Templar Paladin Feedback

Classes Paladin
1

Let me begin by saying thank you to Blizzard for dropping 8 more of these Hero Talent Trees today. I can tell that you guys are a bit surprised by the response to Hero Talents overall and really want to get these out early so as much genuine iteration can happen as possible.

With that said, I am not very interested in what Templar is showing me so far on paper. Of course, I would have to test this to give genuinely effective feedback.

I know the team appreciates precise feedback that is right to the point. I will do my best now to go through a few things point by point. We will see if others feel any similar to myself.

THEME:
The Good
Templar stop at nothing to fulfil their divine purpose of bringing justice and purging the wicked
You guys nailed it right on the head here.

The Bad
They call down hammers of light and unleash devastating combinations of Physical and Holy attacks that vanquish their enemies.
While I greatly appreciate you guys choosing to include Physical damage, the hammers of light isn’t connecting for me. Templar’s scream swords, polearms and shields.

Overall, I was hoping for something named Templar, to reflect more accurately, what Templars are in real historical events.

I understand that might not be the goal at all, as you guys have said this is more based in Warcraft.

Final thought here, I would maybe prefer a rename of Templar. Templar just makes me way too excited for all the things we will almost certainly never get in World of Warcraft with Retribution Paladins.

I’m looking for a more physical, battle-hardened brawler. Ideally with a shield and 2-handed weapon. A more “warrior-like” Paladin if you will.

Talents/Abilites
Light’s Guidance:
For the talents and ability designs themselves, I will say it is a bold direction to add in a 5 Holy Power Spender that isn’t a new ability. I really enjoy that decision as more button bloat should be avoided when possible at this stage of the game’s life. Very smart and clever of you guys with replacing Wake of Ashes after being cast. This is exactly how Hero Talents need to be designed across the majority of specs.

I am not sure at all how this would feel to play, but I think it’s an interesting choice to start with.

If I can be honest some more, the majority of all remaining talents in this Hero Spec tree do not excite me very much. They are by no means, “bad”, but they are leaning on the dull side.

For Whom the Bell Tolls, is likely the next most exciting talent behind Light’s Guidance for me.

Unrelenting Charger
This is the single talent that can make or break this idea of Templar you guys have started. If the team is really dead set on sticking to this style of theme for Templar, please do everything within your reasonable power to make Divine Steed as exciting as possible!

The additional 2 second duration and 30% speed increase for the first 3 seconds is decently useful. But its by no means cool or awesome.

I would love to see some serious iteration here. Make this talent augment Divine Steed in a more impactful manner similar to Steed of Glory, the pvp talent for Prot. Or, completely continue to augment Divine Steed in new ways. Let us directly charge to targets with Divine Steed. Something fresh and exciting for this spell.

These are just my initial thoughts off the cuff after looking at what you have shared today while at work on my computer.

I’ll close with this, as someone who has played Wow and a Ret Paladin throughout nearly 2 decades of that journey, I just wish this spec gave me more hype than what it has. It’s by no means bad, just playing it safe.

But very eager to keep the conversation going!

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Making Divine Steed charge to a target like Warrior’s Intervene x Shield Charge (didn’t they have a charge that could target ally or enemy at one point?) would be really fun. Have it charge to an ally and heal them or charge to an enemy and deal holystrike damage (in an aoe? Have the steed glow with holy light and explode on contact). If you don’t have a target, it works as normal.

5 Likes
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Petition to change the name of Templar to Hammertime!

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Agreed, it should be renamed. Maybe zealot suits it better.

Problem is, for prot’s this is dangerous, as it means less SoTR casts, for ret if you pvp with justicar’s, it means less self healing. This skill also decreases viability of DS builds.

Also ret’s already got 4 point spenders if you use vanguard, so this don’t bring anything that maybe a temp buff can bring to make DS put a debuff/cause hammers to fall on contact of it.

This will be DOA for templar’s, herald has the better option on it’s movement speed boost. They need to lay off on adding more stuff to steed, it already serves it’s purpose of flavor and give a different flavor of movement for them.

To add, templar starting with wake’s is an issue. The goal of hero talents is to not rely on end talents. If wake is so important to have, it needs to moved to the top 3 rows where everyone must take it.

I also got an issue that the hero talents in full feels to closely with avalanche from the DK frost tree, where is causes something to fall form the sky and provide a debuff after a condition is met. It’s not original. They need to try better on the templar tree.

2 Likes
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Overall I like the talent tree a lot. I think its pretty clear that it is the offensive option for Ret and Prot, while Herald/Lightsmith are the defensive options respectively.

Not that big of a fan of the isolation effects in the Templar tree. It kind of shoe horns the tree as the Raid option for ret/prot and I have no idea how on earth they’re going to balance that for Ret PvP without putting pvp modifiers on everything.

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Yeah, from the name drops it was apparent that “herald of thr sun” would be a spec focused on radiant/holy damage and the general “blast them with the Light” nature of Paladins. I expected Templar to embody the martial side of the class, focusing more on melee abilities and holystrike damage from them, not just “make it rain hammers everywhere around you”.

Flavor and playstyle-wise, Herald Holy is probably what I’m now looking forward to the most, rather than Templar Prot.

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This was my first response to seeing it when I saw it in another thread.

I don’t know about templars… Maybe I’m thinking about it incorrectly because people seem to think highly of it.

If I’m playing ret, and I’m in an arena. I cast wake of ashes, get 5 HP cast the Hammer of light, I get 1 stack for the falling hammer. I get another 4 for the buff over 8 seconds. While that’s active I’m trying to extend the buff as long as I can and spend as much as I can to generate more falling hammers. Let’s be generous and say I manage to stack up 20 falling hammers.

That still means I need to cast Wake 2 more times to get access to hammer of light to activate the mini game of maximizing the falling hammers to access the keystone which is just a perfectly timed divine purpose proc?

Every 1.5minutes worth of cooldowns used exactly on cooldown and when ready again IF I can keep good up time, and maximize my falling hammers… I get the big reward of a, well not even a divine purpose proc because it’s only usable on hammer of light and it doesn’t buff the next cast, not even 5 free holy power because, but just a free cast of hammer of light…

I think I somehow like the sunspots better, and that feels bad because you’ll never get anyone to stand in those things. But the laser beams do sound cool and you get a divine purpose proc just for using wake. Numbers can change everything I guess, but it doesn’t sound very appealing to me.

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The whole Templar thing vs Herald kinda just made it = Herald for AOE, M+ while Templar is more of a ST hero spec. There’s even talents that made hammers deal more dmg when hitting a singular target. And considering the existence of Lightsmith, unless Lightsmith number are way WAY up and the other 2 is far weaker, no sane paladins regardless of spec will look towards Lightsmith. It will likely be a dead hero spec or perhaps a meme spec for all it’s worth.

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Hate to break it to you, but lightsmith is still incredibly competitive due to its external nature. Things that huff other players are just insane especially for non dps specs. It’s why it’s very important to fix the issues with lightsmith instead of assuming it’s gonna be a dead hero tree.

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Maybe competitive but the effort into putting in all the placeables is not likely to appeal to players. At least not to me.

Herald/Templar likely changes your rotational cycle a bit here and there but it’s unlikely to force you to step out of the way doing something we dun normally do. Like placing a light ball on the floor hoping ppl will take it. We never have to do that. The only reticle skill we get currently is Final Reckoning and even that can resolved with a @player macro.

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Herald only value for pvp is the 10% spender damage which can change with tuning. The sunspots have zero value. Templar looks better so far for pvp. Hammer of light needs its cost removed though, or at least brought to 3 and maybe have it interact with all the modifiers like dawn, judgement since its a “spender” but 5 feels to all in for a skill that wont do much damage.

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I honestly love what I’m seeing for most of Templar Paladin in how it looks like it’ll play (from a Ret perspective). A new active ability that replaces WoA after using it reduces bloat so that’s a plus. Also a new damage holy power spender is EXACTLY what I wanted on Ret. Although in terms of aesthetic I think I’d prefer a sword emphasis over even MORE hammers, but I digress. There are a few gripes/suggestions on my end though:

1.) That capstone…I think I speak for every Ret Pally when I say that we do NOT want another Divine Arbiter. Having to wait for 50 hammers to hit enemies and then we can use the new ability twice in a row. Just sounds like the 25 stacks of Divine Arbiter but it does something different. That’s pretty boring and sounds underwhelming from a gameplay perspective (just like Divine Arbiter). Maybe something that uses Avenging Wrath? The other 2 Pally hero specs use avenging wrath in the capstone, Templar could use it for its capstone also.

2.) Unrelenting Charger seems redundant. We have multiple talents that affect our divine steed in the normal tree. What might be cool for Templar is to have that talent option be something that provides immediate movement, like a dash? It could be like Fel Rush but with a longer cooldown, and it would replace Divine Steed. Then you can choose between Divine Steed or Light Dash :tm: depending on your build/situation.

Overall excited, but could use some work.

2 Likes
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My interpretation of these talents have been different than some others. So I guess there are just a lot of questions.

I’ve heard some people suggest that sunspots are not like spots on the ground, but dots/hots.
Also there is questions about the range of hammer of light / is it a wake of ashe type ability or is it a melee or ranged type ability. Are the falling hammers kind of like a low range starfall ability.

If hammer of light is a melee range ability, and the falling hammers are like 10 yard range, and sunspots are actually just dots/hots I could see sunspots being better in pvp in some situations especially vs casters when it can be a struggle to stay in melee range for extended periods of time.

I’ve grown more interested than my first read through at least.

1 Like
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Sunspots apply from spenders and are created “on your target”

Illumine talent snares enemies and buffs allies movement speed. It sounds pretty clear to me sunspots are basicalli pillars of light. The wording is far far from a “dot”.

Unless whoever wrote it has worse english skills than me. Or maybe they see feedback and turn them into dots after seeing peoples reaction to these pillars or patches of light

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Huh? They are a DoT, it literally says “over 8 seconds” in the initial talent which is damage/healing over time. The speed increase will be for 8 seconds the sunspot is applied to your target, same for the snare if you apply it to an enemy. Where is the confusion about it being a DoT/HoT or not? A later talent increases the duration by 2 sec so it is a 10 second DoT/HoT as well. It is perfectly clear.

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They are not on the ground, not sure who is saying that but that is very clearly not how it works. It is just a straight up DoT/HoT. It lasts 8 seconds on whatever two targets you heal after you press holy prism (for holy). A later talent increases that duration to 10 seconds up from 8. The DoT/HoT stays on the target for that duration, which is what makes it a Damage over Time/Healing over Time effect.

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Perhaps the description part that grants the healing/damage to nearby allies or enemies is what is causing the confusion?

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You get 3 stacks from HoL, it drops 3 on nearby enemies. (3)
You get minimum 4 from Shake the heaven, if you play well maybe you get like 7 out of it? So 14 sec of active buff. (10 stacks)

While this is going on you might hit 4-5 spenders? (18-20)

But then all your spenders will still give you 1 outside the Shake the heaven effect so within the next 16sec you get maybe another 5 stacks?

So about 24-25 maybe per 30sec?
It’s tight, you’re right.
Maybe it’s meant that we take DP with it?

The second WoA won’t be as fruiful because we won’t have DT generation to boost spender usage…

What would the opener on a pack look like, says we want to maximize using the effect extension and spenders.
Wings-WoA-FR-Spend?-DT(free generation)-HoL and then use CS and BoJ and spend on 3HP everytime?

I wanted to ask you Luth.

I suggested this in the feedback threads.

How would you feel if HoL, instead of being triggered after using WoA and being a 5HP, replaced damage spenders on Divine Purpose procs?

(They directly reference DP in the description after all, in fact I’m surprised it has nothing to do with it)

Forget it has a 10% proc for the moment.

I feel like everything can stay relatively the same and the stack mechanic wouldn’t feel so constricted if it Procs when you reach it instead of being hidden behind WoA 30sec CD.

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19

Good question!

That’s really hard to answer and I think I’ll need some more time to think it through.

But I can absolutely see how having HoL activate from some other mechanic outside of WoA or even EoT helps not make it feel so restricted gameplay-wise. Like what if I am Prot but I don’t want to drop an EoT right in this moment just to unlock HoL? It could also help by not locking us into certain talent picks as well. That is still a lesser issue for me overall but I see the point in those arguments.

This all really leads me into some questions for Blizzard. I’m going to have to write up a feedback response on that main thread and ask them! We have gotten to the point now I think in Templar where we need more information and context surrounding how some things work. We also would need to know what’s changing in our Class and Spec trees for Paladin. Is anything going to be redesigned?

Will Vanguard of Justice still exist for Ret for example? If it does, it obviously can’t impact HoL because we can only hold 5 Holy Power at this point. Does Divine Purpose also apply to HoL making it free to press? What’s the range on this ability? Can we only press it once after using WoA/EoT in that 12 sec window? Or can we continuously keep trying to build up 5 Holy Power to drop as many HoL as we can in that 12 sec window once it’s activated?

Extra note, when I first picked up playing Prot over the last few days, I instantly understood what you have been saying by Prot might need a rework. My first thought was, why is my Avenger’s Shield not generating Holy Power? It feels disconnected from the rest of my kit. No direct attack in Ret’s toolkit doesn’t generate Holy Power for example.

I also originally felt like Prot was the spec who should have gained the addition of an effect like Crusading Strikes. I didn’t like having to press my Hammer of the Righteous at all. Essentially, something similar to how Prot Warrior plays with Devastator. To my surprise, I actually really didn’t hate pressing consecration either.

But now after some more time I figured out how to play Prot, at least in PvP. I was using many of the wrong talents and also needed Blessed Hammer instead of Hammer of the Righteous for example. This was a much better feeling for my gameplay.

Overall now, I’m not sure that Prot might need a rework. Because for example if Avenger’s Shield did generate Holy Power, there wouldn’t be much going on for our rotation besides just spamming whatever is not currently on cooldown. Not saying that is your reason or suggestion for needing a Prot rework though. Just imagine a lot of players would say something like that.

I have grown to like the random defensive benefits provided from pressing Avenger’s Shield on its own outside of SotR and WoG. So that piece of how Prot plays is working for me now and I’m enjoying it. Heck, I even went 6-0 and then 4-2 in my first 2 Solo Shuffle matches.

I’m curious now, what exactly were you thinking that needs reworked for Prot that we haven’t gotten yet in Dragonflight? What areas feel bad?

Keep in mind I’m so new to playing Prot and only have played PvP still. Will actually try to run PvE content this week for more understanding.

But I’ll get back with you with some better perspective on your Divine Purpose idea soon!

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As it is right now it “works”, it’s holding together.

As someone who tanked before the AS change, it feels bad each time I use it, I can’t shake the feeling.

Leaving aside my personal feeling when I press it.

My main concern is that Paladins are supposed to work with Holy Power.

Ret now is a very good example with everything in our kit interacting with it in a way and the things that doesn’t aren’t things you have to actively manage.

My problem with Prot is that they made the AS change to curb the uptime of SotR, that was the reason they candidly gave and never walked back.
It’s a failure, it didn’t reduce it and we kept spamming it despite the change.
In the end, they made a pointless change.

Now that this is said, back to the main concern.
The change also creates an entire segment of the Prot tree that has absolutely NOTHING to do with Holy power.
Every Avenger shield talent there is does not interact with the main gimmick of Paladin and serve only to try and make it an attractive button to press despite being outside the core mechanic.

So it makes you want to press it on CD for the defensive power it gives but you also want to press Sotr because you need it up at all time but it requires pressing other spell than AS.
They work independently of each other, worse they feel like they are competing with each other instead of working together.
It’s like you’re trying to balance 2 different gameplay.

Honestly if they are to compete, I would have preferred if they made AS a spender (with an appropriate amount of care to make it work obviously) and increase the generation.
At least the spell would be working within the current main mechanics instead of outside of it.

EDIT:

Forgot to mention, Prot active mitigation (SotR) also happens to be it’s main damage spender.
While this makes it really simple to play it also makes it impossible to create a paradigm where we don’t spam if it’s literally the only thing we can spend HP on.
Sure we have WoG, but it’s purely a healing spell.

SotR having a dual role is a problem if their goal is to reduce it’s uptime and defensive strength.
Hence again why I think making AS a spender would have been a solution to explore to create that choice.

1 Like