I recently hit 55 as paladin. While I have been tanking in groups and raids I have noticed one thing: I have several abilities which I almost never use and those abilities are rescues. Paladins have several of them, but so far pretty much always I have needed only one of them (best one is used of course) while others just sit there in my UI wasting screen space. All this because mobs can be forced only once per 30 secs. Large set of rescues for paladins might have been good with functionality where you could force mobs as you wish, but now that forcing is limited to once per 30 secs that extensive rescue set is just wasting screen space as useless remnant of the past. How about removing some of them and adding some other utility to paladins instead?
Give it a bit of time before you request class changes. If anything the paladin could be toned down slightly, not given more skills. Paladins have 4 forces available to them, plus one hate dot rescue. 1)RI-CoB clicky helm, FT plus hate (quest item) 2)Entwine-AE forces any mob on your defensive target plus healing them. 3)Contrition-Hate DoT (no longer able to force the dot on mob if it has you targeted) 4)Shining Beacon-AE force, plus hate, plus dmg if undead. Uses virtue points 5)Protector's Fury-FT plus large dmg (can be used when mob is immune to FT for extra dmg!) They are all super useful, I don't think a night goes by that I don't use at least 4 of them. Any raid where I'm not currently tanking Contrition is up a fair bit of the time. Next thing you're going to say is that Wings of the Avenger isn't on your hotbar /boggle.
having different rescues is great in situations where a lot of mobs switch target often due to heal aggro or trigger happy aoe dps The idea is to NOT use aoe rescue and to force target the mob that you loose aggro on, while doig some aoe hatred building with aoe skills or finishers. If a mob is still refusing to turn to you after the initial force, you can use another on it and do some single target aggro building on it before switching back to the group target.. All in all, having multiple rescue skills CAN be handy, IF used properly. Off course, its more of use in groups doing dungeons then raids. Rescues are needed most in dungeons with roaming adds that can social aggro even MORE adds. So you can never have enough of them.. Bottom line is: a good tank uses his rescues and hate skills so he never EVER looses aggro on a mob in encounter list for more then 2 secs.
Paladins need no further tuning down anymore, their on par with dreadknights atm agro wise, slightly below dps wise id say. not sure how the warriors are doing, ours has been mia a bit. I never liked the force taunt immunity, the classes weren't designed around it, and like in the paladins case takes away some of the utility.
Paladins are quite strong in the utility department already. We really shouldn't be getting any more utilities.
As a paladin I must say, if You're using or needing to use force taunts so much, you need to become better.. I can go entire or runs, or raids sometimes without that mob ever looking away. Even against epic dps.. That being said it does happen --- that's where part of our rescues come in... When u lose Agro, u can force it, now u basically have 6 seconds'ish to burn that baby till ur back on top of the hate list. Now ok, what do I do with these other rescues... Well for adds on ur party members. Say now 1 of the adds says ok I'm gonna go after this cleric, u target the add, and the cleric rescue off him, now burn him as much u can so ur hate trumps his healing Agro, then switch to the next add. The heal rescue is a neat one, even if it dosnt pull off due to immunity still heals the player... Also the forget the name, as I'm I. Bed atm hehe, shield of contrition? The one that adds hate over time...just another good use of adding hate. I don't think the pally needs changing, I've loved mine since shortly after launch and I created him. I used to use it ALOT more away back in the day.. I guess pre 55, pre-geared.. And before all the mobs were dumbed down.. Like when tot flips were hard, and fun
Well, I`m just a lvl 48 Pally, but I`ve been playing for very long, sever since 2007 with long breaks. I only use rescue when we get unexpected aggro. And even so, after that we always have a rogue/sorc/psy that can manage and control the crowds. I`ve never needed to use rescue many times in one situation.
The heal rescue is something my pally would use all the time. If I'm tanking, I would 'rescue' someone who had been hit and it would give them the heal and causes no force target immunity. So it's basically an endurance based heal. The damage one can break people out of mezzes if the mez is that type.
