Good morning.
I would like to raise a few issues as a casual player that affect my enjoyment of playing Protection Paladin.
First and foremost: Protection starts off with only two points assigned to the class tree from the get-go compared to Holy and Retribution, which translates to you being one point short. I usually try to use the same class tree setup for all three specs of my chosen class and I would appreciate it if Protection could be made to start off with Blessing of Freedom like Holy and Retribution do.
Secondly, I would like to see something done about the cooldown reduction available to Protection Paladins. There’s a lot of it, and due to the numbers you end up with lop-sided timers like 1.4 minutes for Ardent Defender, 2.8 minutes for Blessing of Protection, 42 seconds for Divine Protection as Holy and so on. Survival Hunter has a similar problem and I strongly dislike this. My suggestion would be to either change the numbers for both Unbreakable Spirit and Uther’s Counsel to something more workable like 25 percent or so, a fixed amount of time in minutes or seconds OR to get rid of these talents entirely and implement them as baseline passives perhaps. Another option would be to change the effect of Unbreakable Spirit for Protection to affect the same skills for the spec as it does for the other two. On a related note, I also dislike that a fun passive like Divine Purpose is gated off to me because of this. Having the two talents switch places would solve this issue.
Thirdly: Damage and gameplay feel. Protection feels - to me - incredibly clunky to play with very little offensive abilities and seemingly low damage to boot. My usual hotbar setup has three free slots at the moment as there’s simply nothing to put in. No, not just on the character used for this post, thank you very much. I also dislike that only Retribution has access to AoE Judgements and would like to see this shared around more, even if it should come with further decreased damage. Another thing that could be done would be to give Word of Glory an offensive component or give Paladins Exorcism back…again. Yet another thing I dislike is the fact that Hammer of the Righteous - my preferred builder skill - is simply not viable compared to Blessed Hammers or even baseline Crusader Strike. The ease of access and functionality of Blessed Hammers blow it completely out of the water, the animation isn’t particularly interesting or impactful and it gives you a similar problem like the one Blood Death Knights are facing at present where you’re made to keep standing in your static AoE, just on a far smaller scale by comparison. Giving Protection access to Divine Hammer from the Retribution tree might be fun in this regard while also making them more versatile instead of forcing you into a stop-and-go playstyle. I mean, things like these are why you removed Rune of Power after all, aren’t they?
What else do I have…? Some more generic Paladin feedback, I suppose.
I would like to give you some praise for what you’ve done with Retribution. I like the thematic split between Holystrike and Radiant damage and the relatively clear choices you pick for each. It would be nice if your Mastery could be affected by your talent choice like with Havoc Demon Hunters, so your Mastery provides you with the respective damage type.
I would also like to see more options for customisation added, such as being able to pick things other than class mounts for your Divine Steed ability. Perhaps more glyphs added to change the spell effects and glows of your skills and abilities. Instead of a sword, Blade of Justice could get a hammer to erupt from the ground, or your holy spells and abilities could be infused with the light of Elune for a silvery-white look instead of orange-gold or runic magic of the Dwarves for a blue tint to match with things like the Dawnforge Ram or Tier 6 / Tier 20. On that topic, I dearly hope that Night Elf Paladins will be added in the near future, considering the NPC’s we had way back in Legion.
The last thing I would like to bring up is the Silver Hand relic. Please give us an option to hide the book stapled to our waist. Let us turn it into an off-hand or reposition it elsewhere. I hate losing my belt buckles to it. The hammer model itself is so good, but I’m stuck with the book too! In addition to that, it would be nice if we could get the option to transmogrify shields into off-hand items (and vice-versa, but that strikes me as entirely unrealistic).
In general, there are always so many things that could be done and added for easy wins and community goodwill and it baffles me that so very little is added if anything at all, only to be advertised as if it were a big deal, like the ONE whopping Draenei skin tone we’ll be getting in the upcoming patch. Before I lose myself in a full-on rant, however, please consider this feedback.
…Oh, who am I kidding? No developer reads the EU forums anyway. We don’t even have a designated bug report section like the US ones do.
Thank you for your time regardless.