Hello, I’m new to this Paladin thing but I wanted a healer and picked Holy Pala.
So, as I was leveling and taking a look at some builds, plus the Heirlooms, etc, I noticed that the recommended, or standard, off-hand for them is a Shield. However I noticed that the only difference is basicly the armor value and block value, which imo is not really needed since your job is healing, not taking damage.
Plus I think that thematically it makes much more sense for a Holy Pala do have a book instead of a shield. I mean, how are you going to heal with a shield? However, in the book they can have their prayers/spells/encantations/auras written down, which they can read in order to cast.
So the question is, why are the recommended items shields instead of the books/lanterns/etc…? Am I missing something?
There used to be a hidden coefficient that would buff your healing when you equip a shield however that has long since been done away with and essentially comes down to personal preference
It is correct that you cannot loot an off hand however if a player trades one to you you can use it just fine. I seem to recall in eternal palace I had a lot of problems getting a shield and use the mythic offhand from one of the earlier bosses for quite some time
I suspect the reason that they Force us to loot Shields is so that we have a viable off hand in case we wish to tank or in the case that a tank would wish to heal. As opposed to having three different weapon sets for all specs. I imagine it’s quite cumbersome to have to have 5 different weapons and off hands.
Hmm yeah I agree it can be more useful in that perspective, but still having other off-hands available in the loot table doesn’t take that away. I mean, as far as I am aware people who care about the min-max go for the shield anyway, people who bother going for the other off-hands are people who prefer a look without the shield, or want to do something on a certain theme, etc…
For example, I see Holy Paladins as the priest that took up the sword, while I see Retri and Prot as the warriors that took up the light. That’s one of the reasons why I prefer to see another kind of off hand on Holy Pala, other than the shields.
I’m not saying ditch the shields completely, more like allow us to also loot other off hands and that’s fine, considering we can equip them seems contradictory.
But hey, I’m just a newbie with a minor complaint anyway, maybe I care too much about the thematics… xD
Guess I’ll just have to ask for a trade if the priest/mage/lock does not need the off hand they loot.
Edit: Or something Blizz could do is what I saw someone else suggest some time ago about off hand drops for any kind of off hand weapon. Make them drop in sets. Like, for example if you are a Rogue and a dagger drops, make it drop with another dagger aswell, for a Holy Pala if a 1H Mace drops make it drop with a off hand item, for a mage/lock/priest if a dagger drops make it drop with an off hand, etc.
That suggestion came from the fact that for dual wielders it’s a bit more of a pain to get weapons because in theory if need double the drops, when comparing with classes that use 2H/Ranged weapons that only need 1 drop and they are good to go.
Actually I think you’re right there is no reason why we shouldn’t be able to loot off hands in my opinion it would make life a lot easier when trading like for example a priest in my guild desperately needed an offhand so he could equip his xanesh weapon and it would have been really nice for me to change my loot spec and help him loot it
It was also probably a deliberate design choice to break up the loot tables and make it slightly fairer. As it increases the chances of a shield dropping, and lowers the drop rate of off-hands.
And ultimately a shield is useful for more Paladin specs, even if it is only essential to one of them.
We did used to have shield with healing bonuses on them. That made it perfect sense for a Holy Paladin to run around with a shield.
I know some of the other offhands did the same thing, but a Holy Paladin with a shield did always look better.
I guess they decided to just leave it like that, even after they threw that big hammer at Holy Paladins in Legion.
Nonetheless in my view I still think a book makes much more sense, like some sort of bible where they have their healing spells. A shield is, at the of the day, something you use to protect yourself in a fight, Holy Palas don’t fight, they heal.
