avoid doing too many ‘hard number’ entries, because I think that that would be the quickest way to alienate Blizzard to ANY changes for Paladins.

I don’t care if they take a single idea from here, I just wanted to show Blizzard that Paladins can maintain some of our old complexities without sacrificing utility or Cool Factor. Paladins feel so pale and hollow these days, and it’s super sad, and they aren’t paying attention to us.

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