End game as a paladin in classic, is it fun?

[Roxyfoxy]

https://legacyplayers.com/Raids/Ranking/Default.aspx <--- logs.

I mean if I'm reading this correctly, we're saying the same thing.

There is obviously no "best healer" in a sense that you need all classes , Priests are the most versatile healers in the game not the best healers. Priests can fill most healing roles but if we're talking about meters paladins outscales priests in naxx slightly, in MC priest and pallies are about the same in term of output.


My decision regarding pallies also includes pvp which is obviously not one of your interests. Pallies are so strong in bgs alone that they tip any argument in their favor.

Well you kind of proves my point with the healing meter and how useless it is.
If you actually look at the log, and not just his position on the healing meter, you will see that half of his healing is from judgement of light, and the fight is a 28 second lucifron kill, which is barely any damage to heal, and any damage was healed so fast by the judgement that no other healer could really get any healing in, thus its simply meter padding and have nothing to do with scaling. That guy on the top was just the lucky guy who got to JoL the boss so noone else really could heal at all.
If you take away his JoL healing, its just a average joe healing, and not something something great.

If you look at some more difficult bosses, you will see a good mix of priests paladin and druids, where paladins only really being top when they get to be that one JoL paladin, rest are middle of the pack.

But the meters are irrelevant, cause healers have different assignments, a healer who is on the MT is usually going to have much higher healing, than the ones healing the offtank. What logs do, is to see if someone actually did what he was supposed to, and not healing something else to meter pad, causing tank deaths.

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If you like single target healing, sure.

Aoe healing is not really a thing in vanilla, with the exception of Shamans. Priest got some aoe healing, but its so inefficient that for the most part its completely useless outside of Oh shit moments, and on vaelstrasz.

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Retribution PvP was definitely not boring, even if it wasn't one-shot kills or dead during a stun (most of the time) - yes it was a more defensive DPS, but it wasn't boring.

We're talking PvE though, in which case almost all specs are extremely simple in the same way Holy Paladin is. Your output per second isn't going to be exactly as high as a Priest, but it isn't going to be far off and with good gear you'll be more efficient. I'm not arguing that Holy Paladin PvE is a ton of fun, I'm arguing that most specs aren't a ton of fun in Vanilla PvE.

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Yes, a Priest will use Flash Heal a lot. Max rank? No, but Flash Heal will be used frequently. Greater Heal will be used too, if easy content is run.

As for the DPS, your caveats for when Warlocks and Mages use different spells than their one nuke (Life Tap, maybe a curse, and.. Evocation? Mana Gem? Wand?) could be applied just as easily (and even more) to Holy Paladin. Cleanse? Lay on Hands? Blessing of Protection? Blessings in general? Divine Shield?

The argument was that Holy Paladin will only use Flash of Light and that's it, and my counter argument was that that's the case for almost every spec in PvE. Warriors are an exception to that, because they have a minimum of 4 abilities they use consistently: Bloodthirst, Whirlwind, Heroic Strike, Execute, Battle Shout, Blood Rage.

If you are spamming flash heals instead of greater heal / heal, you are doing very easy content.

Flash heal any rank is very mana inefficient, and the healing it does is very low, only exception is if you need to proc inspiration on a tank

As for the amount of abilities used, holy paladin have much more than 1 spell, they got a ton of situational spells they can use. The warrior is no exception, yes, they got maybe a few more buttons that they use regulary, but a class is not the amount of buttons, but how you use them

[SirBeef]

WRONG! Blessings are 5 minutes, GREATER BLESSINGS with raid-wide-effects have 15 minutes. Somehow people are always forgetting them.

What you described was vanilla before 1.9. After this, we became the greater blessings. So no, recasting every 5 minutes will be not the case in classic!

Class wide effect.

[Segus1992]

I was a paladin in Vanilla and I almost exclusively ran "Ret" in PvP and let me tell you - it was all fun and games until you met someone with half a brain and gear. You had no control whatsoever over your output - you had to pray for SoC proc while auto-attacking and then pray for some of your attacks to crit to even see some sort of real damage.

Then the worst three things were - people who would chain dispel and mana burn you - literally turning you into nothing fast. People who would do hit and run baiting DS and then coming to finish you off later. People who would simply ignore you and zip away, which was simply too easy to do.

You could not do shit about it but pray your auto-attacks and SoC to connect with crits. My biggest and baddest agency over my damage was Death Ray in bubble, that's it. It's about the only meaningful active damage action you could do as "ret".


And yes, occasionally you have this orgasmic AA crit + SoC crit in one swing that can oneshot (less geared) people, but that's a unicorn.

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I remember some IF bouts with guildies, like our geared to teeth warrior. He literally went through full 3 health bars on my ass and in the end it was super close call with me barely winning. The kick here is if he was in organized PvP match he'd already murder half their team, while I would stand there with my mouth open (or simply do the right thing and healbot, cleanse and freedom him).

Our guild locks and mages? Haha good joke - they just chain CC drain/drink until you are dry as fuck. Locks are pretty much impossible. Spriests with half a brain? If you don't oneshot them in first 10-20 seconds or inside bubble - the end. Just dispel and manaburn, gg. Same with mages, you usually block their 3 minute wonder crap, but they can then just poly/drink forever.

Not sure why you went on a rant about Ret being bad in Vanilla. They weren't amazing no, but they also weren't horrible in a teamfight. In terms of DPS, yes, obviously - but that was the design of Paladin back then. PvP also wasn't designed around duels but mass PvP, in which Paladins as a whole were pretty great.

That said, all I was talking about was whether Ret PvP was *fun*, not *good*. If your only metric for whether something is fun is if it's good, then you should play a Rogue or Mage.

[Gaidax]

Not sure why you went on a rant about Ret being bad in Vanilla. They weren't amazing no, but they also weren't horrible in a teamfight. In terms of DPS, yes, obviously - but that was the design of Paladin back then. PvP also wasn't designed around duels but mass PvP, in which Paladins as a whole were pretty great.

That said, all I was talking about was whether Ret PvP was *fun*, not *good*. If your only metric for whether something is fun is if it's good, then you should play a Rogue or Mage.

In my book sitting there staring at the screen because that's literally all you could really do is not really fun. You quite literally had 0 shit you could do to push DPS and your support was on huge CD or otherwise hardcapped by a small mana puddle you had, so you could not even do that.

Ret was weak in PvP teamfight simply because he was ignored and for a good reason - no damage. (Technically it's flipped, he was ignored because he was useless really, compared to other classes that were a genuine threat.) The best thing Ret could do in battleground is defend a point long enough for reinforcements to come and this was really the only thing good about "ret".

As a whole - playing "dps" paladin is waste of time both fun and performance-wise. I guess if your cup of tea is running up to something and autoattacking and having Divine Shield, then yes. "It is not my time yet, mortals!" bubblehearth macro was hilarious in IF duels.

[Velerios]

Class wide effect.

Oh yes, that was that too... i remembered about the greater blessings, but back then they were only class wide effects.

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Aoe healing is not really a thing in vanilla, with the exception of Shamans. Priest got some aoe healing, but its so inefficient that for the most part its completely useless outside of Oh shit moments, and on vaelstrasz.

Sorry, but that's simply not true: if this was the case, alliance would have had no aoe-healing at all. In classic it was by far not inefficient to use Prayer of Healing: Just that you needed to think about how you sort up everyone in your group: means: every group gets 1 Priest and you don't mix up melee and ranged (and your group should also stick a bit together.

PoH was very important in many fights, so no aoe-healing was not true at all. But yes, it was far far harder than before we got Circle of Healing and Divine Hymn.

[Segus1992]

If you are spamming flash heals instead of greater heal / heal, you are doing very easy content.

Flash heal any rank is very mana inefficient, and the healing it does is very low, only exception is if you need to proc inspiration on a tank

As for the amount of abilities used, holy paladin have much more than 1 spell, they got a ton of situational spells they can use. The warrior is no exception, yes, they got maybe a few more buttons that they use regulary, but a class is not the amount of buttons, but how you use them

Flash Heal isn't far off in terms of efficiency, and it's actually often far more efficient in raids as you're less likely to overheal because someone else landed the heal first. It's also less punishing to cancel a Flash Heal than a Greater Heal (to not even mention the added benefit of people being less likely to die before the heal even lands).

Heal has nothing going for it - it's less efficient than Greater Heal but just as slow. The only reason you could possibly have to use it is to spend as little mana as possible, but with the 5 second rule, that's a stupid thing to do. Your single target heals as a Priest are Flash Heal, Renew, and Greater Heal, unless you suck.

Again, and I'm not sure why you're having issues understanding this part, the argument was about Holy Paladin being boring BECAUSE it's just one button, and my counter argument was that most classes are like that in PvE, while many are WORSE than Holy Paladin.

In my book sitting there staring at the screen because that's literally all you could really do is not really fun. You quite literally had 0 shit you could do to push DPS and your support was on huge CD or otherwise hardcapped by a small mana puddle you had, so you could not even do that.

Ret was weak in PvP teamfight simply because he was ignored and for a good reason - no damage. (Technically it's flipped, he was ignored because he was useless really, compared to other classes that were a genuine threat.) The best thing Ret could do in battleground is defend a point long enough for reinforcements to come and this was really the only thing good about "ret".

As a whole - playing "dps" paladin is waste of time both fun and performance-wise. I guess if your cup of tea is running up to something and autoattacking and having Divine Shield, then yes. "It is not my time yet, mortals!" bubblehearth macro was hilarious in IF duels.

I guess you don't know what 'literally' means. Unless you're still talking about duels for some reason, Paladins have Hammer of Justice, Hammer of Wrath, HoJ -> SoC Judgement. All are strong.

Ret was not weak, you just looking at DPS numbers doesn't somehow mean that that's the case. Paladins are defensive support DPS rather than offensive ones, meaning they're the last target just because they're the hardest target to kill, not because they're not a threat. Being the best defender is hardly a small thing either.

Again, if all you're looking for is numbers and 1v1 strength, Mage is probably your class.

[wholol]

Well you kind of proves my point with the healing meter and how useless it is.
If you actually look at the log, and not just his position on the healing meter, you will see that half of his healing is from judgement of light, and the fight is a 28 second lucifron kill, which is barely any damage to heal, and any damage was healed so fast by the judgement that no other healer could really get any healing in, thus its simply meter padding and have nothing to do with scaling. That guy on the top was just the lucky guy who got to JoL the boss so noone else really could heal at all.
If you take away his JoL healing, its just a average joe healing, and not something something great.

If you look at some more difficult bosses, you will see a good mix of priests paladin and druids, where paladins only really being top when they get to be that one JoL paladin, rest are middle of the pack.

But the meters are irrelevant, cause healers have different assignments, a healer who is on the MT is usually going to have much higher healing, than the ones healing the offtank. What logs do, is to see if someone actually did what he was supposed to, and not healing something else to meter pad, causing tank deaths.

I linked the MC scores for some reason, was meant to link naxx : https://legacyplayers.com/Raids/Ranking/Default.aspx.

Fights are short when you are naxx geared and clearing MC, so those MC logs are a bit whacked, I also suggest you filter the realm to northDa.. as that is slightly more accurate than other realms.

I'm obviously not saying priests are bad healers, each healer has a role to play but pallies are usually on top on a lot of fights if they're doing what they're supposed to, if you add to that how easy they are to play, their insane mana efficiency and how fucking OP they are in bgs then you can see why i said what I did.

Edit: link might be bugged, if it's still linking MC just change the filters I guess.

[Gaidax]

I guess you don't know what 'literally' means. Unless you're still talking about duels for some reason, Paladins have Hammer of Justice, Hammer of Wrath, HoJ -> SoC Judgement. All are strong.

Please, don't make me laugh. HoJ is 1 min CD and SoC Judgement did about ~200 damage give or take, might as well not bother and save your mana puddle for heals and Hammer of Lol (that quite often failed to do what it was supposed to do) was only a thing under 20% enemy HP.

Yes literally. Paladin was a dead fish in the water when it came to meaningful ability use in PvP. You used a very small array of abilities on huge CDs and the only effective thing you could use that was not tied to that was Holy Light. And even then you had mana for like 4 of those give or take.

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Honestly, I can understand, different people love different things. But really, speaking from heart - you know that Vanilla paladins of any "spec" were not really a pinnacle of gameplay there. Yeah, it was this "land of blind" thing where many classes were simple, but Paladins easily too the cake there with how passive they were.

[SirBeef]

Oh yes, that was that too... i remembered about the greater blessings, but back then they were only class wide effects.

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Sorry, but that's simply not true: if this was the case, alliance would have had no aoe-healing at all. In classic it was by far not inefficient to use Prayer of Healing: Just that you needed to think about how you sort up everyone in your group: means: every group gets 1 Priest and you don't mix up melee and ranged (and your group should also stick a bit together.

PoH was very important in many fights, so no aoe-healing was not true at all. But yes, it was far far harder than before we got Circle of Healing and Divine Hymn.

I was salvation on clothies and wisdom on healers. I also never needed that stupid addon. I just started with myself and as my timer was running low, I started over again. But yeah, roll a Paladin if you enjoy healing. If not don't bother if you want to raid until ZG/AQ20. They were more forgiving and had more of the non healing healing class specs in them.

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Please, don't make me laugh. HoJ is 1 min CD and SoC Judgement did about ~200 damage give or take, might as well not bother and save your mana puddle for heals and Hammer of Lol (that quite often failed to do what it was supposed to do) was only a thing under 20% enemy HP.

Yes literally. Paladin was a dead fish in the water when it came to meaningful ability use in PvP. You used a very small array of abilities on huge CDs and the only effective thing you could use that was not tied to that was Holy Light. And even then you had mana for like 4 of those give or take.

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Honestly, I can understand, different people love different things. But really, speaking from heart - you know that Vanilla paladins of any "spec" were not really a pinnacle of gameplay there. Yeah, it was this "land of blind" thing where many classes were simple, but Paladins easily too the cake there with how passive they were.

OMG yes. So many times it was use your abilities, alt-tab for a few, pop a heal, use some abilities then move to the next mob.

[Zensunni]

Lol this tryhard acting like a paladin couldn't heal strath until T2 gear? ROFL. Any group with 2 brain cells, a holy paladin with zero raid gear could easily heal strath. Vanilla was easy. I guess people are not going to get that through their skulls until Classic lands and they say, "My god...this is so easy."

[Velerios]

Lol this tryhard acting like a paladin couldn't heal strath until T2 gear? ROFL. Any group with 2 brain cells, a holy paladin with zero raid gear could easily heal strath. Vanilla was easy. I guess people are not going to get that through their skulls until Classic lands and they say, "My god...this is so easy."

Paladins could easily heal strath; but nobody did it, because let's be honest: until level 60, everybody plays ret. Only real crazy people play holy to 60.

Oh, my first char was a holy paladin leveling to 60 ;-)

[RobertMugabe]

So I'm thinking of rolling a paladin in classic. I already levelled a paladin when WotLK hit and loved it. I also liked the end game as a paladin in WotLK. All specs were viable in raids at this point. I dual specced prot and holy and could tank and heal whenever I wanted to. I'm pretty sure I'll like levelling a paladin in classic too. However I'm not sure about the end-game content when I hit 60. I was wondering if it was fun to play a paladin at 60 in vanilla?

I played a warrior in vanilla myself. I tanked MC through AQ40. I really liked the challenge of tanking, especially as MT. It's probably part of the reason why I liked playing pala in WotLK so much.

Your only viable raid role in classic seems to be to go holy, though. Ret dps was very low and prot pallies lacked utility: no taunt, no spiritual attunement for mana regen during tanking. Now I don't mind being a healer at all, I'm just wondering if it'll be fun and/or challenging to play a holy paladin in end-game raids, or if it's just going to be a lot of spamming flash of light on the MT?

Also, were retribution paladins were any good in pvp? I know they were good duellers but I'm wondering about their role in battlegrounds. If holy in raids turns out to be too boring, could I still have fun in pvp?

In other words, I'd like to know if I'll have fun as a paladin at 60. Could any paladins from back in the day enlighten me?

IMHO Holy Paladins are not only the best, but also the most fun healers in vanilla

[Airwaves]

I used to make them stand off to the side of any boss fight a keep buffs up...

[Velerios]

From your xp, paladins are ok for tanking high lvl dungeons in ret spec w/ ret equip? Or maybe some mixed ret/tanking equips?
Or would you need a full set for tanking those in ret?

In vanilla itself it was impossible to tank as Paladin, because you only had Seal of Fury until 1.9. I only leveled paladin before 1.9 hit and only after 2.0, so i can't say how it works. But one thing for sure: Holy Paladin is FAR FAR better in tanking than Ret Paladin; because they have simply more mana and their spells also often deal more damage (and don't forget the aggro from Holy Shock). And ret equipment... There is really not much difference in equipment until level 60. What you definitively need is simply a shield for the armor-bonus and higher block chance.

In the end: Consecration matters the most, then you need a shield and a 1 handed weapon, the rest is only half important. tanking with a 2h is far from good.

[Nite92]

Well that depends if you find spamming Flash of Light for x hours fun.

Well, aren't most classes spamming one button in raids?

[Velerios]

IMHO Holy Paladins are not only the best, but also the most fun healers in vanilla

Yes, for sure:

/cast Flash of Light
repeat

Most fun class ever. Sorry, but let's be real, paladin was boring, even when you are healing. Sadly blizzard wanted to bring paladin in BfA the same feeling of healing back, making them boring as hell.

Paladin is only fun when you have a lot of crit and see that everyone else run out of mana while you are still kicking.

[RobertMugabe]

Yes, for sure:

/cast Flash of Light
repeat

Most fun class ever. Sorry, but let's be real, paladin was boring, even when you are healing. Sadly blizzard wanted to bring paladin in BfA the same feeling of healing back, making them boring as hell.

Paladin is only fun when you have a lot of crit and see that everyone else run out of mana while you are still kicking.

What a bunch of nonsense. Paladins were, as all other healers, using different ranks of spells AND paladins were in fact using Holy Light and occasionally even Holy Shock (if talented) as well as your blessings and seals.

And if you're saying that paladins were boring healers, then what fucking other spec was fun to play? Holy Priests? lmao

[blooderduki]

So I'm thinking of rolling a paladin in classic. I already levelled a paladin when WotLK hit and loved it. I also liked the end game as a paladin in WotLK. All specs were viable in raids at this point. I dual specced prot and holy and could tank and heal whenever I wanted to. I'm pretty sure I'll like levelling a paladin in classic too. However I'm not sure about the end-game content when I hit 60. I was wondering if it was fun to play a paladin at 60 in vanilla?

I played a warrior in vanilla myself. I tanked MC through AQ40. I really liked the challenge of tanking, especially as MT. It's probably part of the reason why I liked playing pala in WotLK so much.

Your only viable raid role in classic seems to be to go holy, though. Ret dps was very low and prot pallies lacked utility: no taunt, no spiritual attunement for mana regen during tanking. Now I don't mind being a healer at all, I'm just wondering if it'll be fun and/or challenging to play a holy paladin in end-game raids, or if it's just going to be a lot of spamming flash of light on the MT?

Also, were retribution paladins were any good in pvp? I know they were good duellers but I'm wondering about their role in battlegrounds. If holy in raids turns out to be too boring, could I still have fun in pvp?

In other words, I'd like to know if I'll have fun as a paladin at 60. Could any paladins from back in the day enlighten me?

https://barrens.chat/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1655&start=50

Everything you want to learn about Protection Paladin is there.

[Velerios]

One problem I thought about tanking in holy was the rarity of plate/mail w/ int/spell at low lvls. But holy/prot looks cool and safe.

There is a rarity of +spelldmg at low-level at any point, not only for paladin, but also for all classes. Item customization was totally a mess in vanilla.

[classicwowbuilds]

I think it is similar to Shaman in that there is only 1 spec that is considered viable by the "serious" raiding community, and the more hardcore players are going to avoid you / tell you to respec to healer. But if you don't mind that, I am sure the majority of guilds and players have no issues with prot or ret paladins. If you like holy you are safe going pally regardless.