Shadowlands paladin changes

[Wrecktangle]

If the Aura is some of the Paladins magic then I don't think it's really delivering on that part of the fantasy. If it's the Paladin inspiring their allies through their faith, their fanaticism and so on then that too should really be it's own stand-apart mechanic. Both of these are the Paladin taking action, that runs contrary to Auras as passive buffs.

None of these are thematically bad fits for any Paladin archetype - They're just represented very poorly by Auras as a mechanic in my opinion.

Let me clarify - I 100% agree that Aura's as passive buffs is boring and non-engaging design. I'm not entirely sure HOW I would design them for PVE, and in my build I made years ago I honestly didn't even considered it because as you've indicated, mechanically they're just not interesting.

However, I did find some really useful applications in PVP (below is a snippet I pulled out):

Keep in mind that in this build Divine Storm is a resource draining toggle ability, not like it is on live.

Unstoppable Vortex

"Divine Storm costs 50% less Mana per second to maintain. In addition while it is active any allies inside the effect take 30% reduced damage unless enemies are inside the storm's radius."

Mirror of Vengeance

"While Divine Storm is active all harmful effects are reflected at their casters (Note that direct damage will go through, but effects such as Frost fever, Polymorph, etc. will be reflected). Effects cast from inside the storm's radius are not reflected." Reflected attacks also generate Rending Light stacks."

Revitalizing Tempest

"Your Divine Storm heals you and your party members for 100% of the damage it deals."

This tier empowers DS. I wanted it to be both a defensive ability and offensive. Given it's cost to maintain it needed to have very strong effects.The static 30% damage reduction gives incentives to make sure that melee targets are tasked to dispose of the Paladin instead of ranged. Mirror of Vengeance is great because it really punishes spellcasters for blindly throwing debuffs at the Paladin. it gives a risk vs. reward to get close to get meaningful effects off before retreating. Revitalizing tempest is designed to bolster your allies desire to stay in the fight. This is especially effective against melee cleave comps where debuffs or ranged attacks are a non-issue.

---

If you look at these abilities I feel that you can see the theme I was going for. It's that the Paladin is the center of the fight. They inspire and lead and are threatening, but not always in direct manners.

[Tyze]

One ability

Long Arm of The Law! MAKE IT HAPPEN!

[StrawberryZebra]

Unless, you know, PvP. Good against fast hitting melee.

The damage itself was only noticable in PvP when combined with other sources, usually Blessing of Sanctuary and but maybe also Thorns too. It was only enough of a deterent when you could reflect damage back faster than they could deal it. That usually ment it had to be either yourself, or an ally who had lots of armour/HP. That limited it's effectiveness to Prot Paladins, Prot Warriors and maybe Ele and Resto Shamans at a push if they had a shield equipped.

If you had casters dealing with fast hitting melee, than Concentration Aura was better so they could actually manage to cast something through all the push back. If you had low armour allies then Devotion Aura was a huge boost to their survivability. If you were Holy then again you were better off with Concentration Aura so you could cast freely. If you were Ret you'd want to use Sanc Aura for your personal damage, but would swap to the appropriate defencive aura if needed.

All in all, it left Ret Aura being very lackluster except in situations where a Prot Paladin was being attacked by a Fury Warrior, Rogue or Feral Druid. The only way for that to happen, and not be a situation where they could simply stop hitting you and escape, was when you were the flag carrier in WSG. Of course, you were already a massive hard counter to those specs anyway, so you'd win a PvP encounter with them more or less by default.

It really wasn't any good at all outside of being a personal damage increase for the Paladin. A very minor one most of the time at that.

If you look at these abilities I feel that you can see the theme I was going for. It's that the Paladin is the center of the fight. They inspire and lead and are threatening, but not always in direct manners.

I agree, they're much more thematicly appropriate for the Paladin you're trying to build.

But the "Unpruned" (God I hate that term) versions seem to be just the old, bland passives we had before. Honestly, I don't want them back. If Blizzard feel that they absolutely must give Paladins their Aura's back, then they should make sure there's some gameplay attached to them. Make them offer some power that's appreciable to other players not just effects that go unnoticed.

There's a lot wrong with the Auras thematically, mechanically and in terms of gameplay. I would hate to see them back in their old forms just for the sake of pandering to the whims of the players. They're a relic of Warcraft 3 and should have been stayed there, where they made sense.

[Edward Wu]

I want Seals back.
If Seals aren't coming back, I don't want Auras back the way they were before. God they were beyond boring.

[RohanV]

Do you think Glimmer will come back in Shadowlands? It seems very popular, and a lot of Holy paladins like the playstyle.

If it does come back, should it be a talent? Or just make it a baseline passive?

[Nobleshield]

Do you think Glimmer will come back in Shadowlands? It seems very popular, and a lot of Holy paladins like the playstyle.

If it does come back, should it be a talent? Or just make it a baseline passive?

I think they need to bake it in. Glimmer's style, from what I saw, is 100% how Paladins should have been from Day One. A melee healer who attacks the enemy and heals their allies. That might actually get me to try healing if they made it closer to the old RIFT Shamicar build where you were a DPS whose attacks did passive healing and then you had healing cooldowns you could spend it on.

Basically something like Glimmer + the way Retribution is, where you generate a resource via melee and can then spend it offensively (e.g. Templar's Verdict) if you don't need to heal at that moment, or on something akin to Light of Dawn/Word of Glory if you do need to heal.

[froschhure]

please god let them remove holy power.

def. one of the most garbage thing ever created, next to everything after wotlk

[RohanV]

Basically something like Glimmer + the way Retribution is, where you generate a resource via melee and can then spend it offensively (e.g. Templar's Verdict) if you don't need to heal at that moment, or on something akin to Light of Dawn/Word of Glory if you do need to heal.

We had Holy Power a couple of expansions ago. Most healers (myself included) didn't really like it. The problem is that you want to match the high-resource heal to incoming damage, and don't want to get caught with a damage spike when you are at low resources. So you often end up either holding or wasting the resource heal. Honestly, it was more hassle than it was worth.

If the payoff is purely damage-oriented, like 3 healing Holy Shocks into Templar's Verdict, it works a little better. FFXIV's White Mage does this (Blood for the Blood Lily!).

[Teleros]

def. one of the most garbage thing ever created, next to everything after wotlk

Not true. After WotLK was when we got an honest-to-goodness interrupt & Holy damage Divine Storm.

Literally everything else was garbage though.

I genuinely miss being 2nd-3rd on damage taken thanks to Seal of the Martyr, or getting into a nice sized pack and the T10 set bonus resetting Divine Storm's CD regularly*. Also the blue rage bar - ie getting big chunks of mana back by using Judgement. Always felt I had a much easier time using utility spells in raids than I do these days too.

*Although even I'll admit that when Seal of Command's AE hits reset it... it was a bit too much, as in "OOM" too much .

[Elkas]

Holy power staying for Ret, Bosac returning, and no fucking seals in sight. Thank god.

Can't believe some of these people clamoring for these shit fucking mechanics to return, which were universally reviled at the time these people so nostalgically remember.

The best thing that ever happened to seals was taking them to the back of the shed, and double tapping them in the head with a dual barreled shotgun.

[Edward Wu]

Holy power staying for Ret, Bosac returning, and no fucking seals in sight. Thank god.

Can't believe some of these people clamoring for these shit fucking mechanics to return, which were universally reviled at the time these people so nostalgically remember.

The best thing that ever happened to seals was taking them to the back of the shed, and double tapping them in the head with a dual barreled shotgun.

The sheer level of cognitive dissonance in this post is absolutely unreal.

[Elkas]

The sheer level of cognitive dissonance in this post is absolutely unreal.

Vanilla is there to enjoy your peak Retribution gameplay, if you can actually stomach being honest to yourself.

You want holy power gone? Back to WoTLK Ret? It was basically pressing whatever came off cooldown. If you'd have one honest bone in your body you wouldn't dare to hold it over the gameplay provided by holy power, and admit that all your rose-tinted goggles are really about is the dominant position that Ret held on all metrics for that entire expansion.

Holy power isn't perfect, but it's better than any of the systems that came before it. And that's the god damn truth.

[Schattenlied]

Vanilla is there to enjoy your peak Retribution gameplay, if you can actually stomach being honest to yourself.

Let's not pretend that seals didn't exist in the paladin kit perfectly fine after vanilla, Wrath was peak Ret, and Emp Seals in Wod was not problematic, arguably great in PvP.

No one is asking for a return to the vanilla auto attack fest, we are asking for a return to the times post-vanilla where our gameplay was not only good, but our class fantasy was also still firmly intact, and our primary combat mechanic wasn't just a clone of combo points.

[Edward Wu]

Vanilla is there to enjoy your peak Retribution gameplay, if you can actually stomach being honest to yourself.

Please keep going with the nuclear takes, I'm gonna go grab some popcorn.

Please refrain from antagonizing/baiting other users. - Malthanis

[Elkas]

Let's not pretend that seals didn't exist in the paladin kit perfectly fine after vanilla, Wrath was peak Ret, and Emp Seals in Wod was not problematic, arguably great in PvP.

You want to bring up Wrath ret as peak seal gameplay, when that specific expansion relegated them to fire and forget auto attack enhancers?

If you're referring to 'weaving' seal of vengeance in WoTLK; I hope you do realize that even on fights where you could feasibly keep it up on multiple targets, that the gain was negligible and considered more self entertaining bussy work than having any actual significant impact on the dps meters back then.

And ah, empowered seals. A talent so reviled that high end pve avoided it even when it simmed higher than Verdict, and was gimmicky at best in PvP. Yes, people were really in tears when they got rid of that talent for some mysterious reason. \s

[Schattenlied]

You want to bring up Wrath ret as peak seal gameplay, when that specific expansion relegated them to simple auto attack enhancers?

First off, I said peak Ret gameplay, not peak seal gameplay, don't try to twist my words.

Second, they proc'd on abilities too, and active seal choice would still be something you could change depending on your present circumstance, like auras, but for offense.

They were something that could be largely ignored by the people who didn't want to min/max, and could be leveraged by the people who did, I see no problem with that design philosophy.

And ah, empowered seals. A talent so reviled that high end pve avoided it even when it simmed higher than Verdict and gimmicky in PvP at best.

It was far from "gimmicky at best" in PvP, most top rated Rets preferred it and for good reason, as it could substantially increase your survivability and could provide a very strong increase to mobility, both of which are very important in PvP.

I don't care how it was received in PvE, because surprise surprise, not every talent has to be an good choice in every type of content.

[Elkas]

First off, I said peak Ret gameplay, not peak seal gameplay, don't try to twist my words.

Why even bring WoTLK up in that context then. If you misspoke then at least have the balls to admit it.

Second, they proc'd on abilities too, and active seal choice would still be something you could change depending on your present circumstance, like auras, but for offense.

I see no problem there.

Your seal "gameplay" was essentially one for multiple targets, the other for single targets. You'd set your choice once for most fights and not bother with it then for the entire fight. How can you people keep a straight face and call that gameplay worth remembering.

[Schattenlied]

Why even bring WoTLK up in that context then. If you misspoke then at least have the balls to admit it.

I didn't misspeak, and I just explained to you exactly why.

Don't try to weasel out of this argument so pathetically. You misread, I didn't misspeak, you're the one who needs to have the balls to admit your mistake.

[Beefhammer]

The sheer level of cognitive dissonance in this post is absolutely unreal.

Just because someone else likes it or prefers this to what you do doesn't mean there is anything wrong with it.

[Schattenlied]

Your seal "gameplay" was essentially one for multiple targets, the other for single targets. You'd set your choice once for most fights and not bother with it then for the entire fight. How can you people keep a straight face and call that gameplay worth remembering.

1. Being able to tailor yourself to better fit a given situation is not pointless.

2. Gameplay outside of endgame PvE exists too. People who properly adjusted their seals and auras on the fly in PvP did measurably better than those who didn't. Again, a system that can be ignored by those who don't want to min/max, but can be leveraged for better results by those who do, no problem with that design philosophy at all.