Ghostcrawler displays her dedication yet again as she popped up on a few of the Wrath of the Lich King Beta forums in the wee hours of the morning today. Or would that be late last night? What does 2 AM qualify as, again? Anyway! Ghostcrawler popped into the Paladin forums to check in with some concerned players, and brought some fun news. She says herself that it may not be 100% what Paladins want, but it should prove to be good stuff regardless. Let's dig right into it, shall we?

From Ghostcrawler:

• We'd like to do something else with Kings. I don't know that a core ability is the answer, but burying it deep in Prot, when Prot paladins would just as soon play with BoSanc, doesn't feel great either.
• We'd like to mess around with the top 2 tiers of all 3 trees, still encouraging you to cross-spec a little, but making that initial bite into the upper tier more tasty instead of just an icky appetizer to get the what you really want down deeper

• I think Beacon of Light is starting to feel pretty good. It may be a little OP right now, but I think we can get it in a good place. (I'm sorry, but I don't know if you have the version I'm talking about or not.)
• We'd like to get Vengeance back to 3 stacks, because that just feels more fun than 2. I can almost assure you that it won't be at 15% total damage -- that is hugely generous for 5 talent points, and would normally be budgeted at more like 15 talent points. If I had to guess, it will end up at something like 3 talent points for 1 / 2 / 3% that stacks up to 3 times (so 9% at 3 stacks). That is still over-inflated for 3 talent points. I understand that your dps used to depend on Vengeance. We'll just have to buff it in other ways. Death Knights will get the exact same treatment, whatever it ends up being.
• JotW was changed to support the new party buff system and it needs to keep that role. That is one of the main reasons why a group would want to take a Ret pally over another dps class. I understand your mana was dependent on this ability. We'll just have to buff that in other ways as well. Having too many talents that just lower mana costs feel like a band-aid, so we'd rather not overdo that route. Instead we'd just like to make sure you have enough mana. The new Divine Plea is one mechanic here (it works more like Blood Rage than Evocate now), but it's not the only one.
• Deep Ret and deep Prot need 1 or 2 more cool talents. We'll carve out room by bundling or just swapping out some of the current talents.

All of this sounds pretty good to me, though maybe not ideal. I've always felt Kings was in a strange place, so it'll be interesting to see what they do with it. I'd love to see Protection and Retribution get some more fun toys like Warriors seem to be getting, just fun stuff that you can take or leave. Not to imply that Warriors are getting everything and Paladins are getting nothing, I just get a kick out of the flavor talents like Warbringer. I'd love to see Prot Paladins get more of that.

The mana for Retribution Paladins thing we'll need to see in practice before we can form any opinion on it. Divine Plea being more like Bloodrage in the next beta build should help a lot, because channeling it was a lot of lost DPS time, not to mention interrupts on it. If you're going to make a melee class use mana, they shouldn't have to stop doing what they're doing to get their resources back. Ranged casters are one thing, they all fall victim to that, but can you picture a Warrior backing up from a boss, and instead of hitting the bad guy he beats himself over the head so he gets really, really angry? Maybe the Rogues should go drink a Red Bull for 4 seconds to get their Energy? Maybe those aren't perfect comparisons, but I think you see what I mean. In my opinion, it runs counter to how melee are played and ruins the feel of being in the thick of things. I'm sure not everyone agrees, but those are my thoughts on it.

Overall, while Ghostcrawler's information may not be perfectly in line with what Paladins want, they're still fun things and should prove interesting if implemented right.

Edit: Ghostcrawler is a gal and not a guy, so I have fixed my genderbending. Sorry, crablady!

Tags: beacon-of-light, blessing-of-kings, blessing-of-sanctuary, bloodrage, divine-plea, evocate, ghostcrawler, holy, judgements-of-the-wise, protection, retribution, vengeance, warbringer

Filed under: Paladin, Analysis / Opinion, Wrath of the Lich King