what changes and tweeks do you feel would best help the class while also retaining the spirit or flavor as well? I personally am ok with the low dps we do if the reason given is because of out heals. however i do think our heals could use some tweaks. i feel like our heals should really focus on our gheal and ToT heals. these are the best fit for our class and help define our support heal position. i would like to see our gheals get faster cast/recast though. splash is also a big draw for us, could we find a way to utilize this better? maybe a spectrum of splashes with specific cures tied to it using shared timers so that mechanics like the sf raid dont disable the ae totally? anyway this is just a start pls add on. the other thread was going nowhere and was getting toxic. please BNBR.
From a group geared, boxing prospective... #1 - Mana usage/return. IMO, if this isn't first on your list, you aren't hitting enough buttons as a paladin when adventuring. Our mana usage is ridiculous, particularly compared to the other tanks (warriors on endurance obviously). Even if I am not going full bore, there is going to have to be some downtime...even if I choose carefully what I use. Marr's Gift at 5 min reuse would be a quick start at a fix, but give me something (lower cost, different aa/spell returns) so I could at least consider different spell/aa (RIP DP) combinations. #2 - Fix what doesn't work right. For example, Valiant Healing was never fixed for the aggro as far as I know. There have been so many spells/aas over the years that paladins have mentioned over and over again to the devs in threads that have just not worked the way they should. If everything actually worked right, some of the lower things on this list might actually go away. #3 - Aggro management. I don't care that Warriors and SKs can lock me out of mobs. But I do care when I cannot get aggro control on a bad pull. The target limit on the 2 ae aas is too low...should be upped to 8 at least so you can at least establish something early. This in conjunction with everything actually working would pretty much solve my aggro issues. But it would be nice if they considered lowering the reuse on some of the single target aas as well. AND FOR THE LOVE OF MARR, stop ignoring the pacify line when designing. I may be the only paladin in the universe who uses it to control what is pulled...but it's been in the game since the start and should be a defining characteristic for the class. But parking mobs on top of each other when designing makes this useless. #4 - Heal cast times. I'm getting beat on if I'm doing my job right. There are a number of heals that I don't bother using because the cast time is too long (not to mention some have long refresh rates as well). Nothing I cast should (at max aa) have a cast time longer than 2 sec. I like the fun of reacting to different things fast (and I think it's what we do well)...but I cannot if I'm stuck on a 3 sec cast of something.
During the last two beta's since the focus tab AA have existed I have asked for Valiant Deflection and Protective Devotion to be added in there. Target of Target heals feel like the best fit for a paladin. The cast time on our stuns, crushes and Target of Target heals need to be reduced through AA. Crushes should be instant. Trying to cast while tanking 4 to 8 mobs is still a disaster even with Stoicism, far too many interrupts. SK's have far more instant cast agro abilities and as far as I know, all the warrior ones are instant. My ability to heal myself as a paladin with TOT heals is severely diminished if I am doing everything I can just to try to keep agro through the interrupts. This effectively neuters my greatest strength as a paladin, the ability to self heal. Marr's Gift should have a chance to critical to better bring it in line with the SK variant. Lay of Hands should be at the bare minimum a complete heal, 180k hps on the initial burst is already half of what top paladins are working with on raids. The additional tick heal recourse should be higher, 50k or 75k. The component that sort of acts like Divine Intervention during the 36 seconds of the recourse should be extended out to 2 minutes or something. And of course this needs to continue to scale with a new rank like it always has when we get new expansions. This will better bring it in line with Harm Touch's massive power as it currently sits. Act of Valor needs a 3rd rank that instead of killing you upon casting, will cap your health and mana at 50 or 75% or something for 2 minutes. Since Spell Casting Reinforcement Mastery AA was severed from its ability to focus disciplines, all the paladin discs now no longer last long enough. I understand it was not working as intended, but I think its fair to assume that every single disc duration had previously been set at what they are so that they will last as long as expected with whatever the percentage of SCRM was at the time of the discs introduction per expansion. The only disc that paladins used often that predated SCRM was Holyforge, and it was obviously massively extended by SCRM as it was never intended to be. Every other major disc was introduced after at least some ranks of SCRM existed and as such, affected the decision on the duration of the newer discs. All hybrids should get AA to focus disciplines only. 10% per rank. I am sure there is more, but thats where I would start.
Big disclaimer here, I am not very familiar with paladins. I have been trying to be, but maybe just because I like the "character" of the paladin more than the actual play style and tools available to them. Trying to be objective about my subjectivity, paladins just aren't very fun. So these are just what I think would be fun, not considering balance issues or anything like that. Lay Hands I would like Lay Hands to be more effective. A heal is very easy to waste. Its effects are undone within seconds and do not stack with other heals. Some examples: if you LH yourself, you can very easily be right back to the same spot with a bad round from a few enemies; or you LH yourself but a cleric threw in a good heal right before yours. Your LH is wasted or has very minimal effect. I wish LH acted to keep you alive for some time, countering the continuous DPS from enemies maybe over two ticks or so. A bigger heal-over-time component? Some damage absorption? Short duration group buffs It would be cool if paladins had more along the lines of group buffs other than Brell's. A group yaulp? Group staunch stance? Something to increase the group's AC in spell form? Reverse damage shield AA Reverse damage shields don't see much use. They just aren't that great enough to take up a whole spell slot. Can we have an AA alternative? Whether passive or activated, having something like this would be cool. I also can never remember what a reverse damage shield means exactly, but I'm just thinking of something where attacking an NPC with this debuff will cause you to be healed for a portion of the damage. I guess this is not technically a reverse damage shield, but I don't know the terms. A healing shield? Marr's Gift focus The effects of Marr's Gift should be focusable and should be able to crit. I am a very novice paladin, so maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I eat through my mana quickly. Marr's Gift cannot sustain me for the duration of even one Lesson of the Devoted, and I don't feel that 30 minutes is asking for too much. Flash of Light AA, or similar Something to replace the old Flash of Light spell. Or alternatively, doesn't cause enemies to run around wildly, but at least reduces their melee ability. You know, being blinded and all. Insta-cast Shackles of Tunare Self-explanatory Nuke AA Something similar to the Fury line of spells or the 2.0 clickie, maybe an innate proc rather than activated. More AC/mitigation, or something with a shield Being a hybrid of two plate classes, it'd be nice if they were inherently beefier. The image of a paladin with a shield protecting peasants, you know. Mega two-handed piercing damage boost when on a mount 'cause... come on... Jousting!!! Would also give us a reason to get away from the repetitive two-hand slashing weapons.
Think it would be neat if Paladins could buff/aura their group with something which procs sizable heals (offensively or defensively). Would help in both group/raid situations. Maybe something akin to SK epic where every swing procs a heal for a set amount of time. Or something which would buff the group and block debuffs/dots for a minute or so. Or something which allows them to proc slay undead every swing for a small time, and possibly allows slays to work on live targets too as part of a DPS booster. Possibly a splash which doesn't heal but cures in waves like shaman spiritual swell does. I don't play a paladin, but those seem like neat things.
In my opinion, The only spells for any class that should ever be longer than 2 seconds are buff spells.
Considering knights get their own 2h(something) weapon every expansion that is way higher ratio than the other melee classes, all I can see coming from this is either overpowered (yay, knight weapon was a piercer this expansion), or underwhelming (we're stuck using the generic melee 2h this expansion).
Pertaining to Paladins on live servers, something really should be done regarding stuns as a start point. They are near worthless in vast majority of scenarios and have hindered what SHOULD be many of our most powerful abilities. Worst, they seem great on ‘’paper’’. Shadowknight and Warrior aggro abilities are instant, ours have a cast time because stun? Shadowknight Alliance is far more powerful, because ours has a stun? Paladin Harmonius style ability is lacking(especially before all tanks Harmonius were nerfed) because our has a stun? Paladins have one of if not the weakest Dichotomic ability in game..... because stun component like all the above. Anyhow, I hope this trend stops. I don’t care if stuns are completely chalked, or reworked but please do something to address it. Stuns scale poorly on top of things and are just a poor thing to balance around in current state
I agree with seldom. i rarely use stuns and when i do it is usually just for the reflected HoT on the one.
I think the next time all pallies log in they should be class transmorped to druids. Halfing druids. They can keep their AGI tanks. /nods
Act of Valor is bad design. Always has been, always will be. Tanks aren't supposed to die.Sacrifice of Inquisition lose 50% of your HP, take an AC hit increase offensive Melee and +Spell Damage and heal group for 50% of hp lost. Something interesting. Say no to short duration buffs, they create problems. Clerics can use two auras, include a second aura AA and a new Aura.
Frontal AE stun called Holy Flash. "Soandso reflects a flash of holy light off of their weapon, stunning enemies in front for 2 seconds." Limit the stun to only proc group heal off of current target of course.
bring back some old spell lines, long ago we could summon a couple of items. maybe update old lines like that along with offering new auras would be cool.
True, Lay Hands wont save anyone most of the time you decide to use it. I find Hand of Piety much more useful. It should be a complete heal at base (>300khp now) and the regen and DI effects are the most valuable part to continue improving. They add a nice contingency aspect to the ability. Good ideas although shadowknights have this niche along with bards. Compare to SK leech effects and yes Mark's are too weak to be used. The only time to use them is went you want to overwrite a strong NPC damage shield buff. So it's a utility spell and needs like 10 fold upgrade to be considered on par with SK leeches. Compare to SK Veil of Darkness and yes it would be great to get upgrades to FoL that debuff SPA 184 likewise. Paladins already have Disruptive Persecution, Blunted Blade, and Inquisitor's Judgement in this area.
Longer duration self buffs (HP line, Symbol) Scaled LoH to level Stuns with damage component if there isn't a heal component, remove the knockback effects Update Auras (ours end at level 70'ish?)
I am not sure if youre advocating to add damage to stuns but I oppose that if so. We already have Crushes for agro plus damage.
The heal bonus hate is subject to the NPC witness check (of all beneficial spells) which fails roughly 50% of the time. When NPCs witness it, Valiant Healing works as expected which is not nearly reliable enough. I think the bug to fix here is that beneficial spells that have a +hate mod should always pass the witness check. The target limit of Beacon and Lodestar are both 8 already and they were patched to stack (thanks devs). Maybe the short range (30') on Beacon's pbae is what's troubling you. I vote this one up as it can be very hard to cast even a 1s spell like Censure or Protective while tanking current content. Valiant Defense still wins here along with passive healing. Refreshing Preservation at 3s cast time can be a deadly and futile exercise mid combat. Since you're into removing hit counts in the current patch Devs, please remove the hit count on Revitalizing Steel and maybe some paladins would use it.
Paladins also already have stuns with damage too (Holy Might line) that have some utility for positioning mobs but otherwise go unused.
Well you guys get pallies fixed and I will dust off my 109 pally with full EOK vis and borrow some EOK non vis from my chanter and see how it goes In the meantime the chanter is a better use for the non-vis EOK gear
Thanks for starting and contributing to a constructive thread, there have been a number of good ideas presented here. Can you cite other examples like this where something doesn't appear to be working mechanically? The following post regarding hate overrides on beneficial spells is a very good example. Looking into how beneficial spell hate is attributed did unearth some 'interesting' bits of behavior. Your suggestion that spells with a hate override component should always incur this amount in potential targets seems like a very reasonable suggestion. There is one change slated for the August patch at this time that should hopefully alleviate some issues with being interrupted while being hit. It was found that when an NPC tries to bash/kick you, if it failed its roll to stun you it would still have an 80% chance to outright interrupt spell casting (regardless of if the bash did damage or not). To balance that out a bit we're going to change this so that bash/kick attacks that fail to stun you must at least do damage in order to roll the 80% chance to interrupt, then at that point, your total amount of SPA 293 will factor into the roll on whether your current spell cast is interrupted.
