The Spirit Realm

Now that the dust has settled on the new expansion and several things over the last 3 expansions have addressed most of the major paladin issues. What are your thoughts on the class? In what areas do you think attention needs to be focused? What do you like about the recent additions? Are you mostly satisfied with the class now and if not why?

I'm very happy with the paladin class as it stands right now. A large majority of all the serious problems I had with the class have at least been addressed, even if not fully fixed yet.

The biggest problem I have though, is that I'm happy with the class. History has taught me that the other jealous classes will win a debate somewhere and we'll get nerfed again in some big way, and I expect it again in about 4 months. The biggest issue currently against the paladin class is the devs willingness to listen to those that shout the loudest.

Satisfied in general.

1 point tho where we need to be much better would be passive healing, and to another extent passive dps.

Also very lacking in the mana regen department, and that hurt especially with the new manacosts.

I would say in the overall picture we did great not only for our class but overall in the bigger scheme of what other classes got or gained. My few things I would still like to see would probably be:

Penitence lower reuse
Righteous lower reuse
Slight better healing and ratios for heal/mana cost
Better % chance for Blessing of the Faithful to proc on slay. Clearly its better when soloing but it kinda sucks when your in groups, you get the kill and then it doesnt fire dissapointing at times.

Mana costs is the main issue I have, it gets used waaay faster then before, was worried about end regen being too slow, but with respite you never run out, mana goes out so fast

Other issue being resist mods on nukes(makes no sense that crushes have no resist mod vs their -61 mod stun counterparts when the whole point to crushes was adding DPS on non-stunnable content)[nukes being crushes, denouncement mainly], as well as cast time on 2 of them, making 1 a DPS loss, and the other a DPS loss under burns. There is a reason hybrid DoT's are instant and nukes are 0.5 max, which Spell Dev didnt get the Note on I assume

The two weakest areas for Paladins got addressed extremely well, Burst DPS and pulling. In terms of short bursts, we're able to put up respectable numbers.

Penitence is also an amazing emergency heal addition. A 'no targetting' heal was something we desperately needed. (Yes, Hand of Piety is 'no targeting' as well, but that's it) Filled in one major gap that I felt was needed.

The ability to use actual dps spells on things other than undead only is a massive welcome. No more 'use crush to trip mana reit or potions to do damage output', but while doing so risk large amounts of agro thanks to HOs.

Honorific Mantle and Armor of Courage on separate timers, Defy/Protective/Challenge all got solid boosts that make them very viable even in the raid game. All these went a long way to making us much more capable in raid critical tanking roles, as well as the gap in the group game.

All in all, this is one of the best expansions I can remember for Paladins.

I like whats happened to our class again, after the last few years this expansion has brought us full circle once again and are on an even footing with other tank classes. I like all the new stuff and it's alot of fun, heck I even killed my monk friend today with fade lol was good laugh, so many different things we can do now and different spell setups it keeps it interesting.
Everything is great except for the aa group heal not critting anymore, it used to crit quiet abit, was the added hot supposed to suplement that?
thanks to everyone who has fought so hard to keep our class alive.

Aah yes, hand of piety doesn't appear to crit at all anymore (after i bought the new lvl). was this intentional?

Not intentional, need to be brought up.

I have really enjoyed what HoT brought to us.

The things I don't like now:
1. Way to easy to get interrupted, not because we are getting stunned but instead due to raw damage we are taking.
2. We lost our efficient healing capability, the Touch line was awesome when you could afford the cast time, now it doesn't heal enough hp, and is guaranteed to be interrupted with it's long cast time.
3. Our burst DPS is nice and predictable now, but Righteous Indignation is too random. At 3 minutes re-use it would be nice to guarantee that first hit goes critical, cripple, or slay. The part I really don't like about it however is that it is capable of missing much to often.
4. Propitiate (new pacify) duration is random, not to much a problem in most areas when you can fade off agro, but when your pulling for an hour or two it quickly gets annoying. I really liked the old pacify spell since the duration was fixed just right that if you didn't take your time, you could keep 3 mobs pacified and tag the 4th.
5. Duration of Preservation (and the others in Ward of Tunare line) needs to be removed, it's only good for a limited number of procs anyway. There also seems to be a stacking issue with some of the other classes new spells (other than the ranger ones that are the usual culprit).

2 through 5 I can live with if I really have to, but 1 is a huge problem that is going to get worse if they keep ramping up damage we take. I've died countless times from being interrupted and fizzling multiple times trying to cast spells which only take 1 second or less to cast. Lost agro to not being able to get the hate generators off in time (usually near the start or end of a fight). We have the AA to keep on casting through a stun sometimes, now we need one to keep on casting when pushed small distances.

I'm pretty happy with where we are at the moment, moreso than in a long time. I don't play bots or alts, and molo a lot, so can't compare to playing other classes but the available tools allow us to do a lot of things while still maintaining a challenge. I don't see us as overpowered though I'm kinda concerned the way Normy is. Some of the ignorance being spouted over on the SK website is a little alarming but it is nice to see some cooler heads there too.

Heals are good, DPS i think is where it should be on sustained, and a nice burst tool that contrary to non-paladin belief does not actually put us up with rogues or wizzies and that a SK guildy can still beat me on relatively easily. We can pull again but not to any level of a pull class.

From comments above, I don't think we need RI to be less random. It does well most times and if not, well meh - I see it as a chance to do a nice round not a requirement to do humungous damage every time. I enjoy seeing it do several crits within the flurry and that means I'd lose that enjoyment without average clicks of it to compare (I am easily amused). I haven't even tried penitence though I will be swapping it in exchange for denouncement, which is a kinda nice idea but between mana usage and resists make it something I played with but rarely use now. Denouncement for me only gets used to push dps on a burn and primarily as another nuke. The heal is unreliable so just a bit of a welcome side effect. Mana is an issue and I go through it like beer. However, if I lay off the nukes and stick to stuns and crushes I can keep going indefinitely. So mana regen to me seems to be where it should be and is a moderator of the spell dps capability.

My biggest hate now is Shackles with its unreliability in both sticking and duration. As I mentioned, I don't play other classes, but are their roots so crappy? The fact that I'm even worried about this tells me we've done quite well and a pally is now a fun class to play.

Anyway, if I can get some time with one of my guildy SKs we're going to do some parse comparisons. It kinda irks me that the onus of proof seems to be on us to show we're not OP because we're worried about the nerfbat, rather than them to show they need a boost.

I think the change they are referring to is that paci pre-OOW pretty much made the mob mentally handicapped and it wouldn't respond unless hit. The only upgrades were that it would effect creatures up to X level. After the change made to all paci spells, the spell descriptions changed to "Reduce reaction radius" or something similar, where now the paci'ed mob will still agro if it's friendly units are pulled too close. This change meant you couldn't pull mobs through each other with paci anymore. I'm sure the devs liked it this way too, because it meant different classes/levels could have different powers of paci, rather than one glob effect of gimping a mob of X level or lower.

Frenzy reduction might be a more accurate term for reducing reaction radius.

I've not played much with our paci yet, play time has been limited, but I've never seen a paci spell with a random duration. Is it possible other mobs are just pathing too close and getting the add anyway?

Old Paci:
1: Frenzy Radius (15/30)
2: Reaction Radius (15/30)


New Paci:
1: Reaction Radius (17/90)



The line they share reduces the assist range. That's how far away they'll react to a friendly mob being attacked.

The line that the first one has, that's missing from the second one, reduces the agro range. That's how they react to you personally. With a sufficiently good version of line 1 (the best ever was CLR/65 ENC/62 spell Pacification from PoP with 1: Frenzy Radius (1/65)), you could walk straight through the most crowded of rooms without invis and the mobs wouldn't care. Pull - almost straight through it, the mob wouldn't care. You'd have to directly agro the monster on purpose to pull it while the spell lasted. This was deemed more than necessarily mighty and so removed from every paci since.

When I mentioned Propitiate I was not talking about a simple matter of mobs assisting a mob I had cast Propitiate on. That part is fine, not overly difficult to work with, and keeps ya alert.

What I'm referring to is seeing a worn off message at random points that are not long enough periods to have met the duration, in some of the more extreme cases immediately after the spell lands.

If you really want to see the difference between the Propitiate and Pacify, go play an OMM (deep guk probably easier to experiment in) and pick Paladin. After all the years of patches/fixes/hacks the EQ team has made, that spell still function just how I remember it. In fact the only difference is that it now gives a worn off message, which is something Pacify never did back when it was usable.

As a mostly group-geared paladin, I haven't had this much fun since LDoN! I can hold aggro better, tank better, dps a little bit, burn dps a little too, solo better, and pull in a pinch. With pacify and fade I actually feel like I'm playing a hybrid again (lots of utility). Best of all, people actually *want* to group with paladins again, especially in undead camps. In the last few expansions it was very humbling, even embarassing, to be invited by a group to camp undead and then have disappointing dps. I don't feel that way anymore. It may take some time to educate folks and change their minds, but I think that a lot of group-geared paladins will stop being perma-lfg.

The last few expansions have been fun from a content standpoint, but for paladins HoT has to be the best exp in a long, long time.

Honestly I think they have us about where we should be. The other classes that are moaning are normally the expansion favorites as far as I am concerned. In no way did we become uber but on par for being geared and aa'd for playing in a current expansion.

As a group-geared and grouping (boxing) only paladin, I am very happy with the current state of paladins in the game. Since my paladin never solos (unless you count the end mob of the Miragul's mission instance), I have zero thoughts on the power and needs of the soloing paladin. HoT has really let me think about my paladin as more than a meat shield where shielding/avoidance/ac is king and actually made me think about gear choices and spell/ability combos...which is a good thing.

I would say the one area that I would like to have attention focused is mana recovery as I find that mana is actually a bigger worry for me than ever before. Maybe letting us get some of the higher yaulp spells that clerics got for mana recovery. Would have to recast and it would be a buff slot tradeoff...but that's okay. I like having options.

HoT has brought a ton of positive changes to the class and for the first time in a long time, I feel completely justified in choosing a paladin over a warrior or SK in my box group.

Goodn