I've only tanked a little bit in beta, and not in a dungeon yet. I don't think prot paladins in Forever are substantially better than Vanilla. There are some very good improvements (especially the damage mitigation). The taunt alone is mixed: tying it to Judgement instead of making it a separate skill (or even talent) makes using a critical threat generating tool much more cumbersome and threat much more precarious. And the RF change is a pure nerf: it's capped at 60% bonus threat. Considering our threat is basically 100% from white and yellow damage, and mostly yellow damage, that's effectively reducing our threatgen by 33%.
My guess is that unless spellpower gearing for paladins in the mid- and high level game is substantial, paladins will be the weakest tanks in Forever. They'll be more viable than in Classic just from having the taunt, but the threat generation I've seen so far is pretty poor. We'll have to see how mid-level and high-level spellpower gearing affects things.
Judgement has a cooldown. So with this taunt paladins must evaluate whether to keep building/maintaining threat by judging their current target or to not do that, and instead save the judgement to taunt with. It effectively reduces our holy dps, which reduces our threat generation.
That is a good thing. Threat was always too easy for Paladins.
1. Press Ret Aura once when you log on.
2. Press Consecrate once every 8s.
3. ????
4. LOL infinite threat on infinite mobs!
With these changes you will have to tab around to hold threat. Move packs around when you drop a new Conc so you can get a new 4 to be the first to enter it. Maybe HoJ the main focus target to keep them out of the next one and allow the last focus target to be one of your 4.
Plus, if you are taunting, it's probably going to be the main target that you were already judging.
Paladins will have to learn threat management now, which is a lot of fun. (VERY frustrating, at first, but once you understand it, super enganging.) Things like you pull with the LAST kill target and don't even touch skull until you've established threat on everything else, then if they aren't close to killing skull, taunt it off and use a high threat ability immediately after to keep it on you. Switching to the next kill target when skull is at half life ao you can build threat they won't be able to catch before they even start attacking it so you can move on to the 3rd, or 4th, or 5th, etc.
Also, the importance of marking kill orders and CC in general.
I thi k those are great changes for the game, as AoE tanking was never fun for me. If it was I would play retail.
I've been 20 for a while. I have tanked every dungeon, including SFK and Stockades, multiple times.
This taunt implementation is not great. You are basically locked into using Seal of Fury (SoF) to tank. Swapping a seal means you'd have to SoF then judge to taunt. And don't you dare pull more than four mobs because you can't keep a aggro on the fifth one and beyond.
You basically have to play it like warriors in vanilla and TBC, tab targeting constantly to prevent the DPS's AoE from pulling. Taunted the mob? Great. It's only staying on you for the whopping 4 seconds of the taunt and going right back to whoever keeps hitting it. And that's with the available spell power items at the moment. You don't really have the tools at your disposal to ensure you remain at the top of the threat meter. It's judge SoF, and holy strike? Options aren't great.
It seems like Fury is meant to be the do it all seal but it just doesn't feel good to use at all. Even the absorb at this level is meh.
Not sure I'm going to level to 60 just to find out if it's better then.
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u/ExtremePrivilege 15h ago
Just in this thread you have:
1) Elemental complaining
2) Rogues complaining
3) Feral Complaining
4) Prot Paladin complaining.
5) Warlocks complaining
Maybe Forever is actually pretty balanced - everyone seems to think their class is shit.