Paladin Nerfs

So reading the class nerfs that has recently come to pass, it's clear as a day that Blizzard have no idea what to do with the Paladin class. It's not only Retribution getting the shaft, it's ALL specs of the Paladin class. Holy and Prot takes a huge hit, too.

But why, though? What has caused the monkeys at the Dev team to hate the paladins so? It's clear that they don't like hybrids that much. Or rather, they do since Druids seem to dominate the game in every aspect imaginable.

They can tank pretty damn good, they have immense armour and damage reduction while in bear form and their HP is nothing short of astounding. They have enough tools to make sure the mob sticks to them if engaged. If I am to belive my friend, he says they can do some pretty mean damage too in bear form too.

So why do Paladins get shafted?

It's simple, really. Oh so simple.

I should preface this post by stating that I have absolutely no insider information of any kind about their corporate workings...only an eye for the obvious.

You see, when WoW was released, it did not have these monkeys on the Dev Team. The monkeys being Jeff Kaplan (Tigole Bitties), Tom Chilton (Kalgan) and Alex Afrasiabi (Furor Planedefiler). These guys were hardcore Everquest guild leaders, the sort of people who thought 24 hour raids should be the next olympic sport. Between them is zero prior MMORPG design experience.

Furor and Tigole hated hybrid classes. Their anti-hybrid stance was notorious in Everquest. Furor was an obnoxious baby who organized server crash protests because Paladins out-tanked him in the EQ Planes of Power expansion. He was a loudmouthed brat who didn't care a lick about taking all the fun out of the game for other people.

Tigole was his best friend.


When Vivendi bought Blizzard, much of Blizzard's developing talent left. Some of these were Diablo and Starcraft developers. They went to various other projects, including Hellgate: London and Arenanet. It's unclear whether they were fired, or merely quit.

With several of the original WoW developers gone, these two geniuses were suddenly in positions of influence, in a game with three hybrid classes. Two guys who crashed servers because, for whatever petty and childish reason, they saw red whenever someone with a mana bar out-tanked Furor's pwecious warrior.

Talk about a perfect storm.

Then the class nerfs began.

Paladins suffered from nerf after nerf, beginning with a complete gutting of the class one week before the end of open beta. This culminated in a class review wherein the class was outright lied to by CMs, their forum trolls were praised, and almost none of their major concerns were addressed. They became a pure support class, almost identical to the Everquest Cleric. Big surprise, nobody wants to play them, either. Seen how many endgame WoW Ret Paladins there are? The latest Judgement of the Wise nerf only proves the point. Many will quit or reroll. Having your class being treated like a diseased dog for 3+ years with promises of "no nerfs, just tweaks" and then being lied to just doesn't sit well.

And now, in the next expansion "Wrath of the Lich King", Paladins suffer yet more nerfs. Divine Shield and Avenging Wrath should've been mutually exclusive. If you use one, the other should've been locked out until it fades. A post made by a player on the US Beta board said the two should be made to function like a "trinket". Use one, the other is placed on a 20-30sec cooldown making it impossible to use them both at the same time.. But Blizzard in all their vaunted wisdom placed AW and DS on a 2 minute Forbearance cooldown.

This is not a nerf to Retribution spec. It's a nerf to ALL specs. From here on out, it's clear they've no idea what to do with the Paladin class.

This begs the question, why are only Paladins the ones who have to suffer this atrocity? Why don't Warriors - for example - get an "Exhaustion" debuff when they use Death Wish or Mages using Arcane Power?

Ghostcrawler - the newest Dev in the bunch of monkeys responsible for class balancing - said at the start of WotLK Beta that they (Blizzard) wanted every class to be within 5% of each other in terms of DPS in the expansion. Every class except Paladins, apparently.

Shamans fell behind as other classes saw buffs. They were no longer PvP gods, and their PvE abilities were already behind. When their class review came around, they received very little feedback from CMs, their concerns were ignored, and they basically turned into this mishmash of burst damage and poor support, which no one really wanted.

Druids were treated better. Then again, they have several tame CMs. As a result, they enjoyed a great class review. Too bad it didn't last: Like the other hybrids, itemization and talents still pigeonholed them into pure support roles. Things got better in The Burning Crusade but there are still lots of issues they want cleared up.

Now combine this with World of Warcraft's raiding endgame focus (I mentioned they were EQ raid guild leaders?), and you have a situation where one-third of character classes are being forced to do something they didn't sign up for, from the moment they hit level 70 until they either reroll or move on.

Oh, and World of Warcraft's PVP designer was Tom Chilton ("Kalgan"), the man responsible for the overwhelmingly unpopular Ultima Online: Age of Shadows expansion. His view of PvP basically wrecked PvP in UO. It's good to know that Blizzard did their homework before they made their hiring decisions. His view was that weapons = skill. Which basically turned the whole PvP scene into a mockery of what it used to be.

Blizzard doesn't even hide their class preferences anymore. They have basically baited the entire WoW community, read most of WoW subscribers, into BC and now they are left with not much to do. Complete bait and switch. It's no surprise that most call TBC The Beta Crusade.

Vivendi buying Blizzard was viewed with great scepticism from the playerbase as they (Vivendi) had mostly been active in the TV scene and little to none in the gaming scene. They've also bought Sierra (who gave us Leisure Suit Larry). It's from here on out that the proverbial excrement started to hit the rotating blades.

And now, Activision has shat on the cake, too. Activision, if you don' tknow it already, are responsible for the quite popular Guitar Hero games. They've also had a hand in making Doom 3 and the Call of Duty games. And those are really their only gems. The rest range from horrible games based on movies and kiddie games no kid ever plays.

Blizzard is Blizzard in name only. A lot of the original development team are working on new pursuits (Guild Wars, I've also heard they're involved with WAR). I'm sure a lot of them are very bitter about the fact WoW is now a polished version of Everquest with tons of fun lore to play around with.

Oh and take a look at this gem:






Déja Vu, anyone?

I, personally, have lost all respect and hope for Blizzard's Dev team. They have absolutely no idea how to fix the paladin class and I'm not going to sit around and wait for them to pull their thumbs out of their asses and start listening to the playerbase who could balance this game better than the monkeys in the Dev Department could.