“There I was, minding my own business in Light’s Hope. When suddenly a band of monstrous cruel Hordies ambushed us! Well, long story short…I ran away and my group died!”
“The end!”
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Awarded as Best Seller by Chief Editor of Classic Pally Times
Based on Vanilla era Blizzard posts, Prot Paladin was supposed to be a tank. It just wasn’t supposed to be as good as Warrior or even Druid. The intent was that you’d be able to tank up to 20 player raids, but not really 40.
Blizzard thought people would be more accepting of hybrids in non-healing roles than they actually were, so they adjusted it in TBC.
Nah. The conversion of Paladin tier sets from melee-centric to pure heal-caster was based on raider player feedback.
The logical fallacy that anyone capable of doing things equally would delegitimize Warriors as tanks is hilariously infantile and ignores the fact that people have unique consumer preferences.
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It was designed to be an easy start class to play. Plain and simple. They even said that many times. Which is why in TBC when WoW became huge they gave many classes some love. Instead of just being the easy spec to start with and move on latter.
The original tier sets were not 100% melee centric. They were a weird attempt at creating a hybrid set. The original T1 has 3 pieces with +healing on it, and then a mix of tanking/DPS stats on the others.
That’s bs. The original class designers admitted that the reason Paladins are missing things like a basic taunt is because they never finished developing the hybrids.
I mean, does anyone think shaman having to burn talent points to parry or use 2h weapons is good game design?
The major issue with classic paladins comes from the fact that they were actually built too closely to the original lore.
Look at their incarnations in warcrafts 2 and 3: Melee combatants with support spells. What did the warcraft 3 one have? A heal, a bubble, an armor aura, and a mass resurrection. Great stuff for turning a battle, but completely useless if you actually wanted to kill something.
Sure enough, come WoW they’re still that same support class. They hand out blessings, replenish health, and get a solid whack in with nice big 2 hander if they have time, but that’s about it.
During the first phases of vanilla prot was really overpowered in small scale pvp. There were numerous cases of <50 prot paladins beating geared level 60s in duels, I saw these fights with my own eyes, it was crazy. When the word got out prot damage was ninja nerfed into the ground to prevent outcry from horde players.
By phase 3 ret paladins were becoming somewhat viable in pvp with good gear and were capable of high single target dps, spot healing, and utility similarly to enh shamans but more gear dependent. They paired well with arms warrior MS and rogues for bursting down healers and dps.
Holy paladins by default were the go to spec for both pve and pvp for obvious reasons.
Prot never really recovered till classic was over, but was still viable for dungeon tanking and duels, just not as good 1v1 as a ret with hand of rag could be.
The original set was changed several times. It was made for a player to judgment a mob and melee it to generate a group heal proc for passive healing.
Compare priest spell flexibility for healing compared to Paladins. They were NEVER intended to be a primary healing class.
I mean under the description of Pally they literally had it listed as a beginner easy class to play. I am just stating what it was listed as when they released the game. Whether Devs had other plans etc… sure I bet they did while making this huge MMO at that time.
Doesn’t change the fact Pally was listed and stated to be a beginner easy starter class to play. Even said that on stage when they were talking about it.
Not trying to ruffle feathers. Just stating simply they were supposed to be easy and simple to play. This is what “BLIZZARD” labeled them as.
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Okay. I’m not sure why that matters at all. We know how players used them, no matter what the original intent of the class was going to be.
I’m talking about the actual developers describing how things actually worked in Vanilla wow in interviews in the last few years.
The original design concept. Protection oriented support. It was designed for you to have your enemies attention on you, disruption, and prevent harm to your allies.
Take this to heart though: you play a paladin and talents were designed to give flavor, not pigeonhole you to a role. 95% of your capabilities come from gear, your talents are like icing.
http://www.classicwowtalents.appspot.com/index.html?talent=1124125_2
People were wanting more compatibility with roles instead of classes so you ended up with revamps that drastically increased role capability compared to the earlier trees.
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Wow is that the original talent tree from 2004? I started playing from back then, but now I am an old man I have forgotten so much…
It wasn’t just Prot paladins, all paladins. Seal of the crusader was THE damage seal. Your damage wasn’t normalized like it is now. You used to have the extra damage from AP, the extra speed, and a damage reduction that almost didn’t exist. Seal of the crusader was awesome, and I still use it sometimes to remind myself of the fond memories.
Throw ideas at the wall then see what sticks.
Yes it is, classes were much closer in terms of abilities before the revamps and patch 1.8 dualwield change. That said they were much weaker than 1.12 and even MC would be more than just a pug raid.
Paladins always had that “we’re a support role” vibe for me until Wrath, when they got a lot of boosts that increased their power to be main tanks. Even post-Wrath, they still maintained the support role style. They are the most defensive oriented tanks when you look at their BFA toolkit vs. the others (DKs are aggressive, Warriors are tactical, etc.).
It’s what fascinated me about paladins even back during BC (joined 10 days before BC’s patch launched, was trying out rogue during then).
They were but the first iteration was a weird hybrid thing. I looked up an archived version before I posted.
There is also no version of Paladin T1 that is purely about melee. Melee stats and set bonuses exist, but it’s not a set that is “melee centric” like some people claim.
I also didn’t say Paladins were intended to be primary healers. I said they weren’t intended to be viable tanks for raids, because that’s literally what Blizzard said during Vanilla.
So much info has been provided, thanks everyone! After reading all this, I think the general idea is that the protection wasn’t ready for prime time.