Paladin's are in an awful place (just being OP and overly abundant), and a very unsatisfying class to have in at the moment. The direction taken for them here on Turtle does not consider any balance for the game and as we've seen, have completely ruined high level PvP. I also believe they do not feel like Paladins at all with the changes to Judgement of the Crusader.
I feel they need to be reworked, to become something acceptable, fulfulling the class fantasy, whilst also not breaking apart the balance that Vanilla achieved. Here is my take on Paladins, with particular focus on Retribution tree which is where the primary problem lies. I don't think its anything too drastically far from what they were in Vanilla, but it is a necessary change to their core skill set.
Note - all numbers are placeholders, I can't test them. They are mostly just common numbers from other spells and could be too strong or too weak. They are more there to showcase the ideas behind the changes.
Proposed Changelist:
- Seal of the Crusader increases attack speed by [30]%, but also increases damage taken by [20]%*. Additionally when you crit whilst this seal is active, it allows you to cast judgement again. Lasts 30 seconds.
Unleash the power of the seal, dealing [x] Holy damage to the target, based on weapon damage. Judgement of the Crusader does not consume the seal.
- Heart of the Crusader talent reworked - Your Judgements of the Crusader have a 33%/66%/100% chance to cause your target to be vulnerable to Holy damage. This vulnerability increases the Holy damage dealt to your target by [x] and lasts 15 sec. Stacks up to 5 times.
- The Seal of Command proc can no longer miss or be dodged, parried or blocked.
- Crusader Strike removed.
- Divine Protection and Divine Shield have been merged at level 34.
- Repentence removed.
- Vow of Retribution - new 31 point Retribution talent.
Increases your Holy damage [15]%. However, you may not cast any healing spells whilst this is active.**
** This is on a shared cooldown with Divine Protection and Blessing of Protection
Those were the changes, the rest of this will be long explanations about my ideas balance and class fantasy. A lot can probably be skimmed over but I thought I'd just dump it all here. I'd like to get some feedback and discussion going, even if you don't read anything below this point.
The Paladin's problems in balance and class fantasy and the reasons behind it
Paladins in vanilla don't feel good, Ret especially, for a couple of reasons. Leveling up, as a ret in particular, is the most boring experience for a long time. There is almost zero interaction with combat, often times just popping your seal and judging rarely.
End game PvE you were pidgeonholed into healing, and whilst being fantastic at it, it doesn't feel good from the class fantasy perspective, especially for Rets. Prots could tank very successfully, albeit only in dungeons.
Lastly PvP, whilst very strong, were again mostly either Holy Shock burst, healing, or reckoning. Ret only really taken for Seal of Command, which always had its own problems.
One of the biggest problems Paladins have is how good they are. Whilst this example is probably oversimplified and a bit of a generalisation, the problem is easiest to see in PvP where in a 1v1 there are only 3 things that really matter. Firstly, your survivability, how tanky you are. Secondly, your sustain, your ability to heal yourself and draw a fight out for longer. Lastly your damage, and in the case of PvP we're basically talking burst damage. Paladins are naturally very survivable with their plate armour and high health, but they also have their invulnerability spells. Paladins also have heals which include a panic heal for all your health, and as mentioned earlier are fantastic at it.
This leaves damage, and this is the area that leaves Paladins feeling very lackluster as a Ret. The Retribution tree for all intents and purposes should be the damage tree, and yet it falls far too short in that regard. Simply because Paladins would basically be broken if they are good at damage, as we are seeing right now. With the added Crusader Strike and Holy Strike, we've gone the wrong direction. These spells were initially placeholder spells because the seal and judgement system wasn't finished. Paladin's were never intended to have these as they were supposed to be replaced by seals. We also see something that feels increadibly unthematic for a Paladin in the reworked Judgement of the Crusader and encourages this weird gameplay where people go around as rare weapon collectors for their procs.
I want to propose something that I feel is more thematic, better for gameplay, and balanced in all aspects of gameplay (subject to number tweaking).
The fixes to Seals and the ideas behind them
We start with the main culprits, the seals. This was a last minute system in Vanilla and it shows. Seal of the Crusader is just garbage. Righteousness is just flat out your best option 99% of the time. Seal of Command is better than Crusader, but outclassed by Righteousness still.
- The Seal of Command proc can no longer miss, be dodged, parried or blocked.
- Seal of the Crusader increases attack speed by [30]%, but also increases damage taken by [20]%*. Additonally when you crit whilst this seal is active, it allows you to cast judgement again.
Unleash the power of the seal, dealing x Holy damage to the target, based on weapon damage. Judgement of the Crusader does not consume the seal.
- Heart of the Crusader talent reworked - Your Judgements of the Crusader have a 33%/66%/100% chance to cause your target to be vulnerable to Holy damage. This vulnerability increases the Holy damage dealt to your target by [x] and lasts 15 sec. Stacks up to 5 times.
Command thematically is great, especially since it encouraged a big 2h to bring super crits. Very satisfying and the very image that a lot of people see when they think of a Paladin striking down an enemy. But the reality is a lie. The proc from Command can miss, be dodged parried blocked, by a target you've already hit. This makes no sense and is just disappointing once you learn. It's also why Righteousness is just better. This just needs to be made unmissable, undodgable unparriable and unblockable.
Righteousness is great, super reliable, nothing to talk about.
Crusader feels weak. This shouldn't be the case. It should make you feel strong. Going back to the initial problem of Paladins being too good at everything else, there needs to be a downside to using Crusader whilst giving you that power trip.
I propose that it increases your attack speed by 30%, but also increases the damage you take by 20%. This 20% damage would be a debuff akin to Death Wish, so that you couldn't just twist to another seal at a convenient time. For Paladins to do anything in terms of damage, they need to give something up and I believe thats their survivability. This is only for if you want to use Seal of the Crusader, which you aren't forced to.
I think thematically this fits the idea of Retribution and someone bent on a 'crusade'. The singlemindedness to defeat a foe regardless of the cost to those around is a common theme of contention amongst Paladins in lore that's just not represented in the class design, and it is the very thing that kicked off Arthas' journey in Warcraft 3. It also should alleviate some PvP concerns as a high % damage taken increase can very easily lead someone to be blown up quickly.
I also wanted to add a condition to make gameplay leveling up a bit more interesting, and provide a viable strategy at high level PvE and that is the refresh Judgement ability on your crits with Seal of the Crusader active. This leads into Judgement of the Crusader which is a holy damage judgement based on weapon damage, but one that doesn't consume the seal. This is one area that I'm unsure how it will play out, but I wanted a 2h weapon to be the desirable choice still for damage builds. If you want to burst someone, you are looking for Righteouness or Command, but for sustained damage, Crusader should be the judgement of choice. At this point I believe that the Improved Crusader talent should give the increase to holy damage back to Crusader, but stacking just like the current Crusader Strike, to help damage in PvE scenarios.
Hopefully, the faster damage from both sides, and the reactivity to crits should provide a Paladin a new and interesting/engaging gameplay during the leveling experience and at high level, without breaking PvP balance. You have a slightly improved Seal of Command, more befitting the 21 talent points it now requires, which would primarily be for PvP burst that still plays like the traditional Ret.
I'm really not sure how mana wise this will all work out, but I hope it doesn't end up feeling restrictive. I also haven't considered the Santified Command talent and whether my version of Retadin would require some mana love at raid level.
Retributions 31 point talent problem and their bubbles
- Repentence removed.
- Vow of Retribution - new 31 point Retribution talent.
Increases your Holy damage [15]%. However, you may not cast any healing spells whilst this is active.
I believe replacing it with a new damage cooldown for both PvE and PvP would be ideal. This cooldown would be linked to the Divine shields and Blessing of Protection, but put them all on cooldown. This way you can't just pop a shield later, and actually makes you think before using it. The disabling of healing also helps to really make the Paladin sure he wants to commit. Since a PvE DPS Paladin would do neither of these things anyway, I thought it was an elegant solution to up their damage much like the numerous other cooldowns other DPS have. Having said all that, I'm not particularly happy with the fact that its yet another % increase to Holy damage alongside Vengeance and Sanctity Aura. I didn't want it to be a flat spell power bonus, or something that wouldn't scale but then I thought it could be balanced out properly at a later time.
- Divine Protection and Divine Shield have been merged at level 34.
This is the end, thank you for reading if you got this far. I stopped myself writing more because I could probably waffle on for a while, but I'd like to hear feedback as to what people think, good or bad.