Why paladin tanks shouldn't be "viable"

[Khaza-R]

The problem with making Paladin tanks viable is that you give the Alliance an unfair advantage. That’s largely the reason it was never pushed for in vanilla. The Horde was already pissed that Paladins had was better, more stable buffs

[durenas]

A lot of people have fond memories of classic dungeons because of the slower pace, setting up pulls and using CC a lot. Much of that happened because the only "viable" tanks (warriors) had extremely poor AoE threat and couldn't hold aggro very well on large pulls.

Paladin tanks have strong aoe threat. When they were reworked to be viable in raids in Burning Crusade much of that classic dungeon gameplay was lost. Does anyone remember Shattered Halls with a paladin tank? It was a very different experience than Shattered Halls with a warrior that's for sure.

There's a danger that we may lose a lot of what made classic classic in buffing poor specs up.

No, it's not that we didn't aoe because of bad threat(though that is true). We didn't aoe because if you had multiple mobs on you, you were at extreme risk of dying.

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The problem with making Paladin tanks viable is that you give the Alliance an unfair advantage. That’s largely the reason it was never pushed for in vanilla. The Horde was already pissed that Paladins had was better, more stable buffs

Horde had bloodlust. 30% haste was amazing, especially if you had multiple shamans chaining it together.

[Zafire]

Wasn't the reason Paladins couldn't tank because of Mana issues? They could probably tank any non-raid just fine, honestly. Especially with all the undead endgame dungeons. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there that don't want to raid but want to enjoy the other aspects of the game. I tanked half the dungeons I was in leveling to 45 as a HOLY paladin (Consecration).

I could be wrong of course, I just don't see why they couldn't.

[bash the fash]

Because windfury and grounding totem are totally not OP or the totem that stopped fears.

Lol, outside of a few choice encounters Alliance were OVERWHELMINGLY advantaged in PvE due to fear ward and blessing of salvation. You have no idea what you're on about.

Giving one faction a viable tank choice over the other is massively game-changing as far as faction balance is concerned. Horde already had population issues in vanilla; doubling the population of viable, available tanks on one side of the divide will make things even worse.

[Hctaz]

If they give paladins taunt because casual retail-pleb hero-dins cry for it I will literally eat my hat.

I mean, I don't want them to have taunt. But they could change itemization for them to make them not suck while keeping everything else identical. They would fulfill a very different style of tanking than a Prot warrior. If they end up still being not viable then oh well. At least they're unique and not just bad.

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Horde had bloodlust. 30% haste was amazing, especially if you had multiple shamans chaining it together.

Are you... you... okay.

Bloodlust didn't come until TBC when both Horde and Alliance had it. Hello?

[Deleted]

Because then Alliance would have Two viable tanks and Horde just one.
/thread

And horde would have one more ranged DPS class (if they balanced the specs). Problem?

[Khaza-R]

Horde had bloodlust. 30% haste was amazing, especially if you had multiple shamans chaining it together.

Haste didn’t exist in vanilla, nor did BL

Manatide totem was really the shamans big trick in vanilla

[Deleted]

Fook the Paladins.... Prot.Warrior is THE tank. Get over it son.

[Maudib]

Yeah, it was pretty hard keeping Holy Shield up whilst pressing Judgment every 12 seconds. However did we survive.

I rest my case... lots of people have no clue.

[Dhrizzle]

Are you... you... okay.

Bloodlust didn't come until TBC when both Horde and Alliance had it. Hello?

It's weird how many players (I assume mostly Alliance) thought BL existed prior to TBC (myself included before this Classic forum opened.) I think it might be the way everyone refers to it as Bloodlust despite the Alliance version being Heroism.

[bash the fash]

And horde would have one more ranged DPS class (if they balanced the specs). Problem?

Yeah lmao having an 'extra ranged dps class' vs. having an extra pool of tanks available is a bit of problem in classic bro

Also if you balanced all of the specs to be usable, you'd also have spriests and balance druids, diluting the importance of 'an extra ranged dps class' even further

[Super Kami Dende]

I rest my case... lots of people have no clue.

You seem to be trying to make Vanilla out to be far more hard than it ever was.

[Taeldorian]

Yeah, yeah.. game is hardz now. You must not be a tank in Legion. Pali tanking "back in the day" took skill.

No it didnt. Aggro was hard to hold because taunting worked different back then. Prot Paladins didn’t even have a taunt. It wasn’t “hard” it was broken. Big difference. Though I enjoyed tanking on a warrior, only because it was pretty much the only viable tank. Feral druids could tank too, I remember that, but they ate at healers mana so wasn’t optimal. Pally tanking was absolutely terrible without a taunt, that’s why a majority of tanks were prot warriors. It was broken, very different from requiring skill.

That’s not to say retail is perfect. It isn’t. Some classes are very boring while some are extremely fun. I play Holy and ret in mythic and honestly ret needs work. However it’s leaps and bounds ahead of what it was back in the day. However MoP was imo the best time for class design.

Either way, you’ll see when the classic server launches man. It’ll be way different than it was back then in terms of raiding and difficulty. Hell, if you played on Nostalrius BWL/MC was cleared with less than half of 40 people. Was cleared with around 12. That’s because people know exactly what they need and exactly how to handle everything. That’s just how it is.

That’s not to say any of this is bad. I think it’ll still be fun, especially being able to see all of the removed content. I’ll enjoy it, but you shouldn’t make it out to be this extremely difficult super hardcore game. Was it grindy? Yes. Did it require time and effort? Hell yes. Does that make it difficult? No. It did require way more dedication than retail does though, and that’s why it’ll retain the dedicated vanilla playerbase and lose the rest.

[ZazuuPriest]

Then it is not Classic WoW, and is some kind of Frankenstein WoW

your reading comprehension is very poor

[Maudib]

You seem to be trying to make Vanilla out to be far more hard than it ever was.

Nope... just far more fun that you are trying to make it NOT to be. I have enjoyed it MUCH more than WoD/Legion.

[Hctaz]

It's weird how many players (I assume mostly Alliance) thought BL existed prior to TBC (myself included before this Classic forum opened.) I think it might be the way everyone refers to it as Bloodlust despite the Alliance version being Heroism.

Well, I remember the brief time I went Alliance in during ToC in Wrath... Awful. Hated it. But they called it Heroism. REALLY hated that. So I think it goes both ways.

They probably thought it was in Vanilla because it was a spell in WC2 and WC3.
http://classic.battle.net/war3/orc/units/shaman.shtml

And that's probably also why most people refer to these effects as "Bloodlust"

[bash the fash]

Nope... just far more fun that you are trying to make it NOT to be. I have enjoyed it MUCH more than WoD/Legion.

Everything you post is cringe-worthy and screams of someone who never played Vanilla seriously, if at all.

Paladin tanking didn't 'take skill'. It wasn't routinely possible outside of 5-man groups built specifically to accommodate the paladin tank, and it never worked in a raid environment because paladins couldn't hit defense cap.

[Whiskra]

Paladins not having taunt wasn't that much of a problem since 95% of raid bosses were taunt immune anyway (yes, even bosses which required tank swaps). They could also gear for defcap if they really tried, though there certainly wasn't that much gear for them to pick from. The biggest downsides with them was that they used mana for their abilities, which meant that they had to chug mana pots on prolonged fights (which was really bad on fights where other potions were much more important), and that they could not avoid crusing blows in the same vein as Warriors could (this was a weakness they shared with Druids as well). Defense cap would not remove crushing blows from the boss attack table, you'd need to get above 102.4% total avoidance or something for that to be possible. Warriors could make this happen since they could use the Shield Block ability on cooldown, which gave them an additional 100% chance to block, which of course put them above said avoidance. This was also why defense wasn't nearly as important for tanks as it would be in later expansions, since being crush immune also means you're crit immune, and it also made block % the least desirable stat for a tank unless the aim was to tank a lot of mobs at once.

[Deleted]

then it wouldn't be vanilla now would it

Good thing it's called World of Warcraft Classic then

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If paladins had been meant to be top-end tanks in vanilla they would've been designed that way. They weren't.

Stupid design? Sure. But that's why people want to play vanilla - the stupid design.

Thdy quite clearly were meant to tank because the protection spec existed, and indeed in TBC Blizzard did what they either didn't know how to, didn't have time or resources to, make them viable tanks.

[Stormspellz]

Good thing it's called World of Warcraft Classic then

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Thdy quite clearly were meant to tank because the protection spec existed, and indeed in TBC Blizzard did what they either didn't know how to, didn't have time or resources to, make them viable tanks.

classic vanilla two terms for the same thing, the English language is full of such things.