Best. Blog title. Ever.

Posted on September 13, 2006 by Scott Jennings| 28 Comments

From the nascent WoW ranter community: Your Paladin Sucks!

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  • http://projectparadox.f2o.org/ Stephen W.

    Wow, I can’t believe this blog has been around for more than a year and I’ve never heard of it. Talk about class discontent. Personally, I’d be happier learning how to play a different class more effectively than lamenting how bad my current one is, but that’s just me. :P

  • http://tatteredpage.net Chas

    nascent? NASCENT? You, my friend, mustn’t visit their official forums.

    Or do you mean nascent like “has not yet reached SWG teleporting-protesters-into-space
    proportions?”

    That could get interesting.

  • http://weblog.probablynot.com Jason

    I still love the fact that the new expansion basically says, “Sure paladins suck, but at least both sides will now suck equally. Reroll a shaman for the alliance! Frost shock!”

  • http://www.beafraid.com Hellfire

    Welcome to MMOGs?

    For what it’s worth, that site is pretty tame. Nothing he says on there is even remotely “out there” as far as some of the rhetoric in the community. He’s saying what the fair majority of us have been saying for months – “what the fuck? … *sigh*”

    If you want to study the disconnect between intention and reality in class balancing there’s few better examples than WoW-paladins. Blizzard has this vision and they are adamant that it’s right, just and that paladins should universally love it, except many (most?) of us don’t. This boggles their minds. They simply have no idea why people dislike what they’ve done.

    Matters are not helped by whiny mount-breathers that think divine shield is horrifically overpowered and should be removed, yet simultaneously state that the class is balanced because we have divine shield. This is actually a topic of current discussion on the blog and elsewhere as there appears to be a new priest AE that can dispel said shield. There is, shall we say, concern regarding this issue and rightfully so – unless there’s some as-yet unreleased buffs coming in TBC we’ll be taking it in the pants.

    When Blizzard talks about fixing paladins it’s in the sense of a dog being fixed, not a car. And no, neuticles don’t help.

  • scottj

    Players would have liked playing Paladins a lot better in WoW if they were called by their correct title, “Clerics”.

  • http://www.beafraid.com Hellfire

    Correct.

    Although the population would be about 1/2 of what it is now, maybe less. The only reason I still raid with my paladin is because my alts aren’t high enough yet to lead raids in the zones my guild needs me to lead.

    That and interfering with me raiding on a regular basis is like putting your hand in a bears food bowl.

  • http://www.thisisnotacommunity.org D-0ne

    Blizzard is making the same mistakes that SOE made with their first expansion of EverQuest.

    Some classes are being overpowered almost to the point of it being obvious to *everyone* but Blizzard and other classes and races are being disempowered to the point of it being obvious to *everyone* but Blizzard.

    Long story short. There are going to be a lot of some classes and very, very few of some other classes.

    As a reminder to everyone, when you roll that Shadow Priest know full well that in the next expansion of WoW you’re going to see a reveral of fortune as melee saw with the release of SoV…

  • http://www.heresy.com Bob

    OMFG! An entire blog dedicated to whiney emo paladins.

    Never liked paladins. Never liked @sshats who played paladins, because it was always “I’m the paladin, lookee me!” while everyone else wanted to slit the luzer’s throat.

    I’m with Hellfire. Site is boring. Now we need a site called KILLTHEHALFLINGS.com. That’d be cool!

  • http://www.paladinsucks.com Mastgrr

    Woah there! I’m not emo!

    It was originally just a project meant to create some form of effort of a grass roots organization towards our Paladin review in 1.9.

    After our review was finished I contemplated to shut it down, but feedback from the readers prompted me to continue.

    I even asked before the one-year anniversery the readers if I should change the name. They didn’t want to do that, so I kept it.

    But Stephen W is right…that this thing has been going on now for over a year wasn’t something I expected. The only real reason why I continue with it is because it happens to provide a service to people and that I also happen to be a selfless utilitarian by heart.

  • Evangolis

    So, has there ever been a class specific site, for any game and any class, which has ever said, “You know, this class pretty much rocks.”?

  • Aufero

    So, has there ever been a class specific site, for any game and any class, which has ever said, \’e2\’80\’9cYou know, this class pretty much rocks.\’e2\’80\’9d?

    The two class specific EQ Beastlord sites I used to visit regularly were pretty positive.

    As for Paladins in WoW, now that everyone thinks they suck it might be time to play mine again.

  • Freakazoid

    The blog is well and good, but being reminded of WoW paladins just makes me want to drink heavily.

    Players would have liked playing Paladins a lot better in WoW if they were called by their correct title, \’e2\’80\’9cClerics\’e2\’80\’9d.

    No, I think players would have liked playing Paladins a lot better if they were just a different flavored warrior. That’s how they advertised them at release and that’s how they were before public beta.

  • http://www.edgecase.net/devsite/ Cael

    So, has there ever been a class specific site, for any game and any class, which has ever said, \’e2\’80\’9cYou know, this class pretty much rocks.\’e2\’80\’9d?

    For about three years, the SWG Smuggler forums were pretty much stuck with “We’re gimped and we can’t smuggle, but we’re still cooler than you.” I dunno if that counts.

    But it did bring us the immortal phrase – “Quiet Jedi. Grownups are talking.”

  • http://lostranger.blogspot.com almagill

    Sorry, too funny. After a year of reading “oh man this is just a rip off from WoW” for *every* change in SWG, it’s just too funny to see Blizzard making a total borgles backside out of an expansion.

    Hang on.. I play a freakin’ pally in WoW too, they’re out to get me!

  • http://www.beafraid.com Hellfire

    the Safehouse (EQ rogues) wasn’t always positive but it quickly and deservedly built a reputation for being honest and well-informed. The rants one occasionally found there were rarely unintelligent or laced with ridiculous hyperbole…well unless it was for comedic value.

    All classes are bell curves, that’s how it works. There’s the small contingents on the “ZOMG THIS SUX WTF LOLS!” side and the opposing “LERN2HEAL WTF STUPIDS!” side. I’d like to think the majority of us (the smart ones) are striving to be a true melee/healer hybrid and understand the need for things to be balanced. I (we?) just don’t think that’s happened yet. At all. Nor do we (I) think that Blizzard, in any way, understands the class or how real people actually play.

    The big nerfstick coming down on bubblin’ married up to the way Blizzard responds to paladin concerns just plain pisses me off. People who agree with them are right, people who don’t are wrong and stupid. It’s just that simple to Blue. The current public TBC info was definately not a “good” thing for paladins to begin with, this just makes it worse.

    A vain hope that Blizzard will “figure it out” in the next 3 months when they’ve been looking at nothing but the inside of their own sphincters for the last year is still hope, right?

  • Sweetmeat

    I don’t know about a class specific site, but the Controller Forums on the CoH website pretty well recognize that playing a controller is better than sliced bread, fast cars, or sex.

  • IanB

    The paladin’s problem is not that it is weak.

    The paladin’s problem is that it is boring as all get-out.

  • http://cnn.com ubvman

    The paladin\’e2\’80\’99s problem is not that it is weak.

    The paladin\’e2\’80\’99s problem is that it is boring as all get-out.

    See, in EQ1 – Clerics are REQUIRED to even sneeze in any sort of raid event. To balance for this, the lifestyle of a cleric is usually spent sitting down with several bouts of casting 10 second heals repeatedly on a tank. Your in great demand but basically your gameplay is akin to watching paint dry.

    I don’t know much about WOW and the Paladin situation but if they follow the SOE method of “balancing” classes, (and if what you say is true) WOW Paladins should be needed everywhere.

    OTH, a big chunk of the clerics in EQ1 are bots or boxed alts.

  • D-0ne

    Most high end raid Clerics in EQ are macroquest bots. The major reason for this is that bots react perfectly, always.

  • http://www.eqclerics.org Boanerges

    EQ is a bit of a unique screwup tho. The original developers put in this crazy spell called Complete Heal that healed 10k. As the game grew, so did the value of CH. Worse, they made clerics the specialist healers and left everyone else with crap for heals (next best heal behind CH was a 910HP heal). Then they raised the HP cap of mobs (32k to 2 million) and made these marathon fights. With the next expansion and the in-combat/out-of-combat system it’s likely that you won’t NEED a boatload of clerics except for the most extreme fights. But everyone and their dog knows to avoid these problems now (WoW and EQ2 both have IC/OOC regen and no specialist healers that drastically alter the balanace of the game).

  • Freakazoid

    But you could say only having two major healing classes (priests and druids) is just as bad as one specialist class. In 20/40-man raiding, major healers doing anything but healing is usually risky, unless it’s an act to improve healing (potion, innervate, shield). These classes are still essentially one-dimentional and if it weren’t for Blizzard’s client-side cheat detection, these classes would’ve long been botted for raiding by now.

  • http://www.eqclerics.org Boanerges

    Keep in mind that healing as a core role is still pretty one dimensional and probably will always be. Bar goes down, you cast a spell to bring it up. There’s not a MMOG out there that I know of where you can’t, to some extent, farm the role out. Even without bots you can still two-box a healer since you see the same bars the healer sees.

    But devs are crafty people and they don’t like bot or alt healers. I’m impressed with some of the strides EQ has taken that really require you to have a real person running that healer. And in no game can a bot/alt healer replace a person dedicated to playing that class. Keep in mind also that Blizzard has avoided another EQ mistake by not making a specialist who is one-dimensional. It took SOE some 3 years to admit that a one-dimensional healer class eventually begins to wear thin. A WoW priest and druid can still aid their party in non-healing ways and in non-disaster mode that non-healing can play a role in group efficiency. Healing adds no efficiency whatsoever.

  • Pluto’s Dad

    I hate paladins. I’ve known one nice one, the rest are all griefing harassing jerks. So of course they are mad at their pvp nerf, now they can’t attack my priest when I’m trying to do the Barov quest line!

    (it took me 3 hours due to all the paladins ganking me. And yes, pretty much only paladins. And this is an RP server not a pvp server. Funny we horde don’t gank people doing the undead Barov quest.)

    Paladins stand flagged on corpses when I try to look, they jump in the water on my fishing bobber, i’ve had to turn right click=autoattack mapping off because of Paladins constantly harrassing me trying to trick me into flagging. They are the worst, vilest, most immature bunch of ganking losers in the game.

    Something about the class attracts those kind of players, just like the rogue class does. Yes I am prejudiced and bitter.

  • Pluto’s Dad

    oh, I DID leave them a nice post saying they should not have been nerfed. I think Blizz spends too much time listening to whiney 12 year olds.

    I just don’t like them. Too many bad experiences. heh

  • Nomad

    I’m sort of fascinated by Pluto’s Dad’s comments – does anyone else feel like paladins, or any specific class, has a higher proportion of assholes than any other? I haven’t noticed this really at all, barring situations where a class is given a particularly griefable skill.

  • Suicidal Zebra

    Nope Nomad, but then I play(ed) both a Rogue and a Paladin. I’ve found that many warriors are uppity idiots, and the odd mage with a head the size of Jupiter, but generally the people that I have played the game with have been alright.

    Anyway, to be honest Paladinsucks was, as Mastgrr said, never really marketed itself as a ‘my class sucks’ site. Rather, over the last 14 months it has served well as a ‘one-stop-shop’ for new Paladin, and later general WoW, information with comment bent towards a Paladins point of view. The guys posting there are on the ball and unlike WoW.com and worldofwar.net Paladinsucks isn’t limited in the sites we can link to. Plus the sort of angst which is a common part of the official Paladins Forums almost never rears its ugly head over there (unless Vaelin has an axe to grind ;) ).

    I hope that the site continues well into future as a great source of new Paladin and WoW info, without the fuss of a huge forum and all that brings.

    As per Evangolis’s suggestion, i’m now off to register ‘nerfwarlocks’ ;)

  • Thoma

    It’s not so much that any one class is full of jerks, it’s just one class that gets on your nerves. I feel that way about Rogues, mostly because they never shut up about buffs. But that doesn’t mean all rogues are pricks, just the ones I know.

    And even for those that dislike our class, you have to admit that we got screwed over pretty badly. We didn’t get to see our talents till the test realms. We had a bunch of low level talents moved up higher in the trees. We had one talent moved down but in the proccess it removed the justification for allowing Ret Paladins into raids.

    The only thing we got from review that we wanted was longer buff durations. And the angst thing is fustration. Most of us thought we were going to be differant types of warriors and tanks. And we’re not. Tanking is the only role in the Holy Trinity that doesn’t have two classes equally as good at it.

  • Lummy

    Makes you wish LumTheMad was still 10 years younger – they really did know how to rant back then ;)