Tuesday, September 08, 2009

The Newbie Paladin Experience

These newbie paladin whelps are spoiled rotten these days. Back in my day, we had to walk uphill to Stormwind, both ways, in the snow. These kids don't know how good they've got it. They're born with a silver spoon in their mouths. I blame it on the influence of those shilly-shallying blood elves. Seriously, those pansy elves spend so much time preening in front of a mirror, they wouldn't have the muscle to lift my old [Verigan's Fist].

Take that young whipper-snapper Zubon over at Kill Ten Rats. He rolls up a paladin and goes prancing merrily along:
I was amazed to see that she out-nukes the Mage: the damaging taunt does not activate global cooldown...

Taunt? What's this damaging Taunt nonsense? Back in my day, paladins didn't need a taunt. We held aggro because we were real men who used Seal of Fury, and the DPS understood they would die if they pulled aggro.
...so I can Exorcise immediately after starting the pull.

Pull? Bet these fancypants new paladins pull from range too. We had to learn to body-pull, and guess where we learned that? That's right, the school of hard knocks.

And Exorcism could only be used on Undead. Not fake undead, like the Forsaken, but real undead, who would scare the pants off these mincing dandies. Why, I didn't even see an Undead until Darkshire.
Drop a magic hammer as it arrives in melee, get that big first swing in, and the enemy is usually around 25% health.

Drop a magic hammer right at the start? In my day, we did things properly. First, we debuffed the mob with Judgement of the Crusader. Then we activated Seal of Righteousness (or Seal of Command if we were feeling lucky). Fifteen seconds later we were privileged to Judge again (and re-cast our Seal). These punks are lucky enough to have 10-second Judgements (8 with talents) and they still complain about being a 1 button class.

These youngsters are spoiled. Seals and Judgements scale with Attack Power? Hah, in the old days we stuck with the base damage. If it was good enough for us, it's good enough for them.
That takes less than a quarter of my mana, and the blue magic hammer gives me mana for hitting the enemy.

Getting mana back? We had to Judge Crusader just to improve our damage to moderate levels. If we wanted to Regenerate we used Seal of Wisdom, and just did white damage to the mob for a few minutes. And we liked it.

Sigh, do these cubs have any redeeming qualities?
It really is satisfying to crush your enemies with a giant hammer... My only disappointment is that her current best weapon is a big axe rather than a comically huge hammer. I like its numbers, and she gets huge crits all the time due to Retribution talents, but hammertime was both cathartic and classically Warcraft.

Well, Daisy, maybe the kids are going to be all right after all.




On a somewhat serious note, this is a major reason I don't agree with complaints about the "B Team". The modern paladin is light-years more fun than the paladin of 1.0 used to be.

15 comments:

  1. ObWhine that paladins get a taunt that actually does damage :)

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  2. new paladins all lack the most basic skill of all. Alt-tabbing back to wowhead (or thotbot back in the days) to start looking info on the follow up quests or looking at naked ladies on the net

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  3. There's still one thing when you're leveling alliance that truly sucks. It's a place called Kalimdor. The only trainers are at the Exodar, which requires you to fly to auberdine and then take a boat and then walk to the trainer - just as fast to go back to Stormwind - and Theramore, which requires you to have gone there via boat from the Wetlands to pick up the flight point, or to have waded through a zone where mobs will beat the snot out of you until you're at least mid-30s. If you're knocking out your late teens / early 20s in Ashenvale it's an incredibly long trip to the trainer either way. Even longer if you're in Feralas or Ungoro later on.

    Thank god for 30m hearthstone cooldowns.

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  4. That didn't matter back in the days where you had a single level up every few days. :-)

    My paladin is still engineer for the dynamite pulls! :-)

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  5. Hey! I saw your entry go by on my Twitter from the Wowr.us site so I thought I'd drop by to say hello!! Long time no see :)

    My little pally is 56 now, but is 4th or 5th in priority of attention so she won't advance quickly.

    At any rate, isn't it true that all the classes have it easy coming up now? :)

    As time moves forward it's more about leveling quickly to get to the End Game to "join your friends" or whatever.

    And yes, I agree with your B Team comment. From my experience, B Team is a mentality not a technical skill problem.

    Valdesta
    My WoW Blog

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  6. Seal of wisdom? We didn't even have that for half the game and without that, no judgement of wisdom. Can you believe my little dorf alt practically came out the pub with judgement of wisdom?

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  7. I leveled a paladin from one to 60 AS HOLY WHEN BLESSINGS WERE FIVE MINUTES LONG.

    UPHILL BOTH WAYS BAREFOOT IN THE SNOW.

    WHEN ELITES WERE EVERY GOD DAMN WHERE.

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  8. *Is another paladin who still has engineering for the ranged pull capability.*

    Although it wasn't all bad back then...remember when you could bubble twice in a row? Paladins are still pretty invincible while leveling, but back then I never had any fear of getting in over my head because I knew I could dual bubble away from any bad pull or overwhelming elite (well, except for magic users...but that's what my 1hr CD Lay on Hands was for!)

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  9. That's primarily because the vanilla mobs were slower. Every class could get away from every bad pull.

    An epic mount meant complete invulnerability to whatever mobs you ride through. Starting with TBC they kick you from your mount, they run faster than epic mounts, they charge and stun...

    ... and there are even birds who kick you from your flying mount. Yes, I'm looking at you, stupid Kaliri.

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  10. I remember leveling my pally during BC... as prot. I stood there and waited for the mob to die on my shield.

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  11. Not to mention the "free" mount, which took more time energy, and quite possibly gold (depending on repair bills) than any normal epic mount:)

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  12. Lol. Love this post.

    I've been playing a paladin for almost five years, and I find myself constantly falling back into this kind of "these kids are spoiled" attitude.

    Back in the day, paladins had to wake up two hours before they went to bed just to have time to kill a few mobs.

    QQ more spoiled bratz!

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  13. I miss those days to be honest. Granted, we are much more fun now but those days had a certain... purity in them.

    Seal of Fury, was't it? I still remember those Grievous (sp?) videos with Onyxia...

    Oh well, back to Icecrown...

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  14. In 1.0 I rolled every class up to around level 40ish. The one class I didn't get to level (as I played only alliance) was a shaman.

    The paladin was the worst...or the slowest. Leveling my shaman now (lvl 45), I realize leveling is so quick. I used to dread anything 30+ with out rested exp. Now I have heirloom items, and I crack a new level every hour or so. I'm sure a paladin would be a blast to level now, but I don't need two level 80 paladins.

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  15. My very first toon was a Pally I leveled up to 60. I left WoW and came back, and rolled another pally. OMG it's light years different, and easier.

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