I hope this is some long plot that will end with them realizing that buffing paladins made them too broken and gut them a week later as hard as they did to shamans, spriests and boomies.
[quote=“Graoth-aegwynn, post:215, topic:1828155”]
The solution right now which Aggrend said is for anyone who wants to main paladin to just unsub and quit the game for 2-4 months while they fix paladin
[/quote].
Wow, Graoth.
Just wow.
You wanna come up with any backing for that whatsoever? Walk it back? Give it some context? Double down?
“just unsub”
It’s not that I’m mad at you - I’m mad at me.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three or more times, you and I have probably dated.
Then you know better.
And you know how to write a change request and report.
And you know that “he said … just unsub” is an indefensible statement.
-Horse
No he popped into the paladin discord. The solution he offered for Paladins being underpowered was to just wait until phase 5 so they could have their full kit before tuning. Saying “wait several months for us to fix this only after we release next phase” is saying “Just unsubscribe and come back later when we fixed it”
Oh someone posted it, neat.
“In general, I think we really want to get to 60 and get all the Runes out, and then we can actually sit down when everone has all the cards on the table and start making larger moves to truly solidify things. Spending enormous time turning individual knobs to get every playstyle amongst every spec perfect every level up phase is time consuming and we always have to weigh where we are spending our time when the content is coming this fast. That said, we are working on our first truly beeft set of Phase 3 changes which we hope to have out soon.”
This isn’t an acceptable answer. This is a “we’re waiting to actually do tuning until phase 5, until then just sit around and wait as we won’t do any major changes”
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Yesn’t.
I read the whole transcript.
Your statement is inaccurate.
Is phase 3 the same thing as phase 5? Don’t we hit level 60 at phase 4?
Does “we hope to have out soon” and 2 changes this week mean “we’re not balancing anything about ret until phase 5?”
Can you say “Maybe I over-reacted here a wee bit?”
I gave you the benefit of the doubt, neat. Wanna go grab Starbucks?
-Horse.
He didn’t say to unsubscribe, but saying to just wait until phase 5 and then they’ll get to it is encouraging people to just not play paladin or unsub until they actually bother fixes core gameplay issues the class has.
“we are in a weird spot with these level up phases where we are trying to move so so so fast with a relatively small team, and sometimes we have to just let stuff lie for a bit even if we don’t like it”
He’s saying Paladin isn’t getting a major fix, in no uncertain terms. He said this here and later on with “In general, I think we really want to get to 60 and get all the Runes out, and then we can actually sit down when everone has all the cards on the table and start making larger moves to truly solidify things.”
It’s not inaccurate. The team is not wanting to make the major changes paladin needs to have made now in order to make the class feel good. When your options are “play a different class or stop playing until we fix it sometime AFTER the next major patch and until then you’ll just need to sit with it.” that’s not an acceptable answer. No road map was offered, no future design changes were said, no timeline was given, just “We know you’re upset, we’ll get to it after we release another patch even though we know how messed up things are for paladin”
He said they were working on a lot of stuff.
-Horse
You’re arguing with a green parsing S hitter of a warrior who ends his posts like it’s a letter.
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I actually don’t play paladin. I’m a feral druid main with a warlock OT I do. But I can’t let bad game design sit whenever SoD has so much potential for Blizzard and future releases.
Just because I don’t play a class doesn’t mean I can’t empathize with a horrible response. If my classes were broken and his response was “We will balance them after phase 5” I’d be upset too. Do you honestly think that if Warrior was bottom dps and they announced that they didn’t plan to change anything about it because “Oh it will be okay when you’re level 60 and you get titangripping” Wouldn’t you be upset that for several months you’d have nothing to do because Aggrend had decided that trying to balance for a fun levelling experience wasn’t worth it?
An MMORPG should be fun all throughout your levelling experience. I get that most people want to focus on PvP or Raiding, but the bottom line is those are small activities that will likely end up taking less than 10% of your total time. Paladin as it stands, even if it does get MASSIVELY buffed with their endgame runes is not fun for 90% of its gameplay. That does not need a full level 60 with all rune slots released to be fixed. That needs to be fixed now. His response wouldn’t fly in a meeting and you know it wouldn’t. He didn’t promise any actual fixes to paladin or even an acknowledgement of Paladin’s main issue which is it just doesn’t bring much to even levelling groups.
I empathize with being last in line. I empathize with being left out. I empathize with having my favorite spec nerfed.
I just don’t lie to do it.
-Horse
You may wish to avoid avoiding the language filter here - that can earn you a ToS hit - I got one for spelling the f-word with an asterisk.
-Horse
Then tell me where’s the lie in saying that the options given by Aggrend are either unsub for several months while they think about how to fix ret paladin or to just not play ret paladin? Tell me where he proposes an actual solution.
why would anyone take advice from someone who capped at 1900 rating in wrath on a paladin
You parsed blue in Season of Discovery and haven’t completed half the raids.
your post history is funny lol youre in every post mentioning parses. I bet you dont hit the gym irl
Cope and seethe, bro
imgur. com/a/1FIW6ZW
Lmao paladin problems
That’s right, edit your post and go back to hiding.
Lemme try again:
Blizzard takes away TV privileges for people who try to dodge the language filter, because when you try to subvert the safety-features they put on the forums, they get mad. You spelled the S-word with a dollar sign. I pointed out they issue punishments for that, because I just got one, regardless of your feelings about my ineptitude.
You may want to try harder still at hiding the s-word here and dodging the language filter, or just say ‘You think that I am inept.’
I’m a tank and my threat is of a far greater concern than my damage is going to be.
-Horse
I didn’t Aggrend post any recommendations on what to do as a ret paladin. I heard him say he was tired, there were fixes coming phase 3, and that balancing was impossible - not hard - without all the cards on the table. For anyone.
That said, one of the things I definitely heard was:
“That said, we are working on our first truly beeft(sic) set of Phase 3 changes which we hope to have out soon. Will it fix everything every one of you wants to Ret? No. But there’s some stuff in there I do think you’ll like that should help step in the right direction.”
Your statement, a recommendation from Aggrend that everyone playing ret paladin stop doing so, and/or unsubscribe, is the opposite of that statement. I think he’s definitely asking for rets to stick around in P3.
So, any statement that he recommended that rets stop playing, expect no changes, or lower their standards, or STOP ASKING FOR BETTER is a falsehood of whopper proportions.
I do not want a single ret paladin in here to stop talking, asking for better, or being happy when their class gets buffed. I want you to stop speaking things that are categorically false, then when called on it, doubling down on them, when “We’re moving in a truly beeft(sic) set of P3 changes” is right there.
I’m Tauren. You’re Tauren. We know beeft(sic).
-Horse
Since Aggrend and the gang are apparently asking for feedback and suggestions, I figure I might dip my toe in. Sorry if I’m a bit redundant at any point.
As I’m sure it’s been said, Paladin rune situation is a mess. Many of our runes are totally dead, because they compete with mandatory runes in the same slot or they are just inferior to other abilities. Many of our runes are very “basic”. Meaning they don’t really add anything super interesting or crazy to the spec, they provide something very simple to get the class to basic viability. I get it, when the baseline class is almost entirely defensive support spells, you’re probably going to use the shiny new Rune system to patch up all the massive holes in the class kit.
The biggest glaring example of this is the Exorcist rune. Letting Paladin cast Exorcism on everything is a very simple, basic rune and our entire playstyle is built on this one rune. That effectively means every other Rune in our Leg slot might as well not exist at all. For Ret or Prot.
It has been suggested more than once that the Legs slot be more relegated to utility runes like Rebuke, Horn of Lordaeron (move from chest), Divine Sacrifice, and Inspiration Exemplar. Then merge Exorcist and Art of War runes into one rune, since they are both entirely dependent on eachother to function. So much so that they might as well be one rune. This would give us some flexibility with our support skills. Do we bring Exemplar to mitigate the boss’s fear? Or do we bring Rebuke to kick the cast? Can’t do either now, because Exorcist is mandatory for the spec to function.
Another issue with Paladins is spec-specific utility. Almost all our utility is baseline defensive support. And recently mana battery with the SoM buff. A hot item of discussion lately, for Ret, is our lack of unique support abilities for the group and raid. Common suggests, and my preferred ones, are to add the Heart of the Crusader 3% crit debuff to the Improved Seal of the Crusader talent. and to give Sanctity Aura a 2 - 3% damage buff for the group. It doesn’t feel good to use Sanctity Aura, because our dps depends on the 10% Holy damage buff, but it doesn’t nothing for the rest of the group.
Adding Windfury to Horn of Lordaeron or Sanctity Aura are also common suggestions, but I can imagine the outrage from other players if Ret had 100% uptime on WF on their own. Getting lucky procs and just destroying someone in world PVP. Speaking of Horn of Lordaeron, even if we did see our runes shuffled or consolidated, it is unlikely Ret or Prot will want to bring it, unless it can stack with Blessing of Might or it brings a little extra punch to make it worth bringing. I think something like 5% haste would be a nice addition.
I’d be fine with Ret being a middle of the pack DPS if they leaned harder into the unique group supports. As it is now, unless Ret is doing competitive dps, the only reason to bring one is as a mana battery. All their other support can be brought by Holy and Prot.
Another significant issue brought up often in the Ret discord is Ret’s disproportionately high threat generation. For our mediocre dps, Ret Paladins put our a massive level of threat. We would really appreciate a passive reduction in threat gen. My suggestion would be to add a 10/20/30% passive threat gen reduction to the Two-Handed Weapon Specialization talent.
Prior to the recent Martyrdom mana gen buff, Ret Paladins were really struggling with mana. Especially once we got to the execute phase. Consecration and Hammer of Wrath are major mana hogs. I would request that the Improved Hammer of Wrath and Wrath runes reduce the mana cost of each respective spell by X%. Whatever percentage testing suggests would balance out so that we can actually use the spells with some regularity, but also staying in the “mana matters” range.
On another note, please make the Protection tree be a lot less terrible, so the tanks can get out of the dps tree! I’m joking, but the Prot tree really is bad. Tanks don’t want to spec into it. I’d suggest revising some of the talents: Precision should apply to melee and spell hit chance, One-Handed Weapon Specialization should apply to all damage instead of just the weapon damage, Redoubt should apply on hit instead of crit, Reckoning should apply on hit and/or block, etc. On top of that, it is obvious from the runes that keep coming out for Prot that they want Paladin tanks to spec into the Prot tree and play sword and board. But for tanks to want to do that, you need to make it worth specing into that tree. Right now, Paladin tanks have zero interest in Holy Shield, their capstone talent. If you want Paladins to be a blocking tank, then you need blocking to matter. With the numbers right now, the damage reduction from blocking just doesn’t make a difference. Make blocking matter.
That all aside, I’ll wrap this up by spitballing a few ideas for the Paladin runes:
-
Divine Storm. Every Wrath Ret Paladin enjoyed the T10 2pc bonus. If you want to make Divine Storm relevant against Martyrdom, add a X% chance for the cooldown on Divine Storm to reset on a melee hit. Make DS Holy damage and retune the damage formula to work off X% weapon damage + X% spell power.
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Art of War and Exorcist. Merge these runes. They’re too dependent on eachother not to. Add instant Flash of Lights to Art of War procs. Trying to hard cast a healing spell while in the thick of melee is brutal. Maybe have it apply a 20% rolling DoT on our Exorcist hits (or crits).
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Shield of Righteousness. Give Prot Paladins their Holy Shield Slam. Add an effect where it buffs your block value by an X% of your Strength stat. Be generous with that percentage.
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Holy Shield. Increase the charges from 4 to 8 and make each block done while Holy Shield is active deal the damage to X number of nearby enemies.
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Aegis. Total rework. Retool it to change Divine Protection/Divine Shield from an immunity spell to a 50% damage reduction cooldown that doesn’t drop threat.
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Guarded By the Light. Add a 6% crit chance reduction effect, since most of the tanks have that at this point. Stop leaving Paladin and Warrior tanks out. Put the “Guarded” in GbtL.
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Consecration. In addition to dealing damage to enemies, allow Consecration to heal allies standing in it by 200 - 300% the damage amount. Whatever makes it effective for the cost and cooldown.
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Crusader Strike. Retune the attack using the original damage formula: 70% weapon damage + 40% spell power. Allow it to refresh all Judgements on the target.
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Righteous Vengeance. Not the DoT. Recreate Tiny Abomination in a Jar. Every Ret Paladin loved that trinket. Every melee attack and seal proc has X% chance to add a mote. At Y number of motes, the Paladin deals a second melee attack for Z% of weapon damage.
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Avenging Wrath. Every Paladin is waiting for this. 20% buff to damage and healing. Go nuts and allow Hammer of Wrath to be used while AW is active.
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Seal of Command. While the seal is active on the Paladin, party members also receive the Seal of Command buff. Give the bros a 7 ppm 70% holy damage proc.
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Purifying Power. Make Holy Wrath instant and add Holy Shock to the 50% cooldown reduction effect.
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Fanaticism. Add a Holy Light crits splash heals 8 yards around the target for 10% of the heal.
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Sanctified Retribution. Sanctity Aura adds 3% damage and 3% melee haste to the party.
As for “class manuals”, 30 second Judgements would be a nice, little QoL buff.
And, more than anything else, PLEASE bring back 15% Pursuit of Justice. I’m not looking to give Paladins a sprint, or a charge, or a shadowstep, or a blink, or a Death Grip. But when Paladins have no such gap closing or gap making abilities, it would be great if we could run just a little faster than the 8% enchant. Adding the 100% movement speed restriction to Judgement of Justice would also be nice and give us a reason to actually use that Seal once in a while.