Paladin Tier 10 Graphics... Meh.

By now you've all seen pics of Paladin Tier 10 and it looks like opinion is split: some quite like it, others think that Blizzards designers should die in a fire. The general colour scheme doesn't help, pinks purples and browns have never really felt like Paladin colours, and skulls and/or fire make you think more readily of Deathknights or Shaman than Paladins. Note that the 'pink' jaw piece looks like a rendering error.

There is a blue recolour of Tier 10 in the game files which looks better but still doesn't feel much like Paladin gear to me.

This isn't the first time the Paladin community hasn't been particularly impressed with the look of their Tier gear, we've got something of a love-hate relationship with Blizzards art designers. The love can be traced back to Judgement and Lightbringer which both rock, the hate is a product of Lightforge (Tier-0, though great recolours exist), Lawbringer (Banana-shouldered Tier 1) and Crystalforge (ugh, Tier 5). Of course, the problem isn't so much with the artistic ability of the art team which has generally been of a high quality, but perhaps their underlying inspiration needs some work.

Tier 8 and Tier 10 are designed to be evocative of Ulduar and Icecrown Citadel. Rather than genuinely make you think 'that's Paladin gear', they're styled as if you've picked up and decided to throw on what has just been dropped from a boss. In this they've been successful, the plate Tier 10 gear would suite any of the classes equally with only a minor recolour, but that's not to say that they suit any of them particularly well. This philosophy seems unnecessary when the token system implies taking a template item dropped and then heavily adapting it to the class Tier.

Does this mean we're past the days of Judgement and Lightbringer which were undoubtably Paladin styles? I hope not, but it will be if this expansion is anything to go by.

Blue Tier 10 Recolour found here, posted by Vashdakari