Moving forward to next year

[shiftie]

Expansion is settling down now and I am curious what issues the pal community has that can be addressed or forwarded to the devs.

Try and keep your post formatted a bit so we can gather the info better.

Bugs (any and all bugs still remaining)
Spell Issues (tuning)
AA issues (tuning)
Overall class issues (future expansion feedback and tuning)
Weakness and strengths
Wish list (things you would like to see for the class)
I would like to take the time to acknowledge a few things about the strengths and weaknesses as well as the wish list.

Mileage may vary - try to keep feedback relevant to your position in the gaming experience. If you are not max aa on dps, please don't state that we need MOAR DPS ZOMG without prefacing where you are it in your toon progression. The same goes for healing tanking and utility. This will help us round things out at various stages of the game. Also bear in mind retro active fixes to adjust dps at say level 65 aren't really likely to happen even if they are warranted as the devs move us into new content each expansion.

New and innovative ideas are wonderful and I love to see people thinking outside of the box. However, be aware of design constraints and whether or not something is feasible doesn't mean it will be worth the time to create. We want to get the most out of the time allocated. So if something is a neat idea but requires tons of coding or design we might not want to waste time asking for it. So try and ask yourself that question when you approach the concept of new spells and aa.

I have no idea if a new expansion is in the works or not but hoping that it is.

As a side note, I am not a crt member and I have no pull with the devs - I'm just a regular paladin hoping to make the experience in game fun for the whole class. We have had a few successful beta periods over the last three years in addressing a lot of our needs and concerns and one of the reasons was organization. I hope we can continue that.

/salute

I've also posted this on eqlive if you'd rather give feedback there.

[Candara]

Note in advance, that this is coming from a group Paladin. I do have gear near the top of the group spectrum though. But I do not raid at all.


Bugs

- Hand of Piety base heal not critting. VoA beta IRC chat implied that this may not be intended. Would be great if Elidroth could look into it and see if all levels should be seeing the base heal have a chance to crit. For a 16 min reuse ability I can't see it being that unbalancing either.


Spell tuning

- Righteous Audacity - somehow this needs to be tuned to be more useful. Combine it with one of our marks? Or more hate per tick...but it really isn't worth memming. Still, a debuff with hate over time is a good start. Just needs tuning.


AA issues

- Yaulp - take a look at this again and revisit the mana regen. Stopping to med while the rest of group is 75% or higher is just no fun.


Wish list

- Have another component added to future Brells. AC makes the most sense probably.
- Shiftee you've mentioned a "heal stance" before and I second this. Sort of the opposite of VR. Moderate refresh, lowers our dps and ac while boosting heals for a short time. Would be interesting if it boosted innate twinheal. Something like this would be useful.
- Tempus Faycite Shard [upgraded Rejuvenating Steel]
- and/or Salus Faycite Shard [upgraded Rejuvenating Steel]



If I think of more I'll post another reply

[varutia]

Spelling tuning

1. Reduce the mana cost of Glorious xxx line, it's main function is to twin heal, which forces us to keep it all the time, fairly significant mana drain here with increase in cost each expansion since UF.
2. Tune the Zealous fury line's damage in line with the ranger's buffed proc. Right now even with blessing of the light, the damage it does is almost none existent.

AA tuning

1. Increase Yaulp mana regen
2. Increase the blessing of life healed amount, again in today's massive hp environment it does almost nothing.

Wish List
1. Get rid of shinning light and put in a useful ToTT heal.
2. Please add a recourse self heal to Zealous fury line which should make it more interesting and useful.
3. Make an AA to give increased amount healed by procced heals, to make them more effective.

Overall Class issue

Not newbie friendly, two aspecxt to this, one is gear and aa requirement, not much can be done for the gear, tanks are just traditionally gear dependant. AA requirement also higher for hybrid classes. Second is not very solo friendly, today's game is very solo centric, a lot of us solo for xp due to either choice or real life constraint. At lower level, you are forced to solo as well due to lack of population.

Other aspect of game I personally pretty happy with the class now. DPS is lacking in the solo side of things. We need some viable option to make 20 plus aa in a lesson burn solo, be it further boost up the undead dps, or just a random proc destroy undead aa.

Note: I consider myself low end raid and group geared.

[Boleslav]

Group Geared, currently full cultural with a mix of HoT T-4 to VoA T-4 non-vis stuff. Currently stll using HoT T4 weapons. Playing in T3 right now, but can handle trash in T4. About 50-50 between 2-boxing PAL/ENC with healer and rogue mercs, and grouping 5-6 players.

Overall, I am pleased with our class. I can tank what I need to tank and my heals are fine for burst healing in a pinch. The combination of discs, ToTT heals, Rejuvinating Steel, and the Spires (and other AA) make me feel like I can really sell out to tank something tougher than normal. This has improved during the last couple expansions.

My concerns are mana usage, and the degradation of a lot of our passive effects.

It seems like the passive heals, and weapon procs have become smaller by comparison with the total damage we take, and even the total DPS we create. For example, Preservation of Tunare seemed big when we first got it. The newer versions don't. I like a couple of the ideas above about tweaking these. The new Yalup AA is a nice thought, but could use some tuning upward.

The "healing stance" is an interesting idea. When was our Aura last updated? Maybe something can be done there as well.

Of course, everyone thinks they need more DPS. But I didn't roll a Paladin thinking I was going to be a DPS guy. So this is lower on the list for me than sustainable mana useage and beefier passive abilities/procs.

[shiftie]

Since the thread on EQlive turned to shit I hope we can get all the info collected here.

We need to have an easily accessed thread ready for next beta (if there is one) for the IRC chats and feedback ready for that time. One of the problems warriors had was that their IRC chat was at an awkward time last beta and they had no one show up to their chat. When I tried to access their boards in an attempt to get their top lists I couldn't find the information, which ultimately resulted in them getting less than they should have. I would hate to see that happen.

This thread is here to help whoever is able to join beta in presenting the paladin issues/concerns/ideas for the class. Please spread the word and get any and every paladin you know to post what they'd like to see for the class.

/salute

[Stephen51]

BugsNone I can think of.

Spell issues
Mark of Ragan - Combine it with other Mark line, and have both fire as seperate debuffs- Other Mark usually lasts the whole fight, whereas this one doesnt - hard to justify the spell slot for it.
Zealous Touch - I hardly use it. At one time Pallies were required to help heal on raids, but heals are so inefficient compared to pure healers its doesnt happen now. Needs a re-think.
Abolish the Undead - Memming this spell actually reduces our dps - Make the casting time instant or 0.5 and make the recast 1.5 or 2 secs.
Righteous Audacity - Was thankful for something new other than a heal, but this just doesnt seem worth memming, its too weak. Again as we didnt get an extra spell gem this expansion its hard to justify including it in the line up. Needs beefing up or re-think or make it an AA.
Avowed Keeper - Bsty Focus lasts about the same length of time as our Credence copy - thats about 50% of its Shaman counterpart. AK is about 20% the duration of Credence. Make it 2hrs (about 40%) in duration.
Symbol of Erillion - Less useful due to the introduction of cleric mercs. Make this a spell package cast like Shammy focus - Cast Symbol and the AC buff.
Brilliant Light- Like Zealous Touch - but more so, useless spell these days.
Brells - got a nice hp upgrade this go, but needs something. AC seems to be a dirty word with Pally spells - lets change that.
Contrition - A good spell for an emergency heal - but then you have the re-cast and once again, only so many spell gems. Other hybrid classes get much more AA reducing timers etc. Could use such an AA, say 10 secs per rank. Otherwise it should be switched to an AA line instead.
Rejuvilating Steel - Terrible. I have an idea for a new spell line. More later.
Protective Dedication - Melee guard is not compatible with vie, and is not as good, needs to be adjusted as its not really much use for the mana cost at the moment.
Aurora of Splendor - Is listed as a fast heal. Cast time is 3 seconds. It has a fast recast. Would prefer the cast/recast switched.
Zealous Fury - Some time ago, this line was to have dmg for all mobs, and an extra component for undead, but it never worked and SOE gave up trying to fix it. We have 3 or 4 spells now that have an extra component for undead, I think they could fix it easily now.

Discs
Upgrade Pureforge or introduce an AA to hasten it or extend it.

AA Issues
Generally as mentioned above there are a few lines which we should ask for AA's to improve timers on, specific AA's
Disruptive Persecution - Reduce mana cost if not addressing other mana issues.
Overpowering Strikes - Cant get any stats on this, does it increase the MR modifier? It certainly doesn't raise stuns above the level cap. Discontinue please.
Yaulp - I can understand us not getting the cleric version, but its not addressing mana issues, it could use a tweak.
Both SK and Warrior got an AA line to increase damage on 2 handed weapons. This is a Pallies DPS weapon and we should have received it as well, otherwise the damage disparity will just get bigger and bigger. Even with this line we will still be behind both classes in DPS terms.

Overall Class Issues.
Mana - Mana levels are dropping faster than other classes when grouped, meaning downtime. It could do with being looked at.
Direction- Our heals cannot be as good as Clerics, Our tanking cannot be as good as warriors and we cannot be DPS! The last 2 expansions we seem to have a lot of heal spells. The class needs more of a focus. Pallies used to have more of a group benefit, buffs, short to medium term for the group from spells/discs or AAs.

Weaknesses and Strengths
Our strength has turned into our weakness! The game is DPS driven now. We get heals, thats our main strength, except we cant really fill the roll of group healer, so we cant be depended upon for that in a group dinamic. Once we had more benefit to a group, but thats no longer the case.

Wish list.
Replace Rejuvilating Steel, with a melee damage reflect buff. Buff can have a number or procs and/or a time duration. It can reflect part or all of the damage inflicted by a mob/mobs. The higher % of damage reflected the more useful it would be. If it had a finite number of procs/% of damage reflected I'd expect it to be increased by AA in future expansions.

I know we are not a dps class, but the game is getting more and more about dps. Upgrades/new lines should have a damage factor or if not should put the mob at a significant disadvantage or the player at a significant advantage.

Buffs. If we cant get DPS/Heals/ Or more effective tanking ability - we could look at beneficial group buffs - Short term buffs, to increase accuracy, AC, or avoidance. Bards form an orderline to complain here.

I'd like the 2 handed AA line that the other tank classes got this expansion.