Pally Changes

[Kevin]

How would you paladin players feel about an combat ability that is useful DPS, but temporarily disables all ability to use, through a long skill cooldown... say... Holy skills (Healing/Shields/etc, all the survivability stuff) for xxx seconds? Offensive trade-off for defensive abilities, so you can do either or, but not both. Shamans are limited by mana, mail, and totem limitations. I feel like in order to give Paladins offense, you must trade away all the important defensive abilities. One can only hope.
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How would I feel? I would love it as long as it wasn't a complete gimmick. There are so many times where I don't need my defensive capabilities but would love some damn offense for a choice on how to play the character. I pointed it out before. In PvP and PvE the paladin really only has one style of play. No other class is like that. The warrior is pretty much limited to offense in PvP, but a def spec warrior still has choices with stuns and silences that can be very effective when you use them that way and snares and fears are defensive tools as well. So even they can choose and suceed witha differnet style. Heck rogues have more defensive options than paladins have offensive options.

So yeah say a holy might spell that continually drains mana and locks out healing, casting blessings and the bubble but gives you more damage output or open ups some instant attack skills would be great. Or an instant attack spell that takes mana and puts the defensive skills on a 6 or 10 or whatever second cooldown would be great. It would give us a damn choice.

Sure that is kinda like the druid who gives up healing for tanking or DPS along with mana for the form switches and it seems to work pretty well for them. Possibly too well right now.

But again the issues with paladins aren't just PvP they are there in PvE as well. Sure when you gear for it and you look at it over time paladins can contribute decent DPS though they will have no mana pool and likely shallow HP pools as well to get more crits and attack power, etc. But again you still have no control over that. I've seen my paladin in my offensive gear (which is still pretty poor as I'm still building that set) have strings of 600 damage from the weapon 1000 damage from seal of command another 600 damage from the weapon and 700 from seal of comman. So yeah dishing out nearly 3000 HP of damage in about 3 seconds. But that is 3 crits and 2 procs under the influence of vengeance and my Mark of the Chosen effect was probably up as well. I would much rather be able to hit a mortal strike, or shield slam or presence of mind pyroblast or whatever and have some kind of control on that damage. Heck even just more options of putting damage out there like these two DoT's and this direct damage spell and yeah lets burn a shard to get some more in there. Can't do any of that. Can stand around and hope I get a crit or a proc. Over time I can do decent DPS, but no control at all.

So yeah, let me limit my offense by my mana pool (thus hurting my defense) give me offensive skills that lock out my defense or heck even drop my armor value for a time.

It's often said warlocks are balanced by frustration and they too suffer from the mercy of the prng at times. But they aren't at the mercy of the prng all the time and they do have some control on some of the frustration factors. Paladins are always at the mercy of the prng and they always at the mercy of help from friends to kill anyone. Yes their D can be very powerful in PvP. But it's alll they can do. It's very very frustrating. Give me a choice like every other class out there!