10-06-2005, 05:14 PM
Amusingly enough there was a recent post on the Blizzard WoW Forums about a paladin who made it to level 60 without spending any talent points. This paladin was reported to perform tolerably well when compared to other paladins.
If you consider the paladin talent trees there are very few vital or necessary talents. The ones that are close are: Seal of Command & Spiritual Focus.
Spiritual Focus allows paladins to cast heals while being attacked. Very useful when mobbed, useful when soloing, and unimportant while healing and not tanking. On the flip side, when a paladin is mobbed he IS going to die quickly because he can't heal himself fast enough. When soloing taking on multiple mobs is counterproductive anyway. With a single mob attacking, a paladin can heal through the interupts just fine.
Seal of Command increases DPS by ~15-25%, which is important for the low DPS paladin, however Seal of Righteousness increases DPS by ~10-20% and it does not require a talent point.
What maxed talent points in an area do for the paladin is to add ~0-15% to various areas of performance.
Let's say you spend all your talents making an ultimate healing Paladin. Your talent points give you 10% more mana, +5 mana per tick with ImpBOW, 12% more healing with HL, 12% less mana used with FoL, virtually uninteruptable, and critical heals (~5% of the time) will return all mana used.
All of that isn't bad, but it doesn't make a pure healing spec all that much better from an untalented paladin. The rest of the trees are similiar in the lack of definite advantage.
The other important point to consider is that intelligent players who choose to play a paladin, and take on the challenege (or even consider it) of playing a paladin with unspent talent points, are going to be aware of their weaknesses and their strengths. These players are lightyears ahead of the average paladin. The average paladin has a ret build with Seal of Command, Blessing of Kings, and never heals. The average paladin plan is to run up to monsters and autoattack until they die.
In summary:
Paladins are less talent dependent than other classes. They are more dependent upon gear and upon player strategy choices.
If you consider the paladin talent trees there are very few vital or necessary talents. The ones that are close are: Seal of Command & Spiritual Focus.
Spiritual Focus allows paladins to cast heals while being attacked. Very useful when mobbed, useful when soloing, and unimportant while healing and not tanking. On the flip side, when a paladin is mobbed he IS going to die quickly because he can't heal himself fast enough. When soloing taking on multiple mobs is counterproductive anyway. With a single mob attacking, a paladin can heal through the interupts just fine.
Seal of Command increases DPS by ~15-25%, which is important for the low DPS paladin, however Seal of Righteousness increases DPS by ~10-20% and it does not require a talent point.
What maxed talent points in an area do for the paladin is to add ~0-15% to various areas of performance.
Let's say you spend all your talents making an ultimate healing Paladin. Your talent points give you 10% more mana, +5 mana per tick with ImpBOW, 12% more healing with HL, 12% less mana used with FoL, virtually uninteruptable, and critical heals (~5% of the time) will return all mana used.
All of that isn't bad, but it doesn't make a pure healing spec all that much better from an untalented paladin. The rest of the trees are similiar in the lack of definite advantage.
The other important point to consider is that intelligent players who choose to play a paladin, and take on the challenege (or even consider it) of playing a paladin with unspent talent points, are going to be aware of their weaknesses and their strengths. These players are lightyears ahead of the average paladin. The average paladin has a ret build with Seal of Command, Blessing of Kings, and never heals. The average paladin plan is to run up to monsters and autoattack until they die.
In summary:
Paladins are less talent dependent than other classes. They are more dependent upon gear and upon player strategy choices.