Feedback for Ret

Classes Paladin
1

Hello, just wanted to drop in some feedback as a returning player for shadowlands.

I have been playing ret since BC, played warrior in Vanilla, and overall I can say that the spec feels pretty close to what it was in BFA.

I do like that you have moved in the direction of un-pruning and giving us more abilities, but I really don’t understand the implementation.

Currently, you gave me back 2 “aura’s” that are passives I had previously, and now I have to not only choose between them but waste a GCD to do so? Also, where is Sanctity Aura? How about Resist aura? Again this is just absurd to me.

Seems we lost our blessings, which as one of the most iconic Paladin buffs is a disappointment. I also find myself missing exorcism a lot. It was the original Paladin ability dating back to Warcraft II, if nothing else a glyph to morph Blade of Justice would be nice (same damage and range.)

One of the biggest turn offs to ret lately has been a lack of defensives, especially against spellcasters and of course the lack of mobility. This is even further amplified by the return of shattering throw, and mass dispel. It seems we are heavily punished in the form of defensives due to having Divine Shield, yet it can be removed by two of the most common classes in the game… Not to mention most other classes have invulnerabilities, or just better defensives in general. Our other defensive strength is supposed to be healing, but this is really a weakness due to the dampening mechanic and the structure of PvP in the recent expansions.

Mobility wise, it’s just yikes. It feels pretty lousy playing ret and being kited indefinitely. I know we’re supposed to have amazing damage to compensate, but that was not the case in BFA after the prepatch was over. I would really like to see some of the protection paladin talents move over to the ret tree. Steed of Glory, Hallowed ground, blessing of spell warding are all great talents that could fill some of the dead talents in ret. Justicars vengence, fires of justice, these talents have been dead for almost half a decade at this point.

I do really enjoy some of the new abilities, especially the popular azerite traits that you have made into talents. I do however see an issue with getting into groups with the groupfinder as ret.

We don’t really bring anything special that Prot or Holy doesn’t already bring. I think the aura system, or perhaps brining back blessings, are the easiest way to implement this. Fixing the aura system really should be a priority, as it was supposed to be a big selling point for me to buy shadowlands (not quite there yet.)

I think it would be nice to have our passives back, and have the auras activate a group wide effect when used, similar to how aura mastery works. You could add a shared cooldown between the different auras so that paladins have to consider which aura to activate throughout the fight, and give unique auras to the different specs in order to create diversity.

An easy example would be crusader aura. Give us the heart of the crusader passive back, and have a simple activation aura that costs a gcd and some mana, and when activated it would then project that mount speed increase on allies to greater effect for a duration.

That brings me back to another thought, mana. It feels like we have all this mana as ret and it doesn’t really serve a purpose other then healing. Not really sure what you should/could do about it, just tossing out my thought here.

Anyway, that’s my feedback for now. I don’t see myself purchasing shadowlands as the game plays right now, it could change but I just foresee a similar frustrating experience that I already lived through with BFA.

Once prepatch is over, and we level up and probably get a nerf to WoG healing and DPS then we will be lower tier, it will be tough to get into groups for higher level content (not impossible but I don’t really care to spend an hour spamming group finder every time I want to play a game,) and a lack of meaningful changes or balancing to correct the issue. I like that you guys are trying some new ideas with unpruning, but I think the implementation is quite a bit off of what players would have expected when it was being sold to us last year. I didn’t want my passives unpruned into gcd’s.

8 Likes
2

I 1v5’ed a group of alliance twice in a row. ret is busted right now.

3

I’m really interested in maining ret for shadowlands at the moment. I really like way it does damage by just doing big burst. The only thing that is holding me back is its mobility. I mained windwalker in legion and havoc in bfa and I’ve become accustomed to a certain lifestyle of going fast.

Going from those to wheelchair ret feels pretty bad. I really wish they would bring back long arm of the law and / or pursuit of justice at least.

Also glyphs to change the horse to speed of light and blade of justice to exorcism would be great.

4

You’re fighting undergeared scrubs.

1 Like
5

they were all around 18-20k health. i didnt’ armory them though.

was still 1v2ing a geared DH and Warr several times in a row today in the middle of boralus.

6

I’m taking on multiple people on my hunter, DK, and paladin.

Most people in pvp right now are not used to the damage changes, don’t have the new pvp trinket, amd are testing out class changes.

You should see what arcane mage is doing to people.

Check out this clip to see whats in store. You’ll soon be staring down ranged 54k crits.

https://youtu.be/6sbl8Qqg-MU

1 Like
7

Nice post, I like your suggestions for the auras, definitely would be good for us to get all of them passive and just pick what we want to apply to our group.

8

I’ll just quote myself from another post cause that’s pretty much resume my thought on ret currently.

That’s the fake idea of unpruning for you, take away stuff you already have passively and slap them into new abilities called auras which are passive that you have to press to have the effect, which is 100% worse.

It looks like Wisdom and Kings blessings were removed to be replaced for Devotion and Concentration aura to complete 4 auras lmao.
Also giving buffs and debuffs to other classes while Paladin was the original class for buffs, and ret was literally a buff bot in vanilla, it’s weird to not have blessings anymore and see DH and Monk grant a debuff to targets and make them more desirable.

Like i’m fine with moving on from the buff bot design because it was boring, but give me better stuff then that can help me in my massive weaknesses.

I really wanna quote this whole block again. People have this idea that having immunities is so strong, while it’s in reality not that strong. Yes you are powerful during those 8 seconds, but nearly dead for the rest 5min at every occasion (considering you can live those 5minutes). I’m actually among one of those who would like to see these immunities changed into something less powerful, but atleast a better defensive cooldown. Divine Shield could be changed into a 90% damage reduction for 6sec, your next 2 flash of light will be instant and heals for 30% of your max health, 3minute cooldown. With Unbreakable Spirit it’s a 2.1min cooldown. (Dispersion is 1.5min cd with intangibility talent, heals you for 50% of your max health passively and increase movement speed by 50% and immune to movemenent impairing effects.) Keep the fact that you can use it through every cc in the world though. Also delete Shield of Vengeance, it’s another gimmicky spell a-la Holy Wrath from Legion. It’s degenerate gameplay in pve and pvp. Replace it with Divine Protection which is a better defensive cooldown for 1min cd 20% damage reduction and also usable while stunned.

But that’s horrible game design for both parties. The playing retribution paladin is frustrated from never being able to play its character in pvp situation because a single snare will control you for the whole game and there’s nothing you can do against that. And being on the receiving end it’s not fun to get so much damage in your face when a ret finally connect to you for few seconds. This design of slow juggernaut is betterly suited for Death Knight which, by the way, has a amazing slow juggernaut design compared to Retribution, because it can still control the game from range with its pet, interrupting and stunning people, also a 70% undispellable snare that can be used repeatedly, also a 10yards kick, 20yards undispellable stun, it can still deal damage from range via its pets and disease. But most of all, it has the defensive ability to be called a slow juggernaut with its multiples defensives and passively negating slow beyond 70% movement speed and while active, 100%.

Retribution has never been a slow juggernaut. It was an inescapable justice, deliver of judgement and smiter of the evil archetype which we are far from nowadays since Legion redesign which turned us into the bland warrior with reskinned holy abilities.

Reduce the amount of burst damage we can do and give us some dire mobility. We’re not asking for the extra range with Exorcism + Halved cooldown of Hammer of Wrath during wings, just give us more speed boost type of mobility like we had in the past with the mobility row, Long Arm of the Law + Pursuit of Justice and Speed of Light (better than Divine Steed by the way) with Emancipate.

Also you guys keep saying meaningful choice, while you purposely push for open GCDs in my rotation to use those utility spells to help my allies when a lot of the time I’m not in need to use anything so I just sit here for 2-3seconds feeling like a Vanilla Paladin looking at my auto attack cause there’s nothing I can press without wasting a cooldown for no reason and then being punished for using freedom at the wrong time. Go back to 4.5sec cooldown on Crusader Strike and 8seconds cooldown to Judgement. That way using those helpful spells are actually true meaningful choice. I’ll always choose helping my teammates over doing damage. Or you could remove the restriction to Hammer of Wrath since it’s not a special ability or an execute spell ability anymore. Its doing the same damage as judgement so why is it still restricting to maximum health and Avenging Wrath? Just let us use it at all time just to make our rotation more fluid if you don’t want to reduce the cooldown of Judgement and Crusader Strike. (Could also make a PvP Talent to make it become a ranged spender, at reduced range like 20yards, just saying, if you still don’t want to give us mobility, you gotta help our massive weaknesses)

My rant is done.

1 Like
9

my feedback for ret in pretpatch:
ht tps://i.gyazo.com/7f6953782034aa6305b546a3c1f184f3.png
ht tps://i.gyazo.com/617d3ff9a55c02570703d2df76cf4111.png
its fine there are no issues this was simply a learn to play matchup between arms and ret with similar gear

10

All ret has is burst damage. Which is an inevitable nerf.

We do want the nerf because we’re obviously doing too much damage, but if you nerf the burst, you gotta give us something better, like Shield of Vengeance replaced with Divine Protection. Better mobility like we used to have.

Us, ret players, want the damage nerfed for better tools.

11

I’d have to agree. Can literally melt big 10+ mob pulls in seconds.