Feedback: Paladin Hero Talents in The War Within

Please check out the preview and let us know what you think in this thread.

2 Likes

Who is ready to interrupt your dps rotation to pick up my armaments off the ground for a small buff for toxic blessing of summer v2 that’s not as good??? God I can’t wait for an ability that will go unused on the ground woot

47 Likes

hihi here’s the initial lightsmith behavior wishlist!

  • let an effect go off where/when i cast it. movement can be hectic and often in most fights, if im having to search for a person let it go off when i want it to.
  • let me target a specific player with it in a macro instead of forcing me to look for the player. make both [@specific_friendo] and also [@player] work. if im putting out an absorb, i want that absorb to be on the right person every time tbh.
  • have it off gcd. please i beg. dont make me disrupt my rotational feedback loop to put a worse Sacred Shield on someone.

ty

10 Likes

Holy Bulwark and Sacred Weapon should be 2 abilities that share a cooldown. Sometimes you want to give your party defensiveness. sometimes damage. I’m imagining in M+ you want full uptime on the damage (especially if it can buff a DPS class) and will end up wasting the defensive buff just to reset the CD on the damage buff.

If they share a cooldown you are actively making a choice about what is more important in that moment instead of having it decided for you and hoping it lines up with the needs of a fight.

15 Likes

I made a separate post about Lightsmith and then saw this so I’ll post it here too; from a holy perspective:

The main ability here is armaments. These give a shield and then give a damage or healing boost, one then the other on use (according to the interview with Nobbel and Flame). First off, adding another reticle to our kit is annoying (Light’s hammer is a cool looking ability, but I can’t count how many times I’ve thrown a hammer on the ceiling; can’t wait until I throw some armaments up a wall!).

Secondly, if the increase to healing is decent, fine, but the abilities down the left side of the tree give returns on LoH, which only benefits if we use it right away rather than saving it for an actual emergency. The next talent buffs devotion aura from 3% to 4% on armament targets…1% dmg reduction on very few targets; not very exciting. The capstone buffs our holy power abilities. The latest holy paladin build (LoPo) actually has us IGNORE holy power abilities until 2 stacks of blessing of dawn because of how insanely little healing WoG and LoD do. So far what I’m seeing is one of the most despised methods of gameplay (reticle targeting), buffs to our worst abilities, and rewards for using abilities at a time where they’re not needed. Needless to say I feel let down. Might have to go play my evoker more, they get 10% increased intellect and 40% dr on core abilities lol.

16 Likes

Just some Templar thoughts before its release.
A Templar hero talent for survivability would be nice. I’m thinking about the reality in current pvp. Would like to see a 50% chance for casts of MD or Shattering throw to miss, or on use buff with a CD to make defensives immune from abilitys that end or steal the defensives or a talent that removes forbearance forever or a least as an on use ability with a cooldown. Having Bubble BoS or BoP removed early just to die two seconds later with 3 large defensives unable to be used for 26 more seconds feels bad every time.
A hero talent for instant or near instant mobility like all other melee would be nice. An animation that includes a movement componant that replaces Final Verdict would be nice, I love the hammer animation but something cool with a sword comes to mind thats already been done in HOTS. Death From above and shadowstrike I think function like a combonation of a shadow step and an attack and I’d like that for Ret. That movement + damage talant should include buffed damage either for it or other rotational abilites so Ret is no longer the weakest and slowest melee in raid. Stat scaling for Ret should probably be addressed before any stat talents in the hero tree can really help Ret. Right now with Ret pvp talents nerfed by 80%, if Hero talents are not impactful in pvp Ret hype and Hero talent hype cant really exist for Ret pvpers.

1 Like

Please redesign due to the fact that ion said that hero talents are just passives and not have any actives.

14 Likes

Since you guys have in the title Paladin Hero Talents, and i don’t play holy/prot, then i’ll express my opinion on the naming conventions for the other 2 hero talent options.

  • Templar → Ret/Prot - rename this to Knight Templar since that was a real title (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_Templar) that was above Templar and it sounds way cooler.
  • Herald of the Sun → Ret/Holy - rename this to Lightbringer, such a missed opportunity to reference Uther and it sounds way better(while being basically the same thing) than 4 words for a title, i’d avoid using more than 2 for any of these titles, as it’s just a mouthful.

Now to go into detail regarding the kinds of abilities they should have/affect.
I see in the article a reference to Templar enhancing Wake of Ashes, but i’m not sure that fits well, since when thinking about Herald of the Sun i think you’d want “fire” based spells to be affected there.
Come to think of it Templar = Holystrike, while Herald of the Sun = Radiance, so they’d focus on those types of spells to enhance.

BUT please, whatever you do, don’t make 1 of them better for ST and 1 for AOE, as ret already has this issue with AOE and ST being disproportionate in the ST and AOE specs on Live, no need to make this issue even worse next expansion.

Now let’s say that you guys fix the BASE talent trees and ret no longer has a big gap with their ST and AOE in their AOE and ST specs, then you can play a bit, but not too much or we’ll be back in the same situation!

6 Likes

Can someone explain the deal with the right side of the Lightsmith tree which buffs the healing of Crusader Strike, Judgment, Blessed Hammer, and Hammer of the Righteous, none of which do any healing on their own? Is that just a buff to Crusader’s Reprieve (lol)? Or is Blizzard trying to push Holy to take Avenging Crusader again?

I’m actually worried now.

Gives off the feeling of SL Bastion dungeon where you could pick the adds weapon on the ground.
Not the kind of feature I was looking for.

I don’t like the alternating effect.
I don’t like the random nature of it if WE pick it.
I don’t like that we or someone has to pick it up from the ground.

I do like the idea of equipping an ally with “light armament”.
It plays on the support aspect Paladin always had.

But I don’t think this is the way to do it.

16 Likes

Mentioned this in the main thread but is worth repeating. Prot is already heavily punished for movement by consecration. Holy armaments dropping on the ground from both the proc talent and the capstone either 1) forces the tank to constantly move to pick them up or 2) rely on another person to pick up to maximize their own kit.

As such, please consider having the armaments either go on a targeted player or nearby player when you target yourself. Placing or randomly spawning objects in the world is not good game design. Wow has enough forced movement and visual clutter. I don’t even know what templar does but this alone makes it better for prot.

Also make sure all damage from the armaments is attributed to the paladin, lest we experience power infusion 2: holy boogaloo.

12 Likes

I really strongly do not want an extra active button that I have to click a reticle for and then walk over to use.

If I macro [@player] into it and bind it into stuff that doesn’t fix it either, as half of the talents want me to share. I want autonomy over how I share buffs, and relying on people to walk into stuff or asking me to use a reticle sucks hardcore.

This seems like extremely outdated design.

18 Likes

“One thing that we’re keeping a close eye on is complexity. Classes in WoW have a lot of abilities and talents, and there’s a lot to learn about each one. We want Hero Talents to add new fun without creating new burdens, either in customizing or playing a character. Most Hero Talent trees do not add new buttons that players will need to add to their action bar or find a new keybind for.”

It’s only the paladin one that needs to be remedy.

7 Likes

This must be upheld. Paladins have to play by the same rules and must be passives only and no exceptions.

3 Likes

Chasing buffs on the ground I’m not a fan of. Ppl may die trying to pick them up in raid and M+

17 Likes

That was my exact first thought too. What a travesty.

14 Likes

I love the idea behind this tree - Bending light into a physical manifestation that my allies can use to be stronger is cool.

The immersion sounds fun and I imagine something along the lines of - I throw down this hammer of light behind the boss, and the rogue sneaks behind the boss to pick it up and use it to smash him with their backstab for the killing blow.

What worries me about this, is that in a gameplay scenario. The arena will be too chaotic for this to go down unless your group is perfectly in sync. The reality is, that I am going to throw the hammer behind the boss and one of three things will happen:

  • DPS will not see it due to standing in front of the boss and they will block the ability to see the hammer.
  • Everyone is going to rush towards it in a race to have bigger numbers, ignoring other mechanics.
  • Random boss Areas of Denial will prevent anyone from grabbing the hammer or getting them killed.

I think a possible solution, is to let us target a party member and use the spell on them so It becomes like a mini PI or Defensive Cooldown. Or, have it be a raid-wide buff that we trigger to rally the entire party so they can use these armaments of light to defeat enemies.

14 Likes

Its not in the game yet. Lets hope asking for feedback translates to listening to feed back. Having hybids buffing others is good, normal, and a traditionally paladin staple. But implementation and tuning is everything

3 Likes

My proposed fix for turning the active Armaments ability into a passive ability:

Casting Word of Glory on an Ally grants them Sacred Weapon if they are above 70% health, or Holy Bulwark if they are below 70% health. Only one Armament can be created this way every 10 seconds.

That both keeps the determinism and flavor of the spec without adding a keybind.

Divine Inspiration would then randomly create and use an armament on a nearby ally (prioritizing those without one). Forewarning would reduce the ICD of the passive (e.g. 10s → 8s).

14 Likes

More buttons, a reticle ability as the main focus, and abilities that cycle back and forth are not appealing features. Such gameplay isn’t thrilling, often leading to the same strategy of giving benefits to the most advantageous member in a group. In pick-up groups, these features can become an annoyance rather than an asset. Overall, the Lightsmith Hero Tree leaves much to be desired in terms of engaging gameplay.

19 Likes