Friday, July 21, 2006

Tanking Idea: Fear Immunity

Okay, here's a random idea to help improve factional balance AND help us tank.

1. Take Fear Ward away from dwarf priests, and give it to Troll Priests.
2. Make paladins immune to Fear.

Now, Horde gets easy mode on bosses that fear. Instead of having to stance-dance, their priests can Fear Ward them like Alliance does now.

Alliance-side, because paladins are immune to Fear, they become a viable choice for tanking Fear-based encounters like Magmadar and Onyxia. (Or you can have a stance-dancing warrior, but the paladin has an actual advantage.)

This choice also makes thematic sense. Paladins are stalwart defenders of the light. Being immune to fear fits that vision of the paladin.

As well, it shores up one of our big weaknesses in PvP. Because of our lack of speed and range, Fear hurts us far more than any other class. A fight between a paladin and a warlock/priest actually becomes interesting now.

Edit: Okay, as the comments are indicating, a passive immunity to Fear is probably too extreme. How about a self-buff/debuff that breaks Fear and grants immunity for 10s, but increases damage taken by 10%? Maybe make it 'Unyielding Faith', and have the talent be "Improved Unyielding Faith", reduce damage taken by 2/4%?

9 comments:

  1. Let's make Paladins immune to everything. Kk?

    ReplyDelete
  2. This idea is unrealistic and simply put, bad. Passive immunity is not something you hand out, even based on lore. In fact, Paladins already have Unyielding Faith.

    Forsaken were originally classified as Undead, and thus were immune to Sleep, Charm, Polymorph, and Fear, while being subject to a Paladin's abiltiies and a Priest's Shackle Undead. This was grossly overpowered and as such, it was removed rather quickly when Blizzard realised the affect on the game. Undead were too strong vs a number of classes, but too weak vs others. Since class designed was based on class vs class rather than race vs class, Blizzard fixed both with one fell swoop, changing Undead to Forsaken.

    Also, Paladins do not have any weakness to fear. I have quite a few friends who play Paladins in major guilds, and they often talk about the class or let me see it first hand. With decent gear, a Paladin can instantly kill any warlock pet, and then burst a warlock to dangerous levels before his first or second fear. Keep in mind that fear breaks on a damage check, so Blessing of Sacrifice breaks fear very quickly, with diminishign returns for the warlock. Without fear, Priests would fall over dead if a Paladin simply looked at him. The only defence mechenism they have is fear; without it they are dead in a very short time frame.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have a 60 Paladin and a 60 Horde Warlock. Fear does not break on a damage check. It has a chance to break, but unlike other CC, it's not guaranteed. Why do you think the standard practice for 'locks is to DOT things up and then Fear?

    It is possible that priests may have a really hard time. Like all ideas I propose, they are more thought experiments than anything else, and need testing.

    But from personal experience as a Warlock, keeping a paladin feared is a trivial exercise. I mean, it's not like it's hard to see them running very slowly towards you.

    ReplyDelete
  4. That's why I said on a damage check. Damage over time spells do not break the way normal damage does. A check is down when you take damage, however, for a dot, it is down every 33% of the duration. Try it for yourself, Blessing of Sacrifice on 3 or more targets will almost instantly break any fear as each tic is treated as a seperate event.

    This is what I don't understand. Paladins don't run any slower than other classes. Infact, I'd wager that they run faster - since they are not subject to snares that are on the majority of classes the majority of the time.

    I wonder, how well geared are you? Gear does more for certain classes than others, and Paladins are certainly one of those. All the Paladins I know have Sulfuras, Avenger or better.

    ReplyDelete
  5. A paladin needs to run back into melee range. That's where the extra time comes from. A warrior will charge/intercept, a rogue will vanish/stealth and sneak up on you, the other classes will just nuke you from range.

    This is practical experience from a warlock speaking, not just a paladin.

    And no, I'm not geared. There are CT Profiles on the sidebar. But expecting every paladin to have Tier 2.5 and Sulfuras is excessive, in my opinion.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Maybe I should make my anti-paladin strategy clearer. I don't actually attempt to kill them in BGs. I just Fear them. No DoTs or anything. My aim is to remove them from the fight, until they can be focus fired down.

    Paladins are really vulnerable to this sort of tactic. Hamstring, Disorienting Shot, Earthshock appropriately, Counterspell, Sap. There are a lot of ways to remove a paladin from the fight, without actually killing them.

    As a warlock, my gear is not good enough to kill a paladin on my own, especially the epic-geared ones I see everyday.

    A passive immunity is probably too extreme, I agree. The problem is that if it's a buff, then you can just cast it on warriors*, and if it has a cooldown, the cooldown has to be shorter than two fears in a row. At that point, it may as well be passive. Warriors have to switch stances to access their Fear-breaker, which is a significant cost, but paladins have no equivalent cost.

    Maybe a self buff that increases damage taken by 10% but breaks/makes you immune to Fear for 10s?

    I'm just carving out a niche for paladin tanking, and I think Fear-based fights are a good target. Not too common, very thematic, and something the Horde already complains about with Fear Ward.

    *This actually is the problem with Salvation. It's clearly meant to help paladins tank, but it makes warrior tanking even better.

    ReplyDelete
  7. The desire to tank really comes from the desire of a melee character to be in melee. See my posts on 'What is a Paladin'.

    Personally, I don't really want to tank, even though I'm Protection spec. This idea really came from a bunch of different places:

    1. A lot of paladins do want to tank a little bit. We get plate armor, it's a shame not to put it to some use. This point of view is understandable, even if I don't share it.
    2. I do think paladins need a better defense against Fear. Quite honestly, my warlock should not be toying with Tier 2 paladins wielding Sulfuras. I'm still wearing greens after all!
    3. Horde seem to be complaining a lot about Alliance EZ-Mode, one factor of which is Fear Ward.
    4. Fear Ward is unfair to human and night elf priests. Race should be a matter of taste, imo.

    All those got mixed together and I came up with paladins tanking Fear-based fights. I agree that in 95% of all fights, warriors should be the tank. But mixing it up 5% of the time is worth working for. Keeps things from being overly boring. This way, the paladin has at least a halfway reasonable argument for tanking something like Magmadar.

    As for mana, there's Blessing of Wisdom, Seal of Wisdom, etc. Plus, I think that calls to "Innervate the tank" would be quite hilarious. :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Paladins are better off closing in than other classes, since they do so unsnared and with the ability to use that downtime to cleanse and instant heal.

    Wait, where'd this come from?

    I don't agree with you about paladins closing in. Any class can stay out of range of a paladin if they care to.

    Second, Freedom only lasts for 10s (untalented - 16 w/talents) and has a 20s cooldown. It's good, because it keeps us from falling behind, but it doesn't help us close the gap.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Lol, you misunderstand me. I'm not negative about paladins. I think they are a strong class. See my previous posts on paladins in PvP.

    I do think that they are slightly too vulnerable to Fear. Fear causes you to lose ground. Most other slows merely reduce the rate at which you close. Fear actually sends you backwards, which is worse for paladins, because you have to now make up both the ground you lost, and the distance to the target.

    But it's not an "OMG, paladins are useless because they get Feared". It's just a weakness, one that you have to take into account when you play. From a pure game balance point of view though, I believe that it would be more balanced if paladins had a way to combat fear (a slightly more reliable method than Unyeilding Faith).

    (Notice that I have never complained about pally DPS, which is the traditional forum complaint.)

    As for closing, you say that other classes don't take into account that you are unsnareable. Relying on another class to play stupidly is not a good tactic. If the other class just runs, you cannot close with them. But if you do not chase, they'll turn and nuke you.

    Finally, balancing around the assumption that all paladins have a specific 31-pt talent, or a specific profession is not fair. You shouldn't have to have something that specific to compete in a balanced game.

    ReplyDelete