Feedback on Paladin Sets

I know it’s unlikely to change, but having the most coveted gear in the game being primarily useful against only one monster type (undead) is not very exciting. I haven’t talked to a single person yet that’s looking forward to it.

The ret paladin bonuses seem a bit tone deaf after we’ve made pleas time and again for the things we really want. Having a little extra divine storm damage and having holy wrath in the rotation doesn’t seem to do much for us outside of destroying our already meager mana pool.

This could have been an opportunity to do some of most popular things we’ve been asking for over multiple phases and I hope that we can at least get some clarification on the intent behind this.

Two extremely popular suggestions for ret set bonuses that could replace the current iteration:

Seal damage on special attacks

Divine Storm cooldown resets (should be added to the t3 2pc imho)

If you don’t want to do resets for divine storm, another option would be to make divine storm hit a single target multiple times, as in it always does 4x hits but they are divided among up to 4 targets (sort of like Zeal from D2).

Another missed opportunity here is doing something to improve Judgement of Command, so that ret paladin do not have to use a cancel aura macro for every other judgement in order to do optimal damage.

I’d also like to touch on the lack of set for shockadin (again). We’re still waiting after being jebaited in phase one with the molten core set. Rets, Prots, and Holy paladins are ALL aligned in the notion that they do not want shockadins having to piggyback on their sets. It creates animosity between the playerbase, go look at the some of the reactions to my other posts on the topic if you don’t believe me.

Here is a video I made with a bunch of shockadin proposals that I hope can help inspire some action on this front and here is a forum post I wrote alongside it.

Please at least give us some acknowledgement that a set is coming or tell us if we are going to be unsupported so that we can make the proper choices for our respective raid groups.

Thanks for reading, OGB out.

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Agreed. t1 and t2 are amazing, t3 they just slapped a bunch of stuff together with no synergy. If no change they might as well bring back draconic/cf versions of t3.

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The lack of synergy is perhaps the most disappointing aspect of these early T3 bonuses. There’s a lot of opportunity within our existing kit. Divine Storm hasn’t been touched by any tier set yet, so modifying it makes sense with the 2-set bonus.

“Increases the damage done by your Divine Storm ability by 10%, and whenever Divine Storm critically strikes your Strength is increased by 2% for 15 seconds stacking up to 5 times.”

Holy wrath is an extremely mana intensive spell, as previously noted. Tying this into another ability could work super well for a 4-set bonus without adding to the GCD button bloat that paladin DPS is starting to suffer from.

“When Exorcism is cast on an undead or demon target Holy Wrath is casted instantly for zero mana cost when not on cooldown.”

The 6-set bonus could integrate both other set bonuses, making it very rewarding to attain as well.

“Reduces the cooldown of your Holy Wrath ability by 60%, and Divine Storm reduces the cooldown of Holy Wrath by an additional 6 seconds.”

Just some ideas that I think would make all paladin DPS camps happy enough :slight_smile:
Also, I second the idea of draconic/coreforged options for T3 – would be very nice to have this flexibility with the new shoulder runes coming into play.

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The main set bonuses for all sets need to be reconsidered. +Damage to Undead should, if anything, be a 2-set, so players have earlier access to that being that the raid is Undead.

As it is, the set bonuses give little benefit in a full wing of the raid, let alone most of the world we inhabit. We should be clamoring to use the most prestigious sets for all potential encounters we face, not for solely the dungeon from which we get them.

What possible reason would anybody have to wear the 6-set anywhere but two dungeons and Naxxramas itself? That’s poor itemization.

Thanks for making this post.

I strongly agree with the first half regarding the underwhelming set bonuses themselves and I will share some additional thoughts on that below. I don’t necessarily agree with the shockadin sentiment because it is/has always been a very niche playstyle represented by an incredibly small portion of the playerbase and I don’t think it makes sense to ensure that the “spec” is competitive in a raid environment. They have supported the spec in SoD as it has been a strong option for both open world and PvP.

Regarding the set bonuses - as it stands, the tier 3 set won’t even be worth using for a majority of ret paladins. They aren’t strong enough.

The team has done a really great job of refining the ret playstyles since the end of phase 3 to where we are now. The twisting rotation feels wonderful and rewarding to play, and the “exodin” build offers an easier alternative to players who don’t want to put in the extra effort needed to “twist”. I would recommend that the set bonuses for tier offer more of a passive enhancement of the current rotations/playstyles so that they don’t fundamentally change (it took us all of SoD to get here, let’s not ruin it) but they need to be strong enough that we want to wear the tier 3 set.

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That’s not true, exo has very high crit chance probably close to 100%. if you add that to the 4pc t2.5 or the 3pc zg set you get a crazy strong exodin.

Love the post and commenting to hope Blizz moves to make a change. I would LOVE a shockadin focused set instead of it being left behind again.

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Holy Wrath is a garbage spell even with these set bonuses.

IIRC Zirene isn’t working on itemization, and it sure seems like whoever is doing it has no clue.

Here are some additional suggestions (and feedback, his not mine) from Gcatalinstefan, an eu player who asked me to post these here:

2p - Supposing Might of Menethill remains the same, this might be the only decent bonus. If the weapon is changed this bonus will be as bad as the rest. Might be useable for Seal Stacking shoulders enchant. 4p - This needs to go. Nobody uses a spell which drains 40% of our mana. This is absolutely impractical. I repeat, nobody uses the spell, and nobody will ever use it. No point in reducing the cast time and its cooldown since it leaves our mana pool dry and its damage is a bad joke. 6p -The damage gain will be irrelevant. Both the base damage and the scaling are so bad on Exorcism and Holy Wrath. What will our end game be? Getting a 3k crit every few seconds on Exorcism? Yeah, very nice! Even with the T2,5 stacking on shoulders we have to delay our Exorcism, which makes the build not worth playing. Or, shall we go a 1.3 grey sword form the vendors only to make this work? Some bonus ideas:

  • CS triggers the active seal
  • DS resets CD (just like 2p T 10)
  • DS hits multiple times on a single target
  • Casting DS reduces the mana cost and cast time of Holy Wrath by 33% and the cooldown by 20%. Stacks up to 3 times.
  • Seal of the Exorcist (6p bonus) - permanent seal - Stacks with the currently active seal. Casting Judgement unleashes an additional Exorcism. Casting Exorcism refreshes the last seal in use. Exorcism and judgement crits refund half of their cooldown and automatically refresh the duration of the last judged seal
  • Double chance for SoC to proc + procs cannot miss be dodged, parried or blocked
  • Special crits reduce the cooldown of Avenging Wrath by 1 second each

We absolutely need a shockadin set. Or the ability to grab the shockadin set bonuses of ZG and apply them to t3 armor.

The whole ability to change set bonuses also could use some more work. We would like to mix and match the tiers of set bonuses to make our specs and classes fully viable for fun. It would be great to rock t3 with some zg, and t2 and t2.5 mixed bonuses.

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