Glad to see others feel this way too. While I liked the Legion artifacts, they simply butchered cumulative class design from many years/expansions and Ret wasn’t the only victim.
That may work for LKC, but it doesn’t translate well to retail and part of the reason that Ret has fallen into obscurity .
I’ve been playing Ret since TBC.
So i’ve played Ret throughout the years and its design iteration, and current Ret is more or less exactly what it was in Wotlk. The only thing it brings is Blessing of Might or Kings, but they can also be brought up by warrior (in a similar, but different way), Kings is unique to its kind though.
But except from that, it still only has SINGLE TARGETED utility like Dispel (or in wotlk case, magic spell), Sac, Bop, Freedom, and it can also single target heal.
So it brings literally the same thing as Shadowlands.
I hate it so much when people call Paladin a ‘‘support or group class’’ when Ret is about the only spec that doesn’t bring a group utility lol. Its all single target stuff. And its extra niche or you won’t really need it in a good group.
You make some good points. I have been playing ret since vanilla. I had 50k hks by patch 1.4. I would often be top healer and top kbs in the same BG. Ret was better with blessings, auras, seals and judgements.
Not to mention they are Fast, and they have Insane AoE dam all the time compared to ret who needs wings to even get close to competing
Well, WotLK was a bit more group utility in the sense that Auras were still impactful, especially Frost/Shadow resist in PvP, and Divine Storm used to heal 3 party members for 25% of the damage it delt, plus 15% if you used Divine Storm Major Glyph.
But also, Cleanse removed Magic buffs and didn’t have a cooldown, which was insanely good, even if only single target.
Auras, Blessings and AoE healing wasn’t a lot, but it was more than we have now. =/
Was it or was it just nostalgia?
Every caster used spell penetration or had spell pen bonus from talents and effects that made our auras kinda useless. Ret aura was bad, Devo was better back in the day when all melee did physical damage so armor was important.
hmm, yeah. 3 people in a raid, thats sure great group support lmao.
Magic debuff was nice, but it also existed when there were plenty of trash debuff to go through and it didnt have a dispel priority either.
We should stop going into the nostalgia road, because it wasnt as good as people thought. I’d rather they delete Auras, SoV and Lay of Hand and get better spells or true group utility like AMZ, Darkness, Rally, or aoe cc on mobs like Ursoc Vortex, Kyrian Spear, RoP. Or just Wake of Ashes stunning non-players.
Honestly, we can just go towards 2023 gameplay and stop going back to the stone era.
it was nostalgia. im excited for ret in wotlk. but i know it got crazy during icc. both then it was decent
Well it was a counter, for sure. But the reason why they needed spell pen was because Auras were so effective at allowing you to resist spells.
It wasn’t super exciting by any means, but it did at least “punish” those who didn’t have spell pen.
Well, its not good by today’s standards, but I’d argue there were more Paladins in WotLK than probably today as there was 2 less classes to choose from and shamans weren’t extremely popular on Alliance back then.
I know in my Alliance guild, we had 3 Ret Paladins, so those DS heals could add up.
(Obviously Classic Wrath will be different.)
I would argue that it’s not so much the “nostalgia road” as it is staying true to the Class. Auras, Blessings, etc… are a staple in the Paladin design, but yes, those should be designed in such a way that are impactful.
Two things coming off Shadowlands:
How do you shift that power dynamic from ST to group utility for BoSac and BoP?
No thanks, go play Classic see how fun that garbage is. No class should be a support class, don’t put that bad voodoo on anyone.
I agree. Kind of afraid of what our talent trees are going to be like. Because Ret, Holy, or Prot gets access to each others stuff is going to be frankly OP. And we know what happened the last time all three paladin specs were good. We’re still paying that tax.
Not really OP, more afraid how terrible we’ll look like compared to holy and prot since we essentially use their spells all the time.
Wog, dispel, divine protection, lay of hand(delete this) will most likely be from the holy side
Freedom, hoj, bop, bubble will be in the prot side
I legit dont know what ret will have in its side lol, maybe they’re gonna shift hoj and rebuke to ret for the sake of having something beside how. Classes seems to have rotational ability baseline, so I bet Crusader Strike, Judgement will be baseline?
But then, we already have all the same tools as each other specs, so essentially holy can give us aura mastery? Prot can give blessing of spellwarding? Maybe its a good thing and they’ll realize Ret literally dont have anything unique for the class and will have to work on new stuff lol
I remember that one of the reasons I quit Hpal in legion is because it felt so handicapped in aoe healing, in utility, and then Light of the Martyr replacing holy power, eck.
The more I play around with hpal though, the more infusion of light annoys me.
Going off the current class trees that they have release thus far. There’s potential that ret could get a few more things it didn’t have access to. Like a magic cleanse, Divine Protection and possibly all 3 Crowd Controls at the same time(Hammer of Justice, Repentance and Blinding Light). With little downside.
Is this being too optimistic, for sure, but just the potential I see.
I was just thinking today about things I would like to see on our class/spec tree.
Mainly I would love some form of DR instead of shield of vengeance, some way to either reduce the CD of wings (or having better damage outside of wings), and some form of utility that makes Rets desired over our holy and prot brothers and sisters.
Just like mark of the wild for druids, I would like to see Greater blessings come back, but be spec specific, I seen in a earlier post where Ret would get might, Holy would get wisdom and prot would get kings.
For ret, since that is what I main, I would like to see Seals come back to give that class fantasy. But I wouldnt like if it was like BC or MoP. I think it would be nice to get a different seal based on what we speced into and then we gain the buff when we Judge.
For AoE, I would love to see the option of Divine Hammers from legion to replace BoJ, and Empyrean Power (But the first iteration where it would proc off of any ability, not just CS). It would also be cool to see exorcism come back as an AoE/ranged option over BoJ.
For Single target, I would like to see Ret move in a more mid range class. Melee, CS, TV all being in the 8-10 yd range.
Just throwing together some ideas ive seen browsing the forums that resonated with me.
lol, you mean you aren’t excited for these amazing talents!??!:
[Blessing of Freedom] (1/1)
___ ↓ _____
[Divine Steed] (1/1)
___ ↓ _____
[Cavalier] (1/1) ----> [Light’s Barding] (2/2)
Technically Divine Steed was also a Protection Spell
As much as I’d love seals to come back, but I’m afraid we’re only going to get Virtuous Command. I do think Greater Blessings will come back given they gave Druids MotW and Outlaw a party buff.
I would love for Divine Hammer to come back. They keep giving us Divine Tempest that’ll probably be an option. Would love to see an option to replace BoJ with Exorcism, even if it is just a cosmetic glyph. Would love HotR as an option to CS for AoE.
bring back cata pally class. and buff heaven. none of this different blessing based off your spec bs. i like going to areas peeps were lvling at and giving em a blessing as they quested. but now that rp/class flavor is dead. which seems to be a theme in blizz class design removed all flavor and rp from the game and make grinding madatory = good game
Cata ret was good for PvP. We were hopo starved until Dragon Soul when the tier set let us get hopo from judgement as far as PvE goes.
MoP or WoD ret for me thank you.
I just liked the talents from cata. Guardian of ancient kings and Zealotry were really cool. But yeah, seriously holy power starved.