A friend of mine rerolled a paladin on Mal'Ganis to level up with some friends in a new guild. I warned him that I would rather masturbate with sandpaper to reruns of Alf on Telemundo than level a paladin, having leveled one to 15 or so on a PVE realm, but he shrugged me off and went his merry way. A few weeks later, we spend entire lunches bitching about why this class is so terminally boring and consigned to the role of heal bot.

FOCUS: Given the supposed rennovation to hybrids in the expansion, that quite a few people here will be rerolling, and assuming paladins will find new life as a tank hybrid, what kinds of things would you like to see or stay away from?

# Proc based dps. Activating an ability and then plodding away with an already slow 2h weapon hoping for a proc to do damage sucks balls. Why are designers making classes like this? People like button mashing with player-activated DPS, not waiting around for a proc to maybe go off. I think this is part of the reason warlocks are the least played class. Dotting shit and waiting for it to die isn't very gratifying (Regardless of how powerful they actually are. Think of this from a designer's perspective trying to appeal to player psychology.)

# No flashy attacks. Rogues spin around and shit. Warriors make blood spray in the air. Mages make pretty sparkles. Paladins are slow and boring. Why do priests have cool stuff like holy fire and mind control but paladins do not? We are rats who like pressing levers for a shot of joy. Apparently the guy(s) responsible for paladins was trying to appeal to Thomas Merton or something.

# Yaulp. EQ paladins had a self buff called yaulp that boosted attack power and haste for a few seconds. I'd like to see something like this to give paladins a burst dps ability. Warriors have heroic strike, which is also a "on next attack" ability, but it's still more gratifying because you're mashing buttons and activating your dps, rather than hoping for it to proc. A plus attack power and plus crit bonus with an extra holy damage component, on next attack spell would be nice. Crusader Strike, wherefor art thou?

# Melee-based healing rather than whackamole heal-botting. Judgement of Light is awesome. Too bad only one paladin can activate it (again, see: turning on abilities and waiting for shit to happen) while the rest of them play heal-bot. I'd like to see a special attack that heals the group when the paladin attacks. Suddenly, it makes sense to give a paladin hybrid gear with a bad-ass two hander. If the paladin is hitting for 600 or more, divided by 5, that's about on par with vampiric embrace. A flashy graphic like a holy nova explosion attached to the weapon model would be nifty too.

I will never understand why every paladin wants to be a warrior.

In my very very humble opinion, the paladin has the highest potential for healing power. It is also the most powerful support class. If I could do it all over again, I would probably roll a paladin to heal with, and I would probably be the best healer known to man.

Be thankful that you can even do damage as a healer. You could be a holy priest or a resto druid, you know. You put on a two hander and you can do some amazing damage even with a full healer spec. I put on the best feral gear in the game and I'm just mediocre and left feeling very vulnerable.

Like I said before, I will never understand why 95% of the people who play paladins want to be warriors.

It's certainly the path of least resistance to level purely with autoattack + afk, but you can actually do more than that as a paladin. Judge Crusader -> SoC -> Stun + JoC or just SoR -> JoR depending on spec. Actively seek out undead monsters where you can use the various anti-undead spells. Paladins are actually one of the more visually impressive classes to watch in my opinion - seals, judgements, and heals all have effects.

It's not the most amazing thing in the world, but leveling is inherently a very, very boring process when you've already done endgame content. I think your friend is running into that more than the paladin specifically.

I agree with you that paladins are the most boring class to play, but I would also point out that Blizzard has said they were designed to be an "easy" class to play. Should this be changed? Yeah, I think so, but I think Blizzard was aiming for simple class play during the design process.

# Yaulp. EQ paladins had a self buff called yaulp that boosted attack power and haste for a few seconds. I'd like to see something like this to give paladins a burst dps ability. Warriors have heroic strike, which is also a "on next attack" ability, but it's still more gratifying because you're mashing buttons and activating your dps, rather than hoping for it to proc. A plus attack power and plus crit bonus with an extra holy damage component, on next attack spell would be nice. Crusader Strike, wherefor art thou?

Guess you didn't play beta. They used to have holy strike, which was kind of like heroic strike, but was crazy at the high end with the +holy judgements and such, see the paladins in live side strat for an idea. they hit for like 1k-1.5k. This with some serious +damage was crazy :)

Leveling a shaman was just as painful. There's a small period right when we get Windfury that we run around uber DPSing mobs down, and then suddenly we're lvl 54 sitting in EPL emptying an entire mana bar into one mob and barely surviving, praying that WF procs to save our sorry ass. I completely agree on the need for non proc based attacks. Shaman and paladins both need some sort of cooldown based melee attack.

Stormstrike? My leveling as a Shaman was horrible for the last 10 levels, but that was because I was a complete and utter noob. I used Spirit/Int gear (think blue dragonscale...) with an enhancement specc. With proper Str/Atk pwr, stamina and some crit gear, leveling should be a breeze.

That was a joke, right? "amazing damage" and a paladin built for healing just do not go together. Even a priest with their basic nukes will put out more damage.

Don't get me wrong. I knew exactly what I was getting into when I made my paladin. At the start of the game many did not think the paladin could hold their own in healing. I knew better. I wanted a healer that would not die to the first loose mob while raiding. I am an aggressive player and aggressive healing tends to get priests killed at the very start of a trash pull or boss fight.

However, I do not think the paladin is at all what the developers imagined when they made them. Personally I feel like they should be up in the thick of things meleeing/tanking. But we don't have the aggro abilities anymore. We don't have the gear to tank. We don't have the skills to heal while in the thick of things (unless nothing interrupts). Personally I would like to see them make all paladin heals instant cast with longer refresh timers. Basically cut down the heal throughput, but make them true front line healers.

Of course there still needs to be more good reasons to get out there and melee. I am really interested to see what they do with paladins in the expansion.

I levelled back when Seal of the Crusader was the best dps Seal. Also levelled as Holy/Prot after Verigan's Fist was no longer usable. I quested pretty much the whole way. Downtime was virtually non existant, and I rarely died. But then again, this was when I first started playing, and everything was new. I only have one non bank alt that is level 35. If I tried to now, I'm not sure I could level a paladin to 60.

As far as changes go, with the new judgement system, things improved greatly. You basically get a strike every 8-10 seconds. But yes, I agree that waiting for a proc to do decent damage is somewhat aggrevating.

Since 1.11, I don't think shamans are as bad in their mid-high 50's as they were. I used to hear alot how badly they slowed down, but I dinged mine pretty recently.

Pretty good +spellpower itemization beginning in your low 50's, the talent review, and the lvl 50 shammy trinket makes ele pretty painless (3-4+ mobs on a trim mana bar depending on clearcasts, with average to highish ~180-220ish DPS according to recap) as long as you're not trying to grind on nature resistant stuff.

/derail

Deleted.

Heh, yah that was the best - no WF procs for an entire fight until the last 1% of the mobs health when you'd get a triple crit.

That promotes hybrid activity and improves interactiveness. They couldn't possibly give that to Paladins.

Honestly though if that was a made into a 41 point talent it would be really cool.

I think leveling a shaman is quite a bit better to level. You get travel form at 20, which is really nice because the most frustrating part of leveling to me is being without my epic mount. GW is no epic mount but it sure beats running. Astrall recall is also pretty nice. I started a shaman on another server (i.e. no level 60 to spot me gold/twink me out), and traveling in GW with mining and herbalism I had about 250 gold when I hit 40, and that was just mining and flower picking as I was questing and killing mobs (didn't go out of my way to farm). I also always kept the latest 2-hander blue/purple (if affordable) weapon (either through the AH or instance farming). That seemed to help.

Also shamans have a lot more outs on a PVP server, earthbind/frostshock then GW then astrall recall (if needed). Paladins get bubble/hearth but only once an hour.

Paladins get a free mount at 40, but like I said with the right trade skills this isn't a big benefit.

I think the last few levels seem artifically long because you get that, "I'm almost there" mentality and everything slows down.

I think when the xpac hits you will see alliance shamans leveling a lot faster than horde paladins.

Aside from the inherent similarity in that you're just killing monsters over and over, I think what separates grinding on a paladin from grinding on a priest/druid/shaman is that the paladin dps offspec is pretty bad. There's just no comparison between a shadow priest, feral druid, and dps-paladin. You can mitigate it a bit by focusing on undead, and fortunately there are undead populated regions in almost every level range, but then you're missing out on the solo content and questing that other classes are just doing faster.

However, make some friends with a high dps class and you turn that frown upside down, which pretty much sets the standard for paladin gameplay pre-expansion anyway. I never saw them as being "holy warriors," but then again, I was coming from DAoC pvp where the class dps was pretty laughable and they had a set utility role. I can understand the confusion at release, but at this point in the game folks need to bury the hatchet until the expansion.

Your friend must have never played a druid before the talent revamp. Anyone who suffered that can level a pally without blinking.

We had a guy level the full way as a restoration druid wearing green "of healing" items back in 2004. This guys still with us and still loves his druid. Certain people love their class :)

The problem with paladins is they have very few skills (comparatively) where they push a button and get immediate returns. Which makes for boring gameplay.

They have many awesome skills, and a a powerful class, but there is not very much instant gradification.

If a rogue hits SS his character immedately does something and the player sees the effect. If a warrior hits HS, his next weapon swing gets the effect.

When a paladin hits a button, generally its a buff that makes what they were allready doing slightly better, or it has a 50% chance of doing something good.

So the end result is powerful from a mechanics standpoint, but bad from a player perspective.

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Proc based gameplay is just bad design. You have streaks of being too powerful because the procs lined up, and then increadibly weak when they dont. Its hard to balance, and not fun to play with.

Though I think that paladins in their current state would be overpowered if you took away the procs and made the attacks garuneteed, (say a 6 PPM skill becomes a instant with a 10 second cooldown) so I dont envy Blizzard trying to balance it.

Pre-revamp druids were painful, but a very different painful from paladins. Paladins can actually kill things at a decent rate and have fairly low downtime, but are boring as hell. Doing things like killing things with just Entangling Roots was pretty stupid, but it at least involved pressing buttons.

Anyone who cites those as reasons that hybrids have any sort of an easy or "better" time of anything, needs to be punched in the face.

What's the guy trying to do? Powerlevel to 60? Do Quests? Group?

Right.. you're trying to powerlevel a low-dps car.
Right.. you're soloing on a char that has a substantial group-supporting role.
Right.. you're doing this using what.. SoComm and afk?

When I leveled my paladin just to have fun, it really wasn't that bad. As Wodin pointed out there are a lot of things you can do other than just SoComm and afk.

I agree. I have done both Shaman/Pally, and while a Shaman was a little bit better, they both were painful.

Shaman do have Stormstrike (200ish mana for instant attack every 20 secs), and Pallys have Stun + Judgement of Command (400ish holy damage if stunned, 1 min for stun). Still it isn't much, but it does help a bit.