Pally Changes

[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.