Paladin 6.0 - Where do we go from here?

[Clash the DK]

~ UPDATED 8/28 ~

I've been thinking about what can be done to improve upon our current incarnation. I only play Ret, so my personal opinions are based on that fact. I feel like Ret specifically is too clunky. And when I say clunky, I mean that it lacks fluidity and intuition. It's a very paint-by-the-numbers spec. Following are some changes that I would like to see for the next expansion. Please leave comments if you like, and also tell us what you personally would like to see changed in the near future.

DISCLAIMER: Any changes I suggest are not meant to make the spec and/or class OP. Numbers would need to be changed.


Crusader Strike - (No cooldown) - Each CS applies a stack of "Unnamed Buff" to the Paladin that increases critical strike rating by 3% for 10 seconds. This buff stacks up to 3 times and is refreshed whenever a new stack is applied.

I would like to see the cooldown removed completely. Having one ability that we can use multiple times in a row creates a more smooth rotation. The class already has a 1.5 sec gcd (which is nice after playing some of the more intense 1.0 sec gcd classes), so there is no need for such large gaps in the rotation. I want to always have a button to push so that I can continue to build my HP for the grand finale. Having CS without a cooldown would create a nice anchor for a better priority system.



Exorcism - (No cooldown) - Would normally deal less damage (half?) than what it does now. BUT, when used with the Art of War proc, Exorcism would then do one of two things:

1. Create two Holy Power instead of just one like normal.
OR
2. Deal double/triple damage.
OR
3. Maybe it should do both.

I generally want to use Crusader Strike more often and Exorcism less often in order to max my damage. Once again, this will create a better flow to our ability usage. And by doing it this way, we would have a ranged damage spell available in our repertoire at all times even if the spell was a bit on the weak side outside of AoW procs.



Consecration and Hammer of the Righteousness - I would like to see Consecration once again replace HotR for Ret. The current situation where our AOE rotation mimics our single target rotation feels really, really bad. I've personally never been a fan of HotR and Consecration had been a staple of the class for so very long. Also, with a faster moving rotation thanks to the change to CS, the gameplay would make more sense with Consecration and it's longer cooldown.



Inquisition Buff - I do not like buff buttons. Inquisition brings up irrational anger due to my time playing a Paladin back in Vanilla. Normally I would say delete the ability all together. But, we may be able to salvage things:

Judgment - (6 sec cooldown) - Applies the "Judged" debuff to your current target (Increases Holy damage against that target for 20 seconds). Won't get into actual damage numbers, but it would do more damage than CS.

New Inquisition - (9 sec cooldown) - Applies the "Judged" debuff to all targets within a 10 yard radius for 20 seconds. Would do enough AOE damage to be worth using at 3+ targets.

The idea here is for Judgment to apply the Holy damage "debuff" onto your actual target. Inquisition, on the other hand, would be more like Mass Judgment essentially. This would give Inquisition more purpose and adds to the theme of the class.



The color Pink - This may be my boldest and most controversial suggestion yet. I want to see the class color (Pink) changed. Pink is the one color that should not be used as a "class color" IMO. Black or a Dark Gold would be much more appropriate for Paladins. Black represents the Judge archetype very well. And Dark Gold makes sense for obvious reasons. Either color would be a great replacement IMO. Seriously, no class should be Pink.

[Krekko]

I'm on the bench on what I'd like to see done with Crusader Strike, as long as it remains I'll be happy though.

I'd like to see more done with Exorcism than Proc Only.

I've harped on this chord plenty of times before but I'd really like to see Judgement/Seals & Exorcism work dynamically on enemies. I'd like to see Exorcism be useable on friendly targets as well to rid (Exorcise) them and to help aid them. I'd like to see it less as a "press as it's up" and more "press when you want to achieve such effect" kind of spell, based on the seal you have up on your target.

Consecration I DEFINITELY want back for Ret, it was too iconic for me, and it honestly sucks to be without it. From the time I got the spell back in Vanilla until it was removed in MoP it held it's position as #1 on my keyboard and it was weird to see it gone. Now it's been replaced, but I still hope, one day, to get it back. The only thing about HotR is that we'd lose our on demand splash (AoE), which sucks for breaking stealth, it already is annoying enough that you need a target for it to begin with. Consecration if worked could fix this (outward burst of sudden damage and consecration of ground for AoE DoT).

Judgement goes back to what I said earlier, but I also can't help but miss the disposable seal system! Call me crazy (and I know it wasn't perfect) but I miss it, especially judging SotC and then going to SoC, if we're able to replicate that somehow and work the effect of Inq into that I'd be more than glad to get rid of Inq. It's not that I don't like having that "extra bit" it's just I don't like how it's executed, I rather have it be better built in. I can't say I hate your modified Inq idea though. I'd like a CD that'd spread the current seal to targets around to be activated to make switching easier on certain fights, that's just a far wish of me being picking about wanting everything and then some though.

The color Pink is fine! Grr. This is something I've grown quite fond of over the years! I'd honestly hate to see it go! Though a gold would work nicely for the class or a regal violet, Black not so much, I wouldn't be so threatened by it though!

[Citykid]

i miss our auras :C i would love to get them back, even if its just Aura of the King and Aura of Might, and it is something like 60-80 yards range..auras are very paladinish

[Krekko]

i miss our auras :C i would love to get them back, even if its just Aura of the King and Aura of Might, and it is something like 60-80 yards range..auras are very paladinish

Yeah, it was a big shame to lose them.

They should come back even if just in CD form like Devo.

It'd be nice to have pulsing Auras below our feet as well during combat.

[Raxxed]

Yeah, it was a big shame to lose them.

They should come back even if just in CD form like Devo.

It'd be nice to have pulsing Auras below our feet as well during combat.

I'd love a pulsing AoE aura with a CD.

[Clash the DK]

@ Krekko

One other idea I had for Exorcism would be to remove the cooldown completely and then significantly lower the damage. In the context of my above suggestions, Exorcism would create 1 HP normally, and then Art of War would cause your next Exorcism to generate 2 HP. So, the main idea would still be intact: Exorcism would only be used rotationally with AoW, but we would always have a ranged ability in our back pocket. This would be absolutely awesome for PvE, but there might be repercussions in PvP. Namely, the ability to potentially kite other melee. Although, that would all depend on the actual damage of the spell. It may still be a valid idea.

I've thought hard about the Judgment/Seal possibilities, but unfortunately I myself have not come up with anything interesting or practical that might bring back that interaction.

Violet for the class color might feel a little "too regal". But, at least we can both agree on Gold!

[nightfalls]

Most of my useful comments will be Holy oriented but I'll give my take on everything (thank you, by the way, for starting this!)

Holy Mastery: Currently, we sort of just have a jack-of-all-trades position in the "healing spectrum" since tank healing is no longer a thing. This is acceptable for now, but I think we'd like to see a defined niche - while not being relegated to it (this means it can't be too blunt, like "stack healing only" - or you're either overpowered for stacks or just bad everywhere). My suggestion is to make paladins "burst" healers, with the strongest direct single and group heals. At this end I would make Illuminated Healing a fixed passive, Eternal Flame baseline for Holy, and change the mastery to increase the healing done by Light of Dawn and Eternal Flame.

Sanctity of Battle: The higher of melee and spell haste should be taken into account for all abilities (one haste fits all?), this would make rotation way smooth. Also, I'd like to see Sanctity of Battle extend to all abilities. It was a huge success in MOP, but I think the rotation could be smoother yet without losing too much "difficulty curve."

Talents: The talents are mostly fine, but I would do a few things. The CC row and Blinding Light could both use reworking. Especially disappointing for Holy was practically having a Level 87 (the new MOP) ability gutted within a patch. I would try to improve on Long Arm of the Law (potentially replacing it). Some of the HP and Healing talents could become baseline though most of the Row 3-6 talents I would hate to see removed outright.

[Himora]

Down i hope, rets are op as *#*$$ at the moment, its ridiculous actually.

Infracted for trolling. ~Fhi

[Deleted]

Down i hope, rets are op as *#*$$ at the moment, its ridiculous actually.

Huh? Where?

On-topic: I like the suggestions in the OP, with the exception for the class color. As a Paladin player (off and on) since the start of the game, I don't think I'd like the color changing. If I could go back in time, I'd agree that a gold color would fit better, but oh well.

I do think Inquisition should have some single target usage, though, but having it as a specific AoE ability would be fine to me. Judgment applying the 30% holy damage debuff would make it too important, but maybe that wouldn't be a problem. (Edit: Also, maybe put Judgment and Inquisition on a shared CD, and allow Inquisition to proc the Judgment based procs if it hits more than X targets?)

And oh god, please do give us Consecration back. I really can't think of a more iconic Paladin spell (except Divine Shield), and I really think it should be baseline for all Paladins. Maybe make it work like Spinning Crane Kick does (for Mistweavers) for Holy (damage and healing).

[Nobleshield]

To be completely 100% honest I'd like to see them steal the Justicar Cleric from Rift for Prot, at least, and steal some other Rift Cleric ideas. I said some of this in the Ability Bloat thread but I envision something like this (probably never happen but this is all just opinions anyways):

CS: I like the idea of it being spammable with no CD. Maybe it needs some kind of self-buff to make it a reverse Devastate (not sure what it could be though) for Prot
Exo: I actually like Exo being a baseline ranged attack but it kind of overlaps with Judgment here. Maybe if Judgment was spammable and didn't generate HoPo, but WoW's macro system doesn't let you put a spam ranged ability below a melee and have it fire off.
Remove Glyph of Harsh Words.

Prot Only
New Ability: Holy Shield (yes it's back): When you use an ability that consumes Holy Power you reduce physical damage by 40% for x seconds (I still think 3s is too short, but it works so could stay)

Shield of the Righteous: High DPS single target, consumes Holy Power
Word of Glory: AOE heal, consumes Holy Power

Basically steal the mechanic from Rift's Justicar: Single target you use Hammer of Duty to consume your Convictions (HoPo) and do damage, or you use Doctrine of Loyalty as a group heal. I can't bring myself to steal Precept of Refuge (increases your block chance) since that's an extra button and we need less :P Maybe if it could be macrod like in Rift, but WoW's macro system doesn't work that way.

Get rid of Sacred Shield entirely, not sure what to replace it with. Eternal Flame could stay and turn our WoG into a HoT instead of a flat heal.

Prot loses Holy Wrath and keeps Consecrate (maybe glyph baked in by default). Don't know why but I really don't like Holy Wrath, it doesn't seem to bring anything to the table beyond the stun.

RET Only
Ret loses Word of Glory and keeps TV (single target) and DS (AOE). Supplication removed and changed to be the FoL cast time reduction passive from Selfless Healer so Ret still gets a heal. Inquisition becomes a passive buff whenever Retri uses a HoPo consumer (shorter duration as it's going to be up pretty much 100%). I think that Ret works fairly well with my idea of how classes should function. I don't mind them keeping Hammer of the Righteous as their AOE builder, Ret is one of the few classes that feels fluid with ST and AOE because both involve one resource generator and one resource consumer.

Maybe instead of Seal of Command being the low level version of Righteousness, it becomes passive for Ret and gives Judgment a cleave.

HOLY
Not really sure how Holy works so this could be totally wrong but maybe something like a spammable Exo/HoPo generator (call it "Castigate" or "Chastise") with WoG being single target consumer and LoD being AE consumer... don't really know much more about Holy but I do like them getting some kind of Consecrate ability that heals + damages.

That's all I can really think of. Basically I really like how the Cleric works in Rift (although some of it doesn't work quite as well translated to WoW e.g. the 4 or so different types of healers), especially the Justicar for the Paladin.

[anaxie]

Can't take you seriously when you get all bent out of shape about the color pink.

[ipoststuff]

-CS could become spammable but it would have to deal the lowest damage of all rotational abilities. Lower than judgement etc.
-Exorcism used to be a proc only spell in cata but they changed it. And i like it this way.
-I dont mind inq now that duration is 1 min. Removing it would gameplay worse imo.
-I dont like pink either but class color is not something i care about. And the more we fight it the worse it gets. If they changed it though id like it to be Gray as in silver hand.

OT
Id like a flying paladin mount and Heart of the Crusader buffed.

[Nobleshield]

I just had a neat thought: Why don't we go back to the ORIGINAL Crusader Strike? The one from beta that still exists on certain Paladin-like NPCs? Something like:

Crusader Strike
8% of Base Mana Melee Range
Instant
Requires level x
Requires Melee Weapon

Inflicts X% of weapon damage to an enemy and increases the Holy damage it takes by Y% per Crusader Strike. Can be applied up to 3 times. Lasts 30 seconds.

This would make it functionally equivalent to Devastate, and it becomes a spammable "filler" ability. It could maybe be a separate ability entirely (Holy Strike?).

[Tanyn]

1. I would rather see Consecration be more of an aura around the Paladin instead of something to drop on the ground. Almost like a Hellfire spell. You can channel it and move around. You can continue to do your rotation, etc. You basically just give off the Aura and it drains your mana pool or something.
2. Remove HotR and make it a spell named Righteousness, Crusade or Hysteria. Gives you an AoE splash to your single target abilities. Could have a CD and duration to make it not up 100% of the time. Maybe make it take a % of your health while active. Would like it to spread the CS debuff that I'm talking about below.
3. Bring back the old debuff giving Crusader Strike. Increasing the Holy damage taken from the Paladin and make it stack up to 3 or 5.

Using our Health pool as a secondary power could be an interesting change too. Some of our burst damage abilities cost us HP and then we have some sort of lifesteal on certain abilities that help us regain our HP over time. Would definitely be neat. The extra lifesteal you get after you're at 100% builds into a small absorb shield. That way you don't end up dying a ton by popping dps CDs.


** This is just me brainstorming. The ideas are nothing more than that.. Not really thought out much.

[Jackielope]

I (and I think many others) would like it if Holy could get a HoPo AoE heal that actually healed more people than 6 and didn't have a facing requirement. Light of Dawn is simply a PITA to use at times and is terrible for mass AoE.

[Nobleshield]

I (and I think many others) would like it if Holy could get a HoPo AoE heal that actually healed more people than 6 and didn't have a facing requirement. Light of Dawn is simply a PITA to use at times and is terrible for mass AoE.

Hmm... maybe LoD could be a beam or something to one person, and Word of Glory is (like for Prot in my suggestion above) a smart AOE heal.

[Jackielope]

Hmm... maybe LoD could be a beam or something to one person, and Word of Glory is (like for Prot in my suggestion above) a smart AOE heal.

When you say beam, do you mean like the Chain Heal animation but only going to 1 person? I could see that being interesting, although it might impact the flashy animation bloat Blizz has been trying to fix lately. If you mean a beam that went to multiple people in a line, though, I think that it'd suffer even more from positioning issues than LoD currently does since getting people to line up for it in a chaotic fight ain't happening unless the fight itself has that mechanic.

What precedent in WoW for your idea of a smart AoE heal works best to illustrate your idea for WoG? Or is the idea something from Rift?

[Nobleshield]

When you say beam, do you mean like the Chain Heal animation but only going to 1 person? I could see that being interesting, although it might impact the flashy animation bloat Blizz has been trying to fix lately. If you mean a beam that went to multiple people in a line, though, I think that it'd suffer even more from positioning issues than LoD currently does since getting people to line up for it in a chaotic fight ain't happening unless the fight itself has that mechanic.

What precedent in WoW for your idea of a smart AoE heal works best to illustrate your idea for WoG? Or is the idea something from Rift?

It's "Doctrine of Loyalty" from Rift, a resource consumer that heals party/raid (it's 10 for DoL, but probably 5 would suffice for my suggestion). Also one of the most mana-efficient heals in that game, but the context is that Cleric tanks put out healing with their abilities to everyone else (they have what amounts to the current Battle Healer + SoI as a baseline ability) and they generate threat via healing abilities.

I don't know enough about Holy to answer your question about LoD

[Deleted]

When you say beam, do you mean like the Chain Heal animation but only going to 1 person? I could see that being interesting, although it might impact the flashy animation bloat Blizz has been trying to fix lately. If you mean a beam that went to multiple people in a line, though, I think that it'd suffer even more from positioning issues than LoD currently does since getting people to line up for it in a chaotic fight ain't happening unless the fight itself has that mechanic.

What precedent in WoW for your idea of a smart AoE heal works best to illustrate your idea for WoG? Or is the idea something from Rift?

LoD has no positioning requirements anymore. That was in Cata.

[Jackielope]

It's "Doctrine of Loyalty" from Rift, a resource consumer that heals party/raid (it's 10 for DoL, but probably 5 would suffice for my suggestion). Also one of the most mana-efficient heals in that game, but the context is that Cleric tanks put out healing with their abilities to everyone else (they have what amounts to the current Battle Healer + SoI as a baseline ability) and they generate threat via healing abilities.

I don't know enough about Holy to answer your question about LoD

Chain Heal is the beam effect I was talking about for LoD, and it's a Shaman heal. Is that the kind of effect you were thinking of?

Back in Wrath I had some success getting aggro through healing, but it was usually in a secondary capacity and not as a primary tank. It's a shame we can't have that kind of tanking mechanic in WoW, but the encounter balancing would likely break with it, plus the player base would be like "WTF?"

Your redo of WoG would likely work at 5 for 10', and 10-12ish for 25's. What's the typical raid size in Rift, by the way?