MMO Journal--Blizzard Doesn't Understand Paladins?

After a year's worth of wait, 1.9 is upon us. But so far, it's not too encouraging.

First off, let's get some things straight: the paladin has substantially improved for PvP over the last patch. And the strike system of the Beta paladin wasn't anything outstanding--especially when you consider that the wannabe Heroic Strikes consumed more mana at the cost of less damage.

Yet, fundamental problems still remain with the revamped Paladin class. It's not that Paladins are underpowered, weak, or even dull (Shaman dropping totems in PvE is almost as bad). At 1.9, Paladins are by no means a pushover. The problem is Blizzard poorly designed the class--and worse yet, doesn't know what to do with it.

An issue the company encounters before even thinking of revisions is that you have a paladin community that actually hates itself. Retnoobs, Reckoning Bombers and Holy Clerics endlessly debate over what tree is the best. Hmm, shouldn't all trees be viable? Then you have the talent specialists versus generalists, which can be summed up by saying generalists like disorganized trees. I mean if you wanted to be a general spec, what's to stop you from going 17/17/17, or 21/15/15?

Blizzard then faces a dilemma: they are "fairly" satisfied with the class, but the finicky paladin community demands a dramatic overhaul.

The company's inelegant solution comes in the form of shifting talents around... into inexplicable places. Consecration, which is used for either tanking or unstealthing rogues, has no place in the Holy tree, which is the spell damage/healing tree. Sanctity aura has always been useless (get whacked a couple times with Retribution aura and the end result is the same), yet resides in Retribution as the 21-point talent. In any other class, having a 31 point and 21 point talent from separate trees would make you overpowered, yet Paladins are the only--let's say special--class that doesn't follow this trend. Of all the 21 and 31 point abilities, Divine Favor and Repentance are the only skills worth investing. The 31-point Blessing of Kings, at best a 21-point talent, strangely resides in the end of the melee tree, and Holy Shock is either an ersatz Earthshock or a mana-inefficient Flash of Light.

At the heart of the issue is Blizzard's lack of addressing the most elemental question: what is a paladin? An off-tank in PvE? A defensive hybrid? A Diablo II melee fighter (oh Retrib palies, you only wish)? Is it supposed to stay back and heal in PvE or PvP? Is it to charge fearlessly in the front lines--and not Divine Hearth? The answers seem more nebulous with the 1.9 patch. Take the Protection tree: On one hand, one would want to amass as many crits as possible with Reckoning. On the other, there's Anticipation, which gives Defense bonuses that make it harder to get crit on. Maybe the reason why the paladin community can't agree on anything is that Blizzard itself can't make up its mind on what the class should be.

The solution isn't as simple as slapping together melee abilities, getting rid of Divine Shield and calling it a day, because the Paladin class needs to differentiate itself more from Shamans as a counterpart.

One solution: make the Paladin the porcupine class. The class that hurts you the more you beat on it, in all three trees. What would need to happen is as follows:

1) Move Reckoning to the Retribution tree. Reckoning shines most as a two-hander ability anyway. Reduce the number of stored charges to two--to pave way for a new 31-point Retribution talent.
2) Move Eye for an Eye in the Holy tree. As the healing/spell damage tree, it is only logical that the talent to reflect spell damage gets put there.
3) Introduce a new talent in place of Reckoning for the Protection tree:

Atonement -- Abilities that reflect damage back to attacker (Holy Shield, Blessing of Sanctuary, Retribution Aura, shield spikes, etc) add 20% additional damage after the player is the victim of a critical strike per talent point, up to 100%.

This would not only improve the Paladin's tanking ability, but would also give more utility to one-handed paladins in PvP. And Blessing of Sanctuary would actually have some PvP use, too.

Most importantly, Blessing of Kings needs to be moved to some 21-point slot, and replaced with a strike. The fact that Shamans, the supposed spellcasting hybrid, get a 31-point strike at the end of their Enhancement tree is a tad ironic.

Other changes that'd make the class feel more complete:

1) Improved Devotion aura gives 10% bonus per talent, up to 50%
2) Improved Blessing of Might increases attack power bonus of the blessing by 7% per point, up to 35%
3) Consecration, Deflection moved to Protection tree
4) Precision moved back to the Retribution tree.
5) New tier 4 Holy talent: Improved Hammer of Wrath -- Reduces spellcasting time of Hammer of Wrath by .2 seconds, up to 1 second
6) Judged Justice - Reduces movement speed by 40% for 3 seconds when target is stunned. Seal of Justice gets a 20 second cooldown.
7) Sanctity aura increases both holy damage and healing by 10%--and plopped back into the Holy tree where it belongs
8) Holy Shock's healing amount doubled
9) Duration for Divine Protection and Divine Shield reduced by 2 seconds across all ranks, killing shield hearthing.
10) Fix Seal of Command, bugged since eternity.

With the talent calculator up, maybe it's too late for 1.9. I suppose there's always hope for patch 1.10. Until then, keep your Hearthstones cooled down and Divine Shield ready.

Comments [0]

post a comment

Post a Comment