Elements of classic paladin class to be implemented in retail

[StrawberryZebra]

And then there were effects like Ret aura and concentration aura which were both very good but their niche value allowed them to be totally fine. Devotion aura was a great in-between if you just wanted passive armor instead of either of the two more niche effects. There was never a point in the game's history that I can remember where you ever felt like you had to have any of these effects, but they all had value in some encounter. Obviously the resist auras can't really come back though.

There is no longer any niche for them in the current game. Spell pushback doesn't exist anymore rendering Concentration Aura meaningless. Spell Resistances have been removed. I don't think completely reworking the entire game just so you can have a niche ability for Paladins back is good idea. Especially when the niche problem it solved in the first place was removed for being poor design.

Ret Aura is negligable at best and detremental at worst. It lost it's only real saving grace when Paladin threat was no longer tied to strictly holy damage. It's damage was never really significant enough to warrent keeping around, and if it ever got to the point where it was dealing significant damage then being stood in the general area of a Paladin with Ret Aura would completely hard counter Rogues, Feral Druids and Warriors in PvP. Hard countering a class by simply being there is not good design in any capacity. Having an ability which does 0.02% of your overall damage is just taking up space.

But this post feels like exactly what I'm talking about when I say that developers need to drop the kind of mindset you're showing in this post. You can have a thing that exists to be unique and flavorful to a specific class and it's fine as long as it's not obscenely OP. Especially with an effect like auras, they can be seen as yet another raid buff that you either have or don't have, and they can be a reason you bring a paladin for the same reason you bring a mage for Arcane Intellect or priest for Fort. With your logic every raid buff has no place in the game and if that's what you're saying then I have to completely disagree with you.

Have you looked at those raid buff Icons lately? They're all percentage based. That's fine for Attack Power, Int and Stamina which all scale linearly. You cannot add a scalling Armour buff in there though, it will either scale to the point of near meaningless as gear improves or be so powerful that all encounters have to be designed with the assumption that your raid will have it.

You cannot have it be a flat damage reduction either. The current version of Devotion Aura is bordering on broken already. Making something like that raid wide regardless of distance is just insanity, and raids would have to be designed around the assumption that you have the buff because it's way too powerful to ignore.

Let's say you get creative and decide to have the Aura scale with the Paladin's stats. Then you end up with the situation where an overgeared Paladin makes everything easy mode and an undergeared Paladin is practically worthless. Which is ultimately the beginning and the end of this argument. Auras are either worthless or completely OP. There is no middle ground where Auras both offer appreciable amounts of stats to other players without being so over the top that you can't do without them.

[Musta]

I want mmy auras and seals back.

[ExiHext]

Seals for dps'ing again would be cool. The only aura I can see return without being either op or useless is pony aura. Problem with seals: they are more ret thing (unless you bring back seal of light that healed on autoattacks and restored mana, but that seems a little bit strong, perhaps?). So because blizz is dreaming of streamlining classes again and augmenting them with specs my idea would be bringing seals as a talent for at least retribution. Seal dancing is not appreciated, but at least something like a single target and multi target seal would be cool...perhaps with some shiny visuals? Just an idea, very keen to see, how paladins will evolve in the next expac.

[DotEleven]

Wrong and wrong.

You are the one that wants it back cause of "feelings", i don't want them back cause they were bad abilities.

They weren't removed just cause they were pruning stuff. They were removed cause they were bad. I find it effin amazing how you think skills were removed just cause we want to have less buttons. No, they were removed cause they were bad or useless.
I actually think you didn't play Ret across the years cause you would know why they were removed.

Here let me educate you on why they were removed.

Seals, they made our damage inconsistant when they were a priority. Seal of command was pure RNG and required you to only use the slower weapons in the game to increase proc chance. When it didn't proc you were doing white damage.
Seal of blood got added to belves in TBC. It was consistant but it killed you at the same time, leading to deaths when big crits happened and requiring a pet healer full time.
In cataclysm, they gave seal of vengence in order to stop our now scaling holy damage from wrath. It was slow, it had you build stacks and slowed the class to a crawl. Players didn't like it so they made it stack faster, wich made it indistinguable from SoR. At some point the only choice you had was ST seal or AoE seal and made us scale in a silly way in aoe scenarios vs single target. It wasn't an interesting button the rest of the time and was effectively a tax on our other abilities wich couldn't do more damage cause of the added holy damage scaling and got removed.
It wasn't cause they just wanted to remove things. It's because it was boring and useless and was holding the class back.

Auras were always useless. Only in vanilla were the resistances needed, but ever since it didn't matter wich one you had on, so it got removed. There was a point in wich they made party damage and reduction buffs but it made paladins required in every group so it went away. Again NOT because they just wanted to remove it. It's cause it was useless or overpowered.

Blessings are the same. They wanted groups to not have to have paladins, so they gave our buffs to other classes and then removed it from all cause they were just a nuisance. Again NOT cause they just wanted to remove skills, but cause it unbalanced the game.

If you bring these things back, you will only have us turn back time and repeat the same conclusions/mistakes. Maybe you were too young or didn't play the game then, but i am not gonna stick around to see the same thing happening again cause peeps like you have short memories.

You feel they were bad abilities. That's your opinion.

Stop arguing with your feeling and start arguing with logic because until you do, I'm done.

It's funny cause you are really on your own. Go through this thread again, and look at how many people liked them and thought they were useful. While you go "Well, because I didn't like them, it's logical that they be removed and never return. I'm so unbiased!"

[valky94]

not a paladin player, but having seals (for example a seal for single target, one for aoe, one for healing etc.) and resistance auras back would be a good start

[tru]

The first iteration of divine storm at the end of bc b4 the fix lol

[Swnem]

You feel they were bad abilities. That's your opinion.

Stop arguing with your feeling and start arguing with logic because until you do, I'm done.

It's funny cause you are really on your own. Go through this thread again, and look at how many people liked them and thought they were useful. While you go "Well, because I didn't like them, it's logical that they be removed and never return. I'm so unbiased!"

lol your switcheroo attempt is frankly pathetic. These things were told by the devs when explaining their removal.

But hey you "feel" they have to be re-implemented even though they thoroughly failed. All the logic we need eh? Maybe you should read it again cause you can't seem to get it and throw BS things like "they were removed just cause".

[Hctaz]

Because they were flavorful and brought life to the class that made each spec feel connected. Right now with pretty much every class you don't feel like for example a paladin that specialized in holy for healing. You feel specifically like a holy paladin as if you had no connection to the other paladins. As a hunter, I feel no real connection or class camaraderie between me as a beast master hunter and someone else as a survival hunter or marksmanship hunter.

Not even necessarily a big deal to even have the class feel connected, but just feeling like it ISN'T connected from other classes.
That's the biggest thing I'm getting from Classic right now. Every class feels like a unique class instead of like later on. I remember Wrath ret pally, fury warrior, and enhance shaman basically paying identically. Just hit the button that was off CD. No regard for resource, no regard for totem management, mana management, seal management, etc.

[Halyon]

I wish they'd bring those kinds of abilities back to all the classes. Paladin Auras/Seals, Hunter Aspects, Warrior Stances, Shaman Totems if you'd consider them the same.

I can live w/o hunter aspects, I'd rather have double-trapping back. :I

[DotEleven]

lol your switcheroo attempt is frankly pathetic. These things were told by the devs when explaining their removal.

But hey you "feel" they have to be re-implemented even though they thoroughly failed. All the logic we need eh? Maybe you should read it again cause you can't seem to get it and throw BS things like "they were removed just cause".

The only reason these things were removed was because they weren't super interactive. Back when the purged the action bars they looked a lot at what actually required pressing and then removed a lot that was just a long-term passive effect. The abilities we're talking about are very flavorful and enjoyable, but it's not wrong that you didn't really switch out of Battle Stance or Aspect of the Hawk a lot. Which is why they got dropped. Not because they weren't enjoyable, but because they needed to lower button count and these were buttons that weren't pressed a lot.

My "switcheroo" is hardly pathetic. You're literally one of the only people that feels this way and the only reason you're so against them is because you don't like them not because "they'd be bad for the game" because they wouldn't.

- - - Updated - - -

I can live w/o hunter aspects, I'd rather have double-trapping back. :I

I mean, I can understand since we were in Hawk/Dragonhawk aspect 90% of the time, but like one of my favorite moments was that time when my Raid was having some issues with Hagara in Dragon Soul during the ice phase where a few were having trouble keeping up and I actually found a use for Aspect of the Pack. I just think (especially with Survival being a hybrid ranged/melee) they could find some way to bring them back.

[GreenJesus]

Seals for dps'ing again would be cool. The only aura I can see return without being either op or useless is pony aura. Problem with seals: they are more ret thing (unless you bring back seal of light that healed on autoattacks and restored mana, but that seems a little bit strong, perhaps?). So because blizz is dreaming of streamlining classes again and augmenting them with specs my idea would be bringing seals as a talent for at least retribution. Seal dancing is not appreciated, but at least something like a single target and multi target seal would be cool...perhaps with some shiny visuals? Just an idea, very keen to see, how paladins will evolve in the next expac.

Seal dancing was awesome. Get 5 stack of censure on multiple targets nd then switch to the AoE seal. Was awesome and rewarded minmax play.

[Cyanu]

the individual 5 min blessings and the deep and satisfying rotation /s

remember that good ol meme post? 'the reason paladins have so little APM is so you don't mind the latency when you're downloding porn'

[DotEleven]

Not even necessarily a big deal to even have the class feel connected, but just feeling like it ISN'T connected from other classes.
That's the biggest thing I'm getting from Classic right now. Every class feels like a unique class instead of like later on. I remember Wrath ret pally, fury warrior, and enhance shaman basically paying identically. Just hit the button that was off CD. No regard for resource, no regard for totem management, mana management, seal management, etc.

I disagree, just because I feel like Class Identity is a big part of fantasy. Like I said at the start, we really should feel like X Class that has specialized in X Spec instead of specifically a this Spec. I mean, that was on that from pre-MoP was that 90% of the spells your class got everyone in your class got. There were a few that were specifically obtained from a spec tree, but if you learned it from a trainer, everyone from your class learned it. So specializing was specifically that, specializing. A tank pally COULD use Holy Light just like a healing pally but of course the healing pally's is gonna be better.

[Temna]

Honestly...I want very little of it.

For auras i think they hit a happy middle ground in Legion by making them a specific holy only mechanic, which i understand cheesed some people off but i think it was more and interesting thought experiment that ended up overall working out.

Seals and Judgments...kinda mixed on this one because I feel as if they only way they could do those now a days without being a "Make your right click more better smOrc" is by doing what they did to holy with auras and make em a key class mechanic. Wouldn't be a terrible idea to see expanded upon but can see it leading into many dev traps that make me a bit weary.

Gonna combine this one Blessings and Hands...should just be usable by all specs and ffs let rets have Hand of Sacrifice back.

Exorcism...give it to holy as a dps option maybe but otherwise its just a blander Blade of Justice at the end of the day

[Hctaz]

I disagree, just because I feel like Class Identity is a big part of fantasy. Like I said at the start, we really should feel like X Class that has specialized in X Spec instead of specifically a this Spec. I mean, that was on that from pre-MoP was that 90% of the spells your class got everyone in your class got. There were a few that were specifically obtained from a spec tree, but if you learned it from a trainer, everyone from your class learned it. So specializing was specifically that, specializing. A tank pally COULD use Holy Light just like a healing pally but of course the healing pally's is gonna be better.

Oh, I think you've mistaken my point a little. I definitely agree that classes should be classes instead of a class with three wholly unique specs. My main point was that this uniqueness is, in my opinion, actually more beneficial for class identity in terms of a paladin feels uniquely like a paladin instead of a shaman that uses yellow magic instead of green and gray magic.

If that makes any sense? Like a holy, ret, or prot paladin having the same spells is a good thing for one because it makes them feel like the same class that specialized in different things, but it plays a HUGE part in making each class actually feel different from each other specifically. I think the reason for this is mainly because it's a lot easier to make 9 different classes that all feel unique instead of 30+ specs that are all somehow supposed to feel unique from each other.

On top of that, Blizzard started slowly removing the "problems" of each classes' uniqueness. Ammo and the deadzone for hunters, soul shard farming for warlocks, Seal management for pallies... Honestly I feel like so much of the class fantasy isn't necessarily based around what a class is good at, but rather what things make it annoying to play the class. It's something that you can say that you've mastered about your class that will never translate to another class. They're completely individual problems.

[Halyon]

I mean, I can understand since we were in Hawk/Dragonhawk aspect 90% of the time, but like one of my favorite moments was that time when my Raid was having some issues with Hagara in Dragon Soul during the ice phase where a few were having trouble keeping up and I actually found a use for Aspect of the Pack. I just think (especially with Survival being a hybrid ranged/melee) they could find some way to bring them back.

Druids more or less got a better version on AotP. The daze was the killer about it, it was more of a risk than it would ever really reward. I'm more against going back to anything resambling AotH into Viper for way too long to recover resource like Wrath. It won't happen because mana is a thing of past, but stance-dancing is just annoying if on GCD, which it most likely will be, seeing how everything else works these days.

Aspects as a temporary buff, basically as it is, we just have way less of them, is fine. I just personally think hunter has lost a lot of identity and engagement. Except maybe survival, but surv is melee, and there are better melee classes already.

Maybe I'm just jaded though, there is that possibility.

On top of that, Blizzard started slowly removing the "problems" of each classes' uniqueness. Ammo and the deadzone for hunters, soul shard farming for warlocks, Seal management for pallies... Honestly I feel like so much of the class fantasy isn't necessarily based around what a class is good at, but rather what things make it annoying to play the class. It's something that you can say that you've mastered about your class that will never translate to another class. They're completely individual problems.

Ammo and deadzone weren't identity, they were really annoying because 1 was just wasting bag space like nothing else, should've been a seperate bag just for ammo, an actual quiver. I'm tremendously salty that only MM gets a quiver (and the best bow models in the game /huff) exclusive through artifact skins. Deadzone was just annoying to deal with.

Locks still have soulstones, but not in the same capacity, which tbh is fine, because again, should've had a seperate bag from your regular bags just for your resources. Getting the resources is fine, it was just a PITA when you had no other bag space left because of said resource needing to be topped off before a raid or something, and god forbid you ran out...

Paladins should also have had Librams. Because those would be cool, but knowing Blizz, it'd be spec locked via artifact or some shit.

[Palapop]

Bring back seals, auras, sense undead, hammer of wrath as base spell, exorcism (replace BOJ with it).

Make paladins what they truly are- buffers, hybrids with "retribution dps" and helping hand for others.

Make us what we were in wotlk- hard to cc/stun/slow. But also not so good dps either. This is humiliating what we are now- 2 min cd dps who can be CC'ed/rooted/kited forever.

WARRIORS have better mobility than rets now.

[derpkitteh]

all they need to do with paladin is get rid of holy power.

bring back wotlk paladin.

[Hctaz]

Ammo and deadzone weren't identity, they were really annoying because 1 was just wasting bag space like nothing else, should've been a seperate bag just for ammo, an actual quiver. I'm tremendously salty that only MM gets a quiver (and the best bow models in the game /huff) exclusive through artifact skins. Deadzone was just annoying to deal with.

Locks still have soulstones, but not in the same capacity, which tbh is fine, because again, should've had a seperate bag from your regular bags just for your resources. Getting the resources is fine, it was just a PITA when you had no other bag space left because of said resource needing to be topped off before a raid or something, and god forbid you ran out...

Paladins should also have had Librams. Because those would be cool, but knowing Blizz, it'd be spec locked via artifact or some shit.

They absolutely are identity. Have you played Classic at all? This is the first major thing I noticed about class identity; the pain in the ass mechanics they separately had to deal with. You're also wrong if you think that ammo and soul shards are just "bag space." You don't just go to a vendor and purchase soul shards. There was an active element to warlocks where they needed to go out and collect their own soul shards. Rogues had to go out and make their own poisons. Hunters had to make sure they were equipping a quiver or ammo bag for bonus atk speed plus making sure they bought and were using the right ammo (by this specifically I mean the fact that different ammo increased your dmg by different amounts based on its level).

The dead zone is ABSOLUTELY identity. I have no idea how you can say that it isn't class identity. It sounds like you're confusing class fantasy with class identity. Class fantasy is usually used as a term related to the roleplaying aspect of the class. It's how the class stands out in a crowd from the other classes visually. Class identity is what makes each class unique in terms of gameplay.

Some of these things go hand in hand like the deadzone for hunters. You expect to see hunters using ranged weaponry, and ranged weaponry isn't going to be very effective in a close combat scramble (at least not a bow). It's the reason why archers in real military strategies had melee side arms and were protected by others. It's also the reason why guns had bayonets on them at one point as well. The need for those items has obviously decreased now with the fact that guns can now be both a long ranged main weapon and a short ranged side arm, but WoW isn't in a time period where you can just whip out your pistol when the enemy runs up to your face.

As for identity: No other class has this issue. They're either fully ranged and can cast up close, or are fully melee and need to get up close to do any damage. Hunters have a very unique problem that does not translate to any other class in classic. You can master something wholly unique for that class and only that class.


As an example of how the identity being different matters: I can literally pick up any DPS spec in retail WoW, read IcyVeins for about 5 minutes, and play it on par with what's needed to full clear a heroic raid. I can very easily hop from class to class and spec to spec because they're all the same. There's hardly anything completely unique to one class that I have to actually master. All of my action buttons are just bound in such a way that similar things do similar things. 1 is my debuff thing I hit once and maintain, 2 is my resource builder spell on a CD or a proc ability, 3 is my big spender , 4 is my filler option... Frost bolt, Wrath, Fireball, Steady Shot, Lightning Bolt, Frost Strike, Death Coil... That thing you normally hit whenever you've hit all your other things and are waiting.

[Tavin]

Divine Intervention best spell in the game. That's all I want on retail