What do you want to see done to paladins in the next expansion?

[Jackielope]

Blizzard designs each spec primarily for its role and tries to use the class for flavor and theme. It is role first though. Holy is a healer, and as such cannot have worthwhile melee abilities because encounters are not designed to support healers preferring to be in melee because they get a noticeable boost from it. That is why they changed SoI to not return mana.

And no, this has nothing to do with not accepting change, although I'm not sure if me saying so will mean a damn thing to you, Duke. Change is fine, so long as it's in the best interests of the game and community. Changing prot and ret to key primarily off strength in WotLK was a good change because it made gear more accessible and unified mechanics which made things simpler for Blizzard to work with thus they could give it more depth and polish. Changing holy to want to go into melee, even if it's a "style" preference born of a talent or glyph option, will be for the worse because it runs counter to the role design and would cause more actual problems than solve the "style" problems a certain subset of the community thinks exists.

[Vash The Stampede]

Again, I didn't make a comment about the numbers. Naturally when the very top guilds don't take retnubs to their progress raids you know the class isn't quite pulling it's weight. What I was saying is that I see very few pve paladins complaining about the way the paladin plays.

That being said, you need to be able to distinguish between what you can or can't do and what the class can or can't do. For example, I have remarkably similar gear to yourself. Let's compare two single target fights that we're both killing:

Sha of Pride and Malkorok Heroic:

Mine: http://www.raidbots.com/epeenbot/eu/azuremyst/thete/

Yours: http://www.raidbots.com/epeenbot/us/.../judgebringer/

And my gameplay is full of errors by the standards of the very top guys such as the likes of Zardox.

On those two fights it depends on what the raid leader wants you to do. My raider hates melee. On Sha of Pride I'm nearly last to go down to be cleansed, and on Malkorok there was an issue with me taunting with a mouse over macro. If they don't see me targeting the adds, then they assume I'm not taunting them in. Besides having to manually target adds, it's much higher priority then my dps. Not also including having to get in range of adds to taunt them in.

Gotta do what the raid leader says. Not sure what your raid leader has you do, but on Iron Juggernaut our dps is recently similar, and a fight my raid leader can't do too much to hurt melee dps. He still tries though.

[Deleted]

On those two fights it depends on what the raid leader wants you to do. My raider hates melee. On Sha of Pride I'm nearly last to go down to be cleansed, and on Malkorok there was an issue with me taunting with a mouse over macro. If they don't see me targeting the adds, then they assume I'm not taunting them in. Besides having to manually target adds, it's much higher priority then my dps. Not also including having to get in range of adds to taunt them in. .

I appreciate that your role within the fight can determine your dps. However, I assure you that I get all the dirty jobs too. Not because my raid leader hates me, but because I'm not interested in ranks, only the death of the boss. As a result I am always just about last into be cleansed on Norushen (there is no cleansing on Sha of Pride), I always go out for rifts on Sha of Pride when I can, I soak mines on Juggernaut, I don't go risking a munching on Thok, etc.

[Samitsu]

Not exactly a paladin change, but I'd like to bring back the times where your type of armor actually had meaning. If you wore plate, it was harder for melee to kill you than casters, and melee would also rather hit clothies than plate. Now the type of armor is basically just a name, nothing more.

[Volitar]

Remove Slice and Dice, I mean Inquisition.

Remove HP cost of DS (or at least give TV the DS graphic )

[Deleted]

Deleted? or at very least reverted to pre tbc status, e.g. alliance only... paladins have never felt right on horde.

[Vash The Stampede]

I appreciate that your role within the fight can determine your dps. However, I assure you that I get all the dirty jobs too. Not because my raid leader hates me, but because I'm not interested in ranks, only the death of the boss. As a result I am always just about last into be cleansed on Norushen (there is no cleansing on Sha of Pride), I always go out for rifts on Sha of Pride when I can, I soak mines on Juggernaut, I don't go risking a munching on Thok, etc.

But as a Heroic raider you can see that mobility is important. To do the fights properly you need to step out of melee range and do something. As my raid leader will tell you, most mechanics that need to be done are with ranged dps. So when he can, he'll throw responsibility on melee dps. If I can sit on a boss I'll do alright dps, but the moment I gotta move my dps tanks.

Which is why I think we need a gap closer.

[nightfalls]

Which is why I think we need a gap closer.

I don't think you need a gap closer because you play a spec primarily based on healing and self-protection, not on being some furious warrior berserker.

[Neldarie]

Wrath (deathlol) from Above lvl 100 skill 1minute cd (ret = AE dmg like leap, holy = ae burst heal, prot = small AE 10% less dmg taken for 6secs by you and your allies.

Some CC immunity mechanic/talent w-o any vartiations of penalties applied to it (like every other melee class has nowadays). Maybe at the cost of losing bubble w-e.

[Vash The Stampede]

I don't think you need a gap closer because you play a spec primarily based on healing and self-protection, not on being some furious warrior berserker.

Now you're just instigating. You clearly haven't seen the musical.

[Swampmoose]

PVE ret is, well, okay.
At least from mechanic standpoint, and gameplay is actually engaging.
The real problem lies within numbers: Ret is never a top-notch dps.
All I want for PVE RET is to become ONE OF the top-tier DPS( repeat: ONE OF, not ONE), but, alas, it will never happen because any given stupid reason.

Ret was above average in WOTLK and when they were able to get their hands on Shadowmourne, they were at the top end of the DPS spectrum. Everyone complained then too and everyone will continue complaining until they take their quest reward greens, join 24 raid-geared players, and beat everyone by 20% on the charts. I can't speak for Ret now, but history shows, rarely is anyone happy unless their class is best.

GC left probably because he got a better job offer. You guys are overthinking it.

Common sense. An even rarer occurrence at good ol' MMOC.

Agree with first three, DS is what it is, and consecration was awesome as all specs but Prot only is fine.

Consecration was indeed iconic, good for leveling, and decent for AOE encounters, but I never liked it as part of a ret paladin's single target "rotation." I don't think giving it to tanks only was the way to go. I think they should have altered it so that it became useful only in AOE situations while maybe giving tanks a talent that gives them more freedom with the ability or allows them to keep it in their rotation.

[Lumineus]

You have a pretty... interesting memory if you think Retribution was good at all in PvE during WotLK. I mean that pretty much ended about two thirds of the way through the beta. I guess it was decent in ToC, joke of a tier that was, but it was back to being crap in ICC. You needed a Shadowmourne just to be mediocre, and were easily replaced with a druid or rogue that didn't have to have a legendary invested in them to deal competitive damage, and was actually meant to wear the best in slot melee armor (that is to say, leather).

In any event, the hyperbole certainly doesn't help your case.

[Deleted]

I don't think you need a gap closer because you play a spec primarily based on healing and self-protection, not on being some furious warrior berserker.

self-protection

Correction, Paladins are about sacrifice, not self protection.

[Vash The Stampede]

You have a pretty... interesting memory if you think Retribution was good at all in PvE during WotLK. I mean that pretty much ended about two thirds of the way through the beta. I guess it was decent in ToC, joke of a tier that was, but it was back to being crap in ICC. You needed a Shadowmourne just to be mediocre, and were easily replaced with a druid or rogue that didn't have to have a legendary invested in them to deal competitive damage, and was actually meant to wear the best in slot melee armor (that is to say, leather).

The way I remember Ret in WOTKL was like this.

Naxx raiding was pretty much great until they started to nerf Ret, into the ground baby. Seal of Blood was actually killing me on some fights, so I had to use a Seal that didn't kill me, but made my damage bad. Later on they made some tweaks and eventually did away with the self sacrifice, but in PvP we were finally competitive. The problem is nobody ever saw Ret Paladins as competitive, and the hate train started. It got to the point that by the time Icecrown raid was released, we were mediocre on damage and doing poorly in PvP as well. So bad that Shadowmourne was better off for a DK or Warrior, which is why I quit the game as soon as I killed the King. Cause by the time I actually got the weapon, I would have seen no use of it.

As bad as it was, it was the highlight of being a Ret Paladin throughout WoW, and the game was the most balanced I've ever seen it. Once Cataclysm was released Ret took a turn for the worse and has never really recovered. It was so bad that anyone who played Ret professional just gave up, cause they knew the direction Blizzard would take. Which is why www.retpaladin.com died a slow death. If anyone remembers Slayton and the guys who used to run the website.

[Neldarie]

Mostly agree, except the part where Smourne was worse on DK than a ret. Tbh arguably ret and raid (from it) gained most in terms of dmg output by putting one on ret instead of a warrior (where dk was an absolute waste of a weapon)(/cancelaura proc cheesing).

[Godric]

Remove Inquisition . It sucks. Then end.

[Swampmoose]

You have a pretty... interesting memory if you think Retribution was good at all in PvE during WotLK. I mean that pretty much ended about two thirds of the way through the beta. I guess it was decent in ToC, joke of a tier that was, but it was back to being crap in ICC. You needed a Shadowmourne just to be mediocre, and were easily replaced with a druid or rogue that didn't have to have a legendary invested in them to deal competitive damage, and was actually meant to wear the best in slot melee armor (that is to say, leather).

In any event, the hyperbole certainly doesn't help your case.

I'm sorry if you were a mediocre performer and lost your spot to a rogue or druid, but that simply wasn't the case for most of us. I dug up this old thread and spreadsheet I put together back in wrath. My "interesting memory" is pretty spot on. Feel free to provide your evidence of it being crap in ICC.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-DPS-Festergut

So I said I would get the numbers from WOL if it were easy. Well it wasn't too bad so this is from the top 120 dps of all classes on Heroic Festergut as of 9/15/10. I figured it was either this or Saurfang that would give the most accurate numbers not thrown off by massive cleave abilities or gimmicks. The only difference I see when browsing over the top 120 Saurfang numbers is that all numbers are inflated a bit (especially Fury and Fire) and a couple of the casters towards the bottom improve slightly.

Prompted by "Were only competitve to the top classes once we have bis + shadowmourne. Even then its hard to say competitive when were always at the middle or half way towards the bottom." I think it is safe to assume all of these players are in near enough BIS and the Warriors/DKs all have SM as well. If the following does not show we are a competitive DPS class, I'm not sure what else there is to go by.

Fury 20178
Fire 19896
Combat 19296
Marks 18631
Ret 18544
Assasination 18255
Unholy 17872
Frost DK 17850
Affliction 17816
Shadow 17200
Arcane 17060
Demo 16859
Enhance 16578
Boomkin 16528
Feral 16502
Blood 16474
Elemental 16203
Destro 15616
Survi 15395
Arms 15151
BM 13568
Frost 11354
Sub 12682 (only 73)

Link to the Spreadsheet
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?...1E&hl=en#gid=0

[Slirith]

4th spec(could be said for all classes) ranged holy dps(mind you I consider the next expansion the one after WoD)

[Neldarie]

Ret was carried by 3 things in ICC really (broken proc mechanics with TaJ = 1, Shadowmourne proc abuse = 2, and of course everyone remembers stormspam resetting on swings = 3). Ret procrate was heavily fixed/nerfed/shattered just as Cataclysm was comming around if people remember.

Those 3 things alligning for one tier of all content in Wrath is where all if not most bias about "how good it was" lies.

[Lumineus]

But why take your word for it when the WoL rankings from September 2010 are readily available?

http://web.archive.org/web/201009281...rgut/25H/dps/?