Paladin Concern Summary

[nobbie]

Clicky!

I will continue to bump this for a few weeks. My apologies to those of you who will get tired of seeing this
EDIT: If, by some strange chance, you delete this post as you did on the general boards, you are sending a signal to paladin players every where to , as the vernacular is used, go screw yourselves.

Paladins, brothers and sisters, copy this first post and save it in the event that some of the powers-that-be decide to excersize their powers and delete the heartfelt message presented here. Re-Post it and keep the flame alive.



Dear Blizzard and Paladin Forums,

I had received a week long ban after posting blizzards corporate information, including fax number (which is all easily obtainable if you search the web), in an effort to give paladins the ability to contact you directly.

Why did I do this? Because, and I still hold to this belief, the paladin revamp is a complete fiasco. Some of you may ask "Okay, asshat, why is it a complete fiasco? You deserved your ban for a week" Regardless of the availability of the content of Blizzards contact information, posting it and telling paladins to fax in their concerns was a violation of your rules. I accept my punishment with dignity and grace.

I did this because the paladin talent revamp is being fixed from the back-burner during a patch that contains a massive content update, two new instances, quests being put in, tweaks to the general system, and things of that nature. Simply put, the paladin talent revamp is being poked at with a stick like it were a dead animal being investigated by children who want to see the insides without actually touching the thing.

During my week long ban, I made several observations and spent my week reading ....really reading what is going on. You have done some good in regards to the talents, you have done some bad in regards to the talents, and you have some serious skeletons in your closet (and I’m sure you know damn well what I’m referring too, but that’ll be covered later). And, unfortunately, you have made no real change to paladin combat. We have heard from CM’s as to this and that concerning paladins. NOT ONCE have we heard from a dev or a class designer who has religiously played a paladin as to whats good , whats bad, and what needs to still be fixed.

Not once have we heard from someone at blizzard who truly knows what it is to play a paladin. Who at blizzard knows the paladins problems like his own heart? Dare I say no one from your company wholeheartedly understands the problems this class faces.

And by wholeheartedly I mean the following: A dev or CM or employee with direct feedback and influence to the class designers who has played his paladin to 60. A person who has TRIED to tank and felt the frustration of chasing a mob around, trying to gain agro again. A person who has TRIED to be a force to reckon with in pvp and simply been viewed as an annoyance due to our infamous shield-heal tactic…fully knowing that we HAVE to rely on it because we simply cannot do real damage on par with other hybrids or melee characters. A player who has run his paladin in end game instances and has had to suffer the indignation of wearing cloth only to function as a better BACKUP healer.

You do not have such a person. You have the players, sure, but you don’t have such a person at your company.

The problem here is that you don’t listen to your players worth a damn.
And if you DID have such a person, why for the love of god haven’t we heard from THEM??

But I digress…


… there is so much more that I’ve realized during my week ban from the boards.
What did I learn?

Let me share this with you.

First, let me start off by saying that the paladin community, in general, is in a state similar to that of a trapped dog gnawing its leg off. Now, there are plenty of happy 3-legged dogs out there, but since we have problems catching folks as it is, I prefer to have all my limbs for movement intact and properly working


Those of us who have tried other classes know what a proper talent tree looks like. Druids for example, and I use them as an example because their talent revamp was the most current to date, makes wondrous and perfect sense. It flows well; it allows players to really do what they like if they invest enough points into one tree. I have a druid alt. The druid can do what I could only WISH I could do with my paladin. Druids are more liable to be in the front lines and be accepted there more than a paladin is. This is lamentable and pathetic.

You have yet to properly redesign the paladin trees. I have said this several times during my previous posts, but I am old enough to recognize half-assed work when I see it.

And I'm seeing it.

And, from my readings, others are now realizing it as well.

I implore you, push the paladins back another patch. Hell, push them back TWO patches if you have to in order to get things right...but for the love of god, GET IT RIGHT! You have listened to some of the paladin concerns and addressed some of the issues of the class, yet you have yet to do a satisfactory job. You have still delegated us to our pigeon-hole of backline healer and buff bots.


SOME GOOD

Now I will give you some kudos for the new talents you DID put effort into. You have made a 31holy paladin something to be desirable again. I commend you for that. You have given incentive for people to invest talent points into holy. Making divine strength and intellect first tier holy talents is a grand idea. Unyielding Faith is a nice flavor talent to Holy. Increasing the spell crit of a holy paladin is a beautiful thing when combined with Illumination. And even consecrates move to holy, while confusing and its reasoning by certain CM’s was lame, makes sense. This ability needs to be buffed however. Either make it an area heal as well, similar to holy shock but not as potent, or add a slow effect to it. After all, this is now hallowed land for the time being.



You have made good steps into retribution as well. With a full 31points invested into retribution, regardless of the decreased damage from SoC procs, a retribution spec’d paladin or critadin CAN dish out a fair amount of damage if spec’d correctly. Retribution has received four new talents. Some are still buggy and need to be reworked, like the non stacking pursuit of justice. Some talents that are ALMOST worthy of being on the front line just to get a debuff in on a boss, vindication and eye-for-an-eye for example.


However…..

SOME BAD

You have made minor improvements to the protection tree. I do not know where you went wrong here, or perhaps your paladin dev team was just having a day off, but no where do I see new talents. I see revamped talents and I see a game of talent-shuffleboard going on. In reality, the only reason anyone will spec protection now is for Blessing of Kings and Reckoning. The delegation of Holy Shield, without a SERIOUS buff to damage or agro generation, as a 31 point talent still boggles my mind. The protection paladin should be able to tank, be able to hold agro equal to or better than a druid in bear form (but not as good as a warrior), and have abilities that actually make sense. Subjecting the paladin to critical hits in order to gain access to some of our abilities just seems completely backwards.


It can easily be summed up as this. Paladins would like to be considered as the following, provided they have 31 points devoted to a single tree

31 in holy : a group can say “Okay, we have our healer”
31 in protection : a group can say “Okay, we have our tank”
31 in retribution : a group can say “Okay we have dps”

Do note the following though. These are general feelings that I have seen.

31 in holy : we will NOT be as good as a priest, but are a good substitute, just like a druid

31 in protection : we will NOT EVER replace warriors as main tanks, but would like to be able to hold agro and soak up damage equal to or better than a druid in bear form. After all, you’ve given us tank like abilities but no ability to get agro to reliably stick to us.

31 in retribution: we will not EVER be as good as rogues,hunters,mages and arms/fury warriors, OR feral druids at flat-out dps, but by god we’d like a chance at getting close!

While this may be somewhat true for holy and retribution, protection tree talents and our ability to hold agro effectively without sucking our mana pool down to zero leave much to be desired.

Please don’t think that we are asking you to make paladins godlike. Perhaps we might be asking you to overpower us, but this is only because overpowering the paladin class will probably make us equal to other classes in desirability and viability in groups. A quality job, one where you actually take your time and focus entirely upon the paladin, may even result is changes that might make us rival our horde counterpart in many respects.


SKELETONS

I do not know how many individuals have read this thread (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...mp=1#post706366), (EDIT: GG blizzard. delete the thread. What lovely faith you inspire) but the history behind the existence of Furor as a dev and his ties to blizzard, regardless of the fact that he is a quest designer, makes me seriously wonder what the hell was going through your minds. An infamous and known EQ-paladin-hater who went to such extremes that Sony finally took action and made warriors something to be feared, now working for blizzard with the possibility of having feedback and conversations with class devs? This is a seriously questionable association that makes me wonder if this lack-luster revamp of the paladins has been tainted by old blood.

Some people may not agree with the fact that this Furor individiaul is a problem. Let me put it in terms you might understand.

A congressman from the south is known to harbor racist ideas and prejudices. He does not come outright and say them, but goes through every means necessary not to associate with minorities and endeavors to pass or lobby for laws that benefit the upper strata of society, namely rich white folk.

One day this congressman is seen eating lunch with a presidential aide that works closely with some bigwig folks that are passing a few bills that are being worked on for more minority rights.

Then these lunches become more frequent.
Then there’s “minor” revisions to the bill

…this then makes one wonder…has this congressman influenced this presidential aide?

The same can be said for blizzards relationship with Furor.

But now some of you may say “But we’re talking about paladins here, its not the same!” Untrue. It makes sense. How does this make sense? A very intelligent paladin on the pally boards by the name of Thews posted this bit of insight http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...in&T=706366&P=3 (scroll to the bottom of the page)
I have included the post incase this thread is deleted for odd reasons, like its predecessor was.

   

Q u o t e:
    Here's the thing, while this thread fails to deliver on links with actual comments by Furor, the people who are saying that a raid designer has no effect on class balance couldn't be more wrong.

    Someone who is writing the "script" on how a particular instance will unfold has a huge effect on the pve viability of the classes who will be participating.

    For example:

    If endgame instances had a large amount of mobs who debuffed and caused aoe damage, that would tend to force the paladins who attended that raid into buff/cleanse/healing roles for the duration of that instance, as that would be the most optimal use of their talents.

&nbsp; &nbsp; It would even be possible to design instances so that every boss mob <must> be tanked by a warrior, as long as you designed the boss mobs to play favorably compared to a warrior's skills and detrimentally compared to a paladin's.

&nbsp; &nbsp; That situation is the one that exists now, and it is not only due to paladin talents, but to how the bosses and encounters are designed.

&nbsp; &nbsp; In BWL/MC you can run with the following:

&nbsp; &nbsp; No Priests in your raid group. Druids and pallies only.
&nbsp; &nbsp; No Mages in your raid group, Warlocks substitute, majordomo is a nightmare.
&nbsp; &nbsp; No Pallies in your raid group, druids/priests sub.
&nbsp; &nbsp; NO Druids... priests/pallies cover.
&nbsp; &nbsp; No Rogues... warrs dps melee, other classes dps.
&nbsp; &nbsp; No Hunters... plenty of ranged dps options, but no tranq shot will hurt alot in exactly 2 encounters.

&nbsp; &nbsp; No Warlocks... BWL demons are a pain, so are garr's adds, both can be kited or offtanked.

&nbsp; &nbsp; BUT:
&nbsp; &nbsp; No Warriors... there is almost no boss fight in MC or BWL that you can complete without warriors. Either the aggro or the damage mitigation for paladins or druids will doom you on every fight, Based solely on the amount of hitpoints and damage and aggro-sheddding abilities of each boss.

&nbsp; &nbsp; The lack of other tank classes' skills and gear excacerbates this, but if they wanted to, a Blizzard dev could redesign the boss fights to allow druids or paladins to MT all the way through endgame.

&nbsp; &nbsp; But they don't.
&nbsp; &nbsp; Warriors are the only irreplaceable class in the endgame PVE.
&nbsp; &nbsp; Hmmm.

&nbsp; &nbsp; Tell me again how a Raid-instance designer cannot affect class balance?

NO CHANGE TO COMBAT

Once again, you are playing shuffleboard with how a paladin approaches combat. You have polished the judgment system, which honestly should have been done ages ago, but that’s not here or there. Paladins have always been asking for a form of attacks that do not rely on mana.

In other words, some of us wanted real melee attacks.

Why does this matter? Paladins have all their attacks linked to the holy tree. A proper kick/bash/counterspell negates ALL our trees…all at once.

Imagine if a rogue could kick a mage and wipe access to ALL their spells, or if a mage could counterspell another casting class, killing ALL their combat abilities.

That’s what we as paladins face.

Some of the paladin community, and from reading over the past week for hours on end…it seems like a good majority, would like some form of melee attack. There are threads that link to talent trees similar to this (http://mornpaladin.tripod.com/PaladinTal...lents.html) that are more similar to what SHOULD be done with the paladin class. A shield bash for protection perhaps? A smite ability that does holy damage + generates agro? How hard really is it for you to develop something like this. Seeing as how you have put lackluster effort into the revamp already, a simple combat skill such as this is well within your means.



Thank you for your time and patience in reading this. While it may come across as bitter medicine, I feel that negative feedback is better than positive feedback. After all, if you've got something wrong with your game, but everyone smiles and nods happily like nothings going on, then you never learn from your mistakes and change for the better.