M27 Paladin Updates Feedback

rgutscheradev · September 2023

Here's a summary of the current changes to Paladins, some comments on some of the trickier ones, and requests for feedback!

As usual, the focus is on bugfixes, but there's room for some balance changes and some QoL adjustments as well.

Miscellaneous Bugfixes

The tooltip for Forte for Paladin Oathkeeper on the Character tab of the Character Sheet disagreed with the toolltip on the Powers tab (the latter was correct). The tooltip has been updated. The functionality of the Oathkeeper's Forte has not changed.
Aura of Vengeance can now crit.
Paladin Oathkeeper daily Sanctuary should now properly grant CC immunity.
Fixed a bug where Aura of Divinity would not always increase the effectiveness of Paladin Auras as intended. Also updated tooltips for some auras to show the amount of the increase.
When a Paladin took the feat Sheltered Healing, the tooltip on Cure Wounds incorrectly stated the total amount of healing received. The Cure Wounds tooltip has been corrected to give the actual enhanced healing amount, as stated in the Sheltered Healing tooltip (which was correct). No functional change is involved; this is purely a tooltip correction.
Fixed a bug where the Paladin Daily Sanctuary had slightly different casting behavior depending on whether you cast it by pressing it, or pressing it and holding.
The tooltip of the Paladin Oathkeeper feat Spirit of Austerity incorrectly stated it reduced the Magnitudes of Smite to 450 and Bane to 240. Tooltip has been updated to the correct values of 600 for Smite and 310 for Bane. This is not a functional change.
Removed a 1 second self-root from Divine Champion that made it feel like it had a 1s cast time, even though it technically had a 0s cast time (which was what the tooltip showed).

Power Functionality Changes

The paladin powers Cure Wounds and Lay on Hands will now target only players. They will no longer heal companions.

Divine Shelter Magnitude increased from 265 to 300.

The Paladin Encounter Divine Touch has been reworked.
* It no longer uses Divinity (instead, it has a cooldown).
* It no longer splits its healing. Everyone in the AoE gets the full effect.
* Instead of having a shield for its additional effect, it does an additional heal to the most injured nearby party member.
* Magnitude for both the AoE heal and the additional heal is 600.

Paladin Justicar feat Intimidating Presence has been reworked.
* It no longer takes away the shielding from Divine Champion.
* It also does ongoing damage to nearby enemies while Divine Champion is active.

Paladin Oathkeeper's Emissary of Warding feat adjusted to give half of the value to all Oathkeepers. Note this is a net buff, not a nerf.
* Main powers affected by Emissary of Warding have their magnitudes increased by 20% (from 300 to 360 for Divine Shelter, and from 1000 to 1200 for Hand of Divinity).
* Emissary of Warding bonus shield decreased from 50% to 25%.
** If an Oathkeeper crits, they have 1.2*1.25 = 1.5 shield bonus, as before.
** If an Oathkeeper(or even a non-Oathkeeper Paladin) fails to crit, or does not have the Emissary of Warding feat, they gain 20% from the base heal being higher.
Net effect should be to make Paladins stronger overall, but open up additional feat choices. It should also help Paladins be more competitve at lower gear scores (before they've gotten a high enough crit rate to fully utilize Emissary of Warding).

Additional Comments

Since Divine Shelter is a real workhorse for Paladin healers, we wanted to bring it up a bit closer to Healing Word so that Paladins were more competitive. On a pure numbers basis, it's still not the same as Divine Word, but there are some good things about shields as opposed to HoTs that hopefully will put Paladins overall in a good place.

Additionally, the changes to Divine Touch should help healing Paladins top off players who were low on health, which was always a bit tough given their core shielding mechanic. I kind of liked the "big Magnitude heal in exchange for splitting the healing value", but I was very much in the minority -- most people did not seem to like it. So rather than just increasing the Magnitude of Divine Touch I reworked it as above. Note that currently it's a big Magnitude heal with a long cooldown. If people would rather have a smaller Magnitude and a smaller cooldown, let me know and I can do that. I went the route I did because in my mind it fit better as an emergency/reactive tool rather than as part of the regular healing rotation (similar to Cleric Intercession, say), but I'd be interested in any feedback you all might have.

The changes to Emissary of Warding should mean that Divine Vessel (its competing feat) is now competitive. On paper, Divine Vessel is quite a bit better, but of course Emissary of Warding is a lot easier to use. Hopefully at least a few people are tempted by Divine Vessel now, although I'm sure lots of people will want to stick with Emissary.

With the Justicar capstone feats, we had a similar situation: Unyielding Champion was very attractive, and Intimidating Presence much less so. Hopefully Intimidating Presence is a lot better now. Well, it's definitely a lot better. Hopefully it's enough better that it will be attractive to some people, at least in certain situations!

There have also been some improvements to the blocking animations (especially moving while blocking), and to the readability of the stamina/divinity HUD meters.

We've also been trying to clean up CC immunity across the game. Hopefully there will be fewer cases where CC immunity fails for no obvious reason. Some of these repairs are systemic, but there are lots of case-by-case problems that could still be lingering. Please give any feedback on these: basically anything along the lines of "I expected my CC immunity to work against specific enemy/power X, but it didn't" is useful.

Please tells about any other bugs you find or feedback you have! Don't forget, numbers changes are generally easy to do, big power reworks take longer (so we can only do a few, and often at the cost of a bunch of smaller bugfixes or numbers tuning that might be better overall), and getting rid of a power and replacing it with a totally different power is probably not practical. But if you're not sure, don't worry too much about it -- make suggestions and I'll do the best I can with the time that's available!

edit: I accidentally wrote "Divine Touch" instead of "Divine Shelter" in a couple of places, which made things extra-confusing. Updated.

Additional Changes

Changes that have come in past the original set of changes.

Increased Magnitude of Paladin Encounter power Divine Touch to 900.

Paladin shields with smaller shield values will no longer overwrite shields with larger values.

Paladin AoE heals should now heal all allies (including companions), but always heal players first.

Paladin Oathkeeper power Bond of Virtue's functionality has been replaced with:
* 300 Magnitude Aoe heal for allies
* 300 Magnitude additional heal for the lowest HP teammate
* 0 Div cost, 12s cooldown

Paladin Radiant Slam At-Will
* Can now be queued to attack non-stop, with no gaps, like other At-Will powers
* Cast time and Damage rebalanced around new, faster attack cycle
* Overall much higher damage output
* Now considered area-of-effect damage

Sanctuary Daily
* Applies heal more quickly 3s -> 2s
* Increased # of ticks 5 -> 6
* Damage Reduction improved 10% -> 15%

Divine Palisade and Unyielding Champion Update
We’ve modified the baseline Divine Palisade such that it provides a 60% absorb ratio by default. Unyielding Champion no longer affects Divine Palisade, but continues to improve Divine Champion.

Divine Palisade Mechanic
* Base absorb ratio increased from 50% -> 60%

Unyielding Champion
* No longer affects Divine Palisade
* Decreases cost of Divine Champion by -10, and, increased absorb ratio on Divine Champion 40% -> 60%

Divine Reciprocation Feat
* Threat Bonus decreased 3.0 -> 0.5
* Tooltip updated to note this power only 'Slightly Increases Threat Generated'
* This power was generating extremely large amounts of threat compared to all similar powers (because the base threat generated by Divine Touch was so high). Even with the changes, this feat should allow Divine Touch to be a very strong threat generator.

Aura and Divine Champion Update
We've modified how Auras are balanced, and as such, Divine Champion no longer simply 'doubles' the effect of each aura. Auras now have unique bonuses when under the effects of Divine Champion.

Aura of Protection Class Feature
* Stat changed from Deflect -> Defense
* Defense base bonus increased 2% -> 4%

Aura of Wrath Class Feature
* Critical Strike base bonus increased 2% -> 4%

Aura of Restoration Class Feature
* Incoming Healing base bonus increased 5% -> 10%
* Aura of Divinity bonus increased 2% -> 5%

Aura of Life Class Feature
* Base heal magnitude increased 25 -> 50
* Aura of Divinity magnitude increased 100 -> 150

Aura of Valor Class Feature
* Threat Reduction base bonus increased 5% -> 25%
* Divine Champion threat reduction bonus increased 5% -> 15%

Aura of Vengeance Class Feature
* Damage magnitude base increased 20-> 25
* Divine Champion total magnitude increased 20 -> 40

General Changes that Also Affect Paladins
We've made some general changes to CC immunity, threat, and blocking, that are important to Paladins.

Characters who give themselves CC immunity (e.g., by blocking) should no longer cause the buff from the combat enchantment Refulgent Fortification to fall off.

Class Powers - Crowd Control Immunity Update
* Various class powers that granted 'immunity to some crowd control' effects have been standardized to provide consistent immunities.
* 'CC Immunity' should now provide broader general protection against most knockdowns, knockbacks, stuns, slows, etc.
* This resolves issues where one power would provide immunity to a power, while a different power would not. Now both should provide immunity, or neither should.

Tank Threat Baseline Rework
We have reworked the threat multipliers for all tank paragons. Tank powers that do not have "Increased Threat" have had their threat generation roughly tripled. Powers that had "Increased Threat" generate about the same amount of threat. Effects that increase your overall threat generation have been standardized. Class powers that increased your overall threat generation do so by +33%, with diminishing returns for each unique application. Items that increase threat do so by +6.6%, also with diminishing returns. At-Will powers that increase threat generation have shorter durations, while Encounter powers that increase threat generation generally have longer durations.
This will hopefully expand tank power choice and make it generally easier for newer tanks to play the class. It also makes Daily powers and healing more valuable for threat generation. We will monitor this change to insure we haven't created new issues and adjust threat values and mechanics as needed.

Block Priority Update
'Blocking', absorbing damage with stamina, now occurs before shields are consumed. This was previously the case only with the Paladin's Block power, but now applies to all Blocks (including those of other classes), Divine Champion/Palisade, etc.

aragon · September 2023

Here is my video covering these updates, with my thoughts and opinions on the changes: https://youtu.be/R3zQzMv0FUE

Most importantly: Hand of Divinity is still only 1,000 Magnitude instead of having the +200 mag as it should now.
Live: [Combat (Self)]Critical Hit! Your Hand of Divinity gives 404325 (294831) Hit Points to you
Preview: [Combat (Self)]Critical Hit! Your Hand of Divinity gives 410222 (294831) Hit Points to you
(the slight difference is the inc heal aura working)

Remaining bugs:
- Hand of Divinity will not crit on yourself when you are not marked
- Circle of Divinity does not last 12 seconds, it only lasts 10 seconds

I highly suggest reverting the change to Divine Touch, I personally really liked its use, and have done so in a lot of content. Just be sure to give it a magnitude increase to make up for the Emissary of Warding nerf! With the new version of Divine Touch you created, I recommend just replacing the current Bond of Virtue with it.

I do not like the updated animation to blocking. It is far less easy to notice if you are actually blocking now. I can attest from playtesting the new trial soley on my paladin, and multiple times I had to actively double check, am I actually blocking.

Otherwise these changes are very underwhelming, and would hope you would consider adding some improvements and QoL, other than slight magnitude increases on heals only! These are my suggestions:

Change critical touch back to being able to activate at a chance while you attack with your at-will and have it effect hand of divinity.
Change Vow of Enmity to properly trigger the "top of the threat list" when cast and not delayed by 2 seconds
Change Radiant Charge to have a much lower cast time (less than 1 second)
Change Divine Champion to activate while blocking
Change Timely Intervention to activate when the target is at 50% hit points instead of 25%
Change Intimidating Presence to only drain 30 Divinity or instead increase your block with Divine Palisade to 60%
Allow for multiple Auras to be Slotted
Double the amount of Justicar's Charge (make Justicar's Bulwark default), to allow for increased divinity regen, so Paladin Tank doesn't struggle as much with balancing threat and surviving
Change Justicar's Bulwark to give +20% divinity regen, to compete with divine pursuit, better for when you have longer periods of no divinity use.
Consider giving Paladin +10% crit Chane over the 90% cap (or change critical touch like above), to provide more reliable shielding.
Consider giving all Tanks 100% crit chance or 90% Accuracy (to ignore deflects) by default, to reduce the randomness of threat generation.
Consider doubling the action points regen rate for Tanks as a whole, or make sure you balance content that Tankbusters are spaced apart enough to be able to regenerate our daily powers for them. The change to the block giving action points is a massive reduction of action points regen. For Paladin it is gone from a daily every 20s to now only 40s.

Other suggestions:

Divine Vessel: can this feat be switched with Convalescence. Emissary of Warding is the far more reliable option and it would help a lot to have this ability like Cleric has as a viable option and Bard has a regain 800 heal resource feat.
Convalescence: I believe it should change Shield of Faith to only consume 25% of your Action Points!
To make Divine Intervention more competitive after this change, I suggest giving it the ability to cause Lay on Hands to give a shield equal to the targets max Hp.
Change Sanctuary to consume 25% Action Points every 4 seconds, starting from the activation time.

redjackal · September 2023

Correction for Emissary of Warding part. Stated Divine Touch magnitude 300 to 360. I think you mean Divine Shelter.

I think your improvements are mostly adequate for the paladin healer performance, especially for the fledglings. Divine shelter improvement is adequate, but will be spammed even more given the cooldown for divine touch. The drawback/trade is no longer a big shield other than the Lay on Hands (daily) shielding and target switching with aura of divinity. Which will take time due to channeling. The channeling by the way, seems to get interrupted more often than just occasionally. Please reduce by at least 10% from 2.5s to 2.25s. I request this because post update, it will be the only large shield available. Too many interrupts in heated battle equals paladin shield failure and DPS players doomed. Often times a quick DT shield on a single DPS player really helped out.

I like Aragon's idea of moving this special heal (new DT) to replace Bond of Virtue. I like casting divine touch on the battle center, which usually hits 3 group members (mainly the recipient of most damage). Only problem was the shrinkage of the heal due to 3 targets. I'm often trying to aim the target circle to hit just one player. Harder than it seems with everyone moving. I propose leaving DT as is, and just decrease the heal shrinkage by just a little. Or, if this is a good idea, shrink the target circle of DT so it has a better chance of healing one target. Then have the proposed new DT be the larger circle to hit the usual 3 in battle center.

Why was blocking animation changed? It seemed adequate and better recognizable.

I use Sanctuary and Shield of Faith. I'm glad you improved the CC from interrupting it. The only drawback is the tiny radius. Unless it's use is planned in the party (to gather), most don't notice or attempt to gather when cast or move out of range post cast. I don't see a problem doubling it's radius to hopefully catch those out of range (usually battle center).

The only other issue is targeting. Hopefully the update is all that's needed, but it was always hit and miss with cure wounds. As it is now. Target's name on reticle flashes when targeted. This is not easily noticed as adequate target feedback. I suggest the best and fastest visual cue be a change in the target name font color or some other more easily seen feedback. I am often not landing my cure wounds cast. Have no clue where or who it landed on.

- Jor el (PC)

kogucik9421 · September 2023

Hello
According that I’ve seen at preview is more like nerf than buff.
After Action point adjustmnent there is just increase a gap between vanguard and other tanks.
Paladin just need more threat and more surviveability and divinity regen.
You make really good content- really good dungeons and more so I hope you find a solution.
My suggestions are as below:
Paladin tank
I Think templar should not consume divinity. There should be 3 stacks 9 sec cooldown. Rest skills should have more magnitude. Divine protector should generate threat like knight valor. And more divinity regen.
So
Templar wrath- 3 stacks- no divinity cost- and yellow temp hp (max 200-300k HP) in case of single target 300% of that we’ve hitted. If multitarged- 200% of damage done. 9s cooldown per stack.
Divine Protector should wokr as it works but Personaly I will add a affect like knight of valor- they should take aggro from rest of teams and give them 10-15% damage resist – 50 ft range.
Shields of Faith can errect a barier of 300k hp (you will adjust) to help healers
They should be also increased divinity regeneration because in fight of lolth we have to have stamina and divinity to block her mechanic before hypo. Find a way please to build divinty while using tab.
Crit avoidance buff should work like in fighter- at blocking.
60% hp shield should be like on fighter- assigned to tab- not feats.
And other at wills should have a more magnitude because there is really hard to keep aggro-
At the moment on trials one reliable tank is vanguard. If you won’t help paladin this class will be abadoned next module :C

Paladin heal-
divine shelter- 400 magnitude of heal and heal over time. Magnitude 120
Sanctuary- the heals should tick faster because on 2nd boss in MDWP there is problem sometimes to heal.

Thank you for your time. Best Regards !

nexusronin · September 2023

The Paladin daily Divine Protector also needs the button to be held down to cast it.

Reduce cool down for Sacred Weapon to make it more useful. Less time between power's end and recast.

Threat from a Justicar is no where near as good as a fighter. Threat needs to be less dependant on divinity or perhaps more powers that can deal it. Threat overall for Justicar needs to be looked at. Unloading Templar's Wrath 3 times, using all divinity, then to lose threat to one hdps feels a bit broken.

Please dont change blocking animation. I dont appreciate this kind of nerf considering the state Paladin is in compared to other classes. Bad idea.

The only reason I ever started this game was to be a Paladin. Not to fight, or tank, or heal. To be a Paladin. Please consider giving this class the love that I do. Thank you.

hastati96 · September 2023

One issue I see is that paladin healer only has "blocking" healing encounters and dailies. I mean a paladin healer is only able to have a single heal at the same time. A Cleric can cast healing word and then cast other healing spells on top of Healing Word so the overall healing output is much higher for phases like in mDWP. It is the same for Hallowed Ground, the Cleric can cast other healing encounter during the uptime of it.

A paladin can cast Divine Shelter and after that another one. If you cast Sanctuary you are completely dependent on the outcome of this daily. You are not able to cast anything else. This leads to very, very low burst healing for paladins.

This brings me to basically two points that the paladin healer class is missing in my opinion. Either introduce a (small) heal over time like 100 - 150 magnitude or make Sanctuary non-blocking, similar to Hollowed Ground, so that the paladin can cast additional encounters during the uptime of Sanctuary.

artu · September 2023

I will refrain from commenting on Oathkeeper changes due my lack of experience playing it (although some commenters here already pointed out important stuff), instead I will comment on Justicar paragon.

It's nice to see some changes to Intimidating Presence, although I must admit that it's still far more inferior to Unyielding Champion (Access to 60% block and reduced cost allowing you to mitigate big hits for allies with Palisade), so nothing is going to be different here.

Main issues of the Paladin Tank have not been addressed in any way - those being sustained (not burst) threat generation and sacrificing survivability to build threat, so I will just re-post a piece of suggestions I posted some time ago on Discord.

My take on Paladin Tank:

Sacred Shield feat:
Threat Multiplier 400% -> 800%
When feat is selected, Sacred Weapon cooldown 30s -> 15s

These changes would make Sacred Weapon a great tool for sustained Threat generation without having to spend Divinity (similar to Fighter's Shield throw with a Shield Thrower feat selected)

General class skill "Divine Protection":
10% Critical Avoidance should be granted when blocking / using Divine Champion / using Divine palisade, rather than scaling from 10% to 0% based on remaining Divinity.

This would eliminate the contradiction of having to use your Tab for big hits / more effective stamina usage and at the same time reducing your defensive stats because your Divinity is drained.

Aura of Protection:
The stat changed from Deflect to Defense / Awareness, the amount of stat given changed from 2% -> 5%
This would incentivize Paladin tanks to run this aura to boost party's survivability. Right now with it providing deflect, it has next to no effect in doing that.

Aura of Wrath:
The amount of stat given changed from 2% -> 5%
This would improve Paladin tank's ability to contribute to party's damage output (similar to how Fighter tanks can reduce target's awareness by 10% via Enforced threat, and Sentinels will be able to apply a 5% physical damage debuff via Takedown)

Auras in general
To compensate for that, remove the effect of Auras providing double benefit when under the effect of Divine Champion (it's currently completely neglected and not needed to exist at all)

Aura of Valor:
Either completely reworked (to have a different effect), or changed so that Tanks can't be affected by it (using this Aura in a trial would reduce Threat generated by the other Tank). If the Aura remains to work the same way, the % should be massively increased. To put it into perspective, the Tank role already gets a 550% Threat multiplier, and DPS of course generate 100% Threat of the damage they deal. Making them generate 95% is a miniscule difference that isn't worth occupying a Class Feature slot for.

And lastly, Secondary Forte Stat changed from Deflect Severity to Awareness / Critical Avoidance. I understand this is unlikely to happen, but it feels quite unfair having 10-15% less stats than other tanks simply because your Secondary Forte Stat is a useless / underwhelming one. If there is a desire to keep Forte stats unique for each tank, it can be changed to Deflect as at least, would still be infinitely better than Deflect Severity.

I understand implementing all of these together might seem like too much, but it's honestly isn't if you compare it to Fighter Vanguard's kit. But even partial implementation of these suggestions would greatly help, especially the Sacred Shield one.

flo · September 2023

Please consider buffing the class for when people are playing solo. Like leveling or doing quests.
Paladin does not have a dps paragon path and thus not a lot of people are willing to play paladin as it is very hard to level and even do daily quests.
Power Blessed Wanderer from 20% more damage to something like at least 100% or have it increase damage and all offensive stats when not in a party.
Power Composure from 10% faster divinity regen to 30%.

sermastero11 · September 2023

As a person, who plays almost exclusively as oathkeeper paladin, I feel obligated to leave some feedback, so here it comes:

Part one: Complain.

You're reworking divine touch, which was great tool to keep tanks alive, and changed it into semi-strong burst heal with long cooldown. Burst heals like this won't be much of a help, because paladin still lacks heal over time, which means that team hitpoints will bleed over time. It's shields job to keep them alive, while op is slowly, but surely restoring hit points.
Now it lacks shield, and eats precious encounter power slot, which for now is dominated by 3 powers:
Shelter, Sacred weapon, and Circle of divinity.
It's good, that you're trying to make other skills more competetive option, BUT aside of shelter, which is core paladin skill, those encounters already lack.

Part two: ideas

Sacred weapon just restores some divinity. Added damage effect is not really useful for healers, and damage reduction is welcome, but we don't need it with our block. I would love to see it affecting our team in any way, for example boosting nearby teammates damage by 10% of original spell magnitude ( so it'll end up as overwhelming 5 magnitude i know.)
It's also eating one of your FEAT slots, because you can only select a feat affecting sacred weapon, unless you're going some hybrid damage build. If you want to open a field to make other encounters viable, change this feat placement, so you're not forced to use sacred weapon just to utilize it.

Circle of divinity has same role. It is a divinity regeneration tool (which works worse than it's supposed, because we receive 10 seconds of circle instead of 12, but whatever). It also boosts your outgoing healing by 15%. Outgoing healing stat.
Stat, that most healers in semi-endgame content have near 80/90%, making this skill even less relevant, BUT still making it the best and only sane option, because divinity regen is a must.
How about making it boosting outgoing healing, but in same way as masterwork set does, increasing true outgoing healing, not touching stats, making it viable even with good gear? Or sharing effect with other healers, adding any impact on party. Or add any effect to it, like "boosts your teammates stamina regeneration, or even deflect by X %". Just do anything with this skill, so it's not empty divinity regeneration, forcing to stand on your ground.

Part three: Rant about class features.

~~I'll not write about my feelings that auras are underwhelming and miniscule in grand scale, because it's just rant about free stats.~~ But since it's feedback, it might be worth to say that "it would be cool, if aura of wrath would improve crit AND critical severity, aura of protection would boost deflect AND deflect severity along", etc.

But i'll complain on current state of class features. Composure, as divinity regeneration tool, is always there, and you're never gonna swap it currently. Second slot is usually used by single aura. Guarded prayers require specyfic situations to be worth using, and timely intervention is also not really worth it. Maybe it's worth to rework any feature, or add a new one which will compete with current ones?

Part four: warlocks/bards have the greatest chestplate for healers in the game(Bregan D'aerthe), and it would be GREAT, if there was at least hope for us, paladins, receiving a chance of obtaining similar part of gear in a future.

Thanks for listening, and i hope that anything of i wrote will be of any use for you

redjackal · September 2023

I forgot to mention some comments about Oathkeeper forte. As it is, we usually need to spam heals in order to frantically keep the team alive. Especially DPS players, which unfortunately, we tend to give up on due to their horrible mitigation and their ability to dodge our divine touch attempts. Often we are not landing a much needed heal and end up wasting divinity and time. Now, since forte is supposed to be that little bit of help for a class's main role abilities, it would make sense to double divinity the regeneration rate that forte provides. As it is currently, the regeneration rate provided is not just a little, it is teeny, much too teeny (tiny). The other classes receive much more effectiveness from their forte than do Oathkeepers.

kygostar · September 2023

Paladin Tank is just gonna be in a bad spot after those changes.

Paladin Tank already has the best Aoe aggro generation by a mile. Its the only part where it already shines.

Intimidating Presence buff is not needed but we already have great Aoe aggro tools.
Paladin is struggling on single target aggro in longer fights as Divinity doesnt catch up with Dps encounters coming back every 10 seconds.

Like many others said, consider improving Sacred Weapon reducing the cooldown by a lot or improve even further Templar Wrath by decreasing divinity cost/even higher magnitude or just give us more sources of divinity regen. Theres many way to help Paladin Tank. Just choose some.

Rework the Auras a little bit to make them more desirable. They are all very underwhelming.

Consider removing divinity cost from Smite and giving the power a cooldown. Its not teaching newer players how to hold aggro and its hurting veteran players in end game trials as they are getting punished for using divinity to hold aggro and then not having enough of it for a Single target hard taunt used in very precise taunt swap mechanics.

Give us Deflect as forte instead of Deflect Severity. Its still gonna be different from any other tank but its gonna be more beneficial.

Theres a lot more that could be done but I know its too late now. Altough I definetely was expecting for more after all this wait. Please consider addressing those small changes you are receiving from many experienced Paladin Tank.

azura · September 2023

Addressing the healer portion of the rework only:
Reading all that, I guess it’s safe to say that the direction of the work is to increase the heals rather than raising stronger barriers which might be overpowered. I do agree that’s the area the paladin struggles, especially new players, but like everyone else I was expecting more meaningful changes. With that direction in my mind. Here is my feedback and suggestion on some of the powers of the paladin:

New Divine touch: I do like the new power and I do believe and its works towards achieving the goal of the rework providing a big chunk of heals to the group and extra effect for the most hurt. Yes it would be a reactive/panic button heal. However, like most of the people, I do believe that losing the old divine touch is a bad thing. Oathkeepers would lose flexibility, the ability to isolate target to give stronger barrier (compared to divine shelter) and the ability of raising such barrier fast (compared to hand of divinity). So, like suggested before me, you could replace another less used power such as cleansing touch and bond of virtue. My pick being cleansing touch if you put the cleanse someplace else and rework bond of virtue.

Cleansing Touch: It’s a cleanse and people would only consider using for cleansing. All healers have one so what’s the problem with it, you ask. A quick comparison to other healers: The Bard has a song that costs 100 and hits everyone available for use whenever it wants. The Warlock has the cleanse as added effect of revitalize which is a natural pick for its encounters, costing 200 but providing great heals. The Cleric is in a similar position since the cleanse is not a natural encounter pick however is much easier to use because is an aoe power. So my suggestion is to rework the cleansing touch to be an aoe and perhaps add some effects to the power. The other solution would move the cleanse to a more natural encounter pick such as the current divine touch or even the at-will cure wounds (do not put on divine shelter). Keep the cleanse as or in a divinity base power.

Bond of Virtue: The power does increase the heals which is the problem we are trying to solve so why nobody uses it? I do believe its because it only works in 1 party member. The natural target would be the Tank but Hand of divinity takes care of any healing need the Tank may have. So my suggestion is to make this work in all the group.

Shield of Faith: Where is the shield in Shield of Faith? Furthermore, if you succeed in the rework and the heals get better, the feat Convalescence will be even more useless. So, I would consider giving the feat the ability to enable additional heal over time or shield over time to the daily.

Lay on Hands: That’s literally the “Intercession “in daily form for the paladin but worse. Why? We do have to target. I do have 2 ways of approaching this power.
1- Keep it as a reactive but remove the need of targeting. Make it heal the most injured player which is usually the Tank because we do use this power when we know the Tank is going to take a big blow.
2- Change it to be a preventive power. Remove the healing effect and increase the barrier to 100 % of the hit points so we are able to prevent big hits in the Tank. Change the feat to maybe heal the target after the barrier is gone or give additional damage reduction.

Sanctuary: I do believe you are overthinking it. No healer suffers from being interrupted and losing its the daily. Make it work like Cleric’s Hallowed Ground/Warlock’s Soul Barrier. The Paladin should put a stationary Sanctuary circle/bubble on the ground, everybody that’s in gets the effect. The paladin should be able to freely move after casting it.

Aura of Life class feature: It seems to me that if this aura was great it could easily be the solution you are looking for. This gives extra heals every time you use a healing encounter, the problem is obviously the magnitude of it, which is 25 (75 for the marked target). This is abysmal, increase this to around 150? If you increase the values this could be the aura to pick when extra healing is needed.

Spirit of Austerity feat: It literally does nothing for the healer. You can scrap this and create anything. If want to keep it in the realm of modifying encounter such as bane and smite consider giving debuffs for said encounters.

Divine Vessel feat: I think is great as it is, I just don’t think it can compete with Emissary of Warding, even with the changes. I would suggest getting rid of Battle Focus and putting this in the 2nd set of feats instead. To compete with Emissary you could create another “Emissary” like feat focused on the healing part of paladins powers.

Quality of life Changes: Is the small shield of Divine Shelter still replacing Hand of Divinity? Please change this. I know you guys think we might want to apply a fresh shield but 99% of the time this is not the case. What happens is: We shield everyone and procced to using Hand of divinity on the Tank. While we doing it, the Dps takes damage and we need to reapply the shield on them. If we do it with divine shelter, we override the big shield on Tank.

I hope it helps, thank you for your time.

maarte · September 2023

For justicar we have divine touch with a feat named divine reciprocation it has zero purpose as there is no threat generated from using divine touch so please either fix it to actually give the increased threat ten fold or rework it also threat all round is atrocious in a 10man trial its hard to take threat from a fighter and they regain the threat back faster than you can retain it and thats with using all the extra hit gears like journals and mythallar and eilistaees and 86k iL vs a fighter at 75k iL not wearing these extra hit items thats a huge difference also reduce cD of divine touch on justicar

vandresen · September 2023

I'm not too good with statistics so i will use some practical examples. My main paladin got 75k IL recently, so i can't talk about mtos or other hard master content yet cause i don't have practice on them, but i farm AD running a lot of randoms with new players as justicar and oathkeeper. Let's get some examples, at least one dungeon in advanced:

Lair of The Mad Mage first boss: The hard for oathkeepers is the coccoon phase, it's harder when the dps is high cause the cocoon phase comes faster. You can try to heal the cocoon with the at-will but is very risky. What helps a lot is the AP gaining just holding my block stance, is a good way to prepare myself to heal the cocoon. Sometimes a player runs in front of the cocoon when you activate lay on hands and you heal the wrong target, but bad things happen sometimes. With AP gaining reduction, I don't know how it is going to be.

Lair of the Mad Mage as oathkeeper second boss: What saves the day for me is divine touch healing the tanker. the extra shield divine touch generates combined with the good healing helps a lot in the proccess. The tab is very complicated to use here with the rocks falling in the hypo phase, so DT is the main skill to help the tanker on absorving hypo damage, cause i can heal and move away from the rocks falling. Sometimes i need to make some "magic" to have enough divinity for healing if the dps guys didn't break enough rocks, what happens a lot of times in random, but usually i can finish this job with success. And you have said to us you gonna reduce the paladin resource of divinity and gonna make divine touch with cooldown. I can't spam divine touch anymore to keep the tanker alive and move freely to keep "myself" alive. The divinity i gain moving while i'm blocking saves me a lot of times too, but i can't say it's easy.

Lair of the Mad Mage as Justicar: Again one example about second boss, again the hypo phase: I usually survive using "ALL" my def resources: Divine Protector with shield of the gods feat to take less damage for some seconds. I use too the block with the tab combination . The action points that i generate on this proccess helps me on using the divine protector on hypo phase more then one time on each round and i don't overload the healer. And it's not 100% success guaranted, it's a hard fight.

I think the examples above about oathkeeper covers some of problems in general content. You need to have great experience for healing properly and you spend divinity very fast.

About Justicar, the general problem is: i have aggro and survive resources, but i need divinity for both and i become out of divinity fast. The actual change you did in a feat helps more with aoe aggro and our problem as paladins is keeping aggro in one target and having enough divinity and stamina to stay alive on hard boss fights. The other problem about this new feat is that is one more thing to spend divinity. And i'm just talking about advanced, not master.

We need changes to be able using paladin in the start, mid and end game. I like this class and i don't wanna give up of it in the future.

gastndorf · October 2023

Can we please make it so Hand of Divinity shield can't be erased by anything else? This takes like 5 seconds to cast fully, and it's heartbreaking to have it erased just because the person has an armor or companion that gives them a tiny slither of yellow shield... Even worse now that you change divine touch and we're gonna be funneled into using divine shelter for group shields, with divine shelter it's always a pain to erase your own shield you just casted earlier.

For the rest, well it's pretty much what people say above... Divinity for tanks being a massive problem that other tanks don't have: rage for barbarians and wrath for fighters is always benefical addition, divinity is detrimental, having stat and power decrease the more it depletes, and having your power use relying on it. When your divinity is gone half of your powers are gone too, it's partly why barely anyone uses the class mechanic by the way (on top of not being great in the first place) it just depletes your divinity very fast...

Another thing which is really minor and probably no one will mention... Can we have a little change in how divine cavalry daily works? It's hard to aim probably (sometimes it just goes the other way, I assume due to netcode errors) and the delay between the cavalry appearance and the charge is quite annoying. Could we instead have the power work in two phases: first phase you aim the trail, second phase, the cavalry charges with no delay. I think it would be nice...

alesha · October 2023

Look I'm not going to be articulate about this. 10 years a Pali we r not a DC if I wanted a DC id build one. We are shielders to increase my heal n decrease my shield is silly. Don't reinvent the wheel. Divine shelter increase to 400, 450 ish.small increase to make potential closer to 1000 with feat if no nurf . Instead of 25% closer to 30, 35% of hp.And if I have my tank marked it converts all other shields not placed by hand of divinity into heal.10 years I didn't stop I didn't just jump on lots of time with this class please don't kill it. As far as tank goes just don't make my defense (critical avoid) lower for using devinity.or something.kinda stinks to lose stats for defending.the tank side isn't bad just cus we aren't meta right now.small tweeks for better damage mitigation when applying divine palisade. Oh use the divinity Regen helm on both tank n heal.dev is threat gen for a Pali n having it back faster is better surviveabuility.this helm is awesome for Pali over just threat for mentioned issue above. Really as I said the biggest issue is divine palisade and how it works,it eats way to much dev and kills your survive ability to us it..I do wish I had a better idea its just to much demand on a single resource and a negative drawback on top.

valehru29 · October 2023

The main point i would like to be solve with this rework is the shielding mechanic with big/small shield interaction.
The solution is to consider both exist at the same time, but the big one is hurt first. When the damage reach the small shield, both are damage, but the shield is only counted one time, not two time.
A picture to help understand:

It would not only solve the interaction on the tab with divine shelter, but also help when a pala healer play with a SW healer (as both of them shield now).

fortheswordplay · October 2023

Healing Word and Divine Touch CANNOT compete with one another at any stretch of the imagination. One is a regen spell with a 20 second effect and cooldown that is very-much for "set and forget" levels of gameplay. You use it, you cycle other abilities and burst-heal when someone on your team is on the ropes. Divine Touch, otoh, is a shielding spell + insta-heal where you need to be aware at all times what's going on in order to keep people from dropping to half or going into red HP. It's selective capacity to Divine Shelter's lesser all-heal option, where one or two of your people need recovering, or your tank needs a massive shield on short notice. The two abilities ABSOLUTELY cannot be compared with one another as both serve starkly different styles of gameplay.

Please leave Divine Touch alone.

gweddeoran · October 2023

I realize that changing the Forte to Awareness or Critical Avoidance may not be ideal since it overlaps with the other Tanks. Instead, it may be more interesting to make Deflect proc various effects exclusive to the Paladin Justicar that are affected in strength by the Deflect Severity stat. This would be unique to the class and incentivize investing in this otherwise underwhelming pair of stats.

Deflect-oriented changes:

Change the currently unreliable Divine Protection to provide 10-15% Deflect and the ability to go over the 90% Cap so Paladins can use Deflect as a reliable mitigation tool.
Update Justicar's Bulwark so it provides extra Divinity on a deflected hit in addition to its current function of providing Divinity on hits in general. The extra Divinity amount would range from 0x-1.9x the normal amount scaling from our Deflect Severity.
Update Baneful Strikes so it also has a chance to grant a free Bane on a deflected hit. The chance would range from 0%-90% based on our Deflect Severity. Add a Threat Multiplier to Bane so it becomes a viable threat-generation tool which is boosted by investment in Deflect and Deflect Severity.
Buff Aura of Protection to provide 5% Deflect so it is more useful to the party and somewhat comparable to Aura of Wrath (which should be buffed to 5% Critical Strike).

General changes:

Increase the uptime on Sacred Weapon to at least 75% by reducing its cooldown so it becomes a reliable sustained threat-generation Encounter. Also consider buffing the Magnitude of the extra hits.
Allow multiple Auras to be slotted as suggested earlier in the thread by Aragon.
Reduce the cost of Intimidating presence to 50 so it is in line with Unyielding Champion. Make it increase Block to 60% with Divine Palisade. It would still be worse defensively than Unyielding Champion but can compensate with the threat-generation effect.

vasile1991 · October 2023

Feedback about the proposed changes:

OATHKEEPER

The changes to Emissary of Warding look suspicious but I guess they're fine as long as it remains combined with magnitude increase on encounters. I think it's overall a good idea to bring non-crit shields closer to crit-shields.
The new version of Divine Touch doesn't look appealing especially due to the high cooldown. I would prefer a lower cooldown (15s) and magnitudes of 450/500 instead. Even better, I would suggest to move this new functionality to Bond of Virtue and keep Divine Touch... untouched (but boost magnitudes due to Emissary nerf).
Bond of Virtue in its current form is probably the most unused encounter. As mentioned, assign the new Divine Touch to this.

JUSTICAR

The new blocking stance/animation is cool but harder to figure out if the character is really blocking or not. If the character could at least hold up the sword like it does now, it could make the blocking visually move obvious.
The AP gain on at-wills is quite terrible... 1% AP or even less per at-will (Shielding Strike/Oath Strike). We don't like this at all. Please improve it.
The Intimidating Presence changes are welcome but I fear players will prefer to go for the Unyielding Champion feat for the improved blocking.
In the late game, Paladins display threat shortcomings, they could use stronger threat and sadly, I don't see this addressed.
Paladin threat is mainly capped by their divinity gauge, making it harder to perform better when this resource is gone. They could use better divinity regeneration and/or reduced divinity costs.
What I also didn't see addressed at all is the gameplay of paladins while running solo content. Yes, they are not DPS, and yes, they can deal some decent damage when they're high IL but only while they have some divinity and when they run out of it (which happens fast) then they spend lots of time dealing very low damage. Below I have some suggestions regarding this aspect.

Suggestions for new changes:

PARAGON UNSPECIFIC

Remove Aura of Divinity additional effects of Aura feats and provide the same increase to everyone.
Aura of Protection - Increases the Critical Avoidance (instead of Deflect) of self and nearby allies by 5%.
Blessed Wanderer - Increases your damage by 25%, reduces the divinity costs of Bane and Smite by 30% and increases the divinity recovered by blocking, when you are alone. I think it would be a great improvement if this feat could be functionally changed so that "alone" means not in a queue, rather than not in a party. Players generally team up with friends to run content other than dungeons using parties, not queues.
Aura of Wrath - Increases the Critical Chance of self and nearby allies by 5%.
Keep only one Aura possible to have active at a time.

OATHKEEPER

Divine Fulmination should be reworked to become an actual AOE at-will with a small radius. It currently acts as an AOE. Please don't make us, the Vistani debuffers, become Oathbreakers!
Divine Touch/Divine Shelter/both - Every 12s channel (button hold) this encounter for 2s to transform the barrier into healing. Channeling already available to Justicar on Smite with Divine Challenger class feat (but nobody uses it in that form), so I would love to see a similar implementation brought to Oathkeeper!
Aura of Restoration - increases Outgoing Healing by 5%.
Aura of Life - when you cast a healing encounters on your allies, increase the effectiveness of their next healing from another player by 10%. This effect can trigger once every 10s. In its current form, Aura of Life is not interesting. The proposed change helps with better support from the paladin healer in trial runs.
Timely Intervention - increase the threshold for barrier conversion from 25% to 40%.
Guarded Prayers - Your Channel Divinity (tab) decreases the incoming damage of your target marked by Aura of Divinity by 10% based on how much you channeled. This effect lasts for 5s. In its current form, Guarded Prayers is not being useful at all.

JUSTICAR

In my opinion, there's a big gap between a Justicar and a Vanguard Fighter when it comes to threat and overall feeling of being tanky. Fighter has access to Knight's Valor which will scale the threat with any power creep this game might acquire (in the past - Band of Air and currently the Mirage set and Slab of Vecna mount). They have access to low cooldown encounters with high threat and free stats for just blocking. Also Fighter tanks possess the best choice of Forte defense stats - Critical Avoidance. The gap is crazy and it's amazing to see you don't address this aspect with any balancing. Paladins have Templar's Wrath limited by Divinity (a resource Vanguards don't need to manage) and Deflect Severity from Forte but not many means of Deflect to put that Severity to good use.

Include the threat multiplier of powers in their tooltips. Please... for all tanks,
Increase the Divinity Regeneration while outside of combat (QoL).
Aura of Valor - Decrease the threat generated by nearby allies by 10% (up from 5%) and does not affect other tank role players. I believe excluding other tanks would be a great QoL improvement of this feat.
Aura of Vengeance - magnitude increased from 10 to 20 and has increased threat generation.
Oath Strike - magnitude increased from 25 to 50.
Blocking should increase Critical Avoidance or Deflect Chance by 10%. Others mentioned Critical Avoidance already. The general idea is paladins could use something/anything here. Fighters get 25% "free stats" via Dig In while Paladins get... 10% based on Divinity which is much needed for threat encounters so realistically less.
Include the exact Divinity regain of Divine Pursuit in the tooltip.
Baneful Strikes chance increased from 5% to 20% and applicable only when not in a group.
Divine Champion now intercepts 10% of the threat of all DPS role allies in the area. This might sound overpowered but I think it's not (not even in a trial), since divinity is being consumed fairly fast during Divine Champion and players will have to balance this effect with usages of Templar's Wrath anyway.

nayiru · October 2023

Hello, there is my feedback for paladin oathkeeper.

Disclamer
I am not here to influence anyone or debate. This feedback is intended for the developers and not for the players. I will ask players to respect my opinion as I respect theirs.
I apologize in advance for my English, I am not an English speaker but I do my best to be understood.

A word about balancing
I see the changes to the paladin in a global reflection on healing in neverwinter. I play the four healing classes in endgame content and I try to think globally and not exclusively for the paladin.

Some improvements (or massive ones) cannot be implemented on the paladin without risking overshadowing the other three healing classes :
- The paladin cannot excel at healing and we cannot give him HoT abilities without making him overpowered.
- The paladin cannot have too much capacity to buff allies (offensively). Being a support is not only offensively buffering but also protecting allies and that is how I see the paladin: a protector, the best there is, and it must stay that way
- It is not possible to massively improve shields without taking the risk, once again, of being overpowered especially in endgame content.

Oathkeeper's Weaknesses :
Paladins shine in the latest content. I am thinking in particular of Gzemnid reliquary and Master demonweb pits. But Pally have some weak points which make players struggle in other contents.
- New paladins players who do not have a min max build struggle with random queues: the shields are tiny and the heals almost non-existent.
- For mid game content (and still early game), it also lacks the ability to save the life of an ally without necessarily needing to use a daily (lay on hands or sanctuary). There is the old divin touch but in the case where the player to be saved is not away from the rest of the group, there is no way to save this player except to spam divine shelter. It is possible to use at-will power but there is a good chance that another player will intercept the spell and waste divinity.
- Overwriting shields: you absolutely have to work on this and find a solution for timers. Just from a user experience point of view, having to overwrite (or be overwrite) a shield is not pleasant. It is important to ensure good synergy between players, no matter what class they play (dont forget, bard, SW and HR can also shield). If there is one only thing to do, it's that !

Now let's move to changes on preview server :

Divine shelter :
- Looking from a math perspective, the magnitude of 360 is strong conbine with the 25% from emissary of warding. This is a big buff in terms of healing and while increasing average shield (no critical shield are now stronger and more reliable. Critical shields are a little bit stronger). I wonder if it's not too powerful in endgame ? the paladin healer was already very strong for two mods already and many players prefer a paladins rather than another healing class on their team.
- On the other hand, this balancing is welcome for beginners and makes the paladin more attractive and compensate his weakness at this level of play.

Divine touch
- I know that a lot of players like the old divine touch but for a few mods, I no longer use this encounter (since mtos basically). I am more efficient and I manage my divinity better by timing my divine shelter well and paying attention to the cooldown of my allies' potions by delaying them as much as possible (in the majority of cases, no potion is necessary, as with the others healing class). This old divine touch should perhaps be kept as it is to allow for variety in gameplay. If there must be a buff to compensate for the Emissary of Warding nerf, it must be light because the spell remains powerful and once again, it must not have an imbalance in the class.
- I fell in love with the new divine touch. If it remains like this, one of the two divinity regeneration encounters i use will be replaced in my bar by this new divine touch. I like the diversity of use of this spell:
It can be used to give a group a healing boost or used as an emergency button. This was what the class was missing to have a perfect healing kit without being too powerful. The cooldown, from a general balancing point of view, is correct.
I really like the fact that the most injured player does not need to be targeted to be healed, it's very noob friendly and it allows you to heal both the group and a distant player (if he is most injured). Bond of virtue is not usefull, why not use this slot to the new divine touch and give even more diversity of gameplay to the class

Other fixes
- hand of divinity : +200 magnitude is needeed in regards with 25% emissary of warding
- cure wound can no longer heal ghosts in mtos, this is quite unfortunate for the mechanics of the dungeon. Cleansing touch could do it but oathkeeper needs a tool similar to other healing classes.

Conclusion :
Overall, the balances seems to be consistents but perhaps a little bit stronger for endgame content.
All the latest changes to healers are good, warlocks are back, bards are strong in his playstyle, paladins promise to be even stronger than currently. Clerics remains strong but lacks that little something that would make him more special and more tasty.

anna · October 2023

Your Divine Touch rework will make the power nearly useless... Why would I waste one of my three equipped power slots to accommodate a panic button? If my healer functiones optimally, a panic button is redundant. If my healer is sub par compared to a similar cleric/warlock/bard build, then a panic button won't keep it relevant in content. All in all the changes as proposed are quite dissapointing, noting especially the surface level edits in comparison to the other classes tweaks.

fleurdelys2013 · October 2023

For the paladin Justicar :
1st problem Encounters based on divinity aint the best idea since you cant pause the game to recharge your divinity. Maybe take in consideration to do something about this .
2nd problem I m sure you can track what encounters are most used by all players , buff these encounters instead dont buff what aint even used because it will be useless and people will continue to complain .

For the paladin Oathkeeper :If we are protectors then let us protect . Why i cant do a full shield ? Tanks have more hp then shields should be increased since other healers can full heal instantly .We are going to maxed characters but we are not performing at that level as a healers .
1st problem i noticed since i am playing with paladin healer is that for instance if i use divine shelter for everyone and after if i use hand of divinity on the tank and 1 of the dps will drop shield by getting hit, i need to reuse again the divine shelter and my tank will get replaced his shield . Please take in consideration of fixing this problem because it is disturbing and divinity consuming .

2nd problem from my point of view is shields should stack . I went with another paladin healer in a 10 instance people and he was canceling my hand of divinity . If you would compare to cleric healing word for instance these will stack and it wont get canceled 1 by the other 1 .

3nd problem We have a panic power to get maxed healed 1 person and that is the daily . How this could be fair taking in consideration how hard paladin is gaining ap ? Please do something about .

4th problem divinity gain .As i said earlier we cannot pause the game till we recharge divinity , but this is on all divinity based classes .Now either its much faster divinity gain or bigger divinity bar as we had in the past with 4 points on the divinity bar. Now if your concern is the dps would become overpowered, try to make this option to be just for the support classes .

I apreciate you worked to help paladin but please understand there are far bigger stuff to think about than just to boost abit some encounters. Please try to hear our voices . Thank you .

rgutscheradev · October 2023

Sounds like there's a general preference for reverting Divine Touch, but it's not 100%.

Here's another option... revert to the old version, but get rid of the splitting and keep the "heal lowest". The minus side is it's pretty close to Divine Shelter at that point. The plus side is that for those who do NOT like the old version of Divine Touch, it's often the splitting that they dislike, and the "heal lowest" feature seems good for things like keeping tanks alive (but more reliable now, since you don't have to worry about extra people wandering into the effect area).

So something like this (numbers NOT final):

If people don't like it, I'm always happy just to revert to the original Divine Touch. But I thought I'd give the above as an option.

ogrebane · October 2023

For the love of God, please don't change the animation for the Justicar's shield block!

It's incredibly important that it's a 'HIGHLY VISIBLE', visual mechanic. Most fights, but especially in end-game content fighting bosses, where it can be a frantic mess visually, an animation clearly showing the block is utterly vital. This new animation virtually eliminates visual comfirmation that one is blocking, and will result in a lot of Paladin tanks dying unnecessarily, thus generating huge amounts of frustration for all and sundry.

If it aint broke, don't fix it!

hastati96 · October 2023

The big downside is that if Divine Touch would place a 500 mag shield on the ally, the shield would be overriden by the next Divine Shelter. As long as the shield stacking mechanic is not changed it makes no sense to have multiple encounters that apply and override the shields in my opinion.

Additionally I dont think the 30sec cooldown makes the new Divine Touch viable. Either reduce the cooldown by 30% to around 20 - 22 seconds or keep it as it is on the live server to use Divinity. Otherwise we have to use Divine Shelter for healing checks like in mdwp. Personally, I prefer the full healing Divine Touch. Divine Shelter can already be used to provide shields.

rgutscheradev · October 2023

Ok, based on everyone's feedback, here's what I've decided to do:

1) Revert to the original version of Divine Touch (w/ some more Magnitude, to match the other Mag increases on similar powers like Divine Shelter).

2) Bond of Virtue will be replaced by the new power (the former "new Divine Touch"), but with a much lower cooldown. Something like this:

redjackal · October 2023

rgutscheradev said:
Ok, based on everyone's feedback, here's what I've decided to do:

I think this is a good deal after allot of discussion on the matter. The nice thing about the new bond of virtue is the tank or "smacked dps" can get a small heal even if targeted heal is missed or dodged. However it's not much bigger than a cure wounds. The question is, if the "heal lowest" is within the target circle, do they get both heals (300+300)? If so, then that is almost akin to the original divine touch on a single target, but with no shield. At worst, it's a free cure wounds. At best it's a cure wounds on every target hit and a double on the lowest health party member. I'd say throw the shield effect back. Then it'd be useful. Or increase the magnitude to something between cure wounds (275) and sheltered healing (425). I would say make it 25% larger than CW to 330 at the least. Just avoid making the heal too weak to be worthy of a spell slot. If you can make it stronger, just throw in a divinity cost to make it worthy.

I can see an OPs reaction when casting it on a dps that dodges. "Oh well. You dodged the big heal, now you get a small heal lol."

anna · October 2023

Your new proposal is much better, thank you for listening. While I do not expect the class to be much improved through this excercise (I doubt there is enough time), this change is a QoL increase and not a disguised nerf.

Honestly maining a paladin is an excercise in frustration compared with other classes, and if it hadn't been the first I began playing I would not have bothered. You can tank or heal, both of which require very expensive builds with no shared gear (which always gets released more seldom, drops less and costs way more than the dps equivalent). You have to slog through all campaign content because you have no reliable dps, often waiting for your comp to kill your enemies while divinity recharges. In dungeons, you can be a very good choice of tank or heal, and parties with pally tank and pally heal work - in trials, however, while two pally tanks are fine, if get two pally heals and all you do is drain each other's divinity by cancelling the other's shields. In skirmishes, if you load in with other tank(s)/healer(s) you're the one who can't change to a dps loadout. The other support classes all have dps options negating these issues, and dps-heal combinations can reuse much of the same gear in either paragon role. They also have a much better ballance between divinity/stamina powers and cooldown powers. I would not really recommend the class to anyone really, unless they're stupid AD-rich, but QoL improvements for people who've invested in end-game pally builds will go a long way.

azura · October 2023

Thank you for listening. I do think the magnitude changes will be great on its own. The new power its better than what we had but I'm not sure if we gonna use it because in a dire situation where we need a lot of healing we might just wanna spam divine shelter and have 2 divinity regen powers. In other situations, we might be better off with divine touch to quickly raise a barrier. And again, if the increased magnitude does its job, we definitely not gonna need it. Only time will tell.

I think everybody was waiting on more substantial changes to not only improve but renew. You do have a lot of good feedback here and I know you can't make some of changes quickly so I'll just point out 2 I've made again:
Aura of life heals for 25/ 75 magnitude ....can't you increase that quickly ?
Lay on Hands is a reactive skill as it is, could you change it to be a preventive? I do think it suits the paladin theme much better. Not to mention, if someone takes a big hit, they are gonna use a stone of health before we can heal them.
More importantly, the divine shelter shield should not remove the hand of divinity shield on the marked target at least.

I hope this helps. Thank your for your time.

cellx · October 2023

As it is still possible to give suggestions; I'd like to share my opinion. I will briefly touch upon the oathkeeper path. I may make my comments on Justicar later. I'll list my suggestions below based on my own priorities.

- First of all, the shield overwrite needs to be fixed. This causes waste of divinity and loss of a big shield when it is needed. I completely agree with the post of valehru29 above.

- About divine touch; I also didn't like the first proposal. I mainly use Divine Touch to protect/heal a single target. Shield really helps and it fits well with Paladin healing style. My main struggle is targeting only one member which is challenging with the large area of the power; especially when there are more than 2 melee dps in the party. For that reason, I actually like the proposal:

rgutscheradev said:
Sounds like there's a general preference for reverting Divine Touch, but it's not 100%.

Here's another option... revert to the old version, but get rid of the splitting and keep the "heal lowest". The minus side is it's pretty close to Divine Shelter at that point. The plus side is that for those who do NOT like the old version of Divine Touch, it's often the splitting that they dislike, and the "heal lowest" feature seems good for things like keeping tanks alive (but more reliable now, since you don't have to worry about extra people wandering into the effect area).

So something like this (numbers NOT final):

If people don't like it, I'm always happy just to revert to the original Divine Touch. But I thought I'd give the above as an option.

This may work fine if the the protection for the lowest hp member would be the same level of current divine touch. Otherwise, current divine touch is still much better than the first proposal.

- I agree to give another healing power to Paladins to make them more useful during leveling. Bond of virtue can be a good candidate; if end game paladins don't need it; they don't have to use it.

- I find dailies very underwhelming. They are quite poor compared to other healers. I would make them more viable; for example:
-- Lay on hands --> Mass lay on hands: Provides shield and a bit heal to everyone. I am thinking about 2 options; either provide everyone a huge shield or provide everyone a moderate shield which stacks with the encounter shields. This can be very useful for heal checks or for huge mass burst damage mechanics.
-- I find sanctuary not very useful. Its area is very small and paladin cannot do anything else while casting it. As Paladins also do not have any HoT powers; anyone outside the sanctuary will be neglected. It would be nice to make it more competitive; something similar to Hollowed Grounds. Otherwise, sanctuary can be kept as it is and some healing can be added to Shield of Faith which gives us some breathing moment to regenerate divinity during hot encounters.

- Paladin is also quite poor with cleansing; as far as I know, paladin only has single target cleansing which I even don't bother to use. Other healers have cheap party cleansing abilities. To be more competitive, it is good to give a party cleansing power to paladin healers.

Those are the first things come to my mind. There are also very good comments from others; so I hope paladin would get a decent update (it seems like a nerf at this moment) and I can invest more in my paladin to use it more often.