Feedback: prot paladin is a misery to play

Classes Paladin
1

i’ve gotten every tank now up past heroic dungeons and T8 delves. im not a hardcore raider or a high key pusher, this is what you might call a casual vibes review

of all the tanks, prot paladin is by far the most miserable to play. the active mitigation, shield of the righteous, is on such an incredibly short and unforgiving duration and requires so many GCDs just to upkeep, across multiple generator spells, but your primary rotational aoe threat generator, avengers shield, doesnt generate holy power so it makes that SotR window even tighter trying to squeeze it in, nevermind trying to fit in things like your defensive cooldowns or utility like lightsmith which cause such a disruption to the rotation that you might legitimately stand to lose SotR mitigation if you try and use it.

paladin also has something like 30-40% less stamina and armor baseline compared to warrior, just flat out. my paladin and warrior are similarly geared but my paladins base armor and stamina is around 70k lower. the warrior sits on a nice 16% flat damage reduction just for standing widely, while the paladin gets a 3% (and i know it also passes along some group utility), and at my current gear about a 10% additional damage reduction for standing in a narrow aoe that consumes yet more GCDs in an already tight rotation

and for all that extra work, lack of breathing room, tight rotation and positional obligation, im rewarded with a tank that feel like it is absolutely made of glass. my health jump ropes between 100% and 25%, feeling more precarious and swingy than even my blood death knight, and while the defensive cooldowns can be strong, they are also very short duration, almost all 6-8 seconds, which i compare to my guardian druids 14 second 40% barskin on a sub 1 minute cooldown or my prot warriors bolstered last stand providing shield block for 15 seconds straight as well as a fat heal and max hp or demoralizing shout providing a 25% mitigation who’s cooldown is often reduced to 30 seconds or less.

could all of this be chocked up to skill issue or gear? maybe. but prot paladin just feels like 3x the work for half the survivability and resources of the other tanks, with just the most punishingly tight durations on its buffs, almost masochistically so. its so bizarre because ret is a joy to play, a fantastically robust series of interactions and effects all keying off a very smooth, relaxing, and engaging rotation consisting of very few buttons but each feeling meaningful, and prot just feels like the exact opposite, i have too many buttons all demanding precious GCDs i cant spare and even executed well it still feels like im spinning my wheels, in stark contrast to when prot warrior or guardian druid or blood are played well, you feel rewarded for the effort with an unkillable iron wall of a character.

prot paladin feels like a glass wall, which is a terrible feeling for a full plate and shield wearing tank. the rotation is not fun and your effort doesnt feel rewarded.

28 Likes
2

This sounds eerily similar to what I wrote in this other topic.
It seems to be something that is gaining more traction.

We already knew Prot pal was off design wise in DF, but somehow it still worked because they didn’t impair the previous playstyle all that much even if they did attempt to fundamentally change it.

But the changes made for TWW and the addition of Hero spec was the straw that broke the camels back.

Now the design flaws are felt as we play and it’s not a pleasant experience at all.

13 Likes
3

Well said, OP. I main Ret and have some interest in tanking m+ for friends, but a few things are holding me back. First, Crusader Strike and Cons automation feel good for Ret, I really don’t want to go back to pressing those buttons as Prot. Second, I like Templar more than Lightsmith, but I hear Prot is stuck playing Lightsmith. And third, even having not played Prot in a while, I understand the complaints about Avenger’s Shield not generating holy power because for a long time Ret was holy power starved due to…well, I don’t really know why the devs designed it that way, but Ret is way more fun now that it’s flooded with holy power again.

Good luck! I hope Prot gets fixed.

5 Likes
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If you are struggling to keep SoTR up then you either need more haste or you are doing something wrong.

You can’t really compare tanks like the are apples to apples because they are not. A large difference between Paladin and other tanks are our short cd defensives that we can cycle through. It’s a benefit that other classes don’t have. We also have the best interrupts which is essentially mitigating 100% of the damage if the cast never goes off while other tanks need to eat them.

This means you are doing something wrong.

5

I love this class for its fantasy and what it symbolizes. As niche as its utilities are they feel good when used in clutch moments, the interrupts is a big W for prot pally with the changes against stops and casts. With that said, I dont like the HoPo playstyle of Prot Pally compared to its Legion and BFA charge system then again I prefer something unique to fit Prot Pally. As you laid out with essentially maintaining some buffs, the amount of GCD to build and spend on SOTR (imagine if this was on the GCD), positional constraint, and weaving defensives to get anywhere close to the tankiness of a warrior or bear yet WoG heals for nothing unless it crits or with Avenging Wrath active. You’re working harder as a Prot Pally to survive with some clutch abilities and design wise Prot pally has gone through more iterations with its Mastery and SoTR than have Prot Warrior or Blood Death Knight. I dont believe Blizzard knows what to do with Prot Pally they dont want it as tanky as a Prot Warrior with heals nor self heal as much as a Blood Death Knight. Blizzard reverted changes on Prot Pally after a couple of expansions and tries to reign in on their uptime buff from SoTR only in later in the expac we get enough haste to almost maintain a 100% uptime but feel aweful early expac until we have enough haste.

3 Likes
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if a classes baseline mechanics dont function well without a non trivial amount of haste, that would indicate a flaw in the design no? why does SotR have a 4.5 sec duration requiring 3 generator GCDs while they are perfectly comfortable with shield block, ironfur, or demonspikes having durations of 6-8 seconds, sometimes more with talents, and often requiring 0-1 GCDs of generator to build resource to cast?

13 Likes
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The explanation, for some of those at least, is that they can’t be “spammed”.

They have charges and relatively noticeable CDs.

This goes back to SotR doing too much, it can’t last long because we’ll literally use it as our main damage dealing ability as well.

I said this before and I’ll say it again, Prot should have another damage spender.

1 Like
8

They can function well enough without min-maxing haste, but if you are struggling to keep SoTR up for the durations of M+ encounters then you are probably doing something wrong. If your haste is below optimal levels then there are counter plays such as holding HP for a few seconds if your SoTR buff is maxed out on duration.

You realize the buff time stacks right? It’s not just a flat 4.5.

1 Like
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My haste is garbage 15% and I still hit 90% sotr uptime so idk. Maybe your rotation is off?

1 Like
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I just want Avenger’s Shield to generate holy power, it feels lame not getting some with it.

4 Likes
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It’s because they never finished designing Prot Pally for The War Within. They just figured who cares, no one will notice.

3 Likes
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Prot is a nightmare to keep alive right now (healing) compared to the other tanks.
Thanks for the commentary, i hope they fix it.

3 Likes
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They removed it in Dragonflight because they believe it was devaluing the impact of SoTR and essentially resulting SoTR with almost 100% uptime and shifted their philosophy.

Avenger’s Shield is intentionally no longer generating Holy Power. This is part of an effort to constrain Shield of the Righteous uptime, and transfer some of protection paladins’ defensive power out of Shield of the Righteous and into other cooldowns and forms of mitigation. We want Shield of the Righteous to feel like it makes you strong, rather than an essential component of your baseline passive survivability.

But the jokes on them, you can achieve over 90% uptime on SoTR now but currently WoG scaling is poorly tuned, cost 3 HoPo, on GCD; therefore, when it comes to recovering from lots of damage, we don’t have a reliable way e.g. Death Strike, Frenzy Regen to do so and the gameplay to delay these types of deaths is turning us into a tank combat rogue, where we’re rotating defensive cooldowns to fill in the gaps (why we have a few talents now and one more in 11.0.5 for CDR).

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For me it’s a dice toss. I can solo Tier 10 delves being 10 ilvls lower but some pulls on M+ absolutely wreck me unless I chain defensives.

The gaps in mitigation suck though, I agree with everyone else here, Avenger’s Shield needs to generate HP again and WoG needs better tuning, it feels extremely wimpy if it doesn’t crit even at low health.

2 Likes
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Yeah I don’t get why they don’t put HoPo back on AS. We already have nearly max SotR uptime. Adding HoPo back to AS will just let us prio it in aoe which in turn will fix a lot of the tankiness issues due to BoO.

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Adding HoPo back to AS will revert back to the same issue they wanted to avoid with SoTR uptime. I understand that’s the simple fix to prot’s current design issues in handling/smoothing out certain damage events like recovering from damage spikes, but it doesn’t address the spec’s concerns the prot community at large has been pointing out. The spec needs a rework because prot pally sits between a prot warrior and blood death knight but it would be too strong if it leaned too much in mitigation to one of its cousins. The changes going live this Tuesday October, 8th and 11.0.5 (although largely class tree adjustments) with some talents synergy we’re getting another defensive cooldown with lay of hands (Empyreal Ward) for 30 sec armor buff, further cooldown reduction on guardna of ancient kings, divine shield, and among other changes from class talents pretty much becoming baseline into the spec. If there is going to be a rework it won’t happen until next expansion, on the plus side we’re getting changes.

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Lol what…I’m at 90-95% SotR uptime with 605 ilvl. Sotr uptime is already going to be 100% easily this tier.

All adding HoPo to AS would do is make it prio in aoe again. This would make prot much smoother damage intake in aoe which pretty much fixes the main issue prot is having in keys.

Additionally adding HoPo back to AS makes it interact with the hero trees. Currently both trees deincentivize casting AS. Our spec defining spell!!!

18

lol, this was to bait Blizzard if they read this comment, “Adding HoPo back to AS will revert back to the same issue they wanted to avoid with SoTR uptime.”

Yes, right now SoTR is almost close to 100% more likely in season 2 for sure. They thought adding several talent interactions would make AS important yet no interaction with the Hero talents is bizarre to me if anything at least with Templar you lower its priority during Shake the Heaven. I think they know that it would make Shake the Heaven window be almost close to 100% uptime with AS contributing to it or they believe that AS already has too many interactions with talents. Either way, AS is prot’s iconic abiliy not Holy or Ret, therefore why its not the ability that plays a major role in the hero tree??? Marrowrend and Heart Strike plays a major role for Blood Death Knight’s Hero specs. Prot Warrior’s Mountain Thane spec makes use of the spec’s rotational ability. I wish I knew the design behind Prot Pally from devs and not a 1 paragraph of why they removed an ability from generating HoPo. Give me something to sink my teeth into whether I agree with or not, but at least respect them for opening up about.

19

I’m not seeing how Prot Paladins are de-incentivized from using AS. Yes, it doesn’t generate Holy Power, but, it’s not like we can spam Judgement and Blessed Hammer the entire encounter because they have limited charges. We are very much incentivized to use AS because of the mitigation it provides in not just Absorb Shield generation, but also interrupting spell casts. There’s no better mitigation than taking 0 damage from an ability.

1 Like
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You know what they mean, stop being pedantic.

Just say, the Hero spec don’t incentivize the use of AS, instead of saying its “de-incentivizing”

I don’t why, but he chose to die on that pedantic hill.
It’s stupidly obvious what you meant but he has blinders on.