Waxing nostalgic

I’ve only been playing my Paladin since October of 2007, but in that relatively short span of time there’s been a huge amount of changes to this class. I was just thinking of some of them and decided to share.

Remember when…

  • Lay on Hands had a 1-hour cooldown
  • Seals would be used up whenever you judged, so you’d have to macro a new Seal application to your Judgement key
  • Seals changed so they didn’t get used up when you judged, and lasted for more than 30 seconds
  • There was only one Judgement spell
  • Alliance had the best tanking seal and Horde the best dps
  • You had to drink between each pull
  • You couldn’t raid tank until you were “uncrushable”
  • Holy Shield had a shorter duration, so you couldn’t keep it up constantly during a fight
  • Our threat was primarily reactive, we had very few offensive attacks
  • Blessing of Salvation was the most critical dps blessing
  • Divine Protection was a crappier version of Divine Shield
  • Spell power was our major threat stat
  • You could only use Exorcism on Strat runs
  • LoS pulling was a major skill
  • Death Knights didn’t exist! (haha)

Pallies who have been tanking longer than I have can supply more numerous (and more shocking) changes. Feel free to share any I forgot.

11 Comments to “Waxing nostalgic”

  1. jgalt 5 June 2009 at 2:49 pm #

    in before: 5 minute blessings!

  2. Ambrosyne 5 June 2009 at 4:11 pm #

    “I DIED BECAUSE I DIDN’T HAVE SALV”

    …ah, those were the days…
    Remember having more than 3 blessings?! Assigning buffs was such a PITA! And I’d give whoever I didn’t like salv…haha.

  3. Ambrosyne 5 June 2009 at 4:13 pm #

    …and wait a moment, you have my guildie Kyky on your blogroll and not me?! WTF?! I R STILL PALADIN!

    /cue mock righteous indignation

  4. Warvanov 5 June 2009 at 7:40 pm #

    I remember when Consecrate was a talent point in the Holy tree. Paladins became a legitimate tanking class the moment they gave that spell to all paladins.

  5. Logan 5 June 2009 at 9:45 pm #

    Back when a Holy Paladin could hold aggro better than a Prot one because they had Consecration and the Threat coefficient for it wasn’t 0.5 threat per dmg done or healed. so they just spammed Consecration and self healed…

    Back when all we could do on a Raid setting was to cleanse and use Flash of light.

  6. Rhidach
    @Rhidach
     5 June 2009 at 10:42 pm #

    @Ambrosyne: fix’t!

  7. mandm413 7 June 2009 at 3:03 am #

    Illumination was an 11 point talent

    Repentance was at the botton of the protection tree

    Only alliance had paladins

    Holy was the only tree that wasn’t broken

  8. Logan 7 June 2009 at 6:46 pm #

    Back when Blessing of Kings was on the last tier of the retribution tree…

  9. Logan 7 June 2009 at 6:59 pm #

    and it was awesome… specially since all the gear had was primary stats, secondary stats like hit, crit, and extra spellpower and healing power were pretty much unheard of

  10. Ohmymoogle 7 June 2009 at 8:26 pm #

    I started playing Wow after 1 year it came out. I remember the time us Paladins in raids were forced to be healadin cleansers and healers. Not really awesome heals only good for single target heals.

    In WOTLK we still are but we get much better utility then being simply cleansing machines of fury.

    “I DIED BECAUSE I DIDN’T HAVE SALV”

    I 2nd that. You rarely hear people wanting out salvs these days cause it lasts roughly 10 seconds and has a 2 minute cooldown on it ugh.

  11. Galyan 15 June 2009 at 4:51 pm #

    I remember when paladin’s didn’t have a taunt. Then when we got one, we had to macro it to work like a warrior taunt.