Do you think Paladin's sucessfuly fulfills the class fantasy you expect out of the class?

Classes Paladin
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Maybe an odd topic to talk about since I don’t think it’s something the majority of WoW players even care about that much, but it’s something that I think about from time to time, even when I was new at the game and I would like to hear some opinions about others that think about it, regardless if they are pro or against it the current class fantasy.

For context, I began my journey mid Legion, so by that time, Paladin’s had already been “Diablified”: Divine Steed, “physical” weapons manifested by the Light everywhere, etc. Personally, that never really screamed “Paladin” to me. Back then, I was super curious about the World of Warcraft I started getting super into the Lore, and naturally, I found the Paladin characters like Tirion, Alexandros, Turalyon, Uther among others to be some of my favorite characters, particularly Tirion, and yet I just can’t ever imagine them being like the player Paladin.

Like, do you imagine Uther summoning a horse for a few seconds before disspating it or manifesting a physical hammer through the Light to throw at people’s head? Or Mograine using the Ashbringer to summon a sword out of the ground instead of, you know, hitting people with it? I feel like the class fantasy presented in the Lore, where Paladins are warriors that enhance their martial prowess with Holy spells on both offensive and defensive is very different to the one provided to the players, where we are more akin to weapon summoners. Hell, for Prot it’s even weirder, and it feels very utilitarian, with very little focus on fantasy, which naturally is great for gameplay, but very weak for the RPG aspect of the game. For instance, Judgement is technically our main filler, while Righteous/Blessed Hammer is our filler’s filler, so for Prot I am: Summoning a shield, spinning hammers, a single flying hammer, a lightning hammer… What am I, a conjurer? Because I feel more like one than a holy knight.

Anyways, just a late night rambling, we obviously have far more important concerns regarding our class balance and such that I am not here to advocate change, just curious about how people feel about the fantasy aspect overall.

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As someone whose first character in 2006 was a Paladin, I totally agree with you. The amount of abilities that revolve around conjuring weapons and using the light as a weapon make the combat feel too “floaty”. This, combined with how fast paced the rotation is for ret — the class no longer feels like a heavily armored knight infused with the light. It feels more like a holy themed battle mage.

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my imagination about paladin is mix warrior + holy priest hybrid

currently, the warrior aspect is lacking even if its just cosmetic

yes, i wish paladin carry 2h weapon and shield

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Should be mmunity to all kinds of disease and poison.

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Yeah, that was a bit of a reality shock for me when Classic came out. Don’t get me wrong, to say Paladin gameplay was boring would be an understatement, I quit mine at level 54 and basically uninstalled the game than and there, I had had enough of Seal of Command not proccing and not being invited to groups because Ret, but things like Judgement looking more like a spell was super interesting to me, it felt like it could be an actual Priest spell that I use in supplement to my melee attacks for instance, the hammer was more of a representation of a target being judged rather than an actual hammer being thrown.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not totally against us throwing paracausal weapons, Hammer of Wrath and Avenger’s Shield have been around for ages now, but now it just feels too bloated. As I said, I don’t really feel like I belong to the same class that Tirion or Turalyon do, the themes feel very different.

Hmm, I sort of agree with you, I don’t think I would particularly like having a Titan’s Grip lite, that’s too much into Barbarian territory which is Warrior’s domain, but yes, I do agree that the Warrior aspect of the class is very muted nowadays.

Oh, that’s a Paladin classic from other RPGs and even WoW itself IIRC, though we kinda are, since all specs have access to Cleanse Toxins, which I suppose represents that without messing up the game’s balance.

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From holy perspective, wings is nice thematically, the beams/ dawnlights is visually nice as well.

Beacons adding a pillar of light is nice too.

The playstyle is fun, visually it’s sorta lacking though.

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I honestly wish that holy was more like the warrior priest from the old warhammer mmo

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No, needs more support less handholding talents

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I think blade of justice should be changed to a melee slash. The whole raise your weapon thing is lame. The class has one too many conjury spells. Its a melee crusader and should play like that.

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Yeah, I was never particularly a fan of BoJ, and they leaned heavy into it in Legion, even for the “destroy object” animation for Rets, instead of hitting it or doing like a Wake of Ashes type of animation, they just summon like 4 mini swords out of the ground to break it. It never felt very thematic to paladins for me.

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That’s fistweaver monk. Just reroll, they don’t want avenging crusader to be usable, and then forgot about it and wanted to make a healer dps and then gave it to monk and then remembered hpal was the one who was supposed to have that but they were too far gone so no backsies !

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It may not be the traditional rendition of a paladin but i think i like the idea of creating weapons out of light and hurling them at your enemies.

I do think these spell animations need a bit of a facelift. I’m 90% sure all of the animations that summon a hammer are summoning a low-poly, low-resolution hammer model from vanilla.

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I mean, he literally just shot out fire from the ashbringer to burn the undead, flames so hot out of light that he just left ashes behind. Hence the name Ashbringer came to be.

But yes, hammer of justice was an old spell as well. Light creation was always a thing, just not to this extent but I just chalk it up learning more from the Draenei

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I mean…yeah…that was the main thing why the church of light wanted the paladins. To take the priests and their holy abilities, combine it with armor and sword, and turn them into holy magical sword masters. Or a light battle mage.

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Personally, I love Blade of Justice. I love the idea of paladins learning to turn the light into weapons themselves, that is fine for me. Just wish final verdict was like a giant sword slashing instead of a hammer coming down.

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i think the animation should be the dk howling blast where u point yr weapon at the target. or make it use the death strike over head jump animation

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i feel like ret paladin should be treated like frost dk where u can use two handed weapons or a 1 handed and shield instead of the dk duel wield

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Unfortunately Paladin just fails in every regard to meet the class fantasy mark imo. I miss the Paladin of Wrath. It felt really Paladin-ey back then. I think a lot of what happened was the loss of seals and blessings.

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I’ve been saying for a long while that WoW Paladins are actually a type of summoner rather than a traditional “holy warrior”. And Blizzard seems to agree seeing as they added an entire hero spec themed around the idea. Lightsmith.

Should it be this way? Idk, personally i much prefer DnD’s iteration of Paladins. But i don’t mind how it works in WoW either.

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Personally as ret, yes. I have hammer/sword, i hit people with the Light and bless my allies. I do wish we had our Blessing Buffs back to really feel that but they’ll never make me happy like that again.

As Holy, I feel similar-ish but I wish they’d let me use 2h-ers again outside of trasmogging the Silver Hand.

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