Feedback: Templar Paladin in The War Within

Classes Paladin
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Or perhaps since it is the newest ability, it makes the most sense to be referenced :sunglasses:

I see your point though!

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On god I’d love to see a glyph to turn our hammers into swords.

The Glyph system has been rotting for years, adding different spell effects with them again would be fantastic.

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But it’s also not the first time a paladin spell appeared as a sword, we got a current one BoJ and we in cata before glyphs was taken out could make our judgements in the form of a sword.

I still think it’s odd we are the only class in the game that makes almost all of our attacks in the shape of a mace.

Nah, we had sword shaped skills since cata.

They had been slowly doing that again for a bit, but they stopped for some reason in legion was it? or was it bfa? don’t remember.

Anyways, adding more glyphs would be nice. I miss sword judgements.

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agreed, glyphs would make so many people happy without disrupting gameplay.

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Personally, I was kind of hoping this tree would be based more around our Holy Power generators than giving us a big 5 cost spender (though it is nice to get something able to dump extra Holy Power with if I don’t need to use SotR for whatever reason). Those are the spells I think of when I think of the word “Templar”, in relation to the Paladin kit. The idea as it stands sounds okay, though none of the Paladin trees have really given me any amount of excitement to come back to the game in War Within. This one specifically just feels like it’s either gonna clutter my screen too much or never be used.

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This is off topic but they used pvp as an excuse for not having glyphs to customize our spell animations/colors and I still can’t believe they said that. PvP is largely weakaura central now, nobody is really looking at spell effects to see what someone just used, this would only happen if we don’t have WA in the game but that won’t happen. The best pvpers in the game said this reasoning was very bad too.

A revamped glyph system with tons of new glyphs would get so many people hyped, this game is largely about customization/reward hunting now they should really capitalize on it. Make it so we have to go out and do stuff to get the glyphs like events, drops from bosses, etc (think SoD for runes). A glyph to make our spells red for blood knights for example would be sick, I could go on but that’s where I’ll leave it.

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129

To be fair it does have quite a few talents that interact with our generators. It isn’t the focus, but there is good interaction in there for both generators and spenders. I think having a big damage spender for prot sounds fantastic, ive heard a lot of prots are hyped but I don’t really play it so I won’t say much in that regard.

For ret though I think templar looks really good overall, we really need Hammer of Light to be doing big damage though. The only way a 5 holy power spender feels good is if it does a lot of damage, and since it’s basically on a 30 sec cd it should. If it does I think the combo of Judge>Wake>Hammer of Light will feel very good, then we build and spend as normal. I like all of the talents in the tree overall, I like a lot of interactions in the tree that work with hammer of light/empyrean hammers, just need to see what Hammer of Light will do damage wise.

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130

I’ve been prot since BC and I agree that Hammer of Light sounds exciting but, for me, the excitement dwindles the more talents I read. It almost feels like the tree is focused more on the Empyrean Hammers than Hammer of Light. I’d have been more excited if the current tree focused on making Hammer of Light itself do more. Like if Hammer of Light got the damage reduction from the “Empyrean Hammer” talent, but it was doubled if you crit, and Higher Calling causing your next HoL to cost less. Stuff like that to turn Hammer of Light into a spectacle like a League of Legends ultimate ability.

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So not much of a Paladin player and so my knowledge is very limited.

But after reviewing the initial Templar talent tree and everything had to do with hammers just seems to
 miss the mark of the feeling of what a Templar should be.

In my mind, things associated with Templar are the following


  • Fanatic
  1. a person filled with excessive and [single-minded] especially for an extreme religious or political cause.

Seems like blind fury or blind justice where they are consumed by the zealotry of their cause.

This reminds me of the Army of the light and Yrel and the fanatical campaign they ended up becoming.

I think a Templar should be using 2 hand swords and doing a lot more slicing vs bashing with hammers.

  • Auras
    Why not convert an existing Aura or add a new aura that is similar to Fanaticism Aura from Diablo 2? Have the aura make you attack faster or reduce cooldown of your rotational abilities or reduce the GCD of all your abilities or just something aura related so others can benefit as well.
    Perhaps when you spend holy power, you get a temporary aura buff that grants you and your group/raid these buffs for a short time.
    Perhaps each aura gets temporarily upgraded to a more fierce version of it, fit for a Templar?
  • Holy Lance
    Keeping with the theme of using blades instead of blunt weapons for Templar, why not add a spell or change a spell to be a lance thrust (charge) toward your enemy.
    Perhaps it changes the horse movement ability to you literally have a lance of light shown while on the horse and you can charge with the horse?
    Or replace the horse and you just charge at your target instead?

In Darkest Dungeon, you have a hero called the Crusader and he has this Holy Lance ability that he uses to get back in front of the ranks that does a lot of damage and looks cool. I kind of imagine that going on in that this is the primary way to both deal damage and close the gap.

  • Knights Templar
    Similar to Warcraft 3 Paladin Hero, his ultimate spell was to bring back to life his ground unit Allie’s.

What if you can call back your knights Templar brother in arms for a short duration where they either replicate your attacks or maybe you bring one that uses a Lance and does ranged attacks on a horse zipping in and out of range and another using a 2 hand blade cleaving things down or another using Holy Magic like exorcist and other magical spells to expel the threat.

  • Banner of Light
    Calls forth a banner that replicates your aura or has its own aura to either buff up your aura or have larger range of your aura and/or to affect more people?

Those are just some very raw concepts that I think about when I hear the word Templar as it should strike fear and foreboding at the incoming force focused and dedicated at the singular task of purging its enemies from its very sight.

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Yeah I don’t disagree there, I think it will feel weird if the tree is almost entirely focused on Empyrean hammers and they don’t end up doing a lot of damage. We’ll have to see what they contribute, but I assume they will be tuned to not do too much as you can have them going very often it seems. So I don’t disagree that the focus on Empyrean Hammers seems a bit heavy, but for me it all depends on how much they actually do. I don’t mind the focus on it as long as it is a bit better than tier set level damage, meaning it is actually worth focusing on.

I think overall it looks pretty exciting, though like I said I can’t speak for prot, I have only seen prot paladins express a lot of excitement over it in places other than the forums. I would like to see maybe another Hammer of Light oriented talent or two though.

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133

I like the idea, and I’d love it if the image is a giant holy bell dropped onto the target (ala D3), however its usability feels like it will be rough until high haste AND/OR timing Divine Purpose procs to use on it for a free cast. I could see holding onto Eye of Tyr until you get a DP proc and 50 stacks of the buff, then wings, Eye, BELL BELL BELL for mega damage.

Which does sound kinda fun, however it also sounds like it just turns Eye of Tyr into a damage cooldown.

Not thrilled about that.

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Imo, the final cap stone needs to be redesigned.

As per design we’d have to wait at least 30 seconds after casting the first wake to even get to use it, even if we build to 50 stacks quickly, were still gated by wake’s CD.

In contrast with sun’s avatar, which isn’t gated by a stack mechanic nor wakes CD.

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Agreed on all points here (ESPECIALLY 2H + Shield
 I’ve wanted that option for years!), with my 2 cents being that i’m still holding out hope for divine steed to be scrapped and replaced with a better gap closer akin to warrior heroic leap or falling sword from diablo; it’s no secret that divine steed isn’t popular, despite the devs’ best efforts to push the ability as “core to the fantasy of the paladin” when no such case can be made.

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I asked for the charge/attack ability and people acted like I was a fanatic/ zealot lol.

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The more I keep re-reading templar the more hyped I get. This might be one of my favorite trees so far, this and frostfire mage. Very excited to try it.

My only concern is the capstone now. What happens if you reach 50 stacks but wake is still on CD for 10 seconds or so? You just end up wasting potential future stacks for those 10 seconds. It’s possible it won’t matter at all because we have so many empyrean hammers out all the time that wasting just doesn’t matter but it still won’t feel great so it is a potential concern.

I love the capstone though, it may just need adjusting in terms of the stacks? Or it could act like awakening does for holy paladin, once you gain 12 stacks of awakening it turns into a different buff allowing you to simultaneously generate stacks for the next awakening even if you haven’t used your first yet. That might be too insane though.

Lastly the icon for Hammer of Light is what seems to be a flaming hammer. That would actually be an insanely cool way to make this look different from our other hammer spells. A giant flaming hammer would be pretty sick, especially if it looks radiant-ish.

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-Sacrosanct crusade: this talent is just lame
 if you wanted to give some tankiness from generators you could scrap or move fading light from the class tree to this tree and buff it. A 10% sov sounds like nothing to be excited about when normal sov is already nerfed by blizzard and dampening/mortal wound. You could buff the number but Id rather get something else like:

“Not vengeance, Justice: you can now shield of vengeance /ardent defender an ally, if you do this shield is increased by x% but no longer deals damage when it explodes, instead it heals nearby allies up to max 5/ardent defenders cd is reduced by x% or it recharges faster”

-Hammerfall: this talent is the source of all my concerns.
Calls down a hammer on “a nearby enemy” when using fv and ds. What is that? Why not call down the thing on your current or primary target? Same with “shake the heavens”. It needs to fall on your primary target FIRST or rather always otherwise it will feel like WASTED points AGAIN. If empyrean hammer is to be falling constantly from spenders and hammer of light it needs to be useful.

Also sidenote: although I am not on board with all the talk about “turning paladin into warriors” and the whole discussion above, I think that having hammers fall constantly is kind of old when we have more than enough hammers. How about instead of empyrean hammer its more like a sword or beam of light that stabs your targets kind of like and offensive loh visual. Idk. I also dont trust blizzard to make a sick animation for these hammers it will probable be the old ES snimation lol

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ANIMATIONS ANIMATIONS ANIMATIONS:

My feedback to give blizzard is PLEASE make sure to create the best animations for these abilities. One of the most satisfying things for Ret Paladins is when Final Verdict got the animation/buff from the legendary in Shadowlands. Having a giant golden hammer raining down for Final Verdict is SOOO satisfying. This applies to all classes/hero specs but when it comes to Empyrean Hammers I want to have a very satisfying heavy feel to a holy hammer raining down from the sky.

To add feedback on theme for Templar, I think of a zealadon from Diablo 2: mix a retribution with zealot like speed/aggression while using holy hammers/smite type abilities.

Overall I am excited for paladin hero talents, fix the shield of vengeance hero talents (pitifully weak) and make the charger break slow effects.

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From a Retribution PoV.

I’ll split by node and general feedback. I’m excited to test these further when development moves into beta.

General Feedback:

  • The animation for Hammer of Light is a really key piece of this talent tree. It has to look as epic as it sounds.
  • I’m also curious about Empyrean Hammer looks. It should look cool as well.

Light’s Guidance (Row 1)

  • This seems awesome!
  • We could use more clarity on how it impacts the Cooldown of Wake of Ashes
  • Ex. Does the cooldown stay static at 30 seconds or is it impacted by this ability?

Templar’s Watch/For Whom the Bell Tolls (Row 2A)

  • This seems more of a math problem that depends on how many targets you expect to fight. They both experience diminishing returns on multiple targets, so it is almost entirely down to what will do more damage.
  • It is either
    A. You get more damage from Templar’s Watch
    or
    B. You get more damage from For Whom the Bell Tolls

Shake the Heavens (Row 2B)

  • This node is fine since it has interactions with other parts of the tree.
  • It also has interactions with the main tree ability ‘Hammer of Light’, which is welcome.

Empyrean Hammer (Row 2C)

  • Good node, makes sense with how the tree is designed.

Sacrosanct Crusade (Row 3A)

  • The current % value is something around 2% of max health as a shield. That amount is negligible.
  • Having this tied to ‘Wake of Ashes’ is a mixed bag. It will either be
    A. Consumed by incoming damage (Good)
    or
    B. Not consumed at all because no damage is going out (Bad)
  • It makes sense for Protection having it tied to Eye of Tyr because they will use that when taking incoming damage, but Ret is in a different situation.

Higher Calling (Row 3B)

  • Good Node
  • Does this have interaction with Crusading Strikes? I think it should.
  • Consider adding Judgment to the mix since it is currently our highest priority generator (Subject to change based on talent changes/class design in the War Within).

Bonds of Fellowship/Unrelenting Charger (Row 3C)

  • I don’t see Bonds of Fellowship having a use case outside of PvP. The major problem is the delayed movement speed. In PvP when you need to move, it needs to be immediate.
  • Unrelenting Charger is just the superior option for Raid/M+ and it has an on demand element to it.

Endless Wrath/Sanctification (Row 4A)

  • The Hammer of Wrath reset/use is a carbon copy of part of the Final Verdict bonuses from the Spec Talent Tree. I like the proc nature of it, but it is almost identical to something that already exists.
  • We have that type of proc for Blade of Justice, Hammer of Wrath, Templar’s Verdict. Judgment seems like a reasonable alternative to Hammer of Wrath if you want to keep this node intact.
  • This seems more of a math problem.
  • It will either be
    A. Endless Wrath will provide more damage
    or
    B. Sanctification will provide more damage

Hammerfall (Row 4B)

  • Great Node! Has solid interaction with the design of this hero tree.
  • There should be logic so that that Empyrean Hammer that is called down defaults to the primary target.

Undisputed Ruling (Row 4C)

  • Great Node!
  • Might cause some clunky Judgment overlap, but I’d need to actually test it first.

Light’s Deliverance

  • Looks promising, but some of it depends on the frequency of Empyrean Hammer casts.
  • It needs to be able to be used outside of the Wake triggered window.
  • I think an ideal spot would be around 2 to 3 uses of this per minute.

Summary

  • Overall strong talent tree that has synergy with multiple abilities.
  • Choice nodes need to actually be a decision, not a math problem.
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Is hammer of light gonna work with dawn? Judgement? DIVINE PURPOSE?. I can alreqdy see people holding a dp proc just to use HoL right after WoA at least in pvp. I repeat myself it needs its cost removed because for 5HP every 30seconds i expect it to be a NUKE and not just a little bit more damage than a spender.

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It’s been great to keep the conversation going around the class fantasy and theme of what a Templar should be in this thread. I’ve been pleasantly impressed by the number of other players who agree that the class fantasy hasn’t quite been nailed just yet and that others also would prefer a Sword theme for these abilities instead of a Hammer theme!

But at this point now, this thread knows my feedback on that area loud and clear.

I want to now give my attention to each individual talent and see what kind of useful feedback, if any, I can provide. This again comes from the strict and narrow view of a Ret Paladin who only participates in all forms on PvP content!

Light’s Guidance: Again, this sounds really cool and fun to press! Not adding on another keybind is very much appreciated and I think this is the best approach to how the majority of other Hero Specs should aim to function with their existing toolkits. No complaints here and can’t wait to test it!

Shake the Heavens: First of all, I love the name. Especially for what this talent is doing to our gameplay and damage. I also enjoy how it instantly adds more depth to Light’s Guidance as our Keystone talent.

Higher Calling: Best named ability on this tree for Templar class fantasy! I also enjoy the idea of beefing up our Holy Power generators. Finding the balance between Holy Power generators and spenders is tricky, but this lands for me in its first iteration.

Hammerfall: Only needs to be renamed to “Bladefall” :wink:

Light’s Deliverance: Our capstone talent is one of the few I personally don’t enjoy. This again comes from a PvP Ret Paladin, and I already try to pay attention to stacking Aura of Reckoning alongside Divine Arbiter. I think 3 of this type of mechanic is a bit much. Would love to see a rework to the idea of building such a large number of stacks. With that said, the actual perk of this talent itself sounds fun with a free use of the 5-cost new big finisher!

Templar’s Watch: This one also gives me some concern. I think this is a bit redundant with Seething Flames from our Retribution Tree. Perhaps one of the goals could be to save us a talent in our tree? I do also think the built in smart function of automatically reducing its big damage only per extra target hit is genius.

For Whom the Bell Tolls: Piggybacking off of my comment from above with Templar’s Watch, this talent excites me more from the choice-node here. Again, only because Templar’s Watch seems a bit redundant alongside Seething Flames existing.

Sacrosanct Crusade: I had to look this word up, great choice! Besides the name, I do not get excited about this talent. In its current iteration, I am leaning towards preferring a proc of Divine Protection instead. But this again comes from a PvP Ret Paladin’s viewpoint and my head goes straight to Solo Shuffle dampening. Absorbs continuously absorb for less and less over the life of the match. So I don’t think it’s going to be a talent that really feels noticeable or impactful at all. This one could use some sprucing up!

Endless Wrath: I think this is the weakest in our Templar Tree. Primarily, because all of us are already running with Final Verdict and that ability also already has a small chance to proc us the exact same effect. I lean towards preferring to press Hammer of Wrath a bit less often at a gameplay level with all its charges/resets. But when I do press it, I would prefer its a big impactful hit.

I believe this talent should give us an additional reset proc chance on Blade of Justice instead! Again, I am aiming at a Templar Hero Spec thats class fantasy is Sword-themed rather than Hammer-themed. Considering that Light’s Guidance is our new big fun thing to press with a steep 5 Holy Power cost, it might feel more synergistic to allow us an additional way to reset Blade of Justice as it grants 2 Holy Power. Or perhaps our next Blade of Justice has a chance to generate 3 Holy Power. Something to help thematically reach the goal of us using Light’s Guidance as efficiently as possible when its go time. Tying Blade of Justice in here specifically is another way to double down on the Sword fantasy too!

Sanctification: This might be very subjective, but I haven’t been enjoying this transition into us just always pressing Judgement on cooldown with little other thought. I believe I prefer the more contemplated use of Judgement, instead of something to always just press off cooldown because it amplifies everything else and slows targets in PvP. With that said, I’m not so sure on this one. The way it is could be perfectly fine.

Empyrean Hammer: Even though I PvP where Critical Strike is nerfed, I still like the use of a talent that plays into Critical Strike. I really did enjoy the crit focus Retribution was shifting to right after our rework in 10.0.7 with the addition of extra crit damage modifiers. The 60% percent also sounds like a good number to start from! I tried to play protection last night and absolutely sucked. But, my feeling here would be maybe this is too much RNG to tie into a damage reduction buff?

Bonds of Fellowship: This is awesome. Great creativity, great theme and great execution! More of this!

Unrelenting Charger: Very lackluster. I’ll be the first and last to tell you that I wish this thing could allow us to charge directly to targets, but I am finally moving away from those ideas. Solutions like that are best updated in the Paladin Class Talent Tree itself, not in a Hero Spec!

Furthermore, from a Developer point of view, Templar and Herald must be relatively close in overall power levels. If Unrelenting Charger augmented Divine Steed to something like a charge effect, it will seriously impact the appeal and power of Herald by comparison. But with that said, the current talent Illumine from Herald right now, is much better than Unrelenting Charger by comparison!

My best idea currently, is to have Unrelenting Charger augment Divine Steed to proc an Emancipation on yourself and all other allies in your Aura on top of the current planned extra 30% movement speed buff in the first 3 secs. This hopefully also helps to tie back in more class fantasy to Templars. The theme of stopping at nothing to fulfill our divine purpose!

Undisputed Ruling: Love the continued impact of augmenting Hammer of Light further. Haste is also a good choice here I believe. Haste will really help us build up Holy Power to spend on Light’s Guidance. While I don’t know what I’m really doing on Protection, having Eye of Tyr grant 3 Holy Power sounds like a good perk.

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