Prot Paladin Dragonflight Talents

[Lucetia]

Has anyone had a chance to look over the talents that have been released in this build?

Overall not really fond of them. Been playing paladin since Classic so been through all the iterations. Just a quick glance at it we lose 13 core abilities / buffs that are now in the "Generic Paladin" tree. In the protection tree we essentially lose 8 abilities that we have access to now and multiple times in the past. Not a huge fan of having to spec into our mitigation cooldowns to start with (it'd be different if they buffed it different but it's essentially must pick this).

Looking through the entire thing it looks like it's a lot like how we play in SL currently and this time everyone can get access to Divine Toll without having to covenant swap.

In the end I just wish the talents were a bit more compelling and not a "Here's stuff you had in the past but we are stripping you completely down and giving them back to you so you feel like you have a choice".

[Elbob]

Sentinel looks AMAZING, the main struggles i had putting a tree i liked was that its super hard to impossible to get righteous protector mostly because the center part of the prot tree feels like it has too many 2pt talents. When i put together a guardian tree I had no problem having 10 pts to spend in the bottom third but for pally I only feel like I have an easy 8 without gimping the rest of the tree.


O and also AS not genning holy power is hopefully a bug because if it doesn't rip holy pally imo. (also the silence on first target but i heard there is a rank 2 that just isnt on alpha chars atm)

edit: things i like that were updated, golden path being aoe party healing is pog along with the hallowed ground perk of doing dbl dmg to the lowest ally and enemy in it is cool. Dusk and dawn being pretty accessible also poggers. So we are getting access to combos of things we didnt before along with a few new things (mostly excited about sent)

[Callsignecho]

The lack of holy power generation and silence effect on Avenger's Shield would kill Paladin tanking for me. I would be surprised if it is a bug as the rest of the tree is quite strong overall. It kind of feels like you can turn into a Prot Warrior with all the block options that are available and there are tons of shields/heals to go around.

[Celdiseth]

The issue I see is that we are basically forced much earlier than the other trees to decide on our capstone. We have to commit 7 talents to each capstone as opposed to other classes that only need to commit 4. Does this not limit our choices?

[OGXanos]

Just playing around with it seems fun. Heavy consc prot build,with DT, EoT and Sanc Wrath? If this scales well it's gonna be nutty fun. Some stuff should be baseline though for sure, like Steed. And splitting it's augments into 2 points? Bad call.

[Callsignecho]

Just playing around with it seems fun. Heavy consc prot build,with DT, EoT and Sanc Wrath? If this scales well it's gonna be nutty fun. Some stuff should be baseline though for sure, like Steed. And splitting it's augments into 2 points? Bad call.

The worst part about the steed talents is that there is no CD reduction option, so you have to spec a 1 min Steed and spend 3 other points to add a second charge and 2 seconds to the duration. There is no way to get it to 45 seconds. The only reason to take the Steed is because Avenging Wrath is the talent below it. Basically forces you into a meh choice to get a good choice.

[bledgor]

Playing around I can see some good builds, some heavy AoE damage build with high uptime/lowcd wrath to pump some numbers, but I do have a few annoyances/worries. The loss of silence on shield hurts A LOT (which also makes me more hesitant to go divine toll even in M+, as you have to forgo either bulwark or righteous + eye of tyr), AS not giving holy power (damn they hit this ability hard), the awkward movement of the tree at some points, and the fact it feels like every other node is cooldown for some ability feels a bit luckluster.

I think it is in a decent spot overall, but needs some revision, like giving AS a interrupt/silence nod since they dont want it baseline, backing some of the CDR points either into other nodes or making it baseline because right now like 10 talents affect cooldown of spells for prot, and make judgement baseline because having to pick between blessed hammer (which I enjoy thematically at least) and our Judgement feels bad, especially since it is also buffed in the base tree but makes no mention of buffing Blessed hammer, so if you take blessed hammer does that make the middle of the class tree have wasted talents? That sucks quite a bit.

Yeah also horse got nerfed too and having to pick so many talents to get it close to what it is currently feels bad.

[A Blue Smurf]

Very disjointed and linear. Lots of interesting things but too many multiple point talents that offer nothing and no way to navigate the tree besides vertically... reminds me of the first iteration of DK trees but worse.

[Nymrohd]

I like Sentinel. I love the damage dealing potential. The tree definitely lends itself to having many different builds depending on the situation which I think is their primary goal. I am also not at all happy with our mobility (was hoping for Steed of Glory) though at least ret is getting some better mobility now. And yeah, both Ardent Defender and Guardian of Ancient Kings being required talents is problematic but that is the case for every spec so far; they have to talent into their cooldowns.

Ret is much easier to navigate.

[Kalisandra]

The worst part about the steed talents is that there is no CD reduction option, so you have to spec a 1 min Steed and spend 3 other points to add a second charge and 2 seconds to the duration. There is no way to get it to 45 seconds. The only reason to take the Steed is because Avenging Wrath is the talent below it. Basically forces you into a meh choice to get a good choice.

Blizzard's class designers very obviously don't like Paladin mobility. Even this expansion, it's all been about the pony, and while there are duration improvements, you can't get extra charges or CD reductions outside of Torghast. In DS, the same goes and we pay heavily for what we get.

Oh, they've got Long Arm of the Law back in the Ret tree, but it's really weak - 2s duration and +20% speed, so half the duration and half the effect it once had.

I miss the MoP/WoD mobility row so bad.

[Nymrohd]

Blizzard's class designers very obviously don't like Paladin mobility. Even this expansion, it's all been about the pony, and while there are duration improvements, you can't get extra charges or CD reductions outside of Torghast. In DS, the same goes and we pay heavily for what we get.

Oh, they've got Long Arm of the Law back in the Ret tree, but it's really weak - 2s duration and +20% speed, so half the duration and half the effect it once had.

I miss the MoP/WoD mobility row so bad.

I was really hoping they would bring Steed of Glory in the class tree. Or even better, since they brought Steed from Diablo, bring Draw and Quarter.

[Callsignecho]

You could in theory not take any cooldown talents in both the class tree and the spec tree. It is possible to not take any of the blessing spells or Avenging Wrath in the class tree and Argent Defender and Guardian in the spec tree and make it to the bottom of each tree. Wild.

[Zephre]

Anyone else worried about the whole " Avengers shield not generating holy power " being intentional thing?

[Lucetia]

Anyone else worried about the whole " Avengers shield not generating holy power " being intentional thing?

You mean you don't like having a choice between using a defensive ability or healing?

[Callsignecho]

Anyone else worried about the whole " Avengers shield not generating holy power " being intentional thing?

They blue posted it that the no holy power generation is intentional, but it should have the silence effect, which is good, not great. They want to move away from Paladin having 100% uptime on SotR and find other ways to gain defence, such as the block or healing talents.

Honestly feels like they want to make Paladin like Warrior, where you have a high amount of uptime on your active mitigation and use cooldowns to fill the gaps, like Eye of Tyr at the bottom of tree. Block Paladin will probably be the play based on what they threw out there.

[Kalisandra]

They blue posted it that the no holy power generation is intentional, but it should have the silence effect, which is good, not great. They want to move away from Paladin having 100% uptime on SotR and find other ways to gain defence, such as the block or healing talents.

So back to how Prot was at the beginning of SL when you had big gaps in your mitigation and could end up squashed like a bug. Yeah, that was fun. Not.

[Callsignecho]

So back to how Prot was at the beginning of SL when you had big gaps in your mitigation and could end up squashed like a bug. Yeah, that was fun. Not.

What it does do is make the Bastion of Light talent way more appealing. 3 free SotR on a 2 minute cooldown will probably be needed to help fill the gap.

I also think Blessed Hammer is required as it has 3 charges for Holy Power generation instead of two normal Hammer.

[Lucetia]

So back to how Prot was at the beginning of SL when you had big gaps in your mitigation and could end up squashed like a bug. Yeah, that was fun. Not.

You know it's odd the devs apparently think we love having big gaps and getting nuked. Seems like we go through this every expansion and then they have to release hotfixes to make it not as bad. Usually we are told "Once you have more gear it'll be better, we promise!"

[Nymrohd]

So back to how Prot was at the beginning of SL when you had big gaps in your mitigation and could end up squashed like a bug. Yeah, that was fun. Not.

Or how it was for most of Legion. They will really need to rebalance our defenses entirely.

- - - Updated - - -

You know it's odd the devs apparently think we love having big gaps and getting nuked. Seems like we go through this every expansion and then they have to release hotfixes to make it not as bad. Usually we are told "Once you have more gear it'll be better, we promise!"

I remember paladin way back when we had the smoothest damage intake of all tanks

I wonder if we'll stick to the niche of being the dps tanks. Which will mean we will give you the fastest M15 clears (But will get squished at 20+) and the best tank damage for fast Heroic raids (but forget us for Mythic progress)

[Kalisandra]

I remember paladin way back when we had the smoothest damage intake of all tanks

Yup. Mitigation not quite as good as the others, but very consistent, so healing was predictable and thus easier to do efficiently.