Remove or Rework Paladins

I feel like Paladins aren't a fun addition to the game. You're basically forcing a few people to play an age as support slaves. I know a few people probably enjoy playing paladins but I think most people don't. I know all of our KD's paladin players hate it, we only have them because we feel they're necessary.

If you don't want to remove them, at least make them less of a chore. For example, Paladins Inspiration should go back to being a regular spell or removed. It's a spell that's good on all provinces all the time. There's no strategy involved in casting it, it just forces paladin players to have to constantly refresh it like a chore. Maybe more situational spells can be buffed to compensate.

This is just my opinion and the feelings of people in my KD. How do the rest of you feel about Paladins?

If they lose key things, like Inspire for example, there is no reason to play them, and then the people who like the support role lose their niche because they are just extra baggage at that point. I think its nice to have them around but they aren't necessary from what I can see.

If its that much of a chore, it sounds like you need moar Paladins... They can be attacker as well as a TM role, Faery is the most popular, and Dryad has only 4 but for me those are the two.

Outside war Dryad/Paladin are going to want to be training wizards, so they should have decent enough guilds/success rate to handle regular casting on KD mates along with any more TM-minded Paladins you may have. Once in War, Dryad gets some decent protection spells for itself, and it can generate the offence where it needs to be chained. Once chained you can start taking advantage of Barrier of Integrity, as well as huge slaying potential with 15 point Elites vs Dragons.

It needs to be given a couple of Ages and kept somewhat stable over that time, so that people can figure it out and develop the niche, I think...

PS - Was the first time I looked at the survey really this Age, I really thought Paladin would be more evenly spread!

So this is my second age playing Faery Paladin. I am a leader in a kingdom. I am finding the role fun. However, the other Paladin does not. The difference between us is that he went for a decent Mage wpa, and I went for just above attacker WPA and a Hybrid's TPA. I think Paladins are fine this age. The minimum difference in WPA for successful casting is lower now and I feel it's worked to allow Paladins to be more of a hydrid than a Mage. I am basically built like a thief. A weak thief, but yeah.

If they were going to touch Paladins, then I'd say give them a bonus mana regeneration, or increase guilds efficiency by a small amount. Paladin mana is basically kept for the kingdom to use, so the less build space and population that need to be given to making sure you can cast regularly and effectively means there'll be more space to allow the province to develop a secondary role, namely I'd say a Thief ops role.

I think if you want to make a support personality, you might as well go all out.

Reduce mana usage to 1% for all spells. Spells cost 50% less.
Paladins don't have access to offensive spells. Get rid of the Paladin offensive spells.

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Originally Posted by elmoheadbutt

I think if you want to make a support personality, you might as well go all out.

Reduce mana usage to 1% for all spells. Spells cost 50% less.
Paladins don't have access to offensive spells. Get rid of the Paladin offensive spells.

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+1

I agree with this. Paladins barely have mana for offensive spells anyway, and using them feels like a waste when playing a support caster.

I'd also like to add +20% DME would be very nice for Paladins. Especially Faery Paladins, with their reduced income, i found it necessary to run a somewhat lower draft than i usually would, for the bonus gc and the extra BE for more building percentage spread. But i'm not in a top kingdom, i'm in one of the lowly KDs that war most of the time, but get hit with waves more.

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Originally Posted by Kido

+1

I agree with this. Paladins barely have mana for offensive spells anyway, and using them feels like a waste when playing a support caster.

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Agree, as the only DE Pally in my KD this age, ain’t nobody got mana for it!

It's not mandatory for a kingdom to run paladin. Its an option and prob less necessary than rogues or mystics for non-attacker roles. Our kingdom doesn't run any and we honestly don't miss then. We did run two last age just to try it out.

Paladin isnt a necessity and really doesnt fit in some kd builds. If no one enjoys playing it, design a kd setup that doesn't require paladins. Leave the paladin for those that enjoy it.

However, I would support reworking the paladin. Atm, only faery is a viable way to play paladin due to the spells a faery grants being much more powerful than a paladins selfspells. Imo, paladins should have access to all duration self-spells.

And is it necessary for failed Support Spells to kill off so many wizards? Bad enough you fail trying to help someone but having your wpa drop is rubbing salt in the wound :’(

I think Paladin's are great - it does require a lot of activity though - more than any other role.

The refreshing spells thing is a bit of a chore, yes, but beyond that there is plenty of utility around waves that can be just as fun. A major thing is to time Paladin activity to enemy wave times rather than just your own - Wrathful smite, Town Watch, last minute GP bounces, Magic wards on op wave times etc. - there's a lot of potential to do damage to an enemy - Just you have to get used to the idea that the effects are more "invisible". So you don't get the instant gratification of seeing NS numbers pop up, but a timely WS cast does the same thing. Or you don't see the thief losses from a Prop op, or instant drop in wizards from AW - but get the right spells off at the right time - and same thing.

Bear in mind, the "chore" aspect isn't really any different from the "chore" of a mystic keeping MS or chastity up, and just like how Mystics, and both have other non-chore spells to cast.

I'd try to integrate into the game a better way of keeping track of Paladin spells though - currently they're the only spells in the game you cast but cannot see the duration of. We have workarounds of course, but no reason this shouldn't be integrated in the game (maybe something like the espionage page - but make it so you can't see if a spell has been mved, just like for enemy kds (for balance) even if the person is logged on - but at least some way of keeping track of durations without manually logging every spell + duration offline).

Adjusting the formula so there is greater reliance on Paladin guilds rather than recipient guilds, or just a greater duration boost in general will also remove some of the "Chore" behind it. I think that'll be better than +1 mana actually - and maybe less balance issues, and be more "unique" to give Paladins maybe a 25%-33% boost in spell durations - being able to only recast spells on an attacker 2X a day rather than 4X a day will help a lot with the extra-high time commitment needed for Paladins, as well as remove some of the "chore" part of the role.

Home KD Espionage tab

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Originally Posted by Omnilam

And is it necessary for failed Support Spells to kill off so many wizards? Bad enough you fail trying to help someone but having your wpa drop is rubbing salt in the wound :’(

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Self spells on others, boosts your kingdom performance, it shouldn't be risk free. So yes it should carry the same casualties as failing a spell against a hostile province.

Also if there's no downside to Paladins you might just as well give all spells to everybody and do away with Paladins instead, save people of the hassle to have to go through an intermediary.

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Originally Posted by changeling

being able to only recast spells on an attacker 2X a day rather than 4X a day will help a lot with the extra-high time commitment needed for Paladins, as well as remove some of the "chore" part of the role.

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Or it would just decrease the needs for Paladins by one prov and allow you to swap that Paladin to a more productive use.
Lets face it, Paladins is a slave personality, there's no way around that and it's never going to change as long as the feature stays.
It used to be the same thing with Elves back in the days and everybody who played in those days warned that this was going to happen. The only difference from back then is that a race is easier to balance than a personality.
Kingdoms are going to go with the least amount of Paladins that they can get away with so there's absolutely no way of reducing the chore, because instead that'll just reduce the amount of Paladins.

What you call a chore I call a cool way to support your team : What you call a slave personality I call Support personality. Eye of the beholder it seems ;D

-DM <3

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Originally Posted by Zombies are people too

What you call a chore I call a cool way to support your team : What you call a slave personality I call Support personality. Eye of the beholder it seems ;D

-DM <3

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Yes I agree that it's team support, I'm not denying that and if you're one of the people who enjoy playing them then good for you :)
I don't agree with calling it a support personality though since you're expected to give everything to everyone, that's more in common with a public toilet.

If you want to make Paladin a true support personality then I'd suggest increasing the bonuses but also significantly increasing mana usage by a lot so that you'll actually have to select which provinces receives a boost and which doesn't.

IMO also make Faery unable to select Paladin as race and you'd see some actual variation, right now Faery is the only really viable choice for Paladin since Paladin scales so much more with Faery than any other race.

You dont give everything to everybody. I have a large collection of pics and gifs of people and things flipping the bird for whenever my kd mates asked for dumb things.

Paladins and clerics are partly just an attempt to import familiar RPG feel good names into this game.
I won't say if I like the Paladin concept but instead, Ill focus on this inconsistency:

Paladins cast aid spells on kingdom mates but the game doesn't see aggressive/aid action in this even though real mana and runes were expended in aid.

I think:

1) Kingdoms should have a shared market for trade and offers.
A province might offer up to X food/runes for trade and other provinces could just decide how many they want, and trade.
Aid spells would be the same, and the game devs would have to decide what the value of a spell is , which is hard now because I think a spell cast from a large/small province does the same thing, but the rune cost is less for a small province?
ie- the aid spells get cast by the spell target when they decide to go to the Kingdom market page (aid) and take the trade.

2) Trades can be x for y, or x for y over q number ticks.(ongoing contracts)
It makes sense for provinces to specialise a bit in goods ...
consider the current scientist system where a human puts all scientists into alchemy + banks.
He makes gold a lot.
The other guy is a dwarf mystic who has scientists in production.
He casts FL much.
It makes sense the kingdom might be a bit more efficient if the dwarf guy gets his gold from the human,
and the human gets some of his food via contracts with the dwarf.
It would help the community feely thing in kingdoms, but go very wrong if they get chained and whacked in a war.
Even thief intel actions could be put on the market.
You could go and use a kingdom mates thieves for intel, for a price, when YOU want it.
even if that guy is sleeping across the globe and considering quitting Utopia.
Don't you like the market idea?

If I ran this game, and wanted to help its popularity by inclusion of well known stereo type labels,
I think I would:

a) Remove cleric and keep the Paladin name.
I'd move the cleric powers onto the paladin.
I'd move most of the magic spell stuff off the paladin

b) I'd accept that the top magician role will be split by 2 personas,
the mystic/shaman could remain and be the guy who offers magic aid via the market.
And I'd add a nasty Hexer type personality (necromancer/Hexer/Witch/Battlemage/Diablero)
to specialise in nasty magic. I don't see whats wrong with him having nasty spells that can be cast without Hostile/UF relations.
I might rename the current tornado spell -> Earthquakes.
And add a DOT tornado spell that ruins buildings but also does other random damage.
A sort of alternate meteor shower.
It can be cast anytime, but hits in 4 hours, and the target and Kingdom news page will get the warning that its coming.
The old scry spell should come back, as a WPA versus WPA intel means available only to mystics.
I mean if the other guy has too many thieves, then the kingdom mystic can scry that target.
Why was it removed?

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Originally Posted by Mnsdiow

Why was it removed?

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Crystal Ball was made a thievery operation so as to make it compete for stealth with resource operations.
ie you can't use your mana to find a thievery target and then spend all your stealth on that target, instead you'll have to use the same resource to find those targets, thus depleting said resource.

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Originally Posted by Elldallan

Crystal Ball was made a thievery operation .

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Yes but that Scry spell should have remained for Mystics.