Blizzard to Paladins:

[acidjax]

Please, give me plate.  I'll show you what my priest can do if you give me 5-6k armor, the ability to wear a shield, and the ability to go invincible for 12 seconds.

A paladin is a priest with plate that has around the same amount of HP (priest has fort). But then remember you now cast your flash heal at almost half speed. Sure you can cast it with 100% chance of not being interrupted but it's still too slow. Then you have to remember to take out group heal and shield (for MS). Of course you also don't get mana burn or mind control. Furthermore if you go caster stats to get priest levels of mana you have no type of damage. Remove your insta-fear and your ability to get a mana-efficient damage snare. Take away your nukes and DoT(s). In the end, a high mana paladin is a plate armor (maybe some cloth mixed in) priest with divine shield that loses all type of offensive capability (damage and snares on call) while retaining a fraction of non-healing utility.

I stare blankly at the screen when reading this statement.  Sheep, frost nova, entangling roots, slowing poison, as well as most of the offensive power of two classes -- warlocks and priests.  And you think it's "debatable"?

It's debatable in comparison to the usefulness of purge. Only magic debuffs apply since shaman can cure poison and disease. Cleanse is reactionary and purge is offensive; primary healer priests already take an almost purely reactionary role. Paladin blessings can be purged. A shaman can be a real menace with purge while a paladin would be more like "haha i can cleanse your debuff... but i can't do anything back".

Anyways the whole point of what I was saying is that not enough magic debuffs tend to be thrown out that a couple priests can't keep up with and still heal in pvp.

Cleansing is one of the most powerful tools in PvP that completely alters the course of battles.

You mean curing debuffs which other classes can do yet also offer more utility. After a couple paladins you reach a point where more wouldn't do as much good as having other classes. Paladins can't just decide to switch to a ranged dps role or consistantly assist snare/immobilize.

Ah, now I understand the confusion.  You mistake the large battles in AV for PvP. That's not PvP.  That's just a zerg-fest reputation grinding.  You can't even discuss most PvP with regards to the large battles in AV, because most people don't get to use most of their best PvP or crowd control abilities there.  Real PvP happens in 5-10 player confrontations.

What "real pvp" is differs per opinion. While in CTF you can have smaller fights where each individual is making a bigger difference, CTF lacks the strategic depth potential of AV. CTF is a skirmish; AV is a war. Things like baiting, flanking, and sandwiching between graveyards you don't see in CTF. CTF is to FPS as AV is to RTS.

If I were a paladin, I could have bubbled, healed, and laughed at those idiot warriors who were wasting their time attacking a paladin while their team is being ripped apart by my partymates.  Instead, I died.

You argue as if the paladin's divine shield cooldown is as fast as the priest's 26-30sec fear. What else could you have done? Limited Invulnerability Potion. Too expensive you say? Rogues use blind, thistle tea, poisons, and bandages in addition to potions.

Now think then what the paladin could've done in the same position. He pops his 5min cooldown divine and heals himself once and he's got half of his shield time left to do anything with impunity. He can't burst heal fast and doesn't have power shield to pop on people that are mortal striked because those warriors aren't going to swing at the paladin the whole 12 seconds. He can blow his long cooldown BoP on someone which will work for a couple seconds before it's purged. He can't group heal to counter the initial whirlwind. He's still a 3rd-rate healer with low melee-range dps that can go immune up to 12 seconds of every 5 minutes.

Finally, you only pick one certain skill the paladin has for one specific situation and try to transpose the skill to your priest without mentioning any downsides. You don't mention things other debuff curing classes can do that paladins cannot.

Now my party has no dispeller, so three of my partymates are sheeped, one's entangled, and the rest are frost novaed and have dots ticking on them.  Meanwhile, the enemy team is free and clear to do whatever they want.  The warriors now charge one cloth wearer at a time while all the ranged dps picks people apart.  The party gets routed within 30 seconds.

Again, it's an unfair comparison. You can't just hand-tailor a theoretical matchup to make your argument work and use it as a proof. I felt that in many cases you could replace a paladin with a priest and be better off. You are trying to change that alliance-only opinion into a horde group and taking out the paladins without replacing them with priests.

There's only a few things that purge is useful for in PvP -- and most of that is dispelling priest and mage shields.  But those shields can just as easily be "purged" by dealing damage, so purge really isn't any special advantage.  Cleanse is far and away more powerful.

Purge is also used to get rid of key buffs (like fear ward) and paladin blessings. It counters the majority of paladin utility.

The bigger difference in large raids is all the buffs that can be specialized according to class.  Sheesh, the aggro increase and aggro reduction seals alone are incredible.

Salvation may become a moot point depending on how it's eventually "evaluated". For the time being it's an awesome buff but not a reason to have 10 paladins in a raid since a couple can buff the raid fine.

But even without those, the auras and seals are still amazing and definitely outshine what shamans can bring to the table.

Let's look at the actual usefulness of various paladin skills in raid encounters:

Devotion - the extra armor is for the most part useless. It's a slim chance that a rogue that dies in 3 hits will now die in 4 with the small increase to damage mitigation.
Retribution - junk
Concentration - not very useful
Single Resist - This would be more useful if the resist bonus stacked with other resist bonuses. If you have paladin +60 fire resist aura with MotW and the effects of a magic resist potion, you still only get a total of +60 fire resist. Also, paladins tend to play more of a support role so oftentimes many people don't even get the buff during fights.

Seals - pretty much the only judgements used are light and wisdom. If judgements had a static low mana cost with better offensive effects perhaps more of them would be used.

Shamans are good.  But they can be killed, unlike paladins.  And they don't have cleanse, unlike paladins.  Those are huge advantages that paladins have over shamans in PvP.

Shaman are good at killing and good at surviving. Paladins are good at surviving and if their cooldown on one skill is ready, the best for 12 seconds. Paladins are poor at killing as it is relatively easy to escape their seal of command (slow weapon only partial windfury weapon) kill zone. Shaman have grounding and tremor totems with other totems that break stealth. They have better offensive buffs, instant ranged/pbaoe snares, damage on call, and a better fast cast heal. Those are huge advantages that shaman have over paladins in PvP.

[Concillian]

I just thought of a possible solution to this issue:

Add to the Troll racial Berserking a +30% (or so, exact amount would need to be playtested) extra threat generated modifier.

This would add to 'tankability' similarly how BoS does to alliance, but would require significantly different strategies.

1) You would have to have a tank that wants to get hit by a crit from time to time, which adds to itemization diversity.

2) Horde has more mana available (Mana Tide), this makes for the necessity of using that mana in the damage taken by the tank when berserking and by not having so much +def gear, but also gives the extra threat necessary so healers would be less worried about the threat they generate

3) It would give people more of a reason to choose troll (warriors at least, maybe even shaman)

4) No alliance nerfs necessary, simple for Blizzard to implement

5) I can't see too many paths where this kind of a change may open up a new way to 'exploit', as sometimes adding features has unintended consequences like this. Mostly because who really uses Berserking now? Really.

In my mind this goes well together and seems to just kind of click. There would need to be significant coordination for using berserking, which kinda goes hand in hand with the goals of raiding in general. Healers, however would have to be on their toes because of the extra damage being taken by the MT.

What do you guys think?

Edit: I already came up with one potential issue, that they've already, to some extent, balanced the endgame raiding against a racial trait, WOTF.

You could also make a threat totem, maybe something with Thrall's name in it. Which would require a unique strategy, but not quite as complex a strategy as trying to coordinate the use of the troll racial. I like the troll racial idea, but horde needs some fear ward type skill to go with it.

[Artega]

In a word, no.

We're talking about class skills here, not racial skills.

And at any rate, giving this ability to a single race (thereby forcing any warriors who want to be successful tanks to be troll warriors) wouldn't make up for the fact that BoS can be placed on any class of any race on the entire Alliance side.

[Chesspiece_face]

In a word, no.

We're talking about class skills here, not racial skills.

And at any rate, giving this ability to a single race (thereby forcing any warriors who want to be successful tanks to be troll warriors) wouldn't make up for the fact that BoS can be placed on any class of any race on the entire Alliance side.
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it also would have 0 effect on the specific encounters that people are complaining about. Namely BWL encounters that reduce threat levels to 0 or Vael (?) that will pretty much auto kill your MT every minute. in any of these cases having an off tank with that ability wouldn't do anything. the only person that would be generating the additional hate would be the MT that's getting hit.

I'm personally of the opinion that the paladin skill isn't broken the way these new encounters are implimented are broken and forces certain skills to be much more powerful than they normally would be. look at blizzards own statement, they say that this skill is worth jack-s#!& in 90% of the game but when it comes to these few minority encounters suddenly it becomes a God ability.

Also look at the DS ability that Mongo likes to harp on all the time. gauge how badly he hates it compared to how valued it is to the paladins that play with it. they are completely opposite. The reason is that that particular unbalanced skill has nearly 0 use in 90% of the game but in that small percentage of play that MJ focuses on it can be extremely powerful. The end result is that paladins are broken, and the few areas of the game that they actually make an impact in play they end up breaking that too. Personally I would like to see DS removed as a core paladin ability and changed to a talant skill. preferably in the protection tree in at least the 21 skill slot. For those people that utilize it a lot in PvP they can still get a great skill but would have to sacrifice to get it. And the other majority of paladins that could give 2 craps about the skill can just leave it alone.

[lemekim]

Someone on the forums suggested replacing Stormstrike (a pretty bad 31 point Shaman talent at the end of enhancement tree) with Bloodlust - single target buff with something like 10% attack speed increase and 30% threat generation increase. That would make it a worthy talent at the end of the Enhancement tree, similar to Blessing of Kings for Paladins, and would provide the answer to BoS.

Now in response to acidjax:

It's debatable in comparison to the usefulness of purge. Only magic debuffs apply since shaman can cure poison and disease. Cleanse is reactionary and purge is offensive; primary healer priests already take an almost purely reactionary role. Paladin blessings can be purged. A shaman can be a real menace with purge while a paladin would be more like "haha i can cleanse your debuff... but i can't do anything back".

Anyways the whole point of what I was saying is that not enough magic debuffs tend to be thrown out that a couple priests can't keep up with and still heal in pvp.

I am at a loss... Apparently taking a player out of fight completely with fear, sheep or charm is less powerful then taking off maybe 500 life or 150 attack power off a single player. Cleanse is inherently more powerful then purge, if even for the simple fact that purge is pretty much only used against one target (the one you are trying to kill), while cleanse is used to cure multiple party members.

Again, it's an unfair comparison. You can't just hand-tailor a theoretical matchup to make your argument work and use it as a proof. I felt that in many cases you could replace a paladin with a priest and be better off. You are trying to change that alliance-only opinion into a horde group and taking out the paladins without replacing them with priests.

It's a very fair comparison. What it means is that Horde has to bring several priests (not exactly most popular class) to PvP against competent players, while Alliance can split this role between two classes.

What "real pvp" is differs per opinion. While in CTF you can have smaller fights where each individual is making a bigger difference, CTF lacks the strategic depth potential of AV. CTF is a skirmish; AV is a war. Things like baiting, flanking, and sandwiching between graveyards you don't see in CTF. CTF is to FPS as AV is to RTS.

You are right. For some people AV is the real PvP. However, in organized AV groups, the fighting will be MUCH different from what you will see in pickup groups. It's like comparing a backyard kids game of Basketball to NBA. And in those groups, paladins and shamans have their roles, and that role is that of a healer.

Since the majority of damage in AV is done through mages using AOE (and in part warlocks), paladins can also extend the lives of those mages by putting Blessing of Protection and/or Blessing of Freedom on them (it is hard to purge it if you have several mages go in at once, with warriors fearing everyone). They can stun the opponents' mages/warriors, and they can go invulnerable and heal other people while the Horde mages AOE. Shamans of course have uses too, but the point is that even in this AV situation, you are still quite a good healer because of your various abilities (and in organized groups, healers don't really do DPS).

Let's look at the actual usefulness of various paladin skills in raid encounters:

Devotion - the extra armor is for the most part useless. It's a slim chance that a rogue that dies in 3 hits will now die in 4 with the small increase to damage mitigation.
Retribution - junk
Concentration - not very useful
Single Resist - This would be more useful if the resist bonus stacked with other resist bonuses. If you have paladin +60 fire resist aura with MotW and the effects of a magic resist potion, you still only get a total of +60 fire resist. Also, paladins tend to play more of a support role so oftentimes many people don't even get the buff during fights.

Seals - pretty much the only judgements used are light and wisdom. If judgements had a static low mana cost with better offensive effects perhaps more of them would be used.

I don't know why are you listing Auras and not Blessings. So you might have to choose between Fire resist aura (mind you, Horde version has lower range, costs mana to cast and STILL does not stack with MotW) and Devotion.

So with one paladin in your party you can have only 1 aura at a time... Well what about:

Blessing of Kings
Blessing of Might
Blessing of Salvation
Blessing of Wisdom
Blessing of Light
And for the hell of it, Blessing of Sanctuary.
And lets not forget Judgement of Wisdom. That alone beats Mana Tide totem, and that's a 31 point talent.

No, I don't think paladins are gimp.

[kandrathe]

it also would have 0 effect on the specific encounters that people are complaining about.  Namely BWL encounters that reduce threat levels to 0 or Vael (?) that will pretty much auto kill your MT every minute.  in any of these cases having an off tank with that ability wouldn't do anything.  the only person that would be generating the additional hate would be the MT that's getting hit.

I'm personally of the opinion that the paladin skill isn't broken the way these new encounters are implimented are broken and forces certain skills to be much more powerful than they normally would be.  look at blizzards own statement, they say that this skill is worth jack-s#!& in 90% of the game but when it comes to these few minority encounters suddenly it becomes a God ability.
...
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My way of thinking is that overall, maybe the racial and class skills are not that unbalanced, just that the BWL encounters are structured in a way that favors the Alliance (all skill, talents, traits) with no counter-poised Horde ability to make that encounter fair. To make it fair they could either re-think the entire Alliance vs Horde racial, class, talent balance or rethink that encounter (BWL) to make it a little more Horde accessible.

It is also possible that the Horde just haven't found a solution yet, but that one does exist for them to discover. It would be a shame to dumb down the challenge, before anyone solves the puzzle. Maybe the test was just too hard?

[Artega]

No, I don't think paladins are gimp.
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You're comparing apples to turnips.

Shamans and Paladins are both hybrid classes, but they're designed to do different things.

The Shaman is entirely offense-oriented. He can dispel enemy buffs, he can interrupt spells at range with a short cooldown, he can snare enemies at range, he can drop totems that have a wide variety of defensive and offensive abilities, and he can use a wide variety of weapons in conjunction with the four weapon buff spells in order to do significant melee damage.

The Paladin is entirely defense-oriented. He can dispel debuffs of nearly every kind, he can buff party and raid members with a very wide variety of short-duration buffs, he can stun single targets for a significant amount of time, he can become completely invulnerable to all damage and debuffs (and dispel any negative effects on himself) for 12 seconds, and in an upcoming patch, he'll be able to cast a spell to cleave off a significant chunk of an opponent's last 20% HP.

Directly comparing them to each other is unfair, simply because they're engineered from the ground up to play two totally different roles in both PvP and PvE. Because the Shaman is more offensively oriented than the Paladin, it's easy for someone with little experience to play them reasonably effectively, since the bulk of their gameplay involves using one of their Shocks and meleeing. Paladins aren't quite that way, since many roll them thinking of them as Warriors-with-heals instead of Priests-with-plate.

[acidjax]

I am at a loss... Apparently taking a player out of fight completely with fear, sheep or charm is less powerful then taking off maybe 500 life or 150 attack power off a single player. Cleanse is inherently more powerful then purge, if even for the simple fact that purge is pretty much only used against one target (the one you are trying to kill), while cleanse is used to cure multiple party members.

Purge goes more towards causing someone to die and cleanse preventing someone from dieing or allowing them to control their character. In the bigger picture you have priests already taking that reactionary role and spamming their decursive hotkey. Offensive dispelling can be powerful and classes that have more opportunity to do it are either shaman or non-healing priests.

It's a very fair comparison. What it means is that Horde has to bring several priests (not exactly most popular class) to PvP against competent players, while Alliance can split this role between two classes.

In the comparison it painted the picture of a CTF group with an optimum group makeup that also somehow starts the fight with an ambush while the horde group consists of one priest and 9 people that... didn't do anything from the start? If you guess warriors are going to single out the priest and /assist and charge/intercept why does the priest feel the need to stay in range in the first place? The further their warriors have to go to the enemy priest, the further they are from their own healer(s). That is because it needs to happen in order for the examples to make more sense. You *need* the priest to not kite warriors and you need the priest to not use pvp trinket and get out of poly range and you need group members that will allow a mage to blink in (or just walk in) and poly the solitary priest.

You are right. For some people AV is the real PvP. However, in organized AV groups, the fighting will be MUCH different from what you will see in pickup groups. It's like comparing a backyard kids game of Basketball to NBA. And in those groups, paladins and shamans have their roles, and that role is that of a healer.

I notice MJ is also on tichondrius. In the about 10 pre-made AV groups that I've been a part of (either primarily exiled or primarily notorious) they are never ever looking for more paladins. Priests are wanted for their ability to burst heal while paladins lack of group heal, good fast cast heal, and other utility severely hamper their ability to be healers. Mages are heavily desired and warriors the most of melee classes.

Since the majority of damage in AV is done through mages using AOE (and in part warlocks), paladins can also extend the lives of those mages by putting Blessing of Protection and/or Blessing of Freedom on them (it is hard to purge it if you have several mages go in at once, with warriors fearing everyone).

Priests can burst heal mages faster and frost/arcane mages have ice block/cold snap for their own immune bubbles that can work better in those mass aoe charges.

AoE is like the majority of damage and warriors are the chaos-makers and finishers. When on the receiving end, paladins can't heal the AoE damage very well. In 3 seconds a priest heals for up to around 6-6.5k with group heal while that paladin heals one person for around 1.5k in 2.5 seconds. The priest can run in, fear, renew/shield 2 people while running out then group heal.

(and in organized groups, healers don't really do DPS).

That's true but my rank1 mind flays have gotten people killed and rank1 shadow word:pain kept some rogues from stealthing. Mind Controls have taken some warriors out of the fight and mana burn has its uses when there's time for it. There's other utility besides damage.

I don't know why are you listing Auras and not Blessings. So you might have to choose between Fire resist aura (mind you, Horde version has lower range, costs mana to cast and STILL does not stack with MotW) and Devotion.

I talked about auras and seals because MJ said "But even without those, the auras and seals are still amazing and definitely outshine what shamans can bring to the table". I tried to show that most of those amazing seals and auras are not amazing at all.

So with one paladin in your party you can have only 1 aura at a time... Well what about:

Blessing of Kings
Blessing of Might
Blessing of Salvation
Blessing of Wisdom
Blessing of Light
And for the hell of it, Blessing of Sanctuary.

I didn't mention offensive buffs much because they don't compare to shaman offensive buffs. In practice it takes a long time to buff everyone when you try and buff multiple blessings on everyone. I guess you could have your 5-6 paladins spend 2-2.5 min of every 5min just purely buffing everyone. If everyone is bunched pre-fight then you can do it in under 1.5min with a UI mod and enough mana. Wouldn't it be horrible if shaman totems had a 30sec cast time and you went oom after casting a couple? You have to look at the opportunity costs you give up. Compare 6 paladins with 2 paladins, 2 mages, and 2 priests. The mages and priests bring let's say 15-20k mana for 300-350dps damage (combined) and 15-20k mana for healing per fight. In no way are paladin +stat buffs above and beyond your opportunity costs.

-Blessing of Kings-It's a decent buff but just how useful is it? For damage dealers it'll raise attack power by about 60 and add 1% crit. The extra 200-350 life they get may end up being inconsequential. For casters, having an extra AI and divine spirit is definitely nifty.
-Blessing of Might-This sounds nice... getting what looks like a large amount of attack power. The base spell will increase the DPS of melee by around 11 before target armor is factored in. Compare it to Windfury totem where you're basically getting 20%+ crit from one buff.
-Blessing of Salvation-This is an awesome buff in PvE which we're all in agreement and what sparked the Blizzard post to begin with.
-Blessing of Wisdom-This is like a more flexible mana spring and neither really shine until you take part in the long 3+ min fights.

And lets not forget Judgement of Wisdom. That alone beats Mana Tide totem, and that's a 31 point talent.

Judgement of Wisdom alone beats Mana Tide totem in overall mana gain/time for casters that have the time to auto-wand. Hunters can make better use of it of course but casters need to be auto-wanding to really get the use of it. Mana Tide is mana on call so mileage will vary.

[Chesspiece_face]

And lets not forget Judgement of Wisdom. That alone beats Mana Tide totem, and that's a 31 point talent.
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Judgement of wisdom although powerful in PvE is worthless in PvP 99% of the time. and most definately worthless in any group PvP. The only way to get benefit from most of the judgements is if they stay active for the full 30 seconds and that just isn't going to happen in PvP. The judged opponent is either going to be purged or killed before anyone really gets a chance to gain from the judgement.

as an aside i found this post on the official boards the other day and found it amusing regarding paladins:

Random paladin A says "we are the melee hybrid. How come our melee skills are worse than the spell hybrid Shaman?!"
Random player A replies "shut up noob you are the DEFENSIVE hybrid shamans are offensive hybrid. Learn to play your class!"

Okay so we're defensive hybrid, not melee.
Random paladin B says "um what's the point of being so defensive if we're not even allowed to tank in high end instances? Surely my plate gear is there for a reason?"
Random player B replies "Noooo you are the support hybrid!!! Play your role and cleanse/heal me you cleanse bot. Learn to play your class."

Okay so we're support hybrids now.
Random paladin C says " fine I'll play my support role then. How come we have the worst heals in all the healer classes though? If we're a support class wouldn't it make sense to have better heals?"
Random player C replies "shut up whiner stop asking for buffs! You are a melee class with plate (and free mount!) and now you want super heals? Why should a melee hybrid have good heals?!"

Okay so we're a melee hy... wait.

[Concillian]

In a word, no.

We're talking about class skills here, not racial skills.

And at any rate, giving this ability to a single race (thereby forcing any warriors who want to be successful tanks to be troll warriors) wouldn't make up for the fact that BoS can be placed on any class of any race on the entire Alliance side.
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Funny, I thought we were talking about a balance issue between alliance and horde.

And how many Troll Warriors are there? Diversification is a good thing in my mind. So like 1 person per guild would have to re-roll or re-spec so a different person can tank. Wah. Horde is dominated by Tauren and Undead, enhancing Troll and Orc racials wouldn't be a bad thing.

[MongoJerry]

And how many Troll Warriors are there?  Diversification is a good thing in my mind.  So like 1 person per guild would have to re-roll or re-spec so a different person can tank.  Wah.  Horde is dominated by Tauren and Undead, enhancing Troll and Orc racials wouldn't be a bad thing.

Wierd. I hardly ever see an undead warrior, and orc warriors are now the big "in" thing with their resistance to stun ability actually working now.

[Arnulf]

Groups make macros with the names of priests on them to target and kill them instantly.
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This is bad. Blizzard should disable targetting via a macro. A player should only select a member of the opposing faction with directly clicking on it. Terrain, obstacles, a 3-D engine is there for a reason.

[Rinnhart]

Sheesh, the aggro increase and aggro reduction seals alone are incredible.

This, I believe, is a telling statement.

But even without those, the auras and seals are still amazing and definitely outshine what shamans can bring to the table.

You're just making #$%& up at this point.

Thank you for the reply, though, Jerry. I knew that you couldn't resist it, despite how your lunacy shines through every time you start flapping your hole about paladins, you simply can't stop yourself from posting.

Tell me, late at night in Orgrimmar, do the orcs and their allies gather 'round campfires, fires bellowing dark smoke, sweetened by the fatty remains of the night's supper? Do they gather there in the warm, homely glow and relish the closeness of family and friends? And at the ripest moment of the dark night's grasp, do they wheel forth a broken old orc, blind in both eyes, scarred and battered by unmentioned campaigns, proud, green skin greyed by decrepifying age? And does this, most ancient of orcs, in that moment of utter comfort, in that heartbeat of peace beneath the cloudy sky and amongst the dying cookfires, speak of a mighty tale?

Does his tale start with love lost? Does he speak of the savagery of the Humans? The guile of the elves? The bitter hatred of the dwarves and gnomes? Does the worn, broken orc stare sightlessly into the fire, recounting bitter battle and long past glory? And then, does the archaic warrior, his breath, whispy rattles, coming faster to his once noble breast, speak of the most fearful of foes he had ever faced? Does he tell of the dust of the battle? The baking sun? The withered, sharp grasses, lashing at his sandaled feet? The stink of the dying? The cries of the living? The charge upon the hill? The horror at its peak? Does he recount the baleful storm that surged to life as they reached that peak? Does the ancient orc have spittle seething down his cracked lips as he denounces the abomination that rose to meet them? How loudly does the crowd gasp as he details the horror's armored mount? Do they shrink when he speaks of steel glistening in the storm's sheeting rain? When he speaks of the being's eyes, burning blue beneath the golden crest? How closely do the mothers cradle their babes when the withered orc shouts of the charge that met them? Of the lightning that cascaded from the being's hands and slew a hundred of his kin? Of the hammer that turned warrior to ash and churned stone to mud? How do they look when he tells of the tempest aiding the being, the god, upon the hilltop? When he speaks of wind turning aside thrusting spears and dashing the bravest of his fellows upon rain-slick stone? Do they cheer when he tells of how the battle turned? When he speaks of gods-blood burning upon the ground, the cold, muddy ground? When he rises, suddenly, from the wheeled, wicker chair, the chair that has held him for two decades, does the crowd fall silent? Does he stand there, before his assembled children, before decendants and stranger alike, and speak of how he had stood upon a hilltop, above broken god? Alone above the beast that had slain a thousand men? Does he speak of the monstrosities laughter as it gained an eldritch glow? Does he tell how his axe fell and struck solid light? Of how then there was light burning, horrible, blue light? Does he stand before the assemblage, does he stand there and say, "He took my kin, my brothers, and then..." Does his voice turn strained? Does he scream at the crowd, does he beckon them fear and tremble, with his hands high in the air, boney hands grasping, clawing at the heavens- "AND THEN THE PALADIN TOOK MY EYES!"

Is smoke still rising from the fires when the hoary orc weeps? When he slumps into his chair and his sons cart him away? How long does the smoke rise from the fires? How long do the people stay? Do they laugh nervously? Do they heed the ancient orc's tale?

Or do they just bitch on the forums?

[Rinnhart]

This is bad. Blizzard should disable targetting via a macro. A player should only select a member of the opposing faction with directly clicking on it. Terrain, obstacles, a 3-D engine is there for a reason.
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While I agree that using macros to target and kill specific classes is simple poor sportsmanship, "terrain, obstacles, a 3-d engine" are all mitigated by tab.

[oldmandennis]

Tell me, late at night in Orgrimmar, do the orcs and their allies gather 'round campfires, fires bellowing dark smoke, sweetened by the fatty remains of the night's supper?

<snippy>

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/boggle

I want the last 2 min of my life back. Did you write the official warcraft novels?

[Walkiry]

Or do they just bitch on the forums?

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No no, I belive those of you who post crap in the forums are usually known as trolls, not orcs. Easy to confuse the two, though (green, smelly, talk gibberish...).

[Tuftears]

Tell me, late at night in Orgrimmar, do the orcs and their allies gather 'round campfires, fires bellowing dark smoke, sweetened by the fatty remains of the night's supper? Do they gather there in the warm, homely glow and relish the closeness of family and friends? And at the ripest moment of the dark night's grasp, do they wheel forth a broken old orc, blind in both eyes, scarred and battered by unmentioned campaigns, proud, green skin greyed by decrepifying age? And does this, most ancient of orcs, in that moment of utter comfort, in that heartbeat of peace beneath the cloudy sky and amongst the dying cookfires, speak of a mighty tale?

A mighty tale indeed! Too many question marks, I'd say - it would have been much stronger if you had told it in a more narrative than questioning form, but I was mightily amused. :lol:

[Lissa]

Sorry Mongo, but Paladin's are easier to kill than you think. Before the high end weapons started getting into the game, how did you kill a Priest? You ran them out of mana and they died easily enough, Paladin is the same principle.

If you either manaburn the Paladin's mana down or even have a Warlock CoT them, the Paladin is in for a world of hurt. The Paladin is even more of the eptiomy of mana = life than the Priest is. A Paladin without mana will crumple, they may not crumple as fast as a Priest, but they will still crumple.

As Quark pointed out, if you want a Pally to be a healer, they're either going to be wearing a miss-mash of items to get their mana high enough to be effective or they have to be extermely lucky and get all the Pally items that would improve their effectiveness as a healer/buffer/cleanser which is not an easy feat (running instances non-stop for nigh on a month and doing nothing but).

And if you really want to talk about overpoweredness of the Paladin, you have to also talk about the overpoweredness of the Shaman too. The Shaman has atleast 2 snare (possibly 3, can't remember for sure), the ability to remove debuffs their party, the ability to remove buffs from their opponents, the ability to counterspell every 6 seconds, the potential to be an incredible meleer (with a good one hander or two hander), the ability to get a pretty good armor level through a shield, quick heals, and on and on. While the Shaman may have to specialize in one area to get really good in that area, they're still good in their other areas and they don't have to sacrifice like a Paladin to get really good as a healer/buffer/cleanser (take a look at Thottbot sometime for plate items that would benefit a Paladin, they're pretty sparce until you get to MC).

[oldmandennis]

And if you really want to talk about overpoweredness of the Paladin, you have to also talk about the overpoweredness of the Shaman too.&nbsp;

This is probably a case of fearing what you don't understand.

The Shaman has atleast 2 snare (possibly 3, can't remember for sure),

It's only 3 if you count the useless frostbrand weapon

the ability to remove debuffs their party,

poison only, not that many important player buffs are poisons.

the ability to remove buffs from their opponents, the ability to counterspell every 6 seconds,

but the counter only lasts 2 seconds, and you have to choose between that and the much feared frostshock. You did leave grounding totem off the list.

they don't have to sacrifice like a Paladin to get really good as a healer/buffer/cleanser (take a look at Thottbot sometime for plate items that would benefit a Paladin, they're pretty sparce until you get to MC).
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I disagree. Paladins are much better, especially at the buffing and clensing part. People bitch about their blessing running out after 5 min? I think my longest lived totem is 1 1/2 min. I have to plant them practically ontop of the person I am using them on, which can be very tricky if I'm buffing the MT in fights like Mag or Ony. And clensing is only poison and disease (I can't think of an encounter where those are game breakers), and some mindcontrols. Good healing mail items are just as scarece, in another thread I discuss some of my "druid" gear I use in raids.

[Skandranon]

Sorry Mongo, but Paladin's are easier to kill than you think.&nbsp; Before the high end weapons started getting into the game, how did you kill a Priest?&nbsp; You ran them out of mana and they died easily enough, Paladin is the same principle.
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You don't even really need to do that. Just CC the paladin. Or have a shaman watch him and earthshock him as he starts to heal. There are a multitude of ways to screw with a paladin's "healing" ability, and the only response to all of them? Bubble. Bubble. Bubble. And the moment he uses the bubble you can mark him for destruction twelve seconds later. For the next four and three-quarters minutes, you'll be able to focus fire and own that paladin almost instantly. In all honesty, you can't discuss Divine Shield as a tactic for the paladin as 96% of the time the shield's on cooldown. There's a reason no one claims rogues are too powerful because they can Vanish out of everything; why is Divine Shield treated differently?