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Thanks Anonymous for highlighting this thread. Sky has a thread detailing the evolution of the Paladin from release to the Burning Crusade. Very good read and in my view pretty accurate.
It's pretty obvious though that our class has evolved. My prime example of this our talent Illumination (mana back on spell crit) which Blizzard used to think was totally overpowered for us, but then went "Hey...it makes Pallies unique! Let's build on that!".
This is why all the spell crit gear we could scavenge out such as the Eye of the Beast and Cap of the Scarlet Savant locked us out.
I actually began to notice that they changed their philosophy on this right before 1.9 when they gave us the Sanctified Orb as a quest reward for level 50. That trinket is probably the first Pally-only gear that had spell crit.
And of course...after that, it all just got better. The dungeon 2 set was arguably one of the best itemized sets ever. Only strength, intellect and stamina and +spell gear with some +crit and +spell crit thrown in there. One of the set bonuses was a melee +spell damage proc thingy, which is pretty cool. Pretty much in every aspect better than the Zul'gurub set (which had agility, wtf?).
Anyways, I'm rambling on. Read Sky's thread.
It's pretty obvious though that our class has evolved. My prime example of this our talent Illumination (mana back on spell crit) which Blizzard used to think was totally overpowered for us, but then went "Hey...it makes Pallies unique! Let's build on that!".
This is why all the spell crit gear we could scavenge out such as the Eye of the Beast and Cap of the Scarlet Savant locked us out.
I actually began to notice that they changed their philosophy on this right before 1.9 when they gave us the Sanctified Orb as a quest reward for level 50. That trinket is probably the first Pally-only gear that had spell crit.
And of course...after that, it all just got better. The dungeon 2 set was arguably one of the best itemized sets ever. Only strength, intellect and stamina and +spell gear with some +crit and +spell crit thrown in there. One of the set bonuses was a melee +spell damage proc thingy, which is pretty cool. Pretty much in every aspect better than the Zul'gurub set (which had agility, wtf?).
Anyways, I'm rambling on. Read Sky's thread.
posted by Mastgrr at 8:27:00 PM
4 Comments:
Maybe we should just have linked this blog for a comprehensive list of changes since Summer 2005 ;).
Anyway, i'm still unconvinced that Paladins are the best healers in PvE right now. The Holy Paladins strength is that in the vast majority of current lvl70 content is 5/10man and only really needs one dedicated healer. Seeing as you are going to be taking a Paladin anyway (BoSalv rocks the house, always) that Paladin may as well be a Holy Spec healer (unless you are a tank, and there still aren't enough Pally Tanks right now). This leaves the door open for hybrid specs which can off-heal (most notably Shadow Priests) and we all role with that reality.
The best way to deal with this, paradoxically, is to not buff Priest Healing (as it is adequate for the job as things stand) or nerf Shadow/Pally Holy (31pt and 41pt talents, I laff at thee) but to in fact buff Paladin non-holy specs. By making it more viable for a paladin to not be healing 100% of the time but smacking something instead Holy priests once more become attractive to groups.
That said, I am far from upset at the status quo of a Holy Priest no longer being seen as essential in a 5/10 man group. It was stupid that such was the case for 2 years, and very not-stupid now. And I'd wager that Holy Priests will once more become the go-to guys in 25man raids once those encounters are tweaked and multi-target healing becomes important.
Does it bother anyone else when threads like "Why did you roll your Paladin?" come up, and the old-school Alliance people like myself and others say:
"To be a Holy Warrior."
"To melee and spot heal."
"To tank."
And then in come these newblood BE Paladins saying things like:
"To be the best PvP healer in the game."
"To play the best support class in the game."
"Just to heal."
It's annoying. These people KNEW what they were getting into, having seen the class evolve over 2+ years. Those of us who started day one, when Paladins were to be on the front lines, and "tanks overall", we had no reason to believe that the reality wouldn't match the description.
It just frustrates me so much. They tell us we should re-roll because we obviously didn't want to play Paladins, when in reality, WE are the ones who were the first Paladins - the lied to, the nerfed, the ignored. They get to sit there and pretend that everything is alright because they had all the information to know what to expect.
We didn't. They get all high and mighty about it.
/endrant
-Ghmou
It's a pretty good summation of the paladins evolution in pve, not pvp.
As for agility being on our ZG set, agility = crit which is what non-healing pvp paladins go for.
Their point about the paladin being more of a pure healer than a druid or priest is interesting.
To suicidal:
A well played, and geared, Holy Paladin is the best healer in the game currently. Our guild has great priest, but they do not have the ability to keep up with me in terms of effective healing over a raid or heroic instance. Our mana effeciency is not due to downgraded flashed anymore, but instead due to our high spell crit rating.
I will admit that not having HoTs makes things interesting, but the work around is to focus on a) teamwork b) CC c) proactivity. I have mainhealed every instance (non-heroic) wihtout a problem. Heroics are a different monster, but in reality bringing a mana battery (shadow) allows for some DPS, mana/health regen, Fort, and an off healer for when a boss fight requires it.
Side note: Gregarth/Earthern Ring for an armory check if you care. If I have spellpower over 600 its not my healing gear, and you caught me at PvP.
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