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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