Paladins

While thinking about paladins and what is causing them to be so underplayed. People only play them to be crusaders. I think while the class is extremely viable as a new player class, I don't feel it has any kind of finishing power unless your opponent gets greedy. Your charge can finish fights, but again it's more opponent overextending than the paladin doing anything. I'd like to see what people think. 

My first thought was weapons. Giving paladins either a weapon selection that can be spent on anything they want, or even opening up a few archetypes to pallies like flail and Spear.

My second thought was divine intervention. Paladins are the chosen warriors of a deity. And going over the divine interventions, I really don't think there are any that make any paladin op by any means, just let's them have a bit more overall power. They really just rely on charge flamestrike. Giving them some freedom to branch out based on their divine intervention is gonna add flavor without causing any imbalances.

Ditch paladins.  Have crusaders. Go with what works.

Make some of the paladin spells its own crusader path! 

Pali-sader!

Adding to above. Make them like ranger/Druid. 

And yes to flail and spear.

But making crusader more accessible doesn't bring pallies into a better place lol. I want to see what can be done to make a paladin more viable in our cut throat meta. Their relatively low melee output and reliance on skirmishing isn't in a good place espescially given they have no reliable ways to stifle regen besides wounding, and they don't have many options for that.

I'd like to see some class selection love given to paladins.

1. Cavalier - lose a lot of healing and spell output but gain a lot of extra melee output from their horse, or something to that description.

1. Templar - lose a lot of healing and spell output but play as bruiser melee, that can build up power the longer they stay in combat.

2. Champion - more holy spell output less melee output, more of a holy mage type, similar to a cleric in certain aspects. 

Just throwing out ideas, but I've been saying for a while that paladins need some love.

@Pali hellooooooooo ^_^

Ok, ditch crusaders name it paladin.  Make current paladin a selection. Done!

they'd certainly lose the traditional paladin style if you just removed them and made them crusaders.

What traditional paladin style? Flamestrikesprinkler?

I think it would be interesting if Paladins could have mount specialties or mount lores just like warriors. Depending on the type of mount they want to specialize in, they get added buffs/abilities. This might make them more interesting to play and maybe more viable as a class.

2 hours ago, Kyzarius said:

What traditional paladin style? Flamestrikesprinkler?

I was referring you know to traditional fantasy paladins. What with the healing and spells and whatnot. From basically every game ever. 

If we are just referring to FL paladins, then I mean I guess. But might as well just remove paladins and make crusaders a base class, would certainly make the class name make way more sense.

I have always been curious.  How does crusader not fit that trope?

Crusader sometimes does fit that pending on the fantasy setting. But in terms of FL it would be their distinct lack of healing and spells.

But looking at just blizzard games a Warcraft paladin and crusader are quite different. And a diablo paladin and crusader are also quite different. 

In d&d crusaders tend to loose some key abilities of the paladin like spell casting, lay on hands and turn undead. 

It for sure depends on the setting but while they are both "holy" fighters, paladins tend to slightly more in the way of spell users than their crusader counterparts do though.

On 11/23/2019 at 4:23 AM, Ali_gmud said:

I'd like to see some class selection love given to paladins.

1. Cavalier - lose a lot of healing and spell output but gain a lot of extra melee output from their horse, or something to that description.

1. Templar - lose a lot of healing and spell output but play as bruiser melee, that can build up power the longer they stay in combat.

2. Champion - more holy spell output less melee output, more of a holy mage type, similar to a cleric in certain aspects. 

Just throwing out ideas, but I've been saying for a while that paladins need some love.

Reminds me of the three paths I suggested for them a while ago.

The main issue I see with paladins is the lack of versatility: just about every fight as a paladin will go the exact same way while using the exact same tactics.  Open with charge, flamestrike/wrath until you have to flee to heal dance, and repeat until the enemy either makes a mistake you can capitalize on or runs away because you can't stop them from doing so (your one lag skill is a one-off and you lack the burst potential of a dispel magic + spell combo).  The vast majority of battles feel exactly the same for the paladin's player, and since all paladins have exactly the same skills, fighting any one paladin is going to feel much like fighting another for the opponent's player as well - all that changes is how effectively the paladin's player manages the heal dance.

Because of this, paladins are, in a word, boring.  Boring to play, boring to fight against.  They need either something to mix up their fighting style, or something that grows over time and rewards the investment along the lines of a malform/sader weapon.  An idea I recall being floated a while back was doing this with the paladin's Goliath mount: make it a mob or a permanent spell that grows in power every time the paladin kills an evil opponent.  Whatever it is, they need something to shake up the combat style.

I also think they need something to help them deal with rogues, because right now they're arguably the worst class in the game to fight a ninja or thief with - you have no AoEs to force them out of hiding, no faerie fire or poison-like abilities to keep them from hiding, no reliable lag to take advantage of their lack of lag protection, and no defense against blackjack/strangle.

Also, assuming this hasn't been changed, cabal charmies should be exempt from heroism. ;)

I do think paladins probably need something to fix the boring factor that you've mentioned. But I also don't think it should be the top priority, as I think Theives, Battlemages, monks and Lich prolly all need some love before Paladin's do.

While I'm certainly not against those classes getting some love, I don't think any of them (with the arguable exception of bmgs) suffer from the boredom problem to the extent that paladins do.  On top of that, those classes can each join at least three cabals apiece (not counting Herald), while paladins are limited to two cabals that they don't synergize well with because of the conflict between cabal charmies and heroism (assuming that this issue has not been addressed while I wasn't looking, and I'll freely admit I've not kept a close eye on things here lately), which just reinforces the boredom factor with yet another limitation on their versatility and potential power.  A PK-active paladin is either in Tribunal or Knight and thus unable to use both their best cabal power and best class power at the same time, or they are uncaballed and thus have no power growth over time beyond getting better EQ - neither choice is terribly appealing.

Ever since dwarves were opened up for paladins I've been tempted to return with a dwarf paladin - and every time I seriously consider making one, the thought "I've done paladins before and can't really expect anything new" stops me from doing so.  It's not about strength - paladins are very strong.  But a weak class that is interesting to play is, for me, FAR more enjoyable than a strong class that is boring to play.  A thief can try out different engagement strategies or weaken an opponent over time by stealing consumables or prying eq, and a monk knows that going into any fight is always a roll of the dice they'll have to adapt to on the fly - but I'm not joking when I say that nearly every single fight for a paladin is just employing the exact same tactics over and over again while waiting for your enemy to screw up somehow.  You can't force the screw up, you just have to sit back waiting for it to happen, and then you take advantage of it the exact same way every time with a flee/mounted charge/wrath combo.  The only thing that changes from fight to fight is how long you have to wait for your enemy to make their mistake and whether or not they end up dying after your charge - if they don't, they run, and you just accept that you'll do the same thing again once they recover and return.

Do you have some suggestions as to what would make them more interesting then, @Pali ? They should still keep their class-identity however.

I mean, a lot of classes can't really force a mess up, e.g. against a prot shield vs melee,. it's up to the opponent to mess up there.

Yeah I see your argument I really do, but battlemage is in a very similar situation, monk as you said is just random. Lich well they could use some love. But really thief, is in a far worse spot, as no one wants to play against a thief. 

You just mentioned how against a paladin it's the same thing, everytime time. It is so much worse for and against a thief. As against a thief you just log off and play a different game. And if you are the thief you just delete and roll up something new. So yeah, I'd say they for sure need some love before paladins

Honestly having just played a thief I think their biggest problem is how poorly most of their skills scale vs character stats. Poorly and averagely equipped characters your skills are fairly reliable, traps work, you can land melee hits. There is just a rough cutoff where you cannot touch super decked characters. Things like devil wheel are just worthless because as a mob it gets 2 rounded by melee characters in the current sandbox. The removal of the scrolls and the blackjack reverse time thing are huge for thieves though, and will go a long way. I just think the problem is still hyper inflated stats. You cant adjust the skills directly to be more effective for decked people without making them borderline op for averagely equipped people. I tried to think of ways to do it, but I just can't figure out how to make thieves viable vs the top tier in melee without making them op.

But paladins have 0 adaptability. It will be the same fight the same way every time. Survival rates are huge, but you just don't get kills unless your opponent over extends.

I haven't played a thief in a VERY long time, but have certainly played against my fair share. Different players use a variety of different tactics to a degree, but I would like to see their other traps maybe retooled a bit. Either increasing in their effectiveness or maybe just a re-vamp to entice a player to choose more than just: eyeduster, anti-magic, and chestburster.