No One Understands Paladins

[Bling]

I am writing this because it seems that no one really seems to understand the truth behind the Paladin class.

First it seems a lot of people have forgotten that the Paladin is the defensive hybrid. I think what people are having problems with is just what that means. Basically the Paladin has been different than every other class since the beginning of WoW because they are a reactive class while other classes are proactive. They are the defenders of WoW. The paladin isn't a controlling class they are an anti-controlling class, we dispel, buff, and heal or do damage. Our main skill we seem to have originally been built around is to keep the other team from being able to control us or our teammates. Most every other class uses their tools to attack, debuff, or control the other player. Warriors hamstring, Mortal Strike, etc. Death Knights silence, slow, root, debuff, etc. We remove slows, roots, debuffs, without really providing anything ourselves.

This has haunted the paladin class for awhile making it the target of hate. Back in Vanilla and most of TBC, paladins were a joke as a threat, but absolutely HATED by most everyone. Yes, for you newer players even back before Ret did damage (they had probably less offensive might than a holy/disc priest in vanilla) Paladins were hated. QQQQQ I had to kill them 3 times before I killed them, I hate bubble, wagh I frost nova'd them but they ran away for 100 yard before I sheeped them and killed them. We earned our hate by neutralizing all the kickbuttery of the other classes. Now Ret Paladins can do equal damage and neutralize the kickattery some(not nearly what we could, I would honestly say our defensive utility has already been halved or more compared to what it once was) and people hate it. And yes Paladins have been nerfed a crap ton, at one point freedom could be up 16 of every 20 seconds. You could Divine shield then BoP yourself then LoH yourself all in under 20 seconds if needed. There was no forbearance until after TBC came out. Blessing of Sacrifice was spammable. Cleanse actually worked every time.

This all goes back to what was said by Blizzard around 3.1 or so. They said "We nerfed Paladins not cause they were Overpowered overall, just overpowered versus bad players." Its because Paladins require a separate tactic to kill that different than most other classes. Mages hate them because every other melee class they can root/snare into place and sit around like a scrub and burn them down. If they break the root/snare, they simply reroot move away a bit and repeat until dead. Paladins they can't snare very well at all, all of a sudden you have this ahhhh I can't stop them, yet they forget they lack many of the abilities that the other classes have, yet don't think about that cause its only 1 class and they just think melee.

Overall, we can't fix bad players. They will continue to hate and cry about paladins cause unlike the good players that learn to lead a paladin, such as the mage that gets the paladin to use BoF then as soon as it drops then unload on him while he is defenseless, they will continue to blow everything and then get facerolled.



Now look at the Paladins arsenal compared to other classes.

Lets see what classes have a snare or roots of some type. Not counting full CC like stuns, cyclone. poly etc.

Shaman - Frost shock, earth bind elem-earth grip
Warrior - Hamstring plus talent abilities.
DK - Chains with other talented slows.
Druid - Entangle roots, feral disease, natures grasp
Mage - Frost Nova, cone of cold, basicly everything in frost.
Warlock - afflic - Curse of exhaustion.
Rogue - poisons and forgot the name of their hamstring
Hunter - several snares, scatter shot
Priests - really just shadow spec

Now what snares do Paladins get? None, cause they are defensive they get the anti snare. BoF.

Now look at what other melee classes get to close the gap.

Warriors - Charge, intercept, plus their snares, dazes and stuns.
Rogues - Shadowstep, sprint, stealth, 15% movement speed plus snares and stuns
Feral druids - feral leap, dash, 30% movement speed, snares and stuns (can shift out instantly to cyclone or root then instantly shift back)
Death Knight - Chains of Ice, Death grasp, Desecration
Enhancement shaman - ghost wolf, feral spirit's windwalk, snares

Paladins get BoF, a stun and repentence if talented. Judgement of Justice is a semi snare, doesn't slow them but just doesn't let them use speed boosts. Also look at the cooldowns on these abilities. 25 seconds on BoF, 60 seconds on HoJ and Repentence. 40 on Hammer of Justice if your spec'd though you sacrifice a lot of other good talents just for that. Every other melee class can spam their snares. Warriors can interrupt and charge 4 times for each of our stuns. Rogues can stun atleast 4 times as much in the same time as a paladin. Death Knights can Death grip atleast twice during that time, more if talented, while rooting as much as they can spam with chains. Druids have all their snares and roots and cyclone etc spammable. We are the least offensive of any melee class or healer. LOL when comparing to ranged.

Now people complain that Paladins are hardier than other melee classes. That's because they have to be. They don't have an immediate in your face ability they have to survive the getting kited (which a good player can do to a paladin almost indefinitely) and nuked, in order to compete. That's where skills such as LoH, divine shield and sacred shield come in. Art of War barely counts in this situation, because we actually have to be ATTACKING AND CRITTING something for that to proc. If we stop to heal while trying to get to someone to attack them well, we just gave them another 2+ seconds to get further away and for their snares, etc to cool down. If you get a ret paladin to heal you already won, if you lose its cause your bad.

Enough about Paladins being defensive I think you get the point.

Before I continue some questions I would ask Blizzard.

Do you want the paladins to be the defensive hybrid?

If not, do you plan on getting rid of our defensiveness and actually making us like other classes and giving us offensive utility?

Why do Rets suffer for having too much defense (being too tanky and having some healing) when a Death Knight has just as much tankiness and self heals? Rets have to melee to get their healing (Judgement of Light, Divine Storm, Art of War procs) just like DKs do but even though they have all their tanking skills while dpsing, we get penalized for having any it seems because of our bubble.



Now it seems the real problem at hand right now is Protection healers. There’s a reason paladins are doing this. The holy tree is crap. Its been nerfed to a skeleton of what it used to be. There are very few talents in the high portion of the tree worth getting over the utility offered by Protection.

Here is a list of some of the problems that effect paladin healers.

I think one of the biggest problems Holy faces right now is no matter what tree you spec into for healing all you get is just more of the same junk. Blizzard’s stance on keeping Holy Paladins single target healers basically means all you get in the high end Holy tree is no different than what you get with just a few points in Holy. Because they only focus on a single aspect of healing you can’t really have the high end talents boost it much more than what the lower end talents do because you end up making it too powerful. Because of this all the decent healing boosting talents were thrown in back in vanilla without any really good ones being added since that really help in pvp. Because of this you can pick up most of the talents you need for pvp in the bottom half of the tree.

Blizzard keeps nerfing our defensive skills without giving us offensive skills to compensate. In Vanilla and the first half of TBC, healing paladins spec’d holy to pvp because the defensive utility was provided baseline by the class. The left over points went to either prot or ret, depending if we wanted a little more crit or slightly more defense. Thing is Blizzard ended up nerfing all of our defensive skills. BoF ended up being useable half as much. Blessing of Sacrifice was completely nuttered. Cleanse was hardly worth the mana anymore with every class getting dispel resistance. Forbearance was added. Because of these nerfs you saw paladins almost disappear in 2v2 and 3v3 arenas.
Now Paladins are looking for a way to compete, with almost every utility spell we have having been nerfed in some way, players are looking to get something to get them back on equal footing. With high end Holy offering no new tricks or real utility players are specing into other trees to get it. In early WotLK you saw Holy paladins going far into the Ret tree for the utility, repentance, JotW, Divine purpose, etc because they were trying to find utility to make them on par with the other healers. Now you see them going deep into Prot because of the utility the tree gives them. Silence, reduced cooldown stuns, and other great defensive skills.



Now what surprises me is how you guys seem to be going about with the nerfs. Why are you nerfing skills such as Sacred Shield, which is a baseline spell that the class needs with its lack of offensive skills and nerfed defensive skills, instead of a simply rebuilding of the talent trees. Remove the extra healing bonuses from the Prot and Ret tree. They seem to be out of place since you made dual specing available. I remember Blizzard talking about having this talents in there so if a Prot or Ret paladin needs to heal for a particular fight they can simply throw on healing gear and provide a little extra help. Thing is that is no longer needed with Dual specs. Remove the +30% crit bonus and Sheath of Light HoT. Prot doesn’t need to heal itself outside soloing anyways really, and tends to have a low crit anyways, this always seemed out of place to me. And with the recent buff to the Flash of Light HoT into Sacred Shield, the Sheath of Light proc is no longer really needed. That alone would accomplish a lot, but I think the other problem is the way the Holy tree is set up. Drop some of the high end talents that are utility and non-healing spell boosting lower in the tree and move the healing boosting low end talents higher in the tree. Move talents like Healing Light, Divine Intellect and Illumination higher up in the tree and bring talents like Sacred Cleansing, Purifying Power, and Blessed Life down.

A few more questions I would ask Blizzard.

It seems to me that the Holy tree seems to be a major problem with the class right now. Although its has a healing niche in raids, its also a niche that other classes such as Resto shamans and Disc Priests can filled as needed. In fact my resto shaman right now feels like a better tank healer than my paladin at the current incarnation of the game. Is there any chance of a major holy overhaul in the next xpac?

Although I raided hardcore as holy back in vanilla and early TBC with a top 50 US guild, I no longer can stand playing as holy on my paladin and when my friends are in need of a healer I prefer to get on my resto shaman or druid. It seems now that the other 3 healers can now perform any task needed in instances, yet Holy Paladins seem to be denied that ability. Healing aoe fights in heroics makes me want to cut myself sometimes. With the game moving into having so many AoE fights in heroics and such is there any chance of you eventually changing your stance of Holy Paladins in the future as being tank healers only?

[TheeZ]

Could everyone please stop bitching about the Paladins?
We've hardly gotten nerfed ever (I may not agree to these new changes but they are just)
Deal with it for the love of god.

We're fine the way we are

[Omen321]

2LDR past first paragraph .. but just saying

http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=26016

lol

[wiggletard]

Todays post by GC is one of the few I would endorse... I usually hate the d00d for being straight up stupid. But ever sense he stopped changing things to make stupid fuckers happy the guy has made some pretty solid balance issues and I approve of the Paladin nerf stick.


Stop playing last months flavor reroll Captain McBad.

[Copain]

Did not read all of it, but he is right in saying Paladins were built originally as a class to keep others alive, we were made to go Holy at first, other specs we not meant to be anything real. So a lot of our spells fit that.

[Synical123]

Way too long. Did not read. I hope this isent over the lay on hands "nerf" who uses it anyway? If you use lay on hands in a 1v1 situation your just making yourself look like a retard.

[Amgyn]

skimming over this, it seems that your statement "No One understands Paladins" also includes yourself.

[Azyoulike]

I got about half way through the endless wasteland of text before giving up but you might want to remember that PoJ is a gap closer. Not the strongest one I grant you, but a closer nonetheless.

[lep]

LOLOL NICE TRY PALADIN BUT BEND OVER.


"They don't have an immediate in your face ability they have to survive the getting kited (which a good player can do to a paladin almost indefinitely) and nuked, in order to compete."


hahahahahahahhahahahahaha

You forgot that fighting a paladin equals to fighting three separate fights.


Love reading posts by these wotlk rerolls, bet you're a belf too.

[Immadk]

@OP- care to provide your armory and we decide if you can qq or not

I bet you are just another emo kid out there in thousands of scrub paladins

[Deleted]

srsly ..i rerolled from rogue to pally cuz i also wanted to 2 shot people. it doesnt matter IF you have snares...just stun, blow cds, profit. if you cant win that way it depends on your gear.

[Skollvaldr]

srsly ..i rerolled from rogue to pally cuz i also wanted to 2 shot people. it doesnt matter IF you have snares...just stun, blow cds, profit. if you cant win that way it depends on your gear.

much fun killing people in ilvl 200 pve gear while the try to pick up some herbs?

[Deleted]

wall of text crits you for over 9000!!!111

but really SS nerf sucks if you're running 2v2 with 2 dps setup :'(

[Copain]

@OP- care to provide your armory and we decide if you can qq or not

I bet you are just another emo kid out there in thousands of scrub paladins

He was not QQing... Hell why would he need to post an armory? Gear means nothing when it comes to class mechanics.

[Aulus]

Thats a fancy text wall you have there. Too bad its most likely another Paladin QQ post.

[DaLeetPawner]

I bet theres a good chance when the OP looks in his mirror, this will be written on his face: I don't Understand Paladins.

[Pascal]

Remove the extra healing bonuses from the Prot and Ret tree. They seem to be out of place since you made dual specing available. I remember Blizzard talking about having this talents in there so if a Prot or Ret paladin needs to heal for a particular fight they can simply throw on healing gear and provide a little extra help. Thing is that is no longer needed with Dual specs. Remove the +30% crit bonus and Sheath of Light HoT.

No, uh, ret got healing capabilities because when they were fixing ret so that paladins could DPS and PvP as a DPS, they addressed the fact that ret can't heal itself to any decent degree at all. Rets healing themselves was a joke and considering classes that can heal are indeed balanced (or adjusted if you will) with this thought in mind, it was causing problems in balancing ret. Ret paladins couldn't effectively heal at all. They couldn't heal their arena partner, they couldn't heal themselves. They couldn't even heal a full prot warrior taking on 5 scrubs in a BG. They gave them healing potential so that they didnt have to keep buffing their pvp offensive utility. Now they could heal and be hybridy without causing too much damage that they'd be OP in pve.

Prot got spell power talents because they tank using abilities that deal magical damage. It's the way for prot warrior's damage to scale with their gear. In TBC, remember all the prot paladins sets with +Spell damage? Yeah, you don't want to see that shit around ever again. Strength converts to SP, and bam you get spell damage on your gear without spending additional item points, thereby enabling you to gear like a normal person instead of a confused Vanilla hunter who thought he needed spell damage to help his arcane shot.

I was actually reading your post, agreeing that paladins are mostly defensive. In fact, we all should know this, as it was explained by Blizzard when discussing the differences and similarities behind shaman and paladins, that shaman were the "offensive healer" and paladins were the "defensive healer". Totally intended, and you are correct.

But when you said "Remove the spell power talents from prot and ret," I stopped reading.

[Dackout]

Could everyone please stop bitching about the Paladins?
We've hardly gotten nerfed ever (I may not agree to these new changes but they are just)
Deal with it for the love of god.

We're fine the way we are

Step 1. State that the new changes will bring more balance to the class.
Step 2. State that the class is balanced even before said patches.
Step 3. Disassemble barbecue grill, use actual grill to form wings on your bicycle.
Step 4. Cook giant pancake. Use fictional pancake power to reach Kil'jaeden. Boss fight? NO! Tea fight... Party...

How you managed to contradict yourself in two sentences is beyond me.


As for Paladins, I can say that they're effortless, but I won't try to say anything about balance since I don't really know what the hell Blizzard wants Paladins to do, Retribution in particular.

[Copain]

Step 1. State that the new changes will bring more balance to the class.
Step 2. State that the class is balanced even before said patches.
Step 3. Disassemble barbecue grill, use actual grill to form wings on your bicycle.
Step 4. Cook giant pancake. Use fictional pancake power to reach Kil\'jaeden. Boss fight? NO! Tea fight... Party...

How you managed to contradict yourself in two sentences is beyond me.


As for Paladins, I can say that they\'re effortless, but I won\'t try to say anything about balance since I don\'t really know what the hell Blizzard wants Paladins to do, Retribution in particular.

Hwo did he contradict himself..? Mind explaining?

[Kendaus]

Wow... that was an incredible wall of QQ... I've been Raiding Holy since Pre-BC and from what I gather from your post, from a Holy's point of view, Blizz has always made sure we brought something 'unique' to a Raid. Take... Aura Mastery or... Bubble Sac for instance... Seriously, Blizz can't fix bad players, can they?