Hello everyone,
Protection paladin is one of the forgotten specializations of SoD. In this post, I’d like to talk about why that is and how they can be improved. It is difficult to talk about a singular specialization in a game like Classic where the specialization are very intertwined with the class. There will be times where I have to talk about the other specializations too, but I’ll do my best to keep it focused around protection.
I originally wanted to do a deep dive into all the problems the paladin faced in Vanilla but doing so made this post extremely long so I’ll give the cliff notes here:
Paladins in general have the worst abilities and talent trees in the game. From level 1 to 60, paladins only get to auto attack. I’m going to say this again: where every other class in the game gets some sort of instant damage ability, casted damage ability, or ability off the GCD that does damage, paladins only get to auto attack. Furthermore, paladins have the single worst 2 talent trees in the entire game. The protection tree has multiple talents that required the TANK paladin to take critical hits. It also lacks any source of real mitigation. The retribution tree does not offer a SINGLE damage ability which would greatly help the retribution paladin. Furthermore, there are only 3 talents that “boost” the damage of the paladin, one of which is random proc based on critical hits.
Alright, lets get into how to actually fix paladins in SoD. The first thing we need to talk about are abilities that MUST be made baseline. Whether this is through a skill-book that you must find or simply from a class trainer, these abilities have to be available to all paladins without taking up a rune slot.
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Crusader Strike - As I mentioned before, in classic paladins literally have no abilities other than auto attacking. Placing a paladins FIRST EVER ABILITY on a rune is honestly very limiting. It also wouldn’t be overpowered for all paladins to have this. The biggest issue people may think of is holy paladins, because crusader strike regenerates 5% of maximum mana. Mana is already a non-issue for most healers, especially priests who receive extremely powerful heals such as PoM and penance for essentially no mana cost. Giving paladins 5% mana on a button wouldn’t break them. You have to remember Crusader Strike requires the paladin to not only be in melee but it costs an entire GCD to use. So, they risk getting hit by melee mechanics and lose multiple seconds of healing to regain a very minor amount of mana. Furthermore, holy paladins already have powerful mana sustain through getting critical hits built into their talent tree. For protection and retribution, it finally gives them a button to press. Alleluia.
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Taunt - I genuinely do not understand why this wasn’t made baseline in the first place. An entire rune slot is an enormous price to pay for a taunt. The other “new” tanks in in SoD gain so much with their taunt runes: Warlocks get Plate+ armor, Rogues gain massive amounts of parry and 20% physical DR, and Shamans gain every stat under the sun x100. Why do paladins get Spiritual Attunement (one of the most hated paladin abilities ever made) and TBC Ardent Defender (The literal worst ever passive mitigation ever made). Make taunt baseline and lets rework Hand of Righteous into something that isn’t embarrassing.
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Exorcist - This rune currently makes exorcism usable. No, this isn’t hyperbole, exorcism is literally only cast-able on undead targets in Classic. The Exorcist rune changes that. Paladins can finally have TWO whole buttons to press!
Ok, with those out of the way, lets talk about new runes and rune changes. But first, lets talk about direction. It really feels as if the developers are flailing with class design as there is no over arcing theme in the tanks. Here’s an example - Warlock tanks are literally just destruction DPS warlocks that wear plate. They play exactly the same way as a destruction warlock. Shaman tanks are literally enhancement shamans that very rarely will put on a shield. Currently, protection paladins are just shockadins that itemize a little more for stamina than actual shockadins. Let’s have an actual design goal when making the tanks. For this post, I will make runes based around a shield focused paladin tank.
One final disclaimer: you might notice that some of these values seem very high. You might think to yourself, man if my class had THAT they would surely be broken! However, you have to keep in mind just how bad paladin is in Classic. So let teach how to understand these runes. You can still think of whatever you class you like, but now give them Resurrection Sickness (Reduces all attributes and damage caused by 75%), THEN give them whatever rune you are looking at. This is how you properly translate anything from paladin to another class.
Let’s start by replacing the Crusader Strike rune that now is now baseline. Crusader Strike should be replaced by the following:
Holy Strike - This ability replaces Crusader Strike. Instant attack that deals 100% weapon damage as holy damage. Holy Strike increases the magical damage taken by enemies by 1%, stacking up to 3 times.
This is meant as a replacement rune for retribution paladins and it does 2 things for them: First, it gives them a little bonus damage which they currently sorely lack. Second, it provides a buff to casters which are traditionally significantly weaker than melee. Yes, currently that is not what is seen because mechanical units in Gnomeregan have double the armor of regular units but as we enter next tier the massive difference melee and casters will once again become apparent. Retribution paladins never bring something that a Protection or Holy paladin can’t provide. Now they will.
I wanted to very briefly talk about the inspiration for this rune. In the WoW beta paladins had a very similar ability to this. Back then, the developers thought giving paladins anything other than an auto attack was too much, so it was removed. However, the ability exists in enemy paladin mobs, such as those found in Scarlet Monastery. It would be fitting that finally, after nearly 20 years, paladins regain something that was taken away from them.
Now, lets fix Hand of Righteousness
Shield of Righteousness (SoR) - Slam the target with your shield, causing Holy damage based on your Block Value (BV) plus an additional X. Restores 5% maximum mana on use. Using this ability increases the paladin’s Block Value (BV) by an amount equal to his/her spellpower for 4 blocks or 10 seconds. 6 second cooldown. While you know this ability, the threat bonus from Righteous Fury is increased to 80% and Righteous Fury causes you to gain mana when healed by others equal to 25% of the amount healed. You also always gain 15% increased chance to Block and 50% increased Block value.
So, first all we kept the Spiritual Attunement (SA) from the original rune and the bonus mana from crusader strike. The reason being is that when SA isn’t useful (If you played TBC prot paladin you know its almost always useless) the crusader strike effect will mitigation the loss of mana regeneration. We kept the increased threat as this should be the main tank rune and we added some actual REAL AND USEFUL mitigation. Lets talk about the elephant in the room though, the bonus effect to SoR that increases Block Value (BV) for a set amount of attacks. BV is traditionally extremely weak in Classic. The only class that had any use for BV was the paladin, which was pretty much only used by paladin bots selling boosts in Stockades or Stratholme. In SoD, damage values are significantly higher, the the extent that some mobs in Scarlet Monastery are already hitting for 2-3x more damage! Yet, BV was not buffed at all, making it even more useless and taking away the single thing paladin had going for them in Classic. This rune aims to partially correct that by first, flat out increasing BV by a significant amount and then adding a temporary and limited bonus. Remember, abilities that have charges only last for those amount of charges. Paladins will not suddenly be able to pull the entirely of Stratholme in one go because they can block 4 attacks very well. This buff however, really helps make blocking useful on bosses. Suddenly, Holy Shield and Redoubt have some use (since those abilities can’t push Crushing Blows off the attack table anyways) on Raid Bosses.
So we just talked about Hand rune slots, lets talk about leg rune slots. We made exorcist baseline so what are we replacing it with? First, lets fix a mistake so egregious that I have no earthly idea how it even made it to the game: REMOVE THE AEGIS RUNE. The Aegis rune is so bad that I find it impossible to fathom how it this made past any quality control. To explain how bad this rune is, imagine you are one of the head food scientists at . You are tasked with making brand new pizzas to put on the menu. In your infinite wisdom you decide to pitch the idea of a sour cream based pizza, topped with preserved egg and drizzled with chocolate sauce. Your boss, in their infinite wisdom approves this abomination to go onto the market. This is what Aegis is. If I went to my boss and I pitched the equivalent Aegis in my field I wouldn’t have a job anymore. If my boss APPROVED that idea they wouldn’t be employable anywhere anymore. OK, rant over.
The only real change that must happen on this slot for protection paladin is the reduction of the cooldown on Avenger’s Shield (AS). 30 seconds is such an extremely long cool down which makes Exorcism with Art of War the only viable combination. There are 2 ways to fix: this:
- Significantly reduce the cooldown of AS to around 10 seconds.
- Add AS as an ability who’s cooldown can be reset by Art of War.
Furthermore we can add some conditional mitigation here to cement this as a tank rune. Biggest problem paladins face is that they will always take critical hits because it is built into their protection talent tree. So here is one potential solution to this problem.
Avenger’s Shield - Hurls a holy shield at the enemy, dealing X to Y Holy damage, Dazing them and then jumping to additional nearby enemies. Affects 3 total targets. Lasts 10 sec. If Blessing of Sanctuary is learned, reduce all damage taken from critical hits by 45%. You also always gain 10% maximum HP and 10% damage reduction.
Lets talk about the biggest thing here first: reducing all damage taken from critical hits by 45%. Critical hits in Classic do 200% damage. Reducing this by 45% would make critical hits do 110% damage to paladins. Every tank in the game is crit immune except for paladins. This is a huge disability as paladins are the only tank that can be parry hasted into double criticals and die before any heal can be cast. Nothing can be done about this. Even worse, the few pathetic talents that paladins do have, require them to get hit by criticals. Therefore, reducing the amount of critical hit damage they take solves both issues. They still take critical hits, but never to the point where they can be killed by them. They also keep their pathetic talent tree bonuses from taking critical hits. Remember, all other tanks take 0 critical hits therefore, 0 critical hit damage. With this change, paladins will take 10% bonus critical hit damage. They still pay a price but its not severe anymore. The other additions to this rune keep them in line with every other tank. Paladin is the lowest hp tank and the only tank with 0 Damage Reduction in their kit. Now, they are at least tied with some of the other tanks.
Great, this covers most of the problems up to now. What about future runes though? The currently datamined future runes are almost as heinous as Aegis. So I’d like to correct those while we are here. Please refer to this Wowhead post for the rune list. I will not be repeating them here to save space.
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[Engrave Bracers - Improved Hammer of Wrath] - This will never be used. For this to get ANY use it must do the following: Significantly reduce the mana cost. Instant cast. Not place your auto attack on cooldown. All of those things should honestly just be a spellbook. Horrible rune.
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[Engrave Bracers - Purifying Power] - Another rune that targets an extremely niche and weak spell and does almost nothing to make it good. Honestly, all these “making horrible niche abilities less horrible and almost usable” should all be in a singular rune instead of spread out over 15 different runes.
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[Engrave Helm - Fanaticism] - This is just 18 crit and nothing else. Boring and uninspired. Do something more here please. Make it increase attack speed so retribution paladins don’t have to use ACP in Naxxramas.
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[Engrave Helm - Wrath] - Another extremely weak rune. Consecration literally hits for around 10-15 damage at this level (not much more at 60.) Spells only do 50% bonus critical damage. So this rune lets consecration hit for grand total of 22. Wow, Amazing, Incredible. You could add 100% critical holy spell damage to this rune and combine it with the previous 3 and they would still suck (just not as bad).
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[ Engrave Helm - Improved Sanctuary] - Oh boy this is another “sour cream preserved egg pizza with chocolate ontop”. Blessing of Sanctuary is a REALLY BAD ABILITY. Increasing its effect by 1000% wouldn’t fix it. You want to make this usable? Give us the WotLK version and let it stack with Blessing of Kings only on Paladins with this rune equipped.
Alright, that covers everything. I really hope we see some meaningful changes coming to paladin.
Thank you.