Response to "Q&A Series: Paladin"

About an hour ago (starting this post), Bornakk posted a list of questions and answers in the Paladin forums. After reading it, I think I'd like to take the time to give some commentary and talk on some concerns that have been alleviated, and created, by various answers. I will not be responding to every piece of the post, however, as not everything requires a response, and I don't want to waste time with a dozen responses that are all a variation of "cool".

Q. Do we feel Flash of Light and the changes in store for it will allow for additional diversification for the existing healing spells available? Aside from Healing Light, Flash of Light, and Holy Shock, are there any plans to provide paladins with other interesting healing spells later down the road?

A. Later down the road most likely, but it won’t be for 3.2 and it won’t be with something that looks like Prayer of Healing or Wild Growth. We do think paladins will have more of a use for Flash of Light now with the extra benefit to Sacred Shield. The changes to Beacon of Light in 3.2 should make paladins an exceptional dual target healer.

Hallelujah. Currently, Paladins are the artillery of healers, and I absolutely love it -- but having a variety of 'cannons' for differing situations is something that Holy Paladins are still in need of. While Beacon of Light has definitely made a huge impact on our raid healing capabilities, as will this Flash of Light change, I'm hopeful that whatever Blizzard has in mind will further expand our healing potential without drawing too much focus off of the power of our nuke healing capabilities. (Seriously, 20k Holy Light bombs every ~1.2-1.4 seconds is awesome.)

Community Team: Now that we’re on the topic of paladin buffs and spells, dps and versatility has been a topic of concern for many players with respect to both PvE and PvP.

A lot of my posts lately have been in regards to Retribution, and so yes -- this portion will end up being where I spend the majority of my time responding. Retribution has been going through the most changes as of late, and thus, is getting the larger portion of my attention.

Q. All classes vary in dps from one encounter to another; however, some paladins may feel their dps can be less competitive at times in comparison to other classes, more so in straight stationary single-target dps encounters. How do we feel paladins are doing in terms of dps across the board?

A. Retribution dps is too low in PvE in 3.1. We are buffing it in 3.2 through the new way Seal of Vengeance / Corruption will work. This Seal is designed to really deliver damage once the paladin gets five stacks up, which will make it the Seal of choice for boss fights. Seal of Command will be used in PvP or PvE for short fights. We expect overall for Corruption / Vengeance to be the “go-to” Seal much of the time, perhaps even in PvP, provided you can keep the buff up.

The current problem is that, as it stands, Command will never be useful. It now functions exactly like Seal of Righteousness, but has a catch; it does less damage. In PvE, Seal of Vengeance is far more powerful in all situations, and for trash, Righteousness will do. (Trash is not worth a talent point.)

In PvP scenarios, the only thing making Command worthwhile is it's glyph, which increases the mana return from Judgements of the Wise by 8% of our base mana for a total of 33%. However, this mana is largely unneccessary in a 3v3 environment. The only time that Retribution is strapped for mana is when we are forced into a heavy support role, such as when playing double DPS in 2v2.

When paired with a healer, the vast majority of the Retribution Paladin's time is going to be spent playing aggressively in a DPS role, where our mana will be plenty high enough for the few situations where we may be required to help support the healer. Thus, the extra mana from Seal of Command is largely uneccessary. And again, in situations where Seal of Vengeance might be detrimental (Breaking CC), Seal of Righteousness can be used.


Q. Exorcism will be usable in both PvE and PvP once more which is great; aside from allowing this ability to be used against other players, what were the reasons to go down this route in redesigning this attack?

A. Exorcism never did a ton of damage to players, but it was an instant attack which meant paladins could use it while closing with an enemy. It was essentially just free damage and never a decision of any kind. The new approach to the spell prevents it from being used while closing, and also makes Retribution paladins have to pay a little more attention to their combat rotation -- you want to use Exorcism when Art of War procs, and generally not at other times.

We understand this is a small adjustment to Protection paladins, which is why we improved Hand of Reckoning. The 3.2 patch will be pretty good for paladin tanks overall so hopefully they will forgive us.

Yes, as a Protection Paladin, I wholeheartedly forgive you. Yes, I lost Exorcism, but more often than not it was only used as a follow-up to Hand of Reckoning anyway. Ardent Defender and the Glyph of Righteous Defense more than makes up for this loss, I assure you.

Community Team: Specifically with the various spells and abilities that paladins have in a PvP encounter, there have been questions concerning regarding survivability and utility, let’s get into some of these.

Being that I've already read this, I know that this is where the cheering comes. However, it is soon followed by one of the loudest facepalms I've ever had. I try extremely hard at times not to jump to conclusions with certain decisions, but still...

Q. Will it be possible to prevent Avenging Wrath from being dispelled as well? This ability is the means to allow for on-demand maximum dps output for a brief period of time and only affects the paladin.

A. It’s possible but not probable. Really this is symptomatic of a larger problem, which is that the dispel game has become too important in PvP. If the other team has a dispeller, then abilities like Avenging Wrath get totally shut down. If the other team lacks a dispeller, then they may be in trouble. This leads to junk buffs and inconsistencies on which abilities can be dispelled or not. We are going to redo the entire system, though not for 3.2. One direction to take dispelling is to give magic dispel to all the healers (since 90% of player spells are magical), but to prevent offensive dispelling of any kind, or at least prevent dispels for “your-class-is-supposed-to-have-this buff” like Arcane Int or Fort.

I cannot tell all of you how excited this makes me. Too much power currently lays in the hands of offensive dispels, as it can completely shut down a Paladin at times. From our defensive utility in the form of Hand and shield spells, and offensive utility in the form of Avenging Wrath. This makes us quite dangerous against teams without offensive dispels, and about as threatening as a drunk with a baseball bat to teams with them. (Somewhat scary, but handled easily enough if you're moderately experienced in hand to hand combat of any form.)

Q. Do we have plans to introduce a stand-alone interrupt ability for paladins?

A: We would like to add this kind of utility to paladins. First we have to get the burst damage under control so that Ret paladins are not winning PvP encounters by blowing players up. When we accomplish that, we’ll look at finally giving them more
tools.

Then, please, I beg of you, give us a combat system that takes the RNG out of our burst, gives us more easily balanced DPS, and raises the skill cap. I understand that there's literally thousands of different aspects of the game that you're trying to fine tune still, but in order for Retribution to finally be balancable (is that word?), it needs an actual system to work with.

Q. With the slew of options to either "jump into" or "jump out of" PvP encounters for either offensive or defensive purposes many classes receive, do we have any plans to incorporate special abilities for paladins to either help them escape tough situations or quickly get into pvp battle (i.e. Deathgrip, Typhoon, Summoning Circle, Disengage, etc.)? It seems paladins are the only class without a short cool-down ability on the same scale.

A. Players are pretty good at detecting problems, but for solutions they tend to just look around at what other classes have that is working for them. Homogenization is something we fight as much as we can, which is the reason not every class has Death Grip and not every class has Charge. Judgment of Justice is intended to be the gap-closer for paladins. If it becomes a huge liability, we’ll evaluate, but at the moment paladins are doing extremely well in PvP without it.

And now, we reach the point where my face collides with my hand with such force as to send ripples throughout the planet.

Judgement of Justice is not a gap closer. It is, if anything, closer to a (mediocre) snare in it's function. It prevents the target from escaping. In order to apply Judgement of Justice, the Paladin has to have already closed the gap (10 - 30 yard range). Then, even as a snare, it fails to prevent our targets from escaping if we ourselves are snared. 100% > 34.5%(Crippling Poison: 70%) - 57.5%(Hamstring: 50%)

And yes, we have Hand of Freedom, but this falls under the dispel problem, where an offensive dispeller can completely neuter Retribution's gap closing ability. No, we should not have 100% uptime on our target. But we should not be kited to death, either.

Community Team: We’re on our last set of questions here, so let’s switch it up a tad and talk a bit about Librams and aesthetics.

Q. Do we have plans to incorporate Librams as a more prominent aspect of the paladin class? Also, can we expect to see Librams as a physical aesthetic item on the paladin? Much like the quiver is for the hunter (except only the hunter can see their own quiver mounted on their back).

A. This is something players suggest a lot, and honestly something we’d like to do. It’s a pretty iconic image from Warcraft, especially Warcraft III, to have the paladin toting around their libram. Someone at BlizzCon last year asked if they could beat on people with it. This is a big task to put on the art team though so we would want to make sure we do it right. The same answer would apply to shaman totems and hunter quivers. On the other hand, it took a long time to finally update the druid cat and bear art so don’t look for this in 3.2.

At least this can end on a cheery note.

BE WARNED, HEATHENS! FOR THOU SHALT FACE MINE MIGHTY LIBRAM OF FACE BASHING! THY GODS HAVE DECLARED IT SO, AND THUS, IT SHALL BE SO. TREMBLE, FOR MINE BOOK COMES FOR YOU!