I still say even though PTR is coming out soon, there’s still a chance we’ll get meaningful changes, but I’m holding my money for now. Watching what will/won’t be done.
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Holy is dead, so many problems on talent tree connection, mastery, IoL, pve tank only empyreal ward, the meanless new barrier of faith (may work in PVP?) etc. Now hpal is holy power driven, and we only have 3 WoG-LoD talents (including 40 yds LoD) in the talent tree. A lot of talents dev added from Legion is when Hpal is IoL driven which conflicts with the hp. AoE healing is still sick.
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I mean we’ve been complaining that JV should be replaced and for some reason it still exists. Blizzard has always been weird about Paladins though. Like at this point I’d be willing to give up Divine Shield if it meant we could have better defensives.
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Just resubbed for Wrath, and my god, what a glorius design that was for ret, it almost scratches the itch of WoD ret for me.
You would think talent trees would allow them to reintroduce all these different play styles into the game again, but it looks like it’s more a refactor than adding something extra. Which is sad.
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Another week another punch to the gut. Yay.
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Note that Paladins had very few changes throughout SL, aside from PvP adjustments to damage and healing, and Ret had none that I recall. That suggests that the devs think Ret is already perfect in every way, and the way the DF talent trees nerf many current abilities and give only a few new ones that just extend our current buttons a little is in line with a belief that the design is basically perfected.
This definitely calls into question whether or not to buy DF, given my Paladin has been my main since BC, aside from about half of Nighthold, and I’m pretty attached to them.
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Talent trees so perfected that Holy and Prot Paladins can spec into Mad Paragon without even specing into HoW and all Paladins can spec into Sanctified Wrath without even specing into Avenging Wrath.
There truly is no need for iteration. Ship it.
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I heard you like traps, so I put a trap in a trap so you can trap while you trap.
Paladin talent tree is just a big middle finger to all players new and old.
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Well the good news is, 99% of all other classes’ final talents are new abilities because it removes the requirement of ensuring previous talents were taken. Pretty fool-proof logic.
Blizzard has to know this and they are probably working on adding Divine Toll and Exorcism/Empyrean Endowment to the class tree.
I’m just relieved the city is saved.
The fact that Divine Toll is on every spec tree and not the class tree is just 
Also for Ret the fact it doesn’t have Ringing Clarity (which I don’t like due to hey more RNG) is also crazy.
Ah yes, a single Judgement every 1 minute. Exactly what I wanted.
Sure they have the legendary effect as another talent for the “every 5s” nonsense, but that was never the fun aspect.
They should have baked in Ringing Clarity baseline, but instead of god forbid more RNG, just had 100% chance and it does 2 additional strikes instead of rng of upto 3.
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Yeah, it’s just this issue of having this limited imagination when it comes to Paladin design, I just don’t really get it.
Even IF we were to get Divine Toll and Exorcism/Empyrean Endowment (Vanquisher’s Hammer Clone) in our Class tree… what does that really change? They aren’t super over the top exciting abilities.
They have very little player engagement and we’d just be missing even more from our Spec trees…
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Its a little baffling they struggle to think of abilities for paladins when they have so much to pull from. Past xpacs are a ripe resource, NPC abilities that already exist in the game, paladin abilities from EVERY OTHER VIDEO GAME… like you couldn’t think up anything so here’s 2% haste.
Here’s a few simple ones:
- Blade of Hindrance
- Blade of Wrath
- Inquisitor’s Strike
- Divine Strike
- Crusader’s Blade
- Light’s Justice
Wouldn’t be hard to extrapolate those into useful abilities or talents that could modify existing abilities in certain ways.
Like yeah we used to have a seal and judgment system. We also used to have a STRIKE system in vanilla beta. If we are going to continue to use Crusader Strike and Blade of Justice then lets evolve beyond just the two.
Heck I’d love to see an Empowered Holy Power system similar to rogues mini-game with combo points through their Kyrian ability. Increase the amount of Holy Power we can build up and allow us to spend more or less Holy Power on abilities.
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You forgot that judgment damage was nerfed by 30%.
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The fact is, Paladin as it currently is, since Legion in my opinion, has been very boring to play. Yes some fun abilities have been added, but we have definately lost more of who we are and what the core parts of the toolkit a Paladin was envisioned to bring.
I mean, people in this forum have designed more interesting talents and abilities than we have seen in the last 2 expansions and with so much history on things that have been removed, why not look at some of that and work out what was fun engaging play and while not everyone likes seal swapping play, there are other parts of wrath/cata/mop/wod tool kits that had Paladins feel like the utility/buff class we have always been told and designed as.
I will also add, in my opinion that being top of the meters is not fun engaging play, skills / talents / abilities that let us benifit the group and how we use this utility is what’s fun.
I don’t want to go down further the road of paladins being a plate wearing rogue, the combo point system is part of the reason our damage profile feels stagnant and boring.
Playing wrath paladin again just shows how fun the spec was and having Art of War make exo an instant cast is a better playstyle than the rng cd reset of boj or woa.
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If we are going back to that as our starting point though we’ll need the regen mechanics, our buffs, and talent support. I don’t think blizz wants to even work on paladins let alone reinvent them.
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i agree, we would need alot of our old toolkit back, removing the combo point system and going back to charges on skills and other skills and passives empowering other abilities and skills. Having judgement give the replenshment effect again would be an easyway to maintain our mana (or change its name to Holy Power if they want).
But from what we have seen you re correct, they don’t want to work on paladins so the chances of getting a rework or any work is slim from the feedback we have been given.
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I don’t think we’re ever going to see a spec without limited resource again unfortunately, so I’m thinking we’re stuck with HP.
That doesn’t mean they can’t it interesting though, instead of “lul this one builds, and this one spends”.
There are like hundreds of ways they could reinvent the class, many with more iconic themes to the paladin.
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Yeah, that’s been my biggest complaint and something I wanted to see fixed in Dragonflight. But we’re given spells like Of Dusk to Dawn and are some of the last classes to be iterated on, which means we have less time to give viable feedback.
I know that this seems like a lot, but honestly it breaks down quite easily.
Tier 1 is just your basic class abilities you should have, you should be able to get 90% of this tier and only have a few options you cannot reach without commitment.
- Examples: Repent/Blinding Light, FoJ, or Judgement of the Light as a Ret Paladin.
Tier 2 is the tricky part for Paladins, because that’s what the class lacks the most.
The Tier 2 section should be unique Spec Utility that once was spec specific.
- Rogues get Shadowstep and Shadow Dance.
- Mages get Fire Breath.
- Priests get Vampiric Embrace.
- Etc…
So again, it’s just a list.
4-5 Unique Ret Utility Buttons:
- __
- __
- __
- __
Blessing of Might (Summer), Hand of Hindrance, Sanctity Aura…
Everything in the blue is where Prot and Ret slightly overlap, here I show Blessing of Freedom and Unbound Freedom, but could also include Seraphim/Sanctified Wrath or whatever.
I feel bad saying it, but at this stage in design, there’s really no excuse for our talent trees to look the way they do. Even if it was 50% NYI spells and abilities, just the layout itself leaves so little to be desired.
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Not even close, you literally don’t even have to watch for the proc to instant cast Exorcism(other than its first proc at the beginning of fight). As Art of War doesn’t even reset Exorcism Cooldown and is basically always guaranteed to be up when Exorcism comes of Cooldown.
Better playstyle? no its simplistic playstyle.
At least with Blade of Justice and Wake of Ashes full Cooldown resets, is you have to watch for which one resets and then look to not over cap holy power. Meaning you have to pay attention and be engaged.