The Light and How to Swing It: What is a paladin?
by Elizabeth Wachowski 
Jun 5th 2007 at 9:04AM
Welcome to The Light and How to Swing It, one of our new class-specific features. Robin and I will be switching off on pallies by the week. We're both belfadins, so beware: we probably haven't been playing them as long as you have.
The topic I've chosen for my inaugural column cuts to the very heart of the class. What is a paladin, and what should a paladin be? Are we healing clerics, supporting the raid through magic and buffs? Are we defenders, standing in front of the foe with our shield and our sword? Are we holy warriors, charging into battle like Uther? Or are we a mix of two or three of these -- a capable tank that can switch off and heal, a healer that does best in melee situations, or a true hybrid that can step up to any challenge?
This has been one of the biggest debates on the paladin forums, and it generally comes down in two ways: holy paladins vs. ret paladins and Alliance paladins vs. Horde paladins.
The enmity between holy and ret paladins is something I don't really understand. Then again, I'm prot/holy and haven't raided yet, nor do I have much experience with ret in general. On the rogue forums, we don't tend to jump for joy when one tree gets nerfed or develop bitter rivalries based on our specs. Even druids, the other class with a DPS, healing and tanking tree, stick together with their tree/bird/bear/cat brethren. Hearing the holy and ret paladins going after each other when the 2.1 patch notes came out was disheartening for a newb prot pally, like hearing your parents fighting. Is this what I have to look forward to at 70?
In general, the holy paladins who dislike retribution enjoy being arguably the best single-target healer in the game, and are concerned that their healing capabilities will be nerfed if paladins get more DPS capabilities. The popular image of the "retnoob" -- the paladin who runs into battle swinging his twohander, never healing or tanking or caring about anything other than his huge crits -- has also ruined the retribution tree for a lot of paladins.
The ret pallies feel deceived by Blizzard. The original class description, the role of Uther, and the classical image of paladins point to a holy warrior, a class that can smash faces as well as heal them. With plate armor and good utility, why should paladins be standing forty yards away casting two spells over and over and over again? Most coherent ret defenders don't want DPS equal to that of a mage or rogue, but instead some kind of utility along with middle-of-the-road damage -- a form of melee shadow priest.
Similar to the holy/ret arguments are the fights between Alliance and Horde paladins. Once again, this seems to be unique to pallies -- the only comparable class on this one is shaman, and both Alliance and Horde shammies on the forums are united in their dissatisfaction with their class. Basically, Alliance paladins have been playing the class for years, and most of them rolled it based on either their perception of paladins or the abilities of the paladin class at that time. So a lot more Alliance, at least on the forums, tend towards the holy warrior side.
Horde paladins, on the other hand, had two years to watch the raiding and PVP roles of paladins develop. They rolled based on what they saw Alliance doing and what they felt Horde lacked. And Horde pallies never had to go through any of the paladin nerfs and buffs before 2.0. As a result, more blood elf pallies on the forums support paladins being a defensive hybrid, able to heal or tank. This seems to be true in-game as well. At least on my server, most of the rerolled pallies were former DPS looking to tank or heal, and I've yet to see a true ret paladin in action.
Just from looking at our talent trees, it's clear that paladins aren't meant to do only one thing. But it's tough to balance out the trees without totally messing up PVP. A plate class with a magic shield that could do DPS equal to a rogue would be horrifying in the battlegrounds. So how can we balance our roles and find a true place in groups?
The paladin forums and blogs probably have better ideas about this than I do. I have the limitations of being a belfadin that's comparatively new to the class. But from reading the forums and playing pallies, I do have two ideas.
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Let us be the best tanks for certain situations. While I agree that warriors should be the best tanks on average, due to being unable to heal, druids and pallies should be superior for certain situations. If warriors were always the best at everything, no one would ever bring a druid or pally. Blizzard took some really great steps in this direction in the Burning Crusade, making all three classes able to tank, but in a different way. Warriors mitigate damage with a mix of all the avoidance methods, while druids do it through high HP and armor and paladins do it through blocks. Currently, druids can be superior tanks on multiple mobs, while well-geared paladins can be a smidge above warriors on fast, dual-wielding bosses. Buffing the prot itemization and the prot tree slightly, while also varying the sort of bosses faced in dungeons, will make all three classes raid-viable tanks for certain encounters. Also, a non-useless and mana inefficient 41-point prot talent would help.
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Let us be melee healers. Sorry, ret pallies -- you can't DPS as well as single-role classes and on average, you never will. But with plate and judgements, there's also no reason we should spend every raid standing forty yards away when we can be using our abilities to buff the rest of the raid's damage and healing. Paladins are "easy healers" with only two spells for a reason. If judgements were powerful enough that raid leaders would want to have holy OR ret pallies standing at the boss swinging away between heals, then holy would have their superior healing and ret would have their desire to be in the battle. Heck, my guild might not have taken down Gruul tonight if it weren't for our pallies jumping in the fray after the tank and melee DPS died to a shatter at one percent. Possibly some sort of healing threat reduction in either tree?
So what do you think a pally should be? Do you have any suggestions on how to improve the class? What did you roll your pally to do?
Uther Lightbringer fanart by Pulyx on worldofwar.net.
Filed under: Paladin, Analysis / Opinion, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Jamie McCarthy Jun 5th 2007 9:40AM
Healing threat... reduction? You mean in addition to Blessing of Salvation?
Shouldn't the cloth healers who can be one-shotted get threat reduction, and the healers decked out with plate and shield maybe have to put up with drawing aggro every once in a while?
HolyLiaison Jun 5th 2007 9:28AM
Our 41 point Protection talent is far from "useless and mana inefficient."
Avenger Shield allows us to front load our aggro straight away at the start of boss fights. DPS can start laying in to bosses immediately. That's a huge hand up compared to the other tanking classes.
Also, when it comes to tanking more than 3 mobs, no class is better at it than us.
The only downside to being a Tankadin is our stamina shortage compared to other classes. Our base HP is about 1000 less than the other tanking classes (Bears/Warriors). So, I think that's the only thing that really needs a look at when it comes to Protection.
As far as Holy spec goes, it's probably fine now, even after our nerf.
Ret on the other hand needs a lot of love. There's virtually no gear selection for us, besides the PvP/Arena sets, unless we steal our Warriors gear. But even then that's not an idea situation.
Tim Jun 5th 2007 9:32AM
great feature, as a new blood elf I also see a paladin as a more holy defender. Someone who can either tank or heal , but switch to the other if needed in a pinch.
but i do have some comments
- paladin already are FAR better in multi-mob tanking then either a warrior or a druid. Tanking 4 mobs in some instances is no problem, something a warrior would struggle with.
- i think there are situations in game where a pally tank excels. not much though.
Then there is the heal or offspec debate. It's basically the same for both resto shamans and resto druids. If they are healing they also stand at the back doing their heals..
GT0783 Jun 5th 2007 9:41AM
I rolled a pally to be a defensive character that can heal myself when soloing and deal out some damage. I did not know which spec to take up though...
I've spec'd my pally as holy, prot. and ret. Each tree filled out. While I did enjoy healing for a time in my 40s I got quickly bored with it. I healed nice and good and it was easy, but to me a pally wasn't meant to stand all the way in the back with plate armor.
I switched to ret for a change of pace and I loved seeing the huge crits I would get when soloing in WPL. This proved to be a ton of fun and found a good place in a couple of ST runs.
Now I arrived at my current spec which is full prot. with a little bit of holy and ret. Prot. is the spec for me. Grabbing a ton of mobs and just watch my holy shield and sanctuary blessing deal out the holy damage with each block. DPS isn't bad either with my shadowrend long blade that i got in ramparts yesterday.
My guild wants me to be and stay prot. since we don't have tank warriors, they're arms and fury and can't tank for crap because of it. Even though I was asked to heal for a ramparts group that had no real tank (2 hunters, warlock, and a ret pally). I straight up said I have 8800 armor for a reason (lvl60) and thats not to stand in the back and heal. That group fell apart after 2 minutes, I loved hearing that.
I prefer prot. but ret can be a ton of fun. I might make a pally alt that stays full ret.
friedriches Jun 5th 2007 9:46AM
Sorry, I stopped reading after "We're both belfadins."
I find it hard to take advice on my class from someone who hasn't played it for more than 6 months. You have to know a paladin who has played for over a year and has a variety of experiences with the class. Hell, I could write the article for you on any aspect of all three trees and how to raid in each tree.
2 of the 4 commenters here are admittedly belfadins, and one more seems to not have played with the class much, making him a likely hordie. It's kinda like me writing an article on shammies in endgame. I have no freaking clue how to play a shammy, mine's lvl 25 and I hate the fact that I can't wear armor.
Tridus Jun 5th 2007 9:48AM
The animosity between Holy/Prot and Ret Pallies is the worst of any class I know of, but its not unique. Holy/Disc and Shadow Priests don't get along that well either, mostly because Holy/Disc as subpar trees with extremely subpar 31/41 talents are justified by too many people with "Shadow is awesome."
Anyway... demographics are the main problem Ret Pallies have in raids. With the gear they can dish out respectable DPS (I've seen it done), and they can put up some nice buffs (Judgements, and the usual Auras and Blessings) while doing it. The problem is that Holy Pallies are so good and healers are so much more in demand then DPS, that there really isn't much need for Ret Pallies.
I'm not really sure how you solve that without totally overpowering Ret in PvP, short of buffing Avenging Wrath's damage increase while at the same time making it lock out bubble for longer.
(And to echo a previous comment, Avenger Shield is awesome now that there's no minimum range.)
drakesilver Jun 5th 2007 9:51AM
I play a 41/20/0 pally. I've never been ret. I like the class. The 41-point prot talent is really good if the pally tank uses it. We don't have a high threat ability (sunder) so we need that to get initial threat. I've done a heroic with a prot pally who due to health/gear couldn't take hits from the trash mobs but with the 41-point talent and a frost mage and 2 hammer's of justice we could kite the mobs and it was fine. Got to love Heroic's the trash is 4x as hard as the boss.
I think paladins are fine where they are. We are still (arguably) the best healers even after the 2.1 nerf. I do around 45% of the healing in my karazhan runs and we bring a priest and a druid. Paladins can tank, the needed gear isn't well understood so many people are giving paladins a bad name for tanking. Ret tree is underpowered but you can't be good at everything. PvP would be broken if Ret tree was better. Paladins pwn PvP dude to healing in plate as it is.
Drakesilver on perenolde
FLoppyWesL Jun 5th 2007 9:56AM
All of this nonsense could have been solved years ago by my long forgotten post on the realm forums all they had to do was add " Death Knight Form " as the last point in the ret tree and add " can not cast any holy spells/blessings while in this form " and done. Cant heal and DPS at the same time all the QQ is extinguised add some nice dps talents " Final Judgement " 2 damage per 1 mana ( max mana 50% of paladins mana ) that would be our " pally execute " not that hammer of gg we have. A nice prot talent would be " chance on hit restores 1,2,3,4,5% of the paladins total mana which would fix the SA nerf.
unchi Jun 5th 2007 9:58AM
Tank Pallies are the best. They hold aggro from multiple mobs so much better that I have decided I'm never gonna aoe unless one is tanking.
Phyllis Jun 5th 2007 10:19AM
I'll admit that I rolled a pally just so I can smash faces with a heavy 2-hander and heal whenever in a pinch. I know I'd get into more groups if I were specced holy or prot but ret is just too much fun.
Tony Jun 5th 2007 10:23AM
Here is the problem with the 41 Point talent. If you want to sap a mob, and its a group of 3, then its useless. It jumps to your sapped mob a breaks it. If its a group of 4 mobs, you can work it but you have to be lucky.
As a 69 Pally who has tried 41 point builds in all 3 trees. I agree that you need to hope that people understand if you are ret that you should be hitting things with your hammer. I still get asked to heal all the time.
Prot Pallies have the hardest time gearing of the 3 specs. Most Pally plate I see has Int/+healing, where as to get some high defense rating gear you get stam but no Int/spell damage. I am a casual who plays alot, and I just dont feel like spending the Gold to enchant things.
Either way, I am going 42/0/19 at 70 since I can find good healing gear easy, and the 19 in Ret gives me some soloing ability. I will try and build up some good tanking gear and switch back to Prot if my guild needs it, but only if I get some good gear.
Anduryl Jun 5th 2007 10:27AM
Heh... I had to respond to this... (first post btw)
When I first played WoW, I decided to first try out a Warrior, because in virtually all RPG's I played, I was the dude who would always be a meat shield, willing to charging and smash a poor soul's face defending my squishy friends. Sure incinerating, freezing, and overall zap a dude to death is fun, but not nearly as satisfying.
Soon I got bored, being a warrior wasn't fun for me, not that the DPS wasn't enough, I don't care for that, but I felt the rage system was a little slow, boring, and the attacks were unoriginal. Then I noticed the Paladin class, spells for making things go boom, sweet, yet the class was centered around beating someone to a pulp.
It was my class, when I started Paladin, I discovered why I was always a warrior-esque class and never really cared for DPS, I was a defender. I loved the idea of being a symbol if righteousness and honor (I never got into the zealot aspect). To be able to lay the smackdown, yet if I see a dude in trouble, pop a heal and repeat. This is a fact of life for pallys, and we need to accept it. We are fantastic tanks and healers, even with all the nerfs that Blizz threw at me during my career. Now imagine if they really did but some nurturing to Ret? WE would be so overwhelmingly broken that they'd come at us with every dirty nerf-batty trick they got. But I do Insane DPS without a drop of Ret. I'll explain why how, and other bits when I get back from school, Peace out ya''ll!
Dipstick Jun 5th 2007 10:28AM
I originally rolled Paladin after playing Warcraft 2 and 3, and was definitly into the holy-warrior stuff. I was still below level 20 before the class redesign in one of the first patches so didn't really know any different when all the strikes were removed.
However once at 60 the PvE playstyle (spamming FoL) just seemed cheap and exploiting the one thing that we were good at just for the sake of it. At 70 it looked to be better with the various changes:
I tried tanking and it worked well, although not realistic for raid instances. So gave up on that.
I tried healing with the newer idea of downranking Holy Light with lots of spell crit, and that was great until recently when they killed it. So gave up one that as well since I saw the class was moving back towards FoL spam.
Now I'm doing solo PvP as retribution or Arena as Holy/Prot - and I'm enjoying myself again even if I do need to constantly respec.
And I'm doing PvE content on my warlock, which is much more fun and a refreshing change.
Urthona Jun 5th 2007 10:31AM
Heh. I'm new to the game as well. My tankadin is draenei, and only 59. I got a few suggestions, but they may be wrong headed. School me kindly.
1. Let Exorcism and Holy Wrath work on elementals too.
2. Allow all trees access to Holy SHOCK, but with different strengths. Instaheal and slight dmg spell for healadins. Threat generating equivalent to "frostshock" for tankadins. Big damage with long cooldown for Retadins.
3. Druids have a Feral talent that converts a percentage of str to int. Perhaps Tankadins could use a talent that converts a percentage of geared int to stam?
4. A non-Holy spell. Nothing is more aggravating that getting slapped and waiting for ALL my spells to come back online. I guess a single shadow spell would be nice, or a nature one. But I do have an idea: What if we got an Aura Shatter? Push a button and our Devo turns off, and all enemies are AOE stunned. Fire resist is a cold bomb, and frost is a fire bomb. Aura Shatter would have a decent cooldown too, so we don't become the neue AOE class ;-P
5. And to help our Ret brothers find a place: What if speccing heavily into Ret meant they lost the ability to effectively wear plate? Holy crits reduce armor durability, or instead they lose the skill to wear plate altogether? You'd see more people running around in Desolation, for sure.
viktorie Jun 5th 2007 10:36AM
The best tank in our guild is a prot pally. There's no class better at AoE tanking. Forget four mobs--we had an unfortunate pull in Shattered Halls (pulled the middle and somehow got a gladiator pit too), and three adds from the summoner, and the prot pally tank held the aggro on 13 mobs while Karazhan/Gruul geared DPS opened up on them--thank God for Salvation. It was a thing of beauty. A warrior or druid could never do that. And Avenger Shield rocks.
The main problem seems to be damage mitigation--it's my understanding that prot pallys have to stack up a lot of block and defense against crushing blows because of some base stat problems, which means they end up not being able to use resist gear in boss fights. For those of you raiding at 70, you can correct me if I'm wrong about that, but that seems to be the only thing standing in the prot pally's way of being a viable main/off-tank in raids. Which is a shame because the prot pally deserves way more respect than it gets.
Elizabeth, I hate to say it, but the other commentators are right. Pallys are a very complex class, and very misunderstood, and it doesn't sound like you or your colleague have had enough experience to really comment on the class, although you could act as a facilitator for discussions on topics. Just don't state a "fact" like feral druids being superior at AoE tanking until you've done your homework.
R. Knight Jun 5th 2007 10:41AM
I rolled a pally a year and half ago, my first and main, and I'm a casual player. So it took me a while to figure out the class, but for the bulk of my time I've been Ret. As #4 mentioned, it was good fun soloing. I even tried a mix one time, but lately I've gone Proc. Mainly because our main warrior tank went fury. It's been a learning process for sure, and I've made a fool out of myself (and other proc pallys a few times) trying to rack the brain around it.
Picking the right gear still has me puzzled because I seem to be burning through mana like crazy now, and I quickly realize (like when I've done other specs) no mana means a useless pally (especially a tanking one).
Otherwise I'm enjoying proc, seems to be working out for me so far. Tough I have yet to really test it out to its fullest extent.
Urthona Jun 5th 2007 10:46AM
Oh take it easy gentlemen. The woman plays a druid. And, duh, she's more familiar with Swipe, an multi-mob attack she doesn't have to spec for.
Pallies are great at holding AOE aggro because it compounds from being hit/blocked/etc against a spell called Holy Sheild. It's a Prot thing.
More power to ya Elizabeth for discussing Paladins. As MANY have said, paladins are a complex and misunderstood class. Perhaps debate will facilitate further education and bring to light stumbling blocks and how to overcome them.
Sylythn Jun 5th 2007 10:46AM
The way I play my fully retribution pally (who will stay fully retribution at 70) and the attitude I have when playing her is that she's a miracle-worker. I've pulled groups out of worse situations than with any other character I've ever played. My pally's motto is "Remember, I'm the reason you're still alive.", and I prove it time and again.
I'm one of the few pally's that's perfectly fine with things as is. I off-heal, I off-tank, and I off-dps...and that's fine by me, I'm there to add a consistent amount of support/buffing to my team, allowing them to do their job better...and when the shit hits the fan, I'm there to save their asses and pull us out of it rather than wiping - whether that's by pulling mobs off the healer and tanking them, or by getting those badly needed heals onto our tanks, or by throwing out a bunch of burst damage to take that mob the rest of the way down before his buddies arrive.
I may try full protection for tanking at some point - but one thing I cannot stand, and will never do unless there are significant changes, is go Holy for healing...I cannot stand the idea of standing in the back spamming 1-2 buttons for an entire fight while wearing full plate and ignoring all of my melee-range abilities...that's just plain ridiculous.
Dyermaker Jun 5th 2007 10:57AM
There's a few basic problems with Paladins.
Firstly, when WoW was created it was common to hear the phrase "no support classes". It was as if the developers recognized the lack of fun doing nothing but supporting others could be, and sought to provide ways for all players to participate. This sentiment has slowly but surely faded, to where there is one accepted support class. The Paladin. Blizzard seems rather conflicted with the idea that they do not want paladins in the back of a raid, but make them most effective when they do so. This relegates Paladins to a support role, and too many people seem to be very happy with this idea. Except for those that started with the notion of "no support classes" dancing in their heads. All other healing classes can do something else other than heal when in the back of a raid, paladins are melee and its the one thing you cannot do from that distance.
Additionally, the types of roles a paladin plays as they level and gear change so dramatically. In the early leveling, paladins were power houses. Hands down, the most effective class in the early game. Around level 50, that really diminishes. By the time paladins raid, their gear is pretty ineffective for their new roles and they are left with learning the game again. Would you imagine the uproar you'd hear if rogues were suddenly made the master of removing poisons and were expected to stand at the back of the raid cleansing people? The unique Paladin judgement system is rendered null by the need to be outside of healing range, that limits the effectiveness quite a bit. The ability to swap between roles is what makes the paladin fun, however, there is very little opportunity for this as a holy or protection paladin. If you're a healer, you need to heal. If you're tanking, you need to tank. Retribution paladins are fun because they can float to multiple needs. As a secondary source of DPS, its OK to stop attacking and toss a heal. Its OK to grab aggro on something that is not yet picked up by a tank. Unfortunately, the more the role is minimized the less opportunity you have to play this way.
I have found that most healing paladins play a pure dps alt. In my guild we see each of the holy paladins have a warlock alt. This is not a coincidence. Fun in a game is seeing a direct result of the things you do. No one plays Madden to control an offensive lineman, they play the one carrying the ball. You want to see the points on the scoreboard as you cross the goal line, its human nature. However, paladins are expected to contribute less than they can because one single role is deemed more effective. That role is a complete contrast to the role they played as they made it to that stage of the game.
Futura Jun 5th 2007 11:03AM
@5
Ditto
They lost me at "we're both belfadins too"