f13.net

"With that being said, we do feel that the Paladin is currently capable of producing too much burst damage and are investigating reasonable ways to make minor reductions for the future. " - Eyonix

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=79669544&pageNo=2&sid=1#23

So one of the lowest dps classes in the game is overpowered and should be nerfed, while druids in cat form, rogues and arcane/fire mages can put out insane amounts of damage in a short time (btw. I am not calling for nerfs, just pointing out that paladins are already one of the lowest damage classes in WoW).

I don't know what they are smoking, but gimme some of that.

To add some value to the QQing, is it just my impression or have the developers lost every clue as to what purpose the different classes should have and how to realize that.

They add new stuff to classes and take something old away to balance it (more damage output to druids, more armor, less threat generation to balance it), they then nerf the new feature because it is overpowered (damage output of druids, armor of druids) but don't put the thing in which they had taken out for balance (more threat generation to make tanking possible) leaving the class with less than before.

There are countless examples (mage, low HP to balance high dps potential now partially surpassed by warlocks with pets and much higher HP etc.) where things are nerfed, buffed and nerfed again without any indication that they have any kind of clue or strategy as to why they are doing it.

Somebody want to explain how a Paladin generates "too much burst damage" (been out of the game for too long now)?

A retribution specced paladin has to rely hugely on crit luck because the way seal of command works is just plain broken.

So huge amounts of burts damage (for a given definition of huge) would include the need of the following to happen:

white damage crit, seal of command crit, hammer of justice, Judgement of Command crit, Crusader Strike crit, activation of trinkets and the activation of righteous fury while wearing the equivalent of PvP rank 14 Armour plus 25-man raid epic two-hander.

So only if I blow every cooldown available, have every ability crit and the luck of several passive abilities proccing at the right moment (vengeance) after having spent months pvping and clearing everything up to and including Gruul's lair. So for all intents and purposes, never. Even then with that streak of luck I will only get to around 8000 damage against clothies (supposing they don't kite me and just stand there getting owned) and significantly less against players with serious damage mitigation through armor (because most of the damage above is mitigated by armor) and only if I spec at least 41 Points in retribution (for crusader strike). With PVP mages reaching 10,000 HP and other classes eben above that, this won't one-shot anybody.

A value that I can easily top with my arcane/fire mage that has 1/3rd of the gear and that can easily be topped by other DD classes without requiring that extreme amount of luck or gear.

That statement by the dev is insane.  I went Ret spec with my Paladin for awhile and couldn't take the subadequate DPS and went back to Prot to help my guild in instances.  Who cares that they get a lucky crit once in awhile.  Like you said, it still doesn't compare to my Rogue for instance.  My Rogue crits consistently.  He's at over 20% crit at the moment and that only rises as I get better gear!

I already have a hard time playing my Paladin solo as it is.  If they are going to moderate their DPS even more, bullocks!

You heard me.

I think this is the big nerf patch to undo the benefits that the BC expansion gave everyone.  I don't know details but there's apparently a nerf to priests too that has them all up in arms, in addition to, like it's been said, the druids and the warlocks and other classes.

I came back a couple weeks ago and made the mistake of reading the forums for my priest.  They are mad because since launch priests have tended to be more level-headed and patient than other classes when it comes to nerfs/lack of attention and it has gotten them absolutely nowhere.  Only classes that scream bloody murder get any attention so they are deciding to do just that, it is a rather unpopular class though so there aren't many people to complain.

The last straw seemed to be the current changes on the test server where they have decided to nerf our Vampiric Embrace (after two years now it is suddenly unbalanced), removed an already crappy aggro reduction ability if you dare to have fun playing shadow and destroyed the only new usefull healing spell we got in BC (prayer of mending) solely because it was over powered in 2v2 arena.  We still get groups but only because people wrongly assume we are still the best healers, paladins and resto druids are actually better and have the added benefit of being able to actually take hits.  Thankfully I don't PvP but the priests that do are depressed because since the expansion all of the other classes' dps has spiked but ours doesn't scale up at all, it is also more difficult to heal ourselves.

What is it about reading official forums that makes me unhappy with my class, I mean I was having fun before - now I'm just pissed off.  This always happens, if enough people in the same class as me say we suck I eventually start to believe them.  I'll probably roll a Blood Elf toon, which class would currently be best at soloing, warlocks?

I think this is key.  KEY!!  Never read the WoW forums, and certainly never read the class forums beyond the stickies that give you hints on builds and tactics.

Let me ask you this:  I keep hearing about how people used to raids suddenly are very poor at healing or functioning in small groups.  Is that 100% the case?  I get the feeling that NPC damage has spiked as well in the expansion, to the point that cloth classes are instantly killed if they draw aggro, so that would make healing a lot more difficult overall.  I do remember mentally comparing ZG (when it was gear-appropriate to me) with AQ20 (also), and AQ20 was a lot more difficult to heal for me.

So, is it purely lack of skill, or is it the fact that damage dealt is higher / spikier in the expansion?

The trouble my groups have had at higher level instances has been with mind control, fear, summoned pets, exploding pets, teleporting, AE damage, etc.  The general chaos created has been our healers' downfall more than the higher/spikier damage.  Of course, the higher spikier damage adds to the issue too though.  You'd think some kind of CC would be the answer, but typically these same bosses can't be MC'ed, stunned, poisoned, etc.

I never read the forums.  My experience has been that everytime I go back to play my Paladin for awhile, I don't have fun.  I really do notice the class becoming weaker compared to my other characters over time.  It is still a solid class that adds a whole lot of help to groups in instances and probably PvP, but as an individual class, it is just boring and uninspired.

I don't know, I'm only 57 and don't PvP.  Since the complaints about dps scaling always seems to be related to PvP I doubt it has anything to do with getting used to five man PvE encounters.

That said a lot of the priests are saying that healing through the heroics is quite stressfull (which many like), I imagine that is due to the switch to five mans but it is also because everyone is still gearing up.  It's not really appropriate to compare healing at the start of level 70 to healing people who have been level 60 for two years and have been getting better gear the whole time.

I suppose it depends on what you mean by 'best at soloing'.  If you mean 'can take on the most ridiculous odds alone and win', that's the Paladin.  I'm regularly testing myself against the strongest enemies I can find - defeated King Mukla solo at level 50 yesterday on my Blood Knight, when me and a Druid friend together couldn't take him at level 52 a few weeks back  Also just killed Myzrael and all those little swarming elementals she summons tonight, and dinged 52 off the quest completion.  Paladins are also great at farming, as they can fight lots and lots of mobs at the same time, and they don't have to drink often either, because good use of Seal of Wisdom tends to keep mana flowing mid-battle.  But they don't kill that fast.

As for the burst DPS mentioned above...yeah...ret paladins can get some nice burst dps.  Protection/ret paladins can get some really nice burst dps when Reckoning pops and they get good crits.  And about 1 in 30 times or so, a ret paladin will be able to bust out a series of crits that can obliterate an enemy within the duration of a single Hand of Justice stun.  This makes people whine in pvp.  Every class that ever gets an instant-kill combo gets whined about in pvp.  Never mind that these combos generally require top end equipment (durr..what are we busting our asses for equipment for anyway, when if we get too good, they'll just nerf us?) and often a lot of luck.  Never mind they added in Resilience specifically to counteract massive critical hit strings, they're wanting to nerf paladins because people that don't have enough of the right equipment to pvp in are whining about it.  Seriously, there should be a rule - if you don't have a decent amount of Stamina and Resilience, you don't get to whine about being killed too fast in PvP.

As for priests and vampiric embrace...it becomes a problem because the healing is a percentage of their DPS and as DPS goes up, the healing VE adds gets bigger.  Unfortunately, nerfing the base healing to 15% from 20% isn't going to address the percieved problem, it's going to delay it for a while.  Not to mention it nerfs every priest out there, when again, the 'problem' is with priests with 1200+ or so spell damage that are putting out such huge dps that their vampiric embrace is actually a significant amount of healing.  VE's healing should simply scale down past a certain soft-cap on spell damage, which would address the percieved problem without hurting the 95% of priests who don't have that much spell damage equipment.  Not to mention that again, I don't see how this is a problem in the first place.  If you work hard to get the best equipment, logic suggests you should actually be better for it.  Speaking of scaling and priests, on an unrelated topic...Power Word: Shield becomes more useless the higher level you go, since it shields a fixed amount of damage that does not scale with +Healing gear (or anything at all).

I don't know how you can compare paladins to classes like rogues or mages, paladins are not a dps class and their dps shouldn't come close to either of classes under any circumstance.  Its not the devs who have lost track of what the purpose of each class is, a class that can TANK and HEAL complaining about their sub par dps simply needs to stfu and take their nerf.  Paladin dps wasnt too high compared to rogues or mages or hunters, it was too high for paladins.  Yes, it was, deal with it.  Druids are also taking a huge nerf in their dps, much more so than either palis or priests.

I don't understand how paladins can be good at farming if they kill slowly, that seems at odds.  I'd be interested in making a paladin because they can heal quite well but now that I'm leveling beside so many of them for the first time (I play horde) it looks absolutely painful to level one.  As a priest I'm not exactly the fastest soloer but even I manage to kill two or three mobs while the paladin is still working on their first, I see a lot of Paladins killing stuff in duos so that they can actually have a decent kill rate.

Heh, well, the one situation where how fast you kill doesn't matter that much, but being able to survive (unexpected) adds does, is when your walking algorithms tend to walk you into mobs often, and then your bot needs to deal with that without you having to come back from afk.

Prot-spec pally + good sword + good shield + good shield spike + social, non-ranged mobs = Near-endless PBAOE

Paladins are designed to tank in the middle of a pack of mobs.  I'm more effective with a pack of 3-5 mobs hitting me than I am with just one.

When I am restricted to one at a time--which is what I usually have to do for casters--it turns into a painful and mind-numbing experience.

Be aware that this PvE goodness does *NOT* translate well to PvP, unless the enemy is very stupid.  Or a rogue or warrior.

It's easier to generate Reckoning when more things are hitting you.  Plus what the other folk said.  Shield spike, consecration, retribution aura, all that.

Retribution is the Paladin damage tree. If you invest most of your points in it and gear with your talent spec in mind then you cannot heal or tank worth shit. You go out of mana -very- quickly if you start throwing heals and don't even come close to having enough mitigation to do more then off-tank the occasional single trash mob in non-heroic instances. So yes they should be able to put out good damage because they give up effectiveness in every other area for the ability.

I can clear an area with my Rogue much quicker and safer than with my Paladin.  Yes, it takes more attention and care, but there is no comparison.  If you want a class that can walk into a group of mobs and just start wailing away, then yes, the Paladin will win out.  You just keep cycling through your blessings, judgements, etc. to keep yourself alive.  However, using those skills and talents that keep you alive severely depresses your damage output, so it will take longer.

Hell, if they took the spikes out and made their overall damage more even, but higher than it is now, I'd take that.

I play my Paladin as a tank and backup healer anyway, so it doesn't matter to me.  For Paladins that are trying to PvP, this is death.  Solo PvE is already really bad, so I guess this doesn't affect it much.  When I say "bad," I mean slow.  Yes you can take on elites and huge odds, but it is still mind numbingly slooooooow.

I agree.  When I was Ret specced, I only had mana for damage output.  I would pour all of my mana out during a fight and end it quickly, but only have enough left to pop a heal.  Then I'd sit and drink.  Even with Ret spec you have to use all of your powers/talents available to get your damage up to par with other damage dealers. (Well not even up to par...but in the same league at least.)

I suppose that would be the way a PvP'er would go to get any results, but for the rest of the game, that tree sucks.  I see this nerf as a PvP only demand that the non-PvP crowd is just gonna have to eat.  The only good thing is that those that aren't specced in Ret won't be affected nearly as much.  They weren't relying on crits to begin with.

Warning: N00b statements may follow...

Comments like the above amuse me.  Looking at talent trees, the vast majority of the improvements are between 3-12% of base values.  Even if some of them synergize, and allowing for new spells/powers gained from the tree, being fully spec'd in tree A is maybe a 15-20% improvement in that aspect of your character.  Other aspects are only missing that 15-20%, and since at the high end you generally don't want all the talents in a single tree, you can often get a good 5-10% of the improvements in a second aspect.

So your talent spec has relatively little to do with how well you heal/tank/DPS (for a pally, or a druid for that matter).  I would think that the vast, vast majority of the difference is equipment.  The reason you'll run out of mana if your gear is DPS based is because you don't have the +int to have a big mana pool, not because you're missing the +12% to heal effects talent.  Your tanking ability has suffered because you're all +str/agi with a 2-handed weapon, instead of having a shield like someone who doesn't want to get hit.

In short, equipment >>> talents.  This is what makes me laugh when I see 'oh, you're X-spec, you can't Y!'  Of course I can, I just swap out a few pieces of equipment and I can Y just fine.  Just maybe 10-15% worse than someone who is fully spec'd as Y... and short of raids or Heroic instances, that's usually Just Fine.

--
Alkiera

This is so very wrong. Talent spec has a LOT to do with how well you can heal or tank. I would say its about 50/50 spec and gear. Yes, a ret pally can heal well if he is in all healing gear, but not close to what a holy pally can do. Same for a druid tanking or healing. They can do it, but watching a resto druid try and tank a heroic or a ret pally try and heal one is painful.

I did mention gear in my original post but for a Paladin Retribution is a large damage upgrade. Seal of Command and Crusader Strike provide about 13 or so extra attacks a minute that bypass mitigation. And when you are using a huge two-hander thats at least half if not more of your damage output.

The best part about the paladin nerfs?  Griefing your own side.

The 1-minute post-bubble effect cuts all your DPS output by 15% on test.  Use it to fuck with people in your group/raid/battleground who won't stop annoying you by casting it on them every chance you get.  Fun times!

"No, I'm not healing you, and if you don't STFU about it I'm bubbling your whiny bitch ass!"

That isn't going live. Linkie. (http://blue.cardplace.com/newcache/us/79204886.htm)

Look, paladins were generally fine because they were fucking hard to kill but didn't do as much damage. Now a paladin is fucking hard to kill and kills me quickly. That is why there is a problem. If that is due to one spec, well, nerf that one spec. Great. I don't know much about pallies (mine is level 8 ) but I fight them a lot.

So I'm looking at the pally Holy talent tree, stuff that affects healing ability.  We have:
1) a 10% bonus to Int(more mana)
2) 70% chance to not lose cast time on damage (shouldn't be getting hit, but eh.
3) 12% bonus to amount healed
4) Lay hands timer decrease (I forget what the full timer is, but it's long if they're taking 20 mins off it)
5) Blessing of Wisdom upgrade (more mana regen)
6) Total +11% chance to crit-heal?  (not sure that's right)
7) -.5 second off heal cast time on 2nd and later heals when chain healing.
8) bonus of 35% of Int to heal spells.

All that seems to boil down to +10% mana/mana regen,
Lower likelyhood of being interrupted when casting heals,
and a 12%+35% of Int added to heals, and a 20% casting haste on 2nd and later heals when chaining.
lvl 70 pally healing spell is ~2300 hp healed... +12% is ~276, 300 Int gives another +105.
So your talents are adding 381 hp healed to the biggest best heal you have...  From what I'm hearing of +dmg/heal gear in TBC, 380 is not too hard to get, but maybe that's only for cloth casters.

It's 40 points in Holy to get that benefit, when for 13 points you can get everything except the +105(from +35% of int) and the -.5 sec from consecutive heals.  You can get that and still be 41 pts into another tree.  Admittedly, I dunno how often you end up chain-healing at the high end, 20% less cast time might be a big benefit.  Just the +heal is close to the 20% bonus I claimed.  So maybe it's 25% better all told.  On the other hand, some of that is gear-dependant... if you're in a relatively low-int set, you're not gonna get the same beenfits from those high-end talents.  Whereas the good +int/+heal gear will work no matter what your spec, and a mere dip into Holy will get you a large chunk of the benefit.

Even at 25%, I still don't consider that a big deal outside of the very top end raids/instances, which I don't have much interest in anyway.  Getting to the top end as retribution or protection and switching to Holy will make you somewhat better at healing, but I posit that if you haven't got the gear to be a healer, or haven't practiced healing on the way up, you'll be a crappy healer.  Player Skill > Gear > Talents.  Just switching your spec isn't gonna make that big a deal.

--
Alkiera

You can still tank and heal tons better than a rogue or mage.  Your dps should not come close to the classes that can only do one thing, even if you spec for it.

In your talent assessment, you didn't mention Illumination and Divine Favor. Those two talents ARE the reason holy pallies heal as good as they do [or rather, how they can keep going basically forever]. If you stack int and spellcrit, you'll have absolutely insane mana regen.
If you have the 70% interruption talent, you can stack it with concentration aura to make your heals uninterruptable by normal damage. So yeah, it's not really noticable in pve (though there are plenty of aoe attacks being thrown around), but without it you might as well forget healing in pvp.
Holy Shock gives holy paladins a ranged attack, something other builds lack [well prot gets avenger's shield at 41, but that's an aoe and has a casting time]. It can also work as an emergency heal.

Edit: otoh, it's quite true that the "best" and most versatile talents are very often near the top of the tree. This is true of almost all classes I can think of actually... Tactical Mastery for warriors, Inner Focus for priests, the crit% talents for rogues and warriors, etc etc. As you progress down the trees, you become extremely efficient at one aspect of the class, which is I guess the intended purpose (even though some 21 pointer talents are stronger than 41 pointers in other trees... kek). As a mage you could spec 50+ into arcane and focus completely on arcane-based damage, or put some into fire for crazy burst damage in pvp. Both are arcane-heavy builds, but play completely differently... anyway, this is a derail so I'll stop now. :P


-- Z.

I think this is the very definition of TheoryCraft.  I mean, how do you quantify 25% "better" in real world (so to speak) terms? This is why balance is HARD.  Not only do you have percents and time and +this and -that to worry about, you have to care about the interaction between multiple abilities and the general feel of the class.

One thing I was surprised by when I started playing WoW is how the talents all seemed so incremental.  I mean, +5% to (say) power word:shield? Who cares?  Where's the one WTFPWN talent to rule them all?  I never found it, but it turns out that all these little percents and plusses here and there, if you apply them in a synergistic way (which is why we have canned builds), end up being really powerful versus the baseline.

If you don't beleive me, unlearn all your talents and then go try to play :)

Totally agree Jayce. At first I always thought wow, 3% here, and ohhhh look, 10% there. Would be no biggie, but those % really make a build different.

I also agree; you can see this in EVE, where the skills and modules also add only 5% but you end up with 200% bonuses when you put them all together.  Perhaps WoW doesn't go as far as EVE does, but I've seen threshold abilities, like spells becoming insta-cast, or that .5s reduction in the casting time for heals allowing you to beat druids to the punch, which pretty much forces them to abort most of their heals and thus become secondary healers whenever a priest is on the same tank as them.

On the other hand, though, I would never use the phrase "can't do X worth shit", or qualifiers like "huge improvement."

I guess I can see that.  Especially the threashold abilities, things like the talent that makes Warlock Corruption an instant, or for pallies, lets you use an aura to make your heals immune to interruption.  Or stuff like Ice Block or Pyroblast for mages, spells you just woulldn't have without the talents.

The other stuff, +2% per talent kinda things, I have a harder time seeing making a big difference.  Then again, a lot of these games is min/maxing, and a few % one way or the other can be just what is needed.


This is mostly what my post was about.  I read those kind of statements and wonder if it's true, or just hyperbole?  I mean, stuff like 'Feral druids can't heal worth crap' is obviously false.  They have the same heal spells a Resto druid does, they just aren't as fast or efficient or effective.  They aren't as good as a priest, duh, but they aren't supposed to be as good as a priest even when spec'd to Restoration, at least when it comes down to really tough healing situations.  Anyone with 'healing' as part of the class description can manage in a random 5-man if they have half a clue.  Priest, pally, shaman, druid.  It's only for the over-difficult tasks where everyone is forced to be an uber-specialist that the extra few % improvements from talents really come into play, and I don't find those events to be nearly as interesting as those allowing for more generalized characters.

I play a druid for this reason, I want the variability.  I wanna start the run doing DPS, shift to helping offtank a bad pull, and then shift again to heal when the normal healer is out of mana.  That is way more fun, to me, than repeatedly mashing assist and then the 'OMG FIREBALL O DOOM' key.  It's also not very compatible with raids, but oh well.

--
Alkiera

As a warrior, gear will always be first, but spec plays a much bigger part now than it ever did before. Perhaps paladins are different in this respect, but I know for certain druids, warlocks, hunters, and priests vary widely on spec.

Burst DPS != Sustained DPS.

Thus, "OMG NERF DPS HOW? WE HAVE CRAPPY SUSTAINED DPS!!!" is a silly argument to make.

Also, shadow priests are currently NUTS and need the VE and threat nerf.

The burst DPS my level 61 paladin can do with all new Outland greens is less than an average autoattack hit from my level 47 warrior. Granted, I'm 42 points in Protection, but even when I was Retribution spec just before BC, my burst DPS was still less than any of my other's characters that were 13-20 levels lower. But really, the point was that to get any serious DPS you need to go 41 points into Retribution, and even then you're hitting like a level 50 warrior's autoattack unless you flawlessly hit the right abilities in the right order, and get crits on all of them. And what most people are trying to say is that 41 points deep into a tree should at least get you to "mediocre" level on a regular basis.

Same reason I like my shaman so much.  Bash away with my hammer, drop a frost shock on whatever is beating on the mage, take over healing when the priest runs out of mana, and keep my strength and windfury totems down so the warrior and rogue can tear shit up.  The variety prevents one from getting too bored.  Dumped my first 15 points into Resto for max Healing Focus, and the rest are going into Enhance.

One key to the +% talents, particularly for spells and heals, is where they stack with +damage/healing items.  Take the +12% to heals for a paladin.  Is that +12% to base heals or +12% to heals after +healing items?  If it's after +healing items, +12% to a paladin with 800 +healing is considerably more than to a paladin with no +healing.  I can't really recall where it comes in on that particular talent, but that can make or break a talent in its usefulness.  +% multiplied on top of your +damage/healing gear?  Awesome.  +% before your damage/healing gear?  Sucks.  How they interact with crits is also important.

So yes, 10% of a small number is a very small number, the thing to look at is how the talent interacts with the other things that make the number bigger.

I love my boomkin druid and I pray they don't nerf him.  Last shadow labs run I was on was with people who had never instanced with a balance druid (they are so very rare, EVERY other druid I've met on my side in BC was in feral gear, I've seen like two alli balance druids) and they were all amazed how I could lead in damage.  I could wait 3-4 sunders on some very high hp mobs and still get aggro by the end.  And since all my +dmg gear is also +heal, I've successfully PUG healed all the non-70 instances (haven't had to try healing 70 instances yet). 

This is what I eventually want to do, something like a 34/0/27 build for moonkin and some healing talents, a fair bit of mana regen through spellcasting.

--
Alkiera

Right or wrong  - all I have to say is - you guys have not seen anything yet.

When horde paladins start showing up in numbers in pvp - alliance will drive further nerfs to the class.

For solo activities - I find the paladin far superior to the warrior.  But of course that is solo - not a grouping activity with a healer.  I was laughing yesterday when my paladin at level 60 - with shit green non BC gear - fought a level 66 mob to get skill ups (for kicks).  I lasted a long time - unable to kill the beast - I eventually just ran away.  Solo, there is just no way I could do that with a warrior.

Put on the retibution aura - and fight 2-3 even con mobs at the same time.  Man, you cannot do that solo with a warrior.  But a warrior is a specialized grouping character - so I can accept that.  I just cannot get over the power of a paladin.  Right or wrong - I am quite confident we have only seen the beginning of nerfs to this class.

2-3?  I usually go for 5 if I can get them.   It's a slow drain on mana/hp until the first couple die, but then the other three replenish it all and it's time for another batch. 

Or I just have a constant running battle of 3-4, once one dies I drag the fight around until I get an add.

If I weren't using a shitty green axe, I might pull more.

PvP?  I can kill a rogue 5 levels higher than me, but casters even a couple levels below me give me fits.  I'm hoping the 41-point shield toss will help a little bit when I get it, but I won't hold my breath.

And then you met a priest / mage / warlock and got completely obliterated. Not to mention that shadowpriests / warlocks / hunters can solo a +6 mob if they want, it just takes a while and the right gear/talents, and they do it a heck of a lot faster and safer than a paladin. :P My warlock can also kill 3-4 mobs at a time faster than a pally, with zero downtime. When my warrior was leveling, I saw a [well-geared, was using a lv53 blue BOE 2-hander at 54] paladin grinding next to me -- in the time I killed two mobs, he still didn't kill one. So I had to bandage once, big deal.

I like fighting paladins. They try so hard to hurt me, then they bubble, and invariably die. And yes, I've fought plenty of paladins as alliance.. a lot of them in the arenas and quite a few BE paladins in the world. 2-paladin teams are nothing compared to, say, two undead frost mages. I'm just not afraid of them, whether I'm on my warlock or warrior. [unless they severely outgear me]


-- Z.

Well that's a different issue - I don't fear Pallys in pvp either - they suck.  Usually because most paladins are trying to do "damage" rather than heal their team mates - which they are ideally suited for in pvp given there is almost no crowd control compared to PVE.   Maybe Horde paladins will be prove to be wiser and more effective players.  Anyway, my point about pally's is about them as a melee class in PVE - ranged combatants I agree are more dangerous.

A paladin that actually heals in pvp is a real threat - but fortunately - nobody seems to play that way  :lol:

Looking at the patch notes, it doesn't look like they are putting in the most severe nerfs that testers were warning about.

Warriors got much love.  Pallys and Feral Druids got nerfed pretty harshly.  I expected Feral Druids...still not sure about Pallys outside of PvP I guess.

I agree with what has been said about Pally's.  They are powerful.  If they are played right (as a healer) even more so in a group.  I've never really suggested otherwise.  However, with the pitiful dps things are just very slow and I have a hard time getting interested in playing my Pally again.

That said, I could never get interested at all in a Warrior for the same reasons stated.  Solo play for them just plain bites.

- lots of down time for healing
- equipment slaves
- highest equipment repair bills
- slaves to potions/food/etc. to get as much of an edge as possible.

I do have to hand it to the ones that do well and make it to the highest levels.  They are a boon to their guilds and massively helpful for instance runs.  There certainly is a price to be paid to be the "hero" of a group, which is what they end up being (in my eyes anyway.)

They make it painfully clear that they want the paladin to be a healbot and not a hybrid.  Glad I'm a shaman now.

It seems like you should always play two completely different classes in WoW at the same time so that you can roll with the frustrating pendulum of Nerf - Buff - Nerf - Buff.

Don't get too complacent about shamans. Windfury is on the chopping block again. Kiss those sweet offhand windfury proc strings goodbye.

Sure, it's an exploit, sorta/kinda. But with the stealth nerf to windfury cooldowns (3 sec cooldown now), the offhand downgrade was a great workaround. Except now we're not supposed to actually do that sort of damage (like enhance can do anything else? Come on!). I wouldn't have any problem with this if they'd tone down the 3 second cooldown. After this crap goes live, it's going to be hard as hell finding weapons that actually do give you your 20% WF proc rate.

WF is such a clusterfuck right now. Blizz needs to get their heads out and get this thing right. Or at least update the tooltips so you know what is REALLY going on with WF.

They can nerf dual-wield all they want, since I've decided to stubbornly stick to two-handers forever.

That's splendid, but some of us enjoy our akimbo style and it works great for generating flurry and unleashed rage.  Dunno really how much a general WF correction like this would affect my overall DPS.  I seemed to do OK even when I wasn't staggering my WF, but if an offhand WF proc is going to trigger a 3 sec global cooldown... might need to experiment with replacing it with something else.

I just really don't want to pay for the goddamn respec.  And I don't really see why this would need nerfing, unless somehow shaman are doing just unreal DPS in a the raid situation (which I no longer have a sense of).  Enhance seems like it's going to be a joke in PVP at 70 (haven't PVP'd since hitting 70, but I don't see how I'm bursty enough to chew through 8-10k+ HP before getting CC'd or beat down).

I don't think Shrike meant a global CD, but a "Windfury can only proc once every 3 seconds" type thing.

That's what I meant also.  My terminology can get muddled at times.

I run a shadowpriest, a demonology warlock, and a protection paly.

Priest:  Best single-kill speed, absolute worst at multi-pulls (although if one is mind-controllable, it's usually tolerable).  Some downtime depending on # of mobs in a pull.  Eats paladins for lunch in PvP, and it's amazing how many are stupid enough to attack her.  Gets her shit handed to her by rogues and warriors.

Paladin:  Best at multi-pulls, and pulling enough makes it comparable to other class single-target killing speed.  Painfully slow at single-target.  No downtime, unless I'm tanking without a healer in an instance.  I've managed to kill priests with him, but it's uncommon.  When jumped by a melee during a fight with a mob, usually takes the time to finish the mob and *then* kill the rogue/warrior.

Warlock:  Falls somewhere between.  Good at both single and multiple, but not as good as either of the two others in their respective areas.  No downtime.  This one's on a PvE server, and I never bother to PvP with it.

The warlock is a good balance between the other two characters, but I find myself playing the priest or paladin far more.

(http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e121/GrimDysart/32.jpg)

I just watched that last night.  That picture would have been more relevant if the enhance shammy was one of the random guys sent through a wall or maybe the gay tailor.

Nerf Teras Kasi.

Hey, he had his hand held open like there should be a bat in it.  /shrug

I actually purchased the DVD of that.  Absolutely hilarious.  Insane gangleaders doing showtunes with handaxes ftw.

--
Alkiera

Then your not playing your paladin right.  I leveled mine from 60 to 70 within a span of two weeks.  I might have died maybe 5 times while doing quests made for two or three people.  I am not sure what the devs are referring to about burst damage, but I can tell you this I loaded up on + spell damage/healing gear and just annihilated swaths of mobs with my paladin spells.  So far, the paladin has been by far the easiest class to level to 70. 

My wife's been annoyed -- she misplaced our copy of it, and has been wanting to watch it for a few weeks now. It's a fun film -- we have Shaolin Soccer, which my kid absolutely loves.

How many classes have you leveled to 70?

I might have levelled my paladin higher than 61, if not for the fact that the slow-playing boredom made me literally want to go to sleep...


It was alright when my Pally was my first character I levelled up, since I didn't know any better. Having now levelled a Mage and Rogue, I just can't take the excruciating slowness..