Feedback: Paladins

In Development The War Within Beta Test
141

Trying to find a path through the tree that would allow you to pick up Reclamation and Crusader’s Might.

And sure enough the Class tree’s messed up design rears its ugly head. You cannot get a melee focus build without some pretty big sacrifices. The only real way to get both Crusader’s Might and Reclamation is to sacrifice one of the capstones.

Because of how highly tuned Holy Light is, Inflo is a must to take regardless of anything. It just heals for way way too much to not take it, melee be damned. So that leaves Awakening and Rising Sunlight, and honestly with how weak HS is tuned right now, it might be worth not taking that one.

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142

I gave up Glorious Dawn, and though it may hurt, with the amount of buttons I have currently, I find myself not using Holy Shock other than generating Holy Power. It’s not really doing much dps nor healing either way, and glimmer just got nerfed, and since I’m taking Crusader’s Might anyway for Judgment CDR, thought eh why not.

I still think Rising Sunlight its stronger because it actually gives us decent spot healing capabilities, compared to what we gain from Glorious Dawn.

The problem I currently have with my build is that I need to take Tyr’s to get to reclamation now, which is yet another button, its caster oriented, and not doing much since the latest changes, which honestly, I would prefer not to take, but we are forced to if we want stronger Holy Shocks and Crusader Strikes if you take AC.

Yep, I hope they tune down the spell before release and continue to buff spenders. That thing is healing for like 60% of someone’s HP on a crit or more. It’s absurd.

Sadly, yes I agree.

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143

My big devils advocate comment for Hpal is I think it’s time to take a hard look at Beacon and glimmers. Functionally they’re redundant, Faith generally ends up in overhealing and virtue shouldn’t consume mana and is essentially super glimmer.

  1. Either remove glimmer and juice up the beacons again or
  2. Remove and shelf beacons for now and turn the beacon choice node into a glimmer steroid that buffs its effects for a 15 second window on like a 30 sec CD.(Or whatever time we need) This allows for more glimmer DPS and HPS throughput. This gives us more room for skill expression with our glimmers and potentially a strong alternative to Tyr’s based around glimmers/melee.

This would also require our mastery to be reworked slightly to remove the beacon functionality and move reclamations functionality into it.

I’m a long time Paladin and I understand the iconic history behind beacons but I think the games evolved way beyond their usefulness as they are.

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144

absolutely not, the issue still remains aka there is no available global cooldowns to use on templar strike, the frequency of hammer of wrath with radiant glory completely axes ts out of your rotation. boj and judgment cds are non existent if you do your rotation properly with prio order and csaa. especially with spenders back to 3. TS simply has no place and nothing will be able to bring it back unless you cut how frequency back, and to do that you have to remove radiant glory. but thats not a popular solution according how much RG is liked in this forum alone.

i mean both of you are just adding to the bloat of the thread by swapping insults like 3rd graders. its better for the state of endgame for there to be some work for healers to do, if that comes from us having lower hp regen and less impactful self heals then thats fine. its not like we cant eat between battles

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145

Just went through another pass of the tree again, and I was able to take both Inflo and Awakening and get both Reclamation and Crusader’s Might.

But I had to sacrifice Rising Sunlight and Light of the Martyr+Bestow Light.

I won’t be able to test until later tonight but I’m expecting this build to render HS to be functionally useless outside of Holy Power generation, which means gimmers themselves are useless to spread out…which could open a use case for Blessed Focus.

Speaking of which while doing this build layout there was something I realized something. Aura of Mercy is still almost never even considered when building because of how it’s tuned and the fact it competes with a damn near required talent in Blessing of Seasons.

I feel like Aura of Mercy can take Breaking Dawns place in the tree and it will actually get some use, and they could just do the right thing and make LoD 40 yards like it should.

Because I doubt they will do that, they either need to hyper buff Aura of Mercy or just remove it.

146

Bring Long Arm of the Law back. That’s all I care about.

Said it back in Shadowlands as well dragonflight and I ask again in The War Within. Give us more mobility. Remove and change whatever you want. Just give me back Long Arm of the law. That’s my feedback for Beta.

Long Arm of the Law - Spell - World of Warcraft (wowhead.com)

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147

Thank you for letting me beta test TWW. I am currently playing Holy Paladin and I completed the Gadgetzan warband quest.
-Holy Paladin’s damage is very low and made the quest miserable, if it was not for the extra action button skills, I would have given up on the ghost part. I had to request help from other players to complete the part where you fight yourself, and myself had a lot of HP.
-Self healing during world questing felt too weak and needs to be tuned to recover HP quicker or be more efficient.
-I only play healers, and I do not like having to switch spec’s to complete open world PVE.

3 Likes
148

You’re right, the lack of free GCDs is a more pressing issue right now.

There are many solutions to that problem, but I am worried that Blizzard will fix this issue by just increasing the cooldowns of our builders.

Maybe we need to accept that Radiant Glory is causing more issues than it solves… it’s not the end of the world if we don’t have AW every time we use Wake.

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Best solution is to take out HoW from wings, this way ts/cs can have value. If damage needs to be adjusted to compensate (most likely in buffs), then so be it.

Bring HoW back to being an execute.

150

Curious, why not just use Crusading Strikes with Radiant Glory if worried about now having globals CS globals during wings?

I know its an option but i feel the whole talent doesnt need to be scrapped or nerfed to nere pointlessness so Templar Strikes can work, when all you need to do is not take it.

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Templar strikes provides a DoT, which sinergizes with radiant builds.

So i can see why this would be a concern.

It also deals radiant damage (if you do not pick up holy strikes talents) which offers additional change to proc searing.

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And does that searing dot require Radiant Glory though?

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No, but if someone wants to pick up both, they are pretty much setting themselves in a trap with HoW being active during wings.

It can be somewhat remedied by not picking up 2 charges on HoW, but ultimately your forced with a choice to keep ts dot running (which is further buffed by the other wake talent) or using the burst formal execute skill.

This is of course if your choosing a radiant build of course.

154

I would like to express some points that would appreciate if it could be looked up in a near future about improving Lighsmith and making it more interesting compared to Herald of The Sun (considering specially how much Heral buffs our throughput and spenders/holy shock).

Right now our choice node with Excoriation
and Fear no evil are not the most exciting of a choice and would love to have something else supporting the rest of the gameplay of lighsmith here.

Please re-consider how Lighsmith interacts with Infusion of Light, since at the same time some other hero talents interact with abilities like Crusader Strike/Judgment instead of our casts.

Since Lay down Armas and Valiance both uses/gives infusion of light, unless you are playing caster version of Hpal, there’s not a lot of opportunities to interact with out base kit/rotation/abilities outside of Greater Judgment.

Thanks for reading.

155

I’ve only played my Main: Paladin, on the Beta so far.

I usually try most of the other Specs/Classes eventually, but I always end up back on Paladin. I think at the moment I have 7 Max-Level Paladins and another 4 or so Paladins in MoP Timerunning Limbo. I’ve played WoW from Day 1.

I Solo’d ~5 or so Heroic Dungeons as Prot to get a feel for things, then spammed roughly 15-20 or so LFG PUG H Dungeons as Prot/Ret (not trying Holy without Addons).

I also Tanked Thursday’s Heroic Raid Testing (1st Boss=Fine, 2nd Boss=Cool/Fun).

As expected I’ve been enjoying Paladin overall, but it isn’t perfect.

Ret has left me whelmed.

The Interrupt-Range-Nerf upsets me greatly! Far more than losing Auto-Attack Range bothers me - give Rebuke a cool Animation and the same range as DK/DH Interrupts please!

But Ret is still a very solid Spec and very fun in general.

I’m not a fan of auto-Wings on Wake of Ashes, and I think it creates more Design-problems than it solves, such as how it makes Cooldown-priorities awkward and is just generally awkward with Divine Toll & Execution Sentence.

Wings lasting longer than the rest of Ret’s Cooldowns was great and healthy for the Spec! It naturally encouraged Players to use those last few seconds of Wings to throw out some juicy +Crit Off-Heals.

The 8 second auto-Wings doesn’t even last long enough for a full Divine Toll to run its course, and it caused Blizzard to nerf Herald of the Sun. It’s already been unhealthy for the Spec’s Design.

It also feels severely flooded/overcapped on Resources during Cooldowns. It looks like Templar would solve the glut of Holy Power, but it shouldn’t need a band-aid from the Hero Talents to function smoothly, and layering the issues like that will cause confusion regarding how to Balance Ret in the future.

If Blizzard is determined to keep auto-Wings though, I think the Divine Toll Cooldown-Reduction Talent that nobody takes should be changed to 30seconds so it syncs up properly with Wake of Ashes.

I haven’t tried Templar at all yet, but Herald of the Sun was fine.

It was actually the Hero Spec I was most excited about, but having only a single Beam go out feels super underwhelming and I didn’t even notice it half the time.

I haven’t gotten to try it as Holy yet though, where it seems like that Hero Spec will shine brighter than on Ret.

It’s fine if Ret favors Templar though, since it looks fun. I’ll be testing it soon.

Prot Paladin has been great.

I had no problem soloing Heroic Dungeons (except for those big rock Mobs in… Rookhold? Rookroost? that self-cast a big absorb shield, cause they re-cast it before I could break it).

I played Prot in the Heroic Raid Testing today and it was good. It was a little scary on the Boss Pulls because Prot’s mitigation feels super slow to ramp up ATM even with CDs and I accidentally used a 5-man-Dungeon Talent Build, but once I was able to finish my Opener or when the Blood DK took the Boss first it was nice & smooth.

Blessing of Freedom seems like it’ll be extra useful in a Raid filled with sticky spider-webs too.

WoG somehow feels significantly weaker than in DF, as both Prot and Ret at least. Flash of Light was super wimpy too.

BUT, Prot now has viable Talent Builds that can take the more interesting Cooldowns like Moment of Glory (which is basically +25% Leech plus other great bonuses on a 1.5min CD), so there’s a lot of new room to explore with Talents/Playstyles.

Like, I noticed that my Cooldowns were naturally desynching A LOT more than they do in DF, but also that staggering my Cooldowns like that actually felt really good. I tended to fall into a rhythm where I would use 2 Cooldowns at a time, and by the time I needed them another set of 2 CDs would be available. There were some dead-spots here and there, but that easily could have been me playing suboptimally too.

I just had this idea, but I think maybe the Talent that reduces Eye of Tyr should drop it to a 30 second CD. It would fit smoother in the Cooldown-cycle and would be reasonable to use as one of the first GCDs on a Pull while the rest of the mitigation ramps up.

Lightsmith wins my award for MOST UNDERRATED.

Even from the first Alpha Patch-Notes I was intrigued by Lightsmith, but I didn’t expect to like it so much that I haven’t wanted to even try Templar yet.

I like Lightsmith so much I wish I could use it on Ret too!

The Absorb-Shield from the Shield Armament is nice and thicc, it helps with those scary first few GCDs of a Pull, but I’m also suspicious that it’s part of the reason why WoG & FoL are currently tuned to be embarrassingly weak. Because the Shield was often my top Healing-Done as Prot, and I LOVE spamming WoGs.

The Hammer Armament is solid if unexciting, it was doing around 10% of my Details Overall most of the time, but I’m not sure how Details calculates the Hammer I gave to other Players (the Paladin always gets an Armament too, like Power Infusion & Priests).

The Buffs seem to use full Smart-Targeting too!

In the Raid Testing, when I simply Self-Cast the Armament, the Shield always went to the other Tank even when they were 39 Yards away, and I couldn’t track the Hammer well, but it seemed like it might use the same logic as Evoker’s new Prescience (which is exactly what I wanted, and want for Blessing of Seasons too).

In general the Armament felt like having an even better Blessing of Seasons, but as Prot.

Lightsmith-Prot scratches that “Support-Tank” Playstyle itch super good, like a metal hairbrush scratching off old sunburnt-skin good.

But running out of Mana was a huge downer & felt really terrible & totally killed those wonderful “Support” vibes; and I went OOM a lot often every Dungeon, sometimes multiple times per Dungeon, as both Prot and Ret, just from using WoGs or FoLs between damage to keep my PUG Groups from wiping.

I not only had to stoop so low that I asked a Mage for Water… I had to ask THREE Mages for Water in one day of running Heroics.

What kind of Paladin has to beg for FOOD, Blizzard?!

Paladins should be the ones FEEDING(Supporting) the Groups with our ample generosity, not having to ration out scraps of Heals or not being able to cast Freedom on someone because we’ve run out of “Light”(Mana)!

I don’t like WoG & FoL being wimpy, but as long as they Crit good & hard like they always have, and as long as I can keep casting those wimpy Heals for a long long time, then I’m a happy Paladin.

I say that Mana should deplete significantly faster for every Spec, but also regenerate significantly faster in-combat as well.

All Mana should function more like Arcane Mage Mana.

Drastically increasing the Tempo of Mana and un-homogenizing it would make it far easier to balance/improve Healers.

Just like how Mana in Magic: The Gathering is a major pillar for WotC to Design around, and how it gives the Players tons of Agency in how they use their Mana and control over the Tempo of the game.

(Mark Rosewater’s (MaRo) “Drive To Work” Podcast is brilliant if you’re interested in Game Design, btw.)

It seems like Blizzard has forgotten that they can be creative with Mana. Other big-names in the WoW Community have asked for the return of Spirit, we share similar goals I think.

Let Healers choose to dump all of their Mana in ~30 seconds and then use their non-Heal-Spells (which should cost 0 Mana) while they wait 30-60 seconds for their Mana to regenerate back to 100%. Or they could choose to be frugal with their Heals and never ever go OOM.

Only Healers have a Time-Limit on their Gameplay, after at most ~15 minutes Healers are usually completely tapped-out and can no longer properly participate in a fight. Why is that?

Why in 2024 do Healers still need to Drink?

Eating Food to regenerate Health makes sense and sensibly caps Health-Regen, but Drinking Water to regain Mana has been nothing but an annoyance since at least the days of Darkmoon Sugar Fish Feasts in BFA Mythic+.

Making Mana ebb & flow faster would also have a side-benefit of making Cooldowns like Innervate far more interesting/cooler abilities.

Paladin have always been weak outside of their Cooldowns, it’s part of their Core-Design and one of my favorite aspects of playing them.

Being strong in CDs and weak outside of CDs is itself a tool, it naturally encourages an ebb & flow of highs & lows, and gives the Player greater control over their own Tempo.

If a sustained-output Class like Warrior or BM Hunter is like Heavy Metal or Techno Club Music, then a Class with strong Cooldowns such as Paladin or Mage are like Prog-Metal or Jazz.

To each their own, but give me Jazz-Inspired Prog-Metal any day.

Keep Paladins strong in Cooldowns, and weak outside of Cooldowns.

Divine Purpose has too high of an opportunity-cost, taking it requires giving up an entire “standard Build” Capstone Talent.

There’s a dozen ways to make it more accessible, but please let me take the Talent without Trolling my Groups! I LOVE Divine Purpose!

On a related note: Seal of Order sucks and always has. It’s never fun to take, eats up an entire Capstone Talent, and is required because of its sheer power-level.

Kill Seal of Order with Holy Fire! oh isn’t that called “Radiant Damage” now?

Oh! And Blizzard make super sure you fix that [Divine Purpose + Bastion of Light = infinite Holy Power for 30 seconds] Bug.

I reported it a bunch of times and even made a dumb/cringe video about it to get the word out, so you have no excuse not to fix it, and it MUST be fixed because it turns Prot into an invincible God for 30secs on command and is 100% consistently repeatable.

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156

There used to be something for this, called Executioner’s Wrath.

This SHOULD be a base part of how Execution Sentence works all the time, with no other talent point needed, so it does some splash damage. This should also trigger when the target dies. And then Final Reckoning should go back to the full 30% for all targets, because it’s supposed to be the AOE option. But instead we get a nerfed Final Reckoning for no reason, and Executioner’s Wrath is nowhere to be seen.

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157

i mean im still gonna use csaa no matter what, it just weird to put so much effort into buffing anc changing ts fundamentally just to shaft all those changes by putting radiant glory. but ya probably best if we dont bury other peoples feedbacks with back and forth banter.

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Back again after a bit of M+ testing to reiterate the fact that Holy Paladin needs to have its amount of cooldowns reduced, and power returned back into its base kit. My Holy Shock literally hits for less than a Shadow Priest’s Flash Heal. With healthpools that are going to be 4 million+ HP this is abysmal. HS, WoG, and LoD need god. Please give it to them.

Here are some suggestions for spells/passives that could be removed, made niche/optional, given a competitive alternative, or reworked.

  • Tyr’s Deliverance: If one day there is a competitive build that lets me talent out of this spell, I will weep tears of joy. I find it fun in raid but its cast time (especially with HoD) usually means that people die or health pot before my multicast prep sequence is done in M+, especially if I have to move due to mechanics before finishing one of the casts. A buff to the melee build talents could be a solution.
  • Blessing of Summer: I don’t mind BoS, but at best it’s a send-it-and-forget-it buff with a pretty visual. At worst, it’s clunky and forgettable, and doesn’t fit the WoW Paladin fantasy… at all. It does nothing for our rotation, the best part is the mana tbh but just deleting it and at least slightly reducing mana costs of our other spells would solve this issue.
  • Flash of Light: With Holy Light being an expensive, chunky heal now, I think that Holy Shock can replace FoL’s “place” as the quick, punchy heal. We’re barely casting it as it is now, and when I do cast it I pretty much always regret it and end up just thinking about how sad of a spell it is.
  • Glimmer of Light: Glimmer had a good run in BFA and SL, but I’ve found in testing that it no longer feels satisfying, rewarding, or even fun in Hpal’s toolkit. I said to buff it in a previous post, but honestly replacing all of the Glimmer talents with Holy Shock or spender modifiers would probably be a better choice, and potentially easier to balance. In this event, Daybreak could also be replaced with a passive giving you the additional HS casts after using Divine Toll as a 2pt passive.

Ty for your time!

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159

But that’s what Radiant Glory does, it gives you Avenging Wrath every time you use Wake of Ashes

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To continue my tests with running, what looks like weird jank melee talent builds, I decided to commit sacrilege, and choose Aura of Mercy, then I went for Reclamation and Crusader’s Might, and finally dropped Inflo to pick up Daybreak because I noticed I was not making use of Holy Light often. Currently testing with HotS.

What I’m expecting from this build is to do a lot of passive healing, to offset the already very badly tuned healing. The results however was just well, I had a lot of passive melee healing that did fudge all long term lol. As soon as heavy aoe hit, everyone starts to die and there isn’t much that can be done about that.

1 Like