Elements of classic paladin class to be implemented in retail

[sam86]

i think i posted before, but i'll post again
i want the entire seal system back, then entire bless back too, yes even bless of protection and freedom, i want those blesses to remove any other bless so u know u use them for oh f8ck moments, i want the aura system back, tbh i love the old paladin system, that include classic and even the revamp that buffed his dmg a lot in wrath
If i must pick my favorite paladin time, it would be wrath, then classic/tbc, then Legion, i hated the holy point system and i don't want it to even exist, if i wanted a combo point class i'd play rogue, heck i loved when lay on hands had the massive 40 min cd or divine intervention or..
u know what, just give me wrath or classic paladin, i'm ok with low dmg as long i actually loved the best utility/buff i had in game

[Lothaeryn]

Seals worked, sort of, for Ret and Ret only.

I wholeheartedly agree with all of your points, Seals were very messy or outright useless for Prot and Holy, and as such I do not wish to see them return for those specs in that capacity, Holy could use some work since its ST healing is ok, but brings very little to raidwide toolsets aside from Aura Mastery and a few gimmicks that a druid usually just trumps any day.

Protection is in a decent spot I think, overall the spec works fine and Blizzard admitted that they used Prot paladins as their "baseline" for balancing the other tank classes in Legion. I feel the LoTP/HoTP offhealing system is a decent touch for mitigation gameplay, but that mechanic seems like it was more suited for Blood DK's design philosophy, maybe some sort of substitute would give Prot a slightly different approach but where it currently is has no real issue aside from numbers.

Ret however, is the main reason I suggest bringing seals back. Blizzard has already tried and failed at balancing the Holy Power system for Prot and Holy, and outright decided to remove them to fix those specs reliance on that system. And while there are some rough edges, it worked overall for both specs.

Ret on the other hand has had countless issues with how HP affected its throughput and rotation since day one. With Cataclysm's attrocious 1HP generator making ret obscenely useless early in that expansion, making it almost rely entirely on Divine Purpose procs to keep Par with other dps. The system has had countless iterations, some with modicums of success, but constantly overtuned or just outright broken, usually requiring blizzard to come in and fix or downright nerf skills into the ground for an expansion because they can't figure out a decent way to make it work without being detrimental to the DPS aspect of the spec. The continuous changes to utility skills tied to holy power suggests blizzard understands that HP needs to be a dps builder, but doesn't want to copy the rogue's dps kit any further than single target uses and cleave. Adding Utility skills on top of that causes even more problems down the line without wildly adjusting HP generation and would ultimately cause the spec to have problems with sustainability, which it already has with 2 HP generators and only 2 skills to realistically use for DPS purposes.

As I've stated previously in this thread. I do not want Seals in the same capacity as they were; similar in concept, yes, but with more added to its functions not tied only to judgement. I want Seals to affect/morph skills on the paladin's toolkit to give it more options without it being heavily reliant on burst. Bringing Sustainability in line with other melee dps. With a seal morphing a skill's output, you could also allow for more utility to be weaved into the skillset of the paladin while he is dpsing. Like having something like Seal of the Crusader putting a slow on casting/attack speed if it was activated on a Blade of Justice skill. Similar to how Law and Order works for the PvP talent, but tied to a seal instead.

[Wrecktangle]

Seals at least worked. Having them affect multiple skills and not just judgement would have made their synergies a lot more nuanced and made the paladin feel more unique.

Are you implying that current Ret doesn't work? It most certainly does even if it's dull both mechanically and thematically, but it's absolutely functional.

You could have seal of the crusader cause Exorcism/Blade of Justice slow down a target's attack/cast speed, seal of light cause Templar's Verdict to apply a life-leech DoT on a target(AKA: what Justicar's Vengeance should have done), or have command cause exorcism/BoJ to cleave around its target. Seal of Righteousness cause Divine Storm morph into Divine hammer instead and become a small cleave DoT like it worked in Legion, and these are just examples I can think of off the top of my head.

Most of your examples are either passive effects or binary decisions and hardly qualify as interesting, let alone enjoyable gameplay IMO. That's always been the issue with seals and your proposed examples doesn't abate this.

I feel like everyone ignores Cataclysm Paladins and how they were nigh perfect and absurdly fun. Not WotLK broken by deleting things, not ret classic paladin mediocre, and they even had holy power too.

I don't remember Cata Ret being well liked or absurdly fun. I do however remember WoD and MoP being very well received and (for me personally WoD) being enjoyable to play.

[PenguinChan]

I don't remember Cata Ret being well liked or absurdly fun. I do however remember WoD and MoP being very well received and (for me personally WoD) being enjoyable to play.

I'm sure there are plenty of Paladins who enjoyed becoming rogues but I did not. Mists immediately turned me off when they removed Auras, and then when they removed seals I was done with the class. I was hopeful when the buffs returned, minuscule as they were - then the best one, the weapon buff was immediately removed not even two patches later. Plus the AoE that they gained was turned into a passive, and eventually we DID get consecration (Nice), but the generators are still single target and we no longer had the option of both.

Old Ret > Rogue in plate. While I'm sure Ret is fine or good in both ST or AoE, I don't enjoy playing it. They're stuck with spamming HP generators for AoE or ST finishers that, to me, feel like wet noodles. Which is a separate issue not really tied to Ret but the game as a whole until you get absurdly overgeared on content. So the playstyle shifted to something I did not play back in the old days of WoW - so I stopped. I want that old philosophy back.

[StrawberryZebra]

As I've stated previously in this thread. I do not want Seals in the same capacity as they were; similar in concept, yes, but with more added to its functions not tied only to judgement. I want Seals to affect/morph skills on the paladin's toolkit to give it more options without it being heavily reliant on burst. Bringing Sustainability in line with other melee dps. With a seal morphing a skill's output, you could also allow for more utility to be weaved into the skillset of the paladin while he is dpsing. Like having something like Seal of the Crusader putting a slow on casting/attack speed if it was activated on a Blade of Justice skill. Similar to how Law and Order works for the PvP talent, but tied to a seal instead.

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding here, but what you're proposing sounds more like a toggle than anything else. If you've got a Single Target seal, an AoE seal and a Burst seal, you'd simply toggle to the correct one for the situation. What would be the difference between something like Warrior stances or the old Priest Chakras?

They sound, on paper at least, to be very similar in practice. While that's certainly functional, it doesn't really bring anything new or interesting to the table from a gameplay perspective.

[Elkas]

WoD Ret was aids if you cared about consistent output. BFA Ret is basically a heavy consistent derivative of WoD Ret, with basically the most unpopular passives and talents at the time (Divine Storm proc/Empowered Seals) replaced with others.

Many of the same flaws that plague modern day Ret existed in WoD Ret, albeit in a much more severe form.

[Lothaeryn]

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding here, but what you're proposing sounds more like a toggle than anything else. If you've got a Single Target seal, an AoE seal and a Burst seal, you'd simply toggle to the correct one for the situation. What would be the difference between something like Warrior stances or the old Priest Chakras?

They sound, on paper at least, to be very similar in practice. While that's certainly functional, it doesn't really bring anything new or interesting to the table from a gameplay perspective.

I'm not talking about late stage seal design philosophy, Wrath seals were literally an on/off switch that had no nuance aside from whether or not you turned them on before combat. My idea is more in line with Vanilla and BC seal twisting with more utilities baked into multiple skills and not just the Judgement skill.

Seals would be activated and on a short but noticeable CD that required you to think ahead in rotation, you could have Seal of the Crusader work how it did and increase damage on the target by x% value when cast through judgement, but that same seal would also cause your next Exorcism/Blade of Justice to slow the cast/attack speed of your target, allowing you to choose which output would come from that seal. After using said seal it is consumed, which would allow you to follow up with another seal of your choosing for DPS or utility, with similar options on various attack skills/generators.

So for example:

Seal of the Crusader can either:

1: Be cast via Judgement, Causing the target to take x% holy damage for (y Duration)

OR

2: Be cast via BoJ, causing the targets attack/casting speed to be reduced by x% for (y duration)

Casting either skill consumes the Seal, all seals are on a Shared CD timer that starts either at the cast of a seal or at the consumption of a seal, depending on how devs would design it.

You could do that for multiple seals depending on how you want to develop the paladin's toolkit. It opens an avenue to new utility/dps skills while also weaving it into the combat rotation, and could bring the paladin class better sustain that isn't reliant on AW.

[Cyrde]

Seal of the Crusader can either:

1: Be cast via Judgement, Causing the target to take x% holy damage for (y Duration)

No just no.

[Lothaeryn]

No just no.

if you're that much a pussy you want to use a burner account to criticize someone maybe you shouldn't be discussing it.

[Lorianus]

I'm not talking about late stage seal design philosophy, Wrath seals were literally an on/off switch that had no nuance aside from whether or not you turned them on before combat. My idea is more in line with Vanilla and BC seal twisting with more utilities baked into multiple skills and not just the Judgement skill.

Seals would be activated and on a short but noticeable CD that required you to think ahead in rotation, you could have Seal of the Crusader work how it did and increase damage on the target by x% value when cast through judgement, but that same seal would also cause your next Exorcism/Blade of Justice to slow the cast/attack speed of your target, allowing you to choose which output would come from that seal. After using said seal it is consumed, which would allow you to follow up with another seal of your choosing for DPS or utility, with similar options on various attack skills/generators.

So for example:

Seal of the Crusader can either:

1: Be cast via Judgement, Causing the target to take x% holy damage for (y Duration)

OR

2: Be cast via BoJ, causing the targets attack/casting speed to be reduced by x% for (y duration)

Casting either skill consumes the Seal, all seals are on a Shared CD timer that starts either at the cast of a seal or at the consumption of a seal, depending on how devs would design it.

You could do that for multiple seals depending on how you want to develop the paladin's toolkit. It opens an avenue to new utility/dps skills while also weaving it into the combat rotation, and could bring the paladin class better sustain that isn't reliant on AW.

Making the Class this clunky to play is not the way forward, any iteration of seals in this game were either annoying at best or a clunky GCD mess at worst, your system would be a nightmare in the form of ramp up time, target switching, and useless GCD's before any damage comes from you and most often the mob will be dead in lower content.

Our damage will be balanced then for when we have all your proposed "seal buffs/debuffs" active on our selfs/the mob which means that we have to spend 2-3 or even 4 GCD's just so we can play with the big boys and do the same damage as other classes.

Im not hating on your ideas just out of spite, i just dont get the appeal of seals in todays WoW or atleast the Seal systems that got proposed in this thread.

[Elkas]

Could you stop calling 'judge seal x at the start of combat, then sit on y for the rest of the fight' as 'seal twisting'? You're sounding desperate by trying to make it appear more involved than it was/is.

WoTLK is basically the same system, without the first initial cast. It's simply a shit system dude.

The closest we had to your suggestion is empowered seals, and it was a convoluted mess (just like what you're suggesting). In fact, it pulled ahead in theoretical dps for a while, but not even top Rets could be bothered sticking with it. Let that sink in, the people that are most concerned about bleeding edge performance said 'no' to a theoretically higher dps option, due to how convoluted it was.

(Fuck empowered seals)

[Cyrde]

if you're that much a pussy you want to use a burner account to criticize someone maybe you shouldn't be discussing it.

Where to start ?! Hm...

Ok so first I think you should apologize.
I did not insult you.

Second : It is my main account (I know it's hard to believe !!!) and I don't have to give you anything more reason because I don't owe you anything.

Third : You want to discuss about your ideas ? Why would I want to discuss about a system that adds passive damage on abilities ?
Because you claim it's fresh and new ?
You just reproduce what Blizzard did in the past.
Calibrating our dps around this buffs was bad before. Why would it be different now ?

[Malthanis]

Let's keep the insults out of the thread, and keep the focus on the topic, please and thank you.

[StrawberryZebra]

I'm not talking about late stage seal design philosophy, Wrath seals were literally an on/off switch that had no nuance aside from whether or not you turned them on before combat. My idea is more in line with Vanilla and BC seal twisting with more utilities baked into multiple skills and not just the Judgement skill.

Seals would be activated and on a short but noticeable CD that required you to think ahead in rotation, you could have Seal of the Crusader work how it did and increase damage on the target by x% value when cast through judgement, but that same seal would also cause your next Exorcism/Blade of Justice to slow the cast/attack speed of your target, allowing you to choose which output would come from that seal. After using said seal it is consumed, which would allow you to follow up with another seal of your choosing for DPS or utility, with similar options on various attack skills/generators.

So for example:

Seal of the Crusader can either:

1: Be cast via Judgement, Causing the target to take x% holy damage for (y Duration)

OR

2: Be cast via BoJ, causing the targets attack/casting speed to be reduced by x% for (y duration)

Casting either skill consumes the Seal, all seals are on a Shared CD timer that starts either at the cast of a seal or at the consumption of a seal, depending on how devs would design it.

You could do that for multiple seals depending on how you want to develop the paladin's toolkit. It opens an avenue to new utility/dps skills while also weaving it into the combat rotation, and could bring the paladin class better sustain that isn't reliant on AW.

While that does sound better than a toggle, it sounds like quite a clunky system. If the Seal is on the GCD, which current game design indicates it would be, then you'd be pressing an extra button whenever you wanted to use those empowered effects. That might not be so bad if you could fit it into an otherwise dead GCD, but if you wanted to apply the Attack/Cast Speed slow on BoJ, you'd have to stop your DPS to activate your Seal then BoJ to get the effect. That would get quite intrusive when you need one of those effects right now. Not only would you have the Seal CD to content with, but also the BoJ cooldown - Which can get thrown off if you get an Art of War Proc.

Adding Holy Power into the mix too just muddies the water even further. I've always considered that the optimal use case for most abilities should be something you can reasonably create for yourself. If its "Have 4 Holy power, a dead GCD just before Judgement to activate your Seal then Judge, use Templars Verdict as Blade of Justice comes off cooldown and use Templars Verdict again" I consider that to be something that is, predominently, out of the hands of the player in the current game. It might as well be "When the Stars align" for all the influence the player will have over it.

If there is a longer cooldown, say 30-45 seconds, then would there even be the need to tie them into specific skills? If they're going to be awkward and clunky utility cooldowns, then they're unlikely to get used if they're too impractical. In that situation it would be better for them just to be regular easy to use cooldowns, you're not achieving anything by making them harder to use.

On the other hand, having them off the GCD runs the risk of turning the class into a complete button bashing mess that wouldn't really do much to add nuance to the class. You'd simply use them on the skill that gave the highest DPS 95% of the time - It would simply be an extra button you push every X Seconds without much thought put into it. Those 5% of the time you use it on something different would be those strange edge cases, such as where you needed a utility effect that you weren't able to cover elsewhere. And between HoJ, Cleanse Toxins, Blessing of Freedom/Protection and Hand of Hinderance, there's not too many situations where one of those abilities wouldn't be an acceptable solution in a PvE environment.

Could you stop calling 'judge seal x at the start of combat, then sit on y for the rest of the fight' as 'seal twisting'? You're sounding desperate by trying to make it appear more involved than it was/is.

Typically, "seal twisting" was using one seal for the auto attack buff and another one for the judgement effect. For example, using Seal of Vengence in TBC, where stacking it up to 5 would leave a decent DoT but would simply reapply the DoT when it procced again when fully stacked. You would get it to 5 stacks, switch to Righteousness for the on hit damage, then judge Vengeance again for the higher damage and maybe use it for a couple of seconds here and there in between to refresh the DoT.

Or, as is more common now in classic, using Seal of Justice then when it procs the stun switching to Seal of Command to judge for the extra damage.

I agree with you, the term makes it sound far more complex than it really was. It was never really hard to wrap your head around.

[Lothaeryn]

While that does sound better than a toggle, it sounds like quite a clunky system. If the Seal is on the GCD, which current game design indicates it would be, then you'd be pressing an extra button whenever you wanted to use those empowered effects. That might not be so bad if you could fit it into an otherwise dead GCD, but if you wanted to apply the Attack/Cast Speed slow on BoJ, you'd have to stop your DPS to activate your Seal then BoJ to get the effect. That would get quite intrusive when you need one of those effects right now. Not only would you have the Seal CD to content with, but also the BoJ cooldown - Which can get thrown off if you get an Art of War Proc.

Adding Holy Power into the mix too just muddies the water even further. I've always considered that the optimal use case for most abilities should be something you can reasonably create for yourself. If its "Have 4 Holy power, a dead GCD just before Judgement to activate your Seal then Judge, use Templars Verdict as Blade of Justice comes off cooldown and use Templars Verdict again" I consider that to be something that is, predominently, out of the hands of the player in the current game. It might as well be "When the Stars align" for all the influence the player will have over it.

If there is a longer cooldown, say 30-45 seconds, then would there even be the need to tie them into specific skills? If they're going to be awkward and clunky utility cooldowns, then they're unlikely to get used if they're too impractical. In that situation it would be better for them just to be regular easy to use cooldowns, you're not achieving anything by making them harder to use.

On the other hand, having them off the GCD runs the risk of turning the class into a complete button bashing mess that wouldn't really do much to add nuance to the class. You'd simply use them on the skill that gave the highest DPS 95% of the time - It would simply be an extra button you push every X Seconds without much thought put into it. Those 5% of the time you use it on something different would be those strange edge cases, such as where you needed a utility effect that you weren't able to cover elsewhere. And between HoJ, Cleanse Toxins, Blessing of Freedom/Protection and Hand of Hinderance, there's not too many situations where one of those abilities wouldn't be an acceptable solution in a PvE environment.

My overall goal with the idea was to remove the Holy Power system altogether; I do not care for the system in regards to retribution and overall feel it is a hindrance on design philosophy for the spec. The idea of seals coming back is an exclusive outlier from Holy Power, though GCD timing would need to be addressed to make the rotation feel more fluid/functional.

I appreciate your willingness to contemplate and critique my suggestions without resorting to just saying "no" with no logic or reason backed behind it; I think people are thinking far too concretely on this subject and wildly blowing it out of proportion for what the intent of this thread is. your analysis has merit and I thank you for the discussion.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

MoP Ret was by far the best version, you had tons of utility and support tools while not being complete shit damage wise. Back then I was one of the senior theorycrafters and even did a few guides and appeared on Finalboss.tv twice, for those of you who care or remember those days. The one thing that was missing for Ret back then was a definite strong point, we were middle of the pack (or slightly above) for both Single Target, and AoE ...and burst ...and 2-3 target cleave. Back then I said, prayed, to Blizzard to give Ret Paladins a definite niche. Rets needed one strongpoint, it used to be single target burst and utility. But in Warlords of Draenor (and past that) Ret was turned into a "whack a mole!" smashing spec where nothing actually mattered anymore. On top of that Ret (Paladins) lost all utility and flavor tools, the pruning had begun and it hurt hybrid classes the most.

[StrawberryZebra]

My overall goal with the idea was to remove the Holy Power system altogether; I do not care for the system in regards to retribution and overall feel it is a hindrance on design philosophy for the spec. The idea of seals coming back is an exclusive outlier from Holy Power, though GCD timing would need to be addressed to make the rotation feel more fluid/functional.

I agree that Holy Power is somewhat problematic. It doesn't seem to fit thematically with the Paladin and is mechanically similar to a Rogue. I do think it's a far more interesting mechanic than "press all the buttons!" though.

I don't think Seals are the answer though, at least not in the way you're proposing. They were always a clear lack of a class mechanic rather than being something special or worth preserving. For better or worse I think Holy Power is here to stay.

If I were to add them back to the game in some kind of recognisable form, it would probably be to form the basis of a more cyclical damage curve for the Paladin. Where you would have no Seal for a time at the start of combat until certain conditions were met, something like spending X Holy Power for example, then you would automatically activate Seal of Command, which would have a chance to deal holy damage based on your weapon damage and where judgement would be empowered to say... Allow your next Holy Power spender to do 50% extra damage or something. Then after spending X Holy Power, you'd shift to Seal of Righteousness which would deal Holy damage on all hits and empower your Holy Power spenders to have 100% crit chance while also keeping the extra bonus damage from Judgement. Then you'd get a final Seal of Vengeance, which allowed your auto attacks to apply a DoT in additon to Holy damage on Hit, and let your Holy Power spenders hit twice or something. After which you'd drop back to having no Seal and would start the cycle again.

The idea being that you'd get damage output with low points ramping up into a huge high where you're repeatedly critting for massive damage before resetting with some residual carry over damage. It preserves the On Hit nature of Seals while removing a lot of the clunkyness that has traditionally been associated with them. It also gives the Paladin some degree of control over them, allowing you to postpone changing which Seal you're in for a time, but not indefinately. This gives you the opportunity to line up those high damage windows for when other cooldowns or trinkets are ready or for mechanic that means targets take extra damage.

I realise that's also a version of Seals with it's own set of issues of course, but it would at least make them an actual Mechanic that the player has to work with.

More realistically though, Seals would probably be more suited to being a Mastery than an active ability. Having Seal of Righteousness be the Ret Mastery dealing holy damage on each melee hit would probably be the best way to preserve what Seals were originally, without making them cumbersome to deal with. Their days of being a self buff are long over I fear. It's not an interesting design space for abilities in general in my opinion.

I appreciate your willingness to contemplate and critique my suggestions without resorting to just saying "no" with no logic or reason backed behind it; I think people are thinking far too concretely on this subject and wildly blowing it out of proportion for what the intent of this thread is. your analysis has merit and I thank you for the discussion.

You're welcome. A flat refusal to discuss ideas doesn't lead anywhere productive. Far too often people just want to "win" an argument without even taking the time to dig into what the other poster is saying.

I may disagree with some of your ideas and proposals, but I'm more than happy to take the time to read and understand what they are and discuss why that is .

[ultima ratio]

its always the others with the bad ideas. they dont read argument, they dont discuss, they blow it out of proportion blablabla. take a friendly fu to ur ignorance and self-justification: no to seals. seals were bland back then, seals would be bland now, esp. with ur professionals ideas. y r seals bad? play classic!

majority here does not want classic paladin in retail in any version.

[betonstahl]

simply stay classic if u want classic paladin

[Nfinitii]

I didn’t like seals back in the day.

I’d rather they fix holy power, I actually like it for the most part.

Smooth out hp generation and remove the rng.
Crusader strike reduces the cd of blade of justice and wake of ashes by 1 sec.

Consecrate baseline, crusader strike cleaves while standing in consecrate.

Add a new aoe ability that shares cd with blade of justice.

Wake of ashes baseline, inquisition baseline. Remove divine purpose. Word of glory baseline. Hammer of wrath baseline but wings doesn’t make it usable. Repentance baseline.

Wings no longer adds crit or makes first tv crit, instead it adds 1 hp every 3 sec.

Improve mobility, add 15% movement speed. I’d wish they would replace divine steed but it needs to at least have a lower cd. Add spammable melee slow.

Just a few things I would like to c.