Originally Posted by Malakitoo
2) Make it harder to lock down paladin heals. In this day and age of cast bars and focus macros it is arguably the easiest time ever to land a counterspell. From the ptr diminishing returns on silences, although they were shortlived, it is clear that blizzard is looking in this direction for a change. It's just too easy for a good mage to lock a paladin out, despite BoSac and divine shield. Something needs to change in the current silence model, whether it's reduced duration, DR timers, perhaps allowing downranking or something during a silence, I don't know. Maybe give paladins a counterspell ward, 5 sec duration, or add that functionality to divine focus. The casted heal model is losing out to the HoTs in hp/sec, and that shouldn't happen.
I don't think the solution to this problem is to turn the paladin into another support healer / utility bot. BoF and BoP is already solid utility, I hate to jump on the poor shaman bandwagon, but if paladins get more so should we  |
I think the silence DR was the wrong idea, it broke a mostly alright mechanic to save a couple classes.
I think the real problem is that Paladins spell skills are all Holy. Thats what screws them over from a school lock, they can't do anything. Every other class can do something for 8 seconds to pass the time without being a complete waste... paladins are just bricked. Even shadow-heavy deep affliction warlocks isn't as screwed as a paladin.
I think something worthwhile should be made (or created) nature or arcane or physical. If you just add a flat random resist talent or whatever it makes close wins seem too lucky, which no one likes.
Addendum: Looking at their design soulmate, the shaman, paladins were meant originally to be the physical/healer class whereas shaman were the caster/healer class. Shaman have a few different schools to resort to when nature is locked down. Paladins, during Burning Crusade, were fixed to be better tanks/damage, but not in a physical sense: their melee viability is
still based on the Holy School, thus screwing them when they are counterspelled.
If we look at the one other class in the game that loses its spell damage and healing powers in totality when counterspelled, we have druids and Nature School. Even then, however, druids still have amazing capability to shift at will and some good melee powers not dependent on Nature School to use: Feral Charge, cat bleeds, etc.
Paladins being completely screwed healing-wise and having their already-pathetic spell and melee power all shut down over a Holy School lockdown makes them uniquely victimized by counterspells given their design. I think *that* is what needs to be remedied.
I think some sort of oh-shit-panic, almost Bloodlust caliber physical power or 10s buff talent/talent revision would be a good solution. It would only work on counterspelling, so it wouldn't radically redefine the paladin utility vs. healer paradigm, it would be PVP focused, so raiders wouldn't want to get it and unbalance the whole PVE endgame, and it would incentivize stun/disorient style paladin counters over having them baby-guarded by mages/felhunters as is currently their problem (since it would be a risky decision to counterspell a holy heal and presumably saved by good teams for only precise moments in the game, not used as sophomorically as they are now.)