Pally Changes

[Quark]

Saw it on the main forums here, in a post Fangtooth responded to.

Staying with Paladins, they will definitely be getting an upgrade in patch 1.9. Chilton has said that some blessing, seals and judgements will be combined so that they can be improved with less talent expenditure, and a group blessing spell that when cast on a character in a raid or group will cast that same blessing on all other characters of that class. There was also talk of extending the duration on all blessings to 10 minutes (or even 15).

Pally buff time might be getting cut in 1/10th?

[Chesspiece_face]

Saw it on the main forums here, in a post Fangtooth responded to.
Pally buff time might be getting cut in 1/10th?
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how much you wanna bet when these skills are combined and manipulated like this they are made into new skills and thus require paladins to pretty much pay for all their skill upgrades all over again when 1.9 hits?

[Kevin]

Saw it on the main forums here, in a post Fangtooth responded to.
Pally buff time might be getting cut in 1/10th?
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I could live with 10. 15 would be really nice. The buff to all the people of that class is good and bad.

[Boutros]

how much you wanna bet when these skills are combined and manipulated like this they are made into new skills and thus require paladins to pretty much pay for all their skill upgrades all over again when 1.9 hits?
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Hopefully they invested all the money they would have had to spend on mounts and now have a tidy little nest egg.

More likely they blew it all on Darkmoon Special Reserve and nelf dances.

[JustAGuy]

Hurrah, Paladin make-over.

It's about time. I have, after playing other classes (most notably the Shaman), sworn off Paladins until the Paladin is over-hauled. A make-over is due, but I have my doubts.

The Paladin doesn't need a little bit of work, he needs a LOT of work. As it stands, there's practically no skill required to play because there's not much you can do. You can't do much damage at all and in end-game, you're a heal/cleanse bot. If you're doing anything else, you're fooling yourself.

Doing all the high end instances with my Shaman, I don't know how a Paladin would handle the same situations. Tremor totem, Poison and Disease Cleansing totem, resist totems, Nova and Magma for AoE, Earthbind to slow, Windfury, Strength, Stoneskin, Grace all to buff melee, a significant flash heal... What does the Paladin offer? A smattering of buffs that wear off very quickly, a piddly little defense boosting aura that is an always-on aura save for certain situations (like fighting an elemental), a good heal, a great cleanse, and a very poor flash heal.

Take the spider boss in Zul Gurub (4th boss). When she's in caster form, she fires off an AoE poison that does huge damage if not removed quickly. Posion totem takes care of it for you. How is a Paladin going to handle that? He has to F1-F2-F3-F4-F5 cleanse everyone, if not using a mod. By the time he gets to F5, guy's poison is already run it's course and the damage done. On top of that, the Paladin's flash heal is extremely inefficient.

What Blizzard's going to do, from what I read, is increase blessing durations to 15 minutes, and allow them to be cast on class groupings (to reduce buff time), and change up the talent trees a bit. Doesn't sound like enough. Paladins need a MAJOR overhaul, not just some talent repositioning and buff enchancement.

As for PvP, what other class can have their primary method of damage production REMOVED by purge/dispell?

Even if the talent tree changes are extensive, like say adding an instant cleave move in the retribution tree, or adding a single-mob taunt in the defensive tree, or adding an AoE heal in the holy tree, it doesn't address the fundamental problems with the class. Click... Wait... Click... Wait...

The idea with Paladins is that they're supposed to be a melee class unlike the warrior with regards to rage, but similar enough that they make a contribution in melee situations. Having abilities less effective in melee than a warrior is offset by being able to heal. He is to have no serious AoE and no ranged (ignoring the AoE and ranged afforded by talents, and ignoring the bandaid hammer of wrath). Where the designers lost it was with the whole seal/judgement thing. Sure, it'd be a cute little addition to combat, but it was made the focus of combat. It's not feasible because of mana constraints and timing issues (cast seal, judge seal, cast new seal, inflict some damage). The various combinations of seals and judgements compliment eachother, sure, but the usefulness of the combinations is outweighed by the time and mana required to execute them.

Re-doing the Paladin is a tricky proposition because of how closely related the class is supposed to be with the Warrior. If you make it so a Paladin can use abilities like a Warrior, say instant attacks that use mana instead of rage, along with some seal-type attacks that proc on weapon speed, that puts the Warrior in far less demand. Especially since you'd have a Warrior that can heal and clease himself and others. That's where Blizzard failed at the Paladin design. In order to make the Warrior have an indispensible role in any group, they over-gimped the Paladin.

With respect to usefulness, a Shaman is more useful to a group and/or raid than Paladin, in my opinion, because totem combinations offer more diversity independent of trinkets. This means that the Horde have an advantage in any group -- shouldn't the Paladin be at least as useful in a group as the Shaman (seeing as the Shaman is the "cousin" of the Paladin)? I don't expect the Paladin to match the Shaman's absurb DPS capability (frequent 1200 crits with Earth Shock -- oh my!), but they should have some more varied use than just "heal... cleanse...".

I really hope they put some serious thought into the "new" Paladin design, rather than just bandaid us up with more Hammers of Wrath.

Here's hopin'...

EDIT: Typos

[Darian]

how much you wanna bet when these skills are combined and manipulated like this they are made into new skills and thus require paladins to pretty much pay for all their skill upgrades all over again when 1.9 hits?
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If they're fixing it so that pallies can buff an entire raid in 1/10, or even 1/5 the time? I'd slap the snot out of any pally who complained about having to buy their new skills back up. Seriously. Between the immediate benefit to the pally of not having to do so much mindless buffing and the indirect benefit of having raids move along at a faster pace, a one-time investment to buy up the skills is worth it.

[Mirajj]

how much you wanna bet when these skills are combined and manipulated like this they are made into new skills and thus require paladins to pretty much pay for all their skill upgrades all over again when 1.9 hits?
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You mean kind of like everyone else, when they got their talent upgrade? My "free" respec cost me 6g...

[MissileToad]

The "shaman better than paladins in instances" argument really doesn't fly. Both classes function pretty differently, and bring equal amounts to groups yet in different ways. For every situation (save for 2 in which the pally pulls way ahead - blessings of salvation and wisdom) in which one excells it's easy to find a situation in which the other excells. Both classes also suffer from the 'hybrid stigma' in that they're both pretty limited in any certain field due to the nature of being jacks of all trades masters of none, and also from lackluster mana pools. Due to that, both classes get limited to blessing/totem bots and bad healers in instances, it's kinda sad :(.

I'd like to see this "absurd dps" shamans do, the class has been my main since November and I've still yet to find this thing that so many Alliance tell me exists :P. You'd be surprised at how similar it is with paladin dps. Shamans have potential for high damage completely based on the luck of crits and proc percentages, and blowing all of their mana on horribly inefficient spells which leave them dead in the water for healing or screwed vs. multilple enemies (it's like all the rogue pvp videos which only show you the cold-blood eviserate crits on cloth wearers). That grass on the other side of the fence is always greener, hehe.

[Artega]

On top of that, the Paladin's flash heal is extremely inefficient.

Flash of Light is the most mana-efficient 1.5s heal in the game, especially if you add Blessing of Light into the mix.

I'd take a well-played pally over a well-played shammy any day; the blessings are better than any totem, they're better healers, and cleanse is invaluable.

[Treesh]

With respect to usefulness, a Shaman is more useful to a group and/or raid than Paladin, in my opinion, because totem combinations offer more diversity independent of trinkets. This means that the Horde have an advantage in any group -- shouldn't the Paladin be at least as useful in a group as the Shaman (seeing as the Shaman is the "cousin" of the Paladin)? I don't expect the Paladin to match the Shaman's absurb DPS capability (frequent 1200 crits with Earth Shock -- oh my!), but they should have some more varied use than just "heal... cleanse...".
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5 man, it's easier for a shaman to be more useful, but that doesn't make pallies less useful. In raids, pallies are actually more useful than shaman simply because they can throw blessings on anyone in a raid whereas the totems only apply to those in your party, not the entire raid. If you think pallies don't have more varied use than just heal, cleanse, you've either not played one very high or else never seen good paladins in action. Pallies need a little tweaking, but they don't need a huge overhaul. Increase the length of the blessings and possibly cut down on the cooldown of judgements a little and that will go a long way into "fixing" the pally.

And yes, pallies can actually do DPS. They aren't going to be top dogs, but it's not total crap. I do admit that because of the frequency of needing to apply blessings and the lack of ranged attacks (except for the recently implemented band-aid and against undead), I don't enjoy playing my paladin as much as the other classes, but they are not even close to as useless or gimped as you are trying to make them sound. Play the pallies more or just watch the good pallies in action in places like Molten Core or even just UBRS, Strat or scholo. They are a welcome addition to the group, especially if you're low on warriors. Yeah, that's right. Pallies can actually tank if need be! *gasp*

[Chesspiece_face]

You mean kind of like everyone else, when they got their talent upgrade? My "free" respec cost me 6g...
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No actually that's not what i mean. Everyone has to pay to upgrade skills gained from talants when they respec. they also need to pay to upgrade skills that are newly added through game additions. What i read from the pally changes, however, is that they will be altering a great deal of the base class skills as well as skills gained from talants. How would you have felt if when you got your revamp you not only had to pay to upgrade the new skills and talant skills but all of your base class skills as well?

I'm also not referring to the addition of Group Buffs. those are fine and they fall under the Newly Added Skills above. What i'm referring to is the merging and combining they mention of the base seals/judgements and the ramifications that may have on paladins come 1.9 if these skills must be relearned from the ground up. We aren't talking 6-10 gold for a "Free" respec, we are talking 60-70 gold for a "Free" respec.

[oldmandennis]

Hopefully they invested all the money they would have had to spend on mounts and now have a tidy little nest egg.

More likely they blew it all on Darkmoon Special Reserve and nelf dances.
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My vote for reply of the thread!

Justaguy, please read the official description of pallys. It says "melee fighter" exactly once. Practically the whole rest of the description describes buffing, healing, and defensive abilities, except the part where it specifically metions the pallys limitations compared to the warrior.

As far as your specific example of the spider boss, you are right that is one where shamans are better then pallys. There are a whole pile of raid fights where Pallys are better then Shammys. BOS aparently rocks any fight where aggro is a problem, and clense makes Baron Geddon a lot easier for the alliance.

[Lissa]

No actually that's not what i mean.  Everyone has to pay to upgrade skills gained from talants when they respec.  they also need to pay to upgrade skills that are newly added through game additions.  What i read from the pally changes, however, is that they will be altering a great deal of the base class skills as well as skills gained from talants.  How would you have felt if when you got your revamp you not only had to pay to upgrade the new skills and talant skills but all of your base class skills as well?

I'm also not referring to the addition of Group Buffs.  those are fine and they fall under the Newly Added Skills above.  What i'm referring to is the merging and combining they mention of the base seals/judgements and the ramifications that may have on paladins come 1.9 if these skills must be relearned from the ground up.  We aren't talking 6-10 gold for a "Free" respec, we are talking 60-70 gold for a "Free" respec.
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When they did this at the end of beta for Paladin, skill buy back was very, very cheap (about 5% of the normal cost). I wouldn't be too concerned right now.

[JustAGuy]

Flash of Light is the most mana-efficient 1.5s heal in the game, especially if you add Blessing of Light into the mix.
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See, a post like mine always generates a response like "Shaman is better than Pally" or "Pally is better than Shaman", but that's not what I wanted to discuss (you didn't say that, but it's something that gets said). I actually just wanted to point out that the Paladin SHOULD play more interestingly than he does now, and in order for him to do so, the class must be recognized as borked so we can move forward, toward a bright future of Pallies completely owning in PvP and so forth.

Unfortunately, the fact is, with respect to combat, the Paladin is inferior to the Shaman. An un-talented crit-shock goes for 700-800 damage, and with talents, 1000-1200 damage. This is on-demand, instant, spell interrupting or enemy slowing goodness. The Paladin has nothing like that, not even close. Only in PvE against undead can a Paladin do damage via exorcism, and it has no residual effect. The Paladin can't front-load damage either, thus making him pretty item dependent in PvP (engineering bombs and trinkets help a lot). Hell, dare I say that all of the good PvP Paladins are engineers, namely, gnome ones for the shrink and death rays. But for purposes of this post, I'm not going to go into PvP (bubble-hearth ftw!).

The argument can be made that a Paladin is also inferior in healing, thereby making the Paladin, in his two areas of "expertise", inferior overall. This means that the Alliance is gimped because they have a weaker faction-specific class.

Flash of Light isn't as mana-efficient as you think. Comparatively speaking, the Shaman heals for more with less mana, and the timing required for a non Blessing of Light buffed character to get any kind of decent amount of healing from flash of light effectively kills the 1.5s cast time (cast of blessing + flash heal = 2.5s-3s).

Lets take a look see (at max level skills):

Untalented Shaman flash heal does 928 damage for 328 mana. The untalented Paladin flash heal does 383 damage for 140 mana. The ratios of healing done per point of mana are then 2.8:1 and 2.7:1 respectively. There are other issues here, like timing and buffs. The Shaman gets no external buff to increase his healing, so what you see is what you get. With talents the Shaman gets 5% mana reduction and 10% effectiveness added to heal spells. The Paladin gets 12% mana cost reduction only, but also a Blessing of Light which buffs heals. This makes the Shaman flash heal do 1020 for 296 mana (3.4:1) and the Paladin does 383 life for 123 mana (3.1:1) and with the Blessing of Light, Pally does 115+383 for 123 (4:1).

So, the Pally wins out with Blessing of Light -- 498 damage for 123 mana sounds great... But there's more. The Blessing itself costs 135 mana and lasts 5 minutes. For a tank or some such, putting the blessing on it and casting away is all fine and good. But, if the blessing needs to be cast BEFORE casting flash of light (say, the target had some other buff on, which is likely to be the case with a cloth wearer), that puts that kabosh on flash of light's usefulness, with respect to ratios (498 for 123+135 = 1.93:1). The ratio then starts at 1.93:1 and goes up as the number of flash heals are cast (probably a lot...). So it isn't really 4:1, it just looks that way...

Then, there's the issue of timing and realistic amounts of damage being inflicted. When are you in a situation where you need to cast a 1.5 second heal to save someone's life? When a clothie gets aggro and takes a hit, most likely. Elites in the big dungeons are doing damage in the 400-600 per hit range, 1500 on certain bosses (owww). More realistically, a Paladin will do his real 2.5s heal and save the clothie's life (or blessing of protection - that's nice). Enemies doing that much damage to a clothie will drop em fast, so you need to heal a lot. A Shaman can heal for ~2000 in 3 seconds with 2 flash heals or with a regular heal, 1717 (1561 x 10%) in 2.5s. A Paladin can heal for, with BoL, ~1000 in 2 flash heals in 3 seconds, or 1954 (1338 x 12% + 400) in 2.5s. A Shaman with continual flash heals can actually, after inflicted boss-damage, can heal the clothie and leave him/her with more hps than they started with. The Paladin, on the other hand, with continual flash heals, will only barely break even with respect to damage done by bosses (or elites) vs the amount being healed.

It breaks down to this: a Shaman flash heal heals someone for 2-3 hits worth of damage in 1.5s, and a Paladin does the same in 3-4 seconds. With a flash heal, time is everything (otherwise, why opt for a quick heal?); I'd rather heal a lot for a lot mana, than heal a little for a little mana. So as far as being more efficient, even with the Blessing of Light, the Paladin fails at flash healing.

I'd take a well-played pally over a well-played shammy any day; the blessings are better than any totem, they're better healers, and cleanse is invaluable.

Cleanse is invaluable. It is what makes the Paladin truely useful.

As far as taking a well played Paladin over a Shaman, that's a preference thing. I'd take a well played Shammy. The blessings are the trade-off; the nice thing about totems is that there are so many of them, and you can have 4 at once. With blessings you get one thing per person + aura, whereas you get 4 seperate things all at once, easily castable for any situation with Shammy. For the Paladin, there are a lot of things that the Shaman can't bring to the table, such as Salvation and Freedom. The Paladin can't AoE slow and clean poison off of 5 partymates at once, though. These trade-offs were supposed to be what make you attracted to either Paladin or Shaman.

What the Shaman lacks in cleansing, he makes up for in prevention. Grounding totem, poison and disease totems, and resistance totems do the trick. There are situations where neither Pally nor Shaman are very effective in terms of prevention and cleansing, for example, Lucifron in Molten Core. That fricken curse that does 2000 damage is a real "I'm a the mercy of druids and mages" thing. Unless I'm remembering incorrectly and it's a magic debuff, then Pally wins!

I want to make it clear, though: I'm critical of the Paladin because I like him so much. I played him throughout the beta, and I played him at retail, but "click... wait..." has become not enough to hold my attention, especially when I see how well balanced the Shaman is in terms of Talents and over-all usefulness. I can switch from DPS to healing in the blink of an eye, and be effective at both.

PvP was the catalyst really. I crave it, I enjoy it, gotta have it. With the Paladin, having to rely on trickery instead of skill sealed it. Timing your stun and being basically a toothless animal when that Shaman casts purge on ya... If you're 1 on 1 with a Shaman, and he puts down a grounding totem and Earthbind, you put blessing of freedom, and attack the grounding (lest your stun be grounded). This is time that the Shammy loads up a lightning bolt and/or shocks and purgs you. Then you get to run up to him and stand there while you wait for a Seal of Command proc. What fun. You can understand, that for purposes of PvP, I went Horde and I'm not coming back until the Paladin gets fixed. Oh, and Windfury puts Seal of Command to shame. To shame!

For people who say, "ah, it's not that bad," you're really fooling yourselves. The class should play better than it does. It needs a LOT of improvement. Play a warrior or rogue and see how fun and varied combat should be. Play a priest or healing druid and see how effective your healing should be. Now combine them, and tone both down a little, and that's how the Paladin should be.

[Kevin]

See, a post like mine always generates a response like "Shaman is better than Pally" or "Pally is better than Shaman", but that's not what I wanted to discuss (you didn't say that, but it's something that gets said). I actually just wanted to point out that the Paladin SHOULD play more interestingly than he does now, and in order for him to do so, the class must be recognized as borked so we can move forward, toward a bright future of Pallies completely owning in PvP and so forth.

I wonder why that is when you came out and said that shaman were better than paladins. Odd how that can get those type of responses.

And yes pretty much all paladin players agree that lack of control of the DPS (which is what makes it pretty uninteresting) is the biggest issue with the class. So your next paragraph that I'm not quoting is pretty standardly known.

The argument can be made that a Paladin is also inferior in healing, thereby making the Paladin, in his two areas of "expertise", inferior overall. This means that the Alliance is gimped because they have a weaker faction-specific class.

First in mana/HP the paladin has the most efficient heals. In HP/sec they don't. In a 20 or 40 man end game raid the paladin is either filling in the gaps for other healers with the mana efficient 1.5s heal or they are spot healing people that take periodic damage and don't really need a right away heal. Those people generally get healed by a nature's swiftness from a druid or flash heal from a priest. Though the paladins 1.5s heal can buy enough time for the other heal to land.

You start out with raid examples in your first post (the the post I'm replying to), then you descibe the issues with Blessing of Light from basically a 5 man situation. In a raid you will have 2 to 8 paladins. That generally means that everyone in the raid has 2 to 6 blessings on them at all times depending on class (salv, wisdom/might, kings, sanctuary, light). Those are pretty much kept up constantly and the pallies can drink before you move on. That of course means you only have about 2 minutes of use per blessing before you look at the mana. But in a raid you aren't changing a blessing on someone before you heal them. In 5 man if you are the only healer you won't be using flash of light much, you'll be using holy light so that is what you need to look at to compare the effectiveness of healers and in 5 man you are again more worried about HP/MP than HP/s since the damage should be controlled to a few targets. As you mentioned Blessing of Protection is the paladins "oh #$%&" saver, not a quick heal usually.

I'm not convinced that a shaman is a better healer than a paladin. I'm not convinced a paladin is a better healer than a shaman. I do know that most paladin builds have some boost to healing. I've seen many shamans that don't have anything in restoration.

As far as taking a well played Paladin over a Shaman, that's a preference thing. I'd take a well played Shammy. The blessings are the trade-off; the nice thing about totems is that there are so many of them, and you can have 4 at once. With blessings you get one thing per person + aura, whereas you get 4 seperate things all at once, easily castable for any situation with Shammy. For the Paladin, there are a lot of things that the Shaman can't bring to the table, such as Salvation and Freedom. The Paladin can't AoE slow and clean poison off of 5 partymates at once, though. These trade-offs were supposed to be what make you attracted to either Paladin or Shaman.

You also aren't looking at raid vs 5 man here. In a 5 man the paladin brings stronger tanking. They all have parry, dodge, and block, along with the ability to wear plate though like a shaman depending on the role they are filling they could be wearing mostly plate or a mix of plate, mail, leather and cloth. Most have one of those at a higher percentage from talents or they have more armor from talents. Paladins can survive longer without needing healing than a shaman and most can heal without any interruption at all while taking damage though there are some builds that don't take that talent. In a 5 man sure you only get one blessing + aura. But with the totems most party members are only getting a benefit from just one of those totems anyway. Windfurry or strength of earth do nothing for that hunter shooting his bow so is it that much different than putting might on the warrior, salv on the rogue, wisdom on the mage, etc (and if the pally isn't main tank I rarely use salv in 5 mans).

I a raid if you only have one paladin or one shaman the paladin wins the buff contest because the people in his party can now get buffs and the shaman only helps those not in his party. As you add more shaman and more paladins it still stays tipped to the paladin as you start adding more blessings that everyone can have and you can start synergyzing them. A rogue with salvation, might, and kings will do more than a rogue with any totem combo one shaman can drop, if you have enough shaman to get more than one in a group that changes a bit but then you will suffer on DPS because even if that one shaman is burning the mana pool to do DPS another rogue or a hunter or lock or mage or even a fury warrior will most likely do more damage. I don't see most raids wanting 9+ shaman.

I agree there are trade offs but generally I think the paladin wins in end game raids and maybe, maybe even 10 and 15 man loot raids. I think the shaman will do more for you in a 5 man though the paladin is a better warrior replacement in my book. Both of them can heal 5 mans without any real issue all the way through BRD even as the only one with heal spells.

I want to make it clear, though: I'm critical of the Paladin because I like him so much. I played him throughout the beta, and I played him at retail, but "click... wait..." has become not enough to hold my attention, especially when I see how well balanced the Shaman is in terms of Talents and over-all usefulness. I can switch from DPS to healing in the blink of an eye, and be effective at both.

I agree that the paladin needs love (and I didn't see anyone argue against that in this thread) of course so does the shaman. Mana tide is only an OK 31 point talent but when you look at what you have to give up it gets much much worse. The paladin gets quite a few good talents on the way to blessing of kings (buff spells they are the only real talent comparisions between the two of that type) at least if they want to solo or if they are just a secondary or tertiary healer in smaller raids. Those talents become pretty much a complete waste in a 40 man.

A paladin can switch between being a damage sponge and healing in a blink as well and be effective at both. But a shaman that is really doing DPS is going to burn a lot of mana. Whereas if the mob lives long enough the boring pally DPS which is probably lower (though a shaman without the talent to get a 2 handed weapons might not be up as high if they still want mana to do serious healing) doesn't take a lot of mana. Rank one seal of command or a higher rank seal of righteousness you'll generally bless light or wisdom if you are off tanking/DPS or not judge at all. To be a truly effective healer or DPS with either means different gear sets. But I do still give the DPS edge to a shaman, easily, but DPS + healing isn't that clear cut for me because of the mana use the shaman needs to put out.

PvP was the catalyst really. I crave it, I enjoy it, gotta have it. With the Paladin, having to rely on trickery instead of skill sealed it. Timing your stun and being basically a toothless animal when that Shaman casts purge on ya... If you're 1 on 1 with a Shaman, and he puts down a grounding totem and Earthbind, you put blessing of freedom, and attack the grounding (lest your stun be grounded). This is time that the Shammy loads up a lightning bolt and/or shocks and purgs you. Then you get to run up to him and stand there while you wait for a Seal of Command proc. What fun. You can understand, that for purposes of PvP, I went Horde and I'm not coming back until the Paladin gets fixed. Oh, and Windfury puts Seal of Command to shame. To shame!

Yep the shaman wins in heads up PvP and small group PvP easily. The paladin as a tough to kill healer can help group PvP a lot. Shaman are easier to kill than a paladin and their heals will be stuttered if they take damage. A paladin can still heal while taking damage with concentration aura up so they are still an issue in group PvP. But you are right they are not exciting at all (they are most exciting to play when tanking for a 5 man as you have to a lot of button pushing mob switching, etc but they are still a pretty click wait class).

For people who say, "ah, it's not that bad," you're really fooling yourselves. The class should play better than it does. It needs a LOT of improvement. Play a warrior or rogue and see how fun and varied combat should be. Play a priest or healing druid and see how effective your healing should be. Now combine them, and tone both down a little, and that's how the Paladin should be.
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I agree that the paladin should be better. I have a 60 druid and a 60 paladin. Both have done extensive healing as the only healer in 5 mans. My druid was restoration/feral. The paladin is retribution/holy. As far as healing effectiveness goes, once I got a feel for how they both healed, not a whole lot harder to heal a 5 man with either class. My druid was easier to tank with thanks to snap aggro. I have a 60 warrior as well so I know about tanking with a warrior. Really though tanking with a warrior vs a single mob is pretty much as boring as it is with a paladin, druid, or hunter. I push more buttons but I really don't need to the outcome is still the same. Against multiple mobs the warrior has a lot more options and skills to hold the extra mobs but I've tanked with a paladin and held 3 or 4 mobs as well and while I don't get to use as many skills it's still exciting, though it's more of a terror type of exciting since you have a lot less control. A druid tanking multiple mobs is a lot of just hit one button when the cooldown is done too (maul with swipes on multiple mobs). Solo combat is more varied and yes I do wish the paladin had more of that but I still prefer to grind with my paladin over my warrior because of self heal. Grinding mobs is boring regardless so I actually prefer the I don't have to pay any attention at all method of the paladin. :) I've also played Treesh's L57 shaman a few times and her L60 priest (and the priests really have it easy on healing good lord) as well as my own L21 shaman (getting him bigger he ended up as my auction alt for a bit but I'm changing that) so I've got some first hand knowledge of that as well. Paladins don't have it that bad. They should be better and I'm hoping they get a lot better in being able to have more direct control on what they do. I would like some changes to their healing and changes to their tanking no arguments but you can't ignore that they do bring some things to the table that are unique and powerful. It's just as you said they aren't a lot of fun.

[Icebird]

I think the issue is not really whether paladins are "better" than shamans - the issue is "which class is more interesting to play". In our Molten Core raids paladins are invaluable for lots of reasons, but I don't think our paladins feel tested them playing them.

One of our paladins (who has become the default OOC rezzer for most fights) was joking that as soon as a prioritized rezzing mod was available he would only need 3 buttons: one for buffing, one for cleansing, one for rezzing.

Chris

[MissileToad]

I completely agree the paladin class can be quite dull at times. And their talents are lackluster, I empathize. You leave out some pretty crucial things to make the "paladins are underpowered" argument though.

- Two lengthy posts about how you feel paladins are inferior to among other classes, yet not mention their survivability? No class comes close to matching them.

- Considering mana to heal ratio, paladins actually have the best short timer heal among classes.

- Healing spells are much more mana efficient than damage spells.


JustAGuy, if you want PvP advice vs. shamans I'd be glad to help! Well-played paladins will win vs. a well-played shamans in 1v1 fights the majority of the time simply due to mana expenditure. It's just a matter of knowing what to expect from your opponent's class.

Anyway. I really hope the paladin talent changes are great. After seeing the druid changes I have some high hopes for the other two hybrid class talent changes when their times come. It would be excellent for both of these classes to have more variety and spice.

[Tuftears]

The paladin 'Flash of Light' spell has a very good heal-to-mana ratio, but the problem is that it heals such a small amount that it's negligible for keeping a tank up in a raid.

As for survivability... Well, sure, paladins may be hard to kill but when the Onyxia kill winds down to just a few paladins and Onyxia at 0.5%, and they still fail to bring her down, that's when you're thinking paladins could use a little buffing.

[Lissa]

The paladin 'Flash of Light' spell has a very good heal-to-mana ratio, but the problem is that it heals such a small amount that it's negligible for keeping a tank up in a raid.

As for survivability...  Well, sure, paladins may be hard to kill but when the Onyxia kill winds down to just a few paladins and Onyxia at 0.5%, and they still fail to bring her down, that's when you're thinking paladins could use a little buffing.
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Actually, combining blessing of light with flash of light allows for some very good healing. blessing of light gives flash of light 150 additional health.

[Roland]

However you slice it, Paladins need work. A fair amount, too. Their Talent trees need major restructuring, and a good, long look at them. IMHO, they need a damage boost to be more on par with Warriors (not necessarily as strong as a Warrior, say 90% of a NON Fury / Arms Warrior; they should not be near as strong as a Fury / Arms Warrior nor a good Rogue), and some ever-so-slight tweaking to their Healing (this is more of a Talent issue than a skill, issue).

Oh, and they need Caster-oriented Plate. Period. That one fix alone would greatly help Paladins, in that they could tank AND heal, instead of one or the other. :P

I'm worried, somewhat, about the sweeping changes Blizzard is talking about, but I have enough faith not to be too worried. I'm still miffed about Rogues being screwed at the moment, as they have been for a long time, but at least they can overcome 90% of their weaknesses. Just because they can do that, though, doesn't mean they don't have their share of problems. But Paladins DEFINITELY need some loving, since Hunters (and Druids, for crying out loud) have gotten their major overhaul. Paladins never were right since Beta, especially since they changed EVERYTHING about them from Beta to Retail. :P

I want some Rogue lovin'. :P But I want to play, and ENJOY, a Paladin even more. :D I hope 1.9 hits by Nov. 11. It'd be a great B-day present. :D