Retribution AoE

In Development WoW: Forever Beta Discussion
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With the multitude of changes effecting our holy damage modifiers, champion of light changes, consecrate changes and now the reposition of Holy Conduit into the Holy tree, Retribution AoE is going to be absolutely abysmal gameplay.

Consecration is currently Rets only AoE ability which requires no skill expression and is visually and mechanically underwhelming to press. Now there is even less reason to press it because it is going to chunk mana bars until points are spent into holy conduit which is arguably one of the final talents you would consider taking close to end game final talent builds when comparing other talents which are important in the protection tree.

Blizzard have said they took divine storm away from Paladin because they didn’t want them to be like warriors. This is probably the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard since being an original TBCplayer. When divine storm was first introduced, nobody complained that the ability took anything away from or overshadowed warriors. Divine storm is probably the most iconic and successfully introduced ability to Ret paladin toolkit in the entire specs existence.

Blizzard want warrior to be the kings of AoE. That is fine, just scale their whirlwind, cleave and sweeping strikes so their damage profile achieves this. Taking AoE damage away from ret is a crazy knee jerk reaction and poor development choice which just shows the team is lacking creativity.

Do we really want to just accept that Ret will have terrible AoE from 0-60 and throughout end game content? Is the answer to say that our single target damage will just be so high that it will make up for it? For starters, that’s a huge issue on its own which doesn’t even need discussion to recognise, especially for PvP content.

It is not unreasonable for Ret to have a solid AoE ability that is effective and actually feels engaging to press. We aren’t asking for it to be better than whirlwind or cleave, but please give us something to utilise.

Use some creativity blizzard. Remove consecrate from Ret toolkit if you have to, and design something new other than divine storm OR consecrate that we can use forAoE.

We should not just accept we are going to be single target auto attack bots for the entire iteration of WoW Forever. There needs to be Single Target AND AoE encounters in PVE content, such as encounters with multiple bosses, trash mobs with encounters and trash in between encounters.

Players enjoy being able to perform well during ST and AoE content combined. Enjoyment and ‘performing well’ doesn’t need to mean that the spec is the highest dps in that genre, it just needs to mean that people ENJOY playing that spec and that it is at least moderately engaging.

I cant imagine that any Ret players could honestly say that they dislike divine storm as an ability, and the majority of us have fond memories of lining up and landing those big impactful divine storms in combat, whether thats inPvE or PvP.

To summarise, I really think for longevity, pure class enjoyment and gameplay engagement Ret absolutely needs an AoE ability that is scaled appropriately.

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Welcome to a Classic based version of WoW, not every class excels in every damage profile. You’ll likely see more success in Single Target than Warriors due to this limitation in place on Ret Paladins, but Warriors will overtake you whenever 2+ targets are present.

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Yes.

This is Classic. Most classes do not have access to easy, spammable, high damage AoE.

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What Skill expression does Divine Storm have exactly?

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Hi, I was there when divine storm was first being added, asking what the flying fiddle blizzard was thinking giving paladins a holy whirlwind

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I think there are a couple ways to look at this.

Firstly, most specs aren’t going to come together until they’re very far down the leveling road, for any class. Especially at low- to mid-levels, you can barely even call yourself a “retribution” paladin or a “holy” paladin or whatever else. You just don’t have enough points invested in any tree to be meaningfully different from others of the same class. Leveling dungeons are also balanced around that fact.

If, while leveling, you want to be good at AOE damage, I would recommend that you start by putting your first 12 points into Holy. It will make your seals and judgments stronger, too. Forget that whatever youtube build guide you watched says to start by getting 5/5 parry or whatever. I promise you’ll be fine doing slightly less single target and a lot more AOE, if AOE in dungeons is what you want to do.

Just gear appropriately for whatever role you want to be doing at that moment.

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Warlock rain of fire/hellfire, Mage blizzard/ Cone of cold / Arcane explosion / Flamestrike, Hunter Multishot / Explosive trap / Volley, Warrior Whirlwind / Thunderclap, Sweeping Strikes / cleave, Rogue - Blade flurry, Shaman - Chain lightning, magma/fire totem, Druid - Swipe / Hurricane. - Let’s not forget that some of these ‘AoE abilities are actually very strong against a single target also.

I will have disagree with you about “most classes not having AoE”. To compare, Ret has just consecrate. My suggestion is if we are limited to one AoE ability, it could at least be something engaging or more efficient than just consecrate. If we must only have one AoE ability, even removing consecrate for Ret and giving a different ability would feel better than current imo.

As I said in the post, I’m not asking to be top AoE dps, but something engaging and that feels good to press during AoE would be great when there are so many varying AoE abilities currently in the game.

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I didn’t say no AoE. I said easy, spammable, high damage AoE is not something that every class gets to access.

Blade Flurry, for example, is a 2 minute cooldown that lets you hit a single extra target.

Swipe is available only in Bear Form; cat druids don’t have an AoE button at all.

Chain Lightning and Fire Nova have cooldowns that require the use of single-target abilities in between them.

Consecrate, as a constant AoE damage over time effect, is on par with a variety of other class AoE options. Ret is on the weak side, but hardly alone down there, and still ahead of cats. You press your “AoE button with a cooldown” and then do single target damage; that’s how it works.

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Take my opinion with a grain of salt as I haven’t played Ret on beta, but something quite core to classic wow that is being upheld in Forever is that some classes and specs can do things others can’t. This is a good thing, because it means every class and spec has genuine strengths and weaknesses. Moments to shine and ultimately, we are stronger together.

From what I’ve heard, Paladin players seem to be pretty happy with how it plays.

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Warlock rain of fire/hellfire, Mage blizzard/ Cone of cold / Arcane explosion / Flamestrike, Hunter Multishot / Explosive trap / Volley, Warrior Whirlwind / Thunderclap, Sweeping Strikes / cleave, Rogue - Blade flurry, Shaman - Chain lightning, magma/fire totem, Druid - Swipe / Hurricane. - Let’s not forget that some of these ‘AoE abilities are actually very strong against a single target also.

I understand what you are saying, however I don’t think warriors for example in comparison to ret will do any less single target damage either. We can see some simulations currently that have warriors performing above ret doing very good single target damage.

Yeah sims are not 100% accurate because we cant see all items available end game, and there will be other class changes and new systems, but what we can do is use the sims to gauge a basic forecast of classes potential.

I don’t want ret to be the top AoE dps, I just think consecrate feels and performs terribly if we are only limited to having one AoE ability to press.

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They said spammable and most of those you cite have CD’s. They still exist but Blizz gutted most AOE skills going into Forever.

If you want to be an AOE/Cleave God play a Mage. Lock, Rogue or Warrior.

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We’re playing a state of the game where they intentionally don’t want people to have easy access to AoE. They’ve even nerfed Mage AoE, the indisputable original kings of AoE. Warriors are the intended best cleave, and Mage the best AoE - but it’s still limited.

There’s nothing wrong with not having AoE. Rogues have none outside of a deep Combat CD, and that’s just cleave. Warriors have Whirlwind and Cleave.

We don’t know what Holy Wrath will be like going forward, but it’s still around and altered by a few talents, and that’s about the extent of your AoE outside of Consecration.

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At this point, you are arguing for the sake of arguing, instead of agreeing we have a difference of opinion which is fine. If you read and understood my post, I said I didn’t want or expect Ret to “be an AoE/Cleave God”, or the best AoE dps, my suggestion is that we have something that is engaging and fun to play other than consecrate.

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I’m not even arguing. I just don’t see the issue with Consecrate and Ret Aura. Via those two abilities Ret is one of the better AOE specs in the game.

Is it because they aren’t flashy like Divine Storm?

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Average Tanks dont have the cleave/aoe threat, much less the awareness and reaction time, to hold aggro against big aoe or cleave anyway.

You should be happy with seal stacking and windfury :]

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Ret Aura isn’t an AoE, more of a reflect - so it’s not going to apply outside of solo (though, it applying to the tank is decent but doesn’t that actually contribute to the tank’s damage?).

You’re right, though. AoE is limited and intentionally so. The only AoE outside of DoTs on multiple targets is a few Mage abilities, Hellfire, Rain of Fire, and lots of cleave abilities.

Ret could probably use a cleave ability, but that may be in the future when we’ve actually had a chance to play at 60.

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It does but I don’t see that as a probolem. Windfury Totem increases the damage of other party members but all that damage is because of the Shaman.

I guess I still have Vanilla brain but part of the fun playing Shaman and Pally was how much you brought to each group while also doing your own damage.

But I agree that in damage meter terms Ret Aura is a solo thing but Ret is one of the better solo AOE farmers because of Cons, Ret Aura and Plate Armor.

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Does every melee dps have an aoe though? I know warriors are meant to be the cleave specialists, but can’t you say ret is in the same spot as rogue? I don’t think every class necessarily needs to be a Swiss army knife that can do every type of everything. Healers maybe do because they need to all be somewhat interchangeable otherwise you’re forced to bring certain ones and have fewer heal spots in raid, but dps I think less so especially since there are more of y’all in 5 man and raids than heal or tank.

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Look if WoW Forever was designed to be a strictly Classic extension of the game I would not even be making this post, and I would accept the classes for what they are. However, as SoD was used as a kind of testing ground to find a half way point between that and strict Classic to make a “Classic+”, it is hard to not compare the Ret experiences in SoD to the current content. Just divine storm alone felt amazing and rounded out Ret in SoD, forget all the other runes and systems etc. If I could replace consecrate from Ret AoE and only pick one ability it would hands down be divine storm. But as stated earlier, even something entirely new to replace consecrate that is an active ability would be welcomed. A re-imagined Wake of Ashes - aimed cone damage functionality, higher cooldown, offering a basic level of thought, positioning and skill required before pressing it at the right time etc.

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I asked before but is this just an issue with the visuals of Cons?

Would you replace Cons with an 8 sec CD Divine Storm that did less damage than Cons (it would have to do less as an instant cast skill)?