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Warlords of Draenor Paladin Thread!
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Post by
ElhonnaDS
I'm just going to drop a friendly moderator nudge here to make a separate thread elsewhere to debate lore, as this one is intended to discuss the actual paladin talents for the upcoming expansion. I'd hate to have to go all hard core and delete things to keep it on track.
Post by
Lordplatypus
Still, take it to the lore forums, please - don't come in here and throw around your lore in "my" game mechanics thread :p
Pretty sure it's not yours, it's Arannia's
I'm just going to drop a friendly moderator nudge here to make a separate thread elsewhere to debate lore, as this one is intended to discuss the actual paladin talents for the upcoming expansion. I'd hate to have to go all hard core and delete things to keep it on track.
The bunny....
Has.....
A.....
Hat......
Post by
Arannia
That's not a hat! It's a pancake!
Anyway, seeing as news is (as predicted) slow, I am going to be adding -some- lore points to the original post as pertaining to Paladins, as well as some miscellaneous mechanic changes that we will benefit from! Keep your eye on the OP.
Post by
RipperGand
I'm disappointed to find out the Pre-MoP talent tree isn't coming back. I miss being an hybrid of holy and prot. :(
Post by
Lordplatypus
Agreed, even if it was a bit on the "Take 50 mandatory items and then pick with 10 points what's left".
Post by
Arannia
Big update today to the original post to put in some recent blueposts and twitter messages regarding Paladins specifically (as well as some noteworthy general statements that effect the Paladin class in some manner).
___
BLUE POSTS/TWITTER
General
Scaling for all healing and damage spells is now the only source of damage and healing from abilities - no more base damage or base healing. However, base intellect will now
probably
give spellpower as well.
Source 1
Source 2
Mana is likely to be "squished" in a similar way to all other numerical stats in the expansion.
Source 1
Crowd Control
Blizzard says they are removing a whole bunch of redundant CC in the game. I do not believe this will apply to Paladins since we're not heavy on CC although it might mean losing something like Turn Evil at most.
Source 1
Holy
Seal of Faith is designed to offer an alternative method of healing for Holy Paladins, such as Atonement for Priests.
Source 1
Lore
Blood Elf Paladin lore more or less confirmed.
Source 1
Post by
Lordplatypus
Oh look, we're just going to ignore real paladin lore despite already having an entire expansion about blood elves, WE KNOW PLENTY about blood elves, what we need to know is how Paladins from Stormwind and Ironforge differ if they are in one church or not, and how their interact with Draenei Vindicators.
Watch them murder pally burst without giving us anything else to make up for it, while completely ignoring crap like mages having every DR under the sun in their inventory.
Post by
Arannia
To be honest we don't know much about Blood Elves post-TBC (I'm not ignoring some of the lore after it especially in Mists of Pandaria, but it doesn't really answer some fundamental problems with the race, just adds stuff on), the events at the end of TBC were massive and substantial and there's no clear answer on what it is they feed off of still. Are they still required to tap Burning Crystals? Does the Sunwell take care of all that now? Do Blood Knights get their light from the Sunwell or from faith in the Naaru like the Draenei do?
As for Dwarf/Human Paladins, it's been long established that they are the same Church. Dwarves are just more accepted as Paladins in the Church after the Third War.
Their approach to Draenei Vindicators is probably of wary respect. Vindicators approach the Light far differently than Paladins do but nonetheless they'd be recognised as a force of righteousness and mutual love for the Light.
Your whining about pally burst and the nerfing thereof and mages is unsubstantiated, please do not bring that into this thread again. :P
Post by
Lordplatypus
We already know all there is about the blood knights, all the way down to them having their entire plot resolved, we still don't know what new organization subgroup the church has their paladins called, the serious possibility for inter-group dialogue between the paladins and vindicators, and all sorts of plot developments.
Belfs had an entire expac dealing with them (And orcs) already, we don't need more about them.
Post by
Rankkor
Oh look, we're just going to ignore real paladin lore
>_>
So blood elven paladins are not real paladins? get real man. Under that argument one could easily say Draenei shaman are not real shaman.
Blood elves are blessed by the light just like any other race (They already had priests during the first and second war, and the main reason they didn't had paladins was a cultural one, they're still sorta new to the concept of calvary)
despite already having an entire expansion about blood elves
And which expansion was that? Because burning crusade was as much about draenei as it was about blood elves. In fact, the only HORDE blood elf base in the entire outland is on hellfire peninsula and its a small outpost. Contrast to the many many many many ALLIANCE draenei villages and bases, along with their past with the Kurenai, the lore of how they became lost ones, and broken, their induction of shamanism, their role in the cleansing of the sunwell, the fact that it was a prophecy of Velen that led to Mu'ru letting himself be captured by the blood elves, the fact that it was also Velen who purified the sunwell with the help of the reborn Mu'ru.
There was plenty of draenei lore as it was about blood elves, so don't come here saying "entire expansion about them" because the blood elves weren't first row front center (Admittedly, the blood elves did received extra bits of lore in WOTLK, cataclysm, and MoP while the same can't be said about the draenei, but that lore had nothing to do with paladins)
WE KNOW PLENTY about blood elves
We already know all there is about the blood knights
No we don't. What we know is obsolete and outdated lore. Previously blood elves had to steal the light, by tapping into a captured naaru to be able to become paladins, they used to hate the church of holy light going so far as to desecrate their relics as a form of revenge for what they felt was an abandonment on their hour of need. They had a crippling magic addiction, and had sworn loyalty to a corrupted royal line that later on discarded them and betrayed them on a whim (Yes I'm talking about Kael)
But then the ending of TBC came, and there's a lot of questions unanswered. What's their current relationship with the light? what's their current relationship with other paladins? how are they seen by other paladins? how are they seen by other naaru? is the church of holy light recognizing them as fellow paladins who simply follow a different path? or are they branded as heretics? do they still have to steal their powers to have them? do new members simply earn their powers by being righteous and just? Should they choose to, can they still siphon holy magic from someone else? Is such a practice outlawed/restricted/banned/or otherwise regulated?
Don't just say "we know plenty" when there's a lot of unanswered questions about them. Matter of the fact is that blood knights ARE very very VERY different from the typical alliance paladin, of which we know quite a lot considering they've been a part of the lore going all the way back to warcraft 2, and have had numerous books, comics, and other expanded universe material dealing with them and how the light interacts with the humans (and by proxy the dwarves)
what we need to know is how Paladins from Stormwind and Ironforge differ if they are in one church or not, and how their interact with Draenei Vindicators.
This is already known, even in the class description on the menus, the Stormwind and Ironforge branches are one and the same, after the decimation of the Order of the Silver Hand during the third war, they began accepting dwarves into the order, and the church of Holy Light includes members of almost all the races of the alliance minus the night elves and pandaren.
As for their interactions with Vindicators, that's something we're gonna be seeing in WoD considering the HEAVY draenei presence there, and the fact that two of the major protagonists are going to be Vindicators (Maraad and Yrel)
we still don't know what new organization subgroup the church has their paladins called
Yes we do because there is no sub-group, Paladins are simply members of the Silver Hand, which is a part of the Church of Holy Light. Other subgroups are not part of the alliance, such as the Argent Crusade, Scarlet Crusade, Brotherhood of the Light, etc. The one exception is the Hand of Argus which is indeed alliance.
the serious possibility for inter-group dialogue between the paladins and vindicators
Again, expansion is set in Draenor, during the height and pinnacle of Draenei Civilization, with two of the major players in the expansion being Vindicators. This is something that will be explored.
Belfs had an entire expac dealing with them (And orcs) already, we don't need more about them.
What? where in the burning crusade did the orcs had an entire focal point? Yes they had plot development with the integration of the mag'har, but then so did the alliance with the integration of the Sons of Lothar, as well as meeting the actual son of Turalyon, and seeing 3 of the big 5 adventurers who were thought dead on Beyond the Dark Portal (Dannath, Kadghar, and Kurdran)
And as said above, TBC was not blood elf centric. Blood elves were a part of the lore, just as the draenei were. Neither got more exposure than the other.
Your whining about pally burst and the nerfing thereof and mages is unsubstantiated, please do not bring that into this thread again. :P
Aye, there's nothing more non-constructive than basically blaming all the shortcomings of your class (perceived or real) to someone else and cry for nerfs.
Post by
Rankkor
Holy
Seal of Faith is designed to offer an alternative method of healing for Holy Paladins, such as Atonement for Priests.
Source 1
I wish the talent was a bit more useful for the other specs though. In its current iteration, losing 30% damage is too big a hit to be justified by ret or prot.
Of course, I'm fully aware that these are pre-beta (possibly pre-alpha) talents and they will change in some form before going live, but still, Seal of Faith doesn't look too good for non-healers right now, and the post-MoP talent tree is supposed to make each talent universal and equally appealing to all specs, as opposed to pigeonholed and situational for one spec alone.
We'll see how this changes.
Post by
Arannia
If a Ret Paladin can do 40% less DPS (counting the difference missed by Seal of X (forgot the name of our main seal hurr durr)) but can do enough healing to replace a healer on progression content, you're doing maybe 60% of the healing of a main healer but contributing 140%~ of your regular DPS to the raid because you've enabled a healer to respec, or enabled the raid to replace that healer for a DPS. I do believe this is the intent of the talent - an attempt at Blizzard to add an element of hybridization to the Paladin Class. I'm fully in favour of it - Hybridization has been our calling since Day 1 and its about time Blizzard try to do something about it.
Post by
Rankkor
If a Ret Paladin can do 40% less DPS (counting the difference missed by Seal of X (forgot the name of our main seal hurr durr)) but can do enough healing to replace a healer on progression content, you're doing maybe 60% of the healing of a main healer but contributing 140%~ of your regular DPS to the raid because you've enabled a healer to respec, or enabled the raid to replace that healer for a DPS. I do believe this is the intent of the talent - an attempt at Blizzard to add an element of hybridization to the Paladin Class. I'm fully in favour of it - Hybridization has been our calling since Day 1 and its about time Blizzard try to do something about it.
Normally I'd love and embrace this kind of calling, but really, this seal is NOT going to be an effective replacer for an actual healer, specially when working with a small group like 10man. (Admittedly, with the advent of flex, and always Cross-realm content at all times, 10man raids may in fact be coming to an end)
It has a high ramp-up time (You'd need to do significant damage to pump your next healing spell to do healing as "fat" as an actual healer) and then to that you must add the casting time of the heal itself (Of which non-holy pallys have very limited options, Flash of Light and Word of Glory if I remember correctly) and then the incredibly tiny mana pool that doesn't allow you to continually cast heals over and over, at best you can cast 3 and then you're completely dry and need to wait quite a while before you're full again.
All of this restraints will make it flat out impossible for a ret pally in seal of faith to replace a healer, who needs to constantly and uninterruptedly be healing (often in AoE) multiple people at the same time. Can it be useful in a pinch? yeah I guess, but enough to actually replace a healer with another DPS? no way in hell.
As it stands, if it didn't gave you the damage penalty it would still be a subpar choice because it doesn't increases your damage in any way. Normally this wouldn't be a problem if the other lvl 100 talents didn't increased damage either, then you'd just choose utility, but thing is, the other two talents DO increase your damage in one way or another (Basically giving you a 10% attack speed, 10% attack power, or making your Templar Verdict deal its damage as Holy damage, thus bypassing armor), making this a DPS loss. Then you have to factor in that when taking this, not only you don't get the bonus damage, you actually LOSE damage. And finally, factor in the "other" DPS loss (To use this seal you mustn't use Seal of Truth or Seal of Righteousness) and you get yourself a no-no for any non-holy specced paladins.
That's a triple loss of DPS right there (No DPS due to not using your damaging seals, 30% less damage due to using SoF, and no bonuses from the other two talents that do increase your damage)
I'm no theorycrafter, this is all basic conjectures on my side, and I do acknowledge its possible I'm wrong, but that's the impression I currently have of Seal of Faith. Blizzard wishes to add some utility for paladins? there's better ways to do that. lvl 90 talent row for druids comes to mind.
If its pvp we're talking about here, its possible for this to have some uses, but man, your burst is gonna SUCK, 30% less damage, =S that's a huge sacrifice to make. Right now, for non-healers the best I can see a use for this thing is to solo old content, specially as prot, whoa you're definetly gonna have a soloing proficiency of a blood Dk.
Post by
madcowmike
What i don't understand is if they're just shrinking stats and auto changing between str and int, why not just merge the two into something like power, and kill the whole spell power/attack power duality that kills a lot of moves for pally. This seems like an intuitive idea with the way this expansion is headed... Then our crusader strikes would maybe be worth something for the seal of faith talent.
Post by
atomicwolf22
Hmm... I wonder.....
(Ugh to much Hearthstone)
I'm still liking the Light from Within talent for Rets the other with the Change to TV seems ok but I think those to might be flip flopped between depending on two things.
Tier Bonuses
and
How they Scale A.P. and S.P. for Ret.'s
.
Post by
Rankkor
Well, according to
this
tweet, Seal of Faith is not gonna make it live. They like the potential of it but don't feel like its time for it to be implemented (Sorta how Heroic Leap was originally intended to go live in WOTLK but was pushed to cataclysm)
I am curious as to what lvl 100 talent will replace it now.
Post by
H3Knuckles
So if we hit 100 this coming xpac, what's the plan for player progression after this? Alternative advancement schemes rarely seemed to go over well in the other mmo's that tried it.
The Concept of
Glasnost
or "Living Space" is quite literally what Orgrim wanted out of Azeroth.
(bolding mine)
Um... I'm not sure what Gorbachev's policy of openness about the problems facing the USSR in the '80's has to do with the Nazi conquest of eastern Europe*. Perhaps you meant "Lebensraum"?
Edited because of that rule where you can't correct someone in a forum without making a mistake yourself. /emote smack forehead
Post by
Rankkor
So if we hit 100 this coming xpac, what's the plan for player progression after this? Alternative advancement schemes rarely seemed to go over well in the other mmo's that tried it.
As far as I know, there wont be many "alternative" advancement schemes. Instead, its gonna go like this: You hit 100, you then do Normal dungeons for loot (unlike MoP, there's gonna be lvl 100 normal dungeons at max level, only 3 will be for leveling up) and this loot is more than enough to get you inside LFR.
You can then choose to either do LFR to continue progressing on gear, or do Heroic Dungeons which drop gear that is more than sufficient to get you into Normal Mode raids, and then you do Normals so you can do heroics, so you can do mythic.
What I don't get yet is if the 5man heroic gear will be of equal ilvl as the LFR gear. If its ilvl is lower (or if its not purple) I can see pugs not accepting you unless you're fully decked in LFR gear, making this alternate progression pointless. On the other hand, if its ilvl is the same, or higher, then nobody would ever do LFR, since a 5man is shorter, and nowhere near as frustrating when it comes to drops.
So its a hard act to balance.
The Concept of
Glasnost
or "Living Space" is quite literally what Orgrim wanted out of Azeroth.
(bolding mine)
Um... I'm not sure what Gorbachev's policy of openness about the problems facing the USSR in the '80's has to do with the Nazi invasion of Russia in the 40's. Perhaps you meant "Lebensraum"?
Don't bother answering to him, he's been banned (not that it would had made much of a difference, his arguments were......... less than solid. All the time)
Post by
atomicwolf22
Something else that has me wondering is blizzard also said something about bonus loot and bonus quest (the quest being restricted to the giving zone) so I wondering how those will factor into the gearing of toons.
I also like that fact that the gear is set to the armor type and not have pieces of gear that no one in the raid can use which causes it to be d/e or vendor.
I can't wait to the professions panel is released just to see want they have done to all the class professions.
Post by
Adamsm
So if we hit 100 this coming xpac, what's the plan for player progression after this? Alternative advancement schemes rarely seemed to go over well in the other mmo's that tried it.
If you are talking level wise, there isn't anything at all stopping Blizzard from continuing to raise the level cap; that whole 'level 100 final cap' was just a fan wank.
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