Fear fear and more fear

Why in arenas (and pvp in general) is fear so vital for success more often than not especially when it's an AoE fear effect. Blizzard seems to want to make counters for such things (mass dispel for divine shield, cyclone....oh wait) and yet fear has no guaranteed counter outside of some classes' trinkets. Why is it that paladins, a mighty beacon of hope and light, are being feared all over and can not help their allies resist fear on any meaningful level? Where is the counter to mass fear?!

Blessings

5 minute blessings have their place, mostly for pvp. Greater blessings also have their place, mostly for PvE. But what if in PvE there is a class that is doing separate roles and requires separate blessings? A druid tanking and a druid healing for instance, the tanking druid would need Kings or Light (maybe Sanctuary) while the healing druid would need Wisdom or Salvation. The problem is the only way to currently do this is to apply 5 min blessings to each player, which just isn't long enough for a lot of encounters.

We need a 3rd blessing type and my suggestion is as follows:

• 5 min blessing (stays exactly the same as it is now)
• 15 min blessing (no reagent cost same mana cost as current greater blessing but only effects a single target, not the class)
• 20-30 min blessing (a raised mana cost from current greater blessing and the same reagent cost)

Now this 3rd blessing could be another spell entirely or could maybe be activated by shift-clicking the greater blessing spell. Either way, something needs to be done to allow for unique and long-lasting blessings among the same class.

One final subject that has bothered me for a long time is how the short duration blessings (BoP, BoF, BoSac) overwrite the longer ones, how annoying this can be in raids when you have to BoP someone to save their life and then leaving them without their greater blessing. I propose renaming those short duration blessings to Virtues or something similar and placing them on their own system separate from blessings, seals, and auras. This way paladins can toss out the short duration buffs without regret of having to rebuff the main buff afterwards.

Priests rerolling Paladins

Another oddity I'm running into more often than not is priests rerolling paladins to main heal. *Blink* Priests are supposed to be the master healing class right? How did the class with 2 heal spells (LoH and Holy Shock don't count) become the game's best healer? Now you are more likely to bring a priest to raids for dps and utility rather than heal. Now paladins are the thing I never wanted to be: weak and helpless if attacked 1v1. Yes we can survive a while if we can dodge spell interrupts but the enemy is almost never in danger of dying if they don't choose to fight and even then our damage is so low that they might die of boredom before anything.

Meanwhile priests are very dangerous because of the damage that can put out, and their utility they bring is also desired yet a retribution paladin has no such luxury on either account. I'm just hoping that Blizzard will understand the logical errors behind the current game class structure.

Cloth wearing master healer brought for damage and utility.
Plate wearing hybrid with a massive two-handed weapon and an assortment of buffs brought for main healing and virtually no utility.

*blink*

Blood Elves rant

Recently it's occurred to me that many of the Blood Elf paladins that I'm fighting in battlegrounds or arenas are merely just horde that have rerolled an alt for their guild to abuse the functions of the class like a tool. Now most likely this is for PvE purposes and it kind of sickens me to know that that is what paladins have become (at least to the horde). When they look at us they see blessings, healing, cleanse, and the "bubble". People with no knowledge of where the class was or what it's gone through nor any appreciation, because after all who can respect a heal bot? They probably don't even respect themselves, now that I think about it.

Granted there are some that were alliance paladins who switched sides and others who spec protection to tank, both of which I can respect. However it just seems all I run into are Blood Elf paladins who play like an open book.

The Retribution problem

We are the tank/healer class according to Blizzard PR yet the question always remains on my mind after hearing this: what is the retribution tree for then? If we aren't supposed to be able to specialize for damage (like every other class in the game) then why have a teaser of a tree available to increase our already last place damage? I began to think about it longer and came to the conclusion that the only way to fix the problem is to refocus the tree and rather than boosting our own damage we punish our enemies, causing their own damage to go down drastically. Additionally, considering we have a lot of buffs to make our groups and raids stronger the tree should also house new abilities to boost their damage. By doing these things the tree has a clear focus that doesn't conflict with the tank/healer label and also doesn't raise our own damage higher than designed and most importantly lets the retribution paladin get back in melee for a very good reason.

When looking through the retribution tree I can see that there are some debuff talents that fit with the theme I just mentioned. Namely Vindication and Sanctified Crusader, both of which do what they need to do for their placement in the tree but the tree needs more talents along this line. While playing in Outland I came across NPCs that had a spellbreaker debuff that drastically reduced my spell damage and other units that had a debilitating strike that drastically lowered my physical damage. Both of these abilities would be worthy candidates as retribution talents. Think of it: the ability to lower your opponents damage output whether it be magic or physical, therefore doing your job of guardian and protecting your group, not by heals but by your own weapon.

I think that Blizzard might have already solved the problem that retribution is dealing with currently and don't even know it yet. Retribution doesn't mean mega damage but rather punishment, what better punishment than having hot head damage classes taken down a few pegs? Or hard hitting bosses hitting for less on your MT? Raid and PvP viability achieved while giving the option for paladins that yearn to get back into melee in raids.

Then and now

Having played this class since the very beginning I sometimes look back on it and wonder has much actually changed? Yes there are new talents and abilities of varying degrees of usefulness but at the core of it all we're more or less the same class as we've always been in terms of a group setting with some incremental improvements to our solo play.

Rewind a bit to the Molten Core days and how most paladins were a bit taken back that they couldn't melee like they had been doing up to that point in a group setting, their gear being Lightforge at best (still a hybrid set with an assortment of helpful stats for meleeing and spot healing) they weren't the best equipped to be healing but being in melee was too much of a liability. That was a substantial shock to the community and the fault really lies with Blizzard's encounter and dungeon team. This realization spawned the trend of min/max raiding in WoW. A quote that's been passed around for a while "if you have a heal spell you will heal" began to surface and make sense to raid leaders.

During this transition from meleeing first healing second to healing first and waiting to heal again second, the gear began to change as well. I know that both Lawbringer and Judgement sets underwent at least two separate revisions both for individual pieces as well as set bonuses. Crit and other melee stats were replaced or diminished by more intellect and healing bonuses to better fit the new paladin Blizzard was molding (some would title this reference the cleric but I'll refrain from such naming conventions here).

Fast forward a bit to Blackwing Lair and Ahn'Qiraj and the paladin has drastically embraced the role of healer and nothing else in instances (some would further comment that even in PvP this applied since a paladin doing damage was not optimal for victory the majority of the time). Strangely both Judgement and Avenger's weren't quite the healing set to the joy of some and distress of others. It is here where a rift formed between those still clinging to how the class once was and those fully accepting where the class is headed. This conflict still rages today.

The decisions made in the armor sets in addition to the paladin review that introduced some interesting (while short lived) talent specializations gave some hope that there would finally at long last be some of the old brought back.

Enter Naxxramas. The tiered armor set here for paladins was so amazingly one-dimensional it made many players sick. Blizzard had essentially created the ultimate healing set for the class and once again, just so we wouldn't forget, restated what we are: healers. The poor protection paladins (if there were any) and struggling retribution paladins were for the most part forced to take warrior items for their specialization.

Present day Burning Crusade offers another avenue for paladins and that being the tank role. The gear is there the talents/abilities are there (both need tweaking) and it's the best it has ever been for that group of paladins. Although we face stiff competition from warriors and feral druids Blizzard has recently stated that they "aren't happy with the current state of paladin tanking" and want all three classes to be on the same level. This is good news but I wouldn't hold my breath considering the track the class has been running on over the last few years.

Finally one of the biggest topics of discussion among the paladin community is the viability of the retribution tree and how it fits in with the tank/healer hybrid Blizzard has labeled us as. It seems that it can't possibly fit at all in its current form, which is a very big problem for Blizzard that will have to be addressed. The root of the problem lies with a class that is designed to have the lowest damage output (which is still too high according to Blizzard posters) while still having a tree devoted to boosting damage a small amount while sacrificing durability and healing power that the other two trees offer. Specializing retribution now just isn't attractive at all compared to the alternatives. How they should go about fixing the logical problems of having a damage tree for a class that isn't supposed to be focusing on dealing damage is not an easy endeavor, but I will post my thoughts on it next time.

Introductions

I often tell people why I made a paladin and what better way to start this publication than to begin with that story. I played in both stress tests for World of Warcraft and also in the open beta so I have some insight to the history of this class. During that time I decided that I wanted to create a character that was tough, durable, and could solo a lot of content (I didn't know anyone who played the game and didn't want to rely on others to have my fun--despite this turning out to be inevitable).

With that I began looking at the different classes at my selection and decided that a healing class seemed logical if I wanted to be able to solo effectively. That narrowed it to priest, shaman, paladin, and druid. Shaman I immediately marked off since I wanted to play alliance (I enjoyed their story from Warcraft III and specifically the humans). Next off the list was the priest, being the "master healer" class I figured that was all they'd be good for (not knowing much about their shadow tree at all--in fact paladins didn't even have talent trees until very late beta or live I can't recall) and I wanted more versatility. So now it came down to druid or paladin, I thought about it for a few days prior to the release and came to the conclusion that druids seemed like they could do pretty much anything and survive it however I just liked the image of a knight in plate armor too much to ignore and the ability to use many kinds of weapons appealed to me.

So with that I made my decision and have stuck with it all the way--for better or worse I've tanked it.