Pally Changes

[MongoJerry]

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.

In other words, the way things are right now.

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...

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.

You're not getting one thing: Paladins can't dish out as much damage, but Paladins don't die. Compared to all other classes in the short time scales that involve group PvP fighting, they are effectively invincible. Mix a paladin with another character -- particularly good combinations are paladin + warrior or 2 paladins -- and the results are just devastating. An Arathi Basin banner defence that has a paladin in the mix is mind numbingly hard to take down in time before reinforcements arrive. Two paladins? I've seen two well played paladins hold five experienced well equipped Horde players trying to attack them for an obscene amount of time. If everyone attacks one, that paladin gets healed. You crowd control one paladin, the other paladin dispells him. You mind control one paladin and the other hammer of justice's or repents you to break the mind control. If things get rough, one of the paladins finally bubbles and heals himself or the other paladin. When necessary, they throw on the other bubble to be immune from physical attacks. If the reinforcements haven't come by this time (and boy, that's an incompetent team for you) and it's a critical moment in a match, a laying on hands can be applied. Oh, and we haven't thrown in the obligatory engineering or alchemy fun, yet, either. Meanwhile, paladins are using plate and shields and absorbing obscene amounts of damage.

And, of course, while the enemy is wasting their time trying to kill those two #$@# paladins, the other 13 people in the Arathi Basin match are taking other banners. Paladins are the reason why the Alliance teams at Blizzcon dominated the top brackets of the Arathi Basin tournaments. You might think that priests are better healers than Paladins. But in a real fight, when all the priests are dead within 10 seconds of contact with the enemy and the Horde has no way to dispell sheep, charm, freezing traps, entangled roots, frost nova, or damage dots, suddenly those little "gimped" paladins and their dispells and heals start to look pretty good, don't they?

The price of effective invincibility is the lack of being able to deal out the damage. My greatest fear with all the talk of Paladin talent revisions is that Blizzard will finally cave and give paladins some high dps skills and talents. If they do, then paladins could then tank, heal, and dish out dps. Why would one bother to play any other class?

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.

There are some serious issues with totems. First, obviously, you have to be in the party with the shaman to get the buff. Second, the range on the totems is too small. Unless you stay clustered around the totems and make sure the fight stays all in one area (a not always realistic thing to do), your party won't get the buffs. (One of the tier two shaman set bonuses is to increase totem range -- but why should shaman have to wait until BWL to be able to make good use of their totems?). Third, many of the more useful totems are in the same totem schools of magic. For example, against Ragnaros, I ignorantly asked the shaman in our healing party why he didn't have a fire resist totem down and was informed that it's in the same school (water, I believe) as the mana spring totem. A paladin can put up a fire resist aura and throw mana regeneration blessings on healers. Shaman can't. Fourth, shaman typically have to use up their mana pools by dropping their totems in mid fight according to where the fight takes place for each and every fight, whereas a paladin can prebuff his or her party for several fights and drink before proceeding. The upcoming changes to 10-15 minute buffs would make this advantage even greater.

But the biggest thing is that Paladins can tailor their blessings according to the needs of each member of the party and/or raid group. Shamans have to choose. Are they going to drop a Windfury totem that would benefit warriors and shamans but rogues (because it doesn't stack with poisons) and hunters not at all? Or do they drop an agility totem that helps rogues and hunters but warriors and shamans very little? Do they drop resistance totems or mana regeneration totems? In addition, while paladins can run around with an armor buff on for free, shamans have to decide whether it's worth using up their mana during the fight to drop various totems for their parties.

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!

You say that you don't want to focus on PvP and yet you say that PvP was really the catalyst for you. One falacy in your argument is that you make the mistake of believing that 1 v 1 dueling is somehow real PvP. Even though paladins do very well in 1 v 1 combat, where they really unbalancingly shine is in group combat. I think the problem is that your personality isn't suited to playing a defensive character. You seem to believe that PvP is primarily about dealing damage, but as someone who plays defensive characters, I know that crowd control, dispelling, and healing are equally and possibly more critical in PvP when you are trying to take or hold down a resource point or capture a flag. If your personality favors playing someone who likes to dish out damage, then definitely don't play a paladin. Play a rogue, hunter, warrior, mage, or maybe a shaman. If you like crowd control, play a mage, hunter, or warlock. But if you appreciate the finer points of the defensive "Oh my God! This guy just won't die and my sheeps don't last more than one second with him around and God he keeps healing the warrior who's pwning our priests and shamans" game, then you should play a paladin for PvP. It looks quite fun. I know it's not fun being on the other side of a fight involving a paladin, that's for sure.