Lets be real Paladins (2021 Beta)

100% Tanking.

As a group paladin, I feel healing and DPS are in appropriate spots. I can step in and heal very well, especially in 'oh crap AOE' moments. DPS vs undead is great, and the on-kill dps proc is powerful enough that solo play feels viable.

Try playing a paladin in the group game and we are more than 20% behind the other tanks (including the offense-focused SK).

As mentioned elsewhere we are again requesting a Reaver's Bargain-like disc.

Tanking.
Our agro spells and abilities could be doubled in the amount of hate each does and I would wonder if that was enough. 20% more agro would NOT be enough to see us through to the next level increase expansion. At the very least spells should be front loaded with high agro numbers so that we can stay in decent shape through stagnation til the next level increase expansion.

Disc up time was gutted a few years ago with the spell reinforcement mastery nerf and that is the primary limiting factor for a paladin as a main tank option. Our discs just don't last very long. We need AA that works like spell reinforcement mastery used to but just for discs, and have it be a much lower modifier, like 25% or something.
Disc Reinforcement mastery AA for hybrids would be a really low hanging fruit.

well it's clearly dps. Active paladins are already super tough & independent with their healing. There's corner problems that need addressing, like Composite & Valiant not focusing the same as other things, but those are isolated fixes needing fixing, not an overall balance issue.

On the dps side, Holyforge needs a replacement with literally half the reuse timer. I'd also trade substantial duration off Holyforge & Blunted Blade for more power during their reduced durations. As it stands, though they do their thing while they're on and that thing is nice, that they last so long is a bit of a whammy since they block using defensive discs for so long.

Tanking +20% ... and many of us will do some testing in beta to see if that boost is even enough.

A pally version of Reaver's is definitely top of the list.

Upgrade to Holyforge or Pureforge even.

Sincere Light and Protective Consecration on different timers would be nice

A QoL one which I have brought up on Beta often, double the duration of Stormwall Keeper (whatever the new one is going to be called)

Dps on live targets, our dps on undead is good enough it really doesn't need boosts, but our spell based dps verse live targets could use substantial increase.

Our tanking is probably the "worst" of the 3 tanks, however it is still within the "able to tank any content the other tanks can" tolerance band so that seems fine.

Our self healing could use some adjustments in a purely quality of life and consistency basis.

Burst quiet time adjustment

Remonstrate resist mod adjustment

Protective and Valiant getting focus AA so their average heal amount is alittle better to handle our self healing requirements and make them less spotty and reliant on twin heals or crits or stacking heal mods

But those aren't anything mindblowing balance wise.

Easing up on some of the relentless micromanagement we have to do, to achieve satisfactory level of tanking would be cool too

But over all that, I would prioritize DPS, However thats probably not a thing they are going to do.

I think once we have an expansion with few or no undead, this issue will make itself very obvious in how far behind paladin dps is relative to the other tanks. Its much further behind then our tanking ability.

I don't see this happening but it would be interesting and reduce some button pushing.

Farm parts of the Preservation line into other existing spells in our tool box.

Move our agro mod off the Preservation line and onto our Fury spell line. Increase the agro mod from 15% to 25%. Why rely on a SK for our agro mod to stay competitive when they can cast it on some poor unsuspecting DPS and have more fun.

Move the Heal proc off of Preservation and add it to our Armor of Steadfast Grace, the proc count needs to go away since the heals are small and random. Adjust the heal / mana cost as necessary now that it is on a longer duration spell.

I think this would play into the "defensive tank" mindset, keeps the desired effects on self only spells and reduces some micro management.

Long term this could have the effect of removing two spell lines, Preservation and Renewing steel by incorporating the heal procs into the Armor of Steadfast Grace line. This would also reduce the associated AA focus lines freeing up space.

I was thinking something like increasing the damage cap on the 451 threshold on Protest and the vie on Protective, but finding a way to clear up a buff and spell slot in that manner would also be helpful.

Preservation is a very clunky spell in practice, that suffers immensely from stagnation in value in re: heal amount and its delayed effect not being as useful in the modern pacing of the game as it could be.

Like easing the skill floor abit would be overall good the difference in tanking between a paladin who properly cycles heal mods, refreshes protest and protective when other abilities don't take precedence, and has a very good feel for self healing pacing versus a paladin who does not is a massive gap.

The difference between an average player and one played at the edge of capability is massive, some QOL changes wouldn't really further empower the top end players but it would make the class alot more viable for people on the lower end of the skill threshold and generally make life more enjoyable across the board.

Good consolidation ideas.

The theme of Renewing Steel is actually really paladin-like, as I said a few years ago. The reason it does not ever earn my spell gem is because of the 30 sec uptime vs 2 min recast. Spell gems are just too valuable to waste on a marginal spell with a long cool down. It has been suggested before that it should be an AA that casts "highest rank in spell book". If it was an AA button we would all use it on cool down.

In the end, there is little difference between the small heal procs of Preservation, Renewing Steel, Blessing of Life, Blessing of Light, and Armor of Sincerity. They add up to not-enough-passive healing. So we stack our healing bonus options to cover it up. Then we run out of options and have to spend AA on a dragon glyph when we should be able to activate a Sentinel's Bargain instead. It's punishing.

Paladins are the so-called defensive knight and yet cannot aggro as well or defend as well as the offensive knight. The theme has been broken for years. A level 70 epic click does more passive healing then all of that level 115 tool kit listed above.

Especially with the shift in healing strategy since I want to say HOT/VOA to spamming quick heals (remedy/reckless/rejuvilation) our passive effects do need a SOLID retuning relative to content. Especially since our HOTT/burst are subject to timegating and timing more so than those a good portion of our healing and even our heal mods have so much value lost to overheals because they land as another heal lands or whatever instead of happening at the point of damage.

Addressing that would be really helpful. Both from an AA and spell standpoint.

I'm of the opinion that Reaver's Bargain was a mistake. Heavy mitigation cooldowns should be the domain of warriors, especially considering how high the self healing capabilities of knights are these days. I wouldn't mind seeing it phased out like Spiritual Squall (another mistake IMO that makes shamans too good at healing).

I also think paladin DPS is more or less where it should be, but warriors and SKs do too much. Tank DPS in general shouldn't be approaching or surpassing the actual DPS classes.

That said, if the devs are committed to keeping the current design situation going - then I think it's better for the tank class capabilities to be closer together, in which case a DPS buff and Reaver's equivalent would make sense for paladin.

Given the relatively low low low dps of the fury line they should just add renewing steel to that line without a proc count and adjust the proc rate accordingly.

Combining them sounds good and upgrade the Fury damage value please. It should do about the same base damage as an in-era 1-hand melee hit, as Divine Might did originally.

Paladin dps has come primarily, and at times almost exclusively, from melee swings. Divine Might line was one of the earliest weapon imbue spells for any class (after necro's Vampiric Embrace) and it has rarely been more then flavor for the iconic magic-sword wielding paladin. It can be a premier paladin ability if given a creative boost.

It should be on par with inquisitors judgement and still would only account for like 700 dps. The fixed ppm make it a scalable source of dps that has minimal impact combine that with the steel line and it gets a fresh look. I’d much rather an always on lower proc spell than a waste of a gem slot.

Yeh what's Fury now like 200dps? I don't even think I am being hyperbolic.

Thats like several orders of magnitude less than relevant at this point.

That would be great at level 70.

A key benefit of Fury (and weapon procs in general), especially vs our lower weapon skills and accuracy, is that they can proc on a miss. A clumsy flailing paladin can still do some damage while missing and missing and missing. If the Fury line was improved reasonably it would go a long way towards re-balancing paladin DPS.

Oh I definitely agree, it should be adjusted if they are going to address our live dps that would be the best way

Roll steely into it, set the proc rate accordingly

Would be very helpful in addressing some of the issues.

Our passive healing and dps are really the biggest weaknesses in our toolkit. Our active healing could use some QOL improvements to prevent further stagnation and bring it up to modern combat pacing

Valiant having a focus, protective being hastened to .5s/having a focus, looking into the dicho no focus/no twincast, easing up some of the micromanagement of short term mitigation abilities (honor/protective).

If that stuff was addressed we'd be in alot better position then we are now.

Since the re-balance of damage shields in ToV, one of the two paladin Mark spells is now worthy of a spell gem, while the other one is not. The reason that e.g Mark of Sevalak still never earns a spell gem is because of the max hit counters and low damage.

It takes a modern mob <10 seconds to consume 24 hit counters and then the spell cool down is 12 seconds. Those 24 hits do about 61k damage which amounts to little less then a bash hit once every 10 seconds. This Mark spell is mana efficient but has no +hate so it does not help with tanking either.

Since I only want to give 1 spell gem to a Mark spell, I suggest combining the 2 Marks into one spell. Just add the mana and Slot 1 amount to the equivalent Slot 2 of e.g. Mark of the Jade Cohort and discontinue Mark of Sevalak line.

Proposed change:

[58802/10829] Mark of Sevalak
Classes: PAL/111
Skill: Abjuration
Mana: 460
Target: Single
Range: 200'
Resist: Magic -61
Reflectable: Yes
Focusable: Yes
Casting: 0.5s, Recast: 12s, Rest: 1.5s
Duration: 30s+ (5 ticks), Dispelable: Yes
Max Hits: 24 Outgoing Hit Successes
1: Increase Reverse Damage Shield by 2547

[58880/10821] Mark of the Jade Cohort
Classes: PAL/114
Skill: Abjuration
Mana: 606 1066
Target: Single
Range: 200'
Resist: Magic -61
Reflectable: Yes
Focusable: Yes
Casting: 3s, Recast: 1.5s, Rest: 1.5s
Duration: 15m+ (150 ticks), Dispelable: Yes
1: Decrease Damage Shield by 2279
2: Increase Reverse Damage Shield by 2087 4826

That spell could really use a modern cast time. Or barring that being viral so that 1.5s cast is justified in faster paced situations (which is basically all of them now).

Yeah even 1s cast time is too long for a combat spell these days.

PS: As a matter of game play enjoyment (and reduced server load), I would much rather the entire combat system slow back down 30 delay NPC melee and 3s cast times. The game play has been speeding up for years and now there is too much 0s danger. It's become all proactive over healing and reactive resurrection. I hardly get to watch the spectacle of the battles anymore.

PPS: I've also proposed that we get a TGAE version of Mark of the Jade Cohort line in a earlier post. Making it viral is a similar option.