Blizz gathers class feedback

I'm five pages in, see much which I agree with - but nobody's said anything about Vindication or the bizarre/malicious design of our tier armor.

I'll keep reading. I remember the old forum software, which allowed me to post - that was neat.
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Scarlet Crusade - 0/46/15 - Uncrushable at 15.5k

My feedback http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=3271069573&postId=32336897390&sid=1#414

Kinda turned into a wall of text, but hopefully its formatted well at least
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Zeal without wisdom is folly

I didn't have too may gripes, but here's my cut and paste:

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Protection (0/46/15)
Tier 5 Raiding

Issue 1: Tanking specialists are completely shut down by silence. No other tank class is as hampered by such a common ability-- Warrior disarms don't compare (Shield Bash).

Issue 2: Talent trees do not reflect current class vision. Excellent work has been done on improving Main Tank viability. There are several talents in each tree that don't make sense, and should either be baselined or moved around. Others have made many good suggestions (baseline Holy Shield, move Sanctity Aura to Protection, Holy Shock to Retribution).

Issue 3: Very few tactical choices to make, regardless of spec. Sometimes the class feels like a glorified Turing Machine -- Holy Light or Flash of Light? Consecrate or Holy Shield? Crusader Strike or Judgement? In general, if you specialize enough that you're willingly gimping your ability to do other things well (be it Heal, DPS, or take a beating), you should be rewarded with more choices to make your particular mini game more complex. More complex is more fun. Even adding one more choice increases our available fun by 50% (Healbotting, now with 100% more fun!)

Talents:

1. Holy Shield should be immune to silence and have the duration longer or shorter than the cooldown. Best case would be to baseline the talent (more tanks for 5 mans), and have the improved version reduce the cooldown, making it a tank's choice.

2. Seal of Vengeance should play better with tanking weapons (1.8 - 1.6 attack speed). Increase or remove PPM system to make stack building more reliable.

3. Add an interrupt capability to shield spec talent, to make it shield-bashy. I've got way more Int than that warrior, I should be able to figure out how to run into something with my shield to make it shut up.

4. Blessing of Sanctuary lacks oomph. It's an effectively mandatory 21 point talent that is nearly always used after the 11 point talent (Kings) has been exhausted.

5. Fix Righteous Defense. A low priority, we all macro it anyway, but it would be nice to free up that macro slot.

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Nothing earth shattering, but I'm pretty content, class-wise.
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Primary Talent Tree: Protection

Content Focus: 25-man Raiding


Areas in Need of Improvement:

A) Between-Combat Downtime
While rage-based tanks begin fights with an empty threat resource (i.e. no rage) which they then fill, Paladins work the opposite way, starting with a full threat resource (full mana pool) which they then expend.
A side-effect of this is this is that a Paladin must return themselves to a full or at least adequately full threat resource pool following ending one combat before they can initiate another one, while rage-based tanks have the option of either chain-pulling into a new combat without taking down time between pulls or to wait, without suffering from a decrease in effectiveness in the new combat because their threat resource starts low and then fills instead of needing to start high and then empty.
Rage-based tanks are even encouraged to take no down-time between pulls as they will begin with left-over rage that quickly decays out of combat, and thus coexist counter-intuitively with paladin tanks who require down time in between pulls if they are at low mana following the previous combat.


B) Preemptive Panic Abilities
Paladins lack controllable life-saving abilities that can be used preemptively when known periods of high burst damage intake are about to occur. Examples include enrage timers, dangerous phase transitions, sudden incapacitation of the tank’s healers, and deadly boss abilities like the Pyroblasts of Kael’Thas Sunstrider or the Fel Rages of Gurtog Bloodboil.
Lack of these abilities is a serious argument against use of a Paladin tank on unknown content and undefeated progression fights, where many unpredictable variables exist and Warrior abilities such as Shield Wall and Last Stand can compensate for otherwise fatal mistakes. Lay on Hands is inadequate because it is a massively long cooldown, provides no lasting benefit once used, and is reactive only and cannot be used preemptively. Divine Shield and other immunities are not an option for a tank as they remove the player from the threat list of the creature they are tanking, defeating the purpose.


C) Encounter Design
Previously there has been a lack of raid encounters which took advantage of Paladin tank’s strengths, while ones that were disadvantaged or impossible were present in critical junctures. An example would be Gruul the Dragon Killer, the pivotal introductory 25-man raid dungeon boss, who’s mechanics were heavily disadvantaged towards Paladin tanks.
More fights like Leotheras the Blind, Morogrim Tidewalker, Reliquary of Souls Essence of Anger, and Lady Vashj that provide opportunities for paladin multi-target tanking, ranged threat abilities, damage reduction mechanics, and mana/spell-based threat generation to shine should be a frequent part of the raid encounters of future instances, while bosses who exclude any particular class of tank due to gimmick mechanics should be eliminated.




Abilities in Need of Change:

A) Holy Shield
Holy Shield, the Protection Paladin blocking ability, has a duration exactly equal to it’s cooldown.
Because of imperfect human reaction time, latency, and imperfect Global Cooldown management, there will always be a gap in between one cast expiring and the next one being recast.
Even fully talented, with the ability it’s self as well as Improved Holy Shield deep in the Protection tree, there is no overlap of duration-cooldown to provide continuous coverage by the ability who’s very strength is supposed to be consistent and reliable coverage, unlike Improved Shield Block for warriors.


B) Righteous Defense
Righteous Defense, the Paladin Taunt ability, has a mana cost to cast. In a situation where the paladin is out of mana, they will be unable to use taunt.
Since every single threat ability in a paladin’s arsenal has a mana cost, and since the primary way mana is restored to a paladin is through being the target of an enemy and taking damage, that will subsequently be healed and restore mana through Spiritual Attunement, if a Paladin is NOT the holder of aggro on a target and is out of mana they are completely helpless to do anything to return aggro to themselves.
Rage-based tanks, Warriors and Feral druids, have no rage requirement for their taunting abilities, as well as having shorter cooldowns in the case of a resist and far superior ability to replenish their threat resource if they are not taking damage.

C) Blessing of Sanctuary
In it’s current form, Blessing of Sanctuary, a talent required in order to reach Holy Shield, is very lacking in power and provides little benefit in comparison to the other Blessing options. It’s threat contribution is miniscule except in multi-target tanking situations, and even then is useful not merely just to tanks only, but only to the two out of three tanking classes that are capable of blocking. It’s damage reduction is also miniscule, particularly because it is factored in before armor mitigation, thus decreasing in value exponentially the more the recipient’s gear scales.
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"Misunderstanding the Tankadin is forgivable.

In many ways we are still learning to understand ourselves."

www.joanadark.tankspot.com

Oooh mana-based taunt is a good one *forehead*.
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My response:

My primary trees are Protection / Retribution in various combinations. I refuse to spec as Holy, as I find the that aspect of the class repetitive and boring. I dislike raiding staring at health bars.

I spend my time:

Raiding: Protection

PvP: Retribution

I will stick with Protection here...

Issues:

Lack of Control: Beyond Holy Shield, we have little in the way of mitigation abilities. We do not have a Shield Bash (for spells), Disarm (for melee), Thunder Clap, Shield Wall or any other active mitigation abilities; everything a Paladin relies upon is passive or proc-based.

Poor MT Threat Generation: It becomes more difficult to generate the required threat for end-game main-tanking as we scale. Even at 500+ spell damage, I find it difficult to break 1000 threat per second without using Avenging Wrath. Threat generation is harder to obtain and keep a viable tank build going. My guild's Warrior MT can put out 1200 TPS without breaking a sweat.

Mana / Spell / Magic Based: Mana Burn mobs / bosses (Felhunters in Hyjal, Kazrogal) render us useless as tanks. Silences, spell reflect shields and Anti-Magic Shell cut into your threat generation. Some mobs with Shield Slam may knock off our Righteous Fury or it may be dispelled. Another layer of mitigation is added to our threat generation: Parry / Dodge / Block on our Seal of Righteousness swings, and Resistance on swing procs and Judgements, requiring to get not only expertise, but also spell hit.

Abilities:

Righteous Defense: Buggy as hell and overridden by a Warrior's Taunt. In Mount Hyjal, practically worthless when NPCs pull or attack first. We rely upon Warriors to Taunt off to preserve NPCs for boss kills. The inability to taunt on Escort Quests and other acts that require affecting a friendly target is annoying.

Blessing of Sanctuary: Generally regarded as useless and only used when the Paladin is main-tanking or enough Paladins are present to give to Prot Warriors and Prot Paladins. Really, it's only use is to add another 40-odd Holy Damage (which doesn't scale with spell damage) on a block, which is less than 80 threat.

Redoubt: Great for farming, great for Hyjal Trash... generally worthless for all other encounters. It'll help you when you're leveling, but after that, it's horrid. The talent's effectiveness scales down as gear scales up. Generally taken in order to get Shield Specialization and actually get past the 1st tier of Protection talents.

Divine Shield: The only reason to dispel this is if Holy healing, otherwise getting a dispel off Protection or Retribution is stupid as its the only defense, like Cloak of Shadows + Evasion. Best suggestion is to remove the 50% attack speed reduction for Protection / Ret's sake, as it'll get dispelled anyway.

Consecration for Threat: Consecration makes up a good 200-300 TPS for me and I use it on bosses, however it's the bane of CC. I have to watch my placement before I can consecrate for threat, otherwise I break sheeps and kill people. An ability for threat equal to Consecration's for a single target would be appreciated.
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Following the Topic I've done as short as possible my feedback...
and now I see Wall of Text from other paladins

Yet among so many ability feedback, there is the common thought about BoSac. Maybe bliz will understand this talent deserves baseline...
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A very interesting post joana.

I didn't think of taunt, too bad i've already posted and cba fixing it.
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This was my post copy and pasted;

Sorry this turned out a bit long, but I felt I needed the extra space to properly convey my thoughts, please take them seriously as I feel they would be well recieved changes, and are not just long random flamings.

Primary talent tree(s);

Protection, (0/49/12)


Primary Content;

Raiding (Farming all raid instances, with BT being cleared yesterday)


Three general areas of primary concern

1) Boss fight mechanics - There are not many fights where the raid is screaming OMG, where's our pally tank?! Not that I want them to be constantly screaming this, but there are not many fights where it's hugely advantageous for us to tank, mostly it is "well, you COULD tank this, but our other tank would be slightly more optimum and you could do something else" (i.e. heal). Leotheras the Blind, Essence of Anger (Reliquary of Souls phase three), and any fight with spawning adds are out best selling points, even then, any fight with adds can easily be done with any other tank class. I work along side 2 excellent warriors and an excellent feral tank, so they can do the job equally well. More "power" burn (energy/rage/mana, like Essence of Anger) fights would be great if you could work them in, as we take far less damage from mana burn than rage tanks take from rage burn, and some fights are just impossible for us to tank (more fights than feral druids which sucks).


2) Item stat distribution - I feel our stats are too spread out. e.g., when a warrior wants threat, he will (mainly, I don't know specifics) load up on some Block Value. This in turn increases his raw damage mitigation and they both scale nicely, so the warrior will get both neccessary things to tank from one stat - threat and damage reduction. Some conversion for a paladin for some stat to some other stat would be nice, so that our stats become less spread out and we can focus on things easier (although the recent increase in stamina scaling helped this, still more could be done);


3) Just falling short - This is a bit general but it is a combination of the above two points and some other things. We have "Just lower" most things than warriors, who we are most comparable with. 6% vs 10% raw damage reduction. 4% vs 6% raw spell damage reduction. When you progress more and more, these numbers soon become very significant. Our selling point is suppsoed to be threat in general, but we have to load up on damage reduction and as a result, as we progress more, our threat levels out with warriors. Obviously we do not have the same tools, but our selling point becomes moot. We also have no "Oh crap!" buttons, but then nor do druids. One single skill would be very nice though, maybe as a high point talent.


Five specific spells/abilities/talents you are most concerned with

1) Seal of Vengeance - this NEEDS to be a 100% proc chance ALWAYS, regardless of weapon speed. Recently, whilst Main Tanking Teron Gorefiend, the SoV (5) stack had 8 seconds remaning, when it was REMOVED BY OTHER DEBUFFS. It did not fall off, it was REMOVED due to the debuff limit. I was literally gob-smacked. Among other countless times where ths has just plain fallen off due to no procs and mob avoidance streaks, this is just silly. This seal really is completely pointless unless it is constantly refreshing, maybe make the judgement refresh it too (not either or, it really should be 100% proc chance, in my Teron case, the judgement refreshing the stack woudln't have helped, it fell off with 2 seconds left on my Judgement CD);


2) Holy Shield - Due to the nature of a Paladin's tanking, this needs to be up 100% on bosses where being crushed matters (almost all of them, Void Reaver is not a boss). Holy Shield lasts 10 seconds and has a 10 second CD, sounds fine, but it really is not. I am not asking for a 15 second duration, or a reduced CD or anything stupid. 10.5 seconds duration at a maximum would help greatly. Due to latency issues, or just plain freezing slightly, getting crushed and then going splat is really a silly way for you to wipe your raid and is just another thing for raid leaders to dump on their "oh we may as well just use the warrior" mentality pile. I'm not supporting the "take Holy Shield off the GCD" camp, it should be on the GCD and it is a mark of your skill how well you can manage your CDs, but there is a fine line between skill and getting owned due to 0.2 second gap in your Holy Shield. Triple crush from Prince Melchazaar's thrash in the 0.05 seconds Holy Shield was down --> wipe, is just stupid;


3) Righteous Defense - I like this skill, but it is a bit too clumsy. So many times I have taunted and it has just failed. No resist (I can see all my taunt resists), no immunes, nothing funny, it just didn't do anything, oh look wipe, let's use the warrior/druid...another issue, made horribly evident in Mount Hyjal, is that you cannot taunt off NPC's, like warr's/druids can (as they taunt the mob). Also most people have a complicated macro for this skill (including me) so that it is easier to use, and has less chance of failing. Maybe change it so that it directly taunts the mob targeted (still at range), assists it, and taunts 2 mobs off the currently targeted player (pre-taunt). This way, you could taunt off NPC's, and the main effect of the taunt (getting the one important mob off of someone) is preserved without anything funky happening;


4) Blessing of Sanctuary - This just isn't very useful. I could happily not have this spell and I wouldn't really notice and nor would my raid. If there's 2 paladins in the raid I want BoK and BoL, if theres 3 I'll consider BoSanc, maybe I want BoW because of the encounter in question (or trash? higly dependant). Nice to dump on warriors too but again, they would want BoK, L, then Might (I think), then Sanc. It's just not hugely beneficial for a 20 point talent (when other classes/specs get something really worth getting). It could be change to modify the damage reflected/reduced with respect to Block value. This would then emphasise it as a nice tanking blessing - whereas BoK is just "stats", this would be respectable threat and damage reduction buff. Alternatively, make it (or add seperately!)a self buff that increases block value, stacking up to 5 or something times with each block, increasing the amount blocked each time, a percentage based spell would probably be more feasible, say +5% block value each block stacking up to 5 times. Just an idea, but making more use out of our block value would be a nice thing;


5) Seal of the Crusader/Seal of Justice - For the most part (almost everywhere) these seals are useless. Their judgements are brilliant, but the seals themselves are lackluster, there's just not really any point wasteing the mana to cast them if you don't intend to judge. Maybe combine them, so the effect of their seals and judgement would combine. Maybe that's a bit too much (for the judgements, still doesn't sound enough for the seal part..) but something has to be added to make them worth using.


Thank you for reading, I hope my feedback will be properly considered . Keep up the good work, palatanks have come a long way, and I hope they can come the final mile.
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* List your primary talent tree: 0/45/16 Protection specced

* List the content you're primarily pursuing or most enjoy: Raiding

* Provide a brief description of the areas you feel are most in need of improvement:
1) Protection talent tree bloat: The protection tree, with the addition of the talents in tBC, is both very bottom-heavy and very top-heavy. While I wouldn't object if some of the talents were reduced in price for the same effect, biggest help will come if it's just evened out so the "must-have" talents aren't all bunched up (see third and seventh tiers of Prot tree).
2) Redoing sets: With the Retribution S3 set and the new spell damage tanking plate that Blizzard has added recently, they have shown that they are listening to what the players are asking for. Unfortunately, the sets released prior to 2.3 and S3 have not be gone back through and altered, and considering that players are actively seeking them out still, this is one large oversight.

* List up to five specific spells/abilities/talents you feel most need change, redesign or improvement in the order you feel each is most in need of attention.
1) Holy Shield: Biggest change is removing the half second or more period that a person can be crushed. With a duration and cooldown of the exact same time (10 seconds) eventually every Paladin will have Holy Shield down for a moment or more, allowing them to be hit by a crushing blow. I believe that it could be a good change to alter Improved Holy Shield to still give the increased charges, but also increase the duration by 0.5 seconds per talent point (making it akin to Warrior's Improved Shield Block talent). In addition, since Holy Shield is effected by the Global Cooldown, which means that, approximately, 2-3 seconds before Holy Shield becomes castable again. This is a period where I put myself (and thus my entire raid) at risk if I do not have it available for casting. Now, if a Warrior's Shield Block was also on the GCD, I wouldn't have as much of an issue, but it's not, meaning that they have a distinct advantage that we cannot match. I'm merely asking for equality here.

2) Seal and Judgement of Command: For Blood Elf Paladins, this is a non-issue. With the addition of Seal of Blood, a Blood Elf Retribution Paladin has an effective, powerful seal that procs on every swing, turning their physical prowess into strong magical damage. The closest an Alliance Paladin gets is Seal of Command, which is generally considered inferior. Seal of Command's low Proc-Per-Minute ratio means that many swings can pass without a proc. Compared to Seal of Blood, which does less damage per proc, but procs on every swing, Seal of Command is much more random, thus much more unreliable. Many Alliance Paladins are demanding that Seal of Blood be given to the Alliance to balance out the weakness, but I believe that if Seal of Command was given more overall value, Seal of Blood wouldn't need to be given to both sides. If Seal of Command did less damage, but had a more reliable proc chance (12-15 PPM or just a flat 100% chance to proc on hit), even at the expense of having a lower weapon damage percent, would be a huge step in the right direction.
In addition, Judgement of Command's damage is reliant on +spell damage. This is a stat that Blizzard has chosen to move Retribution Paladins away from, so having them still rely on it for any major aspect of their class is bad design. By making Judgement of Command also rely on physical damage or possibly having a percent of the Paladin's Attack Power (maybe 20%) be added to JoC's damage would fix this problem.

3) Redoubt: For an uncrushable Protection Paladin, Redoubt gives an effect that only has any value when Holy Shield is down. Since Redoubt is a chance to proc on hit effect, it is also unreliable, since it may not be up when you need it. While many Protection Paladins do have Redoubt, the only reason most take it is to gain access to Shield Specialization. A change making it similar to the Warrior's Shield Specialization talent (5% increasing Block Chance, 2% total mana regained from a block... something of that nature). Simply put, Redoubt's value should not disappear after a Paladin becomes uncrushable.

4) Seal of Vengeance: Generally a good seal, but the Proc-Per-Minute limitation on it (20 PPM), means that with anything slower than a 2.5 speed weapon, you cannot effectively keep a five stack of Holy Vengeance upon the target. While this is really a problem with a highly limited number of spell damage weapons having fast speeds (only one level 70 spell damage weapon with a speed of 2.5 or slower), removing the limitation from the PPM will not require a total overhaul of many spell damage weapons. In order to keep Seal of Vengeance somewhat similar, it doesn't require a 100% chance to proc per hit. Something like 70% or 75% chance would be more than enough, thus keeping Seal of Vengeance not at a 100% chance to proc, but making it far more reliable despite the weapon speed.
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My Blog: http://kazielmmo.blogspot.com/

I've tried to read every single comment in this thing, all the while wishing I could post. Here are the messages I think have been repeated the most:

Holy
Cleanse isn't cutting it anymore, the way some classes can gob on debuffs. Make it remove more effects somehow.

Inability to heal several people at once hurts us, lack of instant heals hurts us, the two together are breaking us in arenas because we're too easy to shut down. Divine Shield does not compensate for these.

Lay on Hands has too long a cooldown.

Holy Shock is not too bad damage-wise, but is too wimpy as a heal. (Lots of requests for it to HoT/DoT.)

Protection
The Protection tree is bloated, trim it down. (The consensus on this was resounding.) A tankadin has barely enough points to pick up the essential tanking talents, hence almost no flexibility.

Righteous Defense is buggy/unreliable, and we shouldn't need a macro to get basic functionality out of it.

Tier 1 protection talents are bad for tankadins and also bad for non-tanks who want to dip in and grab some utility.

Prot should have Deflection and Ret should have Precision.

We need some means to pull a single target.

Holy Shield's duration or cooldown should be tweaked so we can maintain coverage even with an imperfect connection.

The list of mechanics/fights which screw tankadins is much longer than the list of mechanics/fights which screw warriors/bears. Both lists should be roughly equal, and both lists should be short.

Retribution
Casters chew us up.

Repentance blows, and it blows on too long a cooldown.

Crusader Strike should do something in addition to what it does now.

Alliance retadins wish they had Seal of Blood.

Are we spell damage/spell crit, or are we attack power/melee crit? Make up your minds so you can get our talents and gear all moving in the same direction.

[i]Note: I make no comment as to whether or not I agree with these; I was trying to think only of their frequency.[/b]
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Scarlet Crusade - 0/46/15 - Uncrushable at 15.5k