So, after the patch, how goes it with Paladin?

[eagledorf]

The buff to Paladin misses the mark by a huge margin. It really does nothing to address the real issues behind the tanks, but it is a DPS increase (any DPS increase is a good DPS increase).

Thordan EX is a pretty PLD fight. All the tank damage is physical, there's a multi-hit massive cleave, there's almost no DPS check (and the DPS checks that do exist can be ignored to a certain extent with mitigation), and there are breaks where you have to look away from the boss when you can be casting instead of just twiddling your thumbs. It's also nice in that tank damage is probably the most threatening damage as long as mechanics go well.

I really enjoy that fight more than almost anything else they've released since 3.0, but all that says to me is that the tank design is really bad. If you go into Thordan as DRK, it's totally doable because it doesn't actually hit that hard, but you have a more restrictive toolkit for the exact same encounter and these magic-only skill that are basically useless the majority of the fight. It's basically like A4S, where on PLD or on healer you're just ignoring so many of your skills. It's not really fun to just not have a use for your skills.