My pre rework Paladin is currently lvl 24. I do actually enjoy it as is but my major pain-points (most of which I hope and assume will be addressed by the rework) are:
There's no reason to bring a paladin as anything other than a tank. Even then paladin feels like what you bring when you desperately need any tank and they are the only one in lfg. They don't bring any extra offensive utility to allies and their intense defensive utility, while useful, doesn't feel particularly relevant if you have CC and a healer. Outside of almost dying to enemies my level while on my own, I think I've had to use lay on hands once in a group in the 30+ hours I've been playing.
This is especially painful as a class which is bad at soloing. I've had to make my own groups the majority of the time, which I very much enjoy, but going forwards as people become more sensitive to group composition than they are in the beta I can see this being an issue. To add insult to injury, I'm constantly being buff-cucked by clerics, whose hp buff seems to be just strictly better than mine at every level. I'd like to bring more value to my allies.
Even on the occasions where I've not been a tank, my main damage abilities both have threat modifiers on them, so I would randomly get aggro anyway. This might be a more general issue that gets solved after the rework and when threat gets looked at. In general I hope paladin itself doesn't gain any more damage but instead offensive utility to offer their allies, just so that people don't need to almost die and have a half-asleep healer and and afk cc to feel grateful to have a paladin.
Spamming slam, restorative strike and supplication to me doesn't mesh with the slower more tactical playstyle I was hoping for from paladin, waiting for the right timing to use high impact abilities. This is more of a personal thing, I'm not sure what the design intention was here. Situational awareness and timely execution are what I would hope for from playing paladin, making you feel more like a battlefield marshal, contrasting with the intense battle frenzy of the fighter. A brain class more than a fingers class.
My best stats at the moment when tanking appear to be dex and agi, which is sort of awkward. For damage I only really seem to want strength. It would feel better if stam, wisdom and AC had better value on paladin - mostly for defense but also for offense. Wisdom for holy damage scaling on strikes, AC for shield slam damage as others have suggested. I would love to be wearing more paladin gear and not be the one that takes str, agi, dex, gear because it's still my best option even though it's only half as effective on me as on other classes.
Aside from these, paladin feels pretty decent to play as a tank.
My main hope is that they move away from paladin as a tank/healer and move it towards tank/support.
Not only is tank/support one of the current design spaces that is currently empty, it's particularly suited to the paladin fantasy and playstyle. I made a longer post about it on the forum, but based on the origin of the paladin, I feel that the paladin-as-healer idea is somewhat of a misinterpretation of what holy power actually is, especially in the context of the paladin as a holy warrior. Paladin's have a completely different use for holy power than clerics do and I think separating this in lore as well as in gameplay would do wonders for class distinction and identity. There's holy power as wrath, judgement and fulfilment of destiny and holy power as redemption, healing and saving of lost souls. In very general terms, think old testament vs new. For the sake of clarity, I'd prefer if paladin was very much the former and cleric the latter.
However, there are certain practicalities and expectations, so paladins having some healing in their kit is not entirely untoward. But not as a main healer.
Class design wise, if paladin is a stronger healer than cleric then why would you ever want a cleric and if not why would you ever want a paladin to heal?
I understand they hope to make paladin healing distinct but as they've described it, fast and mana-intensive heals are not who you are going to choose for your main healer if you're dungeon crawling vs sustained group heals and powerful resurrections in most cases. I can't see how these would be balanced and if they were isn't that too much overlap anyway?
In addition, if paladin healer becomes too much stronger than paladin tank, then paladins are expected to be healers and vice-versa if tanking is far better then the healing side remains untouched.
The bold thing to do would be to remove paladin casted heals completely and lean more into saves and melee based healing capacity.
In my view paladin should be one of the classes that's most desirable to bring as a melee support, which trades off their lack of solo power with powerful group utility and fits the paladin identity of empowering their allies.
Restorative strike seems to get a lot of hate but I actually think it's the right direction. The total healing amount in a 6 man party is fairly substantial if you compare it to the numbers on the paladin's current casted heal. The problem is that you're mostly healing people that aren't taking any damage. If overhealing had some other effect (an offensive buff, a temporary shield, smart healing redirected based on missing health) then this could become very interesting. Nevertheless, the core theme of healing and utility through strikes and presence is captured by this ability and some tweaks, as well as a variety of other strikes, could really flesh out this style.
The tank/support space would make those mana-intensive saves much more relevant especially when not tanking and would better lean into the paladin identity of being able to save allies from grave danger. It also gives you a reason to bring paladin as something other than a tank (can cover for the healer being oom or in danger) as well as making paladin — the holy warrior — very distinct from the cleric.
Specifically, things like supplication also applying to party members, perhaps as a reduced amount of haste. More slight offensive utility of this nature — through consecrated ground and auras — would make paladin feel great to play.
I don't think paladins really need to be any stronger by themselves, except maybe vs undead. I like how sharp the design space is whereby the paladin relies on their allies. The main problem at the moment is that allies do not particularly rely on the paladin.
