The biggest 'nerf' you have seen in an online game

Cafe Society
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World of Warcraft- The Paladin class. I think Blizzard really dropped the ball here. During the Beta, the Paladin looked to be a very interesting class. They had warrior-like abilities, but also undead-zapping spells. I was looking forward to making an ass kicking ghostbuster of a Paladin based on the description. Paladins were supposed to be hardier than warriors, but less offensive based. So a sort of counterpart, only with holy spells/healing. Paladins could use their abilities against the Forsaken, an undead Horde race.

Forsaken were very powerful; they had the best innate abilities. Since they were ‘undead’, they were immune to charm, sleep, fear, and polymorph. In other words, 90% of classes crowd control spells were useless against them. But Paladins could zap them with exorcism or fear them with turn undead. It was a neat countermeasure- Forsaken could wreck havoc against alliance, but Paladins could wreck havoc against Forsaken. However, Blizzard understood that it was a little unbalanced to have one class nearly immune to everything else. So they changed Forsaken to ‘humanoid’ and made their fear immunity a temporary racial abilitiy that could be used for about 20 seconds every 3 minutes. Even with this, they were still pretty powerful (since using Fear spells is a Priest/Warlock’s main way of keeping an enemy player at bay). Now that they were humanoid, Paladin anti-undead spells wouldn’t work against them.

In the long run, the nerf against Forsaken didn’t really hurt them that bad. A huge proportion of horde players play as Forsaken specifically because of the fear immunity ability. I can’t take ten steps in hillbarad without tripping over a Forsaken rogue or Shadow Priest- they are at a significant advantage. But the Paladin got left in the dust. Because while the Forsaken are toned down, the Paladin got massively nerfed, in my opinion.

Not only that, but they didn’t introduce the Paladin Talent tree until a week before release. Basically, they built the Paladin one way (Beta) which was decent and fun. Then they changed it at the last minute, and gave it skillsets that really pale in comparison to other class abilities.

The Paladin’s offensive spells are buffs in the form of blessings and seals. The problem with this reliance is that many classes can strip buffs off other players. Without his buffs, a Paladin is naked, so to speak, and little more than a Wariror without any special abiltiies. Seals operate on a proc per minute system. This means that the seal’s special ability (do more damage, gain life, gain mana, stun, etc) has a random chance of going off, independent of weapon speed. The problem with this is that the Paladin’s damage is very random- he has no consistent way of doing damage. Unfortunately, the Paladin was built SO defensively that it is very hard to kill other classes. Because they have no way of stopping enemies from leaving combat, nor any way of escaping, the fight is always in control of the other class- if the Paladin’s opponent is losing, they can get away (because ALL the other classes have some ‘escape’ ability). If the Paladin is losing, he is screwed because he doesn’t have any ability to reliably escape (short of immunity shield+hearthstone which can only be done once an hour)

What burns me up is the intense hatred the Warcraft community seems to have against Paladins, even though right now they are one of the poorest classes out there in terms of their effectiveness in raids, in instances, in leveling up, in PvP, in damage, and in healing. One argument for their poor performance is that since they are a hybrid, they shouldn’t be able to tank better than a warrior, or heal better than a priest. This is perfectly fine, but I think the argument has gotten taken so far that they justify the Paladin getting nerfed into oblivion.

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Paladins get area of effect, stuns and an invulnerability shield. Are you kidding that they’re not good in raids? They’re practically unbeatable.

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It’s next to impossible for a hunter or a warrior to beat a Paladin. They are one of the most powerful (if not the most) classes in the game and perfect for teenage alliance players ;0

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They actually have two invulnerability shields, one that can be casted on other people as well. I think paladins are a bit powerful, myself.

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Wow great parody post. I for a moment actually thought you were seriously trying to say paladins weren’t insanely overpowered.

Oh wait…

It really cracks me up how every time Blizzard gives the smallest nerfs to the most powerful classes everyone starts screaming about how their class is now ‘worthless’ and ‘underpowered’.

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I could probably ask my Everquest-lovin pal Derrick abotu his opinions. But that would take hours to relate.

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Can we please not have this same argument here? It’s been repeated endlessly in thread after thread on the WoW forums.

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Be nice. Incubus wasn’t frothing at the mouth like most MMORPG players do when their pet class is tweaked. That’s the SDMB breeding and socialization at work.

Disclaimer: I don’t play Worlds of Warcraft. I play City of Heroes, and I have played a few other MMORPGs in the past.

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I thought this thread was going to be about spongey footballs. What’s a “nerf” in this context?

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Basically like the spongy football. Instead of the nice pigskin you were promised, the MMORPG company hands you a nerf.

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The idea behind “nerfing” is that you take away the character or monster’s normal weaponry, and replace them with foam-covered plastic nerf bats. This is generally done when a particular character or monster is perceived (justly or unjustly) to have been too powerful, and often leads to a domino effect as a change in one creature requires compensating changes in others to maintain balance.

The one that bugs me is in Diablo II. When version 1.10 came out, all of the monsters became tougher. This was OK, for the most part, since almost every character build improved as well, some in ways that made previously unusable builds interesting, and a host of new items were introduced. Except for bow-using Amazons. In 1.09, I had an Amazon based around the Strafe skill, which fires multiple arrows in rapid sucession. In 1.09, she worked perfectly fine. But in 1.10, not only did Strafe not get any new advantages, but its damage was decreased by 33% across the board, and a change was made such that any given enemy can be hit by at most half of the arrows. To make things even worse, the two new bows that were introduced were both comparable to or worse than the easily-available midrange bows that were already available. So suddenly, Amazons had to use less powerful attacks, using the same weapons they were using before, against monsters that were tougher, more resistant, and more numerous, while every other class got more powerful weapons and attacks.

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The area of effect ability is a talent-based ability which uses a ton of mana.

They have one six-second stun. Their ranged mezz spell (Repentence) requires you go all the way down the protection tree.

Blessing of Protection only gives immunity to physical damage, and is on a 5-second timer.

Divine Shield is also on a 5-second timer, and cuts your weapon speed in half.

Tell me, FilmGeek, have you ever even played a Paladin? The Paladin is the only class that cannot reliably escape. The point of the post was comparing what the Paladin was looking like in Beta (Spells that actually HURT those fear-immune bastard forsaken) Healing Aura, Holy Strike, etc. The Paladin got changed one week before release, and it was completely different. This change only had a week of beta testing before WoW went live.

I can cope with the various shortcomings the Paladin has, like losing Contribution points when I use one of my shields, never being able to stop someone running away, never being able to escape myself unless I resort to shield+hearthstone. I’m just rather disappointed that Blizzard did so much at the last minute with the Paladin. The Paladin itself is decent, but the way the game mechanics work, particularly the nature of PvP make the Paladin far, far inferior in every department. Right now a Druid can do everything a Paladin can do an more. They ought to at least be on par.

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I agree, in Beta my paladin was my main, but live my druid is my main, and I haven’t really played my poor pally in weeks…margali is now 40 and poor aruvqan is stuck at 19=(

Pallys cant really solo a lot of the quests, they can’t run away nor single pull. Warriors get this spiffy attack where they do a bum’s rush at a mob that also is a stun, I have to run up and actually thwack a mob. If a warrior and my pally have the same mob targeted, I have NO chance of getting the first whack and the ‘credit’ for the mob. Any caster with any sort of instant spell gets the tag on the mob, any rogue throwing a knife gets the tag…any hunter using a ranged weapon gets toe tag. Pretty much every class is better than a paladin.

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No other class that I know of can hearthstone in a battle. That’s one escape, granted, it’s a long cooldown, but it’s an advantage, however slight, over other classes.

I understand you were upset about it being changed so quickly before release, and perhaps there were bugs that should’ve been worked out before release. God knows every other class was riddled with them, but that doesn’t make paladins underpowered in any universe.

Everyone thinks that their class is being shat upon by Blizzard. Plus, everyone thinks some other class is way overpowered. But, I think the game is actually pretty well balanced, all things considered.

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I agree about most classes being balanced. I mentioned in another thread that PvP is like paper scissors rock.

The Paladin gets a lot of grief over the immunity shields. Having temporary immunity is something that is really hard to balance in a game like this, but I think Blizzard did all right. In case you are not familiar, the #1 thing Paladins do when they put up the shield is heal, because in PvP if a Paladin tries to heal without the shield up, they will be kicked, counterspelled, earth shocked, etc.

Right now what makes Paladins kind of frustrating is that I will fight someone, and even at an equal level I will often be forced to resort to using my shields to heal. Often, I use both immunity shields, Lay on Hands, Hammer of Justice, Blessing of Might with Seal of Command to squeeze every bit of damage out of my attacks. When the opponent is weakened, they run away, drink/eat/heal, then return. Now I have to fight with them fully refreshed; the problem is that all my bread-and-butter abilities are cooling down. Also, the Divine Shield/Hearthstone combo only works at level 50+ because you need that high of a level to get the maximum rank of Divine Shield (12 seconds of immunity)

I would gladly give up the ability to shield and hearthstone for some other improvement. As it is, that tactic doesn’t really work very well; say I’m fighting in crossroads, then I shield and hearth…all the way back to Ironforge :smack: I’m so far from the battle I might as well call it a night. :stuck_out_tongue:

Because the Paladin’s damage-dealing ability revolve around random chances (Seals) a Paladin can get lucky and get 3 Seal of Command procs in a row, doing incredible damage. But the next fight against the same player, Seal of Command might never proc. No other class has to deal with this degree of randomness, and combined with the inability to control the fight, can make things kind of frustrating. I mean, I was shocked when I found out that Priests can outdamage Paladins! Priests! I thought they were the healer guys! But a shadow priest is one of the most formidible players in PvP! :eek:

Personally, I like the idea of casting a seal (a very short combat-enhancing buff), and having the Judgement ability that gives each seal the ability to become a debuff or secondary ability. The problem is that it isnt reliable, and frankly when the Paladin gets past level 40, the damage of his abilities does not scale with monsters HP. Aruqvan mentioned the Paladins ability to complete quests. This is true- its not impossible to get the Paladin to level sixty. But leveling up is a slow process, because the Paladin can often take twice as long to kill a monster than other classes.

Also, kind of an aside, the Paladin is nothing what the website’s description claims. Talk about false advertising! :mad: