With the beta showing some interesting ideas that the developers added to Paladin I think it’s time to deal with the remaining problem spells and talents.
Tyr’s Deliverance
Tyr’s Deliverance has been too dominant for the specialization since the rework. Blizzard’s solutions to fixing it have involved nerfing it slowly but surely to where it doesn’t really feel impactful anymore. This is the wrong direction for this talent. It’s clear that a talent like this is valuable but it should only be played around a caster-centric style of play.
Goals: Reward casting Flash of Light and Holy Light.
Change: No affects Holy Shock (Same with Boundless Salvation talent below it)
Blessing of Summer
Blessing of Summer has led to a playstyle of holding it for a big cooldown often using a weakaura and then cycling through the other 3 spells on CD for most damage throughput, only holding some of them for specific windows like on Fyrakk to get a DK some CDR for grips for example.
Goals: Make it into a support utility instead of damage output
Changes: Move it to the class tree in place of Of Dusk and Dawn and remove the Summer Element from it. Perhaps merge the naming of the spells in line now that it’s missing an entire season. Blessing of Dusk, Blessing of Dawn for example.
Incorporate TWW’s Blessing of Summer(Summer) effect into Tyr’s Deliverance as a Damage output for Caster Paladin.
Light’s Hammer & Consecration
Light’s Hammer will be removed in TWW. An understandable decision to lower buttonbloat, but a sad decision to have seen made as it’s been iconic. Meanwhile Consecration is remaining an important part of the gameplay, while it is enjoyed a lot less as it’s a mandatory maintanence buff. It also forces the paladin into Melee Range to cast it onto mobs, while Light’s Hammer can be thrown
Goal: Readd Light’s Hammer and modify Consecration
Changes: Make Light’s Hammer a choice node with Righteous Judgment and have it replace Consecration instead.
Remove Strength in Conviction as a talent in the Class Tree
Light of Dawn/Holy Radiance
Light of Dawn makes for a fine spell for Melee but is rather pointless in Range as it does a frontal cone of limited range. It has the issue of being undertuned making it not worthwhile casting in any content. Furthermore, Holy Radiance used to be a Holy Paladin spell that was pruned along the way.
Goal: Reintroduce Holy Radiance, Make Light of Dawn have a distinct purpose
Changes: Add Holy Radiance as a choicenode with Light of Dawn and make it a casttime + holy power cost (Similar to Denounce)
Buff Light of Dawn’s spell power scaling, but increase the mana cost substationally. This make it a spell you cast when there is big AOE damage going out, something that paladin currently struggles with, while maintaining Word of Glory as an efficient spot heal.
With these changes in mind I also hope the Spec tree gets reshuffled a bit, there are still too many talents that have no coherence to be on the same side of the tree, Shining Righteousness near Tower of Radiance, Righteous Judgment below Divine Revelations, etc. Create a clear Flash of Light/Tyr’s Deliverance caster side and a Holy Shock/Crusader’s Might side with Beacon of Faith/Virtue in the center.
These were some ideas I had. Maybe others can point out problems they encountered.