Paladin 3rd Tome

Comparing Paladins to other tanks seems relevant when discussing the balance and power of current/new tomes.

All three classes have their own utility, and I wouldn't say any tanks utility is really superior to others. Each has situations where their utility will shine and make that class superior UTILITY, but when it comes to actually tanking, War>>>SK>Pal for mitigation, and SK>>>War>Pal for agro (at the end game). When it comes to actually being a tank, Paladins have no real specialty. At lower tiers, they are the king AE tanks, but with terror changes, veils, and pbae damage proc weapons (for mass foelock), they no longer have a tanking niche.

What happens here is really up to developers, but I think the most natural solution (which also seems to be consistent with the lower tier situation), is to have paladins be sort of the 'middle ground' tanks. What I mean by that is to change it so that a paladin mitigates a bit better than a SK, and agros a bit better than a warrior (and hopefully becomes king of AE agro again).

I've detailed a lot of different things I think have caused or contributed to the problems of endgame paladins, and here is another way to look at it: Spells are consistent agro. Weapons scale with the raid tier. At a lower tier, pally spells > warrior weapons. At the endgame, warrior weapons >>> pally spells. Its debatable whether pallys were/are actually better tanks than SKs at a lower tier. SKs have the superior stance, but paladin self heals are more efficent than taps. At a lower level that efficiency mattered a lot, and paladins generally did more self healing than a SK. At the endgame, with 8k mana and 22 worn FT, a SK can chain lifetap through many boss fights and actually compete or beat the paladins total self healing. The paladin doesn't have a great way to dump mana on self heals (they can do targeted heals, but those are actually similar mana efficiency to deflux! Maybe the worst thing for the paladin is that they are forced to spend much of their potential healing time casting agro spells, whereas a SK can spend a 10th of the time for far far more agro.

tldr: paladins need a big boost at the end game
 
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This is where I point out that Paladins are fine all the way through ToT and Emberflow. So those of you that have no raiding/6man experience as a Paladin or with Paladins beyond that point, those of you that no longer play and have been bots, and those of you that are clueless/hold to outdated & exaggerated assumptions of the community really need to stop posting in this thread unless you have something constructive to add.

I would have to say that the largest contributing factor to Paladin aggro being garbage at tier 11+ is resists. Paladins are the only tanks whose aggro is reliant upon the resists of mobs as well as the RNG.

The other driver is the fact that Paladins need to utilize their healing options (self heals, remedy, touch etc.) in an attempt to maintain the same mitigation that a SK would provide. However, in casting these heals the Paladin loses the opportunity to generate aggro which puts him even farther back than a SK or Warrior would be as far as maintaining aggro (without giving up mitigation mind you).

I think having heals generate aggro again would be a good start (through tomes -- and not to the same level as prior to the nerf). In addition, something to address the lackluster resist adjusts available to Paladins or potentially branch out from ONLY having magic based spells for aggro (fire would be pretty cool - a la smites - and this could be something done through the murk spell quest).
 
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I was thinking about a potential new murk spell. Then I thought about how the Pally runic 2 is fairly dubious as is, and having this new spell be a runic 2 would give it to players more at the point in progression where they really need it. And... you could alter the old runic 2 and put it in the now useless Murk spell spot. That made me laugh quite a bit since it is nearly exactly the same thing I suggested with the wizard spells. Regardless it seems like a good idea.

New runic 2:
Althuna's Dark Blessing:
180 mana
2 sec cast
30 sec recast
Increase health by 1200
Generate 1200 agro on all targets on paladins agro list.

1200 agro per 30 seconds is really not that powerful verse a single target. As a wizard, my 'safe nuke rate' is approximately 4300 agro per 11 seconds, and as long as a mob doesn't have crazy resists, a paladin will keep up with that. I would estimate that Bango averages about 6k agro per 30 sec (without resists). No warrior is really bango tier, but Fuwok does maybe 7k per 30s. A SK can generate as much as they want, but running 3-4 terrors for a burn raid they generate a minimum of 11k agro per 30 sec (since I'm doing ~10k). I know the agro contest showed a SK can actually produce ~25k agro per 30 sec, but that is not using a typically functional spellset.

SO... with all those numbers you can see that an extra 1200 agro per 10 seconds is not going to be crazy huge. It will about even out pallys and warriors for single targets. It will give paladins some reliable agro vs any number of AE targets. It wont come close to competing with SK runic 2, but at least it will be reliable.

If a spell were altered to help the situation it would mean that the 3rd paladin tome wouldn't need to be so powerful to bring about a good level of balance.
 
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Since this has wandered from tome into general ideas.

Strange and probably unworkable, it may be desirable to have an additional single target, conditional aggro mechanic with a damage component added as well, ie one useful in groups/raids but not necessarily useful duo. The condition would be another class spell landing, allowing the paladin to gain aggro by landing a spell in turn.

The Spell: Chill Bones was intended to add an additional debuff in the beta of another game.
Spell: Chill Bones
Classes : Mag, Nec, Wiz
Cost: 350
Cast: 6s
Recharge : 12s
Duration: 12s
Resist: Ice Resist Adjust: 0
Effects:
Slot ?: Decrease Health by 325 per tick
Slot ?: Stun – with a plus aggro modifier perhaps
Slot ?: Turn mob undead for duration of 2 tick dot

The Paladin Runic 2 would change;
Runic: Slay Undead
Class: Pal
Cost: 450
Cast: 2.2s
Recharge: 30s
Duration: Instant
Resist: Flame Resist Adjust: -200
Effect:
Slot ?: Decrease Hit Points by 2200(?)

Assumptions:
- Making chill bones available to all damage caster classes spreads the utility. The damage in and of itself should be meh.
- Being a replacement runic 2 would not change paladins versus undead prior to Spires, and a Spires geared paladin is already really solid against undead.
- These spells could resist, and the group would have to work as a team to boost paladin aggro. With 4 casters, someone is going to land it.
- Bosses/Nameds could be flagged for effect immunity if a war/sk/muff is the preferred tank.
- This would help single target aggro on magic immune/resistant mobs depending on flagging and resists
- The hate modifier would be enough to motivate a paladin to use this in a raid setting.
- This would work in conjunction with Zaela’s suggestion.
- The dot time would be long enough for a paladin spells to refresh and land the runic, but would require attention to the target.
- It could be fun.
 
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I like that idea Vell, one thing that hasn't really been mentioned here is that unless you are fighting undead, paladins are also the worst dps tank.

Healing Echo: Whenever a paladin uses a self or single target heal (no hots), it produces a second heal 1 second later, equal to 10%/rank of the initial heal. Healing echos generate agro equal to 100% of their BASE healing amount.

This could stand alone, but it would be synergistic with Althuna's Dark Blessing.

Cast Althuna's Dark Blessing. Heal self for base 1200. (You have rank 2 Healing Echo complete). Healing echo heals you for 240 base. In total, this would generate 1440 agro and heal for ~3000 w/o crit. Most of that agro would be from the runic 2 mechanics, not this tome.

Lets say the paladin is using Remedy a lot to patch up themselves or other group members. Rank 4 Healing Echo Complete. Remedy is normally a base 437 heal. Rank 4 would make it a base ~600 heal, also generating ~170 agro per cast for the paladin. That's a nice boost to healing. The agro won't be huge, but its not reliant on resists, and can be generated while increasing self mitigation or utility (patching group members).

Remember that paladins having to trade their mitigation (self healing) for agro/utility is one of the big issues of an endgame paladin. I don't know the exact agro numbers for stuns, meele, blinds, etc, but I'm fairly certain that even with rank 4 complete, this would not make healing the superior agro method. What used to make paladin healing crazy agro was ghots, and this tome will not work on those. A paladin focusing on spamming blinds/stuns, and maybe just the biggest self heals will be the best agro as has been the case, but when a paladin wants to do more self healing or utility, this tome would allow them at least some agro. It also allows a method for tanking spell immune or high reflect/counterspell mobs.

Last and not least it will assist AE agro, giving the paladin a way to generate more agro while AE stun/blind are on cooldown. It wont compare to veil, but any suggestion that could compete with veil would be branded OP (and maybe it should be, I don't mind SKs being the agro kings, I just don't think paladins should be as far behind as they are at the end game)
 
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Silosobi said:
I like that idea Vell, one thing that hasn't really been mentioned here is that unless you are fighting undead, paladins are also the worst dps tank.
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Well, The thing I like about Veil is that in and of itself the spell does bugger all. But an sk willing to coordinate with his/her group can make it kick ass.

My main concern about my idea is it being abused so I think either;
-- a caster mana cost increase,
-- landing aggro + modifier of "one won't do it but spam gets you nommed"
-- and/or a "turn undead" no recast timer on fade for chill bones
-- maybe all 3.
It really isn't intended to be "undead critz omg". Its intended to allow the paladin to land Slay Undead + maybe Consecrate as a perfect timing bonus.
 
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Why not a tome that gives pallys +aggro for any spell cast, for any mob he/she is on the hatelist for. Maybe 10% of mana cost per tome done? So if they cast a Touch of Vitality on another, they would generate 29aggro per level of tome done, for any mob they have aggro with already. It isn't a lot, per se, but every bit helps, and this could help propel them further into their ae aggro niche.
 
how about a dropped spell line like veil? Sept it would be a buff for other players like voice but would be -neg aggro for that one person and the neg aggro that one person gets is given to the pally like veil? so the fist one would be 15% and the second one would be 25%? Throw that on a rogue and a pally wouldn't have the same kinda high end aggro problems they do now, it wouldn't make them super overpowered, But would certainly help in say xp groups where pallys just can't maintain aggro/mana. Would help on raids as you could say have bango throw it on solo and boom bango just got enough aggro to become a viable tank!
 
Draeos said:
how about a dropped spell line like veil? Sept it would be a buff for other players like voice but would be -neg aggro for that one person and the neg aggro that one person gets is given to the pally like veil? so the fist one would be 15% and the second one would be 25%? Throw that on a rogue and a pally wouldn't have the same kinda high end aggro problems they do now, it wouldn't make them super overpowered, But would certainly help in say xp groups where pallys just can't maintain aggro/mana. Would help on raids as you could say have bango throw it on solo and boom bango just got enough aggro to become a viable tank!
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I actually like this idea a lot.

They still need a mitigation boost as well, but this spell would make their agro decent enough that the tome could focus entirely on mitigation.

Holy shield: When the paladin has a shield equipped, they mitigate an additional 1.5% meele damage per rank. Against undead targets, this becomes 3% per rank.
 
Id of recommended it for runic 2, but honestly they need it before that is even possible, Quested, a second murk spell?(Like the mage one?) or dropped. But it just seemed to me that they really needed the aggro boost well before getting runic 2 was in sight.
 
Draeos said:
Id of recommended it for runic 2, but honestly they need it before that is even possible, Quested, a second murk spell?(Like the mage one?) or dropped. But it just seemed to me that they really needed the aggro boost well before getting runic 2 was in sight.
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It gets worse the higher you go, but I wouldn't be opposed to assistance at a lower point. One cool thing about this spell is it will scale up with your dps.
 
Tome of Holy-Evil Eye: every time the paladin gets hit, theres a chance to trigger a magical counter attack: short duration stun, no dmg, X aggro. maybe even AE stun
 
Holy Hand Grenade Kamikaze: when the paladin dies, a Runic level hot is casted upon the group members, as well as a X% spell mitigation while the hot runs
 
Obscenitor said:
Make paladin spells unresistable and call it a day.
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This post is not meant to detract from the tome discussion (as there have been some cool ideas in this thread). I would have just made another thread but I feel like it would be lost in the Sea of Other Ignored Paladin Threads, so better to just have this one.

I think one of the easier drivers of Paladin aggro issues to approach is the fact that our spells can be resisted. We are the only tanks that are completely reliant on the mob having low-ish MR and are subject to RNG on top of that. We (FWF) often find ourselves using a tank (SK) with 900 fewer hps and 150 fewer ac than me to tank mobs, because, simply put -- it leads to fewer wipes. This is an issue in my mind.

Oh, and then aside from weapons (minuscule) and a situationally cool refuge spell, Paladin aggro output has not changed since tier 0.
 
Scale blind agro to weapon ratio for both knight classes and share resistability. SK's can still get a better ratio.
 
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