I have always wondered what the original design concept was for the protection Paladin talent tree and overall play-style. By TBC Paladins had way more tools for tanking, but that was only to be competitive to warriors. I makes me wonder whether the protect spec was even mean to be a tank at all or not. Maybe it was mean to still be a support class. Like remove danger from team mates while healing and taking hits until the main classes take over. Kind of like a Bard/Dancer/Red Mage to a FF White Mage.
We all know eventually thanks to player base feed back, Paladins wanted to be main tanks and need more skills. Still maybe we have been viewing the Protection Paladin wrong XD?
Original design plan…
3 holy specs… I’m sure of it
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One more thought, were WoW Paladins originally Priests who want to fight or Warriors who wanted to embrace the light? Because Anduin is a priest who turned fighter, and many of the old school Paladins like Uther or Tirion Fordring or even Bolvar Fordragon were originally warriors once weren’t they?
Kevin Jordan has often talked about how the classes and talents came to be. Maybe you should watch his stream from time to time.
Thank you for the insight
I may be completely wrong since it’s been a while since I heard this, but I believe all of the original Paladins were Priests that were trained in martial combat as a way to combat the Horde Death Knights after Northshire Abbey got raided.
If I had to hazard a guess, I would assume it had something to do with the fact that in 5 man content, tanks and healers are each 20% of the group, while in raids, tanks can be as low as 5% (main and off tank) and healers can be much higher.
Oh so they were priests, that makes sense. Guess a hard head warrior has no time for faith in Azeroth lol
Few of the original design team had a well documented and very outspoken hatred for Paladins.
Warriors were intended to be the only real tanks in the game.
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Back in the original beta, I believe the priest spell “Inner Fire” also increased Attack Power… so originally priests were supposed to get up in there and melee.
Perhaps paladins are just an afterthought?
Why have warrior if pally can do everything they can do, and be a main healer? Seems kind of like warrior would be screwed if the hybrids had all the tools.
Well that explains a lot, maybe that is why the itemization for holy Paladins were never plate. But now that an earlier post mentions Paladins being priests, that sort of makes sense. I remember there was a big fuss back when Paladins lost crusader strike, and got the projectile hammer of death. Guess the Paladin wasn’t the favourite child
Do a search on Tigole and Furor hating Paladins.
You can give Paladins similar tools and have them use it in different ways. A paladin having a taunt doesn’t diminish the warrior. Having the Paladin become a useless tank once he runs out of mana is bad design. They knew that and didn’t care.
Vanilla WoW wasn’t the paramount of good game design.
And for the record, Warriors are a hybrid class too. They can Tank and DPS…
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Yes. The hero class of WC3 was an afterthought…
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WC3 showed how one Paladin turned dark, and another one died XD, what kind of hero do you call that…
Paladins were a complete mess. Lots of effort went into the basic design, but they never released a fully working combat system.
The seal system they had in beta was tossed out and we have the current one in classic, which is actually nerfed from the release version as they took SotC and cut off the top damage, making it a useless seal outside of solo grind judging for the tiny increase in holy damage it provides, and nerfed reckoning to 4 charges.
We all know about the horrible hybrid talent trees, and with the revamp, they actually overspecialized them for Paladins that actually want to do something other than heal.
Holy has all its best talents within 21 points, but prot and Ret have their best talents tucked away at over 20 points (vengeance and reckoning). Then instead of giving Paladins a strike at 31 points like Arms warriors or enhancement shaman, they gave them a humanoid incapacitate…
And some nimrod thought prot spec should be based around a tank getting critted…
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In PvP their big thing was bubble/hearth. Can’t tell you how many times I saw this happen in WPvP.
A Pally and their group would come across me an m y group, the pally would bubble/hearth leaving his group to get slaughtered.
It was awesome.
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Someone has to tell the war stories lol.