Changes and Buffs to Ret - Problems with the Spec 10.2

Classes Paladin
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Devs,

Firstly, I think you guys do a good job and the game has never been better. I’ve never made a forum post. I apologize if this is an inappropriate spot to air this out.

Ret Paladin is the worst it’s been in a LONG time. At 90th percentile, ret is performing the worst of all specs in the game. What’s the deal? Is it the Dev’s decision for the spec to always be trash at damage? The utility of ret does nearly nothing in raid, and it’s lightyears away from specs like Demon Hunter, Rogue, and BM in M+ - even with the new, underwhelming legendary.

Problems with the Spec

In my mind, and I think in the minds of many other relevant Ret players, there were three things that really needed to change with the rework: a more fun playstyle, addressing the survivability of the class, and lessening the impact of single target and AOE choices in the overall build.

Objections to Paladin Changes

I do think that the rework was a step in the right direction but it is far away from making the spec completive. The issues that the spec has are not going to be answered by simple tuning passes. Firstly, many will point out that the class is simple. That makes no difference. Every spec redesign has made classes easier to play. For example, both Demon Hunter and BM Hunter are performing massively better than every class and they are both simple to play. The second objection I can foresee is that paladins are unkillable therefore they should do low damage. This is anti-fun for many reasons. Paladins can walk through mechanics that would kill any other class which lessons the excitement of mythic raid encounters. Furthermore, if a binary decision was given to a paladin player - like that of Shield of Vengeance and Divine Protection, Paladin players would go for whichever gave more damage. Blizzard, players like doing damage. I would nerf the survivability of the class by half or more if it meant that I could be in the top 10 specs for damage output.

But What About the Legendary?

Everyone at this point knows that this legendary is not going to make Retribution Paladins viable in any content. There are fundamental problems with the spec that need attention. The legendary is simming around 8% total for me which lines up with other members of the community 5-8% mark. The proc is underwhelming in both ST/AOE. It is necessary for min-maxing a character, but changes nothing when it comes to meta comp decisions.

Changes for the Spec

The ST/AOE binary choice is the most egregious aspect of Ret right now. Every mythic boss encounter that matters requires a mix of ST and AOE. Unfortunately, Ret can only bring one or the other, and they don’t bring exceptional ST or AOE when slotting solely into either. Their AOE is decent, but ST is near the bottom. When changing specs, Rets lose nearly 22% ST - the most in the game. The spec tree needs quality of life changes.

  1. Tempest of the Lightbringer should just be baseline. Divine Storm should simply always be better in AOE scenarios. Let’s get with the time.
  2. The button bloat - which was really an overaction in Shadowlands - was not real. Choosing between Final Reckoning and Execution Sentence is unnecessary. I think the spec is better when you are always pressing ES. The funnel in SL was great. You could still do damage to a priority target (though it was really not played past Season 1) while also having Final Reckoning for AOE situations (and ST).
  3. Divine Wrath should be baseline to address ST issues. I think this is a good spot to make Ret Aura unique to Retribution Paladins. I propose that every 30s rets simply proc Wings, instead of Wings proccing when players die. It makes more sense and would flow with the thirty second Execution window. Protection Paladins and Holy Paladins could still bring Ret Aura, but Wings should not proc for them ever. I would argue that Devotion Aura should also have unique effects for the other specs. It feels terrible to have to rely on your raid members to die to do damage. Its archaic and bland. No one is going to bring a paladin into raid, counting on people to die. Bosses die when gamers don’t.
  4. Change Blessed Champion to a one point talent. This is needless friction between ST/AOE. There are not many decisions where it makes any sense to pick a three target cleave. Council fights have been awful, and this particular council fight sucks because the bosses are almost never stacked. This talent is either never taken or you simply put 2 points into it for M+/ AOE scenarios.
  5. Make Divine Storm baseline and place Execution Sentence where DS currently is. I think the spec should center around ES. Perhaps an outlandish take - maybe it would be an interesting idea to make ES splash or do damage to mobs around it. Just a thought about node changes.

Nerfs

Nerf survivability (please, don’t butcher Paladins) if that is the reason why their damage is so poor.

Tuning Around PvP

Nobody wants this to happen. Though it goes unstated, the community believes that Rets can never be good because of PvP. That’s nonsense. Figure it out please. Aura nerf abilities in PvP/PvE respectively.

Conclusion

The spec is loved and played by tens of thousands of gamers. There’s no reason to have this much friction in a spec. From some of my contacts in Liquid, BDG, and other top guilds - Ret is in such a bad spot that you are actively griefing your raid by playing it this tier in Amirdrassil. Unfortunately, they are correct.

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You’re smoking hardcore stuff on the utility front…
You’re probably not using half your abilities in M+.
It’s made almost comical by your reference to hunters who have been crying for ages that they don’t bring consistent utility.
It’s been listed as weakness for them for a while no matter the spec.

I get that for Raid our blessing being 1 target kind of lessen the impact over a 20 person raid and that the auras can be brought by any pally but you still need 1 per aura so we still get a better chance than we used to.

Those 2 were never stated.
Mainly because those we’re not issues prior to the rework.

Here is the post they actually made, those were the goals. Not what you said.
Get your facts straight.

The surprising cost of AoE/ST trade-off is a novel thing since the rework.
It was never that egregious before.

Agreed

Unnecessary but that’s a suggestion, I feel this course of action kind of just makes all the talent “baseline” after 2-3 expansion, I don’t like that mindset.

It wasn’t from shadowland. It was from DF.
It’s DF that forced us to cast Consecration
It’s DF that reintroduced Exorcism
It’s DF that gave access to multiple abilities that were previously concurring with each others.

The rotation feels smooth and uncluttered, what it needs is not more buttons but tuning or talent changes.

3 more sec of AW should be baseline?

That’s for “symmetrical reason/talent point economy” , highlord judgement is 2 point to.
Having access to more talent could be a way to solve it however many of the remaining are low impact.

God please no, I don’t want ES to be a “baseline” thing

Love your enthusiasm, just get your stuff straight.

IMO they don’t need to change much.
Include TV/FV/JV into the burning crusade talent with an added dot to alleviate the trade off.

Reduce or remove the stack from divine arbiter and adjust the bonus damage accordingly for the increase occurrence but keep the AoE effect.

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I’m a multi-CE / Rank 1 Title holder. Lathspell-Illidan is my character that I have played during DF.

The utility is not great in raid. Blizzard has continually moved away from immunities being necessary, freedom is okay on Tindral but has less value on Mythic, and Sac is very good still.

I am currently 3300 w/ most 26s timed. We had a bug where bears pulled on our DHT and went to bed lol. We could be 3350 ish.

It is empirical statistically that rets lose THE MOST of any class going from ST/AOE spec. There have been a few new talent builds - mainly removing the 3 seconds of extra wings for either DS AOE or 1 pt. into cleave on Council.

Addressing the playstyle in SL and w/ the original DF tree was an issue for Blizzard. They mainly wanted to move away from WoA being a lottery system. Lottery systems are often unfun as you could go a minute w/o a proc on the S3 SL tierset. That was then baked into DF tree. Ironically, Rets performed better with the old tree. “It was never that egregious before” - it was actually awful. We had to choose between legendaries in SL (DS or TV). If you removed either your ST/AOE was really bad. This is still the case in the overall tree.

The reason why ToLB should be baseline is because w/ the current tuning, if they buff TV then DS needs more targets to press in an optimal rotation. If they don’t buff TV then our ST is still abysmal.

There are blueposts about the want to remove bloated openers w/ final reckoning, ES, and Seraphim together. Blizzard wanted to simplify the rotation. I don’t see the SL playstyle and DF playstyle as mutually exclusive. Almost nothing changed between tiers. Exorcism was rarely played.

I agree that the rotation is smooth. Tuning would help, but the main issue is that we have to pick between ST/AOE. We are doing 25-40% less in ST than some specs with less decision making regarding ST/AOE.

3 seconds of the course a 5 min fight is 15 more seconds of wings. It’s almost nothing and it is the sole choice node for mythic raiders. Admittedly, I don’t care about heroic or normal raiders or low M+ players because tuning has 0 effect on representation. Tuning does have effect on mythic raiders.

“Symmetrical talent point economy” is not a good reason to kill talents. Blessed Champion is never taken for cleave except for Council. 99% of the time it either 2 pts. or none. The other side, Highlord’s judgment either needs buffed or removed. It is currently a dead talent.

ES is a baseline thing. It sounds like your a M+ player. In raid you run ES nearly 100% of the time. Tindral/Gnarlroot are the only two acceptable times to not run ES.

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This is the original author.

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We are doing 25-40% less in ST than some specs with less decision making regarding ST/AOE

For clarification, when we run our AOE build we do 25-40% less ST dps in keys. I do not have legendary yet so we would still be around 15-20% less dps w/ legendary.

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I’m here to bump this thread. I don’t think we have anything approaching developer interaction/consideration. It’s actually insane. Please refine/finish the rework, this design is not it.

I was skeptical of it during PTR, my fears were confirmed when they pushed the build placing ES and FR on a choice node. Later we got a blue post regarding mastery, speaking from a physical to elemental damage ratio, when very close to that note being pushed, they changed Blade of Justice to holy damage, effectively contradicting the statement they made. I really don’t think the left hand knows what the right is doing when it comes to Paladin.

In regards to removing cds and “simplifying” the spec…why not preserve the burst/sera playstyle and simply provide a low apm passive build for the casual base? Shouldn’t that be part of the intention behind these trees?

I would like to see flexible designs, strong synergies. Everything we have post rework is very muted and it shows. I’m glad people are ready to have this conversation because myself and quite a few other old rets have been highly skeptical of this rework.

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So you’re OP?
It is not below BM and DH in M+.
Arguable for Rogue, but I wouldn’t say its a given either way.

Never disagreed with that

We’re mixing current state, DF start and SL here but I’ll try to follow you.

I’d say they can be “fun” if noticeable, more often than not “noticeable” rhymes with “busted” so in that regard they end up “not fun” yes.

I’d say S3 SL tier was as close as “balance” between the 2 you could get although it didn’t prevent going a full 45sec without a proc on WoA as you said, which felt terrible.

In a nerfed version that no one played, instead relying on the talent Radiant Decree instead.

OG DF Ret tree had issues but the trade-off in ST/AoE wasn’t as bad as it is now is what I meant.
I was refering to the state of Ret from the start of DF.

Obviously, in SL the legendaries forced a choice many other classes didn’t have to make and I agree it did feel bad.

That would be a patch on a patch. Just buff DS to bring it back to be baseline better on 2 target and adjust ToLB accordingly.

As for buffing TV, as I said, it could be “solved” by adding it to the Burning Crusade talent and slap a DoT on it so it benefits from Penitence.
And likewise adjust Holystrike side for AoE.

They added things that were previously choice between each others, that’s why it got bloated.

Divine Purpose use to be a choice between it, Holy Avenger and Seraphim in SL and people generally ran DP.
In DF, DP stayed as choice with HA but Seraphim was placed as a choice capstone with sanctified wrath in the class tree.
And they made the mistake of making the class tree in such a way that we could pick all capstone, a problem still today

They made talents that put an emphasis on casting consecration when it was all but absent from the rotation in SL in later stage unless you had downtime.
Then they went and put FR in the spec tree and technically using Exo was a DPS increase on pretty much all scenarios.

I’m not against build diversity but the combination of all this made it feel completely disjointed.
Some abilities interacted with HP, some didn’t, some did randomly (still baffles they did this with cons), it was a mess.

It’s not the players fault for recognizing that, blame the devs who couldn’t get their s*** together and design something coherent.

They want to have a certain flow to the tree and they decided that the 2 talent that would have 2 point would be those at those specific emplacement.
Idk what to tell you.

It makes sense for them to not unbalance a side in terms of talent investment.
But when you look at it, none will ever put 2 point in highlord so it just ends up weird because it’s unbalanced anyway and you can get to the bottom from AW to so it’s not even gatekeeping anything.

Highlord isn’t that far behind in damage if you do take it instead of certain other talent depending on the scenario and gameplay preference.

I don’t get what’s that suppose to mean or how it has any importance, the game is the same for everyone.
Tuning will affect lower performing players just as it does higher ones.
It will affect people who do M+ as well as raiders of any capacity.
The only difference is that higher one might actually stop playing a spec because of it while lower one will just do worse with it.

Being mainly M+ player doesn’t insulate me from the knowledge of ES being a staple in raid, I’m not blind.
ES is not the proper of Mythic either, people will use it on heroic and normal because that’s what will give them the most on a given fight.

But the game has 3 pillars now, raid is not the sole focus of PVE anymore nor is it the sole standard by which blizz should evaluate and design a spec toward.

Putting ES where DS stands is forcing people to use a spell that not everyone likes when the concerns with the spec can otherwise be solved without such a dramatic solution.

It seems like you’re suggesting stuff that would be purely oriented toward your raiding needs and from a mythic perspective.
I don’t think this is healthy way to approach a problem in such broad and wide ranging game.

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yall focusing on the wrong stuff and it shows. es and fr being a choice node is fine. having both with es as it is now would be turbo bad

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Totally agree. Thematically they fit together and I think they are in the right place in the tree.

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I brought ES/FR node up as a representation of one of the main issues with the rework, not the main issue. Having both as it stands wouldn’t be a panacea, but I’m not sure anyone thinks that either.

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“So you’re OP?
It is not below BM and DH in M+.”

There’s a disconnect here. I am specifically talking about utility in raid where Paladins do not have much. Rogues/DHs, in M+ provide useful utility in timesaving skips and they also do 20-30% more damage. Especially as Prot Paladin is very good, Rets are far away from a top choice.

That would be a patch on a patch. Just buff DS to bring it back to be baseline better on 2 target and adjust ToLB accordingly.

“As for buffing TV, as I said, it could be “solved” by adding it to the Burning Crusade talent and slap a DoT on it so it benefits from Penitence.
And likewise adjust Holystrike side for AoE.”

You’re kind of stuck on this idea that simple aura buffs are going to fix the problems of the spec. That is not the case. You can’t just buff the spenders into infinity because then either the ST or AOE build will be OP. For example, if you buff divine storm by 10-15% to match other top performing classes, while using the ST build, then that would be balanced. The problem is you then pick AOE nodes and now it’s broken. The spec tree is systemically flawed in that regard.

On another note, I am highly against “Holystrike” and all other subforms of damage breakdowns. Make everything Holy and balance us around Mastery. It was better that way. Top Gear sims are so annoying for ret. Finding the best stats is insane. You flip one piece and all your gems, enchants, and even stat priorities change.

“I don’t get what’s that suppose to mean or how it has any importance, the game is the same for everyone.
Tuning will affect lower performing players just as it does higher ones.
It will affect people who do M+ as well as raiders of any capacity.
The only difference is that higher one might actually stop playing a spec because of it while lower one will just do worse with it.”

To be honest, I expected this response from a more casual player. At 2700 IO everything is accessible. You will hit a wall around 25-26 now and then 27-28 later in the patch where no one will ever invite you. In mythic raid it is the same. No one wants to carry a ret because they are highly limited in what damage profiles they bring. In lower level content none of the above matters.

"Being mainly M+ player doesn’t insulate me from the knowledge of ES being a staple in raid, I’m not blind.
ES is not the proper of Mythic either, people will use it on heroic and normal because that’s what will give them the most on a given fight.

But the game has 3 pillars now, raid is not the sole focus of PVE anymore nor is it the sole standard by which blizz should evaluate and design a spec toward.

Putting ES where DS stands is forcing people to use a spell that not everyone likes when the concerns with the spec can otherwise be solved without such a dramatic solution.

It seems like you’re suggesting stuff that would be purely oriented toward your raiding needs and from a mythic perspective.
I don’t think this is healthy way to approach a problem in such broad and wide ranging game."

I’m guessing you mean “insult”? Trust me, we’re all on the same team. I want Ret to be in a better place. ES is simply never used in M+. You are actively doing worse damage if you ever take that talent. I am also not opposed to getting rid of the ES playstyle. I don’t mind FV being good in ST/AOE. I think it would be great to have a powerful button that performs well in both situations. That was my thought in making ES do splash damage. The nice part about that thought is that in a M+ scenario we cannot kill lieutenant mobs with priority. For example, if you wanted to kill an abomination in Everbloom you would just spam DS until it died. It would be cool to have a huge prio damage spell like ES on a target while you ramped it with DSs and killed other mobs at the same time. I can see someone telling me to just spam TV, but then you’re doing abysmal damage and you’ll see groups bring other classes.

Lastly, I don’t know if ES where DS is the right answer or if that’s what Blizzard wants the playstyle to be, but they sure did pigeon hole us into playing it. They may as well make it good if they are going to have us play it in raid.

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Yes, I agree with you. I don’t think it’s a main cause of concern, but rather it is an example of how the spec tree forces a ST/AOE decision making process - which is no longer a concern for lots of classes in the game as I’ve previously stated: rogue, BM hunter, DH, mage, Boomkin… the list goes on.

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The point is not that Blizzard needs to remove the choice node. The point is that we are constantly choosing between AOE and ST in the spec tree. This is an example.

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yes i agree, but the es /fr choice node is probably the least problematic issue in the spec rn. it really shouldnt be everyones togo example. its a capstone that offers distinction between st and aoe, both options are strong enoguh to excell in its content. something like rush of light however shouldnt be like this, it should work with ds as well instead of just fv. if it granted haste on ds, it would be a comparable gain to the bov st fix

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ES sucks and is not fun.

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tis funny how es turned into what everyone thought seraphim was.

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I think we are missing one of the big problems, Vanguard of Justice, 4 HP spenders still feed bad after being forced to use this for 2.3 tiers of content. 3 HP spender is just superior, it feels better, its smoother, leads to less wasted HP. VoJ should be replaced with a talent that makes ES and TV cleave up to 3 targets, of course TV damage would have to be buffed to compensate.

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Oh, I absolutely loathe VoJ and I’d take anything over it tbh, but I feel quite obligated to use it.

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The damage is the important part here, they don’t have more utility different for sure and hunter is a lust but we have more answer than they do.
I agree Ret utility in raid is not good but it is better than before rework by the sole presence of ret aura.
Beside the utility will always be specific to the encounters.
Now it’s not utility specific to Ret so Prot and holy can bring it but we were comparing the damage specs.

You don’t get what I was saying I guess.
Our problem is not the damage each build can output for their intended purposes, it’s the tradeoff for the damage for which it is not intended.
We both agree on that.

Including FV in Burning Crusade is an elegant way to specifically target the ST damage Ret does with it’s AOE build without buffing base FV.
Because, as you pointed out, buffing base FV would just further the amount of adds needed to cast DS over FV.

Making it radiant is a way to make it do 5% more damage and also give another opportunity to trigger Searing Light (to get to those 3 PPM) beside just the expurgation DoT, WoA and cons.

And they can change divine arbiter in the a similar way as to do the same damage is does now by boosting it’s occurrence all the while reducing it’s primary target damage and maintaining the cleave damage to increase it’s AoE potency.

My suggestion is a talent change, not an aura buff. (And frankly I don’t see how what I suggested can be interpreted as such.)
My suggestion is seamless.
My suggestion doesn’t upend the gameplay like putting ES as a “baseline” spell would.

Ok :confused:

I mean the games loose its appeal to me once I have to wait 2 hours to get in a key so I never really get there, I don’t resent it though.
It just means that the end of the run for the patch usually, unless my pals play and we go higher together.

We already know Ret doesn’t scale well, so I don’t expect it to be part of the teams that pushes and goes higher.
The data already shows what you’re talking about, Ret passes from 3rd most popular spec in 20s to 8th in 25s.

I get it, we don’t have priority damage.
ES does seem like a good candidate for it TBH and they did put splash on it at DF start.
But something feels bad in M+ about it because of the delay.

I’d welcome something akin to “lights decree” centered on the target and splashing damage around.
Honestly I thought this was gonna be how touch of light worked in the class tree but they just made a useless talent.

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I think the main issue has been brought up,
To pick aoe you lose a HUGE portion of your single target damage.

The solutions are simple enough, make those choice retain some Single Target power while gaining AoE.

Blessed Champion has actually 0 value in single target.
Burning Crusade has 0 value in single target.
and much more

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