After reading alef's excellent post this morning regarding all of the tournament realms around the world (with exception to Taiwan), I hadn't realized that there are 0 holy paladins in any tournament realm.

Here is a direct link to alef's post:
http://www.gameriot.com/blogs/lolesport/TR-18-th-Top-20-Comps-worldwide/#comment_130641

It is a good post because it has a comprehensive list of all of the classes/compositions on every tournament realm.

Alef cites every single composition in the top 20, but for analytical purposes, here's what everyone here at Gameriot needs to look at:

35 Priests
30 Druids
28 Rogues
22 Warriors
19 Mages
16 Locks
7 Hunters
7 Shamans
1 pally
(Source: http://www.gameriot.com/blogs/lolesport/TR-18-th-Top-20-Comps-worldwide/#comment_130641)

Incidentally, that 1 paladin is actually retribution in a resto druid/hunter/ret paladin combo. Which, looking at it from a strategical standpoint, sounds completely awful.

The shocking thing about the class representation is that there are less paladins than shamans. HUH?

How is that possible? On live, I don't see any shamans, period. Zero. None. Nada.

Looks like season 2 has a lot of benefits for shamans because a lot of paladins don't have the significant pve gear advantage that they do on live. (Or something..)

Some of the paladin nerfs in TBC

-Illumination nerfed from 100% mana back on a critical heal to 60%.
-Blessing of Sacrifice cooldown increased from 0 second cooldown to 30 second cooldown.
-Blessing of Freedom cooldown increased from 20 seconds to 25.
-Guardian's Favor increases duration of Blessing of Freedom by 2/4 instead of 3/6.
-Blessing of Protection: This spell can no longer be cast on others when stunned. It can only be cast on self (to break the stun) under those circumstances.

Some of the paladin buffs in TBC

-Holy shock heal increased dramatically.
-4 piece set bonus for arena healing set changed to grant +30% healing on holy shock.
-Turn Evil implemented. (Can fear pets with a 1.5 second cast time)



It begs the question, were all of these changes necessary? Granted, a hefty majority of the big changes were done a long, long time ago. Not all of them were done in the outset of the paladin-dominated season 1.

It also begs the question, was season 1 really a season where paladins were just so obscenely broken or were just the easiest class to utilize when everyone was still wearing terrible blue gear and didn't realize quite yet that interrupting a paladin is easy?

It is absolutely appalling that the one class that was once so highly praised is now universally considered the worst class in the game. Not the worst healing class, not the worst damage class, but the worst class in the game.

How is it possible that the very significant buff to Holy Shock last patch did nothing to increase paladin representation?
My holy shock went from a 1400 heal pre-patch to a 2250-2300 heal post-patch.
It certainly didn't seem to help the already abysmal paladin representation.

Paladins have always been considered a joke of a class. I recall at Blizzcon last year when everyone was laughing when Tom Chilton (or someone else, i forget) was introducing every class with a brief overview of what each class' description was. "And here we have the Paladin, a hybrid that can deal damage as well as heal and tank". The roaring laughter was a pretty big turnoff because everyone, including the Blizzard staff, knew the class was a complete joke.


Ask yourself this: was my constant whining for the past 10 months about how bad the paladin class was misplaced? Or was there some truth to my constant bickering?