Eyonix gives Paladins some (forum) love
seems to have taken quite a lot of coffee this morning and made a rare appearance on the Paladin boards by making a lot of posts on a couple of threads. The Blizzard CM, not to be confused with the eponymous Innkeeper in Stormspire, surprised the Paladin community by responding to some threads dealing with Protection Paladin weapons and Avenging Wrath. One thread asks for a decent Paladin tanking weapon, which is in short supply compared to the numerous Warrior tanking weapons which have Warrior-friendly mitigation and threat-generation stats. A Paladin tank benefits from a +spell damage weapon -- oddly enough one of the best Paladin tank weapons are the different Gladiator Gavels. Eyonix responds that the amount of spell damage a Paladin tank needs is directly proportional to the raid's DPS capability (in a nutshell, strong DPS needs higher +spell damage) -- which doesn't quite answer the request for more +spell damage tanking weapons, but it was nice to hear from Eyonix, anyway. As a bonus, Eyonix reveals that his Paladin tank is currently raiding SSC and TK with a *gasp* Continuum Blade.
With regards to Avenging Wrath, Eyonix doesn't quite address the fact that it's an easily dispellable (leaving Forbearance, to boot!) buff that has little use for Holy Pallies and in PvP (great from screenshots, though!). He does chime in to say, however, that the Blizzard devs "didn't shoot down" the observation that Avenging Wrath currently confers no benefits to Holy Paladins. Without making any promises, Eyonix says, "you never know what the future holds." Of course, Paladins should learn not to expect anything. This is Blizzard, after all. Eyonix cleverly avoids posting a response on a thread that has had seven maxed response iterations -- suspiciously Kalganized. WoW Insider's Dan and Brian both think that Blizzard could communicatebetter, but any presence from Blizzard is better than no presence at all. Eyonix also posts a sobering thought on his own thread by saying that "All classes are a work in progress. That doesn't mean any class is "unfinished". Our design team will simply never be satisfied with any area the game. Our goal is to make this game the best it can be in every area imaginable." Coming from someone who has more than a few 70s -- and thus knows classes reasonably well -- that's certainly good to know.
