wod ret, gosh wod ret was really neat huh. final verdict memories 
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That’s why Final Verdict has to become part of the baseline paladin kit. Its like Wake of Ashes has become too iconic for it not to.
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I like replacing crusader strike yes
This is probably just gonna end up being a moot point but I figured I’d throw this out there.
I don’t think that Blizzard should sell the talent trees as “meaningful choice” especially coming off of the fail attempts of Covenants in Shadowlands.
If I recall correctly, there were like 150 Necrolord Holy Paladins when SL launched because Divine Toll was so good and Vanquisher’s Hammer was just awful, lol.
It just doesn’t work in World of Warcraft. Your choices matter because they impact other players around you more so than “solo” games such as Diablo, and I think Blizzard is just setting themselves up for failure.
For me, I would pivot from “meaningful choice” and instead focus on “flavorful choice.”
This is just a rough draft of me spending an hour throwing together icons into a “flavorful choice” talent tree. The spells can be arranged in any possible way, and this is by no means a “final version.”
-this is concept.
So I’ll break this down.
- Move all “General Tab” skills, like Armor, Weapon Skills, Flying, Racials, etc… Into the Character Tab Sheet.
- Your character has X riding Skill
- Your character can wear X gear
- Etc.
- Move ALL abilities into talents. And if possible, finally separate PvE and PvP Talents/skill to have separate hot bars and tooltips.
- If you can create every ability into a talent, and on the back end, separate them into PvE and PvP— then do it.
- Just bite the bullet, take the time and just do it.
- Make a section of your talent tree your “Class Abilities.” These are “talents” that are automatically provided to you as you level up.
- Skills and levels they are provided can change based on the class, these are just examples.
- Class Talents should be 100% completable. You are a PALADIN, for all that it’s worth, you’ve slayed Demons, Dragons, and Old Gods, you are not half a Paladin because “reasons.”
- To me, its absolutely silly to see a “Paladin Class” Tree and not be able to fully unlock every spell. How am I suddenly half a Paladin?
- You should be 100% your “class” at all times.
- Your talents now come with Optional Choices that are more focused on flavorful perks than meaning choices.
- Every Paladin gets Consecration, but how do you want to use it?
- Every Paladin gets Divine Protection, but how do you want to use it?
- Every Ret Paladin gets Divine Storm, but do you want Divine Tempest or Empyrean Power?
- Every Ret Paladin gets Exorcism and Art of War, but do you want to launch Exorcism forward, or have Blessed Hammer?
So for example:
Every Paladin will have Exorcism, I’m just showing Ret for this example.
Every Ret Paladin will then get Rebuke and Art of War through talents.
This will open up another optional choice talent that will allow you to choose between:
Blessed Hammer - Replaces Exorcism
- Throws a Blessed Hammer every 1 sec that spirals outward, dealing 1000 Holy damage to enemies within 12 yards. Last 3 seconds.
-or-
Vengeance - Passive
- Casting Exorcism now slings a flaming projectile which pierces and damages any enemies it touches within 12 yards for 3000 Holy Damage.
The damage and what this accomplishes is pretty much the same, but it has different visuals and different effects based on the player’s choices.
Any thing you see with a Blue Line and a “P” is just a spot open for a Passive, a simple +5% damage buff, or reduced cooldown, etc…
So everything “highlighted” in the tree just leads to Flavorful Choices. How you want to use your buttons.
This sets up that “baseline” of where we should be today.
- With the final specialization talents being an “optional” choice of Falling Sword vs Execution Sentence vs Sanctified Wrath.
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hella unpopular opinion but i hope they dont add divine toll in our tree. its not that good without the conduit
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Yeah… I don’t know how to feel about covenant abilities.
I think Divine Toll was the most successful spell for Paladins in Shadowlands as it worked for all 3 specs quite well without creating a very cumbersome gameplay.
Ashen Hallow was never my “go-to” as ret, nor was Vanquisher’s Hammer on Holy.
So Divine Toll was just the safe pick.
- Ringing Clarity could easily just be baked into the spell for any practical applications.
I do hope some classes get to retain their Covenant Abilities, I also hope some of them get new animations. : ) Ashen Hallow, for example, works in Shadowlands but I think it would be a rather silly “Paladin” themed talent. especially for new players.
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I’m not as disappointed from SL as many others are, but I don’t need any of the SL abilities going forward.
True, the base spell is quite bad.
Its a 1min cd Greater Judgement, which we had in Legion.
Same goes for Vanquisher’s Hammer, on its own it was terrible, it needed the legendary to even be playable.
I have some ideal Holy paladin talents; they’re a work in process as well, and I could use some feedback on it.
My feedback: I’m actually glad Blizzard added some baseline abilities, both at the class-level and (occasionally) at the spec-level. Those are good, IMO, because (a) getting free stuff is fun, and (b) it provides a kind of a framework or a foundation that can be built upon by class/spec talents.
…And now I need to stop typing that paragraph and correct myself: I was going to criticize the fact that nothing or almost nothing was baselined with your proposal, but in a way, the entire class talent trees are baselined, since they’re 100% completable! I remember in Legion that part of the fun of artifact weapons was that we knew we’d get all the artifact traits eventually; our choice while leveling was which traits to get first, not which traits to get and which ones to forgo. So letting us get all the class talents definitely has its positive aspects, though really, if Blizzard wants us to have 100% completable class talents, they’d probably need to have an Artifact Power-like system that trickles class talents to us over the course of several weeks to keep the rewards coming over time…
So there’s some really strong ideas in your proposal. I like it, especially if every paladin got Exorcism and Holy had the option of transforming it into Denounce 
Really don’t wanna be the negative nancy here (or perhaps I want to?) but with a release planned for 2022 I don’t see a lot of changes coming to our class. I mean it’s 6 months and a few days til 2023…and I don’t think they will release late december, so it’s effectively 5 months and a few days for alpha, beta and prepatch PTR.
Let’s just hope my intuition is wrong and they’ve done a lot of internal testing. Then again knowing how adamant Blizz is with changes we need wayyyyy more time.
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I don’t mind the baseline abilities going into talent to be honest. Right now they magically just show up in my spell book, so there isn’t much excitement there to begin with.
I especially would like them to re-do the spell IDs on the back end, and make a PvE and PvP variant of each spell, with different tooltips.
- I feel like this is the ideal time to do that if everything moved into the talent tree, but I’m not 100% sure how it all works on the back end of programming.
That was mainly the idea, to give you that “Ideal Paladin” but let you choose less meaningful “perks” so that you could still make it your own, with eventually adding spell skins later down the line for more customization.
There are just wrong answers sometimes, and being the No Soulbind, No Conduit, No legendary, No Set, Night Fae Paladin-- is just “wrong.”
You’re not taking advantage of player customization and “playing your way.” You’re actively griefing other players under the guise that Blizzard labeled it “customization.”
And I don’t think the new talent system is going to be any different.
I’m going to give up Divine Storm and Final Verdict so I can spec into reduced Rebuke Cooldown, please invite to your mythic key. : )
I don’t want to feel like I’m gambling every time I invite someone, or have to enforce such strict rules that ruin the “customization” anyways, so why not give everyone everything that is “right?”
Now that we have the baseline kit, lets expand on it, see what we can make more customized, etc…
I haven’t spent too much time on this, but quickly throwing together a Holy Build, this would be how it starts.
You get:
- Exorcism, Righteous Verdict, Pursuit of Justice
- Holy Shock, Seal of Light, Holy Light
- Infusion of Light, Fist of Justice, Light of Dawn
But now you get to choose optional talents;
Do you want Exorcism to be instant cast but have a cooldown or Denouce?
Do you want Repent or Blinding Light?
Do you want LoD to turn into Holy Radiance?
etc…
And I’m sure there’s different spells and abilities that could be used and expanded on. But the point is, you don’t have to worry about your Hpal not having Holy Shock at all, because they didn’t spec into it.
You don’t have to worry about your Holy Paladin having BoP because they didn’t spec into it.
You don’t have to gamble on other player’s “customization” negatively impacting your game…
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They did say the expansion was farther ahead than the others at this stage when they were doing interviews.
So this can be hopeful.
When they don’t have to waste useless ressource on useless borrowed power system they’ll trash at the end of the expansion, it leave out a massive amount of time to work on classes, raid and other stuff.
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yep totally true. the only coven ability that was solid without a conduit or its lego was ashen hallow. i realy hope they back in the dt conduit if they plan to make it a talent. or turn it to greater judgement to give regular judgement a aoe component
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I wish they’d just release the Paladin talent tree already. So we can at least get feel of what we’re in for. I mean if they’re that far ahead, selling preorders and have release date for the end of this year. Then they could at least give us peek.
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That’s why I think they ain’t as far ahead as they want to make us believe. IF they were they would have released much more talent trees already.
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You’d at least think so right?. My pessimistic side says they’re just trying to sell preorders.
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Yeah I was expecting preview for every class, but maybe they wanted the feedback on those 2, and take the feedback into account to modify the others?
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Good point! Whatever happened to JoJ (Judgement of Justice)??!
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I am waiting for my WotLK and DF beta invites.
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Judgement of Justice was great in wotlk, but now it wouldnt be that amazing now.
War just charges or leap to someone, monk and dh dashes or monk has that 30sec tiger lusts thing it would work against.
Rogue has shadowstep, outlaw has grapple and talent that charge on 20yards to someone.
It would mainly work on druids, hunter, paladin. It wouldnt really help against ghost wolf or dk death advance, cause they can already can’t slowed below 100% movement speed
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