Why do you still play paladin?

[Gloomfox-silvermoon]

I wonder why other still play with this class.
I for one love the class fantasy but I play other classes to …otherwise I would have quit the game years ago of I would only play with my paladin.ű

Truth to be told I dont play the holy spec.

As for prot sure its fairly strong tank but the spec design is super boring and simple. They baked in most of our stuff into one ability and passives so you barely have to manage anything when you are tanking.

As for ret its always in the middle of the pack or at the bottom as it is currently. 90 percentile chart shows it for mythic that its almost the last dps …only augments is below ret. 80 percentile doesnt change much just 2 dps spec slips barely under ret …and the leaders of the dps pack are esily 20%++ above ret. And this gap gonna grow even more since ret mastery scaling was nerfed, crit was built in into many things which devalued crit and versa due to its pvp origin naturally offers less benefits when it comes to scaling in pve…
Also the passive that gives wing when people die in the raid within 40 yards is lame and gives skewed numbers during the first weeks “boosting” ret dps …but as people learn the mechanics over the first 2-3 weeks they die less and less so ret loses a big chunk of that damage from the “free” buff from having people dying near them frequently.

And there is complete silence for retail balancing. We can see frequent post about the season of discovery and class changes like we had yesterday and today …yet for retail we got nothing. Why does Blizz think neglecting retail players and allowing ~4 specs to dominate everyone else by a huge margin is okay a few weeks into a new season?
I’m sick and tired of how paladins are treated.

Also whenever they do something like the “ret rework” they do it toward the end of the expansion or a patch cycle. They did the rework at the end of the patch cycle and overtuned it as usual so everyone jumped on the hate train - for a good reason - and every 2nd post was about ret paladin being op and asking for nerfs for it …and ofc over 3-4 weeks right after the rework and before the next season they gradually nerfed ret back to the middle of the pack back to around the 14th ranking.

It is tiring to see this treatment since Legion so I wonder why you guys still play with your paladin because at this point it feels pointless when you have a bunch of other and better options.
Also I barely see anything about this anymore on the forum …everyone just gave up or moved on and plays sod?

[Nemessisx-kazzak]

You know, i really like story and mistery of paladins, order of silver hard…
I remember times when i first time play alliance company in wc 3,
Arthas had very nice story.

WoW was really nice, scourge, titans, ashbringer…

Shadowlands give me little hope to see new chapter about Arthas, not Anduin.

Sylvana did all bad things as Arthas, but all we see “Oh no, she got controled by Jailer, she is good, she must be redeemed” All hail banshee queen …

And what we see from all expansion??? begone, may the last whisper of your name fade… blah-blah-blah…

[Bizu-eredar]

Hpal is the only healer that offers choice, which matters to perform better than other players.

For monk you use your same rotation in dps and heal, differing spells for different situations, sure, but you dont have much variety and also for thundertea you use mostly the same bonus.

Disc you also just push your buttons and do your aoe heal and when gear doesnt scale anymore then you feel useless.

With hpal you can use ur heal also for dps like holy shock, divine toll or daybreak, you can choose of what u want to use first, u can use HP on either dps or heal, same for the wing cooldown. You have way more variety in cooldown intervals. Use wing first, aura second and divine toll third? Or does a different pattern make more sense?
On top of it you have utility, kick, stun, blind, bop, freedom, sac, etc.

that is why hpal is the best.

[Gloomfox-silvermoon]

Yea what they did to Arthas is almost insulting. They ruined the last remaining embers of the WC3 storyline.
I was hoping for a big reveal during shadowlands. I dont know if you ever heard about the theory that Anduin is actually the son of Arthas. Things kinda add up timeline wise, also Anduin looks a lot like Arthas and nothing like Varian. And ofc a priest with a warrior father makes less sense then a priest son with great affinity to the holy light with one of the greatest paladins ever.
Ofc Arthas fell from that high horse but they even redone the cinematics with Anduin - you cant miss the paralells of Anduin marching into “Undercity” vs how Arthas walked back into his home before he killed his father.

And even in the new cinematic we see the recall for the posture of Arthas in Anduin as he raised his sword against Thrall.
Anduin also looks more and more like a paladin and not like a priest since BFA.

I truly hope they will stop making him cry soon, it was enough times we seen him crying …sure he has Ptsd now and we might get 1-2 more cinmetatics with him in tears but I think most of us would love to see him “man up” get his sh*t together and become a true leader. And I’m saying this as a mainly horde player.
They missed a huge opportunity for his character development by killing off Arthas and turning him into 30 anima…
if they would have had the balls to reveal Arthas was his father and they built a story on that where in the crucial moment the memory of his real father and his deeds would have given him the power to resist going down the same path would have been awesome. Or even see him fall would have been better than what we got but I think repeating the same fallen hero arc would have been boring. People love to see heroes that struggle but manage to overcome their issues in the end and do the right thing.

Without Arthas present the whole thing would be less impactful but they could still give us this “twist” down the line with Anduin and I think it would be awesome.

I also love the weapons that have a “being” trapped in them and they talk to the wielder. This bring me to the Ashbringer one of my all time favourite weapons and its corrupted version with its whispers. It was truly awesome and chilling to hear the blade whispering snippets of truths when you know the story of the blade and the story of the family that its tied to.
Also the fallen naaru core lore was awesome purified by the light when they attempted to destroy it thinking its a sort of weapon or tool of the darkness

The lore became terrible, Danuser should have been fired years ago because all he did is he ruined the great stories and character of the past we loved and gave us terrible new ones and stories that led to nowhere and made no sense.

The one think I liked the most in the shadowlands lore is when Garrosh stood his ground, he regrets nothing, goes out like a boss and disenchants himself not willing to be part of that terrible expansion anymore!

Also its crystal clear the Primus was supposed to be the actual Jailor. Zovaal had domination runes in his body …they changed the plans and cut a full patch cycle so we didnt get to see the true Jailor …but they even left in hints everywhere like the desription of the Primus and how he never lost a fight yet we suppose to believe he was defeated by Zovaal and chained for millennia… not to mention we later see the Primus making a fake “jailed” Primus clone in his place so that fake version could craft the legendaries for us…

And ofc the ending of that expansion made 0 sense we just got a vague threat of something bigger evil that the a cosmos devided cannot withstand… so from what we know Zovaal could have been even right and I see a redemption arc coming for Zovaal 6 expansion later

And what they did to Sylvanas is just terrible. Her soul was split but it was suppose to be her anyways …and that how she ended up being manipulated and “serving” the same way is not even funny…

But Dragonflight lore is pretty bad too…
We are killing primalists left and right when we know as the “champion” that the titans are controlling the flights they influenced with their “special order water” transforming them. And that the primals are the actual children of Azeroth… so who are we fighting against?
Its clear from the info we gathered ingame that the Titans are not the good guys at all…
And its funny after you finish Aberrus and see old God minions and void you go to speak to Alexa and you dont mention anything and Wrathion and the other black dragons dont tell her about this old God/void problem either so she is happy to send you over to the greens to help them with their gardening
Or how he forget that all this “oathstone” “shadowlands five covenant 2.0” led nowhere because the dragons were empowered by Azeroth and not by the stones …not to mention Elune already “lifted” up Kalec to be the aspect during the ritual…
But hey no one cares about the masses we murdered for nothing while we were on the quest to restore the oathstones which did nothing in the end
awesome writing…

[Tyssera-ravencrest]

@Gloomfox-silvermoon

As for prot sure its fairly strong tank but the spec design is super boring and simple.

I play paladin for prot. It hasn’t changed much since I started playing it in BfA. I’ve played other tanks since, but switching to my paladin is like putting on a comfy pair of shoes. It feels natural and comfortable, and the rotation being completely muscle memory leaves my attention free to focus on what’s going on around me.

Also, my paladin is a LF draenei, a fanatic who spends her time (when she isn’t battling the enemies of the Light) converting non-believers to the Light at sword point. I have so much fun getting into her headspace when I’m playing her (especially because I’m an atheist in real life).

[Diamondthorn-gehennas]

I simply just love paladins.

[Yetteh-gehennas]

Paladins been always my one trick pony if you know what I mean.

[Furydin-ravencrest]

I play a lot of classes and specs but I always seem to come back to Protection Paladin - for me nothing else quite hist the spot as well combat wise.

While I also enjoy Retribution a fair but for DPS I actually lean a little more towards BM hunter.

But Furydin is my main and I remain loyal…

[Celiú-kazzak]

I don’t care for the stories and I love BIG AoE dam which we do best.

[Turidas-scarshield-legion (Turidas)]

Paladin is usually the choice I go for in most games. As for this paladin, it’s because I absolutely loved the TBC “Blood Knight” version of them.

And even if Blizzard these days is simply making them just another typical Paladin order, I always see my character as the ‘Old Vanguard’ who still considers the Blood Knights the “True Masters of the Light” like the old Thalassian Charger quest was named.