The Future of Paladins

[Kexmeister]

In before "QQ moar" or "l2P", the only people who reply saying lines like that are faggots who think they're hot shit for being an ass to someone. This post is by a long-time paladin analyzing the class and where it stands in pvp. Hopefully I can spark the interest of the few intelligent members of mmo-champion and get a discussion going.

Blizzard has stated that they ideally want every talent tree of every class to be viable in pvp. One problem with this is that there isn't enough variation between talent trees for any given class. A given talent tree will only give you 3-4 new abilities at most, so no matter what spec you are you're relying on baseline abilities that every tree has access to. With such similarities in gameplay and mechanics, one spec will inevitably be "superior" and become the dominant pvp spec.

Another major problem is tanking-oriented trees. When a large aspect of arena revolves around "gibbing" an opponent, dumping a 40k hp prot warrior into the arena skews any attempts at balancing survivability. How do you gib a beast like that? You can't. There is a fine balance between survivability and damage dealt. Some classes, such as arcane mages, give up survivability and gain burst damage. And vice versa. But for a tank to be even remotely competitive in arena, they need to do enough to pressure the opposing team.

This is all leading up to prot pallies. Ret deals damage and holy heals. Ok. So give prot some survivability and CCs/interrupts and that should balance the spec in pvp. Cool. But now in pve, prot pallies need spell power so we give them a talent for that too. Cool. They also want pve prot pallies to not have to worry about mana, so give them the ability to have 100% uptime on divine plea. Fair enough.

The end result? A pally specced into prot but with healing gear equipped will outheal the pally specced into deep holy. Not only do his flash of lights heal for monstrous amounts, but he has infinite mana and a huge amount of CC.

The reason pallies are speccing into this is because, well, holy sucks. I played holy up to around 2300 (with a warlock) in 2s and I could no longer compete with the infinite mana of resto druids, or the offensive abilities of priests, or the survivability of prot pallies, so I had to give in and switch to prot. The spec is so incredibly dumbed down, I hate it. It consists of putting up sacred shield, then spamming flash of light until you have to replace the key on your keyboard. But blizzard trapped us into abusing this spec, because it's the only spec that can compete with the other healing classes. If you play this spec for a day you've already hit the skill cap, so anyone who picks up the class can become a pro arena hero with little effort.

Blizzard is shitting all over the prot spec next patch, as they should. They didn't intend for prot to be a healing spec, so they're fixing it. Nothing wrong with that. The problem, however, is they have no plans to compensate us by fixing the holy tree. In short, they're destroying our one viable healing spec and leaving us with nothing.

I can't say they're completely destroying prot healing, though. The sad thing is, even after their nerfs, prot healing will still be more viable than holy healing because of how bad holy is. So a lot of pallies will still be speccing prot to heal, but now they'll be subpar and struggling to compete.

Onto ret. Ret is a broken spec, simply put. The spec used to be able to kill a target within the duration of a HoJ stun, so they nerfed it's damage. And then they nerfed it again. And again... and again. Ret has been beaten up so badly by the nerfbat that you can't kill anyone with it on its own. While other classes rely on interrupts and MS effects to kill a target, ret relies on spamming 3 spammable damage abilities. Every pvp fight feels like patchwerk. It's true that ret has useful tools, such as cleanse and HoP, but on its own ret is as useful as a level 19 magikarp (All it does is splash!). Ret is broken because all they do is spam damage abilities, and their lack of interrupts makes them a joke to all healers.

Summary - Pally representation is going to decline, because the class is too simple. Holy and ret pallies lack the tools necessary to compete in arena, and thus have almost completely disappeared from arena. While prot pally healing is currently a viable spec, it too suffers the curse of being painfully simple and having a low skill cap. Furthermore, blizzard is nerfing prot healing without giving any compensation for holy, which will result in less pallies in high-end arena.

I think the best solution for holy would be to give some offensive utility. It would be nice if they gave the silencing shield to holy, or made it accessibly in one of the earlier tiers of prot. As for ret, give them an interrupt for god's sake. Maybe a talent where if you judge them while casting, it interrupts their spellcasting for 2 seconds. Something to trip up healers and interrupt casters. Anything.

Discuss.

what.

But seriously, you deserve to float at the bottom of the SK100 - You've had your glorious two seasons, and you've been even worse than druids in TBC.

You = Paladins.

[crayven]

In before "QQ moar" or "l2P", the only people who reply saying lines like that are faggots who think they're hot shit for being an ass to someone. This post is by a long-time paladin analyzing the class and where it stands in pvp. Hopefully I can spark the interest of the few intelligent members of mmo-champion and get a discussion going.

Blizzard has stated that they ideally want every talent tree of every class to be viable in pvp. One problem with this is that there isn't enough variation between talent trees for any given class. A given talent tree will only give you 3-4 new abilities at most, so no matter what spec you are you're relying on baseline abilities that every tree has access to. With such similarities in gameplay and mechanics, one spec will inevitably be "superior" and become the dominant pvp spec.

Another major problem is tanking-oriented trees. When a large aspect of arena revolves around "gibbing" an opponent, dumping a 40k hp prot warrior into the arena skews any attempts at balancing survivability. How do you gib a beast like that? You can't. There is a fine balance between survivability and damage dealt. Some classes, such as arcane mages, give up survivability and gain burst damage. And vice versa. But for a tank to be even remotely competitive in arena, they need to do enough to pressure the opposing team.

This is all leading up to prot pallies. Ret deals damage and holy heals. Ok. So give prot some survivability and CCs/interrupts and that should balance the spec in pvp. Cool. But now in pve, prot pallies need spell power so we give them a talent for that too. Cool. They also want pve prot pallies to not have to worry about mana, so give them the ability to have 100% uptime on divine plea. Fair enough.

The end result? A pally specced into prot but with healing gear equipped will outheal the pally specced into deep holy. Not only do his flash of lights heal for monstrous amounts, but he has infinite mana and a huge amount of CC.

The reason pallies are speccing into this is because, well, holy sucks. I played holy up to around 2300 (with a warlock) in 2s and I could no longer compete with the infinite mana of resto druids, or the offensive abilities of priests, or the survivability of prot pallies, so I had to give in and switch to prot. The spec is so incredibly dumbed down, I hate it. It consists of putting up sacred shield, then spamming flash of light until you have to replace the key on your keyboard. But blizzard trapped us into abusing this spec, because it's the only spec that can compete with the other healing classes. If you play this spec for a day you've already hit the skill cap, so anyone who picks up the class can become a pro arena hero with little effort.

Blizzard is shitting all over the prot spec next patch, as they should. They didn't intend for prot to be a healing spec, so they're fixing it. Nothing wrong with that. The problem, however, is they have no plans to compensate us by fixing the holy tree. In short, they're destroying our one viable healing spec and leaving us with nothing.

I can't say they're completely destroying prot healing, though. The sad thing is, even after their nerfs, prot healing will still be more viable than holy healing because of how bad holy is. So a lot of pallies will still be speccing prot to heal, but now they'll be subpar and struggling to compete.

Onto ret. Ret is a broken spec, simply put. The spec used to be able to kill a target within the duration of a HoJ stun, so they nerfed it's damage. And then they nerfed it again. And again... and again. Ret has been beaten up so badly by the nerfbat that you can't kill anyone with it on its own. While other classes rely on interrupts and MS effects to kill a target, ret relies on spamming 3 spammable damage abilities. Every pvp fight feels like patchwerk. It's true that ret has useful tools, such as cleanse and HoP, but on its own ret is as useful as a level 19 magikarp (All it does is splash!). Ret is broken because all they do is spam damage abilities, and their lack of interrupts makes them a joke to all healers.

Summary - Pally representation is going to decline, because the class is too simple. Holy and ret pallies lack the tools necessary to compete in arena, and thus have almost completely disappeared from arena. While prot pally healing is currently a viable spec, it too suffers the curse of being painfully simple and having a low skill cap. Furthermore, blizzard is nerfing prot healing without giving any compensation for holy, which will result in less pallies in high-end arena.

I think the best solution for holy would be to give some offensive utility. It would be nice if they gave the silencing shield to holy, or made it accessibly in one of the earlier tiers of prot. As for ret, give them an interrupt for god's sake. Maybe a talent where if you judge them while casting, it interrupts their spellcasting for 2 seconds. Something to trip up healers and interrupt casters. Anything.

Discuss.

Tell me then -what do resto druids have to "interupt casters and trip healers" ?
And don't start with disc priest has coz disc priest is obscenely OP atm as long as his mana holds.

[Crispybacon]

what.

But seriously, you deserve to float at the bottom of the SK100 - You've had your glorious two seasons, and you've been even worse than druids in TBC.

You = Paladins.

The whole "X was OP so now it's Y's turn to be OP" argument is retarded. The goal of arena should be balance, not to give every class a turn to be overpowered.

You're saying pallies were OP 2 seasons, so now it's time to let them be bad for a bit. Thank God you don't work for blizzard.