Yeah the class tree for paladins is rather bland, boring even and starved for choice.
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No, I’m saying that there shouldn’t be a ‘rotation’ at all. Procs add artificial ‘chaos’ to them, but overall, a cycle in combat is maintained with the way combat proceeds right now. It’s still Dance Dance Revolution combat.
If there’s anything I would change about WoW and FFXIV, it would definitely be the reliance of rotations for classes. Not every class should have combos.
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Then you’re wanting to change the very fundamentals of the game.
Welcome to the conversation! The fundamental playstyle of Paladins was radically warped into what we have now, instead of being meaningfully revised.
It will likely never happen: Paladins may remain incredibly boring and lacking in style and fun for the remainder of WoW’s existence. So long as they can be justified for the silly circle that is M+, Paladin devs may never care to give Paladins another thought.
Then again, I’ve always said that a non-lore race would never be created and playable. Lo and behold: Void Elves! So, maybe we will become something interesting. Maybe one day, someone will look at what we once had, and realize that what we had could have expanded into something greater than what we are now.
The only thing any of us can all do, is wait and hope. And argue needlessly while we pace the forums for a hint of info.
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Actually Void Elves are a perfect parallel for Ret Paladin.
The developers had it in their head that there was NO WAY they were going to give the Alliance High Elves. NO WAY QUIT ASKING! There aren’t enough High Elves left. They’d look just like Blood Elves it’d be confusing. Go play Horde man! Excuse after excuse until they finally did. But they still didn’t want to give Alliance High Elves. They’d rather cook up a super embarrassing bad fan fiction story about elves in space, and the void, and blah blah blah poof now you get Void Elves. That way they can say, “We never gave in guys! We didn’t give them High Elves!” Literally cut off their own nose to spite their face type stuff. And now they’ve painted themselves into this corner where Void Elves are a thing, so we can’t rename them High Elves and just ship High Elves like we should have in the first place.
Ret is in the same boat. They have died on the Ret is a wheelchair spec hill for a very long time. Ret isn’t getting fun movement abilities quit asking. Go play warrior don’t you just want to be a warrior!? It’s not Paladiny to charge. Excuse excuse excuse. They have a lot of pride and often times it’s completely misplaced pride when they decide something will never happen. Will they eventually decide it’s time to give Ret it’s High Elves? Yeah they will, but just like wishing on a monkey’s paw it’ll be 90° to the left or right of what Rets actually want. They’ll dust off their hands, declare mission accomplished, and not give it another look for another decade.
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I’ve long believed that the team (or person) in charge of Paladins, is either ambivalent toward Paladins (either WoW or pen and paper RPGs), or they are actually invested in developing for a different character class (likely Rogues).
No matter which it is, this would color their attitude and design choices for Paladins, leaving us in the state that we’ve been in for a while now. I really hope that I’m wrong, and I definitely don’t want to be insulting to our developers, but it must be said…with respect to Protection and Retribution, I’ve not felt like I’ve been playing a Paladin for a really long time in WoW.
Meanwhile, the Priest, Druid, Shaman, and Warrior development teams are over there playing Pathfinder 2.0 and D&D while they create their classes for Dragonflight 
Their last few patches have had the creation of new Talents, the merging of Talents to lessen point expenditures, and the replacement of Talents that felt off to their players.
I don’t mean to seem jealous of Priests, Druids, Shaman and Warriors, they all deserve the attention they’re receiving. However, a small piece of me can’t help but see what they’re getting, looking at Paladins, and being lowkey 
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I’m playing Ret again in Wrath classic, and omg how i missed playing a complete class. Also Divine storm in its former glory.
My only minor gripe is the dispellable/stealable wings
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Unfortunately it’s not. However, it’s not because of the damage rotation, which is junk without the T10 set bonus and not much better with it. It’s because Ret brought a stunning amount of utility to a group, both active and passive.
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Well i already feel better.
Hunters just got another post explaining things.
I almost thought Blizz Devs lost forum posting access!
Glad to see i was wrong.
But it may be that they do not have posting privileges in the Paladin thread?
One can only wonder…
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My God, ret is just so awful. There is no synergy. Its just a jumble of complete nonsense. I’m out healed by warriors, dks, and locks, even just pumping as many wogs as I can. The damage feels way under tuned. I just cannot believe ret has gotten to PTR in this state despite all our feedback. They haven’t even bothered speaking with us about it. Just nothing. I was planning on just doing wrath if ret received no changes, but I’m so appalled by the state of things that I might just unsub and be done, finally, after 17 years.
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Yeah… would be nice if Holy got more utility added to their kit that wasn’t just “Your finishers do X% more damage.”
There’s a lot of Ret Paladin feedback, which is really cool, but there hasn’t been much vocalization about Prot and Holy dipping into the other specs for more unique builds.
As a Melee Holy Paladin, I want to cast Exorcism, why is that a Ret only ability? I want to proc Divine Storms and heal people with my finishers. I want to cast Sanctified Ground and Hand of Hindrance so my target cannot kite my attacks.
Where’s the diversity? 
It was actually so weird playing the DF PTR last night with Seal of the Crusader. I know what the debuff is, what it looks like, but in DF it is applied with your Standard Attacks.
Coming off of Classic TBC/WotLK, it felt sooo weird that judgement didn’t apply the debuff because it’s the visuals and everything, lol.
The laziness of putting everything on Judgement, and then introducing Seals in this fashion hurts my brain, my soul.
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Oh don’t worry, I am.
Yep, the DF changes are definitely and improvement lmao. Are you the Paladin class dev?
They are the only other person to thing the current and DF design is perfect.
Maybe next expansion we can have 6 talent points for a worse horse, or maybe Seal of the Templar can affect less abilities
I don’t disagree, but resetting the cooldown of rotational abilities is also bad.
Final Verdict has the proc that AoW should have been with HoW resetting and being useable outside of wings/execute.
It’s really not. I’m sorry if my in game experience doesn’t match up with your argument.
It’s not hyperbolic, it happens, and it’s not even infrequent.
AoW regularly resets the cd within a global, maybe you simply aren’t paying attention until it lights up, or maybe you’re just incredibly lucky.
Either way, it’s not hyperbolic.
Being hyperbolic would be saying it always resets within a GCD of the cooldown finishing.
You do realise there is more to the game than WotLK Paladin and retail/DF Paladin right?
I’m talking about how bad retail AoW is in general.
Regardless of any past or future design retail AoW is not good, and neither are layers and layers of RNG.
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Protection and Holy feel the same, my friend. I main Prot, and all I am is SotR, HotR, Avenger’s Shield and Consecration. Like, six or seven Talents revolve around Avenger’s Shield alone. That is completely uninspired. Divine Toll really isn’t that cool.
Everything else I have are simple, huge cooldowns. And Guardian of Ancient Kings is the second most useless spell in the game, next to Contemplation.
I truly feel for Ret, but we’ve got to talk about more than just Ret players. Even if you guys have only touched Prot and Holy once or twice, we need a solid stance for the entire class.
That’s because when they ripped away our proper Seals, Auras, and Blessings, they never properly filled in the loss of our power. For any of our specializations.
So yeah, some people may not have liked Seal swapping back in the day, but we should have kept our Seals, Auras and Blessings. We should have asked for a proper revamp of our abilities, NOT simply ditched them. Now, we’re stuck playing catch up, with a dev team that doesn’t seem to want tp work with us.
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Lol im dying in seconds to others…i cant even respond and I do no damage. How can they release it to PTR in this state?
how good is that animation. its glorious to press that button with its sound and graphic 
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It is missing the lightning storm and looks like its faster, i think they are using the cata animation, i hope its a bug, but it looks and feels way better than retail.
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I noticed this right away, lol.
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Imagine if the first point given to ret was tv or better fv on the class tree. Prot and holy would have access to much needed dps hp dump when not doing anything that requires healing. Balanced acordingly ofc.
Tv for ret, sort for prot and wog for holy as given points. Go from there. HoW, auras, freedom, loh, steed, AW baseline for all specs. How much free space we would get.
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You really shouldn’t assume what I mean. DF is still an improvement in many ways over what Paladins have currently. There’s just one or two issues that need to be addressed. Going completely backwards into WotLK wouldn’t fix any of these.(But I get it, it was super easier back then, same as Vanilla and TBC. Compared to things now, been a bit more complicated.)
However if I was a dev the paladin trees would be a lot different.
There’s nothing wrong with it, it reset the Cooldown of Blade of Justice consistently enough(and its not a useless proc 90% of the time for damage dealing). Unless you’re referring to the 4 piece bonus. But you don’t have to talent that in DF, Same with Divine Purpose. Personally I like it, Wake of Ashes is a good ability I like pressing.
The only thing worthwhile more it brought was Divine Sacrifice and you had to sacrifice talents points for other things to take it(still its certainly good to have and would certainly be a welcome addition for the class tree in DF) And also a magic cleanse which is of benefit(which I’d like to see return.) Other then that both have Blessing of Protection, Blessing of Sacrifice and Judgement of Light(tho DF ret has to spec for it). DF ret though is getting Blessing of Spellwarding and a battle res. It also has an interrupt and more Crowd Control.
As for the rest, which was 3 crit% chance, 3% haste, 3% increased damage, Attack power buff, Stats buff and 6% increased healing(but only if you sacrificed other talents to take it). All of these aren’t that necessary with proper tuning. So they’re more flavor than actually “Utility”. And I don’t think you want to be brought along simply as a stat stick. But nor should any group feel compelled in having to absolutely take one.
I’m certainly not against having them though.
This was actually my first suggested for the class tree when they were first announced.
The first talents would be Light of Dawn, Shield of the Righteous and Templar’s Verdict. I’d also condense Divine Steeds talents and make it into a choice node between it and Speed of Light. Then add in Pursuit of Justice(just the 15% movement speed increase) and Unbound Freedom.
How about having a talent that removes its holy power requirement but gives it a Cooldown instead. One that has a chance to reset itself and a greater chance the more enemies it hits. Or how about every 10 seconds it costs not holy power.
Big disagree. Although I’d be interested to know what you think are the only 2 issues that need to be addressed.
I don’t think anyone ever suggested that, people merely said it felt better to play, and I agree it does.
It’s nice to have a fluid rotation and feel strong. It’s also nice to actually provide multiple avenues of benefit to your party/raid.
Lmao, imagine thinking ease of play has anything to do with it.
I’m pretty damn handy on a Paladin, regardless of how bad the design currently is.
The spec ain’t hard friend don’t try and kid yourself.
Also if you have ever seen any of my other posts you would know I’m all for difficulty and nuance in design when done right, that’s one of the things I hate the most about current paladin design, so many layers of RNG alongside a significant majority of your damage done within a short cd window really dumbs down the spec as it doesn’t advantage good or consistent play.
Also to save you the time, since lets not beat around the bush what you were wanting to say was “of course you want it easier because you’re trash and retail is too difficult” which is somewhat ironic from an LFR hero.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/character/us/barthilas/haavi?zone=28#bybracket=1&private=1
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/character/us/barthilas/haavi?zone=25#bybracket=1&private=1
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/character/us/barthilas/haavi?zone=24#bybracket=1&private=1
It’s ok, I get it, you don’t understand the issues and you like it. That’s fine, lucky you.
The same design issue is prevalent in Lava Surge especially in the Master of Elements build, which honestly I’d advice taking a look at if your curious as to what I’m actually saying, it might give you an alternate perspective on how the class design works outside of the vacuum of a single class.
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