You get the Consecrated Blade buff on every AoW proc regardless if it’s BoJ or WoA. Didn’t know that in the first place either.
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Really hope they give the spec an extensive look because problems aside, the spec just has no fun built into it. I’ll give credit to Blizz for a lot of good things in Dragonflight, but Ret and Paladin as a class to some degree, was absolutely botched.
That may be subjective but it’s also an opinion I’ve been hearing a lot lately, largely because of the awful talent trees. My desire to play Ret is currently strictly carried by its nostalgia/class fantasy/mogs and that can only go so far. I play my Ret for a bit and then realize that I’m not having any actual fun so I log onto a spec that’s actually fun to play.
Putting that aside, the mechanical issues still exist and factor into the above sentiment.
Mobility and defensives suck. As a spec that is supposed to be an “unstoppable juggernaut” like DKs, it’s massively missing the mark. When they brought back Divine Protection, it should’ve been in addition to Shield of Vengeance, not one or the other.
Word of Glory is a huge miss as well since its opportunity cost is huge compared to the survival tools of other specs and it’s not even sufficient in many scenarios. Also Justicar’s Vengeance should’ve been a passive that gives our HP spenders a % heal/shield.
Consecration is the new build for Dragonflight which is not very fun or functional and one that no one asked for.
Exorcism was one ability that I was super excited to have again, but the version that was brought back is a huge disappointment. No interaction with Holy Power and its best feature, the sound effect, has been neutered more effectively than my dog. Most of us just wanted the old version as a replacement option for BoJ. Why is it so hard to give people what they want, especially when the bar is this low?
15 Likes
button bloat but in a fun way. the main problem is they’re all on a gcd. fury is more fun because you’re generating the rage with buttons and its ui alerts are just way better. ret is just 1-2-3 spend with the yellow marks lol that’s why it’s so bland
rets should be mobile, they’re on a horse! the problem is the cd is way too long and they only have 2 charges when almost all specs gained MORE mobility in dragonflight. rets also have a dispellable slow that’s not spammable like all melees have, that’s what makes them also bad. lastly, rets are not tanky but they have that spammable dmg+healing spell, and the 1m 35% phys dmg reduction but can’t be used in stuns. Ret’s weakness is versus casters and they need a pvp talent that lets them get magic bop because their physical bop legit does nothing.
100% agree. they need to completely remove it from rets to buff divine storm aoe dmg, or buff it by making it a radiating aoe around the character. if it spawns on another person let the ret be able to pick it up and stack with its current radiating consecration
you mean increase its consistent dmg outside of wings? heck yea! buff its templar’s verdict/Justicar’s vengeance/divine storm dmg. its dmg is so bad outside of its cds.
Exorcism replacing BoJ with added spread effect would be pretty nice on the button bloat. Consecration following us around fixes the clunkiness. Your Justicar’s Vengeance idea is awesome. I actually ran JV over TV because of the healing until I got the 4 piece.
6 Likes
I’m now starting to question how reliable wowheads numbers for Ret scalings are.
Our two physical damage abilities Crus strike(76.5% ap) and BoJ(140% AP) are doing about what I expect if str=ap however the ingame tooltip is saying they should be doing 32.5% and 44% more damage respectively.
Getting into the holy damage spells, only Exorcism and its dot appear to line up with wowheads %, with some margin of error for mastery.
Every other ability is adding noticeably more AP scaling than it should be.
Mind you I’m in dogwater gear, as I’m still on the fence about playing DF vs farming tokens; but sitting at 4698 str. Consecration should do 5% ap per tick with 12 ticks, which would be ~235 a tick. I’m seeing ~425 per tick (9%) and 15 ticks.
Final reckoning and Execution sentence doing an estimated 418% ap instead of 250%, and wake dealing 580% ap.
I’m too tired to be doing this currently
keep in mind that the st buffs overal is 3% simply cause cs is stil our lowest prio ability and both cs and boj arnt effective by mastery.
the real buff is sov being a 63 sec cd defensive and the bluepost note in the bottom. there was whispers of a ret rework in the discord, but now im more incline to believe it
4 Likes
- Replace golden path with an aura that makes consecration follow you
- Make JV baseline as a part of Templar’s Verdict
- Make Blessing of Freedom prevent knockback and all slows below 100%
- Condense cooldown usage, there’s no reason we should have to press 3-4 in sequence cooldowns before pumping damage.
9 Likes
Buff Execution Sentence and the subsequent nodes please! These are capstones, they should be impactful and transformative. No way should Empyrean Legacy be outperforming ES in pure ST. I see the groundwork for flexibility on that branch, we just need proper tuning.
Other than that I second much of what people said here: Exorcism replace Blade of Justice, tune up Blessing of Freedom (prevent forced movement), and take a look at all the rng chip damage/healing nodes that plague the tree(s).
3 Likes
I don’t mind Ret Paladins too much currently outside of a few things.
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Retribution Aura - It’s definitively the best damage aura, does nothing for the group in way of utility.
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Spellwarding/Aura Mastery - Ret needs some utility that compares equal to or favorably to these utilities otherwise Ret is always going to be third ringer to Prot or Holy which is hyper problematic as healing/tanking are much more limited rolls
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Undertuned talent picks - The most offensive of this is Templar’s Vindication- I did a 5 minute parse on a dummy earlier in the expansion to test different builds, this talent at max rank did less than a % of damage
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Divine Steed - Losing the conduit that made this last 6+ seconds really hurts, Shadowlands Divine Steed felt a LOT better than the current iteration.
What I would like to see as a fixes
1-2. Make Ret Aura do damage-to-healing for friendly units affected during Seraphim or Avenging Wrath in reference to Wrath’s Divine Storm offhealing mechanic, give Ret a talent that increases the % of healing from damage to make them stand out more from Prot or Holy.
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Rebalance tuning on some talents- pretty straightforward. Templar’s Vindication isn’t bad in a vaccuum, it’s undertuned.
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Bake the current Seasoned Warhorse talent into Divine Steed, have a new version of Seasoned Warhorse that increases duration by 2 seconds instead of 1 for a net gain of 2 additional seconds to the duration
My bottom line for feedback is that I don’t want them to just say “ok, ret does great damage now”- the things that I felt miss the ball with this expansion’s changes weren’t numbers, it was quality of life lost with shorter duration horse and the ret aura changes making it a default pick for ret (removing Devo from being a viable option)
I think Ret aura isn’t intrinsically bad but it needs to bring some direct benefit to the group instead of just the ret- i think damage-to-healing mechanic is thematic, it’s a role ret has filled in the past (that isn’t currently being filled by any spec), and allows party and raid members to see and feel a clear benefit of a ret paladin’s presence that doesn’t have overlap with Holy and Prot
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I worry after reading what has been suggested that some want the spec to go in a direction that’s either not true to the class identity or exacerbates other issues. Leaning more heavily into burst window spells repeats the avenging wrath issue, which has been worked on for years. Our damage outside the window is awful, its super clunky and worsens button bloat, and it quickly ends up nerfed (and makes us worse then before) within the week of abuse in pvp. Similarly, having to watch a multitude of dps buffs and constantly reapply them is one of the most hated gamestyles in wow for a reason.
This problem occurs with defense too. We are squishy precisely because of bubbles being the excuse. Rather than focusing more of shield of vengeance, which is less defensive and more offensive thanks to stacking with blessing of sacrifice (another new offender as of dragonflight), I would be far more supportive of a general defense increase and/or leech healing, either constantly or tied to tv and DS. Which makes sense thematically. The spec is about retribution. Us doing damage, enacting retribution, should further drive us forward as we accomplish our holy mission.
4 Likes
I agree with alot of this post. Ret needs an over haul but not taking away the class and spec identity is the challenge.
I honestly left ret in the dust the moment it went to holy power. I thought it was cool in theory but then playing it just didnt seem right. And like most have said, so many buttons yet basically pointless.
My first character was a human ret paladin in vanilla wow. I had no idea what was going on and didnt hit max level until a few weeks before tbc launched. I stuck with that character as my obvious main choice until holy power came out. I hated the feel of it. I tried every expansion to pick it up and i bailed out. I just cant do it.
I couldnt even finish leveling it in shadowlands it just has no appeal to me anymore which is sad.
They should combine Justicars Vengeance and Final Verdict. That means the heal and stun effect from JV with all the modifyers for FV like ranged attack procing divine storm.
Also im fine with no mobility BUT they need to do a serious defensives buff plus maybe give horse something like consecration where it takes off all slows when used.
6 Likes
Ret can’t be tanky, it’s DPS and it can heal itself. Being tanky on top would be OP. And ret can’t have good heals either because it’s tanky and can DPS. Having good heals would make it OP. And ret can’t do good damage. It’s tanky and can heal. Doing good damage would be OP.
That was the design philosophy from classic until Cata and it’s why ret struggled so much. And it seems we’re back to that state. Is Kaplan in charge of class balance again?
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Apparently if you can cast heals you get looked at through a different lens. Sometimes.
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Well…Ferals are allowed to do massive damage both ST and AoE, heal, stealth, have multiple crowd control abilities, utility, can tank some damage if needed with bear form and have crazy mobility. I’m not even exaggerating. Feral excels at everything.
We are mediocre in our damage and have good utility and that is all. And even our damage comes with tremendous button bloat to accomplish anything.
4 Likes
Except you have to track HP procs from things like Divine Resonance and Inner Grace, because you might think you are spending 3 HP but you just randomly get 1 and that messes up your Dusk timer. Dawn certainly is easier but Dusk can definitely be more annoying.
Exorcism damage is already horrible, doesn’t need to be any worse. Should be buffed and generate HP, shouldn’t have to run with 2 non HP generating abilities on your bars.
Or, how about 3-5% damage and melee haste, making Ret actually desired.
Wrong see above, Dawn is easy to maintain while Dusk is annoying because we have some talents that generate HP and either you track them or have these weird moments where you get unexpected HP.
Honestly no thanks, I’d rather ES was just removed from the game, it’s a horrible playstyle, definitely needs to be changed before we are ever forced to use it again.
5 Likes
A few ideas, in no particular order.
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Bring back Long Arm of the Law as a talent choice.
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Reduce the c/d on Divine Steed to say 30 seconds per charge OR add in a talent that actively reduces the cooldown for every holy power spender we use. Say, for argument sake, a 1 second reduction for every HP spender.
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Bake in a speed increase with our Mastery a la DH - call it Lightbringer…we’re bringing the Light to you, via large 2 handed weapons.
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Increase base DR and/or give us Divine Protection on the same c/d as Obsidian Scales from Evoker. Make us choose between that and SoV on a 1min or 1.5 min cd
Not going to discuss damage increases because I want to see how the buffs play out.
2 Likes
Yeah, I was pointing out that it was idiotic and contradictory class design which you’d only believe if you want ret to be bad.
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I disagree alot.
The only point i completely agree on is more survivability, no one can deny ret pally is squishy as hell with hardly anything aside from blessing of dusk and SoV to mitigate it, or Eye for an Eye which no one takes.
My BIGGEST disagreement is youre third point, Consecration isnt garbage, its insane. Its very easy to achieve to 170k DPS with just Consecration and Divine Storm. How can you say its garbage when it ticks for 10k crit damage every half second, and have TWO of them on the ground? It slaps, and if you think its garbage, maybe you arent utilizing it properly.
I dont necessarily agree with button bloat, if youre using any more than 11 abilities between single target/AoE you’re doing too much. AoE is literally 4 buttons, BoJ for the consecration proc, Consecration, WoA, and Divine Storm, whats more simple than that? Throw in final reckoning if you want its still very simple. Maybe its just a preferential thing but I dont like classes with a small number of buttons to press, I like being active and not just turning my brain off to DPS.
Overall, Ret deals alot of damage. I almost always top my raid group on the meters, i was pushing 40k+ DPS when i was as low as 370. With fights involving AoE its double that. I guess I would say I like the complexity because it feels good to master and is very rewarding when you do, being able to DPS, heal your party when needed, and use bubble to tank a boss while you brez the tank, feels great, you feel like you can single handedly save a pull, which ive done many times and still top the meter.
I hope whatever changes blizzard makes to ret, wont dumb down the spec, I like it this way.
There’s absolutely no way you were reaching 40k on single target at 370, not even meta classes were consistently reaching it, especially since you didn’t even mention exorcism despite being present in both AoE and ST rotations, nor can you tank with bubble unless everyone is dead at which point resurrecting the tank will be pointless unless the boss is at <5% health, it drops all your aggro.
3 Likes