Paladin balancing of late is conflicted and unnecessarily removes options for what should be a hybrid class:
Today’s “Without the 6-piece Tier 1 set bonus, you can no longer double Judge.” -Tantamount to removing seal twisting outside of the t1 6pc bonus - why remove seal twisting 1 phase later if it isn’t a problem?
Removal of healing power from Sheath of Light rune and Shock and Awe rune, and now Libram of Wrath change -These unnecessary changes ensure a healer-caster DPS build is not possible. Why???
Placement of Infusion of Light rune on same slot as Sheath of Light, and removal of holy shock CD reset from Exorcist skill book -These ensure a melee DPS-caster DPS hybrid build is not possible, and the only way to play shockadin DPS is as an int-geared caster with 1 button (holy shock)
Today’s “Infusion of Light: This rune now reduces the remaining cooldown on Holy Shock by 3 seconds on a critical strike (was: resetting it completely)” -Heavily nerfs the only remaining way to play shockadin DPS (1 button shock spam) - even if they crit 100% of the time, what are they supposed to do with the extra GCD now?
-Libram of Wrath could provide that 2nd button but Holy Wrath is still 30 second CD and extremely weak 19% spell damage scaling
-Why keep adding shockadin stuff while simultaneously making balance changes that ensure it’s unplayable?
Walk back these unnecessary restrictions and paladin will be a lot more fun to play. At the same time, if paladin can be played as a hybrid class the these new runes/items will become much more relevant.
While the pally community has the reputation of being a bunch of yappers, even our reasonable takes are responded to with “no ur op, stop talking”
Shockadin is still gonna be strong, it kinda needed the nerf to its potential damage output but all these nerfs have done is make the hpals(there is a difference between the specs) frustrated because it effects our healing output more than our percieved “pvp potential”
It still boils down to hoarding toys for oneself in this forum. I had assumed SoD was experimental to see things become viable builds, such as Warlock tanking or Mage healing.
But these concepts have been majorly hamstrung and any time these concepts reach viability to contend with others in the same role, the response is this:
Shockadin being a solid casting option would be cool, but every rune that remotely gives Paladins the chance to be a caster is nerfed into oblivion.
I think they just need to stop placating to the playerbase with dps centric changes and just get to the meat of the matter. Paladin based changes in SoD were always catch-up to get them to a proper spot from both a class fantasy and performance metric. But the last few phases have been too DPS oriented, when a large portion of its class fantasy and vanilla game balance was thrown to the side to placate pve raiders. That and it took them 4 phases to realize the dps runes paladin had should have been baseline from the start.
Zero runes dedicated to buffs/cleanses and an over-abundance of runes that soak up GCDs make any future paladin in a vanilla world terrible to balance. And on top of that any future power buffs have to revolve around the fact we now have a mobility spell, which was a direct violation of one of the core paladin designed downsides. The shockadin PTR power probably would have stayed if the burst was less on demand, we couldnt activate a spell to move and our GCDs had proper use on things like cleanse/bops/freedoms.
People were saying its gigabusted in pve when shockadin isnt a pve spec, and was never meant to be
Now that the PVP build has been nerfed, the negatives of this are now affecting hpal, who already questioned whether or not they should even bother using holy shock to heal
Bro, I just want my class to be fun to play. We pay the same sub you do. All of our current specs Blizzard is pushing us to play are wonky, either being “almost good” or “almost fun.”
I’m probably the only shockadin playing on Wild Growth. Holy shock build is a lot of fun! There’s nothing more enjoyable then shocking 7 or 8 times in a row.
With that say, shock build damage is really bad. With full WB and consumes and shock chains, I can do about the same damage as a average geared Ret. Just when p5 might make shock build viable, they take it away!
And for what, non-existence pvp? With imagined people running around with full consumes and WB on live servers? BGs died out during phase 4.
I got to witness 2 shock boys beacon of light each other and decimate everyone in org within 1.5 seconds of being near them (4 crit shocks to the face) well healing each other all the damage they did. The most disgustingly overpowered thing I’ve seen in all SOD glad it was brought down from broken beyond belief to A tier possibly still S tier. you guys need to stop crying. Anyone that played this on ptr had to be out of touch with reality to think it was okay.
That’s my biggest problem. I figure with all of the nice SP gear we got plus shock & awe + infusion of light we would do some decent damage. I still get more damage from my ret with mid gear. Not as good vs ranged classes ofc, but the damage is still underwhelming.
