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:
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.
Lay On Hands can be improved to provide at least 10% mitigation instead of 5%. Sanctuary is not as useless as you think, on the contrary, does a good job in endgame. It's very situational compared to cleric's but effective. The only thing I would improve about it would be to rooting - remove it and cause the daily bubble to disappear when the paladin leaves the area.
Viperion - DragonTribe guild. Playing Ranger/Paladin/Bard/Fighter.
Ok, the "little shields shouldn't overwrite big shields" keeps coming up, so I'm going to check in a change that stops that.
Some warnings: * It looks great in testing, but something could go Horribly Wrong (TM). Please try it out and let me know! * This is just about how Paladin shields interact with Paladin shields. Other shields will still do whatever they do, unfortunately, but I don't want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. * This change isn't something I have a bunch of fine control over. It's just a switch I can flip. So if it's basically good, but has some bad points, or it's basically bad, but has some good points, either way we'll need to make a decision as to "is it good overall? should we keep it?" All I can really do is flip the switch (or not) -- I can't make fine adjustments to what the switch does. * There are situations where you might WANT the small shield to override the big shield. For example, if you have an 800 point shield with 2s duration left, and you cast a 700 point shield (which will last for 20s), you'd probably want to overwrite at that point. But now you won't. That's the downside to "always keep the biggest shield". I think this possible downside loomed too large in the minds of whoever set this system up to begin with. But I think this downside is actually much less likely to happen than the kind of bad shield overwriting that happens all the time with the current system, so I think it's worth making the change.
P.S. People have been making lots of great suggestions, and I'm sorry for any I'm ignoring. But time is running out on my end for Paladin changes, and I'm trying to do the most valuable ones with the little time I have left. I figured the shield overwriting issue was pretty high on most people's list, so I jumped to that over a bunch of other good suggestions people had.
I do hope to be able to squeeze in some Aura buffs, though. I agree some of them are a bit low. We have to be careful, though, because since auras apply to everyone in the party, there's a lot of multiplication going on, and they can move from "hardly worth it" to "must haves" really quickly.
P.S. People have been making lots of great suggestions, and I'm sorry for any I'm ignoring. But time is running out on my end for Paladin changes, and I'm trying to do the most valuable ones with the little time I have left. I figured the shield overwriting issue was pretty high on most people's list, so I jumped to that over a bunch of other good suggestions people had.
I do hope to be able to squeeze in some Aura buffs, though. I agree some of them are a bit low. We have to be careful, though, because since auras apply to everyone in the party, there's a lot of multiplication going on, and they can move from "hardly worth it" to "must haves" really quickly.
I expected QoL improvements to solo gameplay like better divinity costs & regen, more means to consistently deliver damage when we solo content since paladins don't have access to a DPS paragon. We got none of this...
Although your changes are welcome I believe they are not even close that what's needed to make a new player want to choose this class from scratch. The slow combat and level-up experience will either drive a new player away and have them quit the game or stick around but try another class. So this class remains appealing mostly to the established players who see its potential in the end game. They will avoid early/mid game as paladin because it's mainly tragic and they will do so by gearing their paladins with account-wide items obtained by their mains. And this is the painful problem of this class that you didn't address!...
Post edited by vasile1991 on
Viperion - DragonTribe guild. Playing Ranger/Paladin/Bard/Fighter.
Lay On Hands can be improved to provide at least 10% mitigation instead of 5%. Sanctuary is not as useless as you think, on the contrary, does a good job in endgame. It's very situational compared to cleric's but effective. The only thing I would improve about it would be to rooting - remove it and cause the daily bubble to disappear when the paladin leaves the area.
If I remember correctly, Lay on Hands only provide heal+cleanse for one person; and +shield if the right feat is selected. It is like cleric's intercession + cleanse (I find it worse as it also requires targeting). So simple for a daily; especially when it takes longer to fill the action point gauge. Maybe you meant Shield of Fate?
I agree that Sanctuary can be useful; but very situational. I am not experiencing the end game content yet; but, until the end game, it is underwhelming. I play a lot with random people in random dungeons; it is hard to squeeze everyone in a 15ft circle. As I mentioned, Sanctuary may stay as it is; what I'd like to see is a daily that can heal/shield the whole party in many (boss) encounters (Adding some heal/shield to Shield of Faith is another example).
Anyways, it is not likely to get more changes as the dev stated; so let's see how the paladin looks like at the launch...
I do hope to be able to squeeze in some Aura buffs, though. I agree some of them are a bit low. We have to be careful, though, because since auras apply to everyone in the party, there's a lot of multiplication going on, and they can move from "hardly worth it" to "must haves" really quickly.
I've summarized a post I made from General Feedback, similar to other Aura buff's those here have asked for:
NOTE: Many have suggested Aura (2%) be extended as high as (5%), or 10% with Devine Champion. I do feel 5% is a bit high, so I'd be fine between 2.5% to 3.5% for Aura of Protection, or Aura of Wrath; both which would be doubled under Devine Champion.
Aura of Life has tooltip that clearly states from 25 magnitude to 75; if it's tooltip is correct. That's more than doubling...
Aura of Vengeance should be at least increased to 20 magnitude closer to Aura of Life at 25 Magnitude for Healers. It also needs clarity of tooltip &/or fix to ensure it at least doubles at least when under Devine Champion as well--currently it has no tooltip identifying what it increases to like Aura of Life does!
The game currently has a shortage of people playing Tanks, of which the largest % (percentage) is Paladin's. While Paladin Healer's make a smaller % of healers in game, I'm really hopefully these last few 1-2 minor updates will encourage more to play both Paladin Tanks & Healers! Especially with the change to the Healing Encounter described above.
Please Change Forte away from Deflect Severity. Critical Avoidance would be best.
Please remove the losing Critical Avoidance when Divinity is low.
Other tanks gain stats and we lose them.
It also be wonderful to see Paladin's Forte updated to change away from Deflect Severity, to include Critical Avoidance. ╘ This seems small, yet Paladin's suffer Divinity causing higher Critical damage..
Ok, the "little shields shouldn't overwrite big shields" keeps coming up, so I'm going to check in a change that stops that.
Some warnings: * It looks great in testing, but something could go Horribly Wrong (TM). Please try it out and let me know! * This is just about how Paladin shields interact with Paladin shields. Other shields will still do whatever they do, unfortunately, but I don't want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. * This change isn't something I have a bunch of fine control over. It's just a switch I can flip. So if it's basically good, but has some bad points, or it's basically bad, but has some good points, either way we'll need to make a decision as to "is it good overall? should we keep it?" All I can really do is flip the switch (or not) -- I can't make fine adjustments to what the switch does. * There are situations where you might WANT the small shield to override the big shield. For example, if you have an 800 point shield with 2s duration left, and you cast a 700 point shield (which will last for 20s), you'd probably want to overwrite at that point. But now you won't. That's the downside to "always keep the biggest shield". I think this possible downside loomed too large in the minds of whoever set this system up to begin with. But I think this downside is actually much less likely to happen than the kind of bad shield overwriting that happens all the time with the current system, so I think it's worth making the change.
Thank you for this!!
So if my understanding is correct, the shield overwriting fixing has been done only at paladin level and not game wide? We can expect shields not to overwrite anymore for paladins but they would if paladin would play with a bard or warlock?
Viperion - DragonTribe guild. Playing Ranger/Paladin/Bard/Fighter.
- Very happy with Divine Touch reverting back to the original with a magnitude increase to compensate for the Emissary of Warding reduction. - The new version of Bond of Virtue looks good. - The Threat changes and Aura buffs are great! - Happy to see Divine Palisade get 60% block by default.
I personally do not find shield overriding a big deal. I'm ok with as is, you just need to learn the timing better of mechanics and when it is best to use what, but a simple change of Hand of Divinity being the priority shield would be decent. An easy change would be to to make Hand of Divinity stack with other Divine Barriers and reduce the magnitude of Hand of Divinity by the magnitude of Divine Shelter.
Ok, the "little shields shouldn't overwrite big shields" keeps coming up, so I'm going to check in a change that stops that.
Some warnings: * It looks great in testing, but something could go Horribly Wrong (TM). Please try it out and let me know! * This is just about how Paladin shields interact with Paladin shields. Other shields will still do whatever they do, unfortunately, but I don't want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. * This change isn't something I have a bunch of fine control over. It's just a switch I can flip. So if it's basically good, but has some bad points, or it's basically bad, but has some good points, either way we'll need to make a decision as to "is it good overall? should we keep it?" All I can really do is flip the switch (or not) -- I can't make fine adjustments to what the switch does. * There are situations where you might WANT the small shield to override the big shield. For example, if you have an 800 point shield with 2s duration left, and you cast a 700 point shield (which will last for 20s), you'd probably want to overwrite at that point. But now you won't. That's the downside to "always keep the biggest shield". I think this possible downside loomed too large in the minds of whoever set this system up to begin with. But I think this downside is actually much less likely to happen than the kind of bad shield overwriting that happens all the time with the current system, so I think it's worth making the change.
I really don't think this is a good change; you are going to get your group killed for miti checks because you cannot give a full duration shield. I really don't think this is a switch that should be made, it is a severe nerf to pallys.
Is there a way that the big shield Aura of Divinity itself be the one that isn't overwritten? Or the player with the AoD mark cannot be shielded except by another AoD cast? I think while not perfect this would solve the problem so that another cast of divine shelter won't ruin the big shield that was just placed upon the target. This was the main part of the problem. There may be a downside to divine shelter not helping the marked player, but that is on the shoulders of the paladin to take care of by other plentiful means.
Ok, the "little shields shouldn't overwrite big shields" keeps coming up, so I'm going to check in a change that stops that.
Some warnings: * It looks great in testing, but something could go Horribly Wrong (TM). Please try it out and let me know! * This is just about how Paladin shields interact with Paladin shields. Other shields will still do whatever they do, unfortunately, but I don't want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. * This change isn't something I have a bunch of fine control over. It's just a switch I can flip. So if it's basically good, but has some bad points, or it's basically bad, but has some good points, either way we'll need to make a decision as to "is it good overall? should we keep it?" All I can really do is flip the switch (or not) -- I can't make fine adjustments to what the switch does. * There are situations where you might WANT the small shield to override the big shield. For example, if you have an 800 point shield with 2s duration left, and you cast a 700 point shield (which will last for 20s), you'd probably want to overwrite at that point. But now you won't. That's the downside to "always keep the biggest shield". I think this possible downside loomed too large in the minds of whoever set this system up to begin with. But I think this downside is actually much less likely to happen than the kind of bad shield overwriting that happens all the time with the current system, so I think it's worth making the change.
I would also prefer to not get this change. Because as a Paladin healer, when to use your shields and powers is something you need to learn. It actually requires you to manage your shields and divinity and learn the upcoming mechanics of the content you are running. So it atleast requires some experience and skill. I think player should have complete control over the shield and their duration. And as you pointed out, if you implement the change it will not always be useful and practical.
As far as I can see, people are divided into 2, some of them want the change, and some of them don't want it. So I wanted to propose the idea that, if you really want to implement it, is it possible to make it a class feature or a feat? So if players don't want it to be a feature, they can choose not to. So everybody wins.
Devs, there is a huge breach in the balance of threat of the Tanks. The Fighter Vanguard has the encounter power called Knight's Valor that they use to highjack the threat from other tanks in Trials and Skirmishes. They are cheaty, and always use this dirty play to exclude the other tank from the queue. Please rework Knight's Valor so it can't affect other tanks, since your reworked the Paladin threat aura. We can't have this kind of cheating in the game anymore.
The whole shield barrier thing i think people were expecting a stack effect not a negate effect and this just isnt viable the shields that are popped should replace the current shield despite a low or high shield just pop another to gamble a higher one however with that said perhaps they need to give a slight buff to divinity regeneration as it is heavy on resources
Ok, the "little shields shouldn't overwrite big shields" keeps coming up, so I'm going to check in a change that stops that.
Some warnings: * It looks great in testing, but something could go Horribly Wrong (TM). Please try it out and let me know! * This is just about how Paladin shields interact with Paladin shields. Other shields will still do whatever they do, unfortunately, but I don't want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. * This change isn't something I have a bunch of fine control over. It's just a switch I can flip. So if it's basically good, but has some bad points, or it's basically bad, but has some good points, either way we'll need to make a decision as to "is it good overall? should we keep it?" All I can really do is flip the switch (or not) -- I can't make fine adjustments to what the switch does. * There are situations where you might WANT the small shield to override the big shield. For example, if you have an 800 point shield with 2s duration left, and you cast a 700 point shield (which will last for 20s), you'd probably want to overwrite at that point. But now you won't. That's the downside to "always keep the biggest shield". I think this possible downside loomed too large in the minds of whoever set this system up to begin with. But I think this downside is actually much less likely to happen than the kind of bad shield overwriting that happens all the time with the current system, so I think it's worth making the change.
I am in favor of preventing small shields overwriting big shield; but this implementation doesn't sounds right. Ideal implementation would be as described in the quoted post below. It takes both shield magnitudes and durations into account separately. This can be easily coded with a few case statements; but switching an existing property not likely does this magically.
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).
If this cannot be done; another good approach to make divine shelter to work with hand of divinity as suggested in the previous posts. The shield overwrite is mostly annoying when tank's large shield (hand of divinity) is overwritten by divine shelter (for dps). If those two shields stack, that would solve most of the annoyances.
Very roughly, it's: * A repeat of a few things already discussed (Divine Touch Mag. increase, no shield overwriting). * Various small improvements to specific powers. * Aura rework: rough summary is "aura values doubled on average, but the bonus from Divine Champion has typically stayed the same". So an aura that gave 2% and 4% with Divine Champion might give 4% now, with a total of 6% with Divine Champion. * Changes affecting all tanks that naturally affect Paladins too: ** CC immunity made more reliable. ** Threat reworked. Short version is that overall threat generation is similar, but more of it comes from base threat generation, and less from the specific bonus certain "increased threat" powers had. That way there's a bit more flexibility for players, and tanks aren't required to only take "increased threat" powers. ** Blocking and shields: Now blocking happens before shields are consumed. Earlier, it had been before in some cases and after in others.
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leslithegreatMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 16Arc User
I think that shifting power from Emissary of Warding to other abilities helps alleviate the issue that only end game Oathkeeper feel decent to play and new Oathkeepers feel useless, but it doesn't help the power balance with everything else.
When warlock got the at will that can shield for nearly as much as Oathkeeper tab it really felt like the main reason to bring a paladin disappeared. Paladin still has their aura, but Soulweaver has a similar ability in the form of the sigil they can place on the ground (the name escapes me atm). In trials I feel okay as an Oathkeeper, but in dungeons I feel guilty going as healer because I know they could be bringing a warlock or cleric. I feel like Oathkeeper does need a power shift to make them slightly less stat reliant, but they also need some kind of direct buff or QoL changes to make them competitive.
As for weak shields overwriting stronger shields, I think that it would be good to make the stronger shields remain regardless of duration. I saw someone say that keeping it as is gives players more control, but I would argue the opposite. Often you HAVE to place tab shield on the tank first to keep them alive as it is an emergency, and then you want to give the dps their shield, but that gets rid of the big shield on the tank. I think it is pretty rare for shields to last their full duration. In terms of programming it should be pretty simple to have it check if a new shield is less than the current shield, in which case it keeps the old one, but if it is greater than OR EQUAL TO the old one then it replaces the old shield. Since a shield will usually result in the same number each time it is used this would allow you to refresh the duration on the divine shelter shields.
Proposed changes to get Oathkeeper on level with the other healers:
1.Increase the damage mitigation on dailies. - Oathkeeper is the "protection" healer. Lean into that by giving them the best mitigation to supplement their lower healing. DC's Hallowed Ground gives 10% mitigation and can just be placed on the ground, leaving the DC free to do other things. Sanctuary also gives 10% mitigation but requires a channel. It is more akin to DC's Astral Shield, which DC can stack on top of Hallowed Ground for even more mitigation. Make Oathkeeper's mitigation more competitive.
2. Reverse the way bond of virtue functions. Make it heal (and shield) others whenever you heal (and shield) the target. - Your primary healing target is pretty much always the tank, so if that healing could splash to whoever needs it off of the tank that would let you get short periods of very high durability where you only have to focus on one person.
Fighter Vanguards use Knight's Valor to hijack the threat from other tanks in Trials and Skirmishes, using this dirty trick to exclude the other tank from the queue. That encounter power needs to be reworked, so it can't drain the threat from other tanks anymore. This is a huge unbalance in the game, of which cheaters exploit very much. And since the Devs are trying to balance everything, this is a priority improvement to the equilibrium of threat in the game !
I don't think the Paladin shield should be changed, it's good as the way it is.. It's all about timing and knowledge of mechanics when to apply big shield on tank
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.
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). This is line is wrong, did you mean Bond of Virtue? * 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.
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.
#1 small cleanup of tooltip for Oathkeeper Paladins
I thought the decision was instead to leave Divinity still in, for Devine Touch; you called Bond of Virtue the new Devine Touch. So I think you were meant Bond of Virtue, not Divine Touch (above):
So this is more just a typo (above) to ensure patch notes correctly refer to the changes refers to Bond of Virtue. It still seems to have a much longer cooldown though, unless I misunderstood something?
The tooltip for Bond of Virtue may needs an update as well.
One last question however is this, and it's something I just thought of that may require one last consideration for Justicar's especially who use Devine Challenger all the time.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #2 One Last Minute consideration for Justicar Paladins Class Feature
NOTE: With all other Tank Threat changes, is Devine Challenger even relavent now? Since threat is calculated differently, previously many tanks almost always used it as they could only focus on high threat powers mostly. Now I admit it's nice they have more flexibility, yet does this render this ability useless?
Now even if you use Smite for threat, you likely won't gain much benefit from Devine Challenger anymore. Since now this Class Power may require being updated instead to offer a boost to Smite Magnitude when used with Devine Challenger? Yes/No, something you might want to look into before you finalize the M27 Paladin Tank changes; everything else looks wonderful in theory...
Still not sure I'm sold on how threat changes are better or worse, the problem is on Preview it's a lot harder to test, as there's often far fewer online to find a full party to actually test.
Also please read the next two replies below. Thank You!
Abilities like Smite(plus Divine Challenger), Vow of Enmity, Templar's wrath don't seem to be working as intended. I have hit these powers and a DPS will still have aggro we shouldn't have to use Templar's wrath to get agro over smite, but its what we are currently doing. This usually works but I have experienced where spamming Templar's wrath 3x in a row and DPS would still have agro even when using Vow Of enmity. Smite is a guaranteed agro change but does not have a big enough multiplier to maintain that threat.
Another annoying bug that tanks have been facing is when we die while shielding, we are unable to use a scroll of life or scroll of mass life to resurrect. Is it the block mechanics immunity that breaks scrolls? Please fix this. Also when we are marked by healers we end up stuck in combat even though the mobs are all dead. We are unable to swap mount or artifact powers when this occurs, open chests, or go through doors or portals because the game thinks we are still in combat. It takes a long time for this effect to drop or the healer has to remove their mark from the tank to make this bug go away.
Paladins are the only class that have no DPS role and are the only double utility class. This needs to be fixed. When doing adult dragons solo on my paladin it took me a little over 20 minutes to complete, other paladins in my alliance said it took them 27 to 32 minutes. I brought my rogue which was 20k item lv lower than my paladin and completed it in under 4 minutes. It makes no sense that paladins need to take 5x to 6x longer to do anything in this game solo.
I have 2 possible suggestions to fix this issue. The first being the easiest, modify blessed wanderer so that instead of giving 20% more damage to paladin tanks it flips defensive stats to offensive stats. For example def becomes power, awareness becomes combat advantage, crit avoid becomes crit, deflect becomes accuracy. The modifiers for powers that increase threat now do not increase threat but increase damage done by the multiplier amount.
Or the more complicated but probably the best solution is to splinter the paladin class into 3 sub classes. People can choose to leave their paladins as they are now so they can be tanks or healers or do some quest that unlocks 2 new sub classes. Going this route the paladin can choose to go down 2 paths. The first path is that you unlock a permanent change that locks the paladin having a load out that allows them to play the role of tank or swap to the role of DPS. The other path allows you to choose a healer/ dps role.
You can design a single paladin dps play style or go the extra mile and make one a melee(Oath of Vengeance) if your a tank mainsubclass or the other a caster/range(oath of the ancients) style dps if your a healer main subclass.
Abilities like Smite(plus Divine Challenger), Vow of Enmity, Templar's wrath don't seem to be working as intended. I have hit these powers and a DPS will still have aggro we shouldn't have to use Templar's wrath to get agro over smite, but its what we are currently doing. This usually works but I have experienced where spamming Templar's wrath 3x in a row and DPS would still have agro even when using Vow Of enmity. Smite is a guaranteed agro change but does not have a big enough multiplier to maintain that threat.
That was my fear, that now some of the Previous increased threat powers won't offer nearly the same threat, and likely may require a slight to moderate Magnitude increase to compensate!
I at least thought it be mostly noticed on Smite with Devine Challenger, primarily as the Class Power used to put Smite at the TOP of the Threat List, with greater threat; as this used to increase the perceived magnitude by 8x. Now this is drastically changed, and now mostly rendered useless? Since increased threat means far less than it used to, in the way threat overall is calculated as a % now. It's the reason why Devine Challenger should perhaps also offer a BUFF to the magnitude of Smite perhaps by 10-20%?
So while the threat changes does a better job offering more threat to more powers, it doesn't guarantee being placed at top of the threat list for Smite with Devine Challenger, nor will it likely be as effective with Vow of Enmity or other Higher Threat powers...
I'm also concerned it's going to render Sacred Weapon far less effective as a viable choice as well, being that increased the Magnitude of previously increased Threat At-Wils as well. Now At-Wils offer far lessor benefit to keep or maintain threat, than they used to. So perhaps this is why they might also need a more larger magnitude threat bonus for it as well.
It's why I'm wondering if all 3 will require increased magnitude to compensate? ╘ They may need to reconsider this for a few Sentinel, and Vanguard class powers as well.
Still I'm really starting to think, maybe this change isn't as good, as it was first envisioned??? Sadly as I said above it's really harder to TEST this on preview, unless you find 4 others of the appropriate classes all willing to run a dungeon or 10 to do a Trial.
So while the threat changes does a better job offering more threat to more powers, it doesn't guarantee being placed at top of the threat list for Smite with Devine Challenger, nor will it likely be as effective with Vow of Enmity or other Higher Threat powers...
The top of the threat list is the top of the threat list no matter what multipliers or magnitues are in effect ?
This is the reason I wanted clarification, because they changed how threat is calculated, in that more now come from base threat not the increased threat portion. Will this in fact prevent Devine Challenger from placing someone at the Top of the Threat list, or is it now made kind of useless since more is based on the base threat revised mechanic?
Very roughly, it's: ** Threat reworked. Short version is that overall threat generation is similar, but more of it comes from base threat generation, and less from the specific bonus certain "increased threat" powers had. That way there's a bit more flexibility for players, and tanks aren't required to only take "increased threat" powers.
So please read what I quoted above from @knowfear4#5964 in the post in which I he replied; he seemed to validate my fears the High Threat Powers had. He found that using Smite with Devine Challenger wasn't placing him at the Top of the threat list, and still had to use Vow &/or Templar's Wrath just to acquire threat.
I admit I could be wrong, it was just a feeling I have, yet as I said another person seemed to confirm that...
The bad thing about paladin tanks is we have to balance 2 resources, stamina and divinity. I find myself having to drain both resources at the start of a fight to maintain agro and to not die. When we deplete our divinity we become weaker because our crit avoidance drops. Also we build our stats based on what we see, paladins cannot compensate for a loss of divinity by over capping crit avoid. It is already hard enough trying to cap stats but having to over cap a stat to counter a design flaw in the way paladins work is stupid.
I tried to use sacred weapon but I don't really feel it generates enough threat to warrant its use. Also I get more stamina regen using binding oath. I use binding oath because I need that stamina to be regenerating while I'm blocking. We have a dilemma here. If I block I'm not generating threat. If I'm attacking to generate threat I'm not blocking. I get that the game is trying to cater to two different play styles. In this case I propose adding more damage and threat caused by using Binding Oath. Sort of a damage shield or thorns type of effect. You hit me you get hurt and it pisses you off more threat generated. Increase sacred weapons threat and stamina regen it might be used more if it was actually effective.
As it is now I would like to use absolution but I can't because I have to have templars wrath and either smite or vow up to generate threat and this at present is still not enough to have both abilities up. Pallies either have absolution or sacred weapon, when I ask paladins most do not bother with sacred weapon. Also absolution doesn't seems to actually give 20% mitigation. Its probably because the order in which that 20% is calculated. Most likely its being done after all other mitigation when it should be calculated first not last. I'll show you why it doesn't seem to be worth using currently. Active absolution and then divine palisade, 20% plus 60% should be giving us 80% damage mitigation. Why do hits by the boss still take us from full hp to 1/4 hp with these powers both active. Ok lets take this further, we could activate divine protector daily for 30% damage mitigation shield of the gods feat should add another 25% absolution for 20% then divine palasade for an additional 60%. Lets add this all up. 135% mitigation. Why do we still get damage for half our hps or more? This should negate all damage taken.
Why doesn't the stat page show how much damage reduction we have and an explanation for how it works or is calculated and the diminishing return? It's almost as if this stat is hidden so we don't notice that this stat is a red herring as in you make us chase it and it does not actually do anything in game. So I can show you why this stat must not be working or the calculations need to be explained to us better. Companion bonus undying overlord reduces incoming damage by 7.5%, Combat enchantment 10%, Rugged gauntlets of the dragon 5%, drow assailant's tights 3%, and for the new content Bregan D'aerthe Mercenary's tunic 8% from spiders or drow. Lets add this up, 25% for all content, 33% for content with spiders or drow. If a paladin has 90% defense there should be a base damage reduction of 50% or am I misunderstanding how defense works? If it does work like this then shouldn't i have 88% damage mitigation? If we add in overloads like the 5% from Resiliency of depths and a spider or drow ward which gives 10% shouldn't this put us at over 103% mitigation? Lets look at old gear like the Earthen Heart set it can give up to 25% mitigation if we stand still and get 5 stacks. When I try using this set it seems to do absolutely nothing.
Blocking says it absorbs 40% of the damage taken with our base 50% from defense we should only take 10% damage from an attack. This used to be how it worked on mod 16 to 18 but after the combat changes tanks were just nerfed into the ground. I die from certain trash mobs who with 5 mobs first attacks completely depleting my stamina bar then die if I don't start running, but a rogue can go in there and kill all 5 of those mobs solo and take less than 5% damage? Dungeons are now scaled, so my paladin who has 1.3 million hp goes into an RAQ and now only has 280k hp, but DPS are still soloing trash mobs and could care less if the tank is there? what a joke. Why isn't their dps output scaled too? I get new gear for my rogue I can feel my rogue getting stronger, I get new gear for my paladin well I stay the same just have a higher Item level and tanks do not feel like they are getting stronger they just remain static. What is my incentive to do new content when my old gear works just fine? I should feel like I am taking less and less damage the better my gear and stats get but I don't. The current gear itemization for tanks sucks because most of it rely on stuff to proc before we reach our full potential and then these stats just randomly drop off if we some how do not get the proc to maintain these buffs. Its like saying please shoot my M1 battle tank with 100 machine gun bullets so that I can now take an RPG hit. It's dumb. I know all classes face this but they don't die because of bad luck having a stat drop suddenly at the wrong time. Tower of the mad mage was hard but it did not punish tanks with a tank buster that leaves us defenseless. Now every new trial has a tank buster and demon web pit. Stamina just doesn't replenish fast enough so we basically have to depend on the healer to survive till the next tank buster, sometimes we just have to use block to keep from dying. Our stamina bar now depleted and perhaps we are not at full health we have no chance at surviving a tank buster. Even if we double block we end up dying because the stats are all over the place with this random buff HAMSTER that gear gives us.
As for healing as a paladin, it just sucks without a hot. I can take my wife's cleric with no enchantments because she quit after the combat changes from mod 19, so I took all her enchantments and cashed them in and transferred it to my pally account. I did all rounds of hellpit with only healing words hot, and her iLv is so low she cant even go into RAQs. I guarantee my paladin would not complete hellpit as a healer with my current gear for healing. Take a paladin healer into a reaper with constant dot and you will see how much work it is just moving from group to group of trash mobs. A cleric can just drop healing word and not care about the constant dots. I think paladin healers need to try the other healing classes and then they will realize paladins are just trash at healing unless they are fully geared out. They are giving warlocks a shield so why bring a paladin? Give paladin healers a hot and aoe cleanse.
If you can load a private server with mod 18 and try out the old paladin heals at least you could generate nice shields without as much gear investment. On mod 18 paladins could cap all offensive and defensive stats but not cap power. We only used smite to keep agro on bosses. We used templars wrath for clearing trash mobs.
Honestly I think its time for a new combat system change the way stats are calculated and explained on the page is so stupid. If your stats are at the same amount as your item level you get 50% there is not enough gear or buffs in the game to cap these stats without the roulette wheel of stats going up and down. I liked mod 16 through 18 combat system, I have hated this games stats calculation ever since the change and still do today. The 4 insignia mounts have helped a bit but still this current combat system leaves a bad taste in my mouth and the game is no longer fun. Who ever thought of this new system was probably dropping acid.
Fighter Vanguards use Knight's Valor to hijack the threat from other tanks in Trials and Skirmishes, using this dirty trick to exclude the other tank from the queue. That encounter power needs to be reworked, so it can't drain the threat from other tanks anymore. This is a huge unbalance in the game, of which cheaters exploit very much. And since the Devs are trying to balance everything, this is a priority improvement to the equilibrium of threat in the game !
This is my second feedback (oathkeeper only) after this new update.
Bond of virtue : - Allows a breath of fresh air when players' HP gets too low. This allows you to heal without having to recast a divine shelter and therefore save on divinity. - enable emergency healing that has good synergy with shields that are already in place - The cooldown/heal ratio is attractive and balanced with the paladin's other tools to get the job done. - The encounter is more interesting than what was initially proposed with divine touch.
In my personal gameplay, I will use the majority of the time, the tab to protect the tank, divine shelter as main heal, a divinity regeneration spell and bond of virtue to fill up player’s HP when needed, or as emergency heal for dps or the tank if I think I won't have time to cast a tab.
This gameplay seems more fun to me, adaptive to each situation and less brainless than spamming the divine shelter.
Divine Touch : - The magnitude must not be split by companions or npc, this makes the encounter unusable and useless. I don’t know the cap with divide heals, but don’t go over 5 players, shields will be minuscules and heal not significant even if I think that beyond 2 targets, it is more profitable and effective to cast a divine shelter (or the new bond of virtue) - 900 magnitude is too much and the buff is too significant compared to the other improvements. There is a big buff on healing strength in general and on average healing with divine shelter. We are not far from overshielding which is more significant and game-breaking than the overhealing proposed by SW and the DC. - I suggest lowering the magnitude to 800. The math shows that 800 is already more powerful than the current (live) version of divine touch in terms of shield (non-crit shield are more powerful and crits are the same) average and power of heal. Don’t go over 850 magnitude.
What is 900 magnitude is compare to actual 650 :
What I suggest with a 800 magnitude (compare to actual 650):
And just for fun, i was challenging myself to get the bigger shiel i can with divine touch
Divine shelter : - It’s fine like it is. As I said in my previous feedback, it’s strong and it’s a big buff, but it’s needed to increase healing strenght and improve early and midgame with more average shield with no critical stats. - I run a training master gzemnind to help my guild, and on average, it's 50k more healing from divine shelter on ACT.
Hand of divinity : - +200 effective mag is still needed especially with magnitude improvement of divine touch
Aura of wrath : - 4% is too much. 2,5%-3% is ok as an improvement. There is a problem to take into consideration : pure healers will be less attractive to play and to take on your team because except pure healing (sometimes overhealing, for the DC), they have nothing particular or attractive enough to bring from a team support point of view.
Stat boost from support (auras, tutor, portobello, buff from bard’s storyteller), especially if they are displayed on the character sheet, make the game toxic because the players prevent the supports from playing the way they want. There isn't just one way to boost your team and in certain groups the defensive option is better (it's not just endgamers who count). And as a support, i like to analyse situations and choose myself how to help when the team struggles.
Sanctuary : Personally I don't use it to heal check, I only use it on mitigation phase (tomm, master gzemnid for exemple). I prefere use shield of faith to reduce a little bit damage and boost incoming healing with a good timing on my divine shelter Sanctuary is now more powerful than hallowed ground in terms of mitigation and healing (15% vs 10% damage resistance / 600 magnitude for sanctuary vs 500 magnitude for hallowed ground. In the way I play the game, I think boost damage resistance (5% -> 10%) and incoming healing (10% -> 20%) from shield of faith (only for healer, not tanks) would be good, especially to help on heal check even if in endgame content there is no struggle in that (for me at least, with my playstyle, excepted when i’m cocoon last boss of mtos, i literally can do nothing until my team mate free me). Additionally, improving this daily would make it more attractive and fit more in different playstyles.
So I did an RTQ 2 days in a row where a Fighter tank was able to hold aggro over me even after I used all my divinity dropping smite, the agro never switched over once. I tried using Templar's wrath and did 3 and added a smite at the end and still could not take agro. I checked his gear and he did not even have the agro helmet. Paladins are junk. Please offer in the zen store class reroll and I bet there will be a mass exodus from this garbage class. From what I heard they are not even allowing you to make the changes you want because they are sticking with the dev, that left the company, ideas which put the paladin in this awful state that it is in. I've been playing nothing but paladin since mod 10 and this is how disgusted I'm am with the current state of the class. I wonder how many other paladins would be willing to use a class reroll, if offered, if the paladin update does not put the paladin in a better state of game play? Come on no one is willing to address the conundrum of the only double utility class in the game ever since they reduced 3 paragon choices to 2. You want to know why Blessed wanderer is just plain awful? 20% increase is meaningless when we have no real DPS output in the first place. 20% more of nothing is nothing. Do the math.
Oh Btw when they did class reworks on other classes like wizards, who are now the DPS kings, they didn't just change them to be in line with other classes they out right made them the best. All I see is in the paladin forums is we are trying to make paladins closer in line to other tanks and healers, not as good just closer. I guess the Jokes on us.
Oh Btw when they did class reworks on other classes like wizards, who are now the DPS kings, they didn't just change them to be in line with other classes they out right made them the best. All I see is in the paladin forums is we are trying to make paladins closer in line to other tanks and healers, not as good just closer. I guess the Jokes on us.
My Wizard is still often outdone by Warlocks, Rogue's and yes even Ranger's too quite often.
Comments
Sanctuary is not as useless as you think, on the contrary, does a good job in endgame. It's very situational compared to cleric's but effective. The only thing I would improve about it would be to rooting - remove it and cause the daily bubble to disappear when the paladin leaves the area.
Viperion - DragonTribe guild.
Playing Ranger/Paladin/Bard/Fighter.
Some warnings:
* It looks great in testing, but something could go Horribly Wrong (TM). Please try it out and let me know!
* This is just about how Paladin shields interact with Paladin shields. Other shields will still do whatever they do, unfortunately, but I don't want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
* This change isn't something I have a bunch of fine control over. It's just a switch I can flip. So if it's basically good, but has some bad points, or it's basically bad, but has some good points, either way we'll need to make a decision as to "is it good overall? should we keep it?" All I can really do is flip the switch (or not) -- I can't make fine adjustments to what the switch does.
* There are situations where you might WANT the small shield to override the big shield. For example, if you have an 800 point shield with 2s duration left, and you cast a 700 point shield (which will last for 20s), you'd probably want to overwrite at that point. But now you won't. That's the downside to "always keep the biggest shield". I think this possible downside loomed too large in the minds of whoever set this system up to begin with. But I think this downside is actually much less likely to happen than the kind of bad shield overwriting that happens all the time with the current system, so I think it's worth making the change.
I do hope to be able to squeeze in some Aura buffs, though. I agree some of them are a bit low. We have to be careful, though, because since auras apply to everyone in the party, there's a lot of multiplication going on, and they can move from "hardly worth it" to "must haves" really quickly.
Although your changes are welcome I believe they are not even close that what's needed to make a new player want to choose this class from scratch. The slow combat and level-up experience will either drive a new player away and have them quit the game or stick around but try another class. So this class remains appealing mostly to the established players who see its potential in the end game. They will avoid early/mid game as paladin because it's mainly tragic and they will do so by gearing their paladins with account-wide items obtained by their mains.
And this is the painful problem of this class that you didn't address!...
Viperion - DragonTribe guild.
Playing Ranger/Paladin/Bard/Fighter.
Please remove the losing Critical Avoidance when Divinity is low.
Other tanks gain stats and we lose them.
I agree that Sanctuary can be useful; but very situational. I am not experiencing the end game content yet; but, until the end game, it is underwhelming. I play a lot with random people in random dungeons; it is hard to squeeze everyone in a 15ft circle. As I mentioned, Sanctuary may stay as it is; what I'd like to see is a daily that can heal/shield the whole party in many (boss) encounters (Adding some heal/shield to Shield of Faith is another example).
Anyways, it is not likely to get more changes as the dev stated; so let's see how the paladin looks like at the launch...
NOTE: Many have suggested Aura (2%) be extended as high as (5%), or 10% with Devine Champion. I do feel 5% is a bit high, so I'd be fine between 2.5% to 3.5% for Aura of Protection, or Aura of Wrath; both which would be doubled under Devine Champion.
Aura of Life has tooltip that clearly states from 25 magnitude to 75; if it's tooltip is correct. That's more than doubling...
Aura of Vengeance should be at least increased to 20 magnitude closer to Aura of Life at 25 Magnitude for Healers. It also needs clarity of tooltip &/or fix to ensure it at least doubles at least when under Devine Champion as well--currently it has no tooltip identifying what it increases to like Aura of Life does!
The game currently has a shortage of people playing Tanks, of which the largest % (percentage) is Paladin's. While Paladin Healer's make a smaller % of healers in game, I'm really hopefully these last few 1-2 minor updates will encourage more to play both Paladin Tanks & Healers! Especially with the change to the Healing Encounter described above. It also be wonderful to see Paladin's Forte updated to change away from Deflect Severity, to include Critical Avoidance.
╘ This seems small, yet Paladin's suffer Divinity causing higher Critical damage..
Please & Thank You.
Thank you for this!!
So if my understanding is correct, the shield overwriting fixing has been done only at paladin level and not game wide?
We can expect shields not to overwrite anymore for paladins but they would if paladin would play with a bard or warlock?
Viperion - DragonTribe guild.
Playing Ranger/Paladin/Bard/Fighter.
- The new version of Bond of Virtue looks good.
- The Threat changes and Aura buffs are great!
- Happy to see Divine Palisade get 60% block by default.
I personally do not find shield overriding a big deal. I'm ok with as is, you just need to learn the timing better of mechanics and when it is best to use what, but a simple change of Hand of Divinity being the priority shield would be decent.
An easy change would be to to make Hand of Divinity stack with other Divine Barriers and reduce the magnitude of Hand of Divinity by the magnitude of Divine Shelter.
- Overview video of Paladin Auras: https://youtu.be/bO4f8Aw8CdQ
- Overview video of Paladin Threat: https://youtu.be/YzP7muLHQbE
As far as I can see, people are divided into 2, some of them want the change, and some of them don't want it. So I wanted to propose the idea that, if you really want to implement it, is it possible to make it a class feature or a feat? So if players don't want it to be a feature, they can choose not to. So everybody wins.
If this cannot be done; another good approach to make divine shelter to work with hand of divinity as suggested in the previous posts. The shield overwrite is mostly annoying when tank's large shield (hand of divinity) is overwritten by divine shelter (for dps). If those two shields stack, that would solve most of the annoyances.
Very roughly, it's:
* A repeat of a few things already discussed (Divine Touch Mag. increase, no shield overwriting).
* Various small improvements to specific powers.
* Aura rework: rough summary is "aura values doubled on average, but the bonus from Divine Champion has typically stayed the same". So an aura that gave 2% and 4% with Divine Champion might give 4% now, with a total of 6% with Divine Champion.
* Changes affecting all tanks that naturally affect Paladins too:
** CC immunity made more reliable.
** Threat reworked. Short version is that overall threat generation is similar, but more of it comes from base threat generation, and less from the specific bonus certain "increased threat" powers had. That way there's a bit more flexibility for players, and tanks aren't required to only take "increased threat" powers.
** Blocking and shields: Now blocking happens before shields are consumed. Earlier, it had been before in some cases and after in others.
When warlock got the at will that can shield for nearly as much as Oathkeeper tab it really felt like the main reason to bring a paladin disappeared. Paladin still has their aura, but Soulweaver has a similar ability in the form of the sigil they can place on the ground (the name escapes me atm). In trials I feel okay as an Oathkeeper, but in dungeons I feel guilty going as healer because I know they could be bringing a warlock or cleric. I feel like Oathkeeper does need a power shift to make them slightly less stat reliant, but they also need some kind of direct buff or QoL changes to make them competitive.
As for weak shields overwriting stronger shields, I think that it would be good to make the stronger shields remain regardless of duration. I saw someone say that keeping it as is gives players more control, but I would argue the opposite. Often you HAVE to place tab shield on the tank first to keep them alive as it is an emergency, and then you want to give the dps their shield, but that gets rid of the big shield on the tank. I think it is pretty rare for shields to last their full duration. In terms of programming it should be pretty simple to have it check if a new shield is less than the current shield, in which case it keeps the old one, but if it is greater than OR EQUAL TO the old one then it replaces the old shield. Since a shield will usually result in the same number each time it is used this would allow you to refresh the duration on the divine shelter shields.
Proposed changes to get Oathkeeper on level with the other healers:
1.Increase the damage mitigation on dailies. - Oathkeeper is the "protection" healer. Lean into that by giving them the best mitigation to supplement their lower healing. DC's Hallowed Ground gives 10% mitigation and can just be placed on the ground, leaving the DC free to do other things. Sanctuary also gives 10% mitigation but requires a channel. It is more akin to DC's Astral Shield, which DC can stack on top of Hallowed Ground for even more mitigation. Make Oathkeeper's mitigation more competitive.
2. Reverse the way bond of virtue functions. Make it heal (and shield) others whenever you heal (and shield) the target. - Your primary healing target is pretty much always the tank, so if that healing could splash to whoever needs it off of the tank that would let you get short periods of very high durability where you only have to focus on one person.
It's all about timing and knowledge of mechanics when to apply big shield on tank
#1 small cleanup of tooltip for Oathkeeper Paladins
I thought the decision was instead to leave Divinity still in, for Devine Touch; you called Bond of Virtue the new Devine Touch. So I think you were meant Bond of Virtue, not Divine Touch (above):
So this is more just a typo (above) to ensure patch notes correctly refer to the changes refers to Bond of Virtue. It still seems to have a much longer cooldown though, unless I misunderstood something?
The tooltip for Bond of Virtue may needs an update as well.
One last question however is this, and it's something I just thought of that may require one last consideration for Justicar's especially who use Devine Challenger all the time.
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#2 One Last Minute consideration for Justicar Paladins Class Feature
NOTE: With all other Tank Threat changes, is Devine Challenger even relavent now? Since threat is calculated differently, previously many tanks almost always used it as they could only focus on high threat powers mostly. Now I admit it's nice they have more flexibility, yet does this render this ability useless?
Now even if you use Smite for threat, you likely won't gain much benefit from Devine Challenger anymore. Since now this Class Power may require being updated instead to offer a boost to Smite Magnitude when used with Devine Challenger? Yes/No, something you might want to look into before you finalize the M27 Paladin Tank changes; everything else looks wonderful in theory...
Still not sure I'm sold on how threat changes are better or worse, the problem is on Preview it's a lot harder to test, as there's often far fewer online to find a full party to actually test.
Also please read the next two replies below. Thank You!
Abilities like Smite(plus Divine Challenger), Vow of Enmity, Templar's wrath don't seem to be working as intended. I have hit these powers and a DPS will still have aggro we shouldn't have to use Templar's wrath to get agro over smite, but its what we are currently doing. This usually works but I have experienced where spamming Templar's wrath 3x in a row and DPS would still have agro even when using Vow Of enmity. Smite is a guaranteed agro change but does not have a big enough multiplier to maintain that threat.
Another annoying bug that tanks have been facing is when we die while shielding, we are unable to use a scroll of life or scroll of mass life to resurrect. Is it the block mechanics immunity that breaks scrolls? Please fix this. Also when we are marked by healers we end up stuck in combat even though the mobs are all dead. We are unable to swap mount or artifact powers when this occurs, open chests, or go through doors or portals because the game thinks we are still in combat. It takes a long time for this effect to drop or the healer has to remove their mark from the tank to make this bug go away.
Paladins are the only class that have no DPS role and are the only double utility class. This needs to be fixed. When doing adult dragons solo on my paladin it took me a little over 20 minutes to complete, other paladins in my alliance said it took them 27 to 32 minutes. I brought my rogue which was 20k item lv lower than my paladin and completed it in under 4 minutes. It makes no sense that paladins need to take 5x to 6x longer to do anything in this game solo.
I have 2 possible suggestions to fix this issue.
The first being the easiest, modify blessed wanderer so that instead of giving 20% more damage to paladin tanks it flips defensive stats to offensive stats. For example def becomes power, awareness becomes combat advantage, crit avoid becomes crit, deflect becomes accuracy. The modifiers for powers that increase threat now do not increase threat but increase damage done by the multiplier amount.
Or the more complicated but probably the best solution is to splinter the paladin class into 3 sub classes. People can choose to leave their paladins as they are now so they can be tanks or healers or do some quest that unlocks 2 new sub classes. Going this route the paladin can choose to go down 2 paths. The first path is that you unlock a permanent change that locks the paladin having a load out that allows them to play the role of tank or swap to the role of DPS. The other path allows you to choose a healer/ dps role.
You can design a single paladin dps play style or go the extra mile and make one a melee(Oath of Vengeance) if your a tank mainsubclass or the other a caster/range(oath of the ancients) style dps if your a healer main subclass.
https://rpgbot.net/dnd5/characters/classes/paladin/subclasses/
I at least thought it be mostly noticed on Smite with Devine Challenger, primarily as the Class Power used to put Smite at the TOP of the Threat List, with greater threat; as this used to increase the perceived magnitude by 8x. Now this is drastically changed, and now mostly rendered useless? Since increased threat means far less than it used to, in the way threat overall is calculated as a % now. It's the reason why Devine Challenger should perhaps also offer a BUFF to the magnitude of Smite perhaps by 10-20%?
So while the threat changes does a better job offering more threat to more powers, it doesn't guarantee being placed at top of the threat list for Smite with Devine Challenger, nor will it likely be as effective with Vow of Enmity or other Higher Threat powers...
I'm also concerned it's going to render Sacred Weapon far less effective as a viable choice as well, being that increased the Magnitude of previously increased Threat At-Wils as well. Now At-Wils offer far lessor benefit to keep or maintain threat, than they used to. So perhaps this is why they might also need a more larger magnitude threat bonus for it as well.
It's why I'm wondering if all 3 will require increased magnitude to compensate?
╘ They may need to reconsider this for a few Sentinel, and Vanguard class powers as well.
Still I'm really starting to think, maybe this change isn't as good, as it was first envisioned??? Sadly as I said above it's really harder to TEST this on preview, unless you find 4 others of the appropriate classes all willing to run a dungeon or 10 to do a Trial.
The top of the threat list is the top of the threat list no matter what multipliers or magnitues are in effect ?
This is the reason I wanted clarification, because they changed how threat is calculated, in that more now come from base threat not the increased threat portion. Will this in fact prevent Devine Challenger from placing someone at the Top of the Threat list, or is it now made kind of useless since more is based on the base threat revised mechanic?
So please read what I quoted above from @knowfear4#5964 in the post in which I he replied; he seemed to validate my fears the High Threat Powers had. He found that using Smite with Devine Challenger wasn't placing him at the Top of the threat list, and still had to use Vow &/or Templar's Wrath just to acquire threat.
I admit I could be wrong, it was just a feeling I have, yet as I said another person seemed to confirm that...
I tried to use sacred weapon but I don't really feel it generates enough threat to warrant its use. Also I get more stamina regen using binding oath. I use binding oath because I need that stamina to be regenerating while I'm blocking. We have a dilemma here. If I block I'm not generating threat. If I'm attacking to generate threat I'm not blocking. I get that the game is trying to cater to two different play styles. In this case I propose adding more damage and threat caused by using Binding Oath. Sort of a damage shield or thorns type of effect. You hit me you get hurt and it pisses you off more threat generated. Increase sacred weapons threat and stamina regen it might be used more if it was actually effective.
As it is now I would like to use absolution but I can't because I have to have templars wrath and either smite or vow up to generate threat and this at present is still not enough to have both abilities up. Pallies either have absolution or sacred weapon, when I ask paladins most do not bother with sacred weapon. Also absolution doesn't seems to actually give 20% mitigation. Its probably because the order in which that 20% is calculated. Most likely its being done after all other mitigation when it should be calculated first not last. I'll show you why it doesn't seem to be worth using currently. Active absolution and then divine palisade, 20% plus 60% should be giving us 80% damage mitigation. Why do hits by the boss still take us from full hp to 1/4 hp with these powers both active. Ok lets take this further, we could activate divine protector daily for 30% damage mitigation shield of the gods feat should add another 25% absolution for 20% then divine palasade for an additional 60%. Lets add this all up. 135% mitigation. Why do we still get damage for half our hps or more? This should negate all damage taken.
Why doesn't the stat page show how much damage reduction we have and an explanation for how it works or is calculated and the diminishing return? It's almost as if this stat is hidden so we don't notice that this stat is a red herring as in you make us chase it and it does not actually do anything in game. So I can show you why this stat must not be working or the calculations need to be explained to us better. Companion bonus undying overlord reduces incoming damage by 7.5%, Combat enchantment 10%, Rugged gauntlets of the dragon 5%, drow assailant's tights 3%, and for the new content Bregan D'aerthe Mercenary's tunic 8% from spiders or drow. Lets add this up, 25% for all content, 33% for content with spiders or drow. If a paladin has 90% defense there should be a base damage reduction of 50% or am I misunderstanding how defense works? If it does work like this then shouldn't i have 88% damage mitigation? If we add in overloads like the 5% from Resiliency of depths and a spider or drow ward which gives 10% shouldn't this put us at over 103% mitigation? Lets look at old gear like the Earthen Heart set it can give up to 25% mitigation if we stand still and get 5 stacks. When I try using this set it seems to do absolutely nothing.
Blocking says it absorbs 40% of the damage taken with our base 50% from defense we should only take 10% damage from an attack. This used to be how it worked on mod 16 to 18 but after the combat changes tanks were just nerfed into the ground. I die from certain trash mobs who with 5 mobs first attacks completely depleting my stamina bar then die if I don't start running, but a rogue can go in there and kill all 5 of those mobs solo and take less than 5% damage? Dungeons are now scaled, so my paladin who has 1.3 million hp goes into an RAQ and now only has 280k hp, but DPS are still soloing trash mobs and could care less if the tank is there? what a joke. Why isn't their dps output scaled too? I get new gear for my rogue I can feel my rogue getting stronger, I get new gear for my paladin well I stay the same just have a higher Item level and tanks do not feel like they are getting stronger they just remain static. What is my incentive to do new content when my old gear works just fine? I should feel like I am taking less and less damage the better my gear and stats get but I don't.
The current gear itemization for tanks sucks because most of it rely on stuff to proc before we reach our full potential and then these stats just randomly drop off if we some how do not get the proc to maintain these buffs. Its like saying please shoot my M1 battle tank with 100 machine gun bullets so that I can now take an RPG hit. It's dumb. I know all classes face this but they don't die because of bad luck having a stat drop suddenly at the wrong time. Tower of the mad mage was hard but it did not punish tanks with a tank buster that leaves us defenseless. Now every new trial has a tank buster and demon web pit. Stamina just doesn't replenish fast enough so we basically have to depend on the healer to survive till the next tank buster, sometimes we just have to use block to keep from dying. Our stamina bar now depleted and perhaps we are not at full health we have no chance at surviving a tank buster. Even if we double block we end up dying because the stats are all over the place with this random buff HAMSTER that gear gives us.
As for healing as a paladin, it just sucks without a hot. I can take my wife's cleric with no enchantments because she quit after the combat changes from mod 19, so I took all her enchantments and cashed them in and transferred it to my pally account. I did all rounds of hellpit with only healing words hot, and her iLv is so low she cant even go into RAQs. I guarantee my paladin would not complete hellpit as a healer with my current gear for healing. Take a paladin healer into a reaper with constant dot and you will see how much work it is just moving from group to group of trash mobs. A cleric can just drop healing word and not care about the constant dots. I think paladin healers need to try the other healing classes and then they will realize paladins are just trash at healing unless they are fully geared out. They are giving warlocks a shield so why bring a paladin? Give paladin healers a hot and aoe cleanse.
If you can load a private server with mod 18 and try out the old paladin heals at least you could generate nice shields without as much gear investment. On mod 18 paladins could cap all offensive and defensive stats but not cap power. We only used smite to keep agro on bosses. We used templars wrath for clearing trash mobs.
Honestly I think its time for a new combat system change the way stats are calculated and explained on the page is so stupid. If your stats are at the same amount as your item level you get 50% there is not enough gear or buffs in the game to cap these stats without the roulette wheel of stats going up and down. I liked mod 16 through 18 combat system, I have hated this games stats calculation ever since the change and still do today. The 4 insignia mounts have helped a bit but still this current combat system leaves a bad taste in my mouth and the game is no longer fun. Who ever thought of this new system was probably dropping acid.
Bond of virtue :
- Allows a breath of fresh air when players' HP gets too low. This allows you to heal without having to recast a divine shelter and therefore save on divinity.
- enable emergency healing that has good synergy with shields that are already in place
- The cooldown/heal ratio is attractive and balanced with the paladin's other tools to get the job done.
- The encounter is more interesting than what was initially proposed with divine touch.
In my personal gameplay, I will use the majority of the time, the tab to protect the tank, divine shelter as main heal, a divinity regeneration spell and bond of virtue to fill up player’s HP when needed, or as emergency heal for dps or the tank if I think I won't have time to cast a tab.
This gameplay seems more fun to me, adaptive to each situation and less brainless than spamming the divine shelter.
Divine Touch :
- The magnitude must not be split by companions or npc, this makes the encounter unusable and useless. I don’t know the cap with divide heals, but don’t go over 5 players, shields will be minuscules and heal not significant even if I think that beyond 2 targets, it is more profitable and effective to cast a divine shelter (or the new bond of virtue)
- 900 magnitude is too much and the buff is too significant compared to the other improvements. There is a big buff on healing strength in general and on average healing with divine shelter. We are not far from overshielding which is more significant and game-breaking than the overhealing proposed by SW and the DC.
- I suggest lowering the magnitude to 800. The math shows that 800 is already more powerful than the current (live) version of divine touch in terms of shield (non-crit shield are more powerful and crits are the same) average and power of heal. Don’t go over 850 magnitude.
What is 900 magnitude is compare to actual 650 :
What I suggest with a 800 magnitude (compare to actual 650):
And just for fun, i was challenging myself to get the bigger shiel i can with divine touch
Divine shelter :
- It’s fine like it is. As I said in my previous feedback, it’s strong and it’s a big buff, but it’s needed to increase healing strenght and improve early and midgame with more average shield with no critical stats.
- I run a training master gzemnind to help my guild, and on average, it's 50k more healing from divine shelter on ACT.
Hand of divinity :
- +200 effective mag is still needed especially with magnitude improvement of divine touch
Aura of wrath :
- 4% is too much. 2,5%-3% is ok as an improvement.
There is a problem to take into consideration : pure healers will be less attractive to play and to take on your team because except pure healing (sometimes overhealing, for the DC), they have nothing particular or attractive enough to bring from a team support point of view.
Stat boost from support (auras, tutor, portobello, buff from bard’s storyteller), especially if they are displayed on the character sheet, make the game toxic because the players prevent the supports from playing the way they want. There isn't just one way to boost your team and in certain groups the defensive option is better (it's not just endgamers who count). And as a support, i like to analyse situations and choose myself how to help when the team struggles.
Sanctuary :
Personally I don't use it to heal check, I only use it on mitigation phase (tomm, master gzemnid for exemple). I prefere use shield of faith to reduce a little bit damage and boost incoming healing with a good timing on my divine shelter
Sanctuary is now more powerful than hallowed ground in terms of mitigation and healing (15% vs 10% damage resistance / 600 magnitude for sanctuary vs 500 magnitude for hallowed ground.
In the way I play the game, I think boost damage resistance (5% -> 10%) and incoming healing (10% -> 20%) from shield of faith (only for healer, not tanks) would be good, especially to help on heal check even if in endgame content there is no struggle in that (for me at least, with my playstyle, excepted when i’m cocoon last boss of mtos, i literally can do nothing until my team mate free me). Additionally, improving this daily would make it more attractive and fit more in different playstyles.
Oh Btw when they did class reworks on other classes like wizards, who are now the DPS kings, they didn't just change them to be in line with other classes they out right made them the best. All I see is in the paladin forums is we are trying to make paladins closer in line to other tanks and healers, not as good just closer. I guess the Jokes on us.