This week Blizzard updated its popular massively multplayer RPG game, World of Warcraft. The main changes was a "bug fix" that dramatically decreased the amount of damage the Paladin class was capable of doing. The change occurred in how the "Seal of the Crusader" is handled.
Previously it allowed the Paladin to swing faster AND keep doing the damage he would normally do with each swing. Now, it's been changed so that the Paladin swings faster but each hit does less damage (so the effect is mainly that the player is getting more hits in with the same overall "damage per minute" occurring).
The problem is that the Paladin becomes pretty tedious to play in the game once the player has reached level 40 or so. Prior to that, the Paladin is probably one of, if not the most, powerful classes in the game. Needless to say, players who remember having been killed in PvP by Paladins during their character's "youth" (level 20 to 40) aren't sympathetic to the plight of the Paladin.
What they don't realize is that the Paladin in World of Warcraft tops out. That while the Paladin may be king of the hill (not so much now but still pretty damn good) at the early to mid stages of the leveling, it ends up being one of the dullest, most tedious classes to play. The end game of the Paladin is a study in bordeom. Battles, which used to take 5 seconds at level 20 take 30 seconds ore more at level 50 (battles against creatures of the same level).
Meanwhile, other classes, particularly preists, rogues, and mages, see their damage dealing continue to properly scale as they move up. The Paladin, in effect, falls behind in every way except in how difficult they are to kill.
In effect, the Paladin is good only in that he is hard to kill and outlasts opponents. Hardly a fun trade-off for most people. I suspect most players would gladly have their Paladin be more vulnerable in exchange for more damage power. The Paladin at level 50 is very very hard to kill. The Paladin at level 20 does serious damage but is, relatively speaking to the level 50 Paladin, quite vulnerable.
A suggestion I emailed off to a friend of mine at Blizzard is that the Paladin at level 40 should get a new spell. "Aura of Might" that doubles their attack power for 30 seconds but with a cost -- it counts as a use of shield of invulnerability. Aura of Might would have a 15 second cool down but every time it's used, it would reset the cooldown on the various invulnerability shields. So the Paladin would have to make some tough choices.
Any Paladin under level 40 complaining about the changes is, as others gleelfully point out "just whining". But there were serious problems with the Paladin class even this "fix" was put in after level 40. Blizzard needs to address the post level 40 Paladin fighting ability that becomes increasingly problematic as the player rises up in levels.