Is Paladin the least fun class to play?

[Gilthas]

I think one of the problems with the suggestions being made to make Paladin less boring is that said suggestions don't just make Paladin less boring, they make them even more powerful. Like this post here:

Paladin is in a weird spot. It has a lot of really powerful buttons that are pretty boring and a few really crappy buttons. Additionally, most of our subclass skills are pretty underwhelming. There's little reason to ever use Riot Blade. Shield Swipe is similarly mediocre. Awareness, even without the bug, is one of the worst skills in the game. Two of our five job abilities are passive stances, cover is very situational, and Hallowed Ground, while strong, has a very long cooldown. If you compare our current defensive cooldowns to 1.23's paladin, there's a pretty huge difference. 1.23 cds were generally multi-function and shorter cooldown compared to what we have now. In addition to mitigating damage, Old Rampart generated enmity if you hit allies with it, Old sentinel gave an enmity bonus, Divine Veil caused an AOE regen, and Aegis Boon healed you. Current Rampart, Sentinel, and Bulwark mitigate only, so there's no choice to make there. "Am I going to take a lot of damage soon? Guess I better hit one of these."

The main thing paladin could use is for its bad skills to be fixed up. I'd say that Riot Blade, Shield Swipe, Awareness, Cover, Tempered Will, and a few others could use some changes. Additionally, Paladin really needs to use a lot more MP than it currently does. This would give it another resource to manage and really make it stand out from the other melee classes. Things I'd like to see happen:


-Delete Awareness and replace with Aegis Boon. Raises your shield, blocking the next attack made against you and healing you for the amount blocked. Same MP cost as Flash, breaks combos. On magic GCD. Learned at level 2 to make sure GLAs know to equip a dang shield.
-Rampart moved to lv 34, "Enhanced Awareness" and "Enhanced Rampart" levels swapped.
-Enhanced Awareness trait is now called "Awareness" and reduces the effectiveness of crits against you in some way (reduced damage, reduced chance, whatever)
-Tempered Will: Same as current, but CD reduced and add "restores MP upon taking damage."

-Riot Blade potency increased to 255 (so that the potency/GCD is similar to Halone combo). MP regeneration is increased slightly, but given over a period of time (9 seconds?) instead of instantly.
-Shield Swipe pacification removed. Pacification is OP on stuff it works on and useless on stuff it doesn't work on. Shield Swipe now gives attack speed for a short duration.

-Cover cooldown reduced to 1 minute. Range increased. During cover, any enmity generated by the covered target will be given to the paladin instead.
-Sword Oath and Shield Oath combined into one skill called whatever (Solemn Vow/Paladin's Pledge/Gallantry/whatever). First press toggles Sword Oath, second press toggles Shield Oath, third goes back to sword. Oaths remain as-is, but oath effects linger for 12 seconds after switching. MP cost is the same, still on GCD.
-Lv 40 Paladin Job ability: Holy Succor. Roughly 40% MP cost for base piety. Healing spell, ~3s cast time. Should heal for roughly 20% of the paladin's max HP. Heals the paladin for half of what was healed if cast on another target. Generates double enmity, rather than reduced. Also, for the love of god, scales with weapon damage and strength instead of magic damage and mind.
-Spirits Within: Same as now, but add Combo Action: Shield Swipe. Combo Bonus: Increased enmity (5x would put it at 1500 hate potency, which is slightly higher than Halone.)
-Circle of Scorn: Same as now, but add Combo Action: Shield Swipe. Combo Bonus: Reduces the cooldown of Circle of Scorn by 5 seconds for each enemy affected.

Basically, it adds two combos to paladin (Aegis->Shield Swipe->Spirits, Aegis->Shield Swipe->Scorn), adds a lot of MP usage to encourage Riot Blading often, adds an actual healing spell with a prohibitive MP cost, and allows the paladin to actually control his shield arm a little bit with on-demand blocks. I don't know why I bothered with this since nothing like it will ever happen! But basically I'd be happy if they just deleted Awareness so I don't have to look at that horrible ability.

Its just "buff, buff, buff, buff".

If you guys want to make serious suggestions to make Paladin more fun try to at least keep them balanced to their current level of usefulness instead of buffing them through the roof.

[Brannigan]

I think one of the problems with the suggestions being made to make Paladin less boring is that said suggestions don't just make Paladin less boring, they make them even more powerful. Like this post here:



Its just "buff, buff, buff, buff".

If you guys want to make serious suggestions to make Paladin more fun try to at least keep them balanced to their current level of usefulness instead of buffing them through the roof.

ok take that whole thing but add "reduce the effectiveness of some paladin cds to make up for increased offense and ability to heal." Paladin is boring right now. There's nothing a paladin has to deal with in a fight that a warrior doesn't also have to deal with. In 2.1 warrior will have like actual real gameplay beyond just fight mechanics and paladin won't, which sucks.

To put it another way, right now a perfectly played paladin and a horribly played paladin will feel very similar on the party's end. There seems to be not a whole lot of room for you to improve, so it's hard to distinguish between a good paladin and a bad one. With a class like warrior that will almost certainly not be the case.

[Maelwys]

To put it another way, right now a perfectly played paladin and a horribly played paladin will feel very similar on the party's end. There seems to be not a whole lot of room for you to improve, so it's hard to distinguish between a good paladin and a bad one.

In my experience (PLD, WAR and WHM), this is not true in the slightest.

Whilst a "poorly skilled" player might be able to get better performance out of a Paladin than a Warrior, you can spot the difference between a competent Tank and an incompetent one a MILE away. This is true for Tanks in general, but Paladins are certainly included. It's all in the movement, the aggro control and the proper use of utility skills.

Do they rotate targets or just spam flash? Do they mark? Do they lose hate when people AoE? How about when there's both AoE and ST damage? Do they GATHER targets for AoE? Do they stun/silence mobs at opportune moments? Do they point Cones away from the party? Do they precast Stoneskin and Buffs before big hits, or wait until they're already taking damage? Do they call out whenever they're pulling a mob, or whenever a mob is about to use an annoying ability (e.g. Imminent Catastrophe)? Do they run through Line-of-sight abilities to avoid being hit? Do they know how to use PROVOKE and COVER...? The list goes on and on and ON.

Even in Coil there are DERP Paladins who don't bunch up mobs for AoEs and can't position themselves right... and the amount of Paladins I've met who use "Awareness" is ridiculous*...

[*NEVER USE AWARENESS EVER EVER EVER - it prevents all Critical Healing on you, which hurts you far more than any enemy Critical Hits would... especially since enemy "special attacks" can never crit, only autoattacks!]