Past Paladin experience (the big nerf)

[iLive]

Ghostcrawler once said at Blizzcon that he was famous for nerfing Paladins. I didn't play Paladin back when it got nerfed, and nor did I do PvP so I wouldn't know how strong they were, but he must have made some major changes at some point that must have changed Paladins a lot. I am not saying I'm disagreeing with him, or that I will disagree with him, but I would be very interested to know what this change was. :]

Anyone who can explain a little?

[Hendrixstorm]

If I recall, when 3.0 landed at the end of BC it brought loooooooooads of class buffs (Just as it successor 4.0 did) to every class, it was the patch where they finally tried to make every spec of every class useable, such as boomkins who had been worthless aside of the buff for years before.

At the top of this change were retribution paladins, who, before that period, were good for buffing. Only buffing. That's all you wanted one for. So he could buff people. When the patch landed and divine storm came out, as well as colossal holy damage, paladins were the death knights of late BC. Even with a mining pick equipped (I shit you not) they would stun you, and slaughter you with such class buffs as being able to bubble, use avenging wrath, and still do full damage to the target, with no penalty. Then, after about 50 forbearance changes, wrath landed. When resilience only provided half the benefit, paladin burst was out of control. It was absolutely ridiculous, like warriors are now.

Over the next few wrath patches, tons of changes were made to mitigate retribution pvp burst and give it some worth in pve, since it was still a buff bitch for a minor haste buff. They lowered the cooldown of crusader strike and it's damage, removed seal of blood, doubled the mitigation you get from resistance, and played with exorcism on and off. By the end of it, retribution pvp was out the window entirely, they went from having crazy insane burst to having absolutely nothing. If you pvped you were either a prot healer, or holy, or that god awful prot-ret thing that was more popular than the actual retribution spec itself. (however, I do believe they were very good off in PvE by the end of this, iirc ret paladins were like the 3rd or 4th highest class on stateofdps)

Also, it's worth noting that he achieved some of that fame for the 4.0 release, where both zealotry and avenging wrath were dispellable, and the mastery/damage were an absolute joke. Ret landed in cataclysm pitifully weak, and it took until 4.0.6 for them to be worth a shit.