Does Blizz want Protection Paladins to be the beginner/bad player tanks?

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

I’ve heard more about BM Hunters and Protection Paladins being dumbed down than any other class. I watched a Preach video tonight on BM Hunters where he suggested Blizz wanted them to be a class that bad players could still do competitive DPS. Now that nice guy in your guild who everyone likes but he just isn’t very good? He can be a contributing member of your raid team! :\

This got me to wondering if this applies to Protection Paladins too. Maybe Blizz wanted a tank spec for players who need something simple they can’t mess up too badly.

I can understand this line of thinking. Blizz is trying to appeal to a wide player base. BM Hunters and Paladins in general are very popular for new players, so making them entry level toons is logical. It’s just not the most-fun thing that could happen for veteran players who were already playing those specs.

[Pull My Finger]

You shouldn't overvalue the ramblings of a dork like Preach in the first place. What does he know anyway?

Blizzard most certainly doesn't design by such idiotic categories. And if they did, don't you think they'd clearly denote them as such, so that the dumb player may unmistakably identify the dumb class? There are no "entry level" classes.

Contrary to popular belief, the devs don't "dumb down" things. They don't sit around and say: hey listen, I think this isn't dumb enough. Let's dumb that down a little bit. You need to understand that this is player community horsheshit terminology. People on forums tend to way too much believe their own nonsense. You may perceive something as dumb, but it's most certainly not designed to be dumb.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

You shouldn't overvalue the ramblings of a dork like Preach in the first place. What does he know anyway?

Blizzard most certainly doesn't design by such idiotic categories. And if they did, don't you think they'd clearly denote them as such, so that the dumb player may unmistakably identify the dumb class? There are no "entry level" classes.

Contrary to popular belief, the devs don't "dumb down" things. They don't sit around and say: hey listen, I think this isn't dumb enough. Let's dumb that down a little bit. You need to understand that this is player community horsheshit terminology. People on forums tend to way too much believe their own nonsense. You may perceive something as dumb, but it's most certainly not designed to be dumb.

I don't think Blizz would describe it as "dumbing down", but they might talk about simplifying/streamlining/making it more new-player friendly.

[Pull My Finger]

I don't think Blizz would describe it as "dumbing down", but they might talk about simplifying/streamlining/making it more new-player friendly.

And it's still a totally mistaken idea. Do you REALLY believe that Blizzard would sacrifice whole specs or classes to the sole purpose of being tailoring them towards less experienced and less capable players? Making "entry level" classes, but treating them like normal classes would completely defeat the purpose of having a class system in the first place. And how do you even imagine that to work? Let's assume for a moment that this absurdly silly idea was actually true. Blizzard designed Prot Paladin to be the dumb people/beginner player tank. What's the use of it, when the dumb person doesn't know which class is designed specifically for them?

The game doesn't tell you. When you start up the character creation screen, when you open the spell book, when you look at the specializations etc., the game is giving you an idea of what stuff is intended to do, what the gameplay is gonna be like and what will be expected of you. Where does the game say: choose this if you're stupid and/or new to the game?

If Blizzard was designing classes or specs towards stupid and inexperienced people specifically, they would have to denote it as such. And then what? What does this actually mean, looking at the bigger picture? That the game actually has less specs than it seems, because some of them are actually just "entry level" specs that don't really "count". And what happens when I've been playing for a while, and let's assume I got better and more experienced, I also went to evening school and got my school leaving certificate, and doctors put me on meds and I'm not an idiot any more. Now what? Am I supposed to re-roll, abandon my character and reset everything I accomplished with it so far? What about my guild, my raid spot, whatever? Everything has to re-adjust because I elevated myself above the idiot status, so I don't have to be a BM Hunter or Prot Paladin any more?

What if I'm actually a genius and a total intellectual and overachiever in all venues of life ... but for some reason, I enjoy the feel, flavor and mechanics of BM hunter. What in the world went wrong here?

In all seriousness: do you REALLY believe that there's such a significant difference in intellectual requirement between playing Paladin and Warrior, or BM and Marksmanship ... or any other class or spec, for that matter?

Surely there's some streamlining going on, some polishing and certainly a part of that is to make classes and specs well-defined, clearly outlined and easy to pick up. That's Blizzards idea of an elegant design and a very clear, strongly themed class identity. It's happening across the board and not just for select specs.

The judgemental narrative though is not something that comes from Blizzard. These silly interpretations are coming from players. A typical product of stupid and ignorant player prejudice. The moronic idea that a lot of people have - that they're intrinsically superior to other people, and that Blizzard has to "cater" towards this unfortunate lot to be able to collect their money as well. Butthurt idiots who like to come up with ridiculous conspiracy theories that help support their idea of them being special, but treated like an orphan by Blizzard because oh woes, the real money lies elsewhere.

[Deleted]

I watched his videos on both of those specs.
Although in many ways i agreed with his assessment of the paladin, the hunter video made me wonder if he'd played the spec in wod or mop.
Hunter has ALWAYS been the faceroll class for as long as I can remember. This new incarnation of the BM spec is nothing new, it's just another type of easy

[Shuji V2]

I don't really care that much about it anymore. Or actually, for a long time now. Ever since wrath came Paladin's didn't really play like they used to anymore, albeit still tolerable to keep on playing. When Holy Power came into play, I disregarded my Paladin as a whole and stopped caring about the class. Doesn't really surprise me they butcher them even more.

[Emode]

I would say tanks in general seem to be getting dumbed down with the intentions of getting more people to play them, it is with the healer the higher responsibility role, and seen as the leader of a 5 man. Many people dont want that responsibility even with the increased rewards on offer. Making it easier to play may bring more low skilled and/or less confident players to pick up the role, it will probably also see more advanced players maybe moving on from lack of interesting game play.

[Rathael]

Preach is definitely very opinionated and occasionally makes points based on pure opinion. I'd take what he says with a pinch of salt, though it's definitely fun watching his videos. Some of the stuff he says makes a lot of sense, too.

I think the whole debate with prot is over the removal of holy power. Personally, I am quite glad to see holy power leaving the prot paladin gameplay. I've done a bit of raiding as prot this expansion and I found myself staring at my action bars way too much. All you do 90% of the time is manage judgement and crusader strike. I think the back-to-back SotR gameplay is important, and skilled tanks should be able to smooth out damage with it... but that still exists in legion with SotR stacks. The same skillful tank play comes without needing to keep staring at your two holy power cooldowns.

The main issue I hope they address is the presence of "Just damage" abilities. Crusader strike, judgement, even Avenger's if there is no use or need for the silence at the time. Having played guardian druid in WoD, there are currently no "just damage" abilities on guardian. Everything has a point and a purpose and fits into a very loose priority order that you shift around yourself according to the situation at hand. Prot in WoD has the same priority list but it's plagued by cooldown watching.

[Omaski]

Preach is definitely very opinionated and occasionally makes points based on pure opinion. I'd take what he says with a pinch of salt, though it's definitely fun watching his videos. Some of the stuff he says makes a lot of sense, too.

I think the whole debate with prot is over the removal of holy power. Personally, I am quite glad to see holy power leaving the prot paladin gameplay. I've done a bit of raiding as prot this expansion and I found myself staring at my action bars way too much. All you do 90% of the time is manage judgement and crusader strike. I think the back-to-back SotR gameplay is important, and skilled tanks should be able to smooth out damage with it... but that still exists in legion with SotR stacks. The same skillful tank play comes without needing to keep staring at your two holy power cooldowns.

The main issue I hope they address is the presence of "Just damage" abilities. Crusader strike, judgement, even Avenger's if there is no use or need for the silence at the time. Having played guardian druid in WoD, there are currently no "just damage" abilities on guardian. Everything has a point and a purpose and fits into a very loose priority order that you shift around yourself according to the situation at hand. Prot in WoD has the same priority list but it's plagued by cooldown watching.

The paladin class has always been about CD watching. Ive played all 3 specs and its always been about mashing whichever CD comes off CD esp. So for ret and prot. It really hasing changed its just the same thing but not gated behind holy power

[Crackalackin]

OP makes sense. It's either that or simply gross incompetence. 90% negative feedback for half a year of alpha and beta with just minor changes. Either they're trying to kill off the class or they're set on dumbing it down to cater to the LCD.

[Thundering]

OP makes sense. It's either that or simply gross incompetence. 90% negative feedback for half a year of alpha and beta with just minor changes. Either they're trying to kill off the class or they're set on dumbing it down to cater to the LCD.

Sounds like wow to me.

[coolbeans2]

OP makes sense. It's either that or simply gross incompetence. 90% negative feedback for half a year of alpha and beta with just minor changes. Either they're trying to kill off the class or they're set on dumbing it down to cater to the LCD.

Why would Blizzard want to "kill off" a class?

[Deleted]

Well its an impression (since i lack solid number info) but my thoughts :
3 expansions (out of 6) where a class is introduced (could of add tbc where shammies/pallies went both factions but lets avoid it in terms of simplicity): Every time it been a melee class.
Although its not accurate and most probably a wild guess we can say that the number of posts in mmo champion class specific forums reflects quite accurately the trend of "main" toons in game. And u can see that the trend favours pallies ...
So although i cannot back my thoughts with solid numbers i can see why everytime they try to introduce one more class in the game to match the lore or w/e reasons they will try to boost its numbers and distribute it around in a way that some active players /or returning ones will reroll into it and the best canditates are those that for w/e irrelevant reasons prefered an already overpopulated class .
TLDR it is only natural that the paladin community everytime (specially during expansions where a melee class is introduced) suffers from nerfs and annoying mechanics either in casual/ high end pve/pvp environment and it is going to remain this way for as long as the numbers remain high ...

[Shieldi]

What blizzard intended was to lower the skill floor for not just paladins, but the other tanks as well.

I don't agree with Preach's opinions and I think that there has been some nice changes to the spec since that video was made.

I believe the class would be in a good place if we were to get a buff to gc so that it reduces sotr cooldown like judgment does, to make the class feel a bit more like it does on live

[Gallahadd]

I believe the class would be in a good place if we were to get a buff to gc so that it reduces sotr cooldown like judgment does, to make the class feel a bit more like it does on live

Indeed, tbh I think that's all we need right now. Maybe 3/6on crit (or would that be too much RNG? Maybe a flat 4) of SHoR from GC procs and the primary concern of most people on beta, that most of our spells don't really effect anything, would be all but gone.