The 2nd in our series exploring the history of the WoW classes, throughout the game, the Paladin has been a required face amongst any situation. Such a crucial class. Check out Scottw's channel here / scottw1337
He really forgets to mention the start of Wotlk, Paladin's became gods, the only ones able to spar with the new DK's. Retri's back then, could hardly die, always proccing a free flash of light, and the more the merrier, with Divine Storm, hitting like a 1 target spell, but with aoe damage that also healed you. Perhaps the strongest dps(at the time), with plate gear and a free heal almost always ready, the only ones who could really combat the never dying and lifestealing DK. The Wotlk expansion really did introduce the fight between the DK and Paladin on a grand scale. And in the short interval before the release of wotlk, with the new talents, they were unrivaled. Lvling and killing foes was child's play for a time.
Ahh, another one who remembers those days ;D. I had a DK and Pala in top lvl back then, I could faceroll entire groups and then rofl-stomp each and everyone that came back. It was so easy it was absurd, especially on my 60 twink pala, that one was even more fucked up.
Haha this. This was the first time I decided to respec out of holy since the launch of the game and even in epics I got from kara and a few blues I was almost unkillable (talking about the pre wotlk patch)
Agreed and can't you remember sacrifice? Where a paladin would sacrifice himself for a raid or party member to survive and Res everyone. No idea why they removed that
+Mr Raptor They really remade Paladins too many times...... at 70 they were like warriors with a few spells and healing then after that they went to full spell fighters. Hard to imagine it started off at 60 literally as a one spec class!
When TBC came out, I saw the Blood Elves and thought "What are those ridiculous things?" I made a BE Paladin for what I thought was going to be some short-lived fun. That Paladin is still my main, and most beloved WoW character ever. (wipes away tear)
Been playing the game since launch. Never noticed that the Judgement icon is that of a hammer and after images. I always thought it was some sort of wheel.
I've watched this video many times, but never at 11:00 did I notice that the ret clicks his trinket, then clicks his wings, then clicks his haste pot in his bags , and then finally 5 seconds after popping wings is another global CD used. Absolute beast.
I've been ret since patch 1.12 until current (6.2). I've only dabbled in holy and prot (tanked a little 25 man naxx in WOTLK and healed a little bit in TBC). Man, this video doesnt even scratch the surface of all the challenges and changes Ret went through.
I rolled my Paladin back in TBC, and have played him ever since. I loved having to communicate which Auras were needed, who would give each class what blessing, and balancing seals between the group. It was such a dynamic class to play, it kept your interest mid-combat, something that has been lost in Cata and MoP. Now it seems Blizzard wanted to try and make us a healing warrior-rogue hybrid and ruined the old appeal of the class. Now when I log on, I don't feel like I really do anything special for the group, especially considering 2 other classes can do my exact buffs, and my seals only really benefit me. Late TBC paladin was, in my opinion, the most enjoyable time to play a paladin. I had a lot of fun in PVP Wrath, but it was just kind of a face-roll fest. TBC, not only did it feel like we had a roll to fill, but it felt like we had our own playstyle. Playing a Paladin didn't feel like playing any other class. Those are the days I miss.
I remember starting WoW and picking a paladin during TBC and looking at my talents and watching as i got closer to crusader strike thinking that leveling would become a complete joke once i got that spell.
damn...that UI at 3:40 how the hell can that guy even enjoy the game with his screen full of shit like that. its like a computer infested with spyware/adware and pop ups out the ass.
Paladins had that one patch in 3.3.1. Stack stamina spec prot, you could get around 50k hp, do 20k heals and judgement for 10k. It was so messed up, you could 1v3 skilled players in a legit fight. IT was so overpowered.. but quickly fixed.
@@Wellshem Well looking back at this I was not completely serious. I know the UI is awful and no one in his right mind would use it what I meant more to say it doesn't really matter, it works. He can see the health bars and do his job.
Those were the times Preach. I've lots of fun watching you and Ghosty on stream and even though I play rarely I still come back to watch and have some good memories! Cheers!
i played a paladin in vanilla and I play a paladin on a vanilla private server now... I loved it I felt I had so much different seals to use and I could change them a lot in a fight to make it do different things... I loved it and still do
Thanks for taking me down memory lane. A couple of comments: TBC: From what I recall, ret was token in Sunwell because you only needed one for Sanctity Aura (+2% damage to the raid). You had individuals trying to convince the world ret was worthwhile and getting lolled at by raiding guilds. The top guild in the world at the time Sunwell came out even wrote something on why they didn't take rets to raids, and why that changed from 0 rets to one (1) ret for Brutallus. WotLK: This was the true moment of reckoning for Ret, between ret smashing faces at the expansion's launch (after being lolret through two whole batches of content) and being solid DPS with utility until the end of the expansion. I'll admit I preferred the original design pre-Ulduar where Ret was preferred for Judgment of Light since amount healed was determined by your attack power, and Ret had Holy and Prot beat in that department. Cata: I never rolled a rogue because I didn't like combo points and Slice'n'Dice, and Blizz went and took a hammer to my favorite spec, then turned it into a pseudo rogue through Holy Power and Inquisition. I still argue Guardian of Ancient Kings doesn't fit the Warcraft paladin concept (for one because Warcraft paladins can't summon things).
I really like your videos. I started playing in nov 2005 but finally got my own account may 2006. I really enjoyed vanilla, bugs and all. I miss the community and the style of play. Thanks for the blast to the past, It meant a lot to me.
Despite blizz putting so much effort into pallys ret is still one of the most unstable classes in the game. That meaning it's the most commonly changing spec or close to it.
+Nikolai Anzuoni What do you mean by unstable? You probably mean the RNG damage. Ret paladins are pretty rng low-high melee damage. If you look at statistics on Warcraftlogs for Mythic 99% percentile, ret's percentile range is 3-67% (i.e., that's a 64% variation between pulls). But I believe ret pallys have been this way since Cataclysm. Ret's are an opener burst damage class, and what makes a very good ret is having a perfect rotation to not lose that much dps in between bursts. If you want a more stable melee spec, Rogue's and Dk's are probably better for you.
Matt Weismiller I mean blizzard can't seem to decide what they want from them. They seem to drastically change every single expansion. And if the spell names don't what they do does.
Nikolai Anzuoni They buff and nerf every single spec in the game, but Ret's are on the lower side of reliability. They're still not the worst. But the worst spec for a mythic parsing player is an Arcane mage because the difference is from 3-86%. I also feel like better and bad is relative. Since it depends on what you're going for in the game. I am not a 99% parsing, MYTHIC, ret paladin but ret's arent that bad. They're simply middle of the pack dps.
+Nikolai Anzuoni "Effort"? "Hey lets make paladins the most op class of all time in Cata, JUST so they know we "care" about pallys :DD, okay next patch.... Give ferals 1 million dmg..." ~ Blizzard 2010
Once I went into ICC, and everything went good...and when we get to the queeen, first spell I cast on her was that Judgement of Light or how its called (the healing judgement) and I was number one in healing done ... like I had twice as much as the second healer under me, and the funny thing is I was retri
You forgot to mention that when the Wrath of the Lich King patch launched, Retribution Paladins were the second most overpowered class in the game besides Death Knights. During a couple of weeks Ret could kill pretty much anything and anyone. Heck, I even recall being able to solo a lvl 70 Rogue who had epics... As a lvl 67 Paladin. To say that the damage was through the roof is an understatement. Blizzard was forced to nerf them, but it was not enough to stop them from dominating in Arenas during the single most unbalanced PvP season the game has ever had: season 5. Paladins and Death Knights were completely ridiculous and Ret will likely never be as powerful as they were at that point in time.
Preach. I tend to check your channel frequently for new vids of any sort cuz you are fun to watch and easy to listen to. Just wanted to let you know that you do a flatout fantastic job on these videos. It is really neat to see this kind of stuff.
deenman23 I can see what that comes from. I just feel that it was such a unique thing that it at least deserved an honorable mention, but nvm I just feel like I am draging this on and making people upset.
Not even mentioning the bubble!? or the powerful shockadin.. Well of course it is PvP things but still worth mentioning in my opinion.. It's a pretty good series you got going. Keep it up! ;)
Hans Müller I dont think he played as a pally for a long time. I remember that in WotLk pallies and DKs were a must, in all specs. There was a famous talent build in TBC that was half holly and half retri
I remember in classic being the only retri paladin known, always joining raids and actually being able to compete with other DPS classes all thanks to the PVP gear available. Being with all that PVP gear as a retri paladin also made me near impossible to beat in PVP. Also being one of the few on the server with 300 cooking with the epic food recipe and fishing and the UBRS key, made so many people want me. Classic was a time of luxury for me.
The instances and raids were fun, though the classes wern't really finished. You had no free will to choose whatever spec you wanted to play. TBC is when the got things right and you could suddenly play everything.
Yeah man, DIGITAL HIGH FIVE. Feel you there man ... I still remember "battle grounds" surfaced and drove real pvp, real video's and real skill into the ground. Too bad! Was a great time before that, fighting with the whole server in the westhill foothills, right?! Haha that shit was good. Everyone joined in, all levels, classes - MAYHEM!
Aaah Tarren Mill, yeah man haha I was looking for that name haha sick, those were some awesome times. I wonder how much blizzard could make if they just made 1 Vanilla server with the slightest balance tweaks... I and a lot of my former allies would jump in straight away im sure :) I might just pick WoD up though and focus more on the pve. Not sure.
This is an interesting view point from (what seems to be) a prominently Horde player. In Vanilla WoW, Paladins brought 2 things to a raid that Horde coveted: Blessing of Salvation and Blessing of Kings. PVP however was a TOTALY different story.
Paladins in Vanilla PvP were crazy good. Holy that is. Being the only PLATE healers. As well as all the immunities, CC and buffs they brought. Bubbles, Hand of Freedoms, highest critical chance heals, salvation, and hammer of justice. - Those alone made them kings at organized PvP. Be it World PvP or BGs. In WSG they were simply unrivalled by any other healer.
***** Shaman countered Paladin in Vanilla pvp every time, though. Enhancement was arguably the best dps class/spec at the time. For every heal a Paladin could cast, a Shaman could interrupt with earth shock and do damage. Not to mention that bubble was removed with purge and a Shaman's damage was better than a ret paladins. People also forget that Shaman was a viable tanking class, as well. Mace/shield with rockbiter.
***** You must have some rose tinted goggles that you're looking through. I played a Holy paladin in PVP throughout all of Vanilla. Hell, even leveled as Holy. Blessing of Protection was purgeable (hell, all our Blessings and Seals were purgeable) and Hammer of Justice was on a 60 second cool down. The only dependable "bubble" we had was on a 5 min cooldown (Divine Shield). And "highest critical chance heals"? Our 1.5 sec heal, Flash of Light, healed for what a Shaman and Priest's 1.5 sec heal did at lvl40. When it would crit, it would actually heal for what the lvl60 classes healed for without a crit. Holy Light was our 2.5 sec heal and it was interrupted most of the time. Not to mention, when a player was Focus Fired, 2.5 seconds was too long of a cast time. They were usually dead. Not to mention paladins had no HoT no Instant cast heal (Holy Shock didn't heal in Vanilla and Lay on Hands had a 1 hour cooldown) and no group heal. Priest/Druid/Shaman was a better healer than a Paladin in PVP. The only reason Paladins were relied on in PVP was because Shaman had a spamable Purge that would render the other Alliance healers weaker. Horde didn't have this problem.
WarGamerGirl Holy shock ALWAYS healed (the only change was that originally the damage dealt was half the amount healed, until mid-vanilla where it was buffed to be equal to the amount healed). That was the point. It was an instant heal that could also be used as an attack. And pvp support holy was usually spec'd deep enough into prot to get the 50% CD reduction on HoJ (not to mention talent that reduced the cd on bubble and BoP by half)).
the only time i ever really played a pally was towards the end of the Cataclysm expansion, and I was a healer. I just remember being able to singlehandedly heal the whole raid with my AOE heals without really trying. Loved it XD
he forgott about the 2 days of Justice. a wednesday/Thursday adventure never seen again. shotrly after BC poped in, not many horde players got their paly highlevel. but the alliance did, and these 2 days were devistating for the Horde. the day Pallys did pure magical damage with every spell. the spells buffed eachother so that a Pally was able (no shitting i was there in this time) to hold back a WHOLE alterac Horde-army! i member this time, sitting there on the bridge at the ally camp, with oen of my 3v3 arena friends, the third oenw as on his lonlyx road to solo drek'tar because, why the heck not!. so we stand there.. the army of Horde running up to us and all we did was.... Spellspamming. and i tell you guys: the horde wasnt able to get thru us. these 2 days i gathered the whole Arenaset. in 2 friggin days. win after win, it was heroic!
I like how nothing was mentioned about serious rbg groups completely denying holy or ret paladins over 2.2k rating. I wish he would sit on darkspear trade and listen to why neither are viable mop was most certainly not good to paladins in my opinion.
Through love and hate, I played a Paladin from Vanilla through to WotLK. One thing that wasn't mentioned in the video was that Paladins were always one of the most gear-dependent classes in the game. Ret was viable since Vanilla, it's just that it had a high minimum gear requirement. I remember finally getting a Zin'rokh from ZG, immediately specing Ret, and the total ass-ton damage I was doing in raids, BGs, and skirmishes out in front of Tarren Mill. But, inevitably, playing a Paladin was hard. The stigma associated with Prot and Ret was nearly impossible to escape, and most of the time you were stuck healing. Occasionally you would spec Ret for PvP, but had to be pretty committed to amass a completely separate gear set suited for the purpose. And then patch 3.0.2 released, and it was finally time to put all of that off-spec arena gear to good use. This was about a month prior to the actual release date of WotLK and Paladins were in a state that can only be described as "broken." Seriously, no other class at the time could take on 3 players at once and utterly crush them, but a Paladin could. The class had clearly been tested to ensure that it was viable for WotLK content, but not its impact prior to Northrend being made available. The other class forums lit up with vitriol, and Blizzard eventually imposed some big nerfs, but to their credit, left the class in a manageable state. Finally Ret was a viable DPS spec, and so I had a lot of fun in WotLK. I skipped Cata as I was focusing on career now, but returned for MoP for a short while. By then I couldn't put enough time in that the game required, half of the people I'd met had quit, and I couldn't get into a raiding guild. Also, Holy Power had since been introduced, and I'd previously played a rogue in Vanilla for all of 30 minutes before realizing that the whole combo point mechanic just wasn't for me. Really, Paladins have always offered something that most other classes couldn't, true spec variety. What other class, aside from maybe a Druid, could heal, tank, and do damage? But, again, the downside was the massive time commitment required to gear up, sometimes boring play style, and an often type-cast healing role. To this day, I will never forget how much time I spent in Un'goro Crater farming living essences to craft a Hide of the Wild. With WoW Classic coming up, I was thinking about switching, but frankly...to what? In fact, I'm curious to see how far I can progress with a much more constrained time commitment. I say 50/50, but it'll be an interesting experiment.
First gen paladin = best gen paladin. They called us retadin but nevertheless i was an undying GOD who was top dmg in every party i joined... People simple didn't know how to play retribution paladins because they didn't have 1 rotation. I'll never forget the moment where i got attacked in stranglethorn with my pala by a mob who was red to me... as i was doing my best not to die whilst killing it there was an enemy warrior spectating the fight. /applaud and stuff like that b4 he finally killed the mob out of respect for my fight. He then /bow and left me in piece even though he could kill me in 1 autohit. :p
1:36 with seal switching, weapon switching and smarter choice you can relatively okay level your paladin to lvl 60 as a RET. However using a half hybrid prot/ret build with ur shield and 1h weapon is hell.
+Félix Lagüe-Lalonde Group oriented healing... ( forced to focus on 1 or 2 groups and / or tanks ) mostly you were focussing on the tanks and healing your own group ( 1 healer per group minimum back in those days )
Why would you need to find yourself? In Vanilla, there was not an overuse of "don't stand in fire" mechanics. You didn't need to see where your character was or what he was doing, especially as a healer. You needed to see the health bars of the rest of your raid. That said, that was also MY UI in early Wrath, specifically Naxxramas, as an officer to call out when things were happening. The short version is it's the absolute default, nothing adjusted - everything is bigger in the UI and it has to be toned down. Combined with a small monitor (that resolution is 1024 x 768, see it all the time on my laptop) and all the bars and buttons at their default settings and...yeah. You can't f'ing see. When I fixed mine, the biggest change I made was lowering the size of all the crap on screen. Imagine all the buttons on that screen at even half their size.
The reason I don't miss vanilla. It took me way longer than my friends to level up because I chose to play a pally first off and didn't want to create a new character until I was level 60. But TBC and Wrath were just an absolutely amazing time to be a paladin. I do truly miss those days. I'll take my rose-tinted glasses off now.
i sure do miss that shaman and paladin were faction specific though, made it unique to each respective factions and much more fun in this world. And i also miss the fact that each character kind of had its own unique roles and skills, now everything is kind of a mixed pot with everyone class with CC and such. Wow... WoW got retarded for casual players
every class now has more spells, more utility and have to manage cooldowns, spell procs and trinket procs making the skill cap much higher then it ever was at 60 or 70 but yea its been retarded for casuals...
Tim Pogrebiski 99% of the people get full heroic gear? no that isn't true at all, 99% might get LFR gear but its far from good gear, raids at 60 and 70 compared to now aren't hard, most had few mechanics and basic mechanics plus every class being so simple means doing mechanics was easier.
equoowe But you didn`t have addons so the raid intelligence was much lower. I was noobish in vanilla and didn`t even know what addons were, but I recently played a private vanilla x1 server to try it out and see the difference, and even with all the addons I could find I basically had to relearn the class I was playing. At least healing with and without addons are two entirely different things, and you just can`t play the same way. Also the mechanics were simpler, I`ll give you that. But they were also more brutal. Go do Chromaggus in BWL with no addons and the sort of shit gear you`re likely to have because MC bosses drop 2 pieces of gear for a 40 man raid and tell me it`s easy. I dare you! And even then you`re pretending the conveniraids are the only thing that matter in the game. But absolutely everything else has been nerfed. Go on, mention one single thing in WoW that hasn`t been nerfed at least one, usually multiple times! I double dare you!
Blizzard love Paladin.. lol Community loved them and blizzard forced to make them viable. Blizzard officers have more than once said that they prefer Warriors. The name loladin came from the love i guess..
Ahhhhhh the nostalgia and memories of WoW thru the ages :D! I played a Druid all throughout Vanilla, played half of BC and Druid and made me first ever main switch to Warlock. Come WOTLK I rerolled Death Knight and Hunter and absolutely loved it! With Cata stuck with both and added in Shaman for healing :p Mists of Pandaria I stuck it out, but with WOD I have so many characters and classes xP! Def alting a Prot Paladin for some fun and beautiful Transmog options :3!
I just discovered your channel man, and it's just wonderful how much effort you put into these videos. It is detailed and quite long but you keep me interested all the way to the very end. Thanks dude :)
ahh even tho i have put down my horde paladin to pick up an alliance unholy dk this video made me remember my paladin fondly. the love in it's design is clear and even tho blizz can realy goof sometimes- one glance at the paladin shows the good-intentions.
So right off the bat, you're telling me you have no idea about pally until this vid? -.- .. That explains a few things.. You under played vanilla sir.. Prot and Ret were not dogshit.. Back then all Paladins had the same abilities.. It was the tech tree that made certain ones better than others.. So all specs could heal, damage, tank.. We were gods! Yeah sure we had limited spells, but not to the extent you described good sir.. Not even close.. Hammer of Wrath, Consecration, Judgement, all seals, Holy Wrath, Hammer of Justice, Turn Evil, Divine Protection, Divine Shield, Blessing of Protection, Lay on Hands, each and every damage reduction aura, and all our other Blessings.... All of these, used properly, meant certain death to any Horde fool that ever crossed our paths, and made sure we'd always come on top versus anything PvE.. Paladins invented world Solo Elites.. You know those Elites in the world no one could ever kill on their own at the same level? Paladins did.. And we did it so well in fact, that we did it 5-6 levels lower than the elites.. We Paladins, we were more elite than the elites.. Because hey, you forgot one HUGE important detail of Vanilla; NO FORBEARANCE!!! Yeah.. And yes, you read me right, Divine Protection did not get replaced by Divine Shield when you got it.. No.. They were TWO DIFFERENT SPELLS both giving complete immunity.. DShield was 10 seconds, while DProt was 8 seconds.. Add Blessing of Protection to that and we have 28 full seconds of "you can't fucking touch this"! Which meant 28 seconds of you standing in our Consecration, getting burned, while taking any melee and judgement hits.. Oh.. You also forgot to mention how Undead players, actually counted as undead for the first half of the game.. Which meant that Turn Evil and Holy Wrath were regular spells to use.. Holy Wrath also hit any aberrations, elemental's, and of course, demons.. So Warlocks and Mages-especially undead ones-wouldn't even look at us.. They simply ran away in fear.. Not because I cast Turn Evil, but because they seen me, and turned and ran of their own free will.. Vanilla Paladins, were gods.. I once nearly took out a level capped Tauren Shaman, and all of his lower leveled friends, in an STV brawl.. You remember those STV brawls right? At the Nesignwary camp site? 3 ally including myself, at lvl 47, took on 7 Horde players, ranging from the STV45+, to the level cap.. I killed them all except the Shaman.. Obviously.. He was in raid gear.. He better of killed me.. But what's sad on his part is he still nearly died to a lvl47 Paladin.. You see, I had specced prot/ret, which you could do back then.. I went down the prot tree just enough to get the talent "Reckoning", which back then, gave chance on swing, to make your next few swings, have an additional weapon swing.. Which meant I could smash you in the face TWICE in ONE shot.. Couple that with Seal of Command, add a two hand mace that had a chance ability to do extra bonus damage, coupled more with 28 seconds of immunity, factor in Lay on Hands (full insta heal), coupled with what heals all paladins had, including the seal of light... I'm sorry man.. You got it all wrong.. Vanilla Paladins.. You couldn't kill one that knew wtf he was doing.. Especially with our damage reduction aura's.. I mean.. I can go on about how god like I was.. But I think I made my point now.. lol.. So yeah.. You got Vanilla Paladin Legacy all wrong.. Sorry.. -.- Same with BC... Seal of blood was alright, but not as awesome as you say it was.. Countering seal of blood was simply a game of out lasting the guy who is killing himself trying to kill you.. lol.. I mean it was hard, but it wasn't one way as per the impression you gave.. ;) We ally Pally's that knew wtf we were doing gave them elves a run for their moneys.. You also missed some points in Wrath as well.. The age of "lol storm".. The days a pally could jump head strong into a full group of players, press Divine Storm, and drop all of them half health in one shot.. Need I say more? I mean sure, we had to couple that with Avenging Wrath to get that output.. But still.. A whole group of players loosing over half their health by one player with one spell, and he'd just divine shield right afterwards so you couldn't kill him? I tanked through wrath.. Also the age of "block".. You know, when they first introduced "block".. Block paladin tanks were indestructible both PVE and PVP until it got nerfed.. And that was WITHOUT factoring ardent defender.. It rarely ever got used.. But I was still thankful to have it.. It only really helped all the noobs out there that had no fucking idea how to play pally at all.. That and the healers who sucked ass.. And by god there was a lot of them.. By wrath, everyone and their mother wanted to play Paladin simply because of the legacy left behind in BC, coupled with the new rework of wrath.. I mean.. That quickly died down fast, don't get me wrong.. DK's were the absolute when wrath launched.. They were undead and no paladin with all our undead counter spells could touch them.. All that quickly changed though.. First patch and boom! Paladins were gods yet again.. They also changed the undead thing for DK's so they and us were on par.. As for the triple judgement thing.. THAT WAS AWESOME!!! Way better than previous methods of seal, judge, and re seal... But the button mash gap wasn't large either... It was actually really short if you knew your shit.. Vanilla, BC, and Wrath all had one thing in common for Paladins.. Rotation.. You either had it, or you didn't.. Those that did, were among the best that stand tall even to this day.. Those that didn't, still did well enough to make it to raids.. Not enough to top charts as they should have.. Oh, and you neglected to mention... Holy Rad.. The AOE spell that healed everyone around us that all Paladins regardless of class had, and could use effectively... How'd you forget to mention that ditty?! 5 paladins in any BG grouped together were unstoppable.. No one had the damage to take us all out.. It couldn't be done.. lol.. PvE, how about 5 paladins aggroing a whole dungeon at once, and not dying?! Don't even ask what we did to poor Arthas.. He never seen it coming.. Wrath was awesome.. lol.. Did you know back in wrath, they gave us Hand of Reckoning.. This is a taunt, but when it first come out, the target you used it on, would take holy damage if it wasn't targeting you.. Using that spell, 3 Paladins on any encounter, spread out in each of their own corner of the room, could make any boss do a full 360 in the middle of the room without ever being touched... You could tank a boss with three paladins and not need to heal a single one of them since they'd never get hit.. Blizz took the damage aspect out of that spell real quick when they found out.. -.- And then Cata.. Was that ever the change up or what? lol.. I remember learning to use holy power while doing the tourney since that's when they introduced it (a few months prior to cata launch).. It was a learning curve I quickly overcame due to the tanking role I chose for wrath.. And it made me feel godlike even more than I had been previously.. I was healing myself in ICC more than the healers could through word of glory.. Soooo.. That was a thing.. lol.. And then cata came with all the tech tree changes and all that fucked up jazz.. Blah.. I mean you're right, prot and holy paladins had it good from the get go.. But it took blizz nearly a full year to fix the ret output.. It was a constant up and down for rets as the patch's came through.. What a fucking trip that was.. lol. But it was still fun.. And now MoP.. Consider the class perfected.. I've healed, I've tanked, and I've always been ret.. All three specs are about as awesome as they can get.. Yes, there has been some rework that wasn't too great, but that was due to PvP power and how it originally worked.. Holy got a change due to how Mastery works and everyone was using Eternal Flame to keep the shields up.. Everyone still uses EF despite the nerf mainly because everyone who's holy tends to raid heal.. But we're just as good tank healers as any other class if specced for it.. Prot, simply doesn't die.. I seen a prot tank ToT solo.. The whole fucking thing.. Solo tanked.. Soooo.. That's a current thing.. As for ret.. I pop wings, you fucking die.. Period.. No if's, but's, what about's, or nothing.. I pop wings, you die.. That's not to say wings are OP.. That's to say that I'm smart enough to pop that shit when you can't stop me from attacking you anymore.. That's the trick for ret.. Everyone has some mass CC of some sort.. So to be an affective ret player, you need to make sure there is nothing that can stop you while you have wings up.. If you get stopped, and you were stupid enough to pop all CD's (as most pally players are), then you get fucked over and can't kill anything for another 2-3minutes.. If you're smart about it, and you wait patiently, you touch it, it dies.. I can even make it so I stall 5-6 players in one spot on the map, all by myself, just using up holy power to keep myself up... Remember that to be a good paladin, doesn't mean to be awesome in what spec you are in.. But rather that you acknowledge the fact that you are a Paladin.. Be a Paladin first, and you and your team mates will always come up on top, and you will be praised for it.. Walk into anything thinking that you are only supposed to do what you're specced into, and you fail.. Period.. Oh, and the best part is no rotation.. Everything pally, regardless of the spec, has no rotation.. Everything is priority cast.. You actually need to think and be aware of wtf is going on around you to be an effective Paladin player.. GG.. Soixanteneuf - Nath - MS:Ret/OS:Prot Auradia - Nath - MS:Holy/OS:Shockadin Casually epic!!! I break the mold.. ;D
I played a Paladin in Vanilla and I can tell you we didn't have all the abilities. Holy Shield, Repentance, SoC, Divine Favor, Blessing of Sanctuary, Holy Shock all required speccing into and these are just from the top of my head. I'm 99% sure that Divine Protection was either replaced by Divine Shield or they shared the same CD because every single Pally would have been doing it and I can't remember a single case. BoP did not protect you from magical damage and made you unable to melee. I remember Holy Wrath and Turn Evil working on Undead players, but that got patched pretty early on so I didn't get to enjoy it for long. Either way, a good Pally in Vanilla was indeed a force to be reckoned with because of sheer versatility, longevity and group synergy. P.S.: Do you remember the days of infinite Reckoning stacking? Glorious, but got hotfixed when some genius decided to solo one-shot Kazzak.
Well you sir are quite correct for the most part.. I worded myself incorrectly about how each spec had the same abilities.. My bad.. What I meant was we each all shared the same base abilities.. I consider shit like Seal of Command, Holy Shock, and etc talent abilities and not class abilities as it was back then.. I apologize for the confusion.. To be clear though, I never said anything about being able to melee attack while BoP was up.. But casting while BoP was up was, and still is a thing (Judgement (today's Judgement acts like a melee spell when HoP is up, and so does exorcism for w/e reason.. -.-), Conc, Seals, Heals...).. I simply said you can have a grand total of 28second of "you can't fucking touch this".. ;).. And yes.. Most Paladin players thought the exact same about Divine Protection being replaced by Divine shield mainly because, they had the exact same CD.. I myself, am guilty of thinking this.. But I discovered otherwise from another Paladin I encountered when I was level 45 that I could use both since the CD, despite being the same length, was not shared as we thought.. That gave me 2 levels to practice with it prior to the STV event I bragged about.. ;) .. So that was fun to learn and was integral in killing that shamans little friends.. Remember, the game was still fresh and most people had no clue WTF they were even doing until late game.. It was not surprising most Paladin players didn't know this.. In fact, the reason for Forbearance was because word got out on the forum that more and more of us were doing it.. That number sky rocket when it hit the forums.. By that time though it was near the Pally patch, so we got to keep it for only a little while longer.. -.- It was fun while it lasted though.. After pally patch, AV got a lot harder with without it, and forbearance keeping us limited.. lol.. You're also right about the Forsaken being undead only half way through the first year.. -.- I stopped playing for a little while after that since I thought the game didn't make sense.. That part still doesn't make sense.. They're undead.. They made their damn choice and now they should live with it! lol.. Maybe "live" wasn't the right word.. ;) I also forgot to mention-and the OP of this vid also forgot-that exorcism was one of our key spells we used on everything, and it would be a guaranteed crit on all undead/demons... Another reason why blizz changed the Forsaken thing I guess.. lol.. On that account I don't blame them since that was OP.. But they could of just removed the crit.. ;) But that's OK because once the pally patch came in-if I remember well-we were then able to use Holy Wrath on everything after that, but only undead/demons/aberrations would still get stunned when hit.. That damn Pally patch fucked our survivability, but gave us more kill-ability.. lol.. A trade off that had a learning curve, but was fine none the less.. And do I remember the days of Reckoning stacking? lmfao!! I swore by Reckoning.. Everyone thought me stupid for getting it as a "ret" (I kept saying prot/ret was my spec, and they kept saying you can't hybrid tree's, to which I responded; "I'm a fucking hybrid class, it's right in the description!").. But I invented DPH (Damage per hit).. SoC was a chance thing, Reckoning was chance, the bonus ability on my weapon was chance, and then crit on any of that.. I could hit people for as little as my weapon damage, or smash them for their entire health bar if everything procced.. So that's a yes.. I remember the stacking.. It made me well know in AV... Especially since we only fought people from the same server.. Oh yes, I was well known for my double swinging mace.. :D People would just run form me.. lol But I got a better one for you though.. Do you remember the days of seal stacking? Similar to the shaman debuff that led to a 40 man shaman raid vs Rag, where one shaman one shot Ragnaros after all 40 placed their debuff.. Our seals were not as good as that.. But still, 15+ Paladins stacking seals of light on the target, anyone that hits the target gets healed for full health.. lmfao.. That was really short lived since healers were not needed.. ;D..
Oh yea, BoP was a great ability in both solo and team play. Though I remember it could be Purged by Shamans and Rogues could still Blind you. I'm still not sure whether Divine Protection and Divine Shield were usable together. I've been reading some old posts and they seem to confirm that they shared a CD. Maybe this wasn't the case in the extremely early days of WoW or perhaps even the Beta. I personally don't remember being able to do this. I mean, this was long before Forbearance was introduced into the game. Well, lore reasons aside, I think it was unfair for one race to be singled out like this, even though they did have the near-OP WotF racial. Hmm, I don't remember Exorcism even working on anyone but Undead and Demons up until like TBC or something. Prot+Ret was indeed a very smart build because I believe that every extra Reckoning hit increased your chance of getting a SoC proc and made your damage less dependent on randomness in general. I personally played a Prot+Holy build. Not so great against casters, but worked well otherwise in both PvE and PvP.
I read your post until I saw "Same with BC... The age of "lol storm".. The days a pally could jump head strong into a full group of Horde players, press Divine Storm" Paladins didn't get Divine Storm till Wotlk, skipping through some of it makes my face palm so hard, do you just make this shit up?
Nah, not made up sir.. Just misplaced.. I copied and pasted a bunch of paragraphs as they were completed in the word processor.. Then quickly re-organized the paragraphs again and compensated for phrasing.. That paragraph was meant to start the Wrath section.. My bad! I made the correction though.. Enjoy your read and thanks for pointing that bit out... I deserve the facepalm for not seeing that ahead of time.. -.- .. Surprised no one else noticed.. Better still, that no one else noticed until now.. :S
you are spot on about holy pallys going into Cata, i played at end of vanilla TBC and start of wolk before quiting...i got fed up with the spamming of two healing spells it got so boring and easy that i was eating and watching TV while raiding end game content in BC lol. lazymans class i use to call it... when i come back for cata... i was in heaven!!!!! fell even more in love, with all new spells it felt like a new class. i made a new account for cata cause old one got hacked.. ended up calling My holypally ""Spamhealer"" cause of the old play style.... when cata xpac launched, it made that name not fit the class anymore... was pissed for the longest time about my toons name after that lol.
It's interesting watching this series as someone who mained a pally through Classic Vanilla and TBC. On one hand I feel like it is completely backwards but on the other completely spot on. Clearly they were a broken unfinished class back in the day that had hidden holes which lead to fantastic power but I would not say it is game breaking. I watched this video prior to Classic and now post classic both times a great watch
The Warlock. I remember when when warlocks could consume their fire stone thing or buff their weapons with it. And when you consumed the spell stone you got this elaborate green oval energy shield around you. If you consumed your spell gem and sacrificed your void walker at the same time you could absorb a lot of physical and spell damage that way. I use to do ok in dueling with that. At least I'm pretty sure about the fire one. If I'm right you increased fire damage when you consumed it. It's been a long time ago though. Many players don't recall the green shield I speak of but I used it often. I went through a minor DK phase but returned to my senses that The Warlock is the coolest. I miss when their some of their temporary demons could break free and run amok. WoW seems to have wrestled with a role play aspect in the past but was never able to build on it. The idea of "character maintenance" You would have to do better then numbers or graphs to make this work, like say, don't feed your mount in days it should begin to look sick, act sick and it's stats go down and it's movement gets wonky. A sword appearing to chip, crack or rust over time would be funny, you got to main- tain that sword brah! But j.k. and those are examples of role play character maintence. The maintenance also somewhat adresses why they thought rouges should have to prepare and trin poisons, this is my theory anyhow. They never developed fully, character role play maintenance.