Dragonflight Paladin Thread

Classes Paladin
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The devs have said that they intend to return to Azeroth with the Dragonflight expansion. There are many dev interviews concerning Dragonflight.

My favorite Ion Hazzikostas quote is

“losing something powerful sucks”
Ion Hazzikostas

Then he refers to the legion artifact weapons. The paladin class has not been the same since those weapons were taken away, not any spec. The Legion Holy Paladin was imho, the best, truest implementation of the paladin as a healing/melee hybrid ever in WoW. Unfortunately, the Legion Holy spec remained unfinished.

One of the things that he talks about is “new structures” and “permanent systems”. Starting character progression over in each expansion has always annoyed the crap out of me in each expansion. All we have ever carried forward since Lich King is transmogs or character appearance.

New systems and structures will affect the Paladin class. The question for us is how will those changes affect us? We need to have a voice in that. I have had a few threads suggesting changes to the Paladin class that gained wide Paladin community consensus, by combining feedback from the community into the content of the suggestions and ideas on how to improve the Paladin class into the content of the thread.

If we want to provide feedback to Blizzard concerning the Dragonflight Paladin, the time to do it is now. I hope the devs are listening.

Some areas we need to look at:

  • Extensible Paladin talents.
  • Paladin crafted gear including armor and weapons.
  • Paladin mounts or mount customizations.
  • Current Paladin specs and how they can be improved.
  • Player housing.

I had a viral thread on Ret aura that got a lot of constructive community feedback.

I am very interested in extensible Paladin talent trees, Legendary Paladin Weapons and armor specs or roles. I think that the Lich King talent trees, and Legion artifact weapons are a good place to start.

Lets get started by answering the following questions:

  • What were the best paladin specs and abilities in the history of WoW?
  • What were the best Paladin weapons in the history of WoW?
  • What was the best Paladin armor in the history of WoW?

I think that we need to look at where we have been before we decide where we are going.

Please give your thoughts and opinions, it will be summarized in this thread. There are no bad ideas or suggestions. Please be constructive, polite and respectful in your posts. The WoW Dragonflight devs are our audience. I hope they will listen.

Edit:
We need to remember that the Paladin is a hybrid support class. Each spec needs support abilities:

Holy:

  • Aura: Concentration - reduces chance of being interrupted, silenced and stunned.
  • Seal/Judgement: Wisdom/Light - judgement restores resources for everyone who hits judged target.
  • Blessing: Wisdom - regenerates resources.

Protection:

  • Aura: Devotion - increases armor of paladin and group or decreases damage taken.
  • Seal/Judgement: Justice - judgement snares target and has change to stun target.
  • Blessing: Kings - increases stats of paladin and group

Retribution:

  • Aura: Retribution - increases damage of paladin and group
  • Seal/Judgement: Hybrid of Vengeance/Blood/Crusader - increases damage of paladin and group on judged target.
  • Blessing: Might - group damage buff

These support abilities define the paladin class. They should be restored in DF. They don’t have to be exactly like the originals but they should be similar in role and purpose. These abilities could be completely or partially talented. They should be valuable to the paladin and to the paladins party or raid.

From Benmarch:

Retribution aura rework idea

From Anasi:

Blizzard: In Dragonflight, please restore Paladins - Classes / Paladin - World of Warcraft Forums

From Covahredro:

New talent for the Ret Tree
Empyrean Endowment

Talent

Requires Paladin (Retribution)

Judgment empowers your next Templar’s Verdict to automatically trigger Divine Storm with 25% increased effectiveness.

This effect can only occur every 30 sec.

Edit:

I think it is safe to say that most posters in this thread do not want the WoW DF Paladin to go back to the vanilla WoW or WoW Classic (including TBC and WotLK) Paladin. However, many posters do want the classic Paladins to influence the design of the DF Paladin including the reintroduction of redesigned Auras, Seals and Blessings.

WoW DF Paladin Talent Trees are available on wowhead!

Paladin Talent Trees Now Available in Dragonflight Calculator - Wowhead News

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I want our auras to be more impactful, and I would like to be able to buff groups again like Kings and Might bring some of that class fantasy back.

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Agreed. Are we a support class without Blessings, Auras and Seals?

What would be a more impactful aura?

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Well for one our ret aura is almost a useless aura, and it’s not good switching it on and then letting your allies die.

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The current ret aura is a redundant pvp talent. I made a whole viral thread on it.

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After WoD being good for ret from a gameplay standpoint I had high hopes for Legion…I was disappointed.
After Legion’s disappointment I thought it couldn’t get worse…I was disappointed again.
I expected nothing for SL…and got exactly that.
I will not get my hopes up again for DF just to get disappointed again.

We will get more of the same, talents will be mandatory as they always were and the playstyle will still be sluggish til you at least hit the 30% haste mark.
Only good thing will be the end of borrowed power systems. If they keep word that is. Wouldn’t be the first time they fool us.

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The best abilities for me, were Auras. Auras, need to revert back to Party Aid mechanics and not selfish Paladin only “buffs.” This is more focused on PvP Talents, but also Retribution Aura.

Auras need to be redefined across the entirety of the Paladin Class and have a golden rule attached.

“An Aura is a type of skill used by Paladins” … “It passively affects either the caster and all nearby allies, or all nearby enemies.”

This Golden Rule needs to come back for Paladins and their Auras. Buffs that benefit the Paladin AND their allies, or hinders all surrounding enemies.

Abilities such as:

  • Retribution Aura
  • Vengeance Aura [PvP Talent]
  • Aura of Reckoning [PvP Talent]

Need to be reclassified as different abilities as these “ruin” the fantasy of what Auras should be.

While abilities such as:

  • Luminescence [PvP Talent]
  • Judgements of the Pure [PvP Talent]
  • Cleanse the Weak [PvP Talent]
  • Light’s Grace [PvP Talent]

All have amazing potential to be incredibly flavorful auras for the class, and should be designed as such.

Using multiple Auras could be an extremely cool, Diablo2 Auradin reminisce.

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Sacred Flame, Sacred Shield, Divine Plea, Exorcism, Denounce, Holy Wrath, Speed of Light, the various seals and judgement effects, these were all amazing abilities. Instant FoL with infusion into a sacred shield which then turned it into a HoT. When FoL was our main heal. When infusion made HL a fast cast. When we got mana back on crits from illumination. Divine Favor not being a PVP talent that would guarantee a crit. I miss buff blessings; kings, salvation, light, might, wisdom. Having the old resist auras or old ret aura that did feedback damage. Literally take Holy to pre-Legion but give the new holy players talent options so they can keep their melee healer.

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I’m not sure I understand what you mean by this? If you mean which tiers looked the best, I would have to say Tier 2 and Season 11 Elite PvP Paladin Tier.

There’s a few tiers I would like to see recolored for a bit more of that class fantasy, similar to what BE Paladins are getting in 9.2.5…

Imgur
Imgur

Imgur

Imgur

Imgur

(My concepts not Official Blizzard)

Just to show a few. :smiley:

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Great post OP!

  • Unsure on talents really.
  • Not much to say on gear but it would be very interesting to see sort of an idea of a Paladin Weapon forge system. But if we did that it’d either go one of two routes. Either it’d be something for all classes in which we’d likely just see another borrowed power system like Legion. Or sort of a weapon modification/enchantment system much like the Death Knight class has. Which honestly I feel would be cool to add. Paladins have always felt like the one hero class that never got the recognition of being a “hero class”.
  • As for mounts, I actually just did a thread on “Paladin Mounts”. I feel giving paladins much more in the mount department in particular might look bad for other class PoV. But I also want to target the fact that within the world of paladin mounts we have the human and BE mounts which, while still looking amazing, are becoming very dated in their appearances. I feel it’d be great if we got a quest chain on each faction for human/BE paladins that was either based on or a continuation of the original paladin mount quests which would end in giving the human and BE paladin mounts but updated versions(not replacing) and giving both to all paladins cross faction or both to human/BE(really want to get that beautiful gold/red mixture on my main pally haha).
  • I really only play ret mostly. But I would love to see old Divine storm return along with Long Arm of the Law and the removal of the holy power system myself.
    *Not too much to say here, that’s an overall game thing but it’d be cool to see class specific stuff for housing if and when it comes out.

Well… Ashbringer of course!
Sorry couldn’t resist haha.

Judgement set hands down.

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As far as customization goes it would be nice to get more racially individualistic looking abilities(They do it for Shamans and Druids).

For human’s and Dwarfs not much has to change other than Judgement needs to go back to its original animation(Speaking of which Jugdement had a Glyph in WoD that changed its look from a Hammer to a Sword or Axe depending on your weapon) and for Guardian to looking more Dwarf for Dwarves. As the current animations suit Humans and Dwarves, as they are real paladins traditionally.

For the other races who are technically “paladins” for gameplay purposes it doesn’t make sense for them to be reading off of Librams when casting. Or to transform into a humanoid angel during Guardian of Ancient Kings(or have a valkyr appear for Guardian of Ancient Queens). For them it would be better to have more lore friendly and race themed abilities. I mean Tauren are sun worshippers, Zandalari Trolls worship Loa and Drenai have their thing with the Naaru. So their abilities should reflect that in appearance.

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Please, tell me you are kidding right now.

The best abilities in wow history are Wake of Ashes, Final Verdict (wod), Empowered Seals (wod)

They may not be what you want an aura to be, but it fits the general design of Ret being a vengeful crusader. Except only Aura of Reckoning is doing it amazingly, while Vengeance Aura is not giving something good enough to be playable right now, and Ret Aura literally wants someone to die so it’s terrible.

Among all of these pvp talents, only Luminescence is amazing. The rest is too niche or clunky to even be playable and should be reworked.

I’m all for making Auras good, but it wont even be good as long as it buffs other because they have to stay generic or bad to not be overperforming. Just let them act as Stance instead with 10sec shared cooldown that empower our gameplay.

We can move away from 2005 design and nostalgia and move foward into the 2022 where most of the classes are, except us.

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I meant best abilities for Paladins, the 3 abilities you listed are for Ret only.

Paladin abilities to me include:

  • Seals
  • Blessings
  • Auras
  • Crusader Strike/Judgement
  • Bubble
  • Holy Light/Flash of Light

Of those abilities, Auras have always been a class fantasy niche that I think Blizzard has never capitalized on, sadly.

I don’t want them removed, I just think they should be reclassified as I do not think they fit the definition of an “Aura.”

All 4 of these could stay exactly the same but just be called an Aura, because they better fit that persona.

  • Luminescence = Fanaticism Aura
  • Judgements of the Pure = Sanctuary Aura
  • Cleanse the Weak = Cleansing Aura
  • Light’s Grace = Salvation Aura

They function the same, just given names and visual appearances.

I just think meaningful visual auras would be really cool. :slight_smile:

(It’s just a visual update- https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Oo5ANy, https://www.artstation.com/artwork/g2lAnK)

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Mana for crits was the fantasy that I loved so much. However, I’m not sure I agree with taking back to pre-legion entirely. I like the feel of current Holy Pally, specifically the instant cast nature of it. And my favorite build in Legion was Maraad’s Dying Breath. (I literally never ran out of mana despite out healing the rest of my mythic healing team, not a healthy thing for the game, might I add. However, only ever using instant casts was an amazing feeling)

However, I don’t like the melee aspect, but I do like the damage aspect. I would love to see holy stay mostly as it is with the removal of Holy Power, switching back to Two-handed weapons.

I have a couple of thoughts that I think I would be ok with, all of them involve giving two-handed weapons back to Holy, because I liked that fantasy.

  1. Keeping Holy how it is currently, but making crusader strike ranged, change our Mastery to something else, mostly simple enough,

  2. Removing Holy Power, and reverting back to crusader strikes cd reducing nature for LoD, HS, and potentially WoG. Again making Crusader Strike ranged and changing our Mastery to something else, this gets more complicated.

  3. Everything 2 has but also giving us back kings/might. This is a separate one because it involves a full rebalancing of everything.

Look, I’d like to say Shockadin… but I think that would be a sub-build of Ret at this point. rather than a sub-damage-build of Holy.

I loved Holy Pally in legion with it’s Maraad’s Dying Breath Legendary, the instant cast nature of it felt amazing. We pretty much have that now with Holy Power, LoD, and WoG though.

I haven’t liked prot since pre-legion honestly. But that goes for most tanks.

2-Handers:

  • The Silver Hand Reinhardt hammer appearance. I loved the look of that weapon. Felt powerful when smacking something with it too.

  • Hammer of the Naaru. Such a gorgeous hammer. Sad I can’t use it as Holy Pally anymore.

  • Khor, Hammer of the Corrupted, despite its name, it looks really good on Pally’s.

  • Voror, Gleaming Blade of the Stalwart, generally a great pally looking sword.

  • Dawnbreaker would look great on a Zandalari Troll Pally.

1-Handers:

  • Luminous Edge of Virtue, bastically a 1-hander of Voror.

Shields:

  • Soulwarped Tower Shield gets close, but it would need to be more holy-like to fit the aesthetic, imo.

  • Barricade of Purifying Resolve looks great.

  • Vector Deflector too.

  • Blockade Bulwark/Sunburst Crest would look great on a Zandalari Pally.

A lot of the Weapons and Shields that dropped in Sanctum look really good on Pally’s

This is hard for me. While I like the Lightbringer armor from Black Temple, the Radiant Light Bringer Armor from Tomb of Sargeras is better, though I prefer the normal helm, Mythic shoudlers and a different chest piece… because I prefer robes.

Mythic and Normal Nighthold looked REALLLLY good too.

Ulduar’s Valorous Aegis Plate was pretty good but is a far cry from Radiant Light Bringer.

ICC’s Lightsword Plate had a good aesthetic but I would have liked to see more be done with it.

Normal Siege of Org was decent, though, without the helm and it didn’t really do much, similar to ICC.

I liked the Judgement Armor from Blackwing lair a lot, but it’s low poly now comparatively, but thematically amazing.

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Id say seals for all paladin specs, because they had some effect on our gameplay, like swapping between single target, and aoe, or seal of justice for the slow in pvp, when you were really in trouble you had seal of light to heal.

But Auras are just set and forget for life and offer no gameplay. So I would argue that its really not the best spells at all.

Judgement as well, it has been pretty iconic, sadly Legion has made it ugly and got a terrible animation, Crusader Strike is just trash.

Those just arent aura tho, and are also bad, But they could essentially change aura to affect our gameplay in that kind of way. But not those effects in particular.

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Let’s talk Holy Paladin damage… it is too low. Blizzard if you want us to be in melee doing damage, then the damage we do needs to be DECENT. If I cast crusader strike, a judgement, or a holy shocks offensively, the damage doesn’t need to be chart-topping, but it does need to be respectable. If we put our minds 100% to doing damage, we should be 75% of the damage of a typical DPS spec.

Also, no more “one trick” DPS cooldowns like Ashen Hallow. Buff our core toolkit, because guess what, that’s what we’re going to be using most of the time.

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I find Hand of Hinderance a better way of snaring over Seal of Justice as its ranged, doesn’t require swapping abilities and a melee white swing. Its only real issue is its Cooldown being too high and uptime being too low(though Law and Order helps with this a little). Seal of Justice certainly did have great up time once you got into melee, a little too much I think. But it was too much feast or famine.
I think if Hand of Hinderance Cooldown was reduced to 15 to 20 seconds and Law an Order was baseline that would be more optimal.

I don’t think there needs to be a pvp centric seal

The problem with Seal of Light is again like Seal of Justice, is it requires melee swings and high melee uptime. Something that’s not going to happen often in pvp to make it that useful. A solution to this would be for it to be a Heal over Time that’s always up while you have the seal active(though paladins could just have Aura of Mercy instead). Or to change its functionality to some like this.

Seal of Restitution
Judgement, Crusader Strike and blade of Justice now heal up to 2 nearby allies and yourself for x%. Judging a target will cause your next 3 melee attacks to heal yourself and up to 2 nearby allies for x%

I like this later option because it allows for Ret to more of a battle healer, though it does require some melee still. Seal of Light(or Insight) had a Glyph called Battle Healer and it was a lot of fun to use in Raids, dungeons and in large scale pvp. This would be like that and the Holy Talent https://www.wowhead.com/spell=216331/avenging-crusader But in Seal form.

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Well I didnt say one was better or the other. Both had their limitations. But Seal of Justice worked really well with Burden of Guilt glyph that gave our judgement 50% slow for 2sec, remembering it was 6sec cd aswell + Long Arm of the Law of course.

I disagree, having the flexibility to lose on damage to have something extra that actually help us in pvp I think it was make the mmorpg feels great. You know you wont suffer on uptime? Take the dps seal. You’re fighting classes that will kite you or do something that’s countering you, pvp seal (whatever it end up being)

I mean Seal of Light did increase your healing done by 5% passively. So if you were really in desperation mode it was still useful.

I mean, Empowered Seals did just that with Seal of Light. 2% max health every 3sec for 21sec. 14% max health passively during 21sec.

I don’t want to go on the memory/nostalgia lane. I’d rather have Paladin designed for 2022 and not for the stone age. If seal are completely redesign to change our playstyle, or auras, in an interesting way and not just passive then it would be fun. Otherwise I don’t need nor want it. I’d rather have new spells.

I mean you say Seal of Light is bad because its attached to melee attacks, and then you do the same thing except for boj and judge.

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I agree with this. My issue with Paladins as a whole, is everything. (lol)

I think the Class needs a complete redesign from the ground up, and not to say one is more important than the other, but I think Paladins need to start with Aesthetics first, before combat issues.

Both need to be address though.

Playing a paladin should feel like playing a Holy Warrior of the Light, and currently, that feeling is not captured in any meaningful way, outside of Avenging Wrath.

When you play a DK, and you are casting diseases, frost spells, raising ghouls, etc… you feel like a DK.

When you play a DH, and you are turning into an actual Demon, flying around the map, you feel like a DH.

I don’t know the best way to say this, outside of typing a 5 page report.

I think Paladins have a lot of these flavorful tools that are simply misplaced in their toolkit, and visually bland.

If I was “designing” the paladin class going into Dragonflight, I would lay out all the abilities paladins have and see what could be done to make them into more Paladin themed spells and abilities.

What is the difference between the Zeal[Talent] and Seal of the Crusader?
What is the difference between the Righteous Verdict[Talent] and Seal of Righteousness?

Can Blessing of Summer be turned into Blessing of Might?
Can Blessing of Spring be turned into Blessing of Wisdom?
Can Blessing of Autumn be turned into Blessing of Kings?

What abilities, talents, etc… for “Auras?”

What does a World of Warcraft Paladin even look like in 2022? (Where do we start?)

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True, but you’d still have to swap to it just to snare, losing out of other Seals benefits. Hand of Hindrance is a lot quicker. Law and Order in a way is kind of like Burden of Guilt, though shorter range, but much stronger snare(70%).

Memory Rant Skip
[Funnily enough Burden of Guilt was the name of the snare suggestion I once gave back when Paladins didn’t have a snare. Not saying they got it from me, probably more coincidence, but it was nice to see. Makes me think they do listen. Which might not be a good thing sometimes. I did advocate for a Divine Steed like ability, as many of us did at the time and that didn’t work out too well. Well not how we thought it would be. Though I was more for Falling Sword, because it was so much like a mobility suggestion I had made for paladins back in WotLK. Which was to have and ability that had the paladin teleport into the heaven and come down riding top of the Judgement Hammer(you know the original Judgement animation) and crash down upon the foe.
Heck I once even suggested and ability that come from a game called Tales of Symphonia. Its was called Rising Falcon, one were Lloyd the main protagonist would leap up back into the air and dive down into the enemy. Funnily enough not long after Rogues got Death from Above, which is basically the same thing. Which really did kinda suit them better than it would have paladins. Things I remember lol.]

I understand the sentiment but I think such abilities should be baseline for the class/spec. I thought about a pvp seal and it just end up being something I’d either want up nearly all the time or just want baseline. My first thoughts were for it to basically be a mixture of Law and Order and Jurisdiction but to a greater extent. So more than just Blade of Justice would snare and more than Blade of Justice would get the extended range. Then I even thought about it have a healing abortion effect.

I never like Empowered Seals, I just can’t juggle that many buffs and react all the combat happening(especially now with how insane the damage is). I know for some of easily higher skill than me can handle it. But it just wasn’t fun for me.

Agreed, which is why I’ve been against Seals, Auras and such from returning as they were or even at all. I’d rather the class/spec fuction as is and not have additional button bloat that could easily just be baked in passives, Crusader… cough cough… Aura.

I did mention that issue with it, the difference though is you’d still get something out of it at range and not stuck solely in melee to benefit. Plus the added bonus of healing friendlies.

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