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
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
"Yay! We did it!"
"Who are you?"
"Um, uh... just ... a guy." *flee*
"Who are you?"
"Um, uh... just ... a guy." *flee*