For those who have not heard yet, from the latest WoW Deep Dive look into the next expansion “The War Within”, Paladins will have access to 3 Sub-Specs.
-Templar
-Lightsmith
-Herald of the Sun
Almost all of my excitement for this expansion rests in this system!
My early ask, please let me as a Retribution Paladin, acquire more “Warrior-Like” functions by selecting Templar!
Herald of the Sun also is already giving me the Holy Fire vibes from early iterations of our Paladin Rework in 10.0.7.
What is everyone feeling so far about this announcement?
I’m allowing myself to be excited. I tend to think the system may be less transformative than I’d hope, but I still have hope. Looking for flexibility and variety of builds as usual, I think the rework really missed that mark.
In terms of flavor hype, I’m 100% there. I’m curious about these names. I think Lightsmith is a bit different sounding, but perhaps indicative of what it might contain compared to the other specs. Just looking forward to more information at this point!
My excitement is for Templar, the others from their names just do not stand out to me as much as Templar does. So, for that, I’m super excited to see what or how Templar is implemented.
I’m really curious how they design these for Pally. The names themselves don’t give a lot away. Perhaps Lightsmith is about Holy Power generators, or it’s about the “hammer” abilities: Blessed Hammer, Hammer of Wrath, Lights Hammer, Execution Sentence or even Judgement. Herald of the Sun is about radiant/holy fire, dots, hots. Templar I’m guessing would be for Prot and Ret and maybe about, melees, crusader strikes, etc.
No idea, but I’m very interested to see what these look like for Paladins given all 3 specs share the core Holy Power concept and they all cannot be Holy Power related.
This.
Just having a Pally-themed leap ability would be sick af.
Kinda confused as to what they’re going with on this one, but we’ll have to see.
Would’ve expected something along the lines of ‘Blood Knight’ or ‘Vindicator/Harbinger’ for a Pally sub-spec, but we’ll see what they do with the flavor for Lightsmith.
Biggest fear atm is that they make a lot of these sub-specs feel same-y aesthetically.
Paladins the ultimate tanks that never die. What can they do to make them better? Not much except give them movement abilities. However as I have played WoW for 20 years I can give a few opinions. Things I have wanted to see over time.
-Templar: Well since templar’s where a real thing in our history. We will have a certain expectation. I want to see a Prot Pally wielding a Shield and a 2H Spear/Lance. This for me always was the one thing Paladins should have been able to do, but don’t. Templar’s will get extra dps and hopefully another aura that helps his teammates or adds to their auras they already have. Also a charge would be awesome. I could also see Templar’s tossing their shields aside to wield a 2h sword and gaining massive amounts of parry and dodge to compensate for not having a shield.
-Lightsmith: I see this Pally using light to add to their heals and tanks DPS. Maybe as a visual you see a massive holy book hanging from a chain around them. So you know these pallies live their God and carry their holy book always. By using holy light to infuse into their weapons and shield maybe and spells. Each attack also hits with holy light. Maybe giving their attacks and heals the ability to hit another enemy or bounce to a friendly. Like a 25% chance to bounce.
-Herald of the Sun: I see these pallies maybe tossing holy spells aside and going for the sun. The sun bringing them fire magic and blinding magic. Their weapons maybe have fire swirling around it or around their entire bodies. They get a spell that blinds their enemies for a few seconds. Spells may burn their enemies as well giving a DoT to attacks.
Hoping that Templar has Exorcist in it! Also I do like the conjure side of paladin so im hoping if anything Lightsmith leans into that.
I disagree. I think players missed the mark. If players want to be meta sheep instead of making use of the options they have, there’s nothing that blizzard can do about that.
Not too sure on what each hero spec would do, but I’m excited either way.
I would like to think that Templar might includes support for divine steed. Things like more mobility and possibly fighting while mounted on the stead.
Mobility is definitely something that paladins lack, so this might be the time to see something to help with that.
As someone who is coming back after a short break. I have been playing a mage since WoTLK. It’s been my comfort, my home. In MoP I started a paladin to try it out and loved tanking. Ended up switching to a mage for until recently.
From the WoW Deep Dive, while mage’s sub-specs look cool. Nothing looks as cool as the paladins. I am so excited to try them all out.
Templar and Herald of the Sun sound the most interesting. I honestly can’t wait.
My only complaint is that I wish they would bring back class halls. That was such a cool and neat idea from Legion. Bring it forward and give it life in current WoW. Class Halls gave your character so much…character. I still remember doing the class hall for mage and being amazed but within mach-1 I jumped onto my dusty paladin and HAD to experience Ashbringer. After doing all the questing, I played my paladin for most Legion, because of that class hall.
I hope I get that same feeling with the subclasses, granted they’re more focused on stats verse world building.
My guess would be that this is how they are going to introduce support specs without actually making new specs. Now which one of three hero “specs” are going to be the support one? Who knows, but i am probably going to go with “Herald of the Sun”. Simply because of the herald thing.
Lightsmith will be about “conjuring” things of light. Like the hammers and blades we already have.
Going to go out on a limb and say that “Templar” will be focused around Divine Steed. Seeing as the real world Knights Templar were strongly associated with heavy cavalry.
This was my first thought too when I saw them but they ruled out new support specs on War Within launch and after seeing the Druid examples in the deep dive, the Hero talent points are very passive/minor adjustments to playstyle not entire role changes.
I’m still hopeful they are a little more involved than that, but I won’t be holding onto hope that they are full blown support specs.
I feel both “Lightsmith” and “Herald of the Sun” are kinda silly, but until we know what those hero trees are supposed to represent or what they build upon, I’m not going to make any suggestions yet.
People should temper their expextations. The fsct they said “its all passives” already know is gonna be just a 3% increase here and a 4% increase there, it will boil down to "oh I pvp Ill take the hero talents that fullfill more healing vs a pve ret going full damage.
THose are racial archetypes. Makes no sense vindicator would be there able to be picked by other races.
As everyone pointed out every hero spec ressembles a spec like dark ranger for mm, pack leader for bm, and so on. So it will probably come down to doubling down on your spec inspired hero spec or picking something akin to prot and holy with their respective hero specs
Christ I just hope it’s not something like single target vs aoe.
I agree with the prediction that templar focuses on the combat theme such as strikes, light smith prob focuses on light constructs like flying hammers, and herald on radiant magic.
