Constructive feedback: ideas for paladins for Phase 4 (all specs)

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
1

Hey all, Aggrend has asked us about constructive feedback for the classes, so I tried to “get in their shoes” and come up with ideas for Paladins going into Phase 4 of SoD, and put it in the form of a fake blue post. I tried to include “developer’s notes” to provide context and the thought process behind the ideas. You can just skip to the rune/spell changes in bold.

I have been playing paladin since vanilla and play one exclusively in SoD. I have tried all the roles and listened to a lot of fellow paladins, so I hope the changes make sense! The one I’m the most proud of is the thought of crits within some short period of time applying Beacon of Light. It could really lead to some very engaging, yet unique gameplay and enable paladins to be better AoE/raid healers.

Greetings, champions of Azeroth!

As we gear up for Season 4 of the Season of Discovery, we’re thrilled to unveil some exciting changes and reworks coming to the Paladin class. We’ve been closely monitoring feedback from the community, analyzing gameplay data, and iterating on various class mechanics to ensure a more balanced and engaging experience for all players. Without further ado, let’s delve into the upcoming class tuning and reworks for each Paladin specialization:

Holy Paladin:

Developer’s Notes: In response to community feedback, we identified the lack of “fun buttons to press” (compared to other healers’ new runes in Season of Discovery) and the perceived deficiency in AoE healing options as the main issues. While we feel Holy Paladins were already performing well in Phase 3, we’ve undertaken a review of the Holy Paladin’s toolkit. Our goal is to infuse more excitement and dynamism into the gameplay experience while staying true to the class fantasy of a holy warrior healer who isn’t afraid to get up close and personal with the enemy. With that said, we feel like keeping the original strength of the class, being one of the best single target healer, was important to preserve the unique role and class identity of the Holy Paladin, so we intentionally didn’t go overboard with the AoE healing changes. We’re prepared to tune this as we go.

Infusion of Light: Increases the damage done by your Holy Shock by 20 % and healing done by your Holy Shock by 50 % (was 0), and your damaging critical strikes with Holy Shock reset the cooldowns on Holy Shock and Exorcism and refund the cost of Holy Shock.

Developer’s notes: With this rune we’ve increased the healing of Holy Shock to better align with the Paladin’s role as a burst healer. This change should provide Holy Paladins with a more potent instant healing option, particularly in high-pressure situations in both PvP and PvE. And the baseline Holy Shock was underwhelming in this regard, based on the mana cost/heal ratio.

Inspiration exemplar: Your inspiring presence periodically dispels Fear and Sleep effects on nearby party members and periodically heals nearby party and raid members for 100 HP. In addition, your Concecration spell now heals all party or raid members for the same amount it would deal its damage.

Developer’s notes: We reworked the rune to not only have a chance to dispel fear and disorienting effects, but also heal nearby players every tick. This should help bring Holy Paladins a little closer to other healers in terms of AoE, and should be especially benefitial to utilize the damaging and healing benefits of Concecration spell at once.

Purifying Power: When activated, every critical heal applies the “Beacon of Light” on the healed target for 30s. Lasts 10 seconds.

Developer’s notes: We completely reworked this rune, because we feel that previous effect to further boost the Exorcism spell was not needed. There was also not a strong alternative for Holy Paladins per se. We feel that this should boost paladin’s AoE healing capabilities and lead to some engaging gameplay, especially combined with the Light’s Fervor talent or high +crit gear.

Horn of Lordaeron: The Paladin blows the Horn of Lordaeron, which increases total Strength and Agility of all party members within 30 yards by 89, armor by 350 and all resistances by 20. Lasts 30s.

Developer’s notes: We again wanted to provide a rune for chest slot that is more suitable for Holy Paladins. We increased the cooldown and decreased the duration, making it strong defensive tool in dire situations, again both in PvE and PvP, further solidifying Holy Paladin as a strong supporting class.

Protection Paladin:

Developer’s notes: The Protection Paladin embodies the essence of the indomitable plate-wearing warrior, steadfast and unyielding in the face of adversity. Our aim with the upcoming changes is to not only preserve this iconic class fantasy but also to enhance the viability of Protection Paladins as tanks in all manner of encounters. We want players to feel rewarded for investing deeply into the Protection talent tree and to embrace the fantasy of the unstoppable force of the Light on the battlefield.

Improved Sanctuary: Increases the damage prevented by your Blessing of Sanctuary by 200% (was 100), and increases damage done by your Blessing of Sanctuary by 30% of your shield block value. In addition, increases the block chance of your Holy Shield spell by 3 %, increases its damage dealt by 50 % and adds 1 extra charge.

Developer’s notes: To reinforce the notion of the Protection Paladin as an unbreakable bastion of defense, we’ve slightly buffed the Improved Sanctuary rune, which now competes with other very strong runes (Wrath and Fanaticism) and saw very small percentage of pick ups in our data, even by tank paladins. This rune will now also grant increase to block chance and amplify the damage returned to attackers from the Holy Shield spell. By improving Holy Shield, we’re providing Protection Paladins with a formidable tool for both survival and threat generation, further solidifying their position as stalwart defenders on the battlefield.

With these changes, we’re confident that what we feel like was already specialization in a good place, will feel more resilient and like a “proper” tank more than ever before, and will now be able to embrace the full mitigation potential of Protection Paladin. We eagerly anticipate your feedback as we continue to refine and improve the Protection Paladin experience for all players.

Retribution Paladin:

Developer’s Notes: In our ongoing efforts to refine the Retribution Paladin experience, we’ve revisited the core class fantasy of the slow, 2-handed weapon-wielding champion who delivers devastating blows in the name of justice. Our aim is to provide players with meaningful choices and playstyle options while staying true to the iconic essence of the Retribution Paladin. With these changes, we’re keeping the versatility of both seal twisting and spell casting as viable gameplay strategies, empowering players to wield the power of the Light in whichever manner suits their preferences. We will carefully tune this so that the both strategies are as close as possible in terms of damage output. (While we are fully aware that even the slight difference will probably find its way to be the “right one” in the top level of play, we’re not limiting ourselves by this fact.)

Avenging Wrath: Increases all damage caused by 20% and increases your melee critical strike chance by 1 % for 20 sec. Cannot be used within 30 sec of being the target of Divine Shield, Divine Protection, or of using Lay on Hands on oneself.

Developer’s notes: As part of our efforts to enhance the Retribution Paladin’s offensive capabilities, we’re introducing the Avenging Wrath ability, well known to a lot of players from later expansions. This powerful rune empowers the Paladin with the fury of the Light, increasing their damage output for a limited duration. With the Avenging Wrath Rune at their disposal, Retribution Paladins can unleash unparalleled devastation upon their enemies, leaving no doubt as to the righteousness of their cause.

Rebuke: moved to belt slot.

Developer’s notes: Rebuke was not picked up due to its competition with Exorcist rune. Now Retribution Paladins are given a choice of more utility (Rebuke) or damage (Sheath of Light).

Divine storm: An instant weapon attack that causes 130% (was 110) of weapon damage to up to 4 enemies within 0 yards. The Divine Storm heals up to 3 party or raid members totaling 20% of the damage caused.

Developer’s notes: Compared to competing Seal of Martyrdom, Divine Storm had not seen a lot of pick ups, especially at the boss encounters. This aims to bring the two options a little closer together, and also should unlock an alternative playstyle with high-damage weapon (Divine Storm damage is not normalized).

This is only some of the changes we have prepared, and will unveil the rest soon, as we’re closing in with internal discussions. We’re incredibly excited to see how these changes will impact the Paladin class in Season 4 of the Season of Discovery. As always, we welcome your feedback and look forward to hearing your thoughts on these upcoming adjustments. For now - nothing is set in stone yet. Thank you for your continued support, and we’ll see you on the battlefield!

May the Light guide your path,

The (fake) World of Warcraft Development Team

These are just some of the ideas I had, paladins please, let’s discuss! What do you think of these? What’s your idea for Phase 4 for us?

2 Likes
2

I’m just curious why you write this here instead of reddit.

The EU wow forums does not get that much traction

3

Reddit is toxic AF, the only response was “Yeah keep dreaming bubble boy”

4

and here youb get no response at all.

https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/

I dono if you gave reddit a try tho

5

sneaking in a buff to exorcism there huh? lol.
i thought you paladins hated the idea of shockadin?.. why add 20% damage aspect to it?
adding this would make holy paladins damage dealers on top of being insane healers.

as if tremor aura isn’t crazy enough in and of itself (not our fault you don’t see its value, it literally requires just 1 paladin to make the sacrifice to provide his team fear immunity in pvp)… yeah sure lets just add aoe renew as a passive on top, and add healing to consecration too because lol why not… and you want it to be raidwide omegakek.

if this happened, a single geared paladin would tick heal raidwide for upwards of 500-600 healing per second after +healing is accounted for, which is like ticking the instant cast aspect of riptide but raidwide, all the time, passively.

i have no words. this, hitherto, is the most OP suggestion on your list.

again, just take the shaman totems, combine them, make them a battle shout (not a totem) and just add some random stats to it because lol why not. no justification, i just want to buff it somehow.

can you explain why this needs to have the druid worked into it? whats the justification?
did anyone ask for this? why do you need it?.. would it stack with druid buff too? because in that case LOL.

lol this reminds me of the “and then we doubled it” blizzard meme.
again, whats the justification for doubling this ability’s power? it works as intended as it is and makes paladins able to solofarm dungeons bro, why does it need to be buffed?

so far, this is the only one that seems to be reasonable and not blatantly “gimme more power” vibe, at least it comes with a tradeoff, which is more than what can be said for your other suggestions. so i’d greenlight this.

this one is acceptable as well.

0 yards? so it wouldn’t hit anyone? :rofl:
seems a tad much to add 20% more damage in tandem with your avenging wrath suggestion.
paladins have pretty good burst as it is… this along with avenging wrath would cause them to blast people and become immortal in the process, which is exactly what happened when they were first given divine storm back when TBC was retail.

every divine storm (with avenging wrath active) would heal the paladin (and 3 friends because why not) to 100% and dumpster everyone he hits at the same time.

to summarize; the fake dev notes are cringe m8, but here’s some feedback regardless.

6

The problem i see for ret paladins is we cant hit harder becous of pvp so the solution is to give us a new hit to use.
Im no fan of sealtwisting and hope they get rid of it and exo spam is boring. Just give me 1 more attack or lower the cooldown on both CS and DS.

7

Dude you should delete your post, there is so much bs innit that it’s not even funny xD

To start:

The 20% damage already exists in the rune. It still isn’t picked.

Mentioning tremor totem adds 0 to the conversation, since alliance doesnt have shamans. Also, holy paladin has 0 AoE healing abilities.
Also, you don’t really expect every melee+ranged to stand inside the consecration AoE, it’s a stupid thought.

I agree with your take on Purifying Power, completely OP suggestion, wrong in many aspects, biggest one being the 30second duration.

About Horn of Lordaeron, I think it’s a bad suggestion but for a different reason, that reason being it would still be a rune adding 0 to the healing kit.

Blessing of Sanct rune, your justification for denying is that paladins can solo stuff.
By that logic, mages and hunters should be almost entirely deleted from the game, ye?
Again, not the smartest take.

And finally, the best conclusion one could hope for from your post:
Divine Storm wasn’t introduced until WotLK, it wasn’t available in TBC, which says a lot about your knowledge and your capacity to give feedback on the class.
Also, there is a 5% healing reduction inserted in the suggestion, but you obviously wouldnt know about it.

8

i’m referring to the tremor AURA rune paladin has, which by the way, is miles better than tremor TOTEM.

if you think im going to refer to that aura by its actual name, i’m afraid i must disappoint you.
i refuse to call druids aura anything other than windfury too, because that’s what it is, but better in every way.

didn’t aggrend already say they’re cooking up stuff for holy, though?
pretty sure the devs acknowledged this problem and said they’re looking into it.

nowhere in his post did he say people had to stand in the consecration to benefit, he said the damage it causes heals his party (or raid LOL) for the same amount it deals damage.

and just like tremor aura and wf aura, they should be happy they get this at all. its a noble privilege to get handed unique class defining tools previously only available to the opposite faction.

i light a candle every night praising my decoy (freedom) totem.
i have a framed picture of the decoy totem icon hanging on my wall.
and when it comes to spirit of the alpha i have a fullblown alter taking up 1/5 of my living space dedicated to its existence.

because unlike you guys, i appreciate these tools for what they are.
its called being grateful and appreciate what you are given.
when it comes to wf, it is nothing short of absurd that somehow you still aren’t happy… like the sheer notion of complaining about it in any way, shape or form is wild.

the point being that it serves its purpose as intended and doesn’t need a buff “just because”.
ya, i’ll take another 10% damage buff to my shadowform thank you very much, all “just because”.

if its not needed, it shouldn’t be implemented.

what?
elaborate.

oh chums, i got the expansion wrong, so argument invalid. gottem.

9

While at the same time asking for constructive feedback from the community, which is what is being done here.
Nice try though.

So you just assumed that Consecration would just heal 20 or 40 people regardless of where they’re standing, ye?
No AoE ability in the game does that, but somehow you assumed Consecration would.
Right.

wf is not a paladin spell. This thread is about paladin.
Also, no one said they didn’t like having wf.
However, if wf was exclusive to resto druids, resto druids would probably dislike the idea they would have to commit a rune to it while foregoing a healing rune.
But you probably don’t get this point anyway.

The “just because” is actually the fact that as of now, no one is using it.

Unlike shadowform, which 100% of shadow priests use.
But again, you probably don’t get the point.

Your complaint about BoSanct rune improvement is that it would give prot palas more tools to be able to solo dungeons.
Something mages and hunters do already, since they have access to multiple spells and runes that allow them to do so.
If your point against the improved BoSanct is that palas shouldnt be given tools to solo dungeons, my point is that Hunters and Mages would need a bunch of rework to follow that same thing (not being able to solo dungeons).

I recommend you read this part about 10 times, slowly, and focused. You’ll have a very hard time putting it all together, but if you do this, you MAY eventually get it.

You not only got the expansion wrong, you also missed the 5% healing reduction bit.
Which adds to the fact that you know close to nothing about paladin, yet somehow decided to “contribute” (as in, a zero contribution) to this topic.
All of that summed up, your arguments (not just one argument) are all pretty much invalid, yes.

10

It’s a shame you wasted all that time creating that post, the people who should see it never will.

11

what do you mean “nice try though”?
he said paladin has no aoe heal, i answered: “true, but its in the pipeline” as to imply there is no reason to be upset about it, because its already being addressed.

i mean, feel free to make suggestions, of course.

i just don’t see the need to when blizzard has already said they’re gonna give paladin aoe heals…
to me its a waste of energy to do so, but i guess you could make the point that we have no idea what blizzard is cooking up, and thus providing ideas of our own is still valid, and i actually agree with that.

mhmm i guess to better illustrate what i mean; people complained a while back about shamanistic rage, and aggrend announced that they’re gonna gut the raid mana regen aspect of it in phase 4, so coming up with ideas for a nerf to shamanistic rage is a similar waste of energy because its already in the pipeline.

that’s not an assumption, that’s how his suggestion reads.
i know better than to give people the benefit of the doubt on these kinds of things.
if he had been more specific i might have reserved my outrage, but he didn’t bother.
so i’m wacking the stick and going “no, bad OP” as anyone else would and should.

how tiresome that you deliberately go out of your way to misunderstand what i am saying.
the point being that alliance players (yes this includes paladins who are actually the primary offender) somehow find a way to complain about windfury when they should be praising their lucky stars they get it at all.
apparently, feral druids providing it in an aura format is not good enough for you, no you want paladin’s to have personal WF as well, as in; literally copypaste the shamans weapon imbue and put it on paladin.
which is ridiculous and never going to happen.

now the point that i was actually making, which either escaped you or got ignored, was the fact that horn of lordaeron is already an ability stolen directly from shaman and so is the tremor aura - both are better versions of the shaman’s counterpart which is absurd in and of itself, and this guy wants to further buff those abilities, which is outrageous.

the same goes for windfury on druids - its flat out better than the shaman’s counterpart, and thus even suggesting it should be buffed or given to more classes on alliance side is unheard of.
hopefully you understand now.

you think that makes you unique bro?
every class has useless runes that are never used, its just that those aren’t better versions of what the other faction’s counterpart is, which makes suggesting buffs to these runes a display of serious offense.
like dude, nobody is using them?
we can certainly take them away if they’re that god damn bad, would you prefer that?
because if you think horn of lordaeron, tremor aura and wf aura are going to get buffed just because players prefer other runes, while they are already better versions of what shaman has, you’re out of your mind.

there can be no such talk until the OG class’s abilities are brought up to par.
this means; no buffs for your pala (shaman) runes until shaman itself gets a buff to said spells (str/agi totem, tremor totem, wf totem), the versions you get access to are already better from a baseline perspective and solely due to this fact, there can be no justification for buffing them.

its the equivalent of shaman players asking for buffs to decoy totem and spirit of the alpha, which i’m sure is something you, as an alliance player, would find absurd too, considering those runes are also better than the paladin counterpart.

telling me i’m missing the point while mine flew over your head like a god damn airplane.

ahh, now i understand. thank you.
correct and 100% agreed. no class in the game should be able to solo current content dungeons.
not paladins, not mages, not hunters and not anyone else.
this has been something i take issue with for many years at this point. mages absolutely deserve to have their ability to “boost” gutted and never allowed to see the light of day again.

explain your point better from the get-go next time and there’ll be no need. expecting people to be able to read your mind is something i’d expect from my girlfriend.
flat out unreasonable. do better.

frankly that is irrelevant as well.
it was still busted af.

know enough to correctly point out that divine storm was busted until it caught severe nerfs, and was never allowed to get to that same level of effectiveness ever again.

then i suppose you’re done replying to me. you can walk away and claim your victory if it makes you sleep at night.
doesn’t mean you actually won, but like your point about divine storm being a wotlk ability and not a tbc one; that is irrelevant if you can convince yourself you got a W, isn’t it?

12

For phase 4 they should make a rune for paladins that is actually a guide on how to cleanse flameshock.

1 Like
13

please point the post in this thread where someone is complaining about wf, cause I must have missed it.

again, point where someone says that in a post in this thread, I guess I missed that too.

Except shaman doesn’t need to take rune slots to have those abilities?

read previous sentence.

so now it’s not about being able to solo dungeons, but about useless runes being “ok”, and so there is absolutely no point in buffing them.
you make less and less sense with each new sentence.

better buff them, no?

yeah, i’m starting to see you have trouble doing simple rational processes.
reminder: those shaman spells do not take up a rune slot, aka shaman has all those AND extra stuff in runes.

cool, let’s then remove like 60% of mage’s spells from the game, along with like 40% of hunters’ toolkit.

and it’s so busted now that no single ret pala runs it.
WotLK is not SoD.

you know enough but you don’t know that divine storm did NOT get nerfed lmao xD
that’s straight up BS
and if you mean in SoD, it also did not get nerfed, it was SoM that got buffed, rendering an already almost useless rune (DS) into 100% useless.

14

this dude is giving ideas hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
bro we need fixes on the 2006 ideas

15

not in this particular thread. again, you’re missing the point which was that just like with wf aura you do not get to buff tremor aura and str/agi horn because 1. you should consider yourself lucky you have it to begin with. and 2. your version of these spells are better than what the shaman has so stop being cute now ok?
i’m not going to repeat this again.

missing a lot of things are we? do you know how to read?
this isn’t necessarily referring to anything in this particular thread. the forum is larger than this thread dude.
have a look around and you’ll quickly find paladins begging for personal wf.

neither does paladin need to use rune slots for blessing of salvation or blessing of freedom.

read mine?

you’re the one who made the point about mages and hunters bro, you’re the one deviating from the topic.
you don’t get to point the finger at me when i address your deviation. i knew i should have just ignored it, since it was completely unrelated to the idea of buffing sanctuary in the first place.

don’t be a dumdum.

once shaman’s totems are buffed so they’re brought up to par, maybe.
you’d have to combine agi and str totems and increase their radius of effect at the very least, and that’s just the beginning of the buffs you’d need to apply to even think about buffing the paladin rune counterpart.

same goes for wf and tremor totems, which would both need buffs too.
not saying these abilities need to be buffed at all, but if you think alliance versions of these spells (the runes) should be buffed while ignoring their shaman counterparts, then again; you’re out of your mind.

maybe the solution is to just move these runes to a different slot.
that way there is no need to buff them to make them “attractive” enough to pick without giving you guys a faction-only buff.

now, i would argue that its a matter of choice, and if you really want tremor aura that much, its all a matter of making 1 paladin pick the rune.
yeah, in order to use it you have to sacrifice something “more important”.
welcome to SOD.

for your pve andy horn, just make a prot or healer pala take it… oh wait, you don’t have those because all your paladins are ret heroes.

Playermade issue.

hammering on the same damn point 3 times so far.

shaman “paladin” runes take a rune slot too.

if i didn’t know better, i’d say them taking up a rune slot is blizzard’s justification for these runes being better than their counterparts. not that i agree this is the way it should work, but it seems to be whats happening.

let’s… i mean if we’re going to be dumb about it, lets remove the class itself. bigbrain.

that’s not my problem. btw you’re flat out lying now. i see this ability being used all the time.

i thought you said it had its healing aspect nerfed by 5% and accused me of being an idiot for “not knowing” that?
now you’re telling me the ability didn’t get nerfed since its inception at all?
so which is it big boy? are you trolling?
btw https ://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Divine_Storm
at least 10 different buffs/nerfs/changes has been applied to this ability throughout the years.
way more than the single one you mentioned.
are you talking about SOD specifically? because if you are… then omfg you’re not reading what i am saying… when i said divine storm was busted i’m referring to when it was first put into the game, which i said was in tbc and you went “nO iT WaS iN WoTlK NOOOB”

i did not, and i have no clue why you would interpret it that way. again, you seem to have trouble reading.

16

And here you are again, with a serious infection in the brain spewing out things you think are real. Fact bro, facts please

17

im done addressing you. your trolling is omegalow tier.

18

You are the troll, thinking everything should not taste shaman opness.

You are delusional

1 Like
19

TLDR

Git gud scrub

21

lets make all the alliance nabs happy and give paladins every single buff ingame as a passive thats active 100% of the time, 100% mana reg/sec, an infinite bubble duration, and 200% increased damage while in bubble