I'm very unimpressed with this beta. I really wanted to enjoy playing the Paladin. Instead I got to enjoy playing just about every other class with a wild array of builds and found that basically large portions of the Paladin's functionality have had the door slammed on them.
- Paladin life is a problem. One of the big headaches in this patch is his inherent lack of life coupled with massively upgraded monster damage. While he does use 75% resists and blocking to save his bacon, these hardly matter once the damage comes through and suddenly it's curtains for Mr. Pally. Monster Critical Hits are something to be feared in Hell level. Rot Walker Critical Hits when Charging . . . oh I could go on, but it's just too depressing.
- Smite is in trouble. 40 points into two skills and my Smiting Defiant was doing better or similar damage with 4 points in Zeal. Additionally the inability to carry Poison Damage coupled with the horrendous life and regeneration of monsters makes the game exponentially more difficult with each additional player for a Smiter. Granted, that's all item dependant but Moonfall for the Zeal used to be quite well balanced against his Royal Shield for Smiting to the point where they should both be equally crappy. Zeal got amped. Smite looks like it got forgotten.
- Speaking of the Defiant, I was 'absolutely thrilled' to see that a Barbarian's Shout Warcry can now start at 1 minute, 30 seconds, making it a true fire and forget skill, added to Iron Skin, a Defiance merc and potentially the Concentrate skill for incredible levels of Defence. That's before mentioning another Warcry can easily tack 40% extra life on a Barbarian too. Meanwhile the Defiant gets Holy Shield, which takes on +15% Defence per level from Defiance applied to the entire Defence, yet it still starts at 30 seconds. End result? The 'master of defence' is a comparative embarrassment against the Barbarian, doesn't get hit much, but can't hit back much either, so this old build is still back on the scrapheap.
EDIT: Due to confusion over the above paragraph I realize I missed out mentioning Warcry durations are relative to Synergy interaction - Appologies for the gaffe.
- Holy Shield now works on entire defence instead of shield defence. This is a long overdue move and being the only skill a Paladin gets for survival while retaining attack ability usually winds up sucking 20 points away from anything else the Paladin tries to do, because . . . oh I mentioned life already. What it could use now is the same 1 minute, 30 seconds starting duration that certain Barbarian Warcries recieve and a hell of a lot better support for Smite.
- Charge is bugged to questionable usefulness. On one hand it seems to benefit from run speed now, but on the other, the age-old click & hold attack pattern results in the second Charge reducing the Paladin to running on the spot. It's like watching a Wily E Coyote death scene unfolding before your very eyes sometimes.
- Vengeance, in spite of being granted four Synergies, remains almost the same as before. The reason why is that there is simply not enough points to go around. Realistically this is a two Synergy skill with Holy Fire and Holy Freeze being prerequisites for Conviction and difficult to invest in because of points going into Holy Shield (to stay alive long enough to hit something) and Meditation (to pay for Vengeance). Fortunately Avengers can actually get around in Act 5 Hell, although most of mercenaries you'll see with them will probably be Cold Iron Wolves and Holy Freeze Spearmen, because of the much-needed protection they give.
- Conversion is as horrible as ever. Now you too can have your very own 16 second friend and it'll only cost you points you don't dare waste.
- Offensive Auras are basically their same old usual selves. For some reason the elemental ones benefit from corresponding elemental skills on the defensive tree and Fanaticism is now a Synergy for Sacrifice (Which it usually supports directly anyway *cringe*). Given the ineptitude evident in overall Paladin Synergy design I'd say that Blessed Aim providing AR versus Undead as a Sanctuary Synergy would be both entirely logical at this point and also complete wishful thinking. :P It's a pity Blessed Aim is too busy granting damage to Blessed Hammer instead (assuming that entry is even correct!).
- Holy Freeze? Merc Skill. In fact it makes one of the strongest mercs stronger.
- Thorns was is very weak now and needs synergy support. BADLY. Particularly galling is the fact that any number of Offensive Auras are just sitting there doing nothing when such things as Holy Fire and Sanctuary look perfect for adding reflected damage of various specialized forms! <_<
- Conviction. Wow. The one skill in the entire game that practically can't be upgraded just got an upgrade. I'm impressed. It can de-immunize the Immune. Much as I really love the fact that this helps the Fist of Heavens become viable throughout the game, I lament the lack of comparable upgrades throughout the Paladin skill set. Blizzard? This is great. Now can you do something for Smite please?
- The Defensive Aura Tree is now the 'Passive Upgrade' Tree with some of the skills operating as a Mastery for an obscure beneficiary in the other two trees. Coherent words most often used to describe this mess are often referred to as "expletives" or "profanity", but for the most part I've been vastly extending my vocabulary of inarticulate choking noises over this crap.
- Prayer got an upgrade with the pulse occuring every 2 seconds instead of 3, plus a modest +1 life healed per 5 levels roughly that ultimately manages to fall way behind the upgraded attacking power of monsters. Prayer's purpose now is to grant its healing effect to Meditation and Cleansing, thus rolling two Auras into one. I like this actually. It's pretty weak in the revamped game, but at least it starts becoming an option to compete with a TP scroll . . . or does it?
- Meditation, Cleansing? See Prayer.
- Defiance adds to Holy Shield defence and with no points to spare is still a Mercenary-only skill. *chokes* With the advent of Synergies, Paladin Auras that have the potential to exceed those of mercenaries remain mostly unchanged. GG Blizzard. What it needs is a reward for Paladins to actively run it.
- Vigor seems to be the weapon of choice for upgrading damage all over the show as a Synergy. This is really a subliminal message from Blizzard stating that a Paladin's greatest weapon is his ability to run away.
- Resist Fire, Cold, Lightning was crap, is crap, is Synergy, annoys me no end. Shields, Diamonds and Um Runes have these so completely outclassed that turning skills no-one wants into Passives just hurts.
- Salvation? Ditto.
- Synergy skills generally fall into the catagory of "otherwise useless point diversion". While most other classes can take their favourite skills and ramp them up with a useful situational skill that is often already among the pre-requisite skills, the Paladin gets to throw away points into seldom used skills, frequently on another tree entirely! Additionally the Synergies are so few in number that there is very little choice in spending, thus forcing the player into a small number of tightly defined grooves. I could have sworn I read something about improving player diversity. Does this mean Comical Ali works for Blizzard now??? :blink:
It stikes me that in order to create an effective Synergy system that works properly, you have to establish a pattern and stick to it. The worst case senario would be to establish a rule and then ignore it in favour of a mindless array of skill interactions - some additive, some multiplicative, some just plain stupid - pretty much like what the Paladin exhibits now. Well it's too late to save them now I suppose. It's too late to say "stick to single trees please". Maybe it's not too late for a little damage control in which a concientious Blizzard programmer takes the trouble to try and complete the list of synergies before 1.10 gets released for real. Then the QA people can do what they've never done before and try a realistic equipment loadout that doesn't involve complete Griswold sets and +9 All Skills to actually get a handle on ALL of the skills behaving appropriately in the game.
Nah, who am I kidding? The Paladins were always in the running for getting the shaft and I don't see that situation changing any time soon.
- Paladin life is a problem. One of the big headaches in this patch is his inherent lack of life coupled with massively upgraded monster damage. While he does use 75% resists and blocking to save his bacon, these hardly matter once the damage comes through and suddenly it's curtains for Mr. Pally. Monster Critical Hits are something to be feared in Hell level. Rot Walker Critical Hits when Charging . . . oh I could go on, but it's just too depressing.
- Smite is in trouble. 40 points into two skills and my Smiting Defiant was doing better or similar damage with 4 points in Zeal. Additionally the inability to carry Poison Damage coupled with the horrendous life and regeneration of monsters makes the game exponentially more difficult with each additional player for a Smiter. Granted, that's all item dependant but Moonfall for the Zeal used to be quite well balanced against his Royal Shield for Smiting to the point where they should both be equally crappy. Zeal got amped. Smite looks like it got forgotten.
- Speaking of the Defiant, I was 'absolutely thrilled' to see that a Barbarian's Shout Warcry can now start at 1 minute, 30 seconds, making it a true fire and forget skill, added to Iron Skin, a Defiance merc and potentially the Concentrate skill for incredible levels of Defence. That's before mentioning another Warcry can easily tack 40% extra life on a Barbarian too. Meanwhile the Defiant gets Holy Shield, which takes on +15% Defence per level from Defiance applied to the entire Defence, yet it still starts at 30 seconds. End result? The 'master of defence' is a comparative embarrassment against the Barbarian, doesn't get hit much, but can't hit back much either, so this old build is still back on the scrapheap.
EDIT: Due to confusion over the above paragraph I realize I missed out mentioning Warcry durations are relative to Synergy interaction - Appologies for the gaffe.
- Holy Shield now works on entire defence instead of shield defence. This is a long overdue move and being the only skill a Paladin gets for survival while retaining attack ability usually winds up sucking 20 points away from anything else the Paladin tries to do, because . . . oh I mentioned life already. What it could use now is the same 1 minute, 30 seconds starting duration that certain Barbarian Warcries recieve and a hell of a lot better support for Smite.
- Charge is bugged to questionable usefulness. On one hand it seems to benefit from run speed now, but on the other, the age-old click & hold attack pattern results in the second Charge reducing the Paladin to running on the spot. It's like watching a Wily E Coyote death scene unfolding before your very eyes sometimes.
- Vengeance, in spite of being granted four Synergies, remains almost the same as before. The reason why is that there is simply not enough points to go around. Realistically this is a two Synergy skill with Holy Fire and Holy Freeze being prerequisites for Conviction and difficult to invest in because of points going into Holy Shield (to stay alive long enough to hit something) and Meditation (to pay for Vengeance). Fortunately Avengers can actually get around in Act 5 Hell, although most of mercenaries you'll see with them will probably be Cold Iron Wolves and Holy Freeze Spearmen, because of the much-needed protection they give.
- Conversion is as horrible as ever. Now you too can have your very own 16 second friend and it'll only cost you points you don't dare waste.
- Offensive Auras are basically their same old usual selves. For some reason the elemental ones benefit from corresponding elemental skills on the defensive tree and Fanaticism is now a Synergy for Sacrifice (Which it usually supports directly anyway *cringe*). Given the ineptitude evident in overall Paladin Synergy design I'd say that Blessed Aim providing AR versus Undead as a Sanctuary Synergy would be both entirely logical at this point and also complete wishful thinking. :P It's a pity Blessed Aim is too busy granting damage to Blessed Hammer instead (assuming that entry is even correct!).
- Holy Freeze? Merc Skill. In fact it makes one of the strongest mercs stronger.
- Thorns was is very weak now and needs synergy support. BADLY. Particularly galling is the fact that any number of Offensive Auras are just sitting there doing nothing when such things as Holy Fire and Sanctuary look perfect for adding reflected damage of various specialized forms! <_<
- Conviction. Wow. The one skill in the entire game that practically can't be upgraded just got an upgrade. I'm impressed. It can de-immunize the Immune. Much as I really love the fact that this helps the Fist of Heavens become viable throughout the game, I lament the lack of comparable upgrades throughout the Paladin skill set. Blizzard? This is great. Now can you do something for Smite please?
- The Defensive Aura Tree is now the 'Passive Upgrade' Tree with some of the skills operating as a Mastery for an obscure beneficiary in the other two trees. Coherent words most often used to describe this mess are often referred to as "expletives" or "profanity", but for the most part I've been vastly extending my vocabulary of inarticulate choking noises over this crap.
- Prayer got an upgrade with the pulse occuring every 2 seconds instead of 3, plus a modest +1 life healed per 5 levels roughly that ultimately manages to fall way behind the upgraded attacking power of monsters. Prayer's purpose now is to grant its healing effect to Meditation and Cleansing, thus rolling two Auras into one. I like this actually. It's pretty weak in the revamped game, but at least it starts becoming an option to compete with a TP scroll . . . or does it?
- Meditation, Cleansing? See Prayer.
- Defiance adds to Holy Shield defence and with no points to spare is still a Mercenary-only skill. *chokes* With the advent of Synergies, Paladin Auras that have the potential to exceed those of mercenaries remain mostly unchanged. GG Blizzard. What it needs is a reward for Paladins to actively run it.
- Vigor seems to be the weapon of choice for upgrading damage all over the show as a Synergy. This is really a subliminal message from Blizzard stating that a Paladin's greatest weapon is his ability to run away.
- Resist Fire, Cold, Lightning was crap, is crap, is Synergy, annoys me no end. Shields, Diamonds and Um Runes have these so completely outclassed that turning skills no-one wants into Passives just hurts.
- Salvation? Ditto.
- Synergy skills generally fall into the catagory of "otherwise useless point diversion". While most other classes can take their favourite skills and ramp them up with a useful situational skill that is often already among the pre-requisite skills, the Paladin gets to throw away points into seldom used skills, frequently on another tree entirely! Additionally the Synergies are so few in number that there is very little choice in spending, thus forcing the player into a small number of tightly defined grooves. I could have sworn I read something about improving player diversity. Does this mean Comical Ali works for Blizzard now??? :blink:
It stikes me that in order to create an effective Synergy system that works properly, you have to establish a pattern and stick to it. The worst case senario would be to establish a rule and then ignore it in favour of a mindless array of skill interactions - some additive, some multiplicative, some just plain stupid - pretty much like what the Paladin exhibits now. Well it's too late to save them now I suppose. It's too late to say "stick to single trees please". Maybe it's not too late for a little damage control in which a concientious Blizzard programmer takes the trouble to try and complete the list of synergies before 1.10 gets released for real. Then the QA people can do what they've never done before and try a realistic equipment loadout that doesn't involve complete Griswold sets and +9 All Skills to actually get a handle on ALL of the skills behaving appropriately in the game.
Nah, who am I kidding? The Paladins were always in the running for getting the shaft and I don't see that situation changing any time soon.
Heed the Song of Battle and Unsheath the Blades of War