DH changed this expac. While I might agree with much of your post, having alted or mained ret ever since TBC, I think you may be a bit behind on Havoc.
They have dmg buff maintenance now and several more dmg rotation abilities than they ever have.
Not 23, but certainly more than “4-6”. One reason is that now both of their movement abilities are part of their dmg rotation. Nerfs to the old build and necessary new active talents have also contributed.
so the button bloats i can understand, i just feel like some Talents should replace base line abilities like… Exo should take the place of CS. and the talents that buff CS / add charge should affect Exo when taken. Final verdict and Justicars vengeance should be the same “node” and you chouse one if you’re going down that side of tree. as Examples^ / my 2 cents
the other issue i think that would be a easy fix is Ret aura… should be…a Aura, and all paladins in the raid should benefit from it >.> so u can run devo and ret without losing DPS if you have 2 rets in the raid.
that’s my 2 cents at least.
Or just like bake the ret aura effects into devo if youre ret spec, so youre not forced to forgo damage if youre required/asked to take devo when pushing harder content, would that be insane/too much? i dont think so.
“Completely agree. Like I said before, the further we can distance ret from these Colossus Smash abilities that keep cropping up (old mastery, seraphim, es, final reck, etc.) the better.”
I can’t agree, but these things are largely driven by preference which is good!
What I think must be addressed is that we shouldn’t have dead wood on the tree. If you don’t want those talents, fair enough, but something must replace them. If they stay they need proper tuning. That was the heart of my statement.
Consecration feels garbage.
Ah flippin MEN. I am honestly dumbfounded with the amount of effort and design Blizzard has put into that spell in our Ret talent trees.
Let’s just hope this means they are looking into Cons in the long run either, because this is definitely a rotational button that does not feel good to press.
I dont think consecration should follow us. That would be too much like death knight’s cold swirl thing. But pulsing or re-concecrating a couple times leaving a trail I could be totally for.
Remorseless Winter, is the spell your thinking of from Frost DK’s (the other plate-meat I mained, last expo.) Probably turn it into a pulse rather than a glowy floor everything moves out of…
In Cata ret was actually somewhat tanky, did pretty good dmg and had very high offhealing, on top of good mobility.
Nobody complained about it back then, late Cata ret is probably the best iteration of the spec, the only minor drawback was that it was capped at 3 hopo but even with that it was balanced around being good at the things it’s suposed to be good at w/o reaching the dreaded “op” status.
It seems the “new generation” (not sure what to call them, don’t mean this in a pejorative way) of devs simply has no clear vision of the spec, it doesn’t seem to be going in any direction.
I’m just a braindead troglodyte, so feel free to disregard my opinion, but I actually don’t mind it. Even if some of the abilities don’t feel good, at least the class always has something to do. Probably being used to it at this point factors in too.
But for comparison, I’m doing some trivial side content stuff on my BM hunter right now. And my god (even though it’s probably just me being bad and also not picking optimal talents) the class feels like such s**t to play. I don’t even remotely enjoy it as much as I used to. Ret Pally at least has it hopo generators and spenders so you can kind of just hit whatever and you’ll be flowing back and forth. My experience with hunter is just blowing through focus, then sitting there tugging on myself waiting for it to Regen before I can hit one ability before it’s drained again. I’ve heard the class is in a good spot dps wise, but it doesn’t feel great to play.
Pallys button bloat at least gives a surface level amount of activeness whole playing. Which I just enjoy more personally. I don’t think it needs to be DH levels of streamlined but as long as it’s still fun I’ll be happy.
That’s why I said “until” Cata. Because it changed with Cata. It changed when Kaplan was no longer left to ruin the class out of spite for something that happened in Everquest.
Get to 5, down to 2, up to 3, then down to 0 is how I do it.
The problem then is knowing when to get to 3 and drop to 0, and when to work back up to 5 to start again.
I’m not really enjoying BM at the moment in pvp due to my defensives and was hoping to swap to my other alt for pvp as a ret but after reading all these posts about ret now i’m just depressed lol. Maybe I should just make a monk and forever meditate in a back ally of stormwind drinking chibrews.
I have mained my ret pally since wrath and will continue to main it. I love the class but I couldnt agree more, however they arent going to listen to us. We havent been anywhere near decent for 13 years, we dont have a community manager and to make matters worse they are bringing back Chris Metzen! You know, the guy who made Ghostcrawler famous. You all remember that massive piece of [REDACTED] the guy who for years would hold developer board meetings hostage until the other devs reverted or scrapped the changes they wanted to make for ret?
I always LOVE when people say something to ret about their class having it worse…are you kidding me? Re-read the last comment about ghostcrawler and find me literally any other class who had the same treatment. Spoiler alert, you CANT
So minimal effort max damage facesmash pally wants his facesmash ways back. Summing it up
Literally all but 1-3 specs are minimal effort in this game my man. Ret shouldn’t be purposely worse in PvE due to PvP or archaic design, regardless of your personal feelings.
I’m a victim to a broken spec in my class as well. Fire is my main spec love it always have always will. But all they do is take away dots and abilities every patch/exp. I’ll use fire orb as a prime example. Started out as the soul magic orb now its gone while they’ve since added a frost and arcane. Fires cleave used to be top tier now bottom UNLESS you go full aoe and not full single then youre still bottom of the barrel deeps. While my activity is sky high. So i swapped to arcane because of this. Point being, if its not what you like try another spec/class.
I’m guessing you’ve never played Ret. Our rotation consists of 13 abilities… Face roll my *ss, Ret is the most complex rotation in the game.
As someone who is just leveling a Paladin now. I don’t even main one and can see some glaring issues. These may sound silly to you guys, but these would make it more fun and it’s just my opinion.
-Crusader aura should increase ALL movement (run and mounted) speed by 20%. Paladins are so slow, in a game where everything else seems to be getting faster.
-Make the old “Seal of Light” spell a talent that heals for a decent amount every time you do damage. Basically leech, but more Paladin like. Ret feels squishy.
-Divine Shield should be on a 2.5 minute CD. Most classes have 2-3 minute burst CDs, if you don’t die the first go around, you probably will the second.
-Ret Aura is meh… it should do increase your haste by 5% and do a flat % of reflective damage. Something meaningful but not OP. In PVP if a fury warrior (or whatever) blows all their CDs on you, they should have to think about the “retribution”.
Also, something obviously needs to be done about damage. As someone who plays a Survival Hunter, I know what being on the bottom of sims is like… Ret should be competitive, top 15 at least… obviously ideally all specs would be within a few % of each other, to where skill plays a roll in DPS. The DPS difference in Ret and a PROT Warrior is almost the same % as the difference in Ret and Unholy DK… that’s a wide gap…
Anyways. I hope they fix your class.
And you must be a new pally beacuse if that is true it has changed IMMENSELY since i played one.