With more and more fights now featuring frequent and periodic knockback mechanics, I believe it’s time to give Paladins a reliable way to counter them, just like most other classes already have.
Here’s a list of existing knockback counters across other classes:
Death Knight: Death’s Advance
Demon Hunter: [Built-in mobility]
Druid: Wild Charge
Evoker: Dracthyr racial
Hunter: Disengage
Mage: [Mobility toolkit]
Monk: Transcendence / Lighter Than Air
Priest: Can be Dracthyr
Rogue: Shadowstep
Shaman: Gust of Wind
Warlock: Demonic Circle
Warrior: Heroic Leap / Charge
Meanwhile, Paladins don’t have a consistent answer to knockbacks.
(Divine Shield doesn’t count — the cooldown is far too long compared to the short CDs or passives listed above.)
Suggested Solutions:
Blessing of Freedom Enhancement
Make Blessing of Freedom grant immunity to knockbacks while active.
This could replace the current effect of the Blessed Calling talent.
Divine Steed Enhancement
If giving that power to Blessing of Freedom feels too strong (especially since it’s castable on allies), the knockback immunity could instead be tied to Divine Steed — e.g., while Divine Steed is active, you cannot be knocked back.
This could replace the Divine Spurs talent effect.
Think ive seen such immunity given in several alpha/betas over the years to freedom but never made it live. Think this is one of the rare pvp things that effects pve play.
They seem unwilling to give Paladins an immunity to Deathgrip and knockback + bubble + spellwarding.
They usualy dont make talents work in PVE only but not PVP, atleast not without a nerf and the only nerf they can give is duration.
Since I only play PvE, I hadn’t really considered the potential PvP implications. It’s definitely an interesting perspective and worth exploring further. That said, I don’t think it would be impossible for the dev team to come up with a way to make this effect PvE-only. In any case, I think it’s super valuable to start thinking about different possibilities as a community—let’s get the brainstorming going!
I don’t think Paladin needs this to be honest. Every mechanic with a knockback can be dealt with in different ways, and it’s usually safe to get knocked back as part of the encounter design. In raid you can usually use warlock gateways if it does prove to be difficult, or get a rescue from an Evoker.
I think there’s currently too many ways for too many specs to deal with this as is already.
No they cant, they can do a rogue sprint with a horse animation. If they could mount in combat, they would stay mounted!
Btw a sprinting rogue is faster then a “mounted” Paladin somehow. Make it make sense!
Most other melee have a semi counter for a knockback like warriors and rogues that can just leap back, DKs that can be immune with more then 1 ability and still have deathgrip as an option.
But paladins have the forever anchor that is bubble, universal counter for everything that can be countered by 2 other classes. Its to be our main deff, used for offence and counter for small things aswell. The thing that earns the class scorn to get ANYTHING else.
