Knight Class / 2hander / stance discussion (broken out of gemstone thread)

Romulox

Dalayan Adventurer
  • Colorwheel movement time reduced.
  • Minor fixes to dimensional butcher, Will of the Four.
  • One Hand Washes the Other had some bugfixes made. This will require a patch or rolling restart. This is intended to fix the bug where it kills you (oops!).
  • Unductoratory Flascertion will be significantly less effective for Paladins. Other classes on the weapon will enjoy its full power.
  • Glowing Robe of the Outer Planes focus effect increased to reflect the tier. Proc duration shortened greatly and reimagined.
Regarding Unductoratory Flascertion.

What a shame. Paladin finally had a DPS weapon with reduced defenses that they could actually taunt with. The reduced amount of healing and proc frequency compared to Lux Diem made the Unductoratory Flascertion a great alternative; you were basically trading off better DPS for reduced heals since the weapon lacked any real defenses.

Hopefully with all these changes being made for proper balance that an adjustment can finally be made to Lady's Strike so that two-handed weapons once again become relevant for Paladin.
(As things stand currently, we are the only tank class that cannot use a 2 hander with our primary method of hate generation since the Knight revamp.)

Here's to hoping that the positive changes to the game continue, things are starting to look a lot better in my opinion. Nice work so far!

Romulox Hempknight
High Knight of Resurgum
 
sorry your wep got nerfed rom but you rly should have seen it coming. absurdities happen all the time with items, its better to correct the mistake early then end up with a 550 ac robe for years.
 
sorry your wep got nerfed rom but you rly should have seen it coming. absurdities happen all the time with items, its better to correct the mistake early then end up with a 550 ac robe for years.
The nerfing of the weapon doesn't bug me so much. The fact that I still cannot use my primary aggro generation tool with a two handed weapon does. I had hoped that weapons with a better ratio were being introduced to fix this problem.

At this point a cut and paste of lady's strike with a two handed weapon requirement that also triggered the cool down of cleansing strike and lady's strike would be perfect.

I would be 100% pleased with the current state of paladin if that change could be made. Call the new ability Lady's Flourish or Lady's lunge
 
not to derail fuwoks gemstone balance thread but.....

since sks got their terrors taken off the GCD maybe we could consider that for paladin stuns and blinds, since upping the target cap beyond 6 seems problematic, it would help with picking up the 27 other mobs that didnt get hit by your 6 target capped stuns/blind.
 
not to derail fuwoks gemstone balance thread but.....

since sks got their terrors taken off the GCD maybe we could consider that for paladin stuns and blinds, since upping the target cap beyond 6 seems problematic, it would help with picking up the 27 other mobs that didnt get hit by your 6 target capped stuns/blind.
for being the AoE tank it feels really bad when trying to pickup multiple enemies. my favorite paladin bit of the season so far is seeing an AoE stun + aoe blind combo go off on a pack of mobs, the stun fading, and every single mob going to the shadowknight instead because he just casted 6 terrors.

that aside, given past / recent changes i wouldnt expect devs to try and fix class specific issues with itemization going forward.

gemstones seem neat so far, very cool concept.
 
If this thread doesn't super make sense, it is because I moved knight issues out of my event balancing thread. Please do discuss knight balance, just not in the gemstone thread.
 
Wow, thank you for noticing this! I've been jailed before trying to get this issue noticed after the patch!

Bump! Please let Knights benefit from two handers again.
 
not to derail fuwoks gemstone balance thread but.....

since sks got their terrors taken off the GCD maybe we could consider that for paladin stuns and blinds, since upping the target cap beyond 6 seems problematic, it would help with picking up the 27 other mobs that didnt get hit by your 6 target capped stuns/blind.
I agree with you Kapitol K, I think holding aggro on stuff should be a tank ability in general just like a wizard does dps etc. Let a tank hold aggro, and let the mitigation percentages and abilities differentiate the tanks.
 
After the fixes to smooth out aggro generation on paladin aoe blind and aoe stuns, if I keep rotating the aoe blind and the 2 aoe stuns on cooldown I can sort of hold aoe aggro, but not having Lady's thrown into the mix does make it more difficult and most of the time if I'm going to use a 2h, I'll first have a shield in, get a lady's off, then bandolier to the 2H after that. Using a 2h on a paladin is now extremely situational as not only do you lose the massive tanking bonus of having a shield in, you also lose lady's which really helps both your single target and your aoe taunting ability. I agree with Romulox; if Lady's could be used with a 2H equipped and be on the same cooldown as Cleansing Strike that would make 2h tanking much more viable, while still having the tradeoff of losing a ton of defense / blocking by not wearing the shield.

I'll also add this. I almost never use Cleansing Strike. It's far, far too much stamina cost for relatively an extremely small amount of damage. Only if I really have stamina to burn and don't care at all about my stamina, I might click the button, but it's really barely worth clicking even in that situation.

Note on tevinter's comment:

I find myself, when pulling lots of mobs, first casting one of my aoe stuns, then backing up, casting the next aoe stun so it only hits new targets, then backing up again, casting aoe blind, and throwing in a lady's strike somewhere at the end, and self healing / group HOTing to get a bit of heal aggro too. It's weird to have to do that to get initial aggro on more than 6 targets, but that's how I do it. In situations where you can't do that, a warrior greatly outclasses paladin as an aoe tank against more than 6 targets.

Another note I really, really want to stress.... now that paladin aoe stuns are more necessary than ever to hold aoe aggro, PLEASE remove the knockback component. It is so frustrating for both the paladin and members in the group when the mobs are ping ponging all over the place and the paladin is also ping ponging and getting summoned by mobs that are now spread out; especially if you happen to knockback a mob into a wall and you need to reposition it out of the wall, or worse, it summons you into the wall and you're stuck. This right now is by far my biggest complaint with the new playstyle of the paladin.

Complaints aside, I'm still really enjoying the paladin changes overall; paladin feels a lot more straightforward to play and makes more sense than juggling Righteous/Zealous might around when you can aggro and when you can heal more effectively. Paladins can actually do some healing now when they tank, which feels very paladin-ish, whereas before their healing was atrocious when tanking. Losing zealous might lost me about 50% of the dps I had before, but gameplay is a lot smoother and the overall archetype of the paladin now fits better.

(please, at least get rid of the knockback component on paladin aoe stuns .. it's not fun for anyone .. and those spells are really crucial for paladin aggro now - and there are now 2 of them, so even more bouncing around when you use them)
 
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not to derail fuwoks gemstone balance thread but.....

since sks got their terrors taken off the GCD maybe we could consider that for paladin stuns and blinds, since upping the target cap beyond 6 seems problematic, it would help with picking up the 27 other mobs that didnt get hit by your 6 target capped stuns/blind.
The thing about paladin aoes / pbaoes in general is that unless you actively move away from the targets you hit so they are out of range, the next time you cast a pbaoe it's going to hit the same exact targets.. so chain casting your pbaoes doesn't help at all if you're just standing there and trying to get aggro on more than 6 targets. I'm not sure what the game logic behind what mobs get hit by pbaoes is, perhaps it's even as simple as prioritizing mobs in the order that they spawned in the zone, but if you have let's say 10 targets and you cast your 3 different pbaoes on all of them, it is going to hit the same 6 every time.
 
Would definitely like the knockbacks off wizard pbaoes as well. They knock stuff around silly too, and just compound the problem even more (regardless of the tank, but compounds even further if the tank has to knockback stuff too).
 
Since there is currently little love for 2handers, especially with respect to threat generation, I'd propose the following abilities:

Paladin - Slam of Justice
- Swings a 2 handed blunt weapon to the ground causing damage and stunning enemies around the paladin
-PBAOE, moderate stamina cost, 25 to 30 sec cooldown, low to moderate physical (weapon based) damage, short stun (MR)

Shadowknight - Wave of Death

- Swings a 2 handed slashing weapon in an arc in front of the shadowknight causing damage and casting a DOT on enemies in front of the shadowknight
-Frontal Cone, moderate stamina cost, 30 to 35 sec cooldown, moderate physical (weapon based) damage, short DOT (PR or DR)

Additionally, although this is not for AOE, I'd be in favor of giving both knights some sort of armor piercing ability to use with a 2 handed piercer that penetrates damage reduction / ignores physical mitigation or AC. This way, we give some love to 2handers of all types, and fill out some of the perceived missing niches with the current knight changes.
 
Since there is currently little love for 2handers, especially with respect to threat generation, I'd propose the following abilities:

Paladin - Slam of Justice
- Swings a 2 handed blunt weapon to the ground causing damage and stunning enemies around the paladin
-PBAOE, moderate stamina cost, 25 to 30 sec cooldown, low to moderate physical (weapon based) damage, short stun (MR)

Shadowknight - Wave of Death
- Swings a 2 handed slashing weapon in an arc in front of the shadowknight causing damage and casting a DOT on enemies in front of the shadowknight
-Frontal Cone, moderate stamina cost, 30 to 35 sec cooldown, moderate physical (weapon based) damage, short DOT (PR or DR)

Additionally, although this is not for AOE, I'd be in favor of giving both knights some sort of armor piercing ability to use with a 2 handed piercer that penetrates damage reduction / ignores physical mitigation or AC. This way, we give some love to 2handers of all types, and fill out some of the perceived missing niches with the current knight changes.
I like your ideas, but I dont think a 2 handed blunt weapon should matter. 1 hand vs 2 hand is it really!

As for shadowknights, can't they just terror everything without cooldown anyway? I don't think much of a fix is needed for them at all.
 
I agree paladins shouldn't have the majority of their aggro tied to ladies strike.

I also wish the majority of 2handers were actually worth using. Even when mobs are supposedly (max) debuffed the elemental weapons seem to grotesquely under perform more often than not. In exp groups you just end up hitting a mob that is trivially threatening to you for 5 damage with your (250) damage fuckstick. Maybe there needs to be a far more forgiving damage curve for mobs equal to or beneath your level.

Spike went from the item everybody anticipated to the item everybody dreads to the point that nobody even bothers getting their alts in for one. No tank alts come around to ask for boka anymore despite existing. You are still just swinging the screamblade.
 
Spike went from the item everybody anticipated to the item everybody dreads to the point that nobody even bothers getting their alts in for one. No tank alts come around to ask for boka anymore despite existing. You are still just swinging the screamblade.
This is the exact conclusion I've come to since playing Khandra again after all the changes. I've defaulted to using screamblade or even sword/shield over any other 2her when duoing with Pally/Necro.
 
We have no current plans to make more threat or mitigation options for 2h play, aside from spells and discipline upgrades.

Currently we see 3 ways that paladins can play. 1h + Shield for tanking, 2h weapons + Althuna’s Fury for dps (yes, I know, you aren’t going to do a lot of dps as it is, but it can be better than none), and Althuna’s Conduit healing. The latter two are designed around scenarios where a Paladin is not tanking - shadow knights have similar off-roles with disciplines and spells to assist with the same scenario (see: Putrid Aura)

2h tanking is not intentional, nor should it be (fully) functional. From my understanding, the current bash mechanic is doing decent dps as it is for a knight.
 
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