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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm: Paladin Changes Preview
MikeB
Community ManagerAdministrator RarePosts: 6,555
The Paladin finally gets his day in the sun, as the Paladin Cataclysm preview is now live. So far, reactions appear to be a bit mixed, though most players are pretty excited for the new Blinding Shield and Guardian of the Ancient Kings (pet summon!). The preview includes information along the same lines as previous class previews, such as new details on level 81-85 spells, new talents (as well as mastery talents), and an assortment of changes to existing talents, abilities, and mechanics.
New Paladin Spells
Blinding Shield (level 81): Causes damage and blinds all nearby targets. This effect might end up only damaging those facing the paladin’s shield, in a manner similar to Eadric the Pure's ability Radiance in Trial of the Champion. The Holy tree will have a talent to increase the damage and critical strike chance, while the Protection tree will have a talent to make this spell instant cast. 2-second base cast time. Requires a shield.
Healing Hands (level 83): Healing Hands is a new healing spell. The paladin radiates heals from him or herself, almost like a Healing Stream Totem. It has a short range, but a long enough duration that the paladin can cast other heals while Healing Hands remains active. 15-second cooldown. 6-second duration.
Guardian of Ancient Kings (level 85): Summons a temporary guardian that looks like a winged creature of light armed with a sword. The visual is similar to that of the Resurrection spell used by the paladin in Warcraft III. The guardian has a different effect depending on the talent spec of the paladin. For Holy paladins, the guardian heals the most wounded ally in the area. For Protection paladins, the guardian absorbs some incoming damage. For Retribution paladins, it damages an enemy, similar to the death knight Gargoyle or the Nibelung staff. 3-minute cooldown. 30-second duration (this might vary depending on which guardian appears).
Next you will find a list of some of the paladin spell and ability changes, followed by our intentions for improving each talent tree for the release of Cataclysm. There will be further changes, but those revealed below should offer some insight into our goals.
Changes to Abilities and Mechanics
Crusader Strike will be a core ability for all paladins, gained at level 1. We think the paladin leveling experience is hurt by not having an instant attack. Retribution will be getting a new talent in its place that either modifies Crusader Strike or replaces it completely.
Cleanse is being rebalanced to work with the new dispel system. It will dispel defensive magic (debuffs on friendly targets), diseases, and poisons.
Blessing of Might will provide the benefit of Wisdom as well. If you have two paladins in your group, one will do Kings on everyone and the other will do Might on everyone. There should be much less need, and ideally no need, to provide specific buffs to specific classes.
Holy Shock will be a core healing spell available to all paladins.
New Talents and Talent Changes
We want to ease off the defensive capabilities of Retribution and Holy paladins slightly. We think the powerful paladin defenses have been one of the things holding Retribution paladins back, especially in Arenas. One change we’re considering is lowering Divine Shield’s duration by a couple of seconds. Having said that, Retribution does pretty well in Battlegrounds, and Battlegrounds will be a much bigger focus in Cataclysm since they can provide the best PvP rewards. Furthermore, the healing environment of Cataclysm is going to be different such that a paladin may not be able to fully heal themselves during the duration of Divine Shield to begin with, so this may not be a problem.
We feel Retribution paladins need one more mechanic which involves some risk of the player pushing the wrong button, making the rotation a bit less forgiving. In addition, we want to add to this spec more PvP utility. Right now the successes of the Retribution paladin in PvP seem to be reduced to either doing decent burst damage, or just being good at staying alive.
We want to increase the duration of Sacred Shield to 30 minutes and keep the limit to one target. The intention is that the paladin can use it on their main healing target. That said, we would like to improve the Holy paladin toolbox and niche so that they don’t feel quite like the obvious choice for tank healing while perceived as a weak group healer.
We want to add to the Holy tree a nice big heal to correspond with Greater Heal. Flash of Light remains the expensive, fast heal and Holy Light is the go-to heal that has average efficiency and throughput. Beacon of Light will be changed to work with Flash of Light. We like the ability, but want paladins to use it intelligently and not be constantly healing for twice as much.
Holy paladins will use spirit as their mana regeneration stat.
Protection paladins need a different rotation between single-target and multi-target tanking. Likewise, we're looking to add the necessity to use an additional cooldown in each rotation.
Holy Shield will no longer have charges. It will be designed to improve block chance while active, and will continue to provide a small amount of damage and threat.
Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses
Holy
Healing
Meditation
Critical Healing Effect
Protection
Damage Reduction
Vengeance
Block Amount
Retribution
Melee Damage
Melee Critical Damage
Holy Damage
Meditation: This is the spirit-to-mana conversion that the priest, druid, and shaman healers also share.
Vengeance: This is the damage-received-to-attack-power conversion that all tanks share.
Critical Healing Effect: When the paladin gets a crit on a heal, it will heal for more.
Block Amount: We want to keep the kit of the paladin as a tank who blocks a lot. So by contrast, the warrior tank will sometimes get critical blocks, but the paladin will absorb more damage with normal blocks.
Holy Damage: Any attack that does Holy damage will have its damage increased.
Read the original preview here.
[Thanks Kost for the tip!]
Comments
lvl 85 ability, kudos Blizzard for making an ability that finally makes sense in the tri-spec world of paladins. Now only if you could apply this to the quad-spec world of druids.
I find it funny they are giving out 3 abilites (that we know of) for each of the classes. And yet some class/specs seem to be getting nothing in the way of new abilities. Spread the love!
"They essentially want to say 'Correlation proves Causation' when it's just not true." - Sovrath
Does this mean it will still take 15 people to bring down a pally in AV? J/K
Seriously i might just lvl mine up the changes dont sound like that huge nerf everyone was talking about.
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
George Washington
Yeah now this is something I can get on baord with...my own personal Angel of Asskick? Hell yes!
Pallies were always OP now they are going to be moreso - welcome to Blizzards version of SOE's NGE and this will be the new Hero class.
My reaction isn't quite so dramatic ... NGE and all.
I'm withholding judgement until I get a sense of how the overall class changes play out. Palis, along with other hybrids, should be the utility infielders of the game and not the dominant classes they've been recently.
Uhh... what?
and you must be new to wow also then ? ^^ Played it 5 years ago, and even back then pally was the 1 man army ^^
Uhh... what?
Ha! That's hillarious Haradeas. Say hello to Cinderella and Snow White for me when you get a chance. Here in the real world, Paladins weren't overpowered until big boosts to Ret with expansions. ProTip: Bubble/Hearth was considered mereley lame, not OP. And if you aren't talking about that, I don't have the faintest clue about what you are referring to.
Pallies were pretty terrible at everything but healing until they got judgement. It was all auto-attack back then.
Might make the game worth checking out at least for a month when the expansion comes out.
Pallies were only OP for about a month right before and after the lich king exp launched. After that they got streamlined down almost every patch. Majority of the people who complain about a pally being op in pvp dont know how to fight one. I've had my pally since before version one and when im faced with another one or on another character. A paladin hardly gets in my way good gear or not. Because I know how to handle them. Part of the problem that plagues pallies is its easy to play them. But its not easy to understand how to beat them. Thats where the QQ and the whiners who didnt bother to research come in.
Also dont think too hard about the pets thier just gimmichs at best they arent game changing. Pretty much the same way Dk's pets are basically ignored stunned or feared away. With the acception of the holy pet healing someone I can see the QQ train pulling up hard on that. The protection pet asorbing wont be that bad and I cant think they let the ret pet do enough damage to kill someone by itself. So trust me on this the 85 spell is just a look we have a new toy spell and very underwhelming.
Nice changes. Curious as to what they're doing about Ret and Crusader Strike.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
since Wotlk paladins and DK have been the most rediculosly easy and OP classes in WoW. this game is just going down and down the drain.
Nonsense. Its only been fairly recently that retribs have started to have more than laughing value in PvP. For years before that, they were anything but OP. The class has always been one of the most suriviable, but its dps was a sad joke. Most of those who are howling about pallies being "OP" either can't play to their classes strengths, and apply those to other classes weaknesses, or are just knee jerk reacting to the usual soft shell hysteria.
And Pallys get even more OP.
Funny how all the other previews have left me with feelings ranging from "That should make the class more challenging" to "Huh that might buff them some"
But when I read this one it was buff after buff. With the only nerfs being to PvP (Something I personally don't care about)
Minor disclaimer I quit playing my pally in the early 70s, it was just so easy I got bored.
You must be new to WoW if you think pallies were a one man army. They were really tough to kill, but it also took them forever to kill anything. I used to agro one or two mobs, alt-tab out of the game and go read the official forums. I'd alt-tab back in 5 or so minutes later to see if I'd killed anyone yet.
Battlegrounds were a joke. Sure, it would take two or three Horde ganged up on me to kill me, but I couldn't kill anyone back. Sometimes, if I was lucky, I'd get them down to a sliver of health, usually only to watch them run away. It was also a favourite pasttime of the Horde to mark pallies as KOS because people like you thought they were overpowered, so my survivability rate in a BG was usually as long as my shield lasted (though it was fun seeing frustrated Hordies wailing on my impenitrable shield.)
Paladins were brough up to snuff when Burning Crusade came out because now Horde could have Paladins too, so Blizz must have thought "screw it, make em powerful now." I was finally able to kill people in BGs when BC came out. It was also fun to own Blood Elf Paladins who hadn't yet figured out how to PvP with the Paladin.
Once the next patch came out,(that is once they received enough profit off WoTLK) they go ahead and give the bat to the class.And this continues untill they end up being unlikeable to play.
Blizzard knows the majority of horde players own a blood elf paladin.Infact probably paladins make up most of the class base in the game!(Im not sure,Im to lazy to check sk gameing).So giving these changes and a new glamorous pet would be like transforming the paladin into the new "hero class" takeing Death knights place in failure.A paladin did kill Arthas after all,so why not?
Even so these changes to this class are probably the most unique I have seen so far.It may change because beta is not out yet,but this makes me want to polish up my paladin from the glass shelf.
Also Arthas was a paladin himself.
I've always, always thought that paladins should have been a hero class.
Paladins have always been over powered. Anyone who disagree's is a Paladin. HAHA!
I don't know about that... a decently geared, skilled healadin can raid heal as well as some priests. I only say that because I've done it - though it does require a certain OCD mentality regarding healing and that plate doesn't hurt. I can take a lot more damage than a clothie can, not to mention the fact that it does kind of make me giggle on the rare occasion when I PvP and some DK death grips me during a city raid or something and tries to one-shot me only to find out that just because I'm healing doesn't mean I drop like a rock.
Edited to add: yes, Pallys can be OP in some situations, but as healers, most Paladins really can't compare to the "true" healing classes. A skilled priest, shammy, or druid can outheal me any day of the week and I am happy to step aside and let them do it.
Firebrand Art
"You are obviously confusing a mature rating with actual maturity." -Asherman
Maybe MMO is not your genre, go play Modern Warfare...or something you can be all twitchy...and rank up all night. This is seriously getting tired. -Ranyr
Want to talk about OP? Talk about deathknights for the first couple of months after WotLK came out. I literally only grouped for same lvl group quests if I was helping other people out. THAT is OP.
ALSO: If memory serves pallies were a hero class in WC3, right? If that is true it would explain why the class has gone in the direction it's gone in the past couple of years.
Blizzard really needs to get in-game and realize that players don't give a damn about anything other than a fast run. And I will be most pissed off if my main ends up like the Shamans of Yester-year; sat*.
*any raider should know what the term means
Oh and "lol" at the people claiming Paladins have 'always' been OP. There's a reason we were called "lolret" and had a trinket-pet that could bubble then hearth.
Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising everytime we fall.
As an ex ret paladin I'd like to say.
Preach it brother! Amen!