-Introduction

Given some of the comments that have appeared on my workshop page, and with my Protection Paladin finally completed, I wanted to go through my intentions for what I have attempted to achieve for this mod, so that you guys can have a clearer understanding of why I made some of the design decisions I have made and hopefully will make in the future development of my mod.

-WoW Style Paladin: Inspired by, not a port of

In summary, some comments regarding this mod have stated that they will wait until I have released a Retribution, Protection and Holy tree before subscribing; and there is no doubt that their hopes are that the Paladin plays very similar to the WoW version.
Whilst I can understand this, as the WoW Paladin is tremendously built, it is important to remember he was built for an MMO, whereas Torchlight II is an ARPG. Thus, in my creation of his skills, I have taken inspiration from the WoW skills; but I have not simply 'ported' them, because they simply would not suit the game's genre. This in particular is my reason for not creating a Holy tree at this time; the Holy tree is focused very much on healing other players in instances and raids; this would be completely unnecessary in Torchlight II, due to single player, potions and other healing spells. In addition, in my current build, the Protection Paladin both heals and protects his allies. A Holy tree, as seen in WoW, would therefore be superfluous. That said, I do have a few ideas for a potential Holy Tree, but don't expect it any time soon; I've already put 70+ hours into this mod, and I really would like a break, and a chance to enjoy my creation.

-Protection Paladin: A different playstyle

In the creation of my Retribution Tree, I believe I captured the essence of WoW combat; Rotation Skills that build Holy Power (or Combo points, or Fury, or whatever ;)), and then are unleashed in a variety of different ways. Therefore, in the creation of my Protection Tree, I didn't just want to create another Retribution Tree that happens to use a sword and shield, and call it a Protection tree. On the contrary, I wanted to make a different way of playing that distinguishes the Protection Paladin from his Retribution counterpart, whilst still giving something of a WoW feel. I also had to take into account both single player and multiplayer possibilities; that he needed to be able to deal damage to cope in single player, yet no so much as to outshine the Ret Paladin, whilst at the same time being useful to his allies, if in multiplayer. The result is the mechanics that you see before you, and which I will go into detail for very shortly. I am sorry if this disappoints anyone, but hopefully you can see the reason for my design decisions.

-The Gender Locking:

Originally, I intended the Paladin as he is to be male-only. This is nothing against women; on the contrary, I wanted to eventually create another playstyle that could reflect the unique femininity of women. That said, several of you rightly pointed out that the WoW Paladin is available to both genders; and also, there were girl gamers who expressed interest in the mod, but wanted to play as a female Paladin. Therefore, Gender-Locking is gone.

-The Levelling System:

Some of you might notice that the Retribution Paladin doesn't generate Holy Power on strikes; as a result, he needs to be minimum level 4 before he unlocks the ability to use Holy Power. This is taken from WoW, where the Paladin also only generates Holy Power using certain skills. Furthermore, I wanted to give the player something to look forward to and work towards whilst levelling, and level 4 isn't that far away.
Additionally, I use a different system to the Torchlight II system, one that resembles Diablo III a bit more. Rather than having 15 levels for every skill, each of my skills have 5, with the exception of the class passives, which have 88 levels each. I did this for a two reasons:

-Firstly, because every skill level in Torchlight II is individually coded; I'm not sure why the game developers did this, as it is a massive amount of work, and considerably inefficient, but that's the way that it is. Having one skill that uses the bulk of the skill points eased the workload considerably.

- And secondly, this system means that those that invest in the Tree are really rewarded, as the passive only gives its bonuses to the skills in that Tree. It creates incentive to level that particular tree.

Regarding the skills that only have 5 levels each, I think this system is better, because when you do level the skill, you can actually see the jump in power, as opposed to small, incremental increases.

The Future:

A break to begin with. I'm actually going overseas this Thursday for three weeks, so I will not be reachable until I return. That will give the TLII community plenty of time to test this mod for balancing and glitching purposes, which I would be happy to patch when I return.
After that, who knows? I've still got a few more ideas stored away, but whatever I do, I will try to ensure it is of the highest quality that I can muster, and as unique as possible.
Happy gaming, my fellow TLIIers!