Ranged Attacks & You, Paladin Edition

Blizzard has rescinded their old methodology of not allowing Paladins to have ranged attacks.

So far on the list as of 3.1 -
Exorcism
Holy Shock
Judgement(Holy)
Avenger's Shield
Hand of Reckoning

The logic of this never made sense to me, starting from the early days of trying to farm Elemental Fires for FR pots. How was I supposed to gather raid materials when everyone could beat me to the tap? "Class Flavor" decisions vs practicality in gameplay did not seem well explored.

So much change after years of adamant refusal to allow Paladins to strike from range. Much of the early buzz around Avenger's Shield was "wow we'll finally be able to pull trash packs by ourselves instead of body aggroing!!!!" To me this showed a lack of actual testing and play, how can anyone expect a tank spec to body pull caster packs when the said tank has no intervene type ability to quickly move away and LoS? How could anyone think "niche" tanking roles of TBC would have any sort of use in a half decent raid? Paladins with the least effective health of all the tanking classes at the time had great AoE aggro and practically nothing else going for them, and a mana regen mechanic centered again around requiring a resource to get a resource. Paladins made trash easier for brain dead raiders, but were by no means anything close to Warriors in raid situations that actually mattered. With no panic buttons, no armor/aspd debuff, and a lower EH, there really was no reason to have a paladin MT. Blizzard claimed that it was simply a matter of player perception, yet the numbers didn't add up. Feral druids were the kings of Tank for now, dps when my add is dead, and thus secured a few spots in a raid tank array. In TBC we had mana drain mechanics everywhere and were the ONLY mana dependent tank class. Silence abilities locking out a majority of our threat related moves, and exposing us to potentially lethal burst situations from crushing blows.

A phased "rebuild from the ground up" seems to be whats happening to the Paladin class. Practically every core philosophy for Paladins has been uprooted since WoTLK. The changes have been good, that is no doubt, but lots of "fun" elements still need work. Paladin healing is still boring, the ability to use hots/aoe heals during trash is much nicer than sitting around waiting to heal someone. Constant button presses against low incoming damage versus a few hots and letting it ride. Protection is in a good spot, still damaged by mana drains and silences, but a majority of prot threat has been moved to physical abilities(HOTR SOTR), Ret still has mana issues and has its main damage ability locked out by silence mechanics which is going to either limit ret damage or limit encounter design in the future. Furthermore, Ret is hurt on certain fights as a result of the damage feedback mechanic that makes it unsafe to use its maximum damage seal.

About damn time, +History

3.0.9/3.1 Notes :

BoK Baseline - 31 Ret(LOLRETUTILITY)->11Prot(...)->0Prot(ACCESSIBLE!!!)->Present Day
Seals - 30 Seconds Dispellable Consumed on Judge-> 2 Mins Dispellable not Consumed on Judge -> 30 Mins Undispellable.
Judgements - Seal Dependent, pitiful damage, some useless debuffs, did not refresh on hit->Refresh on Hit->Refresh on Crusader Strike+on originating paladin's hits->Cannot be refreshed-> Split into 3 spells that don't refresh.

All in all its taken 3 years for Blizzard to finally attempt a real FIX on their Paladin combat system that was put together right before release with very little testing.

SoTC was garbage, the judgement was mostly garbage.
SoJ mostly garbage, judgement was bad except in rare pve situations(made the judged ENEMY immune to fear, which also made them unable to flee). Only useful because paladins had no snares and did extremely poor damage, thus a fleeing mob would certainly live to aggro more mobs.
SoC LOLRNG, terrible judgement effect(miniscule damage when target gets stunned). Constantly tweaked as gear scaled out. 5 PPM -> 7PPM, 70% MW-> 50%MW-> 45%MW.
SoR rofldps, broken scaling but SP was nowhere to be found minus JOTC that didnt refresh on hits. Pitiful judge damage.
SoL/SoW - useful judgements, retarded refresh hassle. 10 yard range when the game revolved around 40 yard+ dancing heals to avoid AoE, on a class that had no repeatable instant healing moves.


tldr = changes were LONG overdue, I don't know what was so overpowered about seals being undispellable like shaman weapon enhancements, or giving them longer durations.

Delicious Paladin Tears

Divine Plea is being nerfed to -50% healing done in the upcoming tentative patch.

Why are paladins the only healers with an active regen mechanic that has a penalty?
Druids : Innervate - No Penalty
Priests : Shadowfiend - No Penalty, it actually deals damage and scales with SPELLPOWER. Can be blocked with shielding effects, but priests have dispel to manage that issue.
Shamans : Mana Tide - No Penalty except eats your water totem for a bit. Water Shield - Precludes Earth Shield, closest thing to an actual penalty, but not really on the same caliber.

Nearly all healing specs have some sort of illumination mana return now, so that argument is even more bunk than it used to be. Cost-based mana refund mechanics are NOT a replacement for regen mechanics until gear reaches impossible levels. High Efficiency with no regeneration is vastly different than Good Efficiency with Good regen. Priests have Rapture/Serendipity + Holy Concentration, Shamans have Imp Water Shield, Druids admittedly don't have anything exactly similar, but Omen+ToL is somewhere along those lines.

Is it too much to ask for no penalty but have it scale against Base Mana + some small coefficient of Int/MaxMana? Why are holy paladins the only healing spec forced to gimp their healing abilities while regenerating mana? By nature of the limited toolset paladins are given, excessive overhealing is mandatory to keep up with heavy AoE encounters. Thx Blizz.