I’m a Paladin support main with 1000+ hours playtime and I find myself using the same 8 skills in all group content. I would love for some of the less popular skills to get some adjustments to give Paladins more options that fit our preferred playstyles.
Dash Slash
This skill has the potential to be an alternative movement skill to Charge, but falls short due to the brief pause before you begin to sprint. The half-second you spend “repositioning” before you actually start to move completely kills its potential as a way to move out of dangerous boss attacks/mechanics. The lvl 1 part-breaking offered by this skill means it is never truly a ‘dead’ skill in PvE, but it fails to live up to its identity as a movement ability.
Suggestion: remove the brief pause at the start of the skill and allow the player to have uninterrupted movement, or add a short ‘hop’ at the start of the skill.
Sword of Justice
While this skill does have its place as the most flexible applicator of Light’s Vestige, it is by far the hardest to land successfully. This may seem like a fair trade-off, but when you consider that it takes at least an extra full second to apply to an enemy when compared to other skills (time in which your party will be attacking the boss with their most powerful skills), it leaves your group without a damage boost after almost every invulnerability phase and every mechanic that requires repositioning/dodging.
Suggestion: rework one of the level 1 tripods with a ‘Swift Fingers’ effect or rework the ‘Way of Light’ tripod to drop swords along its path to allow for quicker application of Light’s Vestige.
Holy Explosion
This skill is extremely versatile and can help to fill gaps in any build, offering decent stagger, Light’s Vestige, lvl 1 destruction, and excellent AoE damage all in one skill. What kills its viability though, is the cooldown. Paladins already have so many mandatory skills that leave us with very little room for customization or player expression, being unable to bring this skill below a 18~20 second cooldown means that you almost never have it when you need it. Holy Explosion is also the only skill that cannot keep 100% uptime on Light’s Vestige alone.
Suggestion: add a tripod effect that trades damage for cooldown reduction.
I could go on about some of the other less popular skills but I feel that these three I have mentioned would have the greatest impact on improving the Paladin toolkit.