This post is about how to balance prot paladin. Please read and comment if you are interested in a topical discussion.
New patch is hopefully coming soon and with it new items for prot paladins. While good itemization can improve the spec a lot over the “Jack of all trades, master of none” gear we have in T1, T2 and T2,5, we also need tools in form of talent and abilities to utilize the potential in that gear.
Stamina
Prot paladins suffer from lack of stamina and defensive stats(defense/dodge/parry/block) on gear and it is one of the biggest reason that keeps prot paladin from being a viable tank on raid bosses. We really suffer from the “hybrid tax” on gear.
I believe there is a reason why paladins had 11% more stamina scaling from their talents in TBC than warriors; simply to compensate for less stamina/hybrid tax on gear and thus make prot paladins competitive on health.
Suggested solution:
One handed weapon specialization
Increases total stamina and holy damage dealth by 3/6/9/12/15% while a one handed weapon is equipped.
- Protection is a specialization after all. It makes sense that tanking paladins should have more health than ret and holy.
- Strengthens sword and board play, as well as reducing it’s use in PvP since it can’t benefit 2h and can’t be combined with Holy Shock etc.
Threat
Fishbringer made paladins competitive on single target threat. It gave a good feeling of being useful and I only received positive and supporting feedback from people saying it’s cool to see a paladin able to be top TPS tank. After all, we are the weakest when it comes to mitigation, health, defensive CD’s, number of taunts and toolkit in general. Then we also lost Fishbringer to a humiliating nerf, and it was not replaced by other items, abilities or talents. We were suddenly worst at everything.
So, threat has to be solved. A few ways to do this:
- Increased threat modifiers on current talents and abilities
- Set bonuses (hopefully on new gear or modify existing)
- New talents and abilities
- Better spell coefficient scaling on abilities or a massive increase to SP on gear
Here are a few suggested solutions. They are meant as inspiration and probably won’t be perfectly balanced without further work:
Reckoning
Reckoning is a signature paladin talent. However, on Twow the use of this has been greatly reduced and it’s time for a change. The easy way out would be to make it a 2/4/6/8/10% proc chance like TBC. I’d like to make a different suggestion:
20/40/60/80/100% chance that blocked attacks will reset the cooldown of Judgement and the next Judgement will increase block value equal to 100% of your strength for 3 seconds/next X blocks.
- Why block instead of dodge/parry? Blocks can only happen with a shield equipped and thus strengthens the class fantasy of a sword and board paladin. Also, it makes it less useful for PvP since you have to have a shield equipped, rather than 2H and get a free judgement every dodge/parry.
- Why block value? Again, to strengthen sword and board playstyle. You could have it reduce incoming damage by a flat %, which would be fine as well. The purpose is to have an active way of reducing damage taken, rather than passive. In general you will never have enough block value to mitigate a single attack from a raid boss in any impactful way. However, reducing damage from several attacks over time will add up to decent amount of reduced damage taken. And it will strengthen paladins speciality against many weaker enemies, AoE tanking scenarios, while still benefit boss tanking. For reference I have ~300 strength unbuffed and ~150 block value in my T2,5 tanking gear, which would make for a total block value of 450 unbuffed.
- Why scaling with strength? Strength already increases block value so it makes sense to have a scaling with strength than other stats. It is also important to actually have a scaling because a fixed amount may be too powerful at lower gear levels and too weak in higher raid tiers. Having it scale with a stat that is generally not prioritized by prot paladins might open more gearing options.
- Why 3 seconds duration? To make sure the duration is longer than a boss’ attack speed of 2-2,5 seconds so you have a chance to block an attack. Fixed duration will be very powerful in AoE tanking scenarios, so it could also be limited to a fixed number of blocks.
Beacon of Light
New 31 point prot talent
10sec duration, 30sec cooldown.
The paladin becomes a beacon of light, radiating 10% of healing taken as holy damage to nearby enemies and healing to allies within 10yds. While active the paladin will also regenerate mana equal to 10% of the amount healed.
- Can be used as a threat burst due to healing being converted to holy damage from the paladin. Scales with Righteous Fury. Enhances paladin as a raid boss tank.
- Enhances paladin as a support class, taking on the role as a melee healer due to 10% of healing taken radiating to nearby allies.
- If you drop your consecration in a bad spot and none of the adds you were supposed to pick up run through it, then you have one more AoE ability to gather and get threat on those adds - and it’s not stuck in one place on the ground for 8 seconds.
- Can to some extent improve paladins ability to tank bosses with mana burn.
- Possibly no mana cost since it is partly meant as a mana regen ability. Costing mana would defeat the purpose.
- Since it scales with healing taken it will always be on par with the difficulty of the raid. More damage taken in difficult raids=more healing needed=more damage/threat=more healing radiated.
- Overall I think it would be a unique and interesting ability that enhances paladin tanking and plays towards the class fantasy of utilizing the light for damage and healing.
Holy Blast Wave
New Ability with Rank 1/2/3 at lvl 40/50/60
Mana cost 300/375/450
15 second cooldown
The caster radiates a wave of holy energy dealing 125/200/275 holy damage to enemies within 8yds and an additional 125/200/275 holy damage over 8 seconds.
- It’s either Beacon of Light or Holy Blast Wave, both of them would be too much.
- Main purpose is a direct damaging AoE ability. At the moment we only have Consecration to gather mobs, which requires correct placement because it’s stuck in once place for 8 seconds when you drop it. The rest of our AoE threat comes from mobs hitting us and taking damage to generate threat. If we can't make them hit us then we do no threat, unlike the other tanking calsses that deal direct damage to gain threat on several mobs.
- Blessing of Kings spam is an alternative. However, I believe that if paladins are to be the best at tanking 4+ mobs, then we should have some form ability that deals direct damage/threat to gain initial threat to gather packs of mobs.
- Another possibility is to add some sort of debuff to this ability that reduces targets attack speed, damage done or heal the paladin for a small amount pr hit. Warriors have Thunderclap and Demoralizing Shout to reduce incoming damage. In order to not make every tank have the same toolkit, perhaps paladins could have some sort of healing on damage taken to compensate and keep it unique. It is already in the class fantasy with Seal of Light.
TL;DR:
Improve stamina, threat and survivability through new talents and abilities to complement new and better itemization. Suggestions are meant as inspiration to future changes. Thanks for reading.
Suggestion for prot paladin changes
Re: Suggestion for prot paladin changes
If you are serious about fixing Paladin - the whole seal/judgement atrocity is the first thing that needs to go.
Re: Suggestion for prot paladin changes
"Fixing" paladin and turning it into a warrior are two different things. Seals are part of the core identity of paladin and have always been, if anything, the class should be made to lean harder into it instead of just using one seal 100% of the time