Mahgnus
08-21-2008, 07:27 PM
<p>The Paladin Class feedback</p><p>First I'll start by saying most people hold little faith in /feedback on important matters b/c the lack of a responses that are given. With that being said, this for me is a last ditch effort to help get the necessary tweaks the Paladin class has been lacking for a long time. I will cover all know issues with the HIGH END Paladins class. I understand that things cannot be balanced around just high end but things should be tweaked better for sure. This is intended to shed some light into the HIGH END Paladins role in raids. </p><p><u>Durability</u></p><p>Now of days we are simply brought onto raids to tank mobs (mostly multiple encounter fights due to our aggro control on multiple mob encounters) The first thing that any raid Paladin if given the opportunity to change would without a doubt be our ability to stay alive. At the current moment I would say the Paladin last or second to last in that terms of being able to stay alive for simply the fact of the tools we are given to stay alive fail to complete their role they are intended for. It has been stated several times that heals/ward are the main ways paladins are intended to keep themselves alive. There occurs the problem. Our heals/wards are very slow cast and often get interrupted, sometimes you have to cast them three times to get them off. In which case usually your healers have topped you off, or you are already dead =/. Also I have seen it stated several times and completely agree with that our heals are simple too small to for fill their role. I would suggest increasing their power of the heal but also increasing their reuse. Let's take Holy Aid for example, it's a 5 sec reuse, 2 sec cast time, and heals for 1233-1474 (master 1). By increasing the reuse to let's say 15 sec but increasing the heal amount to 2466-2948. That's 3 times the recast but double the power. This small change would greatly boost our ability to use the tools we are given to help for fill our main role, tanking. </p><p><u>Divine Favor</u></p><p>This is a spell that Paladins get at level 58 that doesn't get upgraded. It ‘s a death save that if triggered heals the paladin for 1448 and stifle and dazes him for 12 seconds, 30 min recast, 3 min duration. There is a list of problems with this spell. The obvious is that if it triggers it stifles and dazes the paladin for 12 seconds. With our agro control usually this isn't an issue however, no other plate tank ancients has any negative effects on them. So why should we? Not to mention that it's a 3 min duration and not a toggle able buff like Visions of Madness, which is 100% constant buff so there is no need to cast it. Visions of Madness and Divine favor are both on 30 min recast. How is that even close to be on par with Tower of Stone which is on a 3 min recast and much more effective at keeping yourself alive? Not to mention the spell is level 58 and did not receive an upgrade to the heal in t8.</p><p><u>Divine Aura</u></p><p>A crusaders only option for a self stone skin ability. A buff that is 2 second cast time ,10 second duration, 10 min reuse and does not prevent damage over 50% of the crusaders health. The first and obvious problems with this buff is that it's a 2 second cast time buff that you suppose to rely upon when you're in a critical situation. Divine Aura doesn't protect an attack that is over 50% of our health so that means isn't useful for precasting before a pull on an encounter. With a 10 min reuse time it often times is not up when it is need most. This is compared to a Warrior's Dragoon Reflexes AA buff that grants 100% parry for 12 second, .25 cast time with a 3 min reuse. I would be willing to bet that all Crusaders would gladly take the 12 seconds of being stifle/dazed for 12 seconds of 100% parry on a 3min recast. In conclusion not only does Divine Aura have over triple the recast, 4 times the cast time that Dragoons Reflexes has but it also stops 100% of incoming melee damage on you opposed to Divine Aura were encounters often strike through its stone skin. </p><p><u>Cast Time</u></p><p>This is a minor issues compared to what stated above.<u> </u>Our cast time of our spells defiantly need to be looked and tweaked to better fit the role of a fighter who is expected to have aggro on encounters therefore taken damage. As I stated above we often get interrupted cast our longer cast spells (2 seconds plus) and it takes several times to actually get the spell off. In actuality that makes the cast time of that spell 2 to 3 times longer than the base cast time.</p><p>Possible solution to this could be a crusader end line version of steadfast stance of some sort to allow us to either cast on the run or make our spells uninterruptable after us standing still for X amount of time. Other possible solution to this could be an increase to the cast speed in the end ability in the strength line on our crusader tree.</p><p><u>Crusader AA's</u></p><p>As several threads have pointed out the crusader tree is a bit out of date with how the game has progressed. First to come to mind is the greatly outdated Wisdom line.</p><p><u>Wisdom Line</u></p><ul><li>First rank gives 6 points of wisdom per rank, which is the basic for all KoS tree first options.</li><li>Second is an underpowered 1 min recast, 1 shot proc for the group. Easy fix, up the damge</li><li>Third rank increases slashing, crushing, piercing, ranged, ordination, subjugation , ministration and disruption of the group by 4.8 per rank, max of (38.4) The problem with this buff is that with the current system of diminishing returns that increasing you combat skills nets very little returns in actual effectiveness so overall this buff is very ineffective in increasing you hit % Plenty of alternative options have been proposed from 1.5 double attack per rank to the group, an actual % increase to hit % per rank, similar to the ranger temp buff, 0.5- 1.0 % base damage increase to all combat arts and spells per rank.</li><li>Forth rank increases the cap of health regeneration of the group by 2% per rank and increases actual health regeneration amount by 9.6 per rank. This is the second most severely underpowered AA in the entire crusader tree. In combat health regeneration is and has always been extremely underpowered effect in this game. If further clarification is need on this issue please venture yourself over to the berserker forums where you can see firsthand how horrible in combat health regeneration.</li><li>Fifth rank is fearless moral which grants the crusader fear immunity that doesn't work on most mobs in Veeshan's Peek and grants the group 2% increase to melee damage, spell damage, and heals and wards. This for the most part is an ok AA. I personally dislike it but however I haven't heard any complaints on it other than it not preventing some fears in VP. A couple % increase to the group amount would definitely make it more desirable for sure because there is never enough encounters to were this is warranted to be a full time AA spec for any Crusader. An increase to the base % could make that so.</li></ul><p><u>Strength line</u></p><ul><li>First rank gives 4 points of strength per rank, which is the basic for all KoS tree first options.</li><li>Second rank gives a medium damage ca with a haste component attached to it. No complaints</li><li>Third rank gives a static haste increase to the Crusader, 2.2 per rank. Could give a bit more but no real complaints </li><li>Forth rank gives 1.2-1.4 % hate gain increase per rank. Only complaint I have heard about this is it should be able to toggle on and off as a buff rather than a full time effect</li><li>Fifth rank gives 10 % cast, reuse and recovery speed. Most complaints about this ability is that it should give more cast speed to heal deal with our cast time problems that crusaders have vs other fighters. Perhaps 20-25 cast speed would make this AA quite abit more useful then previously.</li></ul><p><u>Intelligence line</u></p><ul><li>First rank gives 8 points of Intelligence per rank, which is the basic for all KoS tree first options.</li><li>Second rank gives a medium range ranged spell attack. No complaints that I have heard.</li><li>Third rank increases spell critical chance of the Crusader by 8.5. This considered to be the bread and butter of crusaders AA lines. No complaints at all</li><li>Forth rank increases heal critical chance by 6.0 per rank. After the nerf to the amount given per rank this AA has become less desirable to most Crusaders other then dumping your last few points there in your KoS tree. Not to mention Shadowknights get next to zero use out of this tree considering all there life taps use spell crit to determine if they critically heal. Add some sort of increase to incoming heals to the Crusader. Similar to what the Ill will does to its caster.</li><li>Fifth rank is a one shot reflect buff that only reflects NPU and racial spells only. There isn't a more useless buff in the entire crusader tree then this one. This is the absolute most useless effect in our entire tree. The whole idea should be scraped and replaced with some sort of DPS increase option either through a large spell attack of added buff to the Crusader. Perhaps a chance to proc extra damage on a mob on successful attack. Or maybe a static 10% increase base damage of our spells.</li></ul><p><u>Agility Line </u></p><ul><li>First rank gives 7 points of agility per rank, which is the basic for all KoS tree first options.</li><li>Second rank gives a low damage ca that teleports you to the mob to make the attack. Only complaints I have seen on this one is sometimes you fall through the world when you sue this attack.</li><li>Third rank gives 5% Area of Effect auto attack to the Crusader. No complaint on this skill but the lack of multiple encounters severely limits this abilities usefulness.</li><li>Forth rank gives 2 defense per rank and a short duration to knockdown effects. Biggest complaint with this is the fact Crusader receive no parry buffs at all. The defense should be changed to parry and change it from knock down effects to a chance to cure one status effect (root, stun, stifle, mesmerize) 0.5 % per rank. Or perhaps a short immunity to (root, stun, stifle, mesmerize) Once one is been placed on you for 5-10 seconds.</li><li>Fifth rank is a medium damage ca with damage over time component attached to it along with a snare. The damage of this should be greatly increased to make it on par with out end line abilities at the moment it's far too small to consider a worthwhile ability.</li></ul><p><u>Stamina Line</u></p><ul><li>First rank gives 5 points of stamina per rank, which is the basic for all KoS tree first options.</li><li>Second rank gives an area of effect attack with low damage with a stun and knockback component. Complaints about this one is the crazy amount this attack misses. Less than 50% hit rate in all raid zones.</li><li>Third rank gives 2.2 melee crit to the Crusader. No complaints at all consider over 60% of your DPS (Paladin at least) is auto attack and combat arts. </li><li>Forth rank increases the max amount of hit points the Crusader by 0.5 per rank. This nets to just fewer than 500 hit points. Which is less then ¼ of that encounters hit for on average. This could use a boost from .05 to 0.8% which would net around 700 extra hit points vs. 500 hit points.</li><li>Fifth rank Divine Aura (see the top of the post)</li></ul><p><u>Raid wide buff</u></p><p>This should be taken a look at for sure to make all crusader buff on par with ours. At the current moment with itemization all but sorcerers are capped on + spell damage so the majority of the raid nets very little to nothing from the + spell damage of a Shadowknights buff. As for the Paladins raid wide buff the + to heals defiantly needs to be revamps as do all of the fighter raid wide buffs. From what I have heard something is in the works to revamp this. The idea I had was the following</p><ul><li>Monks ~ 13.1% cast speed and 22 haste</li><li>Bruiser ~ 13.1 reuse speed and 22 dps</li><li>Shadowknight ~ 10% base spell damage and a medium damage life tap proc</li><li>Paladin ~ 10% base heal/ward and 300 point raid wide regenerative magical ward</li><li>Berserkers ~ 15% double attack and a medium damage AE proc</li><li>Guardians ~ 10% increase to all hit % on melee attacks and 25 defense</li></ul><p>This block of text may seem like a lot of complaining and whining from crusaders but this is indented to be feedback for Paladins and some Crusader problems. Most of the information is what I have gathered up amongst of the of the best and brightest of the paladin classes for true feedback that can help us get the necessary tweaks to our classes that are long overdue. </p>