Poster: Jotancelot at 7/9/2005 4:37:49 AM PDT
Subject: PLEASE sticky this and make sure DEVS read it |
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Fangtooth,
I understand you're a busy guy, and that attempting to dessiminate all the BS that happens in the forum is a difficult job.
I post a question to you, not out of spite, or to challenge your intelligence in some backhanded manner, but to be assured that what really matters is being handed to the developers who *definitely* are missing the major points that every well thought out post about paladin problems portray.
The question I post to you:
Are you sure you're asking the developers the right questions, and conveying what the overall commmunity feels?
This has been made numerous times, a recent compilation can be viewed here:
https://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=3814187&p=1&tmp=1#post3814187
Quick summary for ez digestion:
1. Relying upon the RNG for *every* ability is a horrid implmentation, lacks imagination and disengages the player from combat.
2. We don't want MORE DPS, we want *control* over how and when it is dealt.
3. Almost every guild treats paladins as a second-rate class. We do not get to roll on high-DPS weapons and gear, ever. Why do you suppose this is?
4. The only armor that caters to us is stuff with int and mana regen, there is no +holy damage, just +"UP TO" healing plate.
5. We are the least rounded class in PVP the minute autoattack is activated.
6. As a hybrid class, our trees do very little to differentiate. A ret pally with +healing gear is almost as effective as a full holy paladin.
7. Buffs on a 5min timer, with a low mana cost, *are* useful, but not in long raid-type scenerios. Given another rank that cost more mana and lasted 30 minutes but had the same effect would greatly improve end-game paladin play. (I understand the Horde would hate this, but lets comprimise here please)
8. We have recieved little or no attention since launch, except to fix issues that were more powerful than originally intended. Our bug list has been in existance since the first month of release yet never been acknowledged until yesterday. If you had JUST bought a new car, wouldn't you be monitor it's vital signs more actively, since you don't know if it came off the factory line defective? We have untested and unproven play mode and talents. Any dev who spent more than 40 hours behind a paladin would have seen the Seal of Command "Spell not ready yet" bug, yet the devs seem to think this is a mystical occurance.
9. A good number of paladins (including myself, see alt mage here) have re-rolled to more "pure" classes, and found the game to be very engaging. Where all other classes can control the events around them to bring about an optimal situation, a paladin must react to all events and pray the RNG works in their favor. It's the difference between pro-active and reactive, with the exception that our reaction is generally still based upon luck to a certain degree. Look at the our talent trees for proof. Most of the more powerful talents are "reactions" to an event or based upon how the RNG wants to roll a certain event, which is NOT guaranteed to happen. (Asteriks denote judged is same as or less than original seal in reactionary/utility based)
-- Redoubt (opponents RNG)
-- Reckoning (opponents RNG)
-- Holy Shield (best with Redoubt, otherwise RNG based to block)
-- Improved Blessing of Protection (reactional)
-- Vengence (RNG)
-- Conviction (RNG redux)
-- Precision (RNG redux)
-- Deflection (redux opponent RNG)
-- *Seal of Command (RNG damage)
-- Spiritual Focus (RNG redux)
-- Improved Concetration Aura (RNG redux)
-- *Improved Seal of Light (increases mana efficiency of an RNG based debuff)
-- Improved Flash/Holy Light (reactionary)
-- Improved Lay on Hands (reactionary)
-- Revelation (reactionary)
-- Improved Seal of Rightousness (RNG damage)
-- Anticipation (redux opponent RNG)
-- *Improved Seal of Justice (RNG redux)
-- Improved Blessing of Freedom (reactionary, powerful)
-- Redemption (reactional, out of combat)
Those are just the talented spells!
Are you seeing the whole picture? *Seal of Wisdom, Resistance Auras, Devine Intervention, Devine Shield, Cleanse.... These are more Reactionary/RNG based spells.
The other spells in our book are completely and utterly void of PVP useage, because they don't have any applicable functionality in PVP. While I do not argue for our undead spells to work against the forsaken because I understand the class vs. race balance issue, I'm going to list them anyways to further subtract them from our spell book. Every class has a few spells that aren't really applicable in PVP, but a paladin has far far too many.
Useless PVP spells:
-- Judgement of Justice
-- Exorcism
-- Holy Wrath
-- Turn Undead
-- Blessing of Salvation
-- *Seal of Fury (and judged too)
Utility-less PVP Spells:
-- Judgement of Light (when your opponent lives less than 15 seconds, there is no mana efficiency, RNG based)
-- Judgement of Wisdom (same as above, RNG based)
-- Judgement of Crusader (the "up to" doesn't bode well)
-- Judgement of Command (do you have a personal rogue to tote around? Everyone uses Rank 1 anyways!)
-- Judgement of Rightousness (for a 5k mana pool, getting 133 dmg from 500 mana is a joke)
-- Blessing of Sanctuary (against an epic-equiped warrior/mage/rogue? Are you nuts? Horrible scaling)
-- Blessing of Sacrifice (same as above)
-- Retribution Aura (Devotion, Concentration is all any pally ever runs, but still the weakest end-game damage shield)
That leaves us with the following spells that are not reactionary or coupled directly to the RNG:
Hammer of Justice
Devotion Aura (end-game the AC benefit is minimal)
Holy Shock (most mana-inefficient "nuke" in game, and takes 31 talent points to get. 6 of which nobody wants to spend)
Devine Strenth (we can either have int, str or agil, but not all three due to plate limitations)
Devine Wisdom (wonderful talent, horrid prereq)
Improved Blessing of Wisdom (about 1 talent point per mana per tick vs. Mage with 8000MP?)
Consecration (weaksauce, and laughable AoE)
Blessing of Might (fun, but again not used vs. light. 5DPS?)
Blessing of Light (well done! no "up to" shinanagins. I applaud whoever made this happen.)
If you add Seal of Command to the above list (our only decent single-target DPS spell), you'll note that's what ALL paladins use in PVP and most of PVE, no more, no less. Why? Because being at the mercy of the RNG and statistical chances of an event happening is about as reliable as playing scratch-off lotto tickets to pay your rent. Would you? The above spells off our only direct way to control a situation, by healing a bit more (still semi-reactionary) stunning or damaging an opponent, or increasing stats by a certain precentage. With the exception of Devine Strength, Devine Wisdom, Blessing of Light and Hammer of Justice, the rest of the abilities have horrible scaling against well-equiped max level Horde.
If I wasn't so passionate about what I feel the paladin class could and should be, I wouldn't bother spending the time reading, helping and posting long-winded threads like these. But myself and a good precentage of the population DO believe in the paladin class, and DO believe that some day the developers will see our woes and say to themselves; "what were we thinking!". It seems common sense that any buff will require a tradeoff, and most paladins are willing to make that tradeoff to become less reactionary and more proactive about the things that happen around them.
So what I ask you Fangtooth:
Since I spent a good portion of MY life typing this up, here just for you to read and nobody else, could you please spend the 30 or so seconds it would take to copy and paste this post to the lead class designer and let him know what a paladin with days of playtime, not including min-max researching, stat crunching and theoretical talent building, feels about the class? Can you acknowledge publicly that this was done, as a personal favor to me?
Fangtooth, if you have even read this far I applaud you for your time and effort.
Thank you.
Epoch
L60 paladin @ Hellscream.
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a very good post that i feel needs more attention
| | | http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-paladin&t=285480&p=#post285480 | | | Poster: Fangtooth at 7/10/2005 6:38:25 PM PDT
Subject: Re: PLEASE sticky this and make sure DEVS read it |
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Jotancelot,
Thank you for taking the time to put this post together. It is well written and covers much that has allready been relayed to the developers. When it is the Paladin classes time again under the spotlight I will be sure to double check my list against this one and the other well thought out posts in this forum.
-Fangtooth
The Murloc murgurguls at midnight...
| | | http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-paladin&t=285480&p=#post286964 | Poster: Fangtooth at 7/10/2005 6:38:25 PM PDT
Subject: Re: PLEASE sticky this and make sure DEVS read it *edited post* |
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Jotancelot and Epoch,
Thank you for taking the time to put this post together. It is well written and covers much that has already been relayed to the developers. When it is the Paladin classes time again under the spotlight I will be sure to double check my list against this one and the other well thought out posts in this forum.
-Fangtooth[ post edited by Fangtooth ]
The Murloc murgurguls at midnight...
| | | http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-paladin&t=285480&p=#post286964 |
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