Venting thread

[Fridmarr]

To be clear, I don't agree with the notion that we're necessarily "behind" any more than Druids are "behind." We're "behind" in avoidance and DR because we make it up by being able to block every incoming hit. With the increase in the power of block value, one unblocked hit by the warrior means the Paladin now has more health (in most cases). That would never happen to the Paladin. Also, AD got buffed drastically with the increase of power of block value, Divine Protection, Divine Guardian from other Paladins, and any of the new %-based spells castable on others. This includes Blessing of Sacrifice from other Paladins, Spirit Link, Intervene (although now not necessarily practical), and probably several other skills I'm not thinking of at the moment.

Are we behind in DR? Yeah, but it's supposed to be that way. So are Druids. Our "selling point" is that we have DR and health similar to a Warrior, except with better mitigation of unpredictable burst (arguably the worst kind). Well, and that we bring HoSanc, HoSalv, a blessing, superior AoE tanking for threat (the only real kind there is). The thing that worries me (and always have) is the way that Warriors will always be OK, and more recently, the half-baked hotfix and haphazard nerfing of all three specs while trying to nerf Ret.

Looking at them now, though, it doesn't appear to be as big of a deal as I originally thought. They're under a lot of pressure as the expansion looms. It may just be that I got the [item=13335]Deathcharger's Reins[/item] on my Paladin tonight (ty, ty), but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Like I said earlier, I think things are fine now, I just worry about going forward.

As far as ret goes, they decided to continue with the methodology from original wow. We were always about burst but it was uncontrollable burst and otherwise low DPS. SoC used to hit hard, but less frequently and there were no instants, no judgements that did damage (well worth seal swapping and casting, plus the longer cd) and no strikes.

I'm a little surprised that when they came to the decision to buff our overall DPS to be competitive and continue the "burst" style that the obvious didn't dawn on them. Having a class that is capable of big burst, and competitive dps, and also able to become immune for 12 seconds, is hard if not impossible to balance in PVP. A little too much and they wreck things with no counter, not enough and they get raped while chasing. There are some subtleties in there, but that's the bulk of it.

So yes, they need to lower some burst and add utility, but that's a big change, it's going to take some time. One new 11 point talent in the prot tree probably won't fix it. They are currently going about these changes in a pretty sloppy manner, and ultimately creating themselves more work. There are lots of other classes and specs and when the expansion ships, they'll have to focus on DKs a bit. I don't feel good about not being done at this point, in fact we are going backwards with all the collateral damage we are taking. I also don't feel good with the pending concerns that we have. I don't think we'll ever be broken or as bad off as when TBC started again, and I hope I'm wrong the the other stuff.

[Bobness]

It's the singleminded drive to balance Ret to the detriment of every other Paladin build that boggles my mind.

I think it's fair to say that the only direct "nerf" to Prot Paladins is the reduction of stamina scaling, i don't like that, i don't like it at all but it's happened & we move on, I don't mind us being slightly inferior to Warriors for mitigation, I don't even mind the lack of a single Target taunt, but when you add them up they are are meaningful, if only in how other people view us.

Seals & Judgements atm are flat out broken... Prot Paladin DPS to TPS is all kinds of messed up.

DS/DP & AW fix really underlined the lack of seeing "the Big Picture".

I think if Holy Paladins/ Prot Paladins were a required build they wouldn't have seen the shambolic "fixes" that have been made in the last couple of weeks.

& to everyone who says don't worry ... Remember the SOC bug ?

[Fridmarr]

The mere fact that Modus, Worldi, myself, and others who have been long term paladins through some of the worst times is indicative of the state of paladins and the recent changes.

There were no Blood Elf Paladins during the "worst times" for the class. That's because the very worst times happened pre-TBC when we didn't even have the tanking abilities we had at launch. I wasn't even a Paladin back in those days, but a lot of my friends were and most of them got quickly frustrated with the "sit back and heal" mentality.

Back in vanilla, Paladins weren't meant to tank. They just couldn't do it. Prot tree was merely a leveling tree, Holy shield didn't exist.
Back then i was playing my priest, and oddly enough, we had a prot paladin in the guild. While he was mainly a healer, on some specific trashs he was tanking since aoetanking was win win. He couldn't tank much more simply cause there was no spiritual attunement, so end of mana = end of tanking

That werent "the worst time", tankadins just didn't exist at all. People who rolled paladins were 90% of the times doing it on the purpose of healing. Actually, myself as well had rolled a paladin to stay behind and heal. The fact i found tanking more enjoyable depended mainly because my main at that time was a prot warrior.

We've always had holy shield, in fact it used to only be 21 talent points and it was part of the infamous PVP tri spec. Free crit heals, SoC, Holy Shield and Reckoning. We were meant to tank, had skills for tanking, and could easily handle stuff up through UBRS without a big worry, but it started breaking down a bit in MC. We were good a generating threat but sucked at mitigation until 1.9, then we just sucked at both.

[Faeth]

I don't like the 'unintended' nerfs to Prot (and holy) to balance Retri. Moreso i don't like the fact that there's little mention of this side effect from Blizzard.

However, i did see 2 posts (i believe both from GC) which addresses some concerns.

1) They're supposedly now looking at holy and prot dps after the effective nerfs
2) Confirmation that they will be introducing a single target taunt glyph with some extra bonus to compensate for the loss of the multi target one.

It's not like we'd have any choice, but i'm just gonna wait and see.

[Worldie]

10 more days....

[Faeth]

10 more days....

It only means GC / they need to fill their cups more with coffee instead of gin

[ulushnar]

Ulush, you cannot consider Vanilla, simply because in vanilla paladin tank tree just didn't exist. Pretending to tank as paladin was as wrong as pretending to DPS as shaman.

We were intended to tank, even back then. We had Plate Armor, shields and an entire tree called Protection. The fact they didn't implement this usefully until 2.0 doesn't mean that it wasn't part of the Dev's diseased backbrain. Admittedly most of the Protadins I knew back in the day were WSG flag runners, but they existed and they did OTing for us in MC and BWL.

I kinda felt sorry for them, they rolled a Holy Warrior class expecting some hot Melee action and were generally told to stand at the back and heal. That said, it was actually seeing them tank that inspired me to roll my first Paladin, but I just couldn't get him past Westfall, so the idea lay dormant until TBC and the Draenei starting area.

Back on topic, and of course a Ret nerf was eventually going to boil down to Prot. They tried making Divine Storm/SoComm physical and it wasn't enough on their own. If they just nerfed the Ret seals and left the others where they were, then every Ret would use SoV (as they were in early Beta).

I still have some faith that they'll balance it out if it's needed.

[Macha]

Back in vanilla, Paladins weren't meant to tank.

Well, we did tank. We tanked nefarian p1(until they fixed wisdom, anyway), we tanked the imps in MC, and we sure as hell tanked trash in Naxx and pre-cthun trash in AQ40. Pre-cthun trash with a Paladin was far, far easier than without.

Not THAT huge of a change to post-2.0 where the few Paladintanks did the same. It took until 2.1-2.2 until it really changed.

[Fridmarr]

Back on topic, and of course a Ret nerf was eventually going to boil down to Prot. They tried making Divine Storm/SoComm physical and it wasn't enough on their own. If they just nerfed the Ret seals and left the others where they were, then every Ret would use SoV (as they were in early Beta).

I still have some faith that they'll balance it out if it's needed.

There are quite literally countless ways to have nerfed ret with no effect on prot/holy. I think they will fix it since they felt the need to comment about it, but those were very sloppy changes to address a specific retribution problem.

[caboom]

Back on topic, and of course a Ret nerf was eventually going to boil down to Prot. They tried making Divine Storm/SoComm physical and it wasn't enough on their own. If they just nerfed the Ret seals and left the others where they were, then every Ret would use SoV (as they were in early Beta).

I still have some faith that they'll balance it out if it's needed.

There are quite literally countless ways to have nerfed ret with no effect on prot/holy. I think they will fix it since they felt the need to comment about it, but those were very sloppy changes to address a specific retribution problem.

I agree to this, so an idea arises in my mind, given GC's statements, maybe they will rebuff the nerfs they did to ret now at lvl 80.

[Worldie]

I still don't understand the point of nerfing SoV and... SoR???? I mean, SoR already sucked hard, why nerfing it :\

[caboom]

I still don't understand the point of nerfing SoV and... SoR???? I mean, SoR already sucked hard, why nerfing it :\

I am thinking maybe cuz of the specs that ignore kings for seals of the pure at 80 ?

[Bobness]

I still don't understand the point of nerfing SoV and... SoR???? I mean, SoR already sucked hard, why nerfing it :\

I am thinking maybe cuz of the specs that ignore kings for seals of the pure at 80 ?

Given the way things are now SOV/SOR would still be crap even with SOTP

[ziggyunderslashone]

It used to annoy me that blizzard posted so little development information. Now I really wish they’d stop.

I didn’t like being in the dark, but having a harsh bright light brought down on development decisions is often a disconcerting process.

I can see what they’re doing. They have a deadline, they're doing what everyone does with a deadline, they need to make the game work. Minor issues can be resolved at a later date. And aside from the taunt issue (“I can tank almost all bosses me”) it is fair to say that issues we have are minor, in isolation (there’s a more overarching problem of perception, but that’s not going away).

Somehow knowing this doesn’t make me feel any better.

[Barathorn]

It's pointless to be worried at this stage, just have to see what other cards we get dealt. I understand its natural to vent and not be happy about the ret changes and their impact on prot paladins, but all it produces is more negativity of which this forum has quite enough already. I think we need to be positive about the good changes we have recieved and wait to see what else Blizzard do.

No matter what happens I will be tanking as a Tankadin at level 80.

Barathorn

PS: I also have the STB now, so watch it!