Beta released, R.I.P Paladin

Classes Paladin
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My experience running dungeons as Ret:

(Keep in mind I don’t participate in PVP as Ret and what I am about to say solely has to do with dungeons / M+)

First off, I did not talent into exorcism because I do not find it worth taking. It is a very cool ability but it does not generate ability power and the ability has not been tuned properly.

But for the general feel and gameplay aspect of Ret I enjoyed it. I was not a fan of putting talent points into consecration but I did just for testing purposes. It did do a decent amount of damage and did generate a good amount of holy power in trash packs. Still a boring button to press (maybe update visual?) and felt weird to initiate a pack by using it but with higher haste shouldn’t feel too bad. So overall the holy power generation felt great especially with our haste being so low.

The amount of free divine storm procs I got was off the charts. The free wake of ashes from our tier set was nerfed but I did manage to get a decent amount of them (still think it’s worth taking). And obviously divine toll still felt good in AOE situations. Overall felt good in aoe situations and played similar to how it’s played now currently in shadowlands.

I have not tested single target yet with a proper single target build so I can’t comment on that. As of now I do know that divine toll is a dead talent for pure single target due to ringing clarity not baked in.

But ret aoe and feel in dungeons feels good and that is with low haste. It will probably feels amazing with proper stats. Personally would rather them swap out the consecration talents with something more interesting but it’s not a deal breaker.

When the raid comes out on beta I will test ret and reply to this forum to let you all know my opinions on it. I’m by no means a pro at ret but I’ll be able to tell you if the class is fun or feels lack luster.

I will go back and test prot if they make massive changes to it but until then I won’t be touching it.

I have never played holy and I don’t know how to play holy so I will not put out any feedback regarding that spec.

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Its sad that we are this deep and resto druids, mistweavers, and resto sham trees look so well pathed with great options.

Like look at the upcoming resto druid tree

Both of their powerful cov abilities as non-capstones. Several of their best legendaries.

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Hey, thanks. I did post it in someone’s thread there, but let’s be honest, it probably won’t be read anywhere. :joy:

I took this perspective as well and participated way less than I normally do during a beta. I wrote maybe four posts, granted four long posts, while in the past it would have been dozens. You’re totally right that it’s their job, not ours. I know that burnt-out feeling well and the best cure is to take a break.

On the other hand, our trees are very messy and the devs need all the feedback they can get. I believe paladins had a better design in Wrath, but I don’t want to live in the past. My friends will love it but it’s just not for me.

Unfortunately, the devs can be very stubborn. Stubborn here doesn’t mean “anything I personally don’t like.” For example, I can live with the decision that the horse is here to stay, but why can’t we improve it a little? No GCD. A choice between Cavalier and giving the horse some utility. Burn Seal of the Templar in righteous fire.

The devs can be tentative to an extreme degree when it comes to paladins. I already mentioned GCD’s we have that would never fly in the hands of another class, and how atrocious Seal of the Templar is compared to other range-increasing talents. A third example is DP on a 2-min CD.

Anyway, I’m just repeating myself now. I guess what I’m driving at it is sometimes, eventually, if we give enough feedback, they listen. Like we did finally get Sac and WoG back in SL, right? Granted that unpruning was across the board and not just a paladin thing. And it’s depressing when you think about how many “good changes” are in fact just reverting bad ones, like we’re moving in a circle instead of forward.

So yea, I’m frustrated too.

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Ret is full of random procs, most of which are for a percentage of the main effect’s damage, so they’re small and not very interesting. However, because there are a ton of them most of the time they’ll just blurr into a background noise of small damage hits, but with the really annoying feature of sometimes just not happening and sometimes all going off at once during Wings and causing everyone to run to the forums and complain about being one-shotted. This seldom ends well for Ret.

Retribution as it’s currently designed for DF is very inconsistent.

There are also nodes that I simply don’t want to take because they’re bad (Empyrean Power/Fires of Justice), but feel compelled to to get to a talent I need (in this case Tempest of the Lightbringer, which isn’t great but is uncapped AoE and better than the vast majority of Ret talents).

I can’t think of a single talent in the Ret tree that I look at and think “That’s awesome!”, because not only is just about everything something we’ve already got or had in the past, but the ‘new’ (recycled) things are almost always weaker versions of what we once had. Where they’re not, it’s because what they’re copying (e.g. Tempest of the Lightbringer) is already a nerfed version of an older spell.

To me the Ret tree feels dull, uninspired, and lacking in excitement. I do not look at it and think “This will be cool!”. I look at Arms and think “This looks really smashy!”, and I look at Fury and think “This looks fast, and choppy, and like Ret of old” (because it’s essentially CD-based more than resource-based) and in both cases I see lots of ways to not die and make life easier for healers (because of tons of sustain).

If I’m looking to play a plate melee, what does Ret do that’s unique and cool that no other plate can do? About the only thing that really registers to me is “Every few minutes be invulnerable to damage for a few seconds, but in PvP this can and will be removed by some enemy players”. Compare with Warriors “Charge across the battlefield, stunning groups of enemies”, or even DKs “Yanking enemies to me and my friends, so we can beat them to death, and stopping them from running away”.

Much the same for our Torghast abilities (though some other classes had the same problem). They worked, once you had enough of them, but they were pretty boring. Compare with the Shaman Torghast abilities - Hero/Lust on a 30s CD (via dropping totems), Stormkeeper as a 30s auto-proc, prema-Earth Elemental with perma-Earthquake (with huge damage)… Ours were so underwhelming that one could even be added to the DF talent tree (though nerfed and unstackable).

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If you have the fortitude to keep fighting the good fight, you have my respect!

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A few more observations.

The “Judgment” talent prior to Rebuke really doesn’t belong in the paladin tree. Move it to the Ret tree and stick something else there like HoJ range or Hand of Hindrance.

Holy can reach for Rebuke. What exciting utility can Ret reach for on the left side?

Make Divine Storm baseline for Ret. Just as the right side of the Ret tree is an uninterrupted flow of talents that upgrade Blade of Justice, the left side should be Judgment talents starting with Timely Judgment.

Both the Judgment side and the BoJ side should culminate in sort of a minor capstone talent between eight and twenty points, preferably a node so we get some input in crafting the ability. An example of this: a version of Exorcism that replaces BoJ / an amped-up Expurgation.

The amped-up Avenging Wrath with 20% crit should be the basic one we get in the paladin tree. Then the middle capstone talent of the paladin tree could be a choice between your spec-specific version (Crusade, Sentinel, Avenging Crusader) or Seraphim, which now replaces Wings with appropriate values to make it worth using. The idea is we get to craft our cooldown in a more meaningful way.

A bunch of other abilities could be moved to the class tree, from Divine Protection (Ardent Defender for Prot) to PvP talents to Hand of Hindrance to perhaps even Exorcism. I feel like whenever the devs have a chance to make the paladin class more cohesive, they should take it. So much pruning has been done over the years that we’re still trying to put the pieces back together. I’m a paladin, not a faceless DPS or some idiot crusader that needs every ability to be vengeance themed.

Why is Cleanse Toxins a separate ability when Holy talents into it? Obviously it should merge with magic dispel. Sometimes it’s better to have them separate, sometimes together, but it’s always bloat when they’re separate.

A lot of people say to move Divine Toll to the paladin tree. Yea, that’s certainly an option, but I don’t think this ability was ever actually that interesting for Ret. Like I wouldn’t mind if only Prot had it. I’ve had a lot of mean things to say about Legion lately, but there was a lot of cool stuff too. Like Wake of Ashes originated in Legion, and it was cooler when it generated 5 holy power and had a 30-sec CD. Legion had Greater Judgment, which wasn’t my favorite mechanic, but it was basically just a better version of Divine Toll (and without the ability bloat). It was the first time we could use Crusade and Divine Purpose together, and wasn’t that a blast.

I look at our Dragonflight trees and I’m like…hm. Well, I didn’t like Vanquisher’s Hammer that much, and we get a worse version of that. Ah, Divine Toll without Ringing Clarity, yes, excellent. Of Dusk and Dawn, you say? The legendary I never once considered crafting and was one of our less exciting Torghast powers? Stellar.

Where’s the exciting stuff? Final Reckoning is pretty cool and that was added at the start of Shadowlands. I know Blizz can still make cool abilities, so why are our new trees putting me to sleep?

Indeed. There is some stuff I like, but overall I agree.

Alright, I should probably take it easy with these forum posts. As Palette said, whoever keeps fighting the good fight has my respect. Good luck everyone!

p.s. I was probably a little harsh on Divine Toll, but it really does need Ringing Clarity.

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The irony that people complain that Ret “has too much healing”, yet due to how our healing is all active, and relies heavily on using our resources that we need to actually deal damage (TV/FV is like 60-70% of our total damage when accounting for the additional sources of damage provided by it) Ret actually does the lowest amount (probably tied with Mage) of healing amongst dps in almost every raid pull or M+.

We have essentially (I believe literally, however to avoid potentially overlooking something, or people including leech on gear I’ll say essentially) no passively generated mitigation or self healing.

I agree with most of what you said to a degree, however I would like to point out that a 5 HP generator was always a bad design.
The optimal way to use an ability should never really be to use it suboptimally, and with a 5 HP generator that is always the case.

There are very few situations you could use WoA in Legion without wasting multiple points of HP generation, (especially since Ret gameplay typically encourages you to play in a way where you never spend HP at 3).

The 30s cd design is fine from Legion, but I’d personally still lean towards the 3 HP generator design being superior from a design perspective.
It’s a guaranteed spender, is still a load of resources, and is much easier to use optimally.

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Btw, the nerf applied like two months ago that dropped AW to 15% is carrying over to DF, just like sov damage and templars vindication. Havent tested if the divine purpose nerf (from bfa) is also staying I am gonna assume yes.

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As I remember it, we rarely generated anything less than 4 holy power, and when we got all 5 it was a wow moment. But I get what you’re saying, and I don’t really have a problem with the way Wake works now.

Thanks for the heads-up! PvP-specific modifiers should really be reset in a new expansion because class balance changes so dramatically and because none of it is documented anywhere. How’s someone new to a spec, or who took a few months off, supposed to know which abilities work differently in PvP? It’s bad game design.

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Gotta hope we win the dice roll on who’s tuned very well in DF. Otherwise Ret is dead in keys yet again…

Prot pally was looking good at first…but protection warrior has their tree… Every other tank is dead if that tree goes live.

Yall getting your warriors ready or nah?

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Ret’s always going to be in an unfortunate situation with M+ if current design continues, especially since they are bringing forward our 4pc.
Having a Shaman for WF is almost required to increase our value from AoW, and since Enhance is also not a high performer in M+ it puts us in a poor situation.
The only advantage is WF is now available on the class tree, so Resto or Elemental Shaman can now also pick it up for us.

But as you mentioned, Warriors are just looking so good.
How much better do we have to perform to compete with Skull Banner, Rallying Cry, Battle Shout, Spear of Bastion, Storm Bolt, and Shockwave?
Especially when Fury has really good answers to things like explosive should melee be required to kill some.

Like seriously, Warrior’s utility in DF is just looking absolutely bonkers.

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I took a long shower and I feel like new mous — I mean man. I’m not a mouse who lives in the church organ and sneaks onto the monseigneur’s computer when he goes to sleep. That would be crazy. How silly of you.

Anyway, I wanted to end on a positive note. Our trees, particularly the Ret one, obviously need a major pass and then smaller ones for polish after that. But I got to thinking that reading forums as a dev must be soul-crushing, and that there actually are things I like so far. So here’s some of that without any hedging.

  • We get a battle rez. We’re like WC3 pallies.
  • Can’t wait to be broken with Lay on Hands in arena.
  • The background pictures for Prot and Ret look awesome.
  • Reduced HoJ cooldown + Rep / Blind
  • Cavalier is easier to get.
  • Spellwarding and the follow-ups to Sac
  • Of Dusk and Dawn could be fun.
  • I like the clear BoJ path on the right side of the Ret tree.
  • Ret has its foot in the door with Divine Protection.
  • Some of the Consecration stuff is pretty cool.
  • I’m happy Exorcism is back.
  • I bet JV is occasionally worth pressing.
  • Excited that our 2pc is back and that it wasn’t nerfed.
  • Just kidding about that last one, the values are halved.
  • Executioner’s Will is fun.
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We really only need better damage outside of our CDs lol. Divine Storm and Tempest of the Lightbringer have a 5 target cap. That’s garbage. We can keep the 4pc just do some freaking tuning for once. Our blessings also need much shorter cooldowns.

Rogue mage boomy don’t have to be meta every time. And people shouldn’t accept that they are.

I guess Blizzard feels they owe prot warriors something after being underdogs for an entire expansion. There’s just no way that prot build goes live.

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Nah. The only thing I’m doing is closing my wallet and playing something different than WoW.

So many classes got blueposts in the last few hours but guess who was left out like the red-headed stepchild.

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I rather like Divine Toll with Ringing Clarity, though it feels really bad when you hit it in a ST fight and it doesn’t proc. Without it it’s just not exciting at all, though I grant that in DF if you’ve got all the other Judgement talents and they proc it could be pretty spectacular - assuming everything procs off DT Judgements like they do off normal ones. If they don’t it’ll be utterly terrible.

Also, to be fair I do still like Final Reckoning (but I hate the 1 minute build that came out of it and all the other 45s - 1 min CDs), and it’s still available.

I have this vague recollection that when they started tuning things differently for PvE and PvP they said they would keep a list available, but if they ever did it was obscure and is long-dead.

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My Warrior has always been Arms (I just love the ‘hit things with a massive stick’ theme), but I’m seriously considering Fury and trying them out - Fury looks to getting to be even stronger than it is now, and it has that CD-based DPS rotation that Ret once had before it become totally about the spender.

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I would love for paladins to have a 2-hander and a sheild. REally would add a nice flair to our class lol!

(it could also show that the light does indeed bring us to peak strength)

This should be a class talent on it’s own obviously lol as I don’t think that image is for everyone.

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This is my biggest frustration about DF ret. I’ve longed so much for Exorcism to return, but the fact that it doesn’t generate holy power and requires Consecration to work to its full potential is worrisome.

This is another issue for me. Consecration is way too static for the current retail gameplay and having many talents around it, even if it’s “tuned” around less-than-100% uptime, still feels bad.

I fear that it’s just basically going to be about speccing into Shadowlands ret again, and I expected more from a 10.0 expansion with a talent tree rework.

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That’s characteristic for the devs: giving things back people asked for (in some cases for years) but with a twist. Same about seals, we got them back but only in name. We just can’t have shiny things.

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They didnt lol. I knew righteous verdict and divine purpose were nerfed versions in SL (because I remember nerfs) and they continue to be nerfed in DF. Simply turning wm on doesnt update tooltips. I started queuing skirmishes to see the sov and AW nerf were still active. I assumed the templars vindication nerf is active aswell but didnt test it long enough.

Btw righteous verdict is currently nerfed from BfA but since the DF righteous verdict is actually WORSE than the nerfed version at 5%, I guess the nerf was overriden.