A lot of people have said Paladin is bad and they aren’t wrong but I don’t see a lot of people addressing specifics of why and that’s something that needs to be discussed so here we are.
From my engagement with Paladins and Talent trees(which I remained silent on throughout the alpha/beta processes due to their constant reiteration that nothing was final yet and improvements and updates were coming, but now as it’s the pre-patch I can openly discuss how bad the design is from a fundamental level) I’m not going to discuss much of the general Paladin tree as it mostly seems like something an obstinate bitter manchild designed while angrily shouting, “Oh, you want talent trees?!? I’LL GIVE YOU SOME TALENT TREES!!” It just looks like they went through and filled the tree with garbage or things that should of been spells or worse mostly meaningless talents because they didn’t really believe in the talent trees redesign.
My focus is going to be on the Protection tree and some things that I noticed.
The most fundamental problem with it and the majority of tank specs is that the very first talent in the tree for every class except warriors and sorta demon hunters has no tanking benefits. NONE. Paladins got the most egregious example as the fact that it doesn’t even generate Holy Power also means it has no effectiveness even as build up to defensive stats. So the very first interaction we have with the protection tree is a mandatory talent that serves no purpose whatsoever for tanking. That is an absolutely massive failure on Blizzard’s part and Mike Ybarra, Ion Hazzikostas and Holly Longdale should be ashamed of what their team did to tanks with an emphasis on Paladin tanks.
There are 14 talents in the tree that have ZERO to do with tanking and last time I checked that was the entire purpose of protection spec, the argument could be made with the existence of “Moment of Glory” that DPS abilities could be “Defensive” but honestly the simple design of most of the tree reeks of more poor class design and the basic concept of having an ability that turns damage into defensive capability shows that the designers have no concept of how roles work anymore. It’s made even more evident by the fact that not a single one of the final tier abilities on the protection tree is purely defensive in its function. The last tier of abilities and the last set of things you unlock and only Moment of Glory provides direct defensive use with Quickened Invocations being the only other one and that’s only because Seraphim increases mastery and by proxy survivability. Bulwark of Righteous Fury and Divine Resonance do NOTHING for defensive capabilities.
After we get through that weedy swamp we’re left with the layout of the tree itself which has talents that would seemingly be connected to others sometimes located opposite of them and talents that provide little to no measurable benefit but are required to reach a node that is actually a well designed talent. There are also specific talents that provide verifiably bad return for the point investment but are required numerically or connectively almost like portions of the trees were intentionally designed to limit power and choice.
I really don’t know how people can defend this mess. This is also a consideration at the top end of the spectrum too. The ability to play your class while leveling is basically nonexistent as you start your adventure into protection having very little way to generate Holy Power(which I still contend is a horrible resource design and a lame copy>paste of Rogue combo points) so you don’t actually interact with the class mechanics much until much later on.
Getting past the basic Talent tree problems the rotation feels bad now because of the Holy Power generation and it isn’t just linked to the set bonuses. There is a fundamental poor design in this system that is built around limiting the ability count and I feel like it’s because they are still trying to design this game around competitive play. They are trying to balance the game out for Mythic+ instead of making it fun and we have seen this before. We went through this same crap YEARS ago when they were ruining classes for PVP balance and here we are again having the same problems with everything in this game and it’s just the worst kind of feeling.
All in all the talent tree reworks and how they seemingly begrudgingly filled talent trees with standard spells and trademark abilities instead of cool nuanced modifications to playstyle or even basic power increases just makes this whole mess feel like the worst kind of bad faith update.
Avengers shield is a silence, can be used for threat gen and ranged pulling it absolutely has value for tanks. being able to silence almost on demand is an incredible defensive ability
A valid point however that’s a relatively small percentage of benefits and is basically negligeable as a benefit as you rarely have a single target caster mob and it’s usually groups of melee enemies to which…you gain no real benefit. Trying to suggest that an ability gains ground because it’s ranged like the generic taunt or judgement or generates threat like literally every other ability in the game doesn’t change the case that it’s still entirely lacking in every aspect of defensive stats for the overwhelmingly vast majority of interactions and lacks any function in the overall playstyle of the class itself.
I agree the loss to holy power on AS is egregious and needs to be reverted. Its a spit in the face more when the 2/3 defensive buffs don’t even share a duration, and those 2 are the ones your more likely to pick together seeing as how the 2%-6% dr is trash. you can’t even maintain barricade of faith and the trash choice of crusader’s resolve without a grand crusader proc. Its the small attention to detail blizz is also missing here.
besides that one point I just ran a few test dungeons as Prot and I still could maintain 100% uptime on SotR (good job blizz didn’t even accomplish your stated goal, you just made the spec worse) but just had an unfun time doing it cuz my rotation went from “oh cool got a grand crusader proc lets spam this cool ability” to “oh i got a proc best cast judgement to maintain SotR uptime”
all they have to do is add HP to AS and this spec is probably the best in DF i would say
I didn’t used to have to have 4 weak aura’s telling me when buffs were falling off from abilities I used to press on CD
Have you realized you picked one specific scenario out of thousands that counter it? It just proves my point that it’s a rare occurrence and that the first interaction we have with the protection talent tree has no interactions with the vast majority of the game including the entire gameplay loop of the Protection spec.
First pack in Algethars academy = 6 mobs that all spam dangerous casts
One pull after that is 9 mobs that all spam dangerous casts. If the spell book casts go off it’s a wipe. They also regularly channel interruptible stuns
First pack in azure vault, 6 mobs that all cast an extremely dangerous group wide dot, if it goes off it’s a wipe. These mobs also appear in multiples in a few other packs in this dungeon.
Later in vault there are many packs that have several mobs that cast a group wide root that if not kicked will likely wipe you to being rooted in the ground effects.
Ruby life pools has a lot of mobs that need to be kicked
Let’s not pretend that having an on demand silence is not an incredibly powerful tanking tool
That’s easy. Protection Paladin is still in a good spot in terms of tankyness, dps, and feel. I have run a +20 after pre-patch and can say that it flows well and that is without the 10 additional points we will get when reaching level 70.
You are being extremely hyperbolic here. Yes, Avenger’s Shield doesn’t generate Holy Power, but it is still an essential part of Protection Paladins. It still interrupts, provides AoE snap threat, and provides us with additional benefits with talent choices down the tree.
Grand Crusader
Barricade of Faith
Bulwark of Order
Crusader’s Resolve/Strength of Adversity
Tyr’s Enforcer
Soaring Shield
Ferren Marcus’s Fervor
Gift of the Golden Val’kyr
Moment of Glory
These are all of the additional talent choices that increase the effectiveness of Avenger’s Shield in DPS and in our ability to Tank.
It is absolutely a benefit that no other tank class has. We can spam Avenger’s Shield to silence on top of our Rebuke interrupt. If we take Divine Toll, that’s another 5 interrupts. You are severely underplaying the importance of interrupts.
This is the absolute truth of the matter, and why I believe that praise for these “Talent Trees” are primarily coming from the sweaty dungeon types. I feel that our Tree is inexcusably bland and devoid of creativity.
For the past seven+ years, Blizzard has overdone the performance value of Paladins, and turned off the quality. We may as well be a visible numerical value that glows gold on occasion. I’m willing to bet some M+ players wouldn’t care one bit, so long as they were clearing content and getting their sweet gear.
Agreed.
Overall, the combination of these so-called recreated ‘Seals’, the bizzare laser focus on Consecration, and our continually bland, overly Xeroxed “Talent Trees” is their “Do you guys not have phones?” moment for Dragonflight.
Actually, this may share the podium with the revised Professions; I have to see how they’ve set their limitations on crafting.
AS silence can not be considered negligible. ignoring a tool in prot’s kit that no other tank has with the frequency that we can press AS is quite the odd take. I agree that it should generate HP. it should. I don’t like that it doesn’t.
Beyond the silence, this Bulwark of Order may turn out to be its most powerful iteration yet. At endgame AS will be doing significant damage, bolstered by talents like Soaring Shield, Tyr’s Enforcer and DT.
again I would prefer it build HP, but to spread word that the ability “has no tanking benefits” is incorrect.
I don’t know how valuable those talents will be at 70. I can’t speak from experience, so this is just pure reasoning, but it seems like avenger’s shield is a button you can only hit so often. The talents that give it absorption and extra damage don’t feel like they’ll be worth it because you can only hit AS so much before you start damaging your HP generation.
The talents that give it defensive buff value like barricade I think are very valuable because you can use AS in between other HP generators without damaging your HP economy, and keep them up with nearly 100% uptime. Unless the absorption/damage talents for AS are so strong they give priority to AS to use over a HP generating button, I think the right hand side will always be stronger as long as AS doesn’t generate HP.
Oh, and I definitely remember doing some dungeons nave having interrupt counts 3-4 times over other dps. There’s plenty of spells to interrupt in dungeons, even if they aren’t all priority spells to interrupt.
What do you mean? You hit Avenger’s Shield pretty much on CD regardless of Holy Power generation or not. You can only tap Judgement and Hammer of the Righteous/Bless Hammer so many times in your rotation with their CDs.
The absorption adds up to about 4 mil+ in damage mitigated in current end-game. That on top of Golden Path and Judgement of Light adds up to quiet a lot in heals.
In my +20 Lower:
First Avenger: 4.51 million
Judgement of Light: 1.9 million
Golden Path: 1.79 million
Word of Glory: 1.66 million
Maybe it’s the my build then. After messing around in a dungeon with blessed hammer and double judgement, there were multiple times I had to prioritize a HP spender over an available AS, though this was mainly during wings on aoe packs with the added HP generator from Hammer of wrath. Since I’m using Sanctified wrath to try to push my HP generation as high as I can for all the HP related cooldown reduction, I was prioritizing keeping judgement on cooldown so I wouldn’t waste any time on the reset.
Did you take Tyr’s enforcer at all? If you do a high level dungeon with them it’d be interesting to see how much damage they contribute. I haven’t done anything since S2 so I’m not in the mood to learn any new dungeons.
Going to just hit this comment since it was towards the top.
I don’t think you’re paying attention to the fact that every other class has something else that handles the same job as the interrupt or does it in a different/better way. DKs have a whole barrier just for dealing with magic damage plus their death grip can interrupt and their main interrupt, warriors have a multitude of options including an aoe interrupt but you’re all arguing like no one else has any tool like it but they do and some of those tools function better the problem is those tools aren’t the MAIN INTERACTION WITH THE RESOURCE SYSTEM OF OUR ENTIRE CLASS.
Whatever issue you have with my characterization of Avenger’s Shield, it is still largely a negligeable benefit because every other class still has some way of doing effectively the same things in their own way. It isn’t an above and beyond capability as you are trying to make it out to be. It’s not anything that other classes don’t have some sort of access to do so why are you all endlessly talking about it like it is? Just because it’s there as a tool doesn’t mean it’s largely beneficial and the guy that keeps wanting to pick a handful of examples that just go to prove my point that there are a few niche examples but THOUSANDS more that the silence doesn’t matter for.
This mentality of you trying to say this is exactly why bad design ends up happening. They think that it’s balance because it has “X ability” on it but they took something away from us for it. They didn’t take away stuff from DKs for having Death Grip why take away a resource generator because it has a silence? Why frontline a skill that doesn’t interact with the primary resource system they specifically designed? It’s bad design and it’s not an extra skill it’s something that has become an iconic skill of protection paladins just as much as death grip for dks and shield slam for warriors, so why is it just tossed in there like that?
I have messed around with it, but I am taking Divine Toll over using Tyr’s.
The main issue with your perspective is that DK’s absorb is personal. It doesn’t help the group with any AoE spells and abilities. There are also issues with you thinking that stuns and grips are equal to actual interrupts. Stuns and grip will stop the cast, but it does not silence them so they will just re-cast the same ability immediately. Silences prevent them from re-casting that school of magic beyond the initial interrupt. It’s value is significantly higher.
It is absolutely not negligible because of the points I mentioned above.
This is the issue I have with theory crafters with limited to no experience. Paladins and their ability to lock down multiple mobs every pull is massive.
But she is not wrong, you are. If you don’t take Bulwark, Avenger shield would serve absolutely no purpose tanking. It does not generate holy power, it does not shield you for any damage from the get go. All it does is damage which is only tertiary to tank roles.
You might argue that everyone is going to take Bulwark, and you would be correct but only because it feels awful to have a non-tank spell into our rotation. Does not change the fact that from the get go avenger shield is NOT a mitigation tool and therefore close to worthless.
Take for example my blood boil. From the moment I click on it, even without any other talent, the disease leeches health back to me. That makes it, from the get go, a tanking ability.