Just some quick feedback on how Prot paladin feels up to 20.
I was an advocate for Paladins not having a taunt. I thought they kinda stood on their own in their particular little niche as a high aoe threat tank that came with a risk of not being able to handle threat pulls, but suffice to say, very few people agreed with me on this front.
Giving us taunt in the form of judgement is a unique way of doing it, and one I had considered myself over the years, but unfortunately I think tying one of our main threat abilities to our taunt is causing complications. Maybe that’s the tradeoff and I can live with that, but it feels like maybe this isn’t the way to go about it. It feels a bit awkward at the moment, is all.
Additionally, our AoE tanking niche has been downplayed with the cap on consecration. It still functions but I’ve noticed that these caps don’t really exist on other [dps] classes. I like that threat matters in WF and I want that to continue, but I’m not sure how Prot Paladins will find their niche going forward. I’d imagine we are as effective at AoE as every other tank, but less effective with taunt swaps. Will that be enough? Not dooming here, lots of game yet to explore, but this has been a concern.
Finally, looking over the prot tree, it feels a bit busy. All of those talents are very desirable for prot, and there are some good tanking talents in the other trees too. This doesn’t really jive with Vanilla’s talent system where you had some variance for preference, but the alternative talents in any given tree typically supported the other trees.
Agree about judgement taunting though. Taunt should be a separate button you can choose to use when you need it, not getting used during your rotation when you may not need it.
I think they’ve accomplished that with the current level of tuning. I get hit like a truck and healer mana matters. Threat is still a thing by the way and DPS players can pull off easily of they don’t throttle… the cap on AoE threat abilities doesn’t really change that.
For end-game, if they lean into horizontal progression, I wouldn’t expect people to be able to out-gear content by as much, which also mitigates the problem. It’s possible that Blizzard over-solved this one, but we also don’t know what things are going to look like down the road.
Either that or Paladins need to have another strength. If we’re going to be weaker on taunt, we need to do something else that Warriors and Druids are weaker at. Even in Vanilla where Paladins had no taunt at all, there was still high value in having an experienced and geared Prot Paladin. There were Naxx fights that were made just so much easier because they could do high AoE threat at significant range with kings spam, then sustain it with consecration.
Either all tanks are the same, or they fulfill different roles. Personally I hope the latter but I think Paladins need work to get there.
Honestly, paladins feel better, but I’m torn on two fronts.
First, Judgement as Taunt is.. clunky. Judgement is our core threat generating tool as prot, so having it tied to taunt means we’ll be risking losing control of a pull and not having a taunt up when needed. Granted, the cooldown is 2s shorter than Warrior’s Taunt or a Bear’s Growl.. but it’s still troubling. I’d prefer it tied to a non-rotational ability rather than having it baked into something we’ll be using all the time.
Lastly, holy strike feels .. meh. It doesn’t really feel all that worth pressing as protection, and the damage is underwhelming to say the least. It feels tuned for ret, not prot. I’d honestly be happier if Holy Strike was replaced with Holy Shock, and the taunt placed on it instead. This solves the biggest pain point for the entire class, no ranged ability. It’s the kind of thing we could make non-rotational with higher costs or significantly longer cooldowns (and using talents to make it work the way you want deep enough in the tree).
As far as aoe goes blizz has expressed that it is not the intention for any tank to be able to consistently build threat on more than 4 mobs max, they want groups to use CC.
But as far as that goes pallies still have the highest threat on those 4 mobs
Roughly speaking a warrior thunder claps twice in the duration of consecrate, and both do similar base damage in that time frame, but as I understand it consecrate scales better with gear, ignores armor, and gets a 90% threat increase from improved righteous fury, putting all that together pally quickly out classes warrior for aoe threat (also if a pally is stunned consecrate is still ticking where a warrior is interrupted)
As a warrior I’m not fond of this, but I believe the numbers indisputably show pally is the better aoe threat generator.
Addon to that, pallies increase the threat differential further by reducing the group’s threat via blessing of salvation.
If this continues to be the case I think that’s something that I can get behind. In general if they want to explore tanking niches over homogenization, a potential avenue is for…
Paladin - High AoE threat, medium ST threat, unstable taunt, medium mitigation.
Druid - Medium AoE threat, medium ST threat, stable taunt, high mitigation.
Warrior - Medium AoE threat, high ST threat, stable taunt, medium mitigation.
Don’t rake that over the coals too much, I just tossed it out off the cuff. At the end of the day though, Paladins do need something to be good at. So do all the tanks. In an ideal raid world I would love to see every tank capable of success by some means on every single boss, but raids are incentivized to bring one of every tank type to greatly improve the overall raid effectiveness.
Ah, I’m not sure that should count here because any Paladin can do Salv, you don’t really need a Prot Paladin for that. More impactful in 5-mans than raids, of course, but not insurmountable. For example, I hear Druids got a normal rez in WF… I don’t love it because brez was their niche. Even in Era it was easy enough to bring a priest or a pally/shaman to your groups to cover.
At this time though, it’s unclear to me if Blizzard is going for homogenization or niche roles. I also only have exclusive WF tank experience. I plan to do a healer next.
True but if you pick a random group by the tank without knowing the rest of the make up then you know the pally can bring salve, especially now that campsites have the might, kings, and wisdom equivalents
AoE tanking threat has been a paladin specialty for a long time, so it makes sense for Blizzard to return to that niche. The problem I see with it is how well that niche carries into endgame content. It’s all well and good to have a tank that makes running dungeons faster and smoother, but we discovered in TBC that this niche does not a main tank make. Against a single target (IE boss with no adds), redoubt will have a 41% uptime (2 second swing, lasts 10 seconds, 5 swings per window, formula is 1-(0.9^5) = 0.41) That leaves 6 seconds out of 10 that a prot paladin will be statistically incapable of pushing crushes off the hit table, and they’ll still need another 25% block chance from gear itemization to get 41% uptime of crush immunity that Warriors get for free with shield block.
Until that point is addressed, it’s difficult to make a case for paladins as a main tank. Druids have the raw armor mitigation and health pool to eat 2 crushing blows back to back and not die. I don’t see the seal of fury absorb shields building enough padding to take an insta-gib off the table.
Furthermore, once that is addressed, we’re still back at Paladins being statistically behind the curve without something to differentiate them. This is where some theorycrafting is still needed, because it’s entirely possible with the threat modifiers, armor ignore from holy damage, etc. that paladins have the highest single target threat cap. If that’s the case, that is a legitimate niche that can justify taking one over the other.
Hey that’s an interesting point actually. Do you think there will be down the road? All of those campfire buffs are less effective than the player buffs. It would make sense for a campfire buff to offer 20% or 25% threat reduction while Salv offers 30%.
Though it might be awkward to tell your tank they have to sit at another campfire
To be clear, I think Paladins worked well when they didn’t have a taunt and had high AoE threat through consecration and Kings spam. I didn’t want that to change but I can understand why it would, especially Kings spam. I do want Paladins to have a role and be able to fill it well though.
I’m not currently sure they do though, and given how my dungeon runs have gone, reduced AoE threat isn’t why I’m not mass pulling. It’s because mobs hit like trucks and if I pulled more, my healer would lose me haha.
As an experienced tank, I just don’t understand why they are trying to reinvent the wheel with a judgement taunt instead of just adding a taunt to their toolkit. Increase the CD to match judgement CD if they feel the need.
Pally will have the huge benefit in dungeons (and to some degree in 10m and a bit in 20m) of bringing salv, so they have a tremendously easier time once they get that. I think that alone locks in ppal as the best dungeon tank that point onwards and a clear pick for one of the tanks in 10/20m raids.
Holy strike seems to be more of a mitigation tool for ppal, there’s a talent later that’ll reduce damage taken by 10% so that will help with boss tanking.
I have been wondering how 31/20/0 would go. Double holy shock, double judgement, holy strike, exo if undead/demon. Seems cool! Can’t bring myself to be a forsaken though.
But there is an interesting dichotomy there. Paladins are going to have the better threat. But a warriors thunder clap and demo shout will give the warrior more mitigation, as I understand it pally vindication does the same thing as demo shout, but single target, and no answer to the 20% attack speed reduction from thunderclap which might just be the best non-cooldown mitigation ability in the game
We can just ignore this guys opinions. Not having a taunt? Making a tank spec not having a basic tank tool so blizzard can try new boss mechanics? Cmon.
Taunt on judge makes everything bad. It only shows that you dont play tank, or you dont press your buttons on cooldown.
if their AoEs were capped it would be very lame