What is wrong with the DF paladin? many seem upset but the class looks to be performing really well

Classes Paladin
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Ive been watching Dalaran Gaming and watching the ret paladins there absolutely cutting loose in pvp.

The burst seems to be very, very large, and the ret paladin melee skills look to have large range onthem as well.

so what wrong? other than theheavy point investment into speccing into our steed?

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I don’t speak for high end play, but for me it’s more of a high bar of expectations. I was hoping that talents would give way to some old pre-Legion playstyles. But it seems like they chose to recreate the current design with the new talents system. While there were glimpses of hope, like Long Arm of the Law and Exorcism, not much came of it. Same with ranged Holy Paladin.

Also, not a fan of so many consecration talents on ret. Tying so much power to a static ground effect in the game with so much movement seems like a recipe for frustration outside of groups specifically dedicated to make use of it. Bringing Exorcism back just to tie it to Consecration is also annoying.

So yeah, just kind of like expected more.

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There is no clear theme in the spec tree, talents are all over the place. AoE on the left hand and right hand side, ST talents gating AoE talents, a lot of clutter that isn’t needed (Judgment damage increased by 8/16%, 2% Mastery increase, etc.), every second ability called Seal of blablabla without being a seal, Exo being a shadow of what it once was (better not to ressurect it in this form) and to make it even better they nerfed a single talent (Blade of Wrath) which indirectly leads to a lot of other (partly already nerfed) talents being nerfed even more, a lot of bland talents (5% crit on BoJ,…), defensives gutted, mobility even worse than SL.
Also: too much mandatory throughput talents in the class tree.

I could go on like this for pages.

Being able to one-shot other classes in PvP IN BETA isn’t exactly an indicator for well performing class.

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Damage tuning is yet to occur, so what people are experiencing in terms of damage is pretty meaningless.

The spec’s utility isn’t improved. It’s survivability isn’t improved. It’s mobility is worse. There’s a good chance a single build is going to far out perform all the others (in PvE at least), and it’s not a very interesting one.

Compare with Warriors, who have improved mobility, improved self-sustain, etc. Compare with Shaman, who have several builds that all should be viable (assuming sensible tuning).

Also, it seems reasonable to expect something completely new with a new expansion not “Here, you can choose more than one of the things you’ve been able to do in these past few expansions, but mostly in nerfed form”.

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  • Ret paladin plays fine if you like the exact shadowlands play style but has no utility. It will be nerfed to the ground because our tree interactions are so one-track, obvious and simple (think Surv hunter season 4) that we’re doing giga dam on beta right now (which isn’t allowed for paladin ever for some reason)
  • They tried to add caster paladin to holy for some reason and fudged both caster and instant play styles. Also people are confused and think “caster” = “ranged” holy paladin is a thing which it isn’t, shouldn’t and never will be even with these new talents.
  • Prot lost HP gen from avengers shield.
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The spec hasn’t really changed in 6 or 7 years, most specs are getting lots of new stuff or regaining lost abilities.

I don’t want 3 more years of doing exactly the same while everyone else plays 6 or 7 years ahead, it’s not just about number tuning.

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It used to be that we were expected to have low dam because we brought “utility” but then they changed what utility meant and gave every class utility. Except almost every class kept their massive damage too. Then they removed all of rets utility as well…

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Wasn’t there a time where in one of our specs when we cast cons it moved with us? I am sure there was all blizzard has to do is make cons move with us.

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Based on what I have observed. It is based on some vocal minority of players complaining about paladin because they prefer paladin to be turned back into its old iterations back in Cata, WoD etc.

For me and a lot of others, paladin since legion has been becoming more fun. I could not get into Paladin before Legion despite trying to like it each xpac.

I am not a hardcore player anymore though so I cannot comment on number tunings. I just play for fun now.

Paladins will be fine do not worry. I see more paladin around more and more now than way back pre-legion. The Guild I am in is full of Paladins planning to main it in DF. It is also one of the class candidate that I might main as well, choosing between DH, paladin and DK (my longest main)

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I’d love that. There was also Divine Hammer talent in Legion, which hurled damaging hammers around us. That could work too.

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I would like the cons that moves with us but I would also like our judgement to bounce to other targets.

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/facepalm

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Being overtuned to one shot and eventually nerfed < Actually having fun

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What’s wrong is that the devs listened to zero (no hyperbole) feedback from the players.

I won’t say Paladin was better in earlier expansions, I wasn’t playing Paladin back then. I know I am enjoying the current iteration in SL; but there are obvious problems (at least with Ret). The main problems are lack of mobility and survivability tools, and low group utility. So what do the devs do?

  1. They take away a talent that a majority of players were looking forward to (LAotL)
  2. They force Consecration into the rotation which a lot of people seem to dislike
  3. They force you to take Divine Steed (which a lot of players don’t like)
  4. They water down the current Divine Steed even with talents (Less duration)
  5. They take Exorcism, another anticipated ability, and make it useless
  6. They keep “survivability” talents that it seems a majority of players dislike (Shield of Vengeance, Justicar’s Vengeance)

So, in short: (1) they did not improve mobility issues, they made them worse; (2) they did not improve survivability issues; (3) they did not improve group utility; and finally (4) they added nothing that Ret players were excited about

Personally, I don’t think Ret Pallys will be very different from what they are now (which again, I do enjoy); my big problem is that they had so many opportunities to do better - and those are low hanging fruits btw - but they just outright ignored the player base a la typical Blizzard fashion, and then they managed to make it slightly worse

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I want to add this list i just made in another thread, in case it’s still a mystery here:

  • choked our class tree full of throughput talents, so much that we can barely get our utility back, what new utility did we get??? i question in the void
  • gave us Long Arm back just to take it away, because movement is fun, but we don’t deserve fun apparently…
  • gave us Blessing of Spellwarding just to take it away… + nerfed it for Prot, now it’s 5 minutes the same as Blessing of Protection. (at least that’s what i’ve heard, i didn’t check yet)
  • gave us Exorcism without integrating it in our HP combat system, while also simultaneously making us have Consecration down a melee range spell before it can be used in AOE… Exorcism… a ranged spell
  • gave us Radiant Decree… a spell that is a finisher, replacing a generator, while doing less dmg than it and only a bit more than Divine Storm due to not taking into account talents that buff Divine Storm. How messed up is that for an addition?
  • nerfed Ashes to Dust… twice, is this how we balance? we nerf procs instead of % dmg nerf?? Slowing down the rotation, smh
  • they put AW: Might against Crusade for us to chose… AW: Might which only brings up AW to what we currently have, versus Crusade which is an upgrade to what we have on Live
  • they give us Sanctification/Inner Power extra HP generation only to say… ah you have too much HP generation, so they proceed to nerf Blade of Wrath… which affects plenty of talents and effectively slows down our rotation, instead of redesigning Sanctification/Inner Power
  • make us literally waste a point on Hand of Hindrance or Consecrated Ground/Sanctified Ground, these provide almost zero benefit in raiding, to get to Relentless Inquisitor if we happen to want to go and take it or talents after it, with Selfless Healer/Healing Hands we actually benefit from them
  • make us waste 2 points on Fist of Justice… we going to stun bosses now, or what?
  • do i really have to mention that we’re the only melee class without any gap closer/movement ability baseline?
  • do i really have to mention that we’re literally the only class in the game losing mobility going from SL to DF? every other class is gaining mobility, there may be some that are keeping it as it is, but i know that most of them are gaining more
  • and do i have to mention that we’re going to spend 3 points on nerfed mobility?
  • Seal of the Templar is a joke, we’re supposed to keep Crusade Aura on to benefit from an amazing 3 yards range on select abilities, when Retribution Aura(aura lol) is providing us with dps? While rogues get 3 yards no strings attached?
  • as opposed to SL, they’ve put more emphasis on us using Retribution Aura, since they tied a Seraphim proc to it now, so it’s basically mandatory, so we can’t even use Devotion Aura if needed, as we’ll surely take a dps dive because we’re balanced around using Retribution Aura
  • added another degenerate mechanic with Recompense… which we will be balanced around, so you can’t even save sacrifice for an actual intended use, since you’ll want to gain the Recompense dmg on cd
  • added a speed increase of 2% with obduracy, but they’ve managed to screw that up too by placing it after the last gate against the 10% extra dmg for Consecration talent, so we can take it only with a DPS hit…
  • after mentioning Consecration, we’re now married to it basically, a stationary aoe which our dps will be balanced around
  • Empyrean Legacy is clunky to use, 30 second static effect and we need to hold Judgment to proc it on time? It’s a shell of Vanquisher’s Hammer.
  • they make selective nerfs, for example: what’s with Seal of Wrath and Boundless Judgment not even casting Judgment? They are both weak and rng.
  • if you look at the talents left, they’re % increases to select abilities and boring as hell and most of them are undertuned, especially for ret
  • i wonder if i mentioned that we have a truckload of rng talents still?
  • added Divine Protection to our tree against Shield of Vengeance, but added it at 2 minutes, making it inferior to SoV, you need to take 150% of you HP in dmg to equal its protection… and you still don’t gain anything else from it, with SoV you gain dmg.
  • our mobility and defensives are almost all on the GCD, every other class have most of them off the gcd, we’re the opposite.
  • Justicar’s Vengeance is still in the game… really?
  • Holy Avenger unchanged from 3 minutes where nobody uses it, against Divine Purpose which everyone likes and uses, what’s the point in keeping HA the same?
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Don’t forget, we asked for Retribution Aura to be reworked, and they double downed on it.

Also for Prot/Holy, they gated Crusader Aura, a QoL aura, behind a talent, lol.

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Covered it… who thinks up these design decisions??

Ret and Crusader Aura should be passives… as they were in BFA.
I remember going against their decision then for making them auras in SL, i was told that it’s a good thing, we have more auras!
Can someone list what improvements Ret has in DF over SL? I’d be curious to see such a list.

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We are looking for a cohesive fluid rotaiton that feels good and where our fillers/spenders do something

We are looking for a movement ability that doesnt feel terrible to use and performs terribly

We are looking for grp/raid utlity that isn 3% dmg reduction no one notices or cares about

We are looking for defensives/utility that isnt the on gcd and doesnt make us the squishies melee ever and doesnt have these vanilla cooldown of like 5 to 3 minutes, makes it impossible to use in any way that matters.

We actually DONT want the huge burst youre talking aobut, we want damage spread out across our kit and outside of wings rather than huge bursts that hinder our balancing just cause we have it, like not having defensives/movement cause someone with so much damage getting to you fast is not fair.

Our damage being high right now doesnt matetr any, if its too high they will nerf us down and then we will be stuck with an undesireable toolkit that does no damage.

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  1. Got battle rez
  2. …

…give me a min

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It’s been 2 minutes… is it really so hard to think about the multitude of improvements that we were blessed with going into DF???

Hmm, maybe we should ask the devs?

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