WTF?! Massive nerfs to Prot Paladin on the PTR

Classes Paladin
1

Honestly, I don’t understand what Blizzard is doing here. Paladin are a step above Druid and that’s it but these changes on the PTR are completely nonsensical. They’ve straight up murdered the bottom of the talent tree.

First off, they’ve moved both Eye of Tyr and Righteous Protector to capstone talents. Previously, these talents would be used to go further into the Center and Right of the Prot Tree.

Now, we’re either FORCED to take 2 points in Gift of the Golden Valkyr (which we only ever took 1 point in because the second point isn’t worth it) or we need to take 2 points in Faith’s Armor (which nobody was taking at all because the talent is garbage and undertuned for it’s place in the tree).

This has now blocked off Final Stand, Blessing of Spellwarding, Bulwark of Righteous Fury, and Eye of Tyr.

Looking at my talent calc for M+, I used to be able to take:

Soaring Shield

1/2 Gift of the Golden Valkyr

Eye of Tyr

2/2 Righteous Protector

Divine Toll

Final Stand

Bulwark of Righteous Fury

Divine Resonance

With these changes as they are on PTR now,

I can really only choose 2 of Bulwark of the Righteous Fury, Eye of Tyr, Final Stand, or Righteous Protector.

In addition, with the move of Divine Toll to the class tree, it’s a must pickup. Meaning I need to sacrifice my already slim desirable talents from the class tree because I need to pickup all three capstone talents. So I’m losing the passive Haste or Mastery from the bottom of the tree most likely.

So, in total, I’m losing:

1-2 of Bulwark of Righteous Fury, Eye of Tyr, Final Stand, and Righteous Protector

Haste/Mastery out of the Class tree in order to grab all three capstone talents

What am I gaining out of this? Nothing.

This really sucks. My Paladin has been my 3rd tank in line of tanks I’ve messed around with this patch but it may be headed for the closet along with my Druid.

13 Likes
2

Yeah this new spec tree is brutal, sucks that we are potentially eating a nerf to help ret out… oh well… on to brewmaster i guess…

2 Likes
3

Gotta say, they screwed up the tree now. It could work if they didn’t make it heavy on 2 point investments to progress. Really screws up the tree and play style.

Not a fan unless they neuter the nodes to 1 points.

2 Likes
4

That sucks. Blizzard might think the population of paladin is still too large.

1 Like
5

Yeah this is grim… Right after the damage buff finally put us almost competetive for single target damage, this is going to cripple us back down immediately. Definitely worried we’re getting the guardian druid treatment just to save retribution.

6

Yeah the Prot tree looks terrible after the changes for 10.0.7 PTR… We are giving-up a lot of our best DPS talents while also somehow losing on some of the important defensive abilities…

And more importantly some of the most fun abilities that let us have consistent access to our defensives or things like Final Stance are much harder to take now.

Up to this point most of my Prot Paladin feedback has been quite positive and I think the spec is in a very good place right now compared to most other tanks (Prot Warrior being the outlier)… Like it’s not OP but well in-line where most tanks are and very enjoyable to play, the proposed talent tree in the 10.0.7 PTR should they stay as they are now will severely diminish Prot Paladin not only in terms of performance but also fun.

7 Likes
7

I’d take this all with a grain of salt, for now. There may be changes in the coming future. We’re in a bit of an…uncertain time.

8

Yeah I really hope it’s just some weird work-in-progress version that happened while they are working on moving Divine Toll to the class tree and not actually an intended talent tree re-work…

Which I know it’s very possible…

But just in case this is something they are actually considering I wanted to point out my concerns.

4 Likes
9

Blizzard can make some simple changes to the new talent tree to mitigate some of these issues:

  1. Make Gift of the Golden Valkyr a 1 point talent.
  2. Righteous Protector keep as a 1 point talent, but double the CD reduction it gives (like the current 2/2 talent does)
  3. Just remove Faith’s Barricade OR make it do a flat percentage damage reduction and cost only 1 talent point.
  4. Crusader’s Judgement should be baseline OR the effect should be included with Greater Judgement on the class tree.
  5. Make Divine Steed baseline and put Cavalier + Seasoned Warhorse into a single talent point.
1 Like
10

Looking at the tree again im reminded just how many of our talents are 2 point gates that just crush any hopes of build creativity. Didn’t they just put this design style to sword with the brewmaster tree that just got like 3 talent points freed up on their last update?

If Faith in the Light, Faith’s Armor, Tyr’s Enforcer, Strength of Conviction, and Ferren Marcus’ Favor were 1 point talents this tree would be incredible. I think golden valk and bulwark of order pose an interesting enouch choice on gaining extra survivability as 2 point talents, the rest feel like excessive tree constraints.

Also… I don’t know how intentional this is… But our talent tree looks like a shield, and I’ve started to notice other trees have some stylistic choices in how they are designed. I legitimately hate this. If some art direction hamstrings our god damn talent trees that art direction is actually garbage.

4 Likes
11

What’s concerning to me is that we are getting pretty big nerfs while Blood DK is getting buffs and OP prot warrior is left untouched. I might trust Blizzard to actually respond to paladin class feedback if they bothered attempting to during Beta, but I’m inclined to think they won’t based on experience.

12

I am hoping its just work in progress.

Problem is I wouldnt put it past blizzard to be this stupid

5 Likes
13

As you shouldn’t. People should always be critical of poor changes being implemented. I have seen a few white knights trying to defend Blizzard. If these changes go live it is a significant nerf. Never give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt. I agree with moving Divine Toll to the class tree. Always should have been there. That I think is a step forward. Everything else is a step back. The problem is they moved around talents in the spec tree in a very bad way. There is almost no flexibility in the spec tree and there is even less flexibility in the class tree also on the PTR.

The biggest nerf is the change to “Righteous Protector”. It’s not just a tooltip change. It is only 1.5 seconds on the PTR as of the time of writing this. The new talent tree (class and spec) on the PTR is less flexible and a significant damage, healing and mitigation nerf. I do not trust Blizzard to do the right thing because we saw what happened to Guardian druids and them needing additional rounds of buffs post patch. They need to get this right during the PTR cycle.

People need to voice their concerns early because we know they probably want to rush this patch out sooner than later.

2 Likes
14

The current PTR prot tree looks real bad. Even if its just the Righteous Protector nerf it will make the spec feel infinitely worse to play.

Prot paladin feels really fun and decently balanced now. I was really hoping 10.7 would simply provide some more build options. Looking at the current state of the PTR tree I will likely abandon my poor pala :frowning: . Here’s to hoping!

2 Likes
15

nahh blizz seems to f up paladin quite often.

they were told months before dragonflight it was Fd up and they didnt listen.

why would they now.

16

Mostly because some of the datamined spells do actually appear to be things we’ve asked for. It’s hard to say whether or not Blizz is listening, but I can say that we might get some of our wants this time.

17

Was watching Andybrew earlier today and he has it on good authority the current ptr talent set up for prot paladin will not make it live, it will be changed he couldn’t say to what (obviously) but he said don’t worry about the current ptr talents

2 Likes
18

Hope that is the case…but ret had to be the most potato of the melee specs for them to give it any attention.

Blizzard has a long established track record of letting things become a burning dumpster fire before it they lift a finger.

1 Like