I think Blizzard made a mistake in Legion when they pruned Denounce. I get that they wanted paladins to look iconic, and since Prot was sword-and-board and Ret had Ashbringer at the time, that left Holy the task of wielding a giant 2H hammer and looking like we were in Warcraft 3 again. And I get that flinging streaky balls of holy magic around isn’t what paladins were like in WC3, and thus isn’t iconic.
Unfortunately, having a damage ability with no cooldown is much more fun than not having one, so pruning it was a step backwards rather than a step forwards. Honestly, I think pruning Denounce is another example of Blizzard making the mistake of prioritizing their design goals over actual player experience—that’s a mistake I hope they stop making in general!
But now that the talent revamp is coming, I don’t don’t know about the rest of you, but I for one am crossing my fingers that the new talent revamp will bring Denounce back! I don’t even care much whether the no-crits-for-you debuff comes back with it or not, to be honest; I really miss having a ranged ability with no cooldown—and, preferably, no mana cost, since having that on my spellbar would give me things to do while I’m not healing, like it did back in WoD.
Plus, let’s not mince words: the Denounce projectile looked amazing! And with our spellbook casting animation causing us to move our hand in the direction we’re casting, it’d look even better now than it did in MoP and WoD!
My personal feeling is that Denounce would actually be best in the class talent tree rather than the Holy spec talent tree: that way, if a scenario arises where having a ranged ability with no cooldown is needed for whatever reason, then Ret and Prot would have the option of getting it on their spellbars. And they could ignore it in all other scenarios.
What do you guys think? Denounce back in DF? And would it go better in the class or spec talent tree?