Razorgore

So we tried Razorgore for the second time this weekend. We managed to go 0/3 on the first phase with a high of 21 eggs destroyed. Still need to learn more about controlling Razorgore.

Paladins and the Community

The Paladin community right now is two groups. Those that rolled a Paladin and expected to be up front in the thick of combat and throwing out a little bit of healing. Those paladins are the ones who complain about lack of DPS/Control/Fun. Then you have the nouveau Paladins who's vision of the class is more in line with a cleric. Healer in Plate who buffs. These are the players who go onto the boards and say "The class is fine. L2P."

The second group is the greatest threat to the class. The second group is a bigger threat then whiny horde, stupid CMs and all of the board trolls combined. That's pretty imflamtory but it needs to be. The nouveau Paladins see the class as having a single role, as having only one correct thing to bring to the table and that is just wrong. Every type of every class brings something to the table for a raid. Bring a shadow priest to MC and see if your locks don't love the increased power that Shadowweaving lets them have. Bring a Feral druid and see if your hunters and rogues don't weep for joy.

But what do Retribution and Protection Paladins bring to the table for a raid? Protection brings Kings and Sanctuary. And Ret brings what? Vindication? God knows the raw joy of buffing BoK every 15 mins. And Vindication is going to be nerfed next patch to be useless on bosses. But the nouveau Paladin screams that it isn't our role to do anything but buff and heal. All they can see is how powerful our buffs are, how efficent our heals are. But that only supports one play style. I'm glad it makes you happy...but that doesn't make others in the class happy.

Some may ask why the nouveau Paladin cares if Ret and Protection get buffed. The reason they care is fear. They have built an identity around buffing and healing. They see themselves as following the "one true path"...and if Ret and Protection become viable builds then there is no longer one true path. They fear that Ret and Protection buffs will cause blessings and heals to be nerfed. They are afraid that what justifies thier righteousness will be taken away.

As long as the nouveau Paladins continue to say the class is fine then they give a reason for the Devs to say the class is fine. What keeps us down is Paladins in our own community.

Okay, this is rather random but I'm trying to put together a list of actual issues the Paladin class has. Not so much what we say as the root causes:

1. The seal system is good but badly excuted:

Too many seals either repeat themselves or do nothing. Seal of Justice and it's judgement are prime offenders. Judgement of Justice is rarely used because it doesn't do what we hope it will do. It's supposed to be a PvE snare but acts more like a stake and rope. As long as it's tethered to the Paladin then the bad guy will always be at range. It just keeps someone from out running us. It also has no PvP use. Instead of a useless snare, why not make it a four second silence? SoC is another Seal that has problems with implementation. It's intended to allow us to have two handed burst damage. But it is very unreliable burst damage. Instead of PPMs with it, turn it in to one shot weapon buff. JoC needs to not be tied to stun damage.
Seal of Crusader has it's own issues as well. The attack speed bonus does nothing. The judgement is excellent however. So perhaps in the spirit of us being buff bots, why not let us have a debuff. What if Seal of Crusader had a ppm debuff that lowered resistances by 5 per proc, lasting 1 min and stacking up to five times? Seals of Light and Wisdom are fine.

2. Purge and Counterspell

Two spells that pretty much make us useless. Turning seals into weapon buffs would help. But seperating our healing spells out of holy would also do that. If Paladin spells were nature based rather then Holy based it gives us two schools of magic and keeps us from being locked down any more then any other caster class.

3. Interaction

The controlled DPS arguement comes from this, not the more DPS arguement. The Paladin class is boring to play. The Aura system and blessing systems take up so much of our class skills but are mind numbingly boring. It's the downfall of any support class. The support abilites are such force multipliers that adding to us is game breaking. It's not DS that keeps us down. It's JoW, JoL, BoK, BoW....that is what keeps us from new abilites.

I love my guild. We cleared Rags last night and the Band of Sulfras dropped. It's a sweet ring for a Healdin, almost 400 mana with BoK and pretty close to 1% spell crit. Now our guild has five active raiding paladins. But one of them is being two boxed by a hunter, and two of the others have spotty raid attendance. So there are two of us that have 90% raid attendance. And the other Paladin spent the DKP for the ring. A mage and warlock wanted it as well but they didn't have anywhere near as much DKP as the other Paladin so he won. And the best part is that not a single person bitched about it. There was no whining about "Paladins shouldn't roll on caster gear." or other such nonsense.

I keep seeing more and more guilds that are looking for Paladins. Raiding level guilds wanting Paladins. And I find myself looking at thier web pages and thier DKP systems and there is a common thread. All of them have item "preferances" for all non-class spefic items. Then I see guilds that don't have these dumb restrictions. And they end up with the odd Paladin getting an Ashkandi or QSR. But they also are never looking for Paladins. And they get *good* paladins to stay.

Assuming Blizzard keeps driving the Paladin player base away from the game, then more and more guilds are going to have problems keeping Paladins if they keep up this stupid idea that Paladins shouldn't roll on anything.