Next Hero Class: Unholy Paladins.

By alex

Hey guys – Just been reading all the blog posts about the nerf we’ve received to Exorcism as of 3.1.1 that went live yesterday/today (US/EU)

Now in the week since 3.1 came out I’ve not done any pvp. Not a sausage! (not including jousting!!) But we all knew this was going to come – a day or so after looking at my exorcism damage i said to one of our prot-a-dins “Watch them nerf it next week…”

Low and behold its done. Thankfully not in PvE phew!

Anyway I read a comment on Tim’s latest post over at Suicidal Zebra from Dallana:

“Ever consider that it’s more often than not, Holy’s fault that Ret gets
hurt?”

Well that got me thinking to the future…something that blizzard could offer us Ret Paladins…

No-one wants to switch mains – not really – you loose all that hard work you put in to get your achievement’s done, and all that awesome collectible loot and fun stuff.

So I came up with an alternative. This will stop all the game breaking nerf’s and bring something new to the game that people will love:

Unholy Paladins.

An optional quest chain would be opened up by paladins wishing to turn their backs on the light and move away from that which was held so dear for so long.

This quest line would take you on a journey of discovery….from one end of Azeroth to another – bringing you back to your ultimate decision to become a paladin. This is a far throw from what happened to Death Knights…this is something different.

Quest by quest each of your main abilities would be corrupted from what we know it as now to their new versions – the dark twisting magic that begins to envelop you the deeper you go on your journey slowly changing the very way you perceive the world – things appear darker, more uninviting.

Your veins begin to pulsate with the hatred for all things holy – the mana burns from your body and a new power system call Unholy Power starts to take over…

The culmination of this quest line is an epic battle between you and your Unholy brothers in arms and the Priests and Paladins that are fighting to battle the corruption from within their very souls.

There would only be 1 talent tree – this is a pure DPS class with raid utilities similar to regular paladins, but wholly different at the same time.

Lets look at some of our new/changed abilities:

Curse of Blood. This 1 hour buff grants you with something similar to combining Seal of
the Martyr and Blessing of Might and Kings – All stats are increased by 15% and all direct melee attacks have a chance to do damage based on a percentage of attack power multiplied by weapon dps.

Damned Crusader Strike. Our old Crusader Strike’s powers are taken and twisted. An instant attack that causes 115% weapon damage + 33% Attack Power and silences the target for 2 seconds. 6 Second Cool Down.

Unholy Storm. Divine Storm has a new ability – As well as hitting 4 targets around the Unholy Paladin for 110% weapon damage it also does this as unholy damage and is not resistible. 10 Second Cool Down.

The old seals and judgement system is gone. Curse of Blood above folds our only useful seal into its blessing and no long does any damage to the user.

Unholy Damnation. This is an instant cast ability that hits the target for 200% weapon damage. This ability also heals you for 10% of the damage dealt – 8 second Cool Down.

Desecration. Like Consecration, but better – this ability does not stay where you pop it – instead it follows the Unholy Paladin – 8 second duration/cooldown.

Our heals have changed as well – Flash of Light becomes Flash of Darkness and Holy Light becomes Unholy Darkness. Core abilities stay the same, but add a HoT affect upon critical which heals for 33% of the amount healed over 5 seconds.

As mentioned earlier the mana bar is gone – its been replaced with an Unholy Power bar. (sounds like some sort of chocolate snack!) This starts empty like a rage/runic power bar and increases depending on how many abilities are used in a certain period of time. Once at 100% your damage is increased for 15 seconds by 30% at the end of this time your bar returns to 0 and you have to work your spells again. Filling your bar to 100% should take about 2 minutes creating a kind of auto avenging wrath every 2 minutes but is controlable by not doing certain abilities that grant Unholy Power.

It just an idea, a fantasy I’ve had – something I’d love to see implemented as a viable option for Paladins who truly want to dish out some retribution.

It kinda all sounds a bit Death Knightish, but with a twist – there’s not tanking nonsense here – its pure dps with some raid utility added in to make us useful in raids.

Can you think of any more interesting new spells to add or change?