Quote Originally Posted by Donjo View Post
Seriously, what's with all the Tempered Will hate? I already explained how it's the most useful of Paladin's situational skills. Why aren't people attacking Shield Bash instead or something?
I would argue Cover is the most useful Paladin situational skill, since you can absorb a single damage type (physical) another player takes for 10 seconds. By popping defensive cooldowns, you also reduce the overall damage inflicted, or outright negate it with Hallowed Ground.

Meanwhile, with Tempered Will, I debate your contention that those described usages are of good design. First, any open world or soloing usage should immediately be discounted as being a valid angle of argument. A situational skill should be empowering and used in often occurring occasions in a raid/dungeon based setting as we are discussing game balance with a focus on team play. Second, I do not believe in the 'safety net' arguments. For fights like Titan, knockbacks basically only have one significant mechanic to them: instant death if not dealt with appropriately. In addition, you take large amounts of damage when hit by them, as opposed to taking large amounts of damage as a direct result of getting knocked back. These cases have an obvious pattern: don't get hit in the first place, because it's suboptimal. Using Tempered Will here brings the benefit of letting you play suboptimally, which is absolutely not what a well designed skill should do.

It would be a different case if the effect of being knocked back leads to a direct disadvantage and said knock back is neigh unavoidable. This is why I can agree with the sentiment that having more uptime on the boss is a good benefit of this skill, but tanking Landslide is a terrible reason why this skill should even exist.

However. This skill is on a 3 minute cooldown, and DRK can just Plunge to get back anyway. PLD's also deal the least damage of the 3 tanks and have nothing that needs to be critically refreshed. Furthermore, there just are not enough of these benefical cases that exist in the game, which leads me to find this skill to be terrible because if it were removed, I wouldn't even notice and would barely be considered a nerf.