FEEDBACK: Paladin Class Changes
Kaivax
3 years ago
FEEDBACK: Paladin Class Changes

UPDATED April 9

In this thread, we’re discussing Paladin class changes coming in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands.

Read more about initial class changes in the World of Warcraft blog.

This initial post will be updated periodically throughout the Shadowlands test. Please check back here for information about further updates to this class as they are made.

Thank you for your testing and feedback!

Sigma
3 years ago
FEEDBACK: Paladin Class Changes

Word of Glory was buffed recently on alpha, in particular for Holy.

Some people have seen, but, a few things not clear on Blessing of the Seasons from tooltips alone: the party is only in one Season at a time (whichever you’ve cast most recently). So you are not simply pressing a button every 15 seconds to maintain 4 buffs. You can let each season last anywhere from 15-60s. Assuming you have a favored buff based on role/context, that you want to keep for 60s, it’s more like 4 presses every 2 minutes, but you might vary that based on planning ahead to have certain buffs at certain times.

Ashen Hallow was pretty recently iterated upon, and its tuning might be pretty far off. Increasing value or reducing cooldown could both be options there, although increasing value might be preferable because the visual is so enormous. Also, a long cooldown is better contrast to the other Paladin options.

Seraphim + Inquisition is uncomfortable, we agree. Candidly, one reason it’s hard to address is that there’s probably a split among people thinking one or the other would be cooler to keep. Open problem for now.

Shield of the Righteous: This is an example (with respect to Ret and Holy) of something there hasn’t been much of in the past two expansions or so. A button mainly intended for another spec, that is given to the class while leveling, that you don’t have a strictly clear max-level use for. You certainly can use it, and one can imagine situations where you would. But if you don’t, or don’t put it on your bar, that’s fine. Our current thinking is that instead of taking it away when you choose your specialization, we can just … not. We are discussing the UI that lights up buttons you don’t have on your bar, for cases like this.

Sigma
3 years ago
FEEDBACK: Paladin Class Changes

Some changes in an upcoming build:

Protection: Holy Power generation rearranged somewhat. Hammer of the Righteous is on a shorter recharge again, and Avenger’s Shield has a new effect whereby it generates an additional HP the first time it hits a given target (i.e. on the pull), but Judgment no longer generates.

The Protection rotation had gotten a little bit emptier with the longer recharge on Hammer, and this puts it back closer to BFA. Also, one particular time when Prot really wants Holy Power is the moment of engagement with a large group (but in a way that doesn’t flood the rotation in longer combats). Avenger’s shield will now conveniently start you with some HP when pulling packs of multiple enemies. Finally, with all this added Holy Power, we had to pull some back out of the rotation, and chose to do that on Judgment, since it currently serves a separate important purpose with the Shining Light mechanic.

A few ancillary changes to this are increasing the duration of Redoubt, and making Sanctified Wrath generate 2 HP (so Judgment still gives 2 in total while it is active).

Blessing of the Seasons: Keeping this short for now, since we are considering further updates to this in subsequent weeks that make this change obsolete. But in this week’s build, the Seasons will be in sync for all Paladins within a party, and their effects are stronger if there are multiple Paladins in the party.

Sigma
3 years ago
FEEDBACK: Paladin Class Changes

In an upcoming build, Blessing of the Seasons is reworked to be a single-target buff, instead of being party-based. This is both more in keeping with modern abilities called “Blessings”, and also avoids a lot of balance-related problems that people were seeing on alpha. For example, the damaging Blessings will now be more effective when used solo, not only in group play. All four of the effects have their values increased to go along with this change (caveat that tuning is still quite preliminary). The changes mentioned last week—where multiple Paladins in a group are locked together, and give a hidden increase in strength to the Blessings—are no longer necessary and are reverted.

Sigma
3 years ago
FEEDBACK: Paladin Class Changes

The most prominent changes in an upcoming build will be two new talents for Retribution.

–A redesigned Execution Sentence brings back the iconic falling hammer, and delayed burst of large damage, on a 1 min cooldown.
–As discussed previously, Inquisition was slated for replacement, due to having its role largely supplanted by the classwide talent Seraphim. Look on row 50 for an entirely new active damage talent, Final Reckoning.

More minor changes:
–Ashen Hallow slightly reworked to be more normal AoE damage, as well as providing a stronger buff to Hammer of Wrath.
–Healing Hands (Ret) redesigned to buff both Lay on Hands and Word of Glory, and to have it effect scale continuously with target health rather than having a cliff.
–Bestow Faith (Holy) generates 1 Holy Power
–Light’s Hammer (Holy) healing substantially increased

Sigma
3 years ago
FEEDBACK: Paladin Class Changes

The second number in Healing Hands’s tooltip should read 200%. I believe it should be working correctly other than the tooltip.

Sigma
3 years ago
FEEDBACK: Paladin Class Changes

Catching up on a few things on Protection:
–Reverted the Holy Power changes from the July 8 update. All things considered, the attempt to rearrange where Protection Holy Power comes from wasn’t enough of a win, given the general sense that Judgment feels a lot better when it generates. Total Holy Power generation should also be higher again in this build as a result.
–Moved some mitigation from Shield of the Righteous to Consecration. This improves mitigation outside of Shield of the Righteous and makes damage less swingy.
–Replaced Shining Light with Bastion of Glory (similar mechanic that existed in Warlords–Shield of the Righteous gives a stacking self-healing increase to Word of Glory). The role of the passive is the same–give Word of Glory a rotational cadence that gives it a clearly “better” time to use.

Sigma
3 years ago
FEEDBACK: Paladin Class Changes

Divine Toll, when cast on a friendly target, should be behaving like a typical smart heal (as of today). It can heal anything, but will favor injured targets, and player targets.

Sigma
3 years ago
FEEDBACK: Paladin Class Changes

Stopping in for two quick notes:

–Legendary “Shadowbreaker, Dawn of the Sun” redesigned in the next build. The new design will work with both Light of Dawn and Word of Glory—we wanted to avoid a situation where two Holy-specific legendaries only buffed Light of Dawn.

–Shining Light (Protection) duration extended. In general, “your next [ability]” buffs should be long enough that the time pressure to consume the buff isn’t too stressful.

Currently Ranked: Fluff