Crusader Strike

[Ravielsk]

Hello, I recently stumbled upon this video that detailed how paladins in WoW beta had these two dps abilities Holy strike and Crusader Strike. They were both removed so late in development that the scarlet crusade NPCs still use them. So I thought that since turtle wow already brought back holy strike it could also bring back crusaders strike.

From my perspective its very much in line with nature of the server and on top of that it would be a huge improvement to the overall paladin experience while staying true to the Vanilla nature of things. Although I think that it would need a bit of tweaking from its beta form to be fair.

Something along the line of a reduced mana cost at the expense of a longer cooldown. So it would become sort of a fight opener that slightly boosts holy damage.

So what do you think?

[Tobbsu]

Agree I love to see paladin be more viable for raids.

[Unangwata]

As much as I like it, it would be overkill for balance purposes.
If I was to implement it, I would modify it to share CD with Holy Strike, so you would have to chose. Otherwise it's just too much damage.

[Ravielsk]

As much as I like it, it would be overkill for balance purposes.
If I was to implement it, I would modify it to share CD with Holy Strike, so you would have to chose. Otherwise it's just too much damage.

Thats actually a good idea. If it were implemented that way it would solve both the balance issue and the mana issue.

[Lawmonark]

I would much rather have a Taunt rather than another DPS ability.
Holy Strike is already enough to make Ret paladins "decent" endamge if you push it, but when it comes to tanking, Pally needs a taunt.

Even if this "taunt" in a consumable item that anyone can use and has to be farmed, Some use Magic Candles for a single pull to start the fight, but after that the lack of taunt makes the pally not viable for some content as a tank.

[Ravielsk]

I would much rather have a Taunt rather than another DPS ability.
Holy Strike is already enough to make Ret paladins "decent" endamge if you push it, but when it comes to tanking, Pally needs a taunt.

I mean it could be incorporated as a taunt. Just extend its range, and instead of increasing holy damage it could be used to increase generated aggro.
My concern really is with how the paladin plays in general as especially the leveling experience is just tedious with only two abilities that actually deal damage. Nevermind ranged capabilities or gap closers.

[Lexi]

I'd love to see pally get crusader strike but only if other classes can get some abilities as well. I don't think it would be fair or balanced to give pally a second removed ability until every class gets either a new ability or a removed one.

[Ravielsk]

I'd love to see pally get crusader strike but only if other classes can get some abilities as well. I don't think it would be fair or balanced to give pally a second removed ability until every class gets either a new ability or a removed one.

Agreed. Especially Druids and Shamans could do with some fine tuning.

[Balake]

Crusader Strike can't be brought back unless everything that was added as compensation is removed. And that list is LONG. Blizzard removing Crusader Strike was part of their plan to make Paladins into more of a supportive power-booster class. So really, they should have to pick one or the other (Strike Paladin for the beta offensive playstyle, Blessing paladin for the buff bot). Abilities don't exist in a vacuum, they interact and those two playstyles would heavily synergize with each other. With the Vanilla kit, paladins can greatly boost damage but they don't *do* damage. Crusader Strike gives them the damage but during the time they had it they couldn't boost damage so it was fine.

Adding it is possible, with a sacrifice. Paladins will need to accept heavy nerfs to ALL aspects of the class just to fit in a weaker version of Crusader Strike into their power budget. What this means is, paladin dps will stay mostly the same but become more fun and interactive, since their raw damage is higher but they won't be able to multiply it by as much as they used to. And they also won't be able to buff their buddies as much.

Is a spammable swinging spell worth the heavy shift in role, theme, power budget allocation? I think it's subjective, depends on the person you ask and what they want to play. One thing is an objective fact though, it would make paladins (40% budget for self, 60% budget for buffing others) a bit closer to rogues and warriors (90% for self, 10% for others) in terms of selfishness in the power budget.

[Qixel]

I was one of the most vocally excited for Crusader Strike when they were originally bringing it back with Holy Strike, but the devs decided against reimplementing it. I even offered to trade Holy Strike, all my bubbles, all my heals, and various other things in exchange for Crusader Strike and was denied. It's definitely not going to happen. :c

[Steyr]

I would much rather have a Taunt rather than another DPS ability.
Holy Strike is already enough to make Ret paladins "decent" endamge if you push it, but when it comes to tanking, Pally needs a taunt.

Even if this "taunt" in a consumable item that anyone can use and has to be farmed, Some use Magic Candles for a single pull to start the fight, but after that the lack of taunt makes the pally not viable for some content as a tank.

Having played years as a paladin tank I actually like how this class doesn't have a single-button all-solver when it comes to threat. Honestly, paladin tanks in later expansions are boring for exactly this "press to tank" ability. If anything should be done about paladin threat generation it should be either adding custom gear that is tuned specifically for paladin tanking (holy damage, armor, defense, stam, int, mp5 in that order), or buffing up righteous fury, so it multiplies threat from holy damage from 60/90 to, say, 100/150%. This way you retain specific paladin tanking style - based on aoe and reflected damage - and make paladin tanks viable.

What many people don't understand about paladin (and, essentially, other) tanks is that you cannot jump ahead of them and open with your biggest damage possible spell - paladin tanks are slow and they require some time to build initial threat (so do other tank classes, but they can compensate with taunt for lack of patience from dps players). Like some other paladin tank put it on another forums, "if you pull aggro from a paladin tank - it's your own f*ing fault". Most people have no idea how threat system works and they just claim that "paladins can't tank" due to that.

Another option that was discussed some time ago on these forums was incorporating paladin taunt into a seal+judgement system. That actually makes sense, and it would allow to balance the threat-wiping mechanics that are used a bit too liberally here, from what I can judge. Still, taunt as a mechanic in this game is akin to fear - press to win, essentially.

[Unangwata]

Yeah I like paladin not having taunt as well. It's their charm. Give it taunt and it will not be paladin tanking anymore.
Same thing with war, they have taunt but don't have aoe.

[Sinrek]

You guys still gotta be more specific on which one of the two Crusader's Strike you all talking about.

Funny thing though Paladins are viable for raids already. I mean, of course, you can live with no Paladin in your raid just as fine … however, it's that subtle difference on how would two of those raids perform in the long run. Paladins do bring a lot of utility and support to the raid even if they do not do so much damage as expected … let's say an arms warrior.

[Starkobjekt]

Philosophy of vanilla wow is if the class can do multiple things they pay a tax for that, sadly vanilla philosophy is also 1 spec viable for a class in pve content is enough. On Turtle Ret is pretty strong, especially, compared to something like Enhance that does not benefit as much from cross faction raiding because windfury is boosting ret dmg a ton.

[Steyr]

Philosophy of vanilla wow is if the class can do multiple things they pay a tax for that, sadly vanilla philosophy is also 1 spec viable for a class in pve content is enough. On Turtle Ret is pretty strong, especially, compared to something like Enhance that does not benefit as much from cross faction raiding because windfury is boosting ret dmg a ton.

I think you are talking about officially advertised developer "philosophy" for vanilla wow. In reality, though, things work a little differently. For example, fear mechanic can replace tank in some cases, and we all know how frost mages solo farm ZG trash.
It is worth mentioning, too, that developer stance on the game has been changing with patch versions - there is a reason they redesigned deathbone set as well as paladin t2 in later vanilla patches.
The fact is that hybrid classes can be viable in multiple roles. Of course, they will not perform as ideally as "single" role classes (by the way, is warrior a tank or a dps class?), but with much effort they can come quite close. What matters, essentially, is how much effort the player himself is willing to put into it and how ready the rest of the team is for "unorthodox" playstyle. From what I can see, people simply refuse to think out of their box, when it comes to teamwork.

[Velite]

Not having a taunt is great until you need one because that is how a fight was mechanically designed in vanilla.

If you don't want to use a taunt you can choose not to use it. You can just play a warrior and never bind the spell if you want a tank without a taunt. But not having the choice for it when fights like Ebonroc and Razuvious were designed to have tanks taunt just means that you can't play those fights as a paladin tank in vanilla.

I would like to propose on this forum, however, that Holy strike be given the property of crusader strike in TBC: that it refreshes all active judgements on a target. That would add alot of utility to the ret class and it would fix the issue that holy strike does not refresh your current judgement, meaning that if you do your rotation you might end up having your judgement fall off before being able to reapply it. Holy strike uses your auto attack but doesn't refresh your judgement.

[Ravielsk]

I think you are talking about officially advertised developer "philosophy" for vanilla wow. In reality, though, things work a little differently. For example, fear mechanic can replace tank in some cases, and we all know how frost mages solo farm ZG trash.
It is worth mentioning, too, that developer stance on the game has been changing with patch versions - there is a reason they redesigned deathbone set as well as paladin t2 in later vanilla patches.

I get the impression that his is a problem in general when it comes to Vanilla. Too many people cite this "developer philosophy" but fail to realize that those very same developers later admitted that philosophy to be wrong. There is a reason why the paladin was reworked after Vanilla and it was not because the class was so well done. Many of the class balance decisions and specs in Vanilla are effectively just placeholders that were not replaced with their proper counterparts until TBC.

Besides the "tax" hybrid classes in Vanilla pay is everything but fair. Its not that paladins are somewhat worse tanks or DPS than warrior, its that outside of early content they are not consistently usable as tanks and asking entire raids and groups to finagle themselves around a paladin tank is the definition of bad design. Especially since depending on the group configuration and/or raid/dungeon that might not even be an option.

I would like to propose on this forum, however, that Holy strike be given the property of crusader strike in TBC: that it refreshes all active judgements on a target. That would add alot of utility to the ret class and it would fix the issue that holy strike does not refresh your current judgement, meaning that if you do your rotation you might end up having your judgement fall off before being able to reapply it. Holy strike uses your auto attack but doesn't refresh your judgement.

That actually sounds like a very solid idea.

[Steyr]

If you don't want to use a taunt you can choose not to use it. You can just play a warrior and never bind the spell if you want a tank without a taunt.

That's like saying "If you don't like all the trashtalk in world chat, you can leave it". The next thing that will happen, it will be people getting on you for not using it.

As far as I know, there are ways of dealing with any fight mechanic other than just straight threat wipe (which happens surprisingly a lot on this server for reasons I don't know), other than using taunt. The question is whether the raid group is patient and qualified enough for any approaches that aren't listed in guides.

The main issue is slow threat generation for paladins, whereas almost every warrior skill "deals additional threat" on top of defensive stance multiplier. While tweaking holy strike sounds nice, making paladin spellpower scale with strength (like it did in TBC) would actually be more beneficial and it would synergize better with whatever gear paladins get. But that is probably too much to ask on a vanilla server.

[Lawmonark]

Yeah I like paladin not having taunt as well. It's their charm. Give it taunt and it will not be paladin tanking anymore.
Same thing with war, they have taunt but don't have aoe.

Except Warrior AoE tanking is possible. Check out the video by Skarm. While its not ideal, it is possible.
Paladins really do need a taunt.

[Velite]

Yeah the thing with warriors is any issue they have can be addressed. That is not the case for druids and paladins, they have permanent issues that the group has to work around. I would prefer if obstacles were had that could be overcome by the individual which is the case for warriors.

[Velite]

As far as I know, there are ways of dealing with any fight mechanic other than just straight threat wipe (which happens surprisingly a lot on this server for reasons I don't know), other than using taunt. The question is whether the raid group is patient and qualified enough for any approaches that aren't listed in guides.

Yeah for Ebonroc the only way a paladin will be able to do that, is if they are able to get everyone to wipe their threat in order to get the boss to shift aggro. That will never happen, you'd need so many petrification flasks. And so, people would rather a warrior or druid press taunt. If you have to go to such extremes to be able to do a TANK job as a TANK spec, that's a problem. And that's why blizzard gave paladins a taunt when they fixed the spec in TBC. The spec is currently still broken.

[Hardwelsam]

Crusader strike and holly strike for paladin in vanilla..
Forgot about that.
Pala with holly strike is already enoughly strong.
Adding the crusader strike make a big unbalance.
And yes,possible to make this,adding crus.strike tho,but after that Every other classes also needed a New abilitie/spell,and its require so much work.
Just imagine that,holly strike and crusader strike being accepted and released,Everybody going to make paladin..

And lets Talk about an another thing.
A taunt are seriously more wanted for prot pally.

Or an aoe.
I can imagine a custom aoe.

[Steyr]

Perhaps if paladin threat generation from holy damage would be boosted (by boosting righteous fury or somesuch) you could beat initial threat from dps when all threat is wiped (unless it's tank-exclusive)

[Hardwelsam]

I was looked forward about that,how the pally threat generator is work.
Devs,as always,maked a Good job on the talent tree.
But let be honest,in a raid without taunt/aoe,paladin is really have to be concentrate on it to not lose agro,but this is hard.
So , i mainly recommend a paladin aoe,to keep mobs on ourself,taunt is also would be great,but the problem with a taunt,its be coming useless on a raid,like naxx.

[Pfwg]

Paladin tanks lol

[Velite]

Paladin threat is fine, it can compete with warriors and druids, the issue is ultimately when a mechanic calls for tank swapping via taunt.





You have these scenarios where paladins are able to tank Patchwerk but not some adds on Razuvious which is dumb.