07-25-2005, 05:15 PM
Reiterating what has been said.
Paladins have very little to do in solo combat. They will out DPS or keep up with DPS with a warrior up till around L45 or so. At least in all the tests I did, they have and this includes arms/fury builds. However they have little in the way of snap aggro or damage (judging seal of fury does seem to be a nice snap aggro generator) and some of the stuff they can do for that is very mana inefficient or tied into a timer that was burned for something else. But even with a the possibility of a good average DPS they just lack fire.
I've solo'd named elites that were 4 or 5 levels higher than me and came out of the fight with over 90% health and mana. Of course one of those fights took 7:40 minutes. But a paladin can be health and mana postive in a fight if the mob lives long enough, and they will.
My paladin has main tanked instances and main healed instances and been an assist in instances, been the top damage dealer in instances. I main healed Maraudon at L45-6 (turned 46 in the instance). This is the run Garrin was on so there was another paladin there, but I think he cast a total of 5 heals and all of those were out of combat. Sure some of the people in there were over leveled 48 warrior, 50 paladin, 51 hunter, 45/6 paladin and 52 warlock. But I could have main healed it with level appropriate people as well. The warlock was comfortable enough to be using hellfire a lot of the time too.
You can do a lot with blessings and seals. I got to use Divine Intervention in Razorfen Downs last night when the whole hill came running. Unfotunately a pat came along right after the priest I hit with the DI rezzed the other priest and neither had any mana left and well we wiped anyway, but I almost saved a wipe with it.
The class is more subtle and slow play than other classes, there can be a lack of interaction with the interface, especially when soloing. That being said I prefer a paladin solo over a protection warrior solo. The paladin doesn't have to go, oh #$%& time to hope I can run away from this, lets sit and eat or bandage now and they kill just as fast if not faster because seal of command procs will make up for the slight extra damage that a heroic strike, or shield slam and even the untalented execute will do. People forget a protection warriors damage, even in battle or zerker stance, because of no talent backing, is basically just autoattack with a little help here and there as well. Sure you control when that damage comes but it really doesn't add any more damage than the PRNG will give a paladin.
There have been runs with my paladin though were I did more button pressing than any other class in that instance. I had a blast as main healer in maraudon. I did an uldaman run with 2 paladins that were kinda spliting the healing so we were both in combat gear and up front smacking things with the warrior and throwing out the heals when we needed (both had the 5 points in the heal talent so heals were uninterrupted by damage with concentration up). That was a blast and we both got to do a lot of judgements and stuns to stop runners, heal here, cleanse here, stun this guy. Back out of the way to so you can heal and avoid the knockdowns. Charge in and fight while the other one heals. At the end of the instance I put my healer gear on and we did a more traditional main healer set-up but it was a blast.
But they play a lot different than all the other classes really, and the differences are most stark solo. But I find them no less boring to solo than a protection warrior. An arms/fury or fury/arms warrior is more fun to play solo but except on the test realms I've never really had anything but a protection warrior above L20.
Paladins have very little to do in solo combat. They will out DPS or keep up with DPS with a warrior up till around L45 or so. At least in all the tests I did, they have and this includes arms/fury builds. However they have little in the way of snap aggro or damage (judging seal of fury does seem to be a nice snap aggro generator) and some of the stuff they can do for that is very mana inefficient or tied into a timer that was burned for something else. But even with a the possibility of a good average DPS they just lack fire.
I've solo'd named elites that were 4 or 5 levels higher than me and came out of the fight with over 90% health and mana. Of course one of those fights took 7:40 minutes. But a paladin can be health and mana postive in a fight if the mob lives long enough, and they will.
My paladin has main tanked instances and main healed instances and been an assist in instances, been the top damage dealer in instances. I main healed Maraudon at L45-6 (turned 46 in the instance). This is the run Garrin was on so there was another paladin there, but I think he cast a total of 5 heals and all of those were out of combat. Sure some of the people in there were over leveled 48 warrior, 50 paladin, 51 hunter, 45/6 paladin and 52 warlock. But I could have main healed it with level appropriate people as well. The warlock was comfortable enough to be using hellfire a lot of the time too.
You can do a lot with blessings and seals. I got to use Divine Intervention in Razorfen Downs last night when the whole hill came running. Unfotunately a pat came along right after the priest I hit with the DI rezzed the other priest and neither had any mana left and well we wiped anyway, but I almost saved a wipe with it.
The class is more subtle and slow play than other classes, there can be a lack of interaction with the interface, especially when soloing. That being said I prefer a paladin solo over a protection warrior solo. The paladin doesn't have to go, oh #$%& time to hope I can run away from this, lets sit and eat or bandage now and they kill just as fast if not faster because seal of command procs will make up for the slight extra damage that a heroic strike, or shield slam and even the untalented execute will do. People forget a protection warriors damage, even in battle or zerker stance, because of no talent backing, is basically just autoattack with a little help here and there as well. Sure you control when that damage comes but it really doesn't add any more damage than the PRNG will give a paladin.
There have been runs with my paladin though were I did more button pressing than any other class in that instance. I had a blast as main healer in maraudon. I did an uldaman run with 2 paladins that were kinda spliting the healing so we were both in combat gear and up front smacking things with the warrior and throwing out the heals when we needed (both had the 5 points in the heal talent so heals were uninterrupted by damage with concentration up). That was a blast and we both got to do a lot of judgements and stuns to stop runners, heal here, cleanse here, stun this guy. Back out of the way to so you can heal and avoid the knockdowns. Charge in and fight while the other one heals. At the end of the instance I put my healer gear on and we did a more traditional main healer set-up but it was a blast.
But they play a lot different than all the other classes really, and the differences are most stark solo. But I find them no less boring to solo than a protection warrior. An arms/fury or fury/arms warrior is more fun to play solo but except on the test realms I've never really had anything but a protection warrior above L20.
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It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.