Since last weeks release of patch 4.0.1, Holy Paladins have received some of the more drastic changes compared to other classes. Many players have shown their discontent with the changes and want paladins to be changed back. Lead Systems Designer shares the intents of Blizzard with the Paladin class for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.
A majority of paladins have been getting very uneasy with the recent changes done to the class and are not used to the new style of game play. On the World of Warcraft forums, many paladins have been voicing their opinions against the changes to the class, urging Blizzard to change paladins back to the way they were.
Ghostcrawler, Lead Systems Designer for Blizzard, read the thread and voiced the intentions of Blizzard with the paladin class for the new expansion World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.
According to Ghostcrawler, all of the Paladin classes were designed for a very passive game play and although it created a different style for each class, the passive game play made the class boring as not much decision making was being made.
Paladins (all three specs really) were designed to be a really passive class, with Protection doing a lot of passive threat generation (e.g. Consecrate) and survivability (e.g. Ardent Defender), Ret doing a lot of passive damage (e.g. Seal damage, Vengeance) and Holy doing a lot of passive healing (e.g. Judgment of Light). It made paladins play really differently for sure, but it was also kind of boring. Because so much of what the class did was passive, players weren't making a lot of choices. Because they weren't making a lot of choices, there wasn't a huge difference between good and bad paladins except gear.
With the upcoming release of Cataclysm, the paladin class has received some major changes to not make the game play so passive and allow the player to make mistakes so that he or she can earn their title of being a great paladin.We made some pretty radical changes to the paladin class for Cataclysm. There is another resource to master. There are opportunities to do the wrong thing. A great paladin will have earned his or her greatness.
The diversity to what the holy paladin could do in raid was always a tank healer. With the new paladin design for Cataclysm, it will allow for a paladin to be either a tank or a raid healer allowing the holy paladin class to be more diverse and versatile.As stated by Ghostcrawler, many of the talent tree changes have not been so evident because no one is level 85 yet, but they believe that the design of the Holy Paladin will allow for a very different style of game play and a greater margin of error for Paladin healers.
We think Holy paladins are good at 85. Holy Radiance is a powerful AE heal. Light of Dawn is too, though it's more situational. It really shines in larger raids. (Maybe we should have switched which was the talent and which was the core ability, but we knew Light of Dawn could have a more dramatic graphic effect since it was instant, which we wanted to reserve for the healer.) Paladins have more choices now about how to heal single targets -- they have a similar arsenal as the other healers when choosing between efficiency, speed or throughput.
At level 80, the strength of the changes are not so evident because of the lack of Holy Radiance and having to choose between Holy Light and Flash of Light to heal targets. However, mana efficiency will be another thing that Holy paladins will have to worry about in Cataclysm and their choice of healing spells will be a lot more situational than automatic. To read the whole post, please visit the source link. Definitely recommended if you are a Holy Paladin.
Links
World of Warcraft Forums - Holy Paladins Changes
