Significant Paladin Changes Are Needed

Classes Paladin
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As a long time player (2004) and a Paladin main (Holy Paladin, specifically), I just feel like this post needs to be created despite several other threads existing that point out the massive flaws and issues with the class as a whole in Dragonflight. First, I just want to start off with the positives and clarify that while I feel like the class needs a big change, Paladin is still playable and I do have fun. I think Dragonflight is fun, and as a PVPer, I may not agree with every aspect of the game and its current conditions, but I do feel that the game is in a much better state than previous expansions.

While I feel like the Paladin tree has some cool ideas and it doesn’t HAVE to be the most creative thing ever, there are just so many talents that flow into each other that provide such small benefit that I wonder how this made it into the final product of Dragonflight:

Cavalier, Seasoned Warhorse, Divine Steed (the triangle in the middle of the main tree near the top):
I just don’t understand why we’re funneled and forced into taking these three talents for any spec that provide such meager bonuses. Ok, we take divine steed because that’s a no-brainer. But now I have to take Seasoned Warhorse (1 second improvement to my divine steed), and Cavalier (grants me 2 charges of divine steed). For any non-Paladin players reading this, Divine Steed is our 45 second cooldown that grants us mobility (hop on horse and 100% speed for 4 seconds lol).

Lol like I don’t even know how to write a polite sentence to describe what this looks like. I’m the least mobile class and I HAVE to spend THREE points to gain my bad mobility.

I’ll go onto my next issue, which is the weird and awkward focus on consecration and it’s hot garbage benefits, so let’s talk about …
Golden Path, Seal of Mercy (far left side near the bottom):

Lmfao I just can’t stop smiling because after I returned to the game from the heap that was Shadowlands, I read the talents and thought to myself, “Well, consecration must be pretty good, right?” and I’m still waking up every morning with a sweat and a bad dream about using a global to consecrate the ground below me to get that sweet 600 (yes, you read that correctly, 600 with no following zeroes) heal every second on my 370(ish)k HP pool. And not only does it HEAL me and my PARTY, but I just spent THREE talent points to allow this sweet move to heal me and provide extra healing (Seal of Mercy provides a 100% bonus effect to lowest HP individual). Ok, so I guess it’s healing me for 1200 now. Big quality of life improvement and worth the points? No.

Well, in theory, this isn’t a bad idea though, right? It’s kind of cool, but the issue is that I’m walking around a lot, you know? I might walk to the other pillar in arena, or I may have an encounter in PvE that makes me move and why would anyone be piled up on top of me anyway for a consecration heal? Like, does this ever really happen? No, it doesn’t.

And let’s not forget about Judgement of Light, Afterimage, and Aspirations of Divinity (my favorite three step talent choices in the game so far):

Listen, Judgement of Light is cool and you butchered it, but I understand how it could be overpowered if not tuned right. But listen, when my warrior friend hits the bad guy and gets that sweet 332 (yes, you did read that correctly … 332) for the next 25 hits, he doesn’t even notice it. I mean, why would I bother with judgement of light when a fury warrior can just POP A HEAL on his own, outhealing judgement of lights accumulated benefit over a 25 second charge span.

Quick Math: 332 x 25 (charges of judgement of light) = 8,300 lol

Listen, JoL is cool and it’s even fine sitting at its position, but like, is the calculation wrong or am I just not connecting the dots here? 8,300 over 25 charges. I could break this down further but I’m sure you see the point – the benefit is low.

Afterimage is actually cool by design but suffers because Word of Glory is like drinking a sip of water after a literal full marathon run. It’s not enough. WoG heals for a low amount outside of Wings, and 30% of bad is just worse.

Aspirations of Divinity. Not terrible design but you’re kind of tricking me into thinking I should go melee that DH for some sweet 2% intellect benefit over 6 seconds. This is a talent designed to enforce the dreamed up vision of melee paladins and I just disagree with entirely but understand the fantasy. IF you insist on it, you need to give a hard look at overall dmg reduction that my armor provides and better CDs that cannot be removed. The playstyle isn’t awful, but the synergy of spells and the way the class performs doesn’t line up with the idea of being in melee range in PVP. It never has.

and to avoid this post being too long, I’ll end with our best talent in the tree, Touch of Light/Incandescence: :grinning:

We’re seeing a cool trend of all my mid to late talents providing less than 1% bonuses to my actions, such as damage, or healing. Touch of Light basically does nothing, and while I’m trying not to quote others here, it seriously does nothing – like, you do realize that it provides such small benefit, I’m assuming it’s bugged, right? Is this bugged? Hello?

And the other option, another consecration talent, provides extra oomph to that consecration I’m always dropping to help me and my team – definitely worth the global and the output it provides. No, this isn’t serious and I’m hoping you’ve caught onto my style of writing by now.

Also, you should really just change the Holy Paladin mastery. It is bad. How many times do you have to have your players tell you this? It’s BAD. Nobody likes it, I’m at a disadvantage because of it, and more importantly, it just reinforces my belief you’re a bit lost on the approach of the class and how to balance/design talents and spells.

5 Likes
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We’re the kings at filler/awful talents. Can’t say much about the holy tree but the ret tree isn’t that much better, there only basically exists 1 build and maaaybe you swap 1 point at the end depending if u want st or aoe.

Filler talents are also present and some of them actually replace/negate others.

I don’t think this is a finished product but it was released anyway.

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The Paladin class talent tree is by far the worst of this expansion. No cool spells, no hybridization opportunities, useless point-waster talents…

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I’ve posted it here before, the healing talents that heal for amounts in the hundreds shouldn’t be in the game.

Talents that take 8-10 swings for ~1% of your HP are silly. If an ability takes 5-7 minutes to replace your health bar that ability has essentially no value, it’s a tiny pad to the meter, and that’s it. What it isn’t is affective healing. The judgement talent should have another option for more healing per swing for the next 5-10 swings or something, it needs this plus the overall healing buffed.

A few players getting 1-3% of their HP in healing over 5-7 seconds doesn’t seem game breaking. It would be like a weak HoT ticking.

We have both healing and Damage talents that don’t add 1% some of them are sub .5%, you have to take 3 talents to enhance one ability in some cases to get close to ~1%.

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+1

Yes, we need a lot of help. The biggest issue going for us is that our talents are awful. A bunch of talents are just dead in the water as they are comically under-tuned (Judgement of Light, Touch of Light, Tyr’s Deliverance), and almost all the rest are severely meh. I run Golden Path and Seal of Mercy for raiding and even on the most AoE heavy fights, they clock in at around 4-6% of my overall healing. My healing is almost entirely tied up in Holy Shock and Light of Dawn.

Our overall HPS is doing okay and we have some great utility cooldowns in the form of Aura Mastery and Blessing of Sacrifice, but I am getting absolutely reamed by Pres Evokers and Holy Priests on the meters who regularly do 20-33% more healing than me despite both of us parsing roughly the same for our respective classes. I at least feel useful knowing that I’m saving the tanks’ asses through double beacon. But it feels bad lacking toolkits to counter heavy HPS sections as Avenging Wrath just doesn’t do a whole lot versus the likes of Hymn, Tranq, Healing Tide, Rewind, etc.

I also take issue with our rotation. Holy Light and Flash of Light are depressingly weak right now and do not fit neatly in our rotation as we are slaves to hitting Holy Shock on cooldown. It is often better for me to stop healing and do nothing if my Holy shock is ~1.5 seconds or less away from coming off CD, and that feels bad. We need a faster Holy Light cast time and Flash of Light needs to be beefier for them to get more use - maybe change Infusion of Light bonuses and have Holy Light generate a HP by default. I’d also like to see Holy Shock have two charges and maybe a slightly longer CD so it’s not dominating our rotation as badly.

I also agree our mastery is bad. It’s especially bad for PvPers, but as a raid healer I also dislike it and I actively avoid mastery on gear because I cannot count on it to be useful.

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I’m surprised it’s even that high.

I haven’t done any “real” healing in a long time though, not in terms of progression. Mostly keys I was over geared for, 8-12s helping out guildies get keys on alts.

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Oh I misspoke. Looking back at our logs it’s closer to 5%

5% is roughly where most of the more useful talents like Holy Prism are at.

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I literally laughed so hard when I saw goldenpath healing me for 520 or something on pure honor gear pvp scaled in arena. 520 on mi 320k hp pool not considering the instant 10% dampening and ramping up damp per minute. Lets not ignore all the specs that have healing reductions.

Back in SL on full rival2 gear golden path healed me for 999 on a 90k something hp pool with 42% vers. Its just sad

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I think JoL could use a buff in pvp specifically, but for pve it has to remain the way it is. Passive healing you get for pushing a button you normally push probably shouldn’t be crazy high. Golden path does a lot of healing, usually 4-5k hps if used properly, so it’s okay.

Overall though our general tree is so embarrassing.

As others have said, we just have a bunch of filler talents that have nothing to do with the class. We have a very controversial capstone that most people do not like (dusk and Dawn), and the rest are abilities/talents we’ve already had which would be okay if (again) the rest of the tree wasn’t filler talents like: 10% cons damage, 10% cs damage, 4% haste, 8% mastery in wings, 4% armor and crit, 2% speed and avoidance, 2% intellect from csing, 8% healing/damage from dawn, etc.

We have some of the most unique class wide utility in the game right next to shamans, and our class tree could not be any more generic than it is right now. Then you look at shaman and see that the developers understood how to approach their unique utility.