Button Bloat. Way too many damage abilities that are uninteresting on its own and are simply an extra button to press. Hell, FDK/Fury only has ~3 and yet it seems more fluid and interesting than all of ret’s abilities.
Defensive/Mobility: Since you mentioned that you do not want to provide Paladin’s mobility because they should be tanky, where is the tanky portion as befitting a plate class? Give us innate damage reduction and bake healing into TV/FV.
Consecration feels garbage.
Spread the damage outside of Avenging Wrath.
I would honestly be happy with a complete rework of the general/spec trees.
It’s ironic that was once a draw for many to the ret playstyle, a more simple rotation that allowed ease of use of support abilities, has turned into playing the piano. It’s bizarre how many abilities I’ve had to sequence macro to alleviate dps ability bloat; I’m not sure how newer players could ever handle the spec.
It’s still an okay class, but the talent trees have so many mundane, weak, and even anti-synergistic talents (Wake not procing consecration when it consumes the Blade of Wrath proc). I like your suggestions on point 2 of innate damage reduction and baked in healing. If they did that as well as bringing back the pursuit of justice speed boost (base amount +extra for holy power), Ret could easily become one of the most fun classes to play, and it wouldn’t even be op, just on par with others. It’s felt awful being the last one to reach boss rooms running back after wipes by a LARGE distance. Literal minutes more.
Consecration and exo just don’t flow well currently. They aren’t the worst, but as many have mentioned they feel bad to press. It is nice having another ranged ability though (even if it doesn’t have the proc like in WoD). And the capstones in the spec tree are all so bad imo. Execution sentence I’ve never liked in its current iteration, similar with final reckoning (which I just added an at self macro to because targeted ground spells just don’t work with ret’s playtstyle.) Divine Toll does nothing and is only taken now because of tree design. The final verdict build would probably be my favorite but its not currently takeable.
Completely agree with your points. It really does feel like other classes have strong core abilities while Ret Paladins have a bunch of itty-bitty damage abilities you have to smash on cooldown with no thought to it.
Unfortunately, it seems that Blizzard is absolutely adamant on NOT giving Ret Paladins mobility. Which would be fine, but they need to at least give defensives that would make it the holy juggernauts that they should be.
I like the less punishing playstyle ret has always had (excluding weird swing timer stuff in classic), so I would hope it stays similar to that. There are plenty of specs that need to worry about tracking/managing buffs and damage windows (which is why I dislike the current ex sentence and to a degree final reck). Let us never return the the dark times of the colossal smash mastery.)
Guys, I really know how BAD our mobility and defensive capability are, but the button bloat is SO frustrating that it is my number 1 issue with the spec right now.
Having 15~23 damage abilities with 4 holy power spenders to actively manage and use together, along with many procs and also keeping track of mechanics such as “dusk and dawn” is far too much to make the spec remotely enjoyable. All that coupled with abilities that have 0 interaction with HoPo such as Consecration and Exorcism.
Yeah I was really happy with the buff to SoV too, it will be about 1 minute of cooldown with Unbreakable Spirit. It is certainly a great change. Much more reasonable than it is now.
I really miss the days of Long arm of the Law as well. I would be very satisfeid if it returned. Maybe Blessing of Freedom extra movespeed from the pvp talent becoming baseline too?
It’s still an okay class, but the talent trees have so many mundane, weak, and even anti-synergistic talents (Wake not procing consecration when it consumes the Blade of Wrath proc).
When Ashes to Dust procs, your next Blade of Justice still spawns Consecration.
As a long-time Ret player I find it difficult to empathize with “button bloat” as I don’t really notice it, but I feel this is exaggerated. Also, Dusk and Dawn is really not something you need to manage at a generous 20 seconds for each buff, simply get to max HP at the start of combat and drain it after. There’s very little chance you won’t refresh both buffs during a regular rotation, and if there is, consider burning your HP builders earlier so they go on cooldown and are up faster.
Consecration has a talented interaction with HP that’s the current meta so that’s kind of untrue. I do agree that Exorcism doesn’t feel great to press, however, despite knowing it’s high priority. It doesn’t even have that old satisfying sound effect it used to have, and sounds like nothing in combat. Be nice if it had a harder sounding cast and generated some HP in exchange for less damage; it is after all precluded by an HP generating talent, which is a little bizarre.
I do respect your opinion but I personally don’t see it as being exaggeration.
We have by default easily 15 damage buttons and that number can go upwards to 23 with some talents. On pvp, we have AT LEAST 4 HoPo spenders that we use all together for usual ST rotation (Seraphim, TV/TJ, Radiant Decree and Execution Sentence). We have 4~5 major damage cooldowns among the numbers I listed. Not only that but we have numerous procs in various different abilities.
Meanwhile we have a multitude of specs with 4~6 damage buttons such as DK, DH, Marksman, Mage…I’m not asking for Ret to be as braindead as DH or Marksman, but we have too many abilities and mechanics to micromanage right now.
I’m with you regarding Exorcism sound. The old sound was much better. Same for Hammer of the Righteous on Prot, the old sound was waaay better than it is now.
The irony is that they put Divine Protection on a 2min CD same as SoV even though it doesn’t reduces as much damage and doesn’t deal damage.
And now they are reducing SoV cd… and not touching DP. Which realistically should be a 1min CD.
Even if it were baseline for Ret, Divine Protection is a pretty laughable DR cooldown compared to, say, Evoker’s Obsidian Scales with 1.5x the DR, 1.5x the duration, and 2 charges.
As another long time ret, I will say that the reason it’s harder to notice the button bloat is because we’ve naturally adapted to it with each expansion and found workarounds. While there are certainly more bloated specs in the game still overall, ret easily has room for some streamlining.
Yeah, Dusk to Dawn is probably the easiest to manage combat buff in the game. It really requires no tracking, but instead rewards what our playstyle has been for over a decade. Either pool holy power, which you should be doing anyway to put your builders on cooldown, or don’t take Radiant Decree. It and JV aren’t exactly necessary, especially if you aren’t currently sequencing elsewhere to manage bloat.
If it does that’s my mistake for not noticing, although based on other talents, having it not also spawn when wake is procced seems more like a bug, albeit mostly inconsequential.