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Oathkeeper Blueshield Proposal
mphoenix
Member Posts: 21 Arc User
An argument for augmenting the Paladin in Neverwinter
1. The Oathkeeper Paladin healer prestige path vastly underperforms clerics and warlocks in terms of actual healing performance in dungeons and trials; Paladin healers are often less viable than her counterparts in the current meta.
a. Total effective output healing is lower by about a factor of 2 or greater relative to her counterparts
b. Blue-shields are anemic and hardly increase survivability in actual encounters
c. Paladin healers are usually passed-over for dungeons that are healing intensive because they can’t perform well enough to keep the party alive, and are only taken in trials when a cleric or warlock is also present
2. The encounter power “Bond of Virtue” currently in Neverwinter is passed-over as it is basically useless, in all but the most niche of situations; but there is a spell in the 5e rulebook that serves as inspiration for a new ability which might replace it.
a. 5e rulebook: Warding Bond: This spell wards a willing creature you touch and creates a mystic connection between you and the target until the spell ends. While the target is within 60 feet of you, it gains a +1 bonus to AC and saving throws, and it has resistance to all damage. Also, each time it takes damage, you take the same amount of damage.
3. Proposed Neverwinter application:
a. Encounter Power: Mass Warding Bond- Cast 0.35s, Cooldown 22.5s. Create a Divine Bond with all allies within 60 feet. For the next 12 seconds, all shields granted bless allies with your defensive stats when higher than their own while the shield is present.
i. Example: If the Paladin has 70% Defense, 50% awareness, 50% crit avoid, 40% deflect, and 50% incoming healing, then any ally granted a blue-shield from a paladin heal (Divine shelter, divine touch, lay on hands, etc) will receive that stat wherever it is higher than their own. When the shield is broken, or fades, so too does the buff.
ii. The intent here is to make it so that the paladin’s shields can be tougher to break and grant allies additional survivability if the paladin healer has itemized defensively better than her allies.
4. Argument for validity
a. This proposed change keeps the flavor and intent of Warding Bond from the DnD 5e spellbook/rulebook while making the paladin a more viable healer in the current meta, via allowing the paladin to make her allies tougher to kill/damage, but it forces the player to use an encounter power to make it happen, which sacrifices other possible tools to make use of this.
b. This proposed change also allows the paladin to be flexible and have additional freedom of choice when building for stats and gear.
c. It isn't free. If instead, the ability just made blue-shields grant 25% damage reduction, that would be free; in this case, it demands that you have better defensive stats than your allies, which requires planning.
Edit: Alternative- Increase the magnitude of Divine Touch and Divine Shelter by 50%. Easy, quick, and will make the paladin equal to the warlock and cleric in fulfilling the role of healer.
Edit Edit: For reference, Divine Shelter has a magnitude of 265, compared to cleric's Healing Word at 750. If you include the shield, this doubles the magnitude of Divine Shelter to 530, but that's only true if there's no shield present, since shields don't stack. After the first, it's always worth considerably less than that, which makes healing a party up to full in the presence of high damage nearly impossible. In the current meta, a paladin healer is always roughly 1/2 as effective as a cleric.
1. The Oathkeeper Paladin healer prestige path vastly underperforms clerics and warlocks in terms of actual healing performance in dungeons and trials; Paladin healers are often less viable than her counterparts in the current meta.
a. Total effective output healing is lower by about a factor of 2 or greater relative to her counterparts
b. Blue-shields are anemic and hardly increase survivability in actual encounters
c. Paladin healers are usually passed-over for dungeons that are healing intensive because they can’t perform well enough to keep the party alive, and are only taken in trials when a cleric or warlock is also present
2. The encounter power “Bond of Virtue” currently in Neverwinter is passed-over as it is basically useless, in all but the most niche of situations; but there is a spell in the 5e rulebook that serves as inspiration for a new ability which might replace it.
a. 5e rulebook: Warding Bond: This spell wards a willing creature you touch and creates a mystic connection between you and the target until the spell ends. While the target is within 60 feet of you, it gains a +1 bonus to AC and saving throws, and it has resistance to all damage. Also, each time it takes damage, you take the same amount of damage.
3. Proposed Neverwinter application:
a. Encounter Power: Mass Warding Bond- Cast 0.35s, Cooldown 22.5s. Create a Divine Bond with all allies within 60 feet. For the next 12 seconds, all shields granted bless allies with your defensive stats when higher than their own while the shield is present.
i. Example: If the Paladin has 70% Defense, 50% awareness, 50% crit avoid, 40% deflect, and 50% incoming healing, then any ally granted a blue-shield from a paladin heal (Divine shelter, divine touch, lay on hands, etc) will receive that stat wherever it is higher than their own. When the shield is broken, or fades, so too does the buff.
ii. The intent here is to make it so that the paladin’s shields can be tougher to break and grant allies additional survivability if the paladin healer has itemized defensively better than her allies.
4. Argument for validity
a. This proposed change keeps the flavor and intent of Warding Bond from the DnD 5e spellbook/rulebook while making the paladin a more viable healer in the current meta, via allowing the paladin to make her allies tougher to kill/damage, but it forces the player to use an encounter power to make it happen, which sacrifices other possible tools to make use of this.
b. This proposed change also allows the paladin to be flexible and have additional freedom of choice when building for stats and gear.
c. It isn't free. If instead, the ability just made blue-shields grant 25% damage reduction, that would be free; in this case, it demands that you have better defensive stats than your allies, which requires planning.
Edit: Alternative- Increase the magnitude of Divine Touch and Divine Shelter by 50%. Easy, quick, and will make the paladin equal to the warlock and cleric in fulfilling the role of healer.
Edit Edit: For reference, Divine Shelter has a magnitude of 265, compared to cleric's Healing Word at 750. If you include the shield, this doubles the magnitude of Divine Shelter to 530, but that's only true if there's no shield present, since shields don't stack. After the first, it's always worth considerably less than that, which makes healing a party up to full in the presence of high damage nearly impossible. In the current meta, a paladin healer is always roughly 1/2 as effective as a cleric.
Post edited by mphoenix#7043 on
3
Comments
It gives you a solid reason to gear up your Paladin healer's defensive stats, while also reinforcing that the Paladin healer is the best at reducing incoming damage.
However, your proposal runs into one problem ... ... That Cryptic loves to pretend they're making a 5e D&D online RPG, but won't actually implement any of the gameplay ideas from 5e.
They'll gladly show off names, locations, and characters that will get tabletop players salivating, but will refuse to implement anything from the gameplay aside from surface level presentation.
I do like the concept, might give me a reason to re-visit my pally healer.
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This also could open up options for some tanks, where they ignore a certain defensive stat (like crit avoid) and invest into power for better aggro management. So there is certainly interesting ways to use this.
Long live defense share!
I think an easier fix for the healer paladin would be a feat causing the existing shields to be turned into HP healed whenever a new shield is applied. However, not 100% of the existing shield because that might be too strong. Somewhere between 50% to 75%, I'd say.
Viperion - DragonTribe guild.
Playing Ranger/Paladin/Bard/Fighter.
OP heals do need some TLC. Increasing encounter magnitude is the way to go, or reducing their divinity cost. It sucks that a HoT from healing word does more actual healing than DS.
I'd also rather see DT be a single target spell instead of AOE.