Paladin agro (yes everyone knows it's horrible)

I can assure you that the OP does all of these things plus things you have never even heard of. Paladin threat is just bottom of the barrel at the tier he is at, plain and simple. Anything contrary to that is a lack of understanding or ignorance.
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-Dev Marza

Part of it may be the lack of dps. Another part of it is probably that blinds are resistable and probably don't generate the agro they should. Stuns and heals are confetti nowadays. What can we do to make the class worth using again?
 
Atada said:
Stuns and heals are confetti nowadays.
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Therein lies the problem. Paladin bread and butter abilities are vanilla dick flavor, while dull as dirt blinds have been made our primary focus. Think about it.

LORE: Would you rather wield the power divine to bolster the health of your comrades and bring your enemies to a halt OR flash a light in their eyes which usually annoys them.

MECHANICS: Healing always good and stuns are a roundabout form of damage mitigation that almost certainly was factored into the paladin lack of a mitigation stance while blinds are flashing a light in their eyes which usually annoys them.

Ok. Slight exaggeration, but c'mon, blinds are lame and we only like them because we are forced to like them.

Ideas to make Paladins more scalable and generally useful:
1. Change self heals to Zealot's Strikes. This adds to our meager DPS which helps aggro and adds to our non-tanking group/raid usefulness (we're supposed to be #1 tank at that I think). Also scales slightly with foci.
2. Either add aggro to ghots OR add a lower% (but potentially always on, fair trade?) veil type effect to them. The later would be good as it would scale thus alleviating a lot of the tier related issues. This helps with aggro as well as adds to our non-tanking group/raid usefulness.
3. Increase the damage on stuns (Tranquility, Thunder, Crusader, Divine). Also reduce the recast on single target stuns. Damage good and scales slight (aka infinitely more than blind).
4. Make all blinds PbAoE. This hurts more than helps with adjusted recasts, but it just makes sense. Besides, the idea here is to move Paladins away from the glorious life of overwriting "flashing light in their eyes which usually annoys them" towards a more damage / useful in other ways / scales somewhat approach.

Roleplaying!
polizei-0006.gif
 
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On #2 it would be to revert ghots back to the way they used to function; they used to have agro. Quite a while ago it was shamefully removed why? Was it a good idea? What was the reason? Another issue to go along with it was self heals with no agro and divine stun with no agro. Were these good ideas too? I don't get it. Was it some kind of an experiment that never got finished, only to be forgotten to where we are today? I wholeheartedly believe the 3 tank classes need to be seriously looked at and define their roles with respect to each other versus the agro generation of DPS classes or healers.

I think there has been tons of input from the broad spectrum of SOD classes knowing the Paladin's issues. They are mainly (in order of importance):
1) Agro generation
2) Mitigation
3) DPS

I would be willing to be a test subject of proposed changes so that we could move forward with This issue That has been long outstanding. You do not hear about Wars or SKs complaining or their tank ability as they had issuescorrected not too long ago. It is now time for the Paladin.
 
I'm still waiting for some dev input. I'm not looking for any immediate implementation of any of The above great ideas but to start an open discussion. I appreciate your time.
 
Dev input would be great. There is no shortage of ideas here and in the half dozen other threads covering this issue over the past several years.

Here is my current and ever changing humble request list:
1. Self heals changed to Zealot's Strikes (damage target and heal to whoever is tanking)
2. Blinds: unresistable.
3. Make Divine Stun worth pressing (Flame of Light + .01 stun?)
4. Althuna's Conduit: either reduce the casting cost or increase the duration
5. Group HoTs: Veil effect (5-20%?) or straight aggro

I just do not understand why Paladin abilities have to be so laden with downsides. Just try reading the wiki description of Lady's Strike:

"Grants the Paladin an area of effect hate proc. Procs very rarely, does not generate much aggro, drains stamina fast."

If you removed just one of the drawbacks it might be worth using, but in its current state it reads like satire of games that punish gamers for existing.
 
Very supportive of blinds being made unresistable spells. There are a number of fights a good button pressing pally could become feasible for then.
 
I may be alone in this, but in a game where we have 3 classes who's sole purpose in life (PRIMARILY) is to tank monsters, I don't really understand why it should be a "challenge". An on tier tank should really have zero problems holding aggro against DPS of similar teir (I would argue a lower tier tank should still be able to relatively easily hold aggro off a higher tier DPS). I know we SoD players feel like anything good should come with 3 or 4 massive time sinks and terrible side effects, but this isn't something that should.

The fact Paladins being "good tanks" seems to hinge on the player knowing everything about the class, having all spells, max aggression, +aggro tome EF tome, Tears of the Crusader X, Taratzu's, etc... seems silly considering all you really need to know for other tanks is: terror, other terror, taps. Or: /s 4, Bloodlust, Ramapage, Whirlwind, "OH NO PANIC!" Enrage.
(Yes I may be over simplifying this a bit, but it is just to get my point across)

Im not saying all tanks should be mindless toons that hold aggro with no effort, but I feel Paladins currently are on the far other end of this. Can't remember the last time we took a Paladin to an exp group over a Warrior or SK.
 
on live paladins get two upgrades to divine stun. they are both 8s cd like divine stun, 1 sec cast time, and share the same cooldown. one of them is a sizable low aggro nuke, and the other is a spell interrupt + massive aggro. this always paladins to choose to either DPS or tank more effectively.

so, you could do something similar to that through stances. one stance could be no/little endurance drain, and it changes divine stun into a big aggro spell, removing the stun component. another stance turns it into a nuke. these stances could probably also have some other effect, like the dps one reducing healing done or something.
 
Part of the issue is also that when blinds were made they were made with low threat because heals and stuns created the other necessary threat to hold agro. When paladins were nerfed and the threat was removed from heals and stun, the threat on blinds weren't increased to compensate, leaving Paladins with gimp threat generation. Warriors and SKs were fixed not too long ago, it Is now time to fix paladins. Even non-paladins complain about paladin agro so that should tell us something. All 3 tank classes should be looked at as an archetype to see if they are balanced versus each other since right now they are clearly not.
 
cian2 said:
on live paladins get two upgrades to divine stun. they are both 8s cd like divine stun, 1 sec cast time, and share the same cooldown. one of them is a sizable low aggro nuke, and the other is a spell interrupt + massive aggro. this always paladins to choose to either DPS or tank more effectively.

so, you could do something similar to that through stances. one stance could be no/little endurance drain, and it changes divine stun into a big aggro spell, removing the stun component. another stance turns it into a nuke. these stances could probably also have some other effect, like the dps one reducing healing done or something.
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Some kind of elaborate fix that incorporated stances, AAs, spells, etc... into a cohesive system would be neat, but not the thing to ask for with 3.0 right around the corner. Instead, simple and (I am hoping) relatively easy/quick to code patches to make Paladins tolerable until 3.0 is finished and more long term holistic fixes are an option is the way to go. Some of the things that just about everyone who posted in this thread and every other "please fix Paladins, why are you ignoring us?" thread that would likely full under quick fixes are:

1. Make blinds unresistable.
2. Make Divine Stun a button worth pressing. Changing the effects to interrupt + aggro would be preferable, though if "Rush to Judgement" could be changed from reducing CD to increasing damage then a big ol' nuke (called "Judgement"?) would be even better.
3. Aggro back on heals. There are a few ways to do that. Simply having Paladin heals generate the same aggro that non-tanking healers do would be something. Self heals doing Zealot's Strikes to boost dps and utility would be better as would adding a veil effect to ghots for scalability and potential raid synergy.
 
The other night in OOC was the first time I seen any GM/Dev reply back to the subject and the only thing that was said was pointing to Bango being the number 1 tank (personally imo Bango is T13 and has the single most game changing item so you cant really compare him to any other pally , and frankly to balance a whole class around 1 player is... sigh ) and "well there is only like 5 mechanics for tanks so no one class can be the best at something". Other then those comments it was mentioned or posed in a question I should say that pally aggro should be adjusted to be brought in line and or balanced with the other 2 class's. I 100% agree that it should for the record.

I just hope they don't take what was said about warriors and SK's and what makes them so good compared to the pally and nerf bat the SK/warr.
 
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Tier 13 dps already stated that mighty Bango The_Hand_Of_Jyre doesn't hold aggro off them. Shout it from the rooftops. In other news:
Grinkles said:
PALADIN

Third Paladin Tome --> In Malath’s Name: The Paladin intones the name of law incarnate during combat, infuriating his/her attackers. Following a successful cast of Blessing of Malath, the Paladin generates 25% additional aggression for 5/9/12/14 seconds.

Justification: Paladins are in dire need of aggro generation prior to and outside of the ever-elusive Runic: Zealous Might. This aims to solve that problem by empowering a spell that they already use on a regular basis. Additionally, this tome invokes the name of an SoD-exclusive deity whose godly status is often overlooked due to his name being primarily associated with zone names. Its power is offset by the inflexible 30-second recast on Blessing of Malath and the fact that the aggression modifier is one-quarter that of the aforementioned Runic.
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This is something that could be rallied around.
 
Just thought I would drop in on a fix paladin post to show unheard/seen support.
GO PALADINS!
Things haven't been the same since the 1 handed nerf that was part 1 of a 2 part knight fix. Part 2 never came. people quit while waiting.
I don't play sod because I like my paladin and there is 0 room for him in raids outside of starting my own guild and building it around my paladin.
 
believe it or not bango didn't start the game at tier 13. amazingly, runic2 didn't have the 100% aggro bonus until he was tier 13 either. yet he still managed to do it somehow
 
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