Upcoming Paladin Changes in v12:
As with the other characters, I've been spending time leveling Paladins from scratch, with self-found gear. No cheats or save editing or free gear. This way I really get a feel for imbalances and bugs.
Vengeance: Fixed an animation bug that caused the Paladin to lay sideways in the saddle when mounted and using 2h swords. This is yet another animation vanilla issue that our awesome bug reporters caught.
Smite: Increased base regeneration time. This is a great skill, and it was a little too easy to spam it. Now it's still low, but closer to the other CA's in this aspect.
Charge: No longer causes Stun without taking Overwhelm modification. Stun chance from Overwhelm increased to 50%. Tooltip no longer mentions breaking existing roots as this was non-functioning.
Holy Bolt: Increased damage. In original D2, this skill only worked against Undead, but of course there were only 3 monster types: Undead, Demons, and Beasts. Sacred 2 has dozens of monster types, so this skill got a boost to be decently useful against any monster type, and EXTRA powerful against Undead and Demons (and T-Mutants with a mod).
Fist of the Heavens: Increased damage. This CA is meant to be a nuke, now it performs as such.
Conversion: Duration and minion attack speed now scale with CA level. Because it's important to have a reason to read more runes.
Holy Shield: Percent of damage diverted to shield starts at 70% instead of 80%. Having the percent too high at low levels meant the shield took so much damage it often got depleted too quickly.
About the Paladin's personal quests: The Paladin is now fully differentiated from the angels (Seraphim and Archangels), and all the dialogue, quest logs, and lore reflect this now. The Paladin and her order are human men and women who fight with holy powers, while the angels are... well, angels. They are faceless and mysterious immortals, and despite being ethereal creatures of light, most have a cool attitude at best towards the other races of Ancaria. Paladins on the other hand are grounded in their mortality and are therefore compassionate and have a keen sense of justice.
The Paladin's personal quest is still much the same at its core. The Dark Seraphim is still the main antagonist, but her origin is much better fleshed out, and tied in with D2 lore of the Sin War and Necromancy. Side note: If you play the Barbarian you will also learn even more about these events through his own class quest.
I have also corrected what I believe to be an oversight, if not a bug, in the vanilla game, where you are sent to the Swamp to bring the Dark Seraphim out of hiding there, but then you have to go all the way back to Tyr Lysia to kill her in the same cave where you drove her out in the beginning of the quest. This makes no sense!
Therefore the Dark Seraphim final battle now takes place in the Swamp underneath Hesheth, as the dialogues and quest logs suggest it should. She is also now equipped with a dangerous poisonous weapon that I meant for her to have all along.
Class quest "Whoops" now drops Herald of Zakarum as reward. This is that quest that is an homage to the Sacred 1 quest "Seraphim Rescue" (now a human Paladin like the player).
Class quest "The Hunt III" now drops Endijian's Javelin as reward (upon reporting to Sophia). I wanted each of these loooong character chain quests to also have a "midway" reward, so Sophia outfits you with an angelic weapon now.