...You are not an arms warrior. For the love of God/Uther/RaptorJesus, stop playing like an arms warrior, and stop asking for blizzard to turn ret paladins into arms warriors. Ret paladins are (as they should be) a unique beast, which takes a bit more subtlety and knowledge to play properly than just mashing crusader strike.
Yes, I know, both classes wear plate, and both classes favor big, slow, heavy-hitting 2-handed weapons, and both need hefty amounts of AP and crit to perform at their best. This is where the similarity ends. Please stop rolling around in warrior gear with 4K mana and 50 spell damage, auto-swinging away at the nearest player (especially if its a shield wearing paladin. Really, unless you've got a deep thunder and amazing gear, you're nothing but a nuisance to me. Go bug a priest or something). And stop insisting that the life of a ret paladin is soooooo terrible because nobody will take your sorry ass to even a non-heroic 5-man. You make the talented ret paladins out there look bad just because they share a spec with you.
And please, stop posting your inane "improvements" to the ret tree that involve moving reckoning to ret, giving ret pallies a shadowform, changing crusader strike to a 31 point, 11 point, or even a base ability, putting AW as a ret talent, swapping deflection with precision, etc. Ret is not supposed to be the only tree with damage. Ret is not supposed to be a DPS tree. Ret is (in theory, at least. More on this particular issue in a later article) supposed to be a tree that increases both you and your allies' viability when you are in melee, hitting things with a big 2-hander. Yes, damage is a part of this, but it is only a part. You do not lose all your other class abilities, nor your obligation to look out for your allies (provided they're worth looking out for) just because you spec for crusader strike.
You are a paladin, first and foremost, and that means that you can, and should, do more than just bashing skulls in, even though bashing skulls is the ret paladin's forte.
...You are also not a goddamn priest. Yeah, I know, plate healing gear isn't always easy to come by (I'm stuck with some cloth/chain myself, *grumble*), but you can (and should) wear as much plate armor as possible for a reason: You are supposed to be up front whenever possible in a raid, keeping up a judgment and using your seals to enhance your contribution to the raid. While it is true that A) Seals provide a meager contribution, and B) You can keep up a judgment without meleeing, these facts are merely concessions to the fact that Blizzard's raid designers have some irrational hatred of melee classes (which leads them to do things like giving a considerable amount of bosses 360 degree cleaves of death and other nasty PBAoEs) that they are only now beginning to overcome. And still, the fact of the matter remains that you are more effective when you're hitting things than when you're hanging around in the back with the squishys, and so if you're actually committed to maximizing your contribution, you will be meleeing whenever possible.
And just like the retnubs asking for blizzard to turn the them into an arms warrior, there are a lot of dumbass healadins (somebody needs to coin a good derogatory term for these folks. "Cleric" really doesn't have any teeth) asking for blizzard to turn them into priests. We do not need a HoT, we do not need a group heal, and FFS, stop asking for blizzard to buff Divine Illumination! The holy tree is fine as is (maybe even a bit too powerful, though in the end that is for Blizzard to decide). Blizzard did an excellent job at making us a unique healing class by giving us two spells that, when combined with all the talents in holy, allow us to be potent main healers in our own way. If you can't do the job with the tools you have, then methinks that a dose of L2P is in order.
As for the protadins, well, you guys get off easy for now. I really haven't seen the kind of rampant idiocy that other specs tend to demonstrate.
And to all the good paladins out there: Keep on kicking ass at whatever it is that you like to do.
1 comment:
Hello, I suppose I should introduce myself. I am Warmmilk, a 70 lock that also rerolled paladin for my guild.
Now, I won't claim to have as much experience as you when it comes to the paladin class, as I am not yet 70, however; I can begin to make an honest assessment of the paladin after fighting with them over a year and half, grouping with them and ultimately playing them.
It seems I can relate to the paladin class as I could relate to the warlock class pre-deathcoil buff. Both classes had a large amount of utility, both classes have been considered "weaker hybrids" of their more powerful and pure counterparts.
This is, of course, inherently false. All this means is that in particular situations, these classes perform beautifully. Take for example the healadin; A holy-specced paladin can heal a MT and OT much more efficiently than any other class, priests included. However, they don't have the capability to do massive group heals, as well as HoTs. And they shouldn't. That would make the priest class useless.
People have to realize that the paladin IS a hybrid class, like the druid. As you put it, a ret paladin cannot and should not be an arms warrior, a holy paladin should not be a priest, and a prot paladin should not be a prot warrior. Paladins should take comfort in the fact that they can easily shift into each one of these roles when the occassion arises, something other classes cannot do.
More to come later, I am getting kicked out of work.
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