Ret has has the highest quantity of nerfed pvp talents, the least amount of pvp talents, and the largest pvp talent nerfs on pvp talents that have been nerfed(80%nerfs on several), So I do believe there is definitely room for some utility added to steed through a pvp talent and fear reduction or removal that a paladin could use on themselves while suffering a fear.
For Hero talents I’d be happy to see instant mobility, changing Final Verdict optionally to a new ability that functions like Shadow Strike(outside of melee range brings the Final Verdict caster to its target and does 10% more damage. Maybe use a sword visual for this charge like ability like is already present on HotS(or have the instant mobility baked into Wake of Ashes as we cast it far less often.
If Templar hero talents only have damage increases to Wake of Ashes it would have to be a large increase to make the lowest perfoming spec catch up in raid, although reducing the cooldown by about 50% would help a bunch as WoA already does good damage, if the target doesnt sidestep its damage.
Seperate from Hero talent conversations, what Ret really need is a few of the recent nerfs reverted and our former mastery scaling brought back.
As it is now, gaining a bunch of new gear doesnt give Ret much benefit in damage performance.
Lastly, for the love of all that is holy, remove Forbearance, please.
I was actually thinking of leveling a paladin because I tend to enjoy classes that can solo most content. So I am approaching this from the perspective of a novice.
Lightsmith in it’s current iteration made me to decide not to pursue the class simply because of Holy Armaments. So that eliminates a 3rd of the class options out of the gate. Holy Armaments is not an appealing talent. The rest of the talents paint an interesting picture for a support healer though. I like the general design, but that first talent really sowers the whole tree for me.
First it alternates between the buffs, so to get the effect I want, I have to actively keep using a talent I already do not find appealing. Second, I have to drop it and hope someone picks it up. Basically it’s a rotating mini-game. I don’t like it.
If you made it two abilities that share charges and can be targeted to a player. That will be more appealing. Add flexibility and choice. Empower two DPS or buff a tank with damage and defense. I like the idea of buffing players and getting benefits. I’m even ok with random armor and weapons spawning. I just feel Holy Armaments needs to touch of QOL.
Points for creativity. It just needs refinement in the execution.
Although there is a real design problem regarding stat scaling
And it should be remedied, I just don’t see it being through the hero talent.
If they do it through them it’ll be a pretty big letdown for anyone but the PvP community.
Anything they design for PVE will inherently be found in PVP albeit in a nerfed form sometime, the contrary isn’t true.
See PVP talents.
The whole reason they exist is so that they could carve out a specific design space that wouldn’t make it feel like you’re missing out on what your classe/spec can do because you have to take the “PVP” talents instead of your usual build.
So designing something (hero talent) with talents clearly intended for PVP would be a massive miss in my book for a leading expansion feature.
Add another PVP talent slot, add more PVP talent but diluting the spec/class/hero trees with virtually PVP only node feels like a waste.
Class tree/holy problems aside, I like this suggestion the most.
I can deal with the current button bloat as prot, but holy has a couple more binds on top of that. it’s really too much atm.
Couldn’t lightsmith just summon/forge a holy golem that does stuff, a la Bronn from the Kyrians? then the hero talent tree buffs that, if we want to stick to the “smith” part of the name.
I like the concept, the practical aspect will be similar to pelagos’ collecting balls and staring at ghosts though, which really sucked as a tank.
My take on the Hero Talents in general is that you’re putting all your eggs in one basket way too often with your current design philosophy of making the main focus of your hero talents be buffing and/or introducing a single ability per hero tree: if that single ability doesn’t have universal appeal, or if you accidentally do something in the hero talents to make the ability less appealing or more annoying to use optimally, then you’ve lost.
Please keep in mind: a loss like this is a very bad thing —quite a bit moreso than usual. In Dragonflight, you’ve started to rebuild trust with players by doing a good job with class design. Like it or not, that trust is fragile. You need to keep that trust if you want World of Warcraft to rebuild momentum; if you botch it with hero talents, you’ll lose what your hard work has built in Dragonflight.
And by putting all your eggs in one basket, you’re setting yourselves up to fail in War Within.
A broader focus or broader flavor is much wiser; I came up with an ideal Lightsmith tree of my own (I started on it before you made the Dec 18 announcement), and its focus is generally damage prevention through your heals. The tier-1 talent (I think you’re calling it the “Keystone Talent” in your jargon) was Holy paladins’ old Cataclysm mastery: Illuminated Healing, where the targets of our heals get an absorb shield proportionate to the amount healed. This has a much broader appeal because it applies to all your healing spells, and doesn’t put all your eggs in one basket. It’s useful for Protection because it helps them absorb damage, and it helps with Holy because it prevents damage on the targets we heal.
Having a broader focus and broader appeal is setting yourself up for success, and we want you to succeed. Please reconsider what you’re doing!
Blizzard, I am telling you right now that if all a person has to do is direct heal someone and sometimes swap aura this will be a big success. The current version sounds horrible.
While being less than optimal in M+ and a downright waste of a raid slot to bring Ret, “it’s just tuning” remains a large concern. While you’re correct to assume hero talents are likely not to be used to correct paladin deficiencies in pvp… If fear durations, forbearance, and 5 min CD defensives continue to be removed by 1 min CD mass dispells, without at least improving paladin mobility when it’s not crowd controlled, Ret players are going to continue to reroll DH and Sub rogue and leave their Rets to rot. Its a really sad state Ret is in. When Ret only had damage going for it, everyone that wasnt Ret complained. Now it just gets ran over by everyone that has the tools it lacks.
And yet, it is still one of the most popular melee spec PVE wise.
Which just underscore how it’s more of a PVP issue that needs to be dealt with PVP already existing features.
Depends on the difficulty of the content.
In 20s and up, Ret is 3rd most popular DPS on 26 specs.
In 25 and up it falls to 6th place on 26 specs.
We do have a problem with scaling.
In raid, it’s last in the chart in mythic and by a margin significant enough that it should still be looked at but the mean difference between each spec is actually pretty decent all things considered.
They are clearly balancing around the legendary which is an irritant.
But I don’t mind being “last” if the repartition is further contracted by another 1-2 points from the bottom.
It’d be good if they had another round of adjustment but lets not pretend we are so behind that it’s actively an handicap or a waste to bring one either.
Especially considering people clearing just get stronger and stronger which make the DPS requirement of the group easier to achieve regardless of the spec brought, within reason.
100% agree, such big impactful spell shouldn’t just be able to be swatted like this.
Plenty of people made suggestion to alleviate those that doesn’t end up with Ret just being invulnerable for 8sec.
These suggestion can be specific effects on the spell that only occur in PVP to.
Fix it, Placing stuff on the ground for others to pick up, especially stuff that is DPS/HPS related, is giga cringe. Listen for once devs, you didn’t listen when it came to trying to bring the boomer classic casting playstyle back, so actually listen once when it comes to placing stuff on the ground.
Get rid of it, make it castable on the target, or a huge aoe circle that everyone in gets it.
I literally agree so much with the addition of added button bloat for Holy, but what more worries me, is another ability to keep on maintaining.
You mentioned a holy golem, I thought it was a missed opportunity to revive Cataclysm’s Guardian of Ancient Kings for Holy, it sort of essentially is the cap stone Blessing of the Forge, with less headaches and management.
My worry in a nutshell, we have a lot on our plate currently, we already have a lot of cds to keep track off, ontop we are maintaining glimmer and seasons, mana, holy power.
I think Holy Armaments is more a hindrance then a “Hero Talent”.
The MD or ST removing Bubble or BoP/BoS is not a stand alone concern. It is a problem made worse by Ret being made of paper outside of these cooldowns being used against the correct specs at the correct moments, and if they do get removed early, the one cooldown that was used and removed, locks us out of 3 more cooldowns for 28 seconds to 5 min such as with Bop and BoS.
We can HAVE access to possess blessing of spell warding and blessing of protection. But if you use one on anyone, both are on a 5 min cooldown and having the other talent is useless for 5 min. That falls outside of obvious problems with forbearance denying lay on hands access to cast on yourself after a Bubble/BoP/BoS is cast/removed in 2 seconds.
I could talk for hours about the annoyance of snares and slows, steed somehow attracts, BoF casts not being available but 1/4 the times you need it and Blessing of Freedom somehow attracting stuns.
I know this thread is suppose to be about hero talents but what I need to enjoy the game I pay for is my defensives to do what they say they do (I havent a clue how thamatically it is sound logic to have spells remove Blessing of Spellwarding) and to be able to control my own character more.
The two biggest things I’ve seen protection and holy have issues with is, weak single target heals/ weak holy power spenders, and concecration things with protection.
Hero talents should/could help those issues.
Some sort of mobile single target defensiveness, either boosting HPS or defensiveness(like a shield)
Either use hero talents to fix the issues, OR fix the issues directly, then offer something interesting and extra on top, but armaments are NOT it
I was watching the dev interview about the new lightsmith tree. My initial thought for the final talent was to take it one of two ways to make it a little cooler.
Blessing of the Forge summons a Light forge that gives a bulwark or weapon item like a warlock healthstone. This is an on demand buff with standard potion cooldowns. Flavour wise you can use the forge as an anvil like lightforge draeni.
Blessing of the forge is a mega cooldown that gives everyone either in the raid or in X range of the user a stack of Bulwark. Being that this tree is for holy and prot I think focusing more on group def/survivability makes sense.
I think it’s kind of interesting, but I don’t main Holy / Prot and it’s easy to be laid back about someone else’s hero talents. Do players actually have to click on the armaments, or can you lob it on them and they get it automatically? The latter doesn’t sound that bad to me. Other observations:
Will Holy have this and Blessing of Seasons? Seems redundant.
Excoriation (15% AoE snare when you HoJ) is very weak.
I wouldn’t mind a Ret support spec, but you know, make sure other Rets feel the same way.
From everything I’ve read, it sounds like it will work similarly to the Priests’ feather ability, where you click your ability, then click a spot on the ground for that ability to land. Some are assuming people will have to click on the armament to pick it up, but I imagine it will just be something you have to walk over. The problem people are having is, in terms of min/maxing, you’d probably want specific people to get the buff based on their own performance and cooldowns, etc, and especially in a raid setting it will be extremely difficult to target specific people with a reticule. Depending on how often we have to use this ability, constant reticule-targeting in addition to our normal gameplay will be a major burden and huge investment of extra time.
There IS going to be a talent that causes it to work similarly to priests’ Power Infusion, though, where you get the buff as well when an ally picks it up, or a random ally gets the buff as well if you pick it up. So it will be possible to just self-cast the buff every time and echo it onto a raid member, but this will likely severely limit its power because it’s not selecting ideal targets preferentially.
We currently have no idea how the main talent trees will change in TWW. As a Holy paladin main, the thought of juggling armaments plus BoSeasons plus everything else is painful though.
Lightsmith is the Holy/Prot shared tree, I’d expect outcry if Ret also gets a support-focused hero talent tree so that 2/3 of paladin trees are support.
Unless maybe they’re trying to push all healers into support-ish roles, which I guess wouldn’t be the worst thing if the whole game moves in that direction
