Paladin Feedback specifically around the pip mechanic

Reborn Beta
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#1

I know that I’m about to poke at someones baby. As a dev I know that never feels good. Let me preface this with: I love the Paladin. It’s likely my new main unless the final class is a satisfying melee dps or better yet a Dark Knight… It tanked better than the Warrior on all of the trash pulls. I never felt like I wasn’t able to pick up mobs having such a short cool down on my taunt. It was refreshing after so long as a Warrior feeling like group tanking was so painful. I love the fact that the second tank class fills all the gaps I felt with the Warrior. The kit is great.

However… While I like the tanking side of things and all of the individual abilities I do think the pip mechanic could be more engaging.

There are too many interruptions to the flow of combat. I’m ok with slow and steady but the Paladin feels like it jumps from 80 mph for a second then back to 5 mph for 2 seconds alternating the whole fight. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in Atlanta rush hour but that kinda stop and go traffic flow is infuriating. I’d rather go a consistent 30 mph the whole time than have the 80 mph bursts and brake slamming.

That elaborate analogy to say, I think the pip system needs to be rethought out. My suggestion would be as follows.

Auto attacks are on a consistent .25 or .33 second cool down. Something that you can get a nice relaxed rhythm to your swings and feel more like you’re swinging a big hammer around.

Auto attacks generate pips instead of consume them.

These two suggestions have the following benefits.

Combat now flows better. There’s no stunted waiting on pips.
It eliminates “waggle to win” that can currently be done.
It eliminates the unrewarding and unsatisfying 5 damage attack from a giant hammer.
It still gates DPS and prevents players from injuring themselves like the original Warrior.
You feel more like you’re swinging a large hammer around.

If you were to remove pip generation from Call Lightning, you get the side benefit of making the abuse of the hammer throw teleport harder to do without an out of combat pip builder. I’m of two minds on this change though.

I would expect damage per swing to be adjusted as well keeping in line with a tanks dps.

This also plays more into the pip management play style. You’re more likely to hit max pips and thus stop mitigating damage. With the current pip mechanic, I don’t believe anyone would ever hit 5 pips outside of pre-fight prep or even need to think about losing their damage mitigation. It’s so unlikely that it may as well not even exist.

Further adjustments would be to balance out spell casts. Right now, your heal is pretty strong and on an extremely low cooldown.
I think this should have a pip cost. The Libram of Blessing is likely fine as a 0 pip cost ability. The Libram of Power and Healing should likely be 1 pip each.

I believe these changes shift the Paladin from a play style of struggling to generate pips to do anything to a play style of ensuring pips are consumed through ability use as soon as possible to keep from maxing them out and gating your own pip generation.

Once again. I love the Paladin and it’s kit. I just think the current iteration of the pip mechanic is holding it back. As usual though this is just my opinion and can quite likely be different from the rest of the community.

I did post this outside of the general Paladin feedback thread for more visibility and to also narrow the scope of discussion to specifically the pip mechanic. Hopefully that’s acceptable.

#2

I agree with some of your points, but I think you are oversimplifying. Looking at your video, you keep complaining about having nothing to do between taunts and that combat takes too long, but you aren’t using your librams, which is what you should be doing while waiting for pips, and will help you do more damage. As far as paladin being a waggle class, it really isn’t because you do effectively 0 damage when not using pips, and you usually have enough time between pip generation that you can attack at a much slower speed and still be just as effective. That said, I do think there needs to be some sort of timer between empowered hits so you can’t get full orbs then spazz out on a mob/player to instantly deal 5 empowered hits.

I’m also a bit confused by your proposed system. Do you still also generate pips by taking damage? If so, that may mean you don’t want to attack at all in high damage fights to prevent yourself from losing your mitigation… which would be pretty boring. Although the current system also needs to be adjusted for this situation, since the solution now would be to just spazz your hammer on an enemy so that you never are pip capped. If you meant that pips are no longer generated through taking damage, then you only ever generate them at a set rate (attack rate), which takes away from the whole “reactive” design of the class.

Overall I think the class and your proposed version definitely need some work. Personally I would much rather see a different approach (Perhaps directional arcs to swing in every so often? A parry system? etc.) than another rhythm based attack like the ranger.

#3

With the proposed idea, you would still generate pips from damage. I don’t believe you would ever want to stop attacking. You would just be required to use other abilities that consume pips. The intent was to eliminate the micro down time while fighting and balance out pip generation with consumption. It may not be perfect but hopefully sets the stage for improvement.

When playing the paladin I did not have to stop my regular rotation to use Librams. They take 0 focus outside of grabbing them which is simple as long as you have nothing in your pocket slots which is how I eventually started playing. I did not find the use of Librams to have any impact on the stutter stop combat. Librams are also not on a cooldown that enables them to be up alternating with your pip down time. Maybe ever other down time you’d have but again, using a Libram did not interrupt or impact the use/generation of pips.

I would argue differently on the waggle topic. It is the definition of waggle. The fact that I can lightly touch an enemy to deal full damage and instantly consume all 5 pips by waggling the hammer at an enemy instead of taking deliberate swings makes it a waggle class. Yes, no pips, no damage. That’s an entirely separate issue to tackle as that feels bad as well.

Would the directional arcs work like the Warriors combos?

I think parry would be far too challenging to do well in an MMO environment. Especially the public quests with a dozen Paladins running around.

#4

I do not want to see directional arc attacks for the Paladin as it will just turn into another warrior, especially since theyre both one handed weapons(the warriors shield never factors into combos so its pretty much the same).

#5

The way the Orbs work now i think is fine. i found that unless im soloing or fighting super low level mobs, having orbs to deal damage wasnt really a problem. When tanking for the group, i was either holding aggro on multiply targets and taking many hits, or tanking a boss whose auto attacks did enough damage to keep my orbs recharged. In both cases, just by taking regular hits and making sure not to die to aoes, not just spamming away the hits. against some weaker mobs its possible to purposefully stand in their aoes to get a bit of extra globes.

if orbs were generated by swing ur hammer and hitting the mob, then that would only encourage waggling to win. Not only that, but the whole class would need to be changed since it couldnt be used to empower your hits, since hitting it is how u get that charge in the first place, and it would make it so that the only way to get more than 1 orb is to wait, not hitting, for the mob ur fighting to give u the orb, make the problem worse than it was before. if the charge then doesnt work on normal hits, it would only be used to teleport and ground smash meaning u would need to spam one of the two to not have full orbs

#6

To me, this reads as standing there not fighting. The core of the problem I see with the class.

This is why I suggested a cooldown on the auto attack. To prevent waggle and provide more of a feeling of swinging a large hammer around.

I don’t understand this logic here. You would simply swing and get a pip. Consume said pip to cast your Libram. Swing again to consume the buff and deal double damage and gain a pip. You have to choose to use the pip for that Libram cast or build up for something else. You would generate multiple pips via multiple basic attacks before your Librams cooldown expired allowing you to use both the Libram and other abilities while maintaining the threat of maxing out your pips and losing your mitigation.

#7

what i suggested is that you should be able to hold your hammer up as long as you want and keep generating, but if you get hit, you take full/bonus damage. this way you have to time holding your hammer up as kindof a reverse warrior.

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