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Horde Paladins and Alliance Shaman in WoW Expansion
Gamespot has the news that Blizzard will be allowing 'crossover' classes with the new races promised for the Burning Crusade expansion. The Paladin class, up until now an Alliance class, will be allowed for the Horde race of Blood Elves. Likewise, the Alliance Draenei will be able to choose the Horde Shaman class. From the article: "According to Blizzard, Horde paladins and Alliance shamans will have many of the same talents of their traditional counterparts, though they "will also enjoy some unique abilities to themselves, similar to the priest class' racial specialties." Since this new feature will fundamentally change the asymmetry between the game's two factions, it will presumably have a significant impact on the way the game is played, especially in competitive player-versus-player combat." It's also likely to somewhat balance the preference between the two factions. A pretty race for the Horde, and what is considered (by some) a very powerful class for the Alliance.
Speaking as a Tauren Shaman, I wouldn't want to face someone who has Windfury and Frostshock.
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
I might start playing this game again if the alliance get shamans, This move looks like it will very nicely balance out the tower of power that the Horde has enjoyed.
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I look forward to seeing group combinations involving totems, auras and blessings. Now, the alliance can't whine about the supposedly overpowered Shaman class since both sides will have access to it.
If i wanted to hear bullshit, i'd go to church.
and I saw this comming... this is a sad day for creativity in gaming. Just making everyone identical is not a good way to balance a game. If WoW ever had a soul it has officaly lost it.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
With 9 classes instead of 8, it's going to be more difficult to create a well-balanced raid group. I think eventually the paladin will simply phase out the shaman in end-game horde raids.
I frankly don't really care who gets what, I'm just disappointed in Blizzard.
I've played a Shaman to 60 and enjoyed it. It was the uniqueness of the class that made Horde stand out. The dungeon 1 shoulders are unmistakable, you know it's a shaman. In PvP a shaman is really fun to play due to the high survivability and DPS, although melee was nerfed somewhat in the last patch.
On the other hand, I found it unique to also fight against a class I couldn't group with. Paladins are a special challenge, especially against my rogue. Their gear is mostly gold, so you can really see them coming as well.
This just seems like a cop-out by a company that used to do innovation very well. They supposedly class-reviewed the shaman and for some reason gave them PvP buffs (especially with their offensive spell tree) when shaman were asking for more PvE utility. Horde in the end game is tougher than Alliance and the pally/shaman issue is the reason. So instead of coming up with a good idea or listening to the customers who had some great ideas to help shaman out, they just ignore the whole thing and give the Horde paladins, and Alliance shaman.
It'll take months after the expansion for either to make their presences truly felt but I guess Blizzard is just trying to scape a couple extra months of playtime out of an increasingly boring game.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
More information from Blizzard.
I, for one, welcome our new Space Shaman overlords.
Shamans are almost useless in end-game raids, when you can have paladins instead!
Shamans for the alliance will be a nice novelty, but ultimately a white elephant in dungeons. they will be quite a nice addition for burst damage in pvp though.
on the horde side, the raiding shamans will see their roles marginalized by new paladins.
i could live a little longer in this prison
WoW forums explode. Incidentally, Blizzard information page containing lore about the announcement.
A Horde Paladin? Paladins are against everything evil, bad, unholy, etc. Half the horde is considered evil bad and/or unholy. What's next? Undead paladins? Gnome shamans?
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
From Eyonix, a Blizzard employee:
"Something we have always held to as a core design philosophy is developing classes which are distinct from each other. This means developing a class with it's own abilities that clearly separate it from other classes in terms of how the class plays and operates, both for the player and from a design stand-point.
Early on in the inception of this game, it was a hot debate as to whether factions should have a specific class, which they alone have access to. Some wanted all classes to be distinct from each other, but accessible by all. Others thought that more flavor could be generated by keeping a class unique to a faction. Obviously, if you have one side with a unique class, you should probably give the other faction a unique class as well. Thus, Shaman and Paladins became those unique classes.
However, by linking them in a relationship as unique counter-points, options are closed for our main design goal, which is to keep classes distinct. We want factions to be balanced, but don't want to cut and paste abilities from one to the other and homogenize the classes. If we went that road, there would be little difference or need for a distinct class. We want classes to be different in more than just name-only or superficial appearances.
So, in our desire to keep the classes distinct and open up new possibilities for development of each class, shaman and paladins shall now be a playable class for both factions. This decision comes at a time when we have an opportunity to blend this decision into future development. Namely, with the new races in the upcoming expansion. Prior to the new races, the Paladin and Shaman lent themselves easily to their own factions and not that well to the opposite faction (Tauren Paladin? Gnome Shaman?) With the advent of the two additional races, the choice was made more clear in game design and lore.
In terms of game design, one of the options it opens up is for specific classes in dungeon encounters. We already have several encounters that highlight the abilities of a single class or make use of a classes specific abilities. Shaman and Paladins in the previous design could not participate in such encounters. If killing a creature required a Shaman, the Alliance could never beat the encounter and vice versa. This change allows the two classes to bring their own abilities into a situation which may highlight their class as an integral part of the encounter."
This is actually one of the few official responses from Blizz that I see as legit. Hopefully they can give the paladin and the shaman some really cool and distinct new abilities in the expansion.
"How to make money from WoW" ads. Real money item and gold buyers don't add anything to a game (except very easily beaten high levels :P).
This isn't to "expand play opportunities across factions", its to ease the burden on the designers of having to constantly tweak existing content for two separate play dynamics, not to mention this constant cry by the player-base to balance the Paladin against the Shaman.
The ugliness will begin when the loot tables for both sets are turned on, and guilds that do MC/BWL content start seeing drops wasted by a month or more of Paladin loot for the Horde, or Shaman loot for the Alliance, before the classes are of the appropriate level to raid.
I find them pretty much anorexic
The new alliance race, on the contrary, looks like it could kick ass.
I know enough people who strongly advocate the game to imply it at least had a soul at some point and heavy handed game balance changes with no respect for the established game world story or "fluff" as some call it is high on my list of ways MMOGs can lose there souls.
;) Since the alliance is gaining these talents through the introduction of *new* races the existing storyline is not being disrupted, existing races have not been altered. The storyline expands with the expansion. Matter of fact, using your definition of soul the game continues to demonstrate soul since one of new races, the Blood Elves, were in Warcraft III.
It seems your followup is unfounded as well.
In a thousand years it will be interesting to see what Digital Archealogists make of all of these postings. Most likely the fundmentalists be searching for the remains of one of these unique cross-over classes and arguing against the 'imaginists' who believe that all of this was just a highly ritualized social interaction.
I'm sooooo glad I got out of WoW. As is usually the case with these games, the first year or so is the "glory era," after which everything that made the game fun is slowly eroded away. I went through this with EQ, DAoC, and now WoW. Even the stupid bugs and stuff didn't bother me. It was new and different and fun to explore, but the longer the game marches on, the more insane content and bad ideas find their way into the game. Cheerio, World of Warcraft.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
I hate to add to all the QQ, but WoW just became a little more boring. They should be adding two more classes unique to each faction rather than merge them together.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
The thing that astonishes me the most (and I've played WoW off-and-on since the release day) is that it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever for Blood Elves to be Paladins. These are the elves that broke with the night elf race due to their all consuming addiction to magic. Paladins draw their powers from divine sources and divine power is non-magical (if you don't play WoW or have familiarity with the backstory, this may not make sense). But anyway, it smacks of a slap-and-dash solution to an underlying game issue and it just makes no sense. I always really liked the fact that the Horde went to the elements for their power and the Alliance went to their belief in divinity. Now that distinction is worthless, and it was done in a way that contradicts the backstory of one of the races. I'm sure, they will come up with some hokey "explanation", but I don't even play a Paladin or a Shaman (any more), and I'm still looking at this change and going, "WTF? That makes no sense." I didn't really expect that my first reaction to a basic fact about the expansion would be that. I was more expecting, "Hey, neat." Blizzard caves to the eternal whining of the forumkiddies. How disappointing.
Right now there is a big issue with the newly implemented "Global Looking For Group" (LFG) channel which has basically turned LFG from a useful tool into the worst general chat channel to rival Elwynn/Barrens chat. This factor alone has got me to drastically cut my playing down.
What was it that finally got to you?
this is about the stupidest idea ive heard
blood evles as paladins?
Ex-WoW player here. Can't say I'm surprised. Nor can I say that it'll end ANY whining. Heck, it'll give people new causes to complain.
Now the Alliance people can complain that the Horde pallies are overpowered, and the Horde people can complain that the Alliance shamans are overpowered. And thus, we have balance. Until the "nerfbats" come out (which everyone but the warriors really bitch about... because the warriors can always find better gear).
The primary 'good' thing I can see coming out of this is that Horde warriors will (eventually) have competition for their platemail drops (because there will always be idiot paladins on both sides who want the warrior armor).
And if people keep getting PoS loot (shaman/pallie when there aren't any), might as well shard it all. Really sucks for the people who've been raiding for 3-5 hours though.
Then again, I dropped WoW when I decided that I was tired of dungeon/PvP grinding/farming. Because that's all it is--one big farmfest. You work your ass off for the 'high end' gear, which takes multiple hours to achieve (at which point you're just sick of the dungeons), then you go over and do the PvP farming for rank/rep (after which you're also sick of all of the battlegrounds). Little wonder why people are leaving. (I now play EVE Online)
"I've spent my whole life figuring out crazy ways to do things. It'll work." -- Montgomery Scott, "Relics"
I play WoW. Not a lot, like I used to, but I still play. I intend to get the expansion and I think I will enjoy it, even though I am a casual player these days. I'm even considering getting another account so I can dual box. It makes solo'n a lot more fun and the money is immaterial to me. I've played since beta so I have a pretty good knowledge base of the game (been in a hardcore raiding guild for a while now, one which is consistently in competition for furthest advanced on our server, Windrunner). I was the second person on my server to hit level 60 in my class (Warlock).
All that said, I think people who are whining that both Horde and Alliance will be basically the same now (in endgame) are making assumptions.
First, the Horde Paladin will not be identical to the Alliance Paladin. The same goes for the Shaman on each side. The new racial abilities will see to it that they are different in a meaningful way. If there's one thing I know about racials in WoW, they ARE relevant. Take Perception for humans, WotF for Undead, and Escape Artist for gnomes as just three examples of how racials are useful. I promise that Blizzard will make the new racials quite useful as well. And on top of that there will be specific skills, like the Priest class has, which are unique to the new cross-overs. For example, undead horde priests have Devouring Plague, which is a pretty good Drain Over Time. Nobody else has that.
Well, ok then. So what about the problem with "evil" paladins? Uhm, what? Who said the Horde was really, inherently evil? Show me somewhere in the WoW Lore that says Horde are 'evil'. Tell me why the Argent Dawn would ally with Horde if they were? Just because they are at war with the Alliance makes them evil? I don't think so. So the Horde sees things differently than the Alliance, and so they clash... Take any number of real life examples and you see that two groups can be at war with each other and either none or both might be considered "evil". Sometimes it's very difficult in a war to see which side is right and which wrong.
I wouldn't mind it, however, if the Horde Paladin, being Blood Elf specific, was given an extra word in the name, such as Crimson Paladin... But that's beside the point.
From personal experience I have found that the people who tend to leave WoW are the ones who can't play along with others. They can't join a guild or don't want to because they just don't have a very agreeable personality. So they wind up playing alone. And they wind up watching as everyone else progresses and has a good time while they are still wearing the same old crappy blues, or whatever. Well, like I said, whine, bitch moan and sniffle. If you can't play well with others, WoW isn't for you.
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Blizzard always screws up expansions. Starcraft was okay, then Brood War added a bunch of units and screwed up the balance. Diablo was okay, then the expansion (don't remember the name) came along and screwed up the balance. Blizzard makes great games with okay balance from the get go, but always ends up releasing an expansion that screws up the balance. So this announcement is more like par for the course.
Blizzard,
I hate to be the one who has to tell you this, but people are still going to whine about the game being improperly balanced or their character class being underpowered. as soon as somebody in WOW loses a dual/pvp combat it must have been because their class is unbalanced.
There are people out there that will complain that their mage can not win a sword fight with a paladin.
That is the nature of a MMO... people will complain.
you can either do what SOE did and continually change the game listening to the complainers, slowly making the people who liked the game as it initially was quit (and you will eventually be left with a GREAT warcraft-starwars galaxies clone),
OR you could take a stand and tell the people if they dont like to get beaten by paladins, make a paladin, and when you dont like getting beaten by rogues, make a rogue. If you still cant deal with it point them at the box and say it is rated for teens and up, and suggest they go play some bob the builder.
Taurens are pretty
-gjr
Mmmmmmmmmmm. Donkey ears.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
...this screenshot, then. http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/burningcrusade/imag eviewer.html?/burningcrusade/,images/screenshots/, 45,61,/burningcrusade/townhall/draenei.html - Looks like a Draeni to me.
Informatus Technologicus
First, there is currently a serious PVE imbalance between the Horde and Alliance. Conventional wisdom held that the survivability of paladins and their raid-wide buffs were balanced by superior Horde DPS. This has been proven false. The Horde does not do more DPS.
The statistical superiority of Blessing of Kings, the superior mana regeneration of Blessing of Wisdom and Judgment of Wisdom, not to mention the increased 40% DPS potential of Blessing of Salvation* makes the Alliance superior in a PVE setting in almost every way to the Horde. Second, don't even mention PVP because it is irrelevant. The factions are balanced in PVP and in no way is the current state of PVP broken in massive favor of one side or the other like it is in PVE.
When designers plan out encounters, be it in a dungeon or raid environment, they have to consider what each class will be doing in that fight. Some fights make exclusive use of a particular class ability, such as priest mind control for Instructor Razuvious, or hunter Tranq Shot for Flamegor. Without these abilities, you cannot beat the encounter. They are designed this way on purpose. With a difference in the factions, you cannot design a fight around paladins or shamans because of this fundamental difference. From a design perspective, you have effectively marginalized both classes. There is currently not a single fight in the game that requires a paladin or shaman.
Furthermore, the concept that Alliance should have more survivability whereas Horde should have more damage limits the potential for timed encounters. Take Patchwerk, for example. You have 7 minutes to do roughly 4 million damage before he enrages and you lose. Most Alliance guilds are killing him in about 5:30-6:00 whereas Horde guilds are coming in at just under 7 minutes. Do you see the problem here? Even if Alliance guilds actually did less damage than the Horde, (which they don't), you couldn't design encounters like that without screwing one side or eliminating the whole concept of a burn-or-die fight. Equalizing the factions improves the PVE game.
When you design fights that do not require specific mechanics, you eliminate the potential for creative, new encounters. By allowing both factions to have all classes, the designers can create more innovative, class-dependent encounters that do not marginalize any one class. As a raid leader, I'm very excited about this change for two reasons:
1) Encounters will be more fun and creative. 2) The versatility this change offers is tremendous. My current plan for a standard operating procedure will be something like:
3 druids 3 shamans 4 paladins 5 priests +- depending on what we need for an encounter
Speculating that this will somehow break the game or eliminate the need for shamans is asinine. Adding another 10 levels to the game automatically trivializes old content. If you want to see how this is true, go to BRD and let a level 52 mob cast on you. See how many times you resist. At level 70, a level 63 mob can no longer land crushing blows. This makes current fights like the Twin Emperors or Nefarian trivial. Players that aren't currently able to see this content will be able to PUG it with 15-25 people at level 70. The point is, we don't even know what abilities and changes will occur to classes in the expansion. Shamans could get bloodlust, which would make the best paladin buff of today pale by comparison. We just don't know, so speculating about how shamans will be worthless is stupid.
Now, for the people whining about how this is a cop-out decision, or uncreative, the developers have been debating this since alpha. After a year and a half, they realized how drastically distinct classes broke PVE. For those complaining that they should "fix" shamans, here is why you are wrong:
Raid-wide "greater totems" are a bad idea because the core design behind shaman
In these parts we refer to them as "Handles".
*tunes musical instrument* To the tune of "I'm a little teapot"
I'm a little paladin, short and stout! Here is my hammer, and my free mount!
When I get in trouble, hear me shout! Just throw up my shield, and hearthstone out!
Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week...
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
I don't play WoW, but do know WC3. WoW is derived from the story in WC3.
Basically, Death Knight comes pretty close to a Paladin. Consider the WC3 abilities:
- Death Coil is equivalent to Holy Light.
- Death Pact heals the DK while Divine Shield only renders the Paladin immune to attack.
- Unholy Aura heals and speeds up friendly units while Devotion Aura only adds protection.
- Animate Dead is similar to Ressurection, but the effect is only temporary.
Funny how the Death Knight heals a lot more than the Paladin... Anyway, I would've expected WoW to implement horde Paladins as undead Death Knights. The story even goes back to WC2! Doing an exact copy (and giving it to any race OTHER than undead) is just uncreative and ignoring the story they so dearly love.Anyway, how much simpler can this be? A Death Knight is a fallen Paladin. Instant horde Paladin!
I can see why people would consider the Draenei to be far more powerful than the Blood Elves: they look like Cthulhu! One thing I can't understand is that it would seem more logical for the Horde to have Draenei and the Alliance to have Blood Elves. Not that I'm complaining; with this new class I'll be able to play Alliance with a character I like.
They kidnapped a Draeni pally and got the power from him. I have this funny image of a bunch of elves confronting the Draeni and yelling, "Give me your God. Give me God now!!!" Sorry, pal...it doesn't actually work that way. And yeah, I read the flimsy lore.
Paladin performs Hand of Justice on you. You are stuned. Shaman's Earth Shock Crits you for 900. Shaman gains 2 attacks through Shaman's windfury. Shaman crits you for 895. Shaman hit you for 600. Shaman crits you for 1295. Paladin gains one attack through Wind Fury totem. Paladin hits you for 459. Paladin's Seal of Command crits you for 1200. Paladin hits you for 300. Paladin's Seal of Command hits you for 600. Paladin's Judgement of Command crits you for 600. You are dead.
... shows the ignorance of your comment.
Players have whined and whined and fucking whined that Paladins and Shamans are too different and need to balance better between each other. In other words, they were effectively asking for them to be the same.
Instead of destroying two classes to make the one class that might keep people quiet, they decide the best way around it, while still keeping the uniqueness in both classes, is to allow both factions access to it. No more complaints that the Horde get overpowered Shammys and the Alliance get overpowered Loladins.
And yet, somehow, people still find a way to complain. Now apparently, even the people that don't play. They can't fucking win.
Next up was PvE. Running Molten Core 120 times in hopes of getting the one drop you need. And you need it so you can get good enough gear to hit Blackwing Lair, whose gear you need to be good enough to tackle AQ40, whose gear you need to be good enough to tackle the Necropolis, whose gear you need to be .... well you get the idea.
What finally broke me though was the server lag. I was a MUD admin, I understand the internet, and I can tolerate some lag. But when Blizzard designs encounters that REQUIRE 40 people with a good connection to have a shot at beating that encounter (I'm thinking of Vael here) and the server lags to the point with only 3 groups working on that instance that the encounter is unbeatable, why should I keep playing? Our BWL group was up to Firemaw at one point. And then for MONTHS we couldn't get past Vael. We'd organize, gather, wade through the 8,983,391 paladins hanging around BRM to get into BWL and then we'd beat the General and throw ourselves at Vael for 4 hours before calling it quits. Our strategy was fine, but with the lag, we simply could not do enough damage quickly enough to beat her.
That, plus I'm starting law school this fall, it was just a good time to quit. That was in April. I checked back with my guild after the Shaman talent "improvement" was done, and the lag is still a problem. So to hell with it. I loved WoW and I wish I could still play but I've reached a point in the game's advancement where I have to schedule my life around gaming rather than schedule gaming to fit into my life. I don't want to be like that. I did that with EQ and DAoC and while I had some fun, I eventually found myself irritated and frustrated, throwing all my energy into something that wasn't giving me much back and wasn't all that fun. I decided that if I wanted my life to revolve around that kind of experience I'd just get married. :)
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
[Blizzard's cheap shot crits you for $14.99 a month.]
[You die.]