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Paladin Balance suggestions:
thefabricant
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 5,248 Arc User
Bear in mind that my paladin is a devotion paladin, so my knowledge of protection paladin is 2nd hand info. However, with that being said, I think you will find that my suggestions are more then fair, with regards to how powerful some mechanics are. Also, to those reading this, please don't turn this into a nerf/buff thread. I do actually have a paladin, I do actually play a paladin and I am requesting some balancing because I find the class to be too strong.
So, to start out with, my area of expertise the devotion paladin:
My over all approach to rebalancing devotion is to decrease the power of its healing and increase its strength in other areas.
Shield of faith: I recommend 2 possible changes. The first being to stop it from stacking and reduce its dr from 50% to 40%. At the moment, it provides too broad a layer of protection and because it stacks, its power can be taken way too far. My second suggestion would be to reduce its damage reduction to 25%, but add the effect of it buffing the parties damage dealt by 25% and still allow it to stack. Personally, I prefer proposal number 2 because it allows more then 1 devotion paladin to use this ability in a dungeon without it being completely out of whack. The issue at the moment and the reason I propose this is because with 3 devotion paladins working together, you can mitigate almost all damage, even in epic cragmire crypts. For the reason that this ability actually makes other classes redundant atm, this needs to change.
Vow of enmity: I recommend changing vow so that it has an ICD on its procs, but that each proc heals for more. This means that it doesn't simply keep the entire party at full health so long as the party keeps mashing hit on 1 target and so long as nobody gets 1 hit, at the same time as retaining its power as an ability. The issue at the moment is that it procs so rapidly in combination with any class with fast procs that it makes parties immune to all but 1 hits as well as procs any and all things that rely on healing constantly.
Bond of virtue: Like vow, I feel that bond needs an ICD on its procs so that it doesn't spam heal, but at the same time, it should also provide something like an additional 10% dr or 5% dr and 5% damage to all members of the party inside of its radius. The issue at the moment is that it synergises so well with other devotion paladin powers and acts as a catalyst for the devotion paladin "nuclear" state. It should also only affect players within a party with you, thus limiting its target cap and preventing its utility from scaling out of hand.
Burning guidance: Give it an ICD. As compensation, you can increase the damage it deals to say 10k on proc. Every time a class that has some rapid healing mechanic gets a hold of burning guidance, burning guidance gets out of hand. Instead of having this issue get out of hand with the release of every single new class that has a healing mechanic, there is always some mechanic with regards to this ability that has issues. This is because if a class can heal multiple times really rapidly, it doesn't even need to be for large amounts, the class can deal large amounts of damage through burning guidance. This ability is an ability of extremes, it is either underwhelming or overpowered, give it an icd or redesign it entirely, but don't leave it as is.
Healing font: This is an unnecessary daily power. The devotion paladin heals more then it will ever need to, as both light and justice. In no circumstances does the healing provided by this daily power ever make a major impact. I would recommend having the font instead provide an AP gain aura to players other then the devotion paladin, restoring 2% of their AP/second, as well as providing them with 10% more damage and 10% more dr.
Sacred Weapon: Make it do something, currently, it doesn't.
Protection paladin:
My approach to rebalancing protection paladin is to remove its immortality status and bring it down to the level of us mere mortals.
Binding oath: The design of the ability itself is good, the issue with it is that there are ways to prevent the damage its supposed to deal to the paladin from ever actually hitting him. I will not share the specifics of this, suffice to say, they need to change.
Templar's wrath: The issue with this ability is how much HP it is capable of giving the paladin. I feel it should be reduced to 200% and that in its place, monsters that take damage from this ability gain a 6 second debuff that decreases their damage by 30%. This makes the paladin more vulnerable to monsters who are not touched by this debuff, but less vulnerable to those who are and therefore the actual playing of the class becomes more skill reliant. At the moment, a paladin with good enough gear and skill can spam a single rotation and make a party immune to damage.
Divine protector: The issue here is that the daily power can be made spammable, meaning the rest of the party takes no damage. This is an issue because a paladin can render the party invulnerable with little effort on his part, making content far easier then it should be. In contrast, a party that has a GF with kv will still have to take a lot more care then they do with an OP. I would suggest either decreasing the uptime of the daily power, so its impossible to achieve back to back immunity, or to change the ability. I would change it by make it redirect 70% of the parties damage instead of 100% and the damage itself is reduced by 90%. This way, the party still has to be careful with out they play.
Things effecting both paragons:
The AP gain from burning light needs to be slightly increased, but the amount received should be dependent on how charged up the ability is. A charged BL should give say 40% of your AP, but an uncharged BL should give say 5%. This makes it more of a risk vs reward scenario when using the power as well as making the power more interesting to use and more rewarding for skilled players. In addition, make burning light apply weapon enchantments, currently, it doesn't.
Divine Judgement: It needs to have a higher base damage, or do something other then be "big bread knife from the sky." Say if it shattered the armour of effected targets, making them take 30% more damage for 8 seconds, then it would be useful in more ways then just acting as the celestial toast slicer.
Prism: Change it so that instead of being something that spam activates over and over, make it give you a temporary aura called "prismatic" that applies the prism buff to nearby allies, which is a HoT for 6 seconds that does not stack. In addition, players with the prism buff are immune to negative status effects while the buff is up. The prismatic effect lasts on the paladin for 2/4/6/8/10 seconds. This prevents the prism spam whilst retaining the integrity of the ability.
Deific intervention: I recommend changing this so that whenever you are at less then 20% of your life total, apply the DR and heal buff to all party members for 2 seconds. Upon application, a 6 second ICD is triggered, preventing it from spam triggering. This makes it a useful feat, instead of being utter garbage, without making it blatantly overpowered.
Also, I am aware, that from the devs perspective, they don't want to nerf/buff anything too soon or too quickly because you have to consider how the changes you make will affect the game as well as the fact that you don't want to upset players in the community too much. I do understand that, if changes are made to a class deemed slightly overpowered the moment players start speccing to it, they will be upset due to their lost enjoyment. I do think however, that the OP's time to shine so bright should start coming to an end now and that the flame should be lowered to a reasonable level of glare.
Any feedback/suggestions is welcome, especially in the protection area. So long as you keep it constructive
So, to start out with, my area of expertise the devotion paladin:
My over all approach to rebalancing devotion is to decrease the power of its healing and increase its strength in other areas.
Shield of faith: I recommend 2 possible changes. The first being to stop it from stacking and reduce its dr from 50% to 40%. At the moment, it provides too broad a layer of protection and because it stacks, its power can be taken way too far. My second suggestion would be to reduce its damage reduction to 25%, but add the effect of it buffing the parties damage dealt by 25% and still allow it to stack. Personally, I prefer proposal number 2 because it allows more then 1 devotion paladin to use this ability in a dungeon without it being completely out of whack. The issue at the moment and the reason I propose this is because with 3 devotion paladins working together, you can mitigate almost all damage, even in epic cragmire crypts. For the reason that this ability actually makes other classes redundant atm, this needs to change.
Vow of enmity: I recommend changing vow so that it has an ICD on its procs, but that each proc heals for more. This means that it doesn't simply keep the entire party at full health so long as the party keeps mashing hit on 1 target and so long as nobody gets 1 hit, at the same time as retaining its power as an ability. The issue at the moment is that it procs so rapidly in combination with any class with fast procs that it makes parties immune to all but 1 hits as well as procs any and all things that rely on healing constantly.
Bond of virtue: Like vow, I feel that bond needs an ICD on its procs so that it doesn't spam heal, but at the same time, it should also provide something like an additional 10% dr or 5% dr and 5% damage to all members of the party inside of its radius. The issue at the moment is that it synergises so well with other devotion paladin powers and acts as a catalyst for the devotion paladin "nuclear" state. It should also only affect players within a party with you, thus limiting its target cap and preventing its utility from scaling out of hand.
Burning guidance: Give it an ICD. As compensation, you can increase the damage it deals to say 10k on proc. Every time a class that has some rapid healing mechanic gets a hold of burning guidance, burning guidance gets out of hand. Instead of having this issue get out of hand with the release of every single new class that has a healing mechanic, there is always some mechanic with regards to this ability that has issues. This is because if a class can heal multiple times really rapidly, it doesn't even need to be for large amounts, the class can deal large amounts of damage through burning guidance. This ability is an ability of extremes, it is either underwhelming or overpowered, give it an icd or redesign it entirely, but don't leave it as is.
Healing font: This is an unnecessary daily power. The devotion paladin heals more then it will ever need to, as both light and justice. In no circumstances does the healing provided by this daily power ever make a major impact. I would recommend having the font instead provide an AP gain aura to players other then the devotion paladin, restoring 2% of their AP/second, as well as providing them with 10% more damage and 10% more dr.
Sacred Weapon: Make it do something, currently, it doesn't.
Protection paladin:
My approach to rebalancing protection paladin is to remove its immortality status and bring it down to the level of us mere mortals.
Binding oath: The design of the ability itself is good, the issue with it is that there are ways to prevent the damage its supposed to deal to the paladin from ever actually hitting him. I will not share the specifics of this, suffice to say, they need to change.
Templar's wrath: The issue with this ability is how much HP it is capable of giving the paladin. I feel it should be reduced to 200% and that in its place, monsters that take damage from this ability gain a 6 second debuff that decreases their damage by 30%. This makes the paladin more vulnerable to monsters who are not touched by this debuff, but less vulnerable to those who are and therefore the actual playing of the class becomes more skill reliant. At the moment, a paladin with good enough gear and skill can spam a single rotation and make a party immune to damage.
Divine protector: The issue here is that the daily power can be made spammable, meaning the rest of the party takes no damage. This is an issue because a paladin can render the party invulnerable with little effort on his part, making content far easier then it should be. In contrast, a party that has a GF with kv will still have to take a lot more care then they do with an OP. I would suggest either decreasing the uptime of the daily power, so its impossible to achieve back to back immunity, or to change the ability. I would change it by make it redirect 70% of the parties damage instead of 100% and the damage itself is reduced by 90%. This way, the party still has to be careful with out they play.
Things effecting both paragons:
The AP gain from burning light needs to be slightly increased, but the amount received should be dependent on how charged up the ability is. A charged BL should give say 40% of your AP, but an uncharged BL should give say 5%. This makes it more of a risk vs reward scenario when using the power as well as making the power more interesting to use and more rewarding for skilled players. In addition, make burning light apply weapon enchantments, currently, it doesn't.
Divine Judgement: It needs to have a higher base damage, or do something other then be "big bread knife from the sky." Say if it shattered the armour of effected targets, making them take 30% more damage for 8 seconds, then it would be useful in more ways then just acting as the celestial toast slicer.
Prism: Change it so that instead of being something that spam activates over and over, make it give you a temporary aura called "prismatic" that applies the prism buff to nearby allies, which is a HoT for 6 seconds that does not stack. In addition, players with the prism buff are immune to negative status effects while the buff is up. The prismatic effect lasts on the paladin for 2/4/6/8/10 seconds. This prevents the prism spam whilst retaining the integrity of the ability.
Deific intervention: I recommend changing this so that whenever you are at less then 20% of your life total, apply the DR and heal buff to all party members for 2 seconds. Upon application, a 6 second ICD is triggered, preventing it from spam triggering. This makes it a useful feat, instead of being utter garbage, without making it blatantly overpowered.
Also, I am aware, that from the devs perspective, they don't want to nerf/buff anything too soon or too quickly because you have to consider how the changes you make will affect the game as well as the fact that you don't want to upset players in the community too much. I do understand that, if changes are made to a class deemed slightly overpowered the moment players start speccing to it, they will be upset due to their lost enjoyment. I do think however, that the OP's time to shine so bright should start coming to an end now and that the flame should be lowered to a reasonable level of glare.
Any feedback/suggestions is welcome, especially in the protection area. So long as you keep it constructive
Post edited by thefabricant on
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Comments
You elder gods tend to forget that not everybody in the game is elder gods. Reliably refilling an AP meter in the relatively short duration of DP is non-trivial for non-minmaxed characters, and shortening the duration further would leave it questionable as to whether it's worthwhile to slot it at all. If you need to do something to make elder gods less godlike, that's fine, but don't do it in a way that makes the ability useless to the typical player.
@guurzak
How would you go about fixing it then? The problem is that players can keep it up 100% of the time, effectively rendering their team invulnerable. Short of reducing its up time, I see no way of reliably solving this issue.
I see lots of ways to solve this problem without shortening the duration of the ability. You came up with one yourself, i.e. reduce the overall effect of the ability somewhat. Here are some other options the devs might consider:
Option 1: Nerf AP gain generally. I'm sure DP isn't the only daily which can be unbalancing if used on a too-fast reuse cycle. Consider a hardcap on max AP gain rate, or a diminishing returns curve on AP gain boosters.
Option 2: Nerf reuse of this specific ability in any of a variety of ways.
* Apply a cooldown timer which blocks reuse
* Apply a reuse penalty timer which causes significantly reduced effect if reused too quickly
* Block reuse until the paladin has used his other daily ability
* Reduce effect if reused before using the other daily ability
* etc
Option 3: Combine previous two: reduce or disable AP gain while DP effect is active or for a specified period after activation.
I'm sure there are plenty of other ways you could solve this problem with a little creativity, none of which require you to cripple the ability for users who haven't yet achieved Peak AP.
- mob was debuffed with 3 stack of Bane before it hit me.
- I had sanctuary up before i even get close to the mob (60% dmg reduction with Prot Paladin)
- Shield of Faith = 50% dmg reduction
Despite all that im still getting one shoted.
The fixes that OP needs is:
- Shift working properly and fast.
- Casting speed of various abilities needs to be greatly improved.
- Dmg of various non-daily abilities needs to be increased to be on par with GF's dmg.
- We also need 1-2 semi ranged dmging abilities (like smite having 40 range or so)
- Binding Oath needs to be reworked so it can actually block the dmg not just delay it. What's the point using this ability when you gonna die to every f.cking trash group in dungeons? On top of that dying from BO doesnt trigger the SF enchant armor. Dead tank is useless tank, and our Shift is worthless compared to GF Shift when it comes to blocking dmg.
On top of that recent changes to capping in PvP made OP nearly useless, because even if you manage to stay alive, you cant kill anything and therefore you cant block the node anymore. In the same time you're slow as f.ck so cant even get fast to another flag.
That being said, it is probably because I have chosen to focus solely on PvE with Strongholds.
Before DP is adjusted we need reliable, spamable threat generation that is high enough (or repeatable enough) to keep mobs focussed on us.
Sanctuary working instantly would help as well. Sanctuary also creating threat would be a big help in this regard as well, then the fact we cannot attack while we have it up would be suitably mitigated and we would be able to more reliably turn certain mobs and so on.
Sacred Weapon, Banishment and Absolution are powers that need to be examined as well. For example Sacred Weapon makes Oath Strike do what Oath Strike does for Protection making all your attacks generate extra threat would be far better than only the 4 single target powers. Banishment is a power that is counter to the game, it sits in your bar doing nothing until an emergency or you run a good power, its just a trash power for tanks. Absolution is just ineffective, a limited buff on 2 people is a waste of a slot and points.
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
Even with BO in its current state, you CAN kill pallies running it. It's just very hard in a 1v1, and usually requires more like a 2v1 or 3v1 so you can chain stun. I definitely agree on nerfing it though.
I would like it if they made Divine Judgement Prone on its aoe for 1 second. I wouldn't mind if they damage stayed low like it is now haha, and there is other AOE prones in the game (Avalanche for one)
Banishment I can see the benefits of it. but at the same time It's just not useful in our PvE and PvP meta.
Drunken Goose of MidNight Express. - 3.3k Paladin , 3.6k GWF , 3.1k GF,
I still think binding oath needs a good change also though. even a "break threshold"
Drunken Goose of MidNight Express. - 3.3k Paladin , 3.6k GWF , 3.1k GF,
However, when it comes to 20-man+ content, you really shouldn't use Prism. It will lag the HAMSTER out of the game for everyone, and you WILL get yelled at. That being said, most people still complaining about Prism still complain about the first Prism debacle (and trust me, we're at the third or so now) where it very, very much caused lag when there's two paladins using Prism. Now, a Devotion and Protector together is fine. However, two Devotion OP's together will cause a time-stop (Jealous much, Wizard!?), and will crash some people if they are running a combat log. Hell, I've crashed myself using Prism, Burning Guidance and the Combatlog.
If people are complaining about lag and you're the only OP around in a 5-man party, eighter they're running the game on a potato and you should tell them to turn off player created power floaters, as your Divine Protector is far more important than the fact they can see Prism flash over their screen a bazillion times (or just once every 2 seconds on a Protector) or it's just one of those days where dungeons lag.
That being said, Prism does deserve a balance pass. Yes, I thoroughly enjoy Prism with Burning Guidance on my Devotion OP. Yes, it makes my life easy. But when two Devotion OP's can kill the Scorpions in ELOL in seconds, while casting time-stop, you know something is up.
Edit: It's a little more involved than just 2x Dev. OP, but you get my drift.
Oath of Devotion. Relentless avenger is the only good AP generator. Stuck with vow and bond, that leave you with 1, and the best one happens to HAMSTER people off that are uptight about scattered mobs.
Reviving and losing divine call. TAB for devotion is best used for an emergency heal if bond is disabled. But if you happen to fall in combat you lose it, and have virtually zero self heal power until bond is off cooldown. I only get viable use out of TAB in pvp.
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
Any Paly regardless of build or gear can be killed easily by a controller class, if there are two, and they are not HAMSTER, Palys has 0 chance, especially with controllers classes getting 90% proc rate of their drains from damage/cc.
Not to mention any class can simply walk away from a Paly who are so slow compared to every other class.
GF is far superior to OP Palys for PVE or PvP, they tank just as well, and provide a ton more damage where it is needed, on the bosses.
As far as Palys, topping damage charts, are only doing so from minor AOE damage to multiple mobs, compare spike damage which is what counts in dungeons, and they lose out badly.
They have nerfed/desgined Paly damage to nothing, made their so called OP abilities, on such long animations there about useless, and keep reducing their surviabilty to the point Palys, cant hold up.
OP Palys damage is by far the lowest off all classes, and their defense is garbage in PvP, and only useful as a back up for PvE tanking, as GF are a much betterrrrrr option for tanking, even with group buffs from Paly's.
The difference is most people are playing against Paly's that over gear them, and never get a chance to see them against equal level player's, for PvP, DP are perfect where they are, OP PvE are fine, just not as good as GF's, PvP they are a train wreck of badness.
Frankly all you need to do is hang out PE and you will see half of the groups only looking for OP tank (starting 2k), you never read about GF tank in LFG channel. Plus I think vast majority of players (including OP players) will agree that it needs to be nerfed down. This is the reason why I decided to focus on GF because I figured that a nerf will definitely happen.
Neverwinter is a game where the difficulty for PVE is to avoid/dodge/block red aoe most of the time.
When a class can protect everyone from those AOE spells, the last inch or part of difficulty go away.
This class ruin all form of PVE challenge (whis is already very small because they don't put effort on creating challenge by using tactics or strategy) and makes the PVP so boring that the game is not anymore an action game but a sleeping game.
All forms of persistant immunities should be banned out of this game.
Most of the AOE protective spells cause massive lags, they should be personnal/or target single buff and not group buff.
Of course i don't talk about all the bugs that AOE protective spells can produce, wich is certainly a nightmare for the devs.
The actual paladin is the worst class ever for the health of neverwinter for PVE and PVP.
Neverwinter is a game where the difficulty for PVE is to avoid/dodge/block red aoe most of the time.
When a class can protect everyone from those AOE spells, the last inch or part of difficulty go away.
This class ruin all form of PVE challenge (whis is already very small because they don't put effort on creating challenge by using tactics or strategy) and makes the PVP so boring that the game is not anymore an action game but a sleeping game.
All forms of persistant immunities should be banned out of this game.
Most of the AOE protective spells cause massive lags, they should be personnal/or target single buff and not group buff.
Of course i don't talk about all the bugs that AOE protective spells can produce, wich is certainly a nightmare for the devs.
The actual paladin is the worst class ever for the health of neverwinter for PVE and PVP.
I can agree with this honestly.
Except the bit about OP's needing a rework.
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
The only nerf I really agree with is an ICD on Burning Guidance.
Sure, you know more than 2 devotion paladins, but as long as /lfg is not filled with "lf4m devo OPs" this is not a realistic concern.
I'm fine with not letting SoF stack, but nerfing the DR because you could conceivably have multiple devo pallies in one group who would be bored because they couldn't stack the same daily just seems like ... arguing for nerfs for the sake of arguing.
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
The problem as it lies is they made a tank class that can mitigate to such a extent that they do not ever need a healer, while also healing the party and debuffing and doing damage while sitting around half the time. While ALSO at the same time, literally mitigate the parties damage , SO they never need healing anyways. Its all too crazy much, at the start of mod 2, with mobs doing more damage and the ARP bug on, they were virtually needed to complete it, now, its time to dial this crazy stuff back. There are ops out there atm, that will virtually spam DP over and over.. and over.. Flail snail , aura of wisdom bam.. back all the time. This wont even require a DC artifact! but some have them.. FS, AoW , DC artifact to mythic.. you will virtually never have to worry about not having DP when you need it. What Ive done when Im on my DC with most 2.5k + ops is just drop healing spells, I just do DG, BTS and whatever I want to play with in that DD.. I guess it makes for more interesting runs, since I dont actually have to do anything =P.
I do not know how to balance this class, without drastically slashing and burning stuff, in addition, no tank should heal the party, I think prism needs to go if you choose protector.
And protector isnt even the broken tree in the op class...
with rank 7's silveries, the shield power with ap, a blue 2% cloak w/ ap, every purple alliance/elven with recovery, and a sprite i was having a few second gap. and heaven forbid the mobs drains ap or ping pong you around.
i've since sorted all that ( other than the slapped around part). but to say a 1.6il is anywhere near permabubble is just dishonest.
honestly the best "fix" for dp is a 75/25 split. where we reduce damage by 75% and take 25% of it. or 70/30.
but if we're fixing bubble. we need to fix dps. as wet puppies will outdamage most permabubblers.
and tab and shift need to work the 1st time.
and a few second gap is enough to wipe the party. just try and do a pickup egwd with 2k ilers.
Ever try to kill a good DC? It's impossible. Always has been. Paladins have the lowest damage of any class in the game, though. Any nerfs to their durability should come alongside like, tripling the damage of the justice tree.
Vow and Prism absolutely need to change. Vow gives off way too many procs. I concur with giving Vow a 1s cooldown and adjusting the actual "heal" to appropriate levels. I strongly wish for Prism to be completely reworked into something I can actually use all of the time and not get hate messages because I tried to balance the need to save my party vs lagging them to death.
I cannot use a Daily on a Dragon in WoD. This is NOT right and it is completely Prism/Vow's fault.
Avariel Merilwen: Burn baby, MoF/Rene
Aejun The Silver: Devoted to Healing, DevOP/Justice
Mina Rosepetal: Super Natural, Pathfinder/Melee
Frost: Benchwarmer, Soulbinder/Fury