Feedback: Paladins

[Leomar-stormrage]

I agree with all of your points and it’s nice to see like-minded people. It’s not easy to get some awareness since this topic is so secondary or unimportant to many in this thread - which is no offense to any of the colleagues here!

Also, it surprises me:

• On the one hand people are happy to see more tanks - so we shouldn’t make life unnecessarily difficult
• Then we’re all paladins here in the thread and we should be happy if the class performs generally satisfactorily - according to one for all and all for one.
• And now that Rated Battlegrounds Blitz are coming, there should be a bit more focus on PVP anyway.

Regarding the spec selection in PVP
In all games, I always protect my colleagues and watch their backs on the front line. Sword and shield are simply the central element for this style of play - others might suspect an exploit or other powergaming intentions - how foolish.

@Blizzard Devs - please try to include this PVP Prot Paladin in your rework.

[Metahealss-sargeras]

would it be too much to consider holy shock to be added into Avenging Crusader that way the choice node of Awakening/Sancitifed actually becomes a choice node?

[Toushin-proudmoore (Toushin)]

Make Glimmer of Light an additional effect to Holy Paladin’s Mastery without the increased effectiveness the more people affected and make Crusader Strike also trigger the effect with having the cap at 5 or 10 people.

If not, just make a weaker version of Avenging Crusader part of Holy Paladin’s Mastery, and if talented it will simply improve the ability. My suggestions are as follows:

Mastery: Lightbringer
Level 10
Passive
Increases healing done by up to 12.00%, based on the proximity of your target.

Crusader Strike and Judgment heal up to 5 injured allies within 40 yds for 60% of the potential damage done, split evenly among them.

Keep in mind it’s a mastery so, the effect will go up with mastery.

Avenging Crusader
Talent

Replaces [Avenging Wrath]
3.6% of base mana
Instant 1 min cooldown

You become the ultimate crusader of light for 12 sec. Increases Crusader Strike and Judgment, and auto-attack damage by 30%; and Crusader Strike and Judgment cool down 30% faster.

Mastery: Lightbringer’s proximity is increased to 40 yards. Crusader Strike and Judgement heal an additional 5 injured allies for an additional 300% of the damage done, split evenly among them.

[Daiza-gilneas]

I think adding glimmer back as a mastery threatens to make it worse, as it can get stronger with Mastery which means once again our entire kit has to be bad to accommodate it.

Though adding a consistent healing effect to Crusader Strike would be good but i dont think it should be a mastery. Because without a ranged equivalent to you are 100% locking Holy into melee. Perhaps choosing AC will provide the CS and Judgement healing component as a passive then the active does the wings thing and buffs it?

[Luxrage-area-52]

@Metahealss-sargeras

The answer to AoE healing will always be virtue

I like the above mentioned idea of added true aoe healing into Virtue. a modified version of Sheilun’s would fit nicely.

@Exmeet-area-52

Liberation is nice. but I feel if you could make it to reduce the cast of the Holy light it would be better. I honestly think we are still missing some type of MW monk talent that let us cast Holy light instant without stoping to cast the spell (like x amount of WoG will grant you the next HL for free) something like that.

Invigorating Mists style free Holy Lights? i’m not sure we need to go quite that far into homogenization, especially considering my above suggestion
I wouldn’t mind seeing a stacking buff from judgement that reduces the mana cost of Beacon of Virtue though. 20% mana reduction per stack?

I could actually see myself playing virtue if i could use my DPS rotation to reduce the mana cost of my big AoE heals. This feels in the same vein as Mana Tea but with a Holy Paladin flavor. Though this would most certainly necessitate the removal of all other beacons aside from Virtue in every setting lol.

[Barahädd-lightbringer]

@Luxrage-area-52

Though this would most certainly necessitate the removal of all other beacons aside from Virtue in every setting lol.

Not really - Beacon of faith is a nice set it and forget it for easier content still. Having the stay as a choice node and baking the cost reduction into the BoV talent would be fine IMO. Just make judgement reduce the cost 30-40% stacking once and it’s probably easily maintainable.

[Greybrook-sargeras]

@Pallywacker-chogall

• Light of Dawn: This spell has been underwhelming and not worth casting for several expansions in a row. Just delete it already; most holy paladins have already deleted it off their skill bars anyways. Which leads to my next point…
• Beacon of Virtue: This should replace Light of Dawn for AoE heals on a relatively short CD. BoV plays into the beacon fantasy that’s core to Holy Paladin. I would liken this to something like Radiance, Wild Growth and Temporal Anomaly from other healers. A 12-15 second AoE heal CD to fill that gap. Also please revisit the mana cost on this one.

This is probably going to sound stupid, but I HATE that hpal healing is balanced around having Beacon of Light up all the time. What I would like to see (and I’m sure this idea is full of holes) would be:

1. Removal of Beacon of Light from the baseline kit. Completely gone.
2. Beacon of the Lightbringer (talent) would be changed. It would still do what it does now, but would also give you the Beacon of Light ability. Basically, this talent would serve ONE purpose: it would let you select someone to act as a second node for your Mastery stat/proximity healing. It would transfer 0% healing, but would still interact with the new talent to give your Beacon target 5% DR. This would allow caster paladins who wanted to stay back to Beacon the tank and still heal the melee group, or give melee paladins a Beacon to put on a ranged stack target/priority ranged mechanics player to ensure they and those around them would always get bigger heals from your Mastery

3. Beacon of Faith: removed
4. Beacon of Virtue: moved to a capstone and changed. It no longer replaces Beacon of Light. It now replaces Light of Dawn and costs 3 Holy Power. Affects target and up to four raid members in range, and transfers x% healing from spells cast to the recipients. Affected by all talents that affect Light of Dawn (it’s trivial to adjust these in reasonable ways for how BoV works). Mana cost and cooldown of Beacon of Virtue reduced, but it is kept in check by the 3HP cost and the limited duration of the buff. My thinking is, this would be more powerful than Light of Dawn, and do away with the hated cone healing, but require somewhat more resources and better timing, and would require followup healing to reach its potential, making timing it right essential to getting full value.
5. This would also reduce button bloat by replacing an AOE heal with an AOE heal.
6. If Blizzard refuses to part with Breaking Dawn talent to increase Light of Dawn’s range, they could nerf Virtue to affect only 3 targets, with the 4th and 5th requiring talent points in Breaking Dawn. Or they could make the effective Virtue range around your target relatively smaller unless talented or something (I hate this, but you know).

[Exmeet-area-52]

It’s a good Idea, an likely they will not change a talent they just made. But honestly who cares if looks like mist weaver. mist weaver monk is the version of the Holy Paladin we would’ve from the begining!

I will say if you want us to cast Light of Dawn, attach the holy light spell to that.

My thing with virtue is that you need to cast it. and sometimes you require to react quicker than the second that it’s getting out of the GCD you might not have a spell strong enough to get the value outside of the Toll. if you pre cast it then you miss valuable seconds vs the amount of mana you spent.

Or that is how I feel the spell.

[Westly-frostmourne]

I really wish Blizzard would look at the GCD economy of Hpal. While I’m happy to see spenders moving health bars again, I think more work needs to be done to make the rest of the kit relevant.

If you look at any of the logs from yesterday’s raid testing you’ll find that 50%+ of Holy’s healing comes from HS, WoG and Beacons. 20%+ is Hearld of the Sun stuff and so the remaining ~30% is made up of the 100 passive affects and minor healing spells. eg Judgement, Prism, Holy Light, Flash of Light + passives etc.

I saw a log where someone cast 83 LoDs totaling 18% of their overall healing.
They cast 36 Flash of Lights which is a large investment and that many Flash of Lights healed for less than 2%.

Even with all the new things that interact with Judgment (Judgement of Light (lol), Greater Judgement, and now Truth Prevails), that spell is still doing like sub 2% of people’s overall. After a talent investment of 3 to 4 points, some of which are capstones, you get a 2% return. What?

This spec constantly has an economy problem. Why would I bother hard casting 36 Flash of Lights for 2% healing? That’s an insanely bad trade imo. QoL: don’t cast 36 Flash of Lights, extend your life expectancy by 5 years IRL and do less than 2% less overall healing. DEAL!

I wish Blizzard could find a way to:

1. Give melee playstyles a way to interact with casted spells more easily. Redesign Crusader’s Might or Relentless Inquisitor: Crusader Strike increases your next Flash of Light by 15% and reduces its cast time by 25% stacking up 4 times. idk something that make Flash or Holy Light instant.
2. Reduce the number of Holy Shocks we have. I know this will be unpopular but with Glimmer gone, HS is just like every other HoPo generator. There is no reason we need to have infinite amounts of them to the point where 30-40% of our casts are 1 single spell.
3. Increase the base crit chance of HS if having fewer Holy Shocks will cause issues with the Infusion economy.

Put simply, the goal is to give this spec space for other spells to fill and feel impactful.

IMO the paladin gameplay should be:

1. Spend HoPo
   • LoD = if evenly low health players will be hit. AOE.
   • WoG/EF = particularly low HP target. Spot heal. M+ etc.
   • SotR = free damage spender.
2. Holy Shock when on 2 charges.
3. Consume infusions.
   • Holy Light = massive, slowish, expensive heal.
   • Flash of Light = medium sized heal. Cheap with infusion. Instant with gameplay mechanic.
   • Judgment
4. Holy Shock on 1 charge.
5. Playstyle dependent fillers/generators.
   • HoW, Judgement, Prism/Barrier of Faith.
   • Casters: Flash/Holy Light.
   • Melee: Crusader Strike, Consecration

Noting that talent choices should slide some things up and down ie Judgement is the best Infusion consumer with all the relevant talents. With Tyr’s up casted spells are etc.

At the moment, you have so many Holy Shocks and it heals so much relative to everything else that you just become a Holy Shock bot.

[Eviaeline-area-52]

This has already been mentioned multiple times, but Light of Dawn is tuned insanely low. Hitting all 5 targets only does 5% more healing than WoG, and less in all situations when under the effect of Strength of Conviction. Ideally it should be outhealing WoG at 4 or even 3 targets. Maybe 3.5?

Also minor bug report.

• The healing over time portion of Eternal Flame is unaffected by the healing modifiers of Blessing of Dawn and Divine Purpose.

[Cheonsul-tichondrius]

I like devs trying to make hpals better by reworking talents. But there are still way more things to change to feel good to play.

For a example, i dont like the way of AC playstyle rn. I mean its good for paladin concept. Being melee healer hitting foes and healing allies at same time…but its just not enough yet to be as “the melee healer”

You see, AC only benefits judgement and crusader strike. You just only want dps? Maybe no problem. But when you want your allies to keep alive well, you also have to cast holy shock and WoG to allies as you were keep dpsing foes by judgement and crusader strike. You click enemy then ally then you click enemy then ally on very short time feels completely DOGHOUSE

I suggest that holy shock and shield of righteous and auto attack should also get benefits by AC. So then you can focus on enemies on dpsing and target allies when you really have to do (such as blessing of whatever)

[Luxrage-area-52]

@Eviaeline-area-52

Hitting all 5 targets only does 5% more healing than WoG, and less in all situations when under the effect of Strength of Conviction. Ideally it should be outhealing WoG at 4 or even 3 targets. Maybe 3.5?

If it felt like it had value healing three people I could see myself using it on occasion, but with Strength of Conviction I can’t see a world where they make Light of Dawn not absolutely suck.

There’s not a single other healing spec in the game that has an (essentially) baseline/non-optional spell completely useless in 5 man content. And it’s our only way to aoe heal outside of Beacon of Virtue/Divine Toll.

[Biggyronny-stormrage]

Please allow Kul Tiran to be paladin!

[Kretyn-illidan]

And please let Dracthyr be paladins!

[Zenetta-proudmoore (Zenetta)]

There were videos awhile back predicting that we’d get paladin’s for all races in DF, guess that didn’t work out.

I’d vote for Vulerpan and Gnome paladins.

[Pepino-frostmourne (Pepino)]

This may be a controversial suggestion, but why not simply just remove SotR and bake its dps and talent modifiers into LoD?.

This does 2 things, removes the shield requirement for Holy Paladins for those who want to use a 2H intel weapon, but then adds a larger range for our dps, essentially more uptime when moving, dodging mechanics.

To me it’s clear it seems BoV seems to be our “AoE” Healing especially now with juicy WoG, HL and HS now, and I honestly cannot argue as it’s very effective, although I really do think BoV needs to go easier on our mana.

LoD doesn’t feel good to press, and I still find myself in M+ Beta essentially avoiding it, but then if it’s Healing is buffed to be competitive BoV losses value to even be picked.

Why not just give LoD what SotR does, so essentially it’s a frontal cone heal/dps so while DPSing regardless we are constantly healing melee, I’d argue more trickling healing as LoD heals isn’t so great but it would help but more so keeping our dps uptime aswell and giving it slight range to our dps.

Works regardless of build, melee or caster focused aswell.

It’s just a suggestion, I just keep thinking to myself LoD just needs more.

[Daiza-gilneas]

I don’t think that is a bad idea, because LoD does need a reason to be pressed, but they don’t want to completely remove Beacon (both of them) for reasons.

I do not know however, how important both Beacon and LoD are in raids, which could be the tipping point.

[Misuta-senjin]

I think one of the major things that should to be addressed for Ret is the use of Execution Sentence, and/or Final Reckoning.

Execution Sentence, in theory is great, but falls short. It’s use and power in raids and long living mobs is undeniable, but feels bad, like really bad, when they die before your ES goes off. I think a cool way to address ES would have a choice node after it (maybe with Executioner’s Will) that when a target dies while under the effect of ES your damage explodes to enemies around that target.

I personally think merging Execution Sentence and Final Reckoning would be great (Final Sentencing!). With a choice node after that alters there ST/AoE influence. Whether it be a 30 second or 1 minute ability.

Personally I love the way ret is feeling on the beta atm, between Templar and Radiant Glory, it has gotten another breath of fresh air. Sorry if any of these sound like bad ideas, I have never mained Ret really but highly contemplating it for TWW.

[Misuta-senjin]

Also I think the talent removal of Crusader’s Reprieve is fine since everyone is in the same basket but the range to Rebuke should stay (bake it into Punishment), and the heal portion of Crusader Strike should stay (bake into Seal of the Crusader).

[Itzmiidii-tichondrius]

I have been testing out a lot of dueling in the Beta. We have received some buffs and more self healing with Sacrosanct Crusade which is within the Templar tree. This is a wonderful addition to Retributions survival. Wonderful talent, please don’t nerf it.

Dueling alot of Dks on the Beta and its safe to say currently they are our biggest counters. But something I notices is their insane amount of self healing. looking at the numbers a single Death Strike on average heals for 1mil, not including amplifiers, which currently dk hp is average 8mil thats 1/8th of their health pool as a melee class. Right now on beta WoG heals for 400k, thats at 20% hp with selfless healer. Flash of light heals for 300k with Lights Celerity every 6 seconds. On this matter thats all I have to say, the numbers speak for themselves. Other classes heal just as much as dks.

Divine Protection is only 10% damage reduction in PvP. When did this happen and why?

Shield Of Vengeance sharing the same node as Aegis of Protection really blows. If they were separate I would shut my mouth and never complain about our defensives or lack of healing again but having to choose between 30% dam reduction vs a 2.2mil shield thats easily broken really blows.

I dont think its goign to be a SUPER big deal but throughout all my time on Beta it is 1000000% not worth pressing WoG or FoL ever in any situation while in PvP. The waste of a GCD instead of pressing a 5min cd isnt worth. My ret currently has 7.3mil HP there is no way 300k is going to move my health bar.

I understand this is Beta and could possibly get some healing buffs but Im just hoping a Dev might stumble upon this and look at the numbers and see how its awkward for a HYBRID class does pretty good damage and no healing at all. At that point Ret is just a dps class with minor utility.