Analysis of Uther's Hammer

Edit: Should've been more clear: these quotes are from Uther's Hammer (a mirror), a post Fangtooth made after a lot of Paladin feedback. This was many, many months ago.

Fangtooth posted the following on 5/24/2005 3:59:14 PM PDT:

Seals

Many of you are concerned with the Seal of Command – specifically, that the higher ranks of this skill are not worth the mana to cast. The devs will be looking into this and will see about making the higher ranks more worth while.

Accomplished.

Seal of Justice is another big topic. There is a big misconception with the way stuns work now. All stuns are affected by the same diminishing return scale, so Fist of Justice, Seal of Justice, etc will all be affected. Over all, the whole Seal system will be looked into in the future, and changes will be made as they are needed.

Seal of Justice fixed, as well it's coercion with Hammer of Justice. The Seal and Judgement was changed to make it more worthwhile, yes.

Talent Trees

As with all classes, the talent trees for Paladins will be under investigation. The developers would like to make the talent trees more diverse. Please be aware that these talent changes will not come for a few content patches. We hope to improvement the existing Seals and Judgment system so you will have more control over your damage, and the fights will be more interactive.

Did the talent trees become more diverse? At first sight: not really. There weren't any radical changes. At second sight: Still quite subjective. Third sight: Hopefully we'll start to see our new powers.

Did we get more control over the damage? I guess so.

Class Role

Paladins are good at many things, including healing, keeping others free of debuffs, and staying alive. Because of this, they are not set into one role. The improvements to the talent trees, mentioned above, should help define the Paladins role in groups. The developers liked the idea of being able to make Paladin’s into a healer with the Holy Tree, a fighter with the Retribution tree, or a tank with the Protection tree. We will be able to give you more details about the upcoming changes when the talent tree improvements begin.

(Emphasis mine)
I'd have to say that tanking got improved, but really, when it comes to healing and damage... well, it got less/marginally improved. Holy seems the way to go now if you want to do damage, which doesn't make any sense. Dang it! Why couldn't Blessing of Kings have been replaced with a spell that directly increases damage? It'd set the Retribution tree in stone as the damage dealing tree.

Ranged Slot

Since Paladins have no ranged attacks, besides speccing down the Holy Tree to get Holy Shock, you wonder why there is a ranged slot on your paper doll. We do hope to fill all the empty slots on each character in the future. The developers have many ideas on how to fill this slot – we will provide you with more information as it becomes available.

Nada.

Auras

Most players stick to Devotion Aura in groups, or switch to Retribution Aura if another Paladin already has Devotion Aura up. There are a few instances when a more specific aura is required, but over all it is either Devotion or Retribution. The developers are aware of this, and they will be looking into ways to make all auras more competitive and viable.

Next to zero changes: Retribution Aura got improved with 5 more damage points for less talent points and with no need to invest in Seal of Command. Concentration got it's talent moved to Protection and 3-talent 15% chance to resist silence/stun/kick effects. In my opinion one of the most disappointing ones, I had hoped for more aura interactivity.

PvP

Many of you feel that the majority of your skills are geared towards PvE combat; this is true for all classes. The developers recognize this, and will be looking at ways to make Paladins more effective in PvP.

I guess we got buffed and improved. Haven't PVP:ed that much yet though (using trackpad!). Judgement of Justice now makes the target immune to fear -- what the heck...?

Buff Duration

Currently the duration of Seals are set to 5 minutes. Many feel that this is too quick of a time, as seals must be re-applied often in dungeons or on raids. However, if these buffs last longer, we would have to increase the Mana cost of them. With that being the case, buffs have to be balanced so that they are useful, but they will not drain your Mana supply every time you get brought back to life or someone in your party needs to be re-buffed. This is especially important in the Battlegrounds where dying is immanent and you need to balance your mana between buffing and healing.

Heh, that battlegrounds argument fell short pretty quick. I always dismissed that as a pretty poor excuse for having short blessings. Great to see that they realized that there was a way to fix this. I'd love to grab this quote up whenever there's talk for greater blessings.

Blessing of Freedom

Blessing of Freedom is not working correctly, and will be fixed in an upcoming patch. Currently, you either take full affect or no affect at all. When this is changed, you will no longer get the movement impairing effects, but you will take full damage from the spell. This is for both player and monsters spells and abilities . However, the Dazed effects players receive from monsters when trying to run away will not be prevented by this Blessing. The Dazed effects you get while running through monsters was put in purposely to prevent players from bypassing massive amounts of content by running through zones without any repercussions.

BoF got BuFfed; 1 more sec on it's talent increase, and the talent is easier to max, easier to get and much more worth investing in now overall.

The following are not bugs:

Blessing of Might does not affect ranged attack power. This is correct. The tool tip is planned to be reworded.
Retribution Aura does not get the bonus damage from +holy effects or any auras. Retribution Aura does not receive bonuses from +spell damage items just like Thorns and the Imp’s fire Shield don’t. This is the way all damage shields work.
Resistance auras do not stack with other resistance effects. This is correct. These auras are designed to be able to work by themselves instead of relying on other spells effect’s to stack with them.
The stun affects of different spells are affected by diminishing return. This is correct; all stun affects are part of the same diminishing return rule on each character.

Blessing of Might hasn't had its tooltip reworded (...and this was written seven months ago. Laughing out loud.)
The stun effects affected by diminishing returns were changed.