Lightsmith’s talent “Fear No More” is way too strong in PVP combat and needs to be looked at.
Armaments last 20s, the CD of it is 48s and it has 2 charges meaning the ability is essentially up for almost 50% of an arena while also being shared use on another target. So not just the paladin, but also another target takes a substantial reduction in fear for free.
This is just as bad as Concentrated Aura from Shadowlands which had to be nerfed specifically in PVP and I hope the same can be done with Fear No More so holy paladins won’t freely hard counter any class with a fear (Warlock, Priest, Warrior, and potentially Evoker).
Greetings, first off want to say, thank you so much for the work you guys are doing and the time you’ve put into the hero specs.
What I’m calling out
I noticed while playing the lightsmith hero talents that my armament went to a nearby warlock’s pet without targeting the pet. I’m not as in depth or nuanced as some of the posts above, but I feel like the possibility to have your new major armament go to a pet is a rather large negative. Please allow for the armaments when using the smart targeting to target nearby players first before the possibility of targeting pets.
Quest Description: “Paladins, the time has come to bring light to the forsaken. Your mission is to redeem Xal’atath, the Harbinger of the Void, and turn her from her path of destruction.”
Questline Highlights:
Redemption Arc: The paladin’s unwavering faith and light challenge Xal’atath’s dark nature. Initially resistant, she gradually begins to question her allegiance to the Void through a series of trials and heartfelt interactions.
New Class Hall: Establish a serene sanctuary on a farmstead, symbolizing peace and renewal. Here, paladins can find solace and strength, while Xal’atath assists in tending to crops and livestock, learning the values of life and growth.
Farm Management: Cultivate holy crops and rear celestial livestock, providing unique buffs and resources for the paladins.
Epic Mount Reward: Earn a radiant steed that embodies Xal’atath’s transformation, symbolizing her dual nature of Void and Light.
Cinematic Finale: The quest concludes with a moving cinematic where Xal’atath, freed from the Void’s influence, pledges to aid the paladins. Her transformation is complete, and she embraces her new path, bringing balance to her dual nature.
Additional Rewards:
Unique transmog set blending Void and Light themes.
Special abilities reflecting Xal’atath’s influence, enhancing the paladin’s connection to both Light and Void.
A letter from Xal’atath, expressing her gratitude and newfound purpose, highlighting the profound impact of the paladin’s mission.
So far my biggest gripe is Holy - it still feels tremendously undertuned where you are scrambling to keep people healed.
i get that you wanted to reduce the reliance on beacons and have martyr baked in but its just rough. Flash of light and holy light feel like im tickling my targets, wog doesnt seem to have any umph behind it, etc. About the only time i really feel like im spot healing is after a daybreak where shocks are going out like candy.
add to that issue - lightsmith just feels terrible. i dont even know what to do with this talent tree. its more of a pita to use - especially due to the lack of strong healing which forces you to focus sometimes to the point of forgoing armaments just to keep the targets alive.
Adding onto this after getting a chance to play around with the Hero specs as Holy:
Herald of the Sun was a blast, and there’s plenty of passive healing going on from Sunspots and the tethers during Avenging Wrath, as well as some other talents (I think). Eternal Flame feels like the intended upgrade from Word of Glory, and has the added benefit of giving us a HoT option when using up Holy Power.
Lightsmith doesn’t feel like its adding anything as Holy. I throw out some absorbs and give myself/others damage/healing procs, what else? What is this adding to the Holy Paladin playstyle/kit aside from another cooldown to press?
Moreover, adding on to how weak Holy Paladin’s spells feel individually, I gave Conduit of the Celestials Mistweaver a try before servers went down. Celestial Conduit does 5 million healing (at 613 ilvl) across 5 allies in a what, 2-3 second channel? And that’s on a 1.5 minute cooldown. It would take me 7-10 (if we’re accounting for crits) Light of Dawn casts (so you know, 21-30 Holy Power) to do as much at the same ilvl.
I’m enjoying Herald of the Sun as Holy. Lightsmith not so much.
I think the main reason for that is Herald of the Sun puts Holy Paladin healing output where it should be. It’s quite satisfying to pump out big green numbers that are somewhat proportional to the amount of cooldowns you spend.
Lightsmith doesn’t really feel very engaging in that way. The armaments are neat but it’s on what feels like a long cooldown (even for 2 charges) that isn’t reduced quickly enough by using corresponding cooldown reduction abilities. I would rather have a faster cooldown and/or greater cooldown reduction on armaments, even if it means they’re less powerful to compensate.
healing breakdown spread out over too many cooldowns
pressing any individual heal usually doesn’t feel impactful
hard to catch up to burst damage/triage heal without (or even with!) a major cooldown
remove mana cost on spenders
counterintuitive to have a spell cost mana and holy power
makes using spenders without Blessing of Dawn stacks even more punishing
increase builder mana cost if necessary to rebalance mana economy
buff Holy Shock and spender healing
nerf casted heals (except with Infusion of Light procs) to encourage limited, but powerful, casting in all playstyles
too many talent interactions with casted heals instead of instant heals
introduce choice nodes in talent tree to separate melee (PVE) and caster (PVP) playstyles
too vulnerable when being targeted in PVP
currently can die thru Avenging Wrath + Divine Toll + Daybreak + Divine Protection + Devotion Aura Mastery
buffing instant heals will help with this
possibly buff heals when casted on self
paladin is the only healer to wear plate armor - it should be tanky!
making spenders cost 3-5 holy power would open up more rotational flexibility and skill expression
reliance on hard casting limits viable arena comps and playstyles
procs to massively buff Holy Shock are not useful, since we want to press it on cooldown anyways
usually leads to overhealing
see: Power of the Silver Hand/Blessing of An’she
Forbearance
feels outdated and punishing in PVP
overly difficult to play with retribution paladins
holy has little purge protection (improved with Herald of the Sun buffs), and it’s common for BOP to be instantly removed
possible solutions:
reduced forbearance duration (even 5-10 seconds would be impactful)
no forbearance or reduced forbearance duration when BOP/Bubble are dispelled
PVP talent to offset BOP/Bubble being dispelled (a la Reactive Resin for resto druids)
active reduction on Forbearance duration by casting certain spells (e.g. Holy Shock reduces the Forbearance duration by 1 second)
Infusion of Light
bring back fast cast holy light! it’s fun way to incorporate casting without disrupting melee playstyle
usually not worth the mana to use Infusion of Light procs on Judgment in PVP, unless being trained/can’t cast
Class Talents
Afterimage
too weak to be a desirable choice
20 holy power requirement is a lot (e.g. every eighth Word of Glory triggers a weak splash heal)
Blessing of Sacrifice/Sacifice of the Just/Recompense
what is the reasoning behind longer CD on Sac only for holy?
15 seconds reduced CD is not enough to justify spending another talent (Sacrifice of the Just)
Recompense is niche at best, or just leads to overhealing
should activate even if the target has an absorb shield (currently doesn’t activate until shield is consumed)
suggestion: choice node replacing Sacrifice of the Just/Recompense
choice 1: Reduces the cooldown by 1 min, but nerfs damage reduction to 20%
choice 2: Now usable on self with a reverse effect (e.g. 30% of damage taken is diverted to one or more allies)
maybe even amplify damage diverted to allies if this is too strong
this will help with the problem of being too vulnerable when targeted in PVP
Divine Resonance/Quickened Invocation
Divine Resonance leads to overhealing and is only taken to get more Infusion procs
Quickened Invocation not taken due to mismatched cooldown with Daybreak
bring back Ringing Clarity in this location to make Divine Toll a stronger single target heal
Spec Talents
General Comments
certain talents de-synergize each other (Blessed Focus, Daybreak, Glorious Dawn)
too many mandatory talents in the bottom section, leading to a lack of build variety
Beacon choice node
Daybreak + Rising Sunlight
Wings choice node
Tyr’s Deliverance + Boundless Salvation
Inflorescence of the Sunwell
Blessing of Seasons
adds to button bloat and usually awkward to use
preferably this ability is removed
prime position in the tree for how weak the ability is (required to take up to three powerful capstones)
many times just pressing on cooldown or in the starting room to get to the next blessing
Blessing of Summer
how does targeting logic work for the new Summer?
damage portion should target players in PVP situations (preferably low HP players or target of whoever I am healing)
seems like it will be too strong at current tuning levels
Divine Favor
needs interrupt protection with how much hard casting is required PVP
still dispellable, so meaningful counterplay is possible (e.g. purge + kick macros)
Divine Prism/Barrier of Faith
Divine Prism healing too weak to compete with Barrier of Faith in PVP
Barrier of Faith being nerfed by ~40% in PVP, so both of these may need buffs to avoid being a “press this to trigger Dawnlight” button
Glorious Dawn
tied to number of active glimmers, so should be moved underneath Illumination/Blessed Focus
possibly modify the power of this talent when Blessed Focus is taken (e.g. less glimmer damage/healing, but greater chance to reset Holy Shock cooldown)
Hand of Divinity
usually too weak compared to a Divine Favor Flash of Light every 30 seconds
power level perhaps OK with Holy Light/Infusion changes in TWW
casting Tyr’s Deliverance and Hand of Divinity every 90 seconds adds some clunkiness to the rotation (consider making Hand of Divinity instant cast)
Light of the Martyr/Bestow Light
no cap or duration on heal absorb → too risky/exploitable in PVP (you could get swapped to with a heal absorb greater than your max HP!)
already too vulnerable when targeted in PVP
Tirion’s Devotion
CDR is not enough to be impactful in PVP (reduction from 7 min CD to ~5 min CD at best)
LOH is not overly strong in PVP (nerfed by 25% and puts target on Forbearance), so increased CDR would be fine (ret already has better CDR on LOH!)
Tyr’s Deliverance/Boundless Salvation
possibly add extension from spenders/all heals, or just make the duration fixed with no extension
feels required in all content (this is OK, but then it should move up in the tree)
Hero Talents - Herald of the Sun
Eternal Flame
HOT duration too long for healing to be impactful
Hero Talents - Lightsmith
The entire fantasy/concept of these Hero Talents is flawed to me, for reasons explained better by other people, so I will just add one comment:
Fear No Evil
bad for PVP just like Pure Concentration was in Shadowlands - remove or significantly nerf
PVP Talents
Avenging Light
perhaps more useful in TWW with the Holy Light/Infusion changes, but this would be more useful if it also worked with Flash of Light (nerf its damage if necessary)
Blessed Hands
essentially required in all PVP situations, due to the abundance of roots/snares in the game
consider moving to spec tree
Cleanse the Weak
first portion of this PVP talent is bugged, and dispelling one ally will not dispel another ally of the same effects
Denounce
having a ranged damage spender is great, but this should be in the spec tree (possibly on a choice node with Shining Righteousness)
Divine Plea
tying our best burst healing cooldown (Daybreak) to a 30% healing nerf feels bad
consider a different curse on the kiss/curse tradeoff here (e.g. increased Daybreak cooldown)
Searing Glare
add an Evoker-style telegraph on the ground while casting so we can see what we will hit
Ultimately, I feel like Retribution is more fun and flashy than it was in the past (namely, the boring periods of Legion and BfA, for example), but I feel like there’s been a little bit of over-padding of the spec tree to the point where there’s too much going on. You’ve got free Templar’s Verdicts proccing, free Divine Storms, free Blades of Justice, divine toll, Final Reckoning, Wake of Ashes… on and on it goes.
I’m not saying we need to prune everything, but maybe if we’ve got SO much doing on at all times, things can be slowed down a little bit. OFC you can skip these talents, but you’re leaving A LOT of damage on the table. It feels a bit busy at the moment. Ret in WoD for example felt really good, and there’s a lot of that here now, but it’s coupled with 8+ years of addons.
Protection: I’m still never playing this as long as your defensiveness is tied to being in Consecration (yes, even with the recent change of it staying up for 4 seconds after leaving it, or however long it is). It ultimately feels terrible that you’re not safe unless you’re standing in it constantly. I feel weak and tied to one ability, it’s weird.
I’m not much of a writer, but hopefully something along the lines of
Opening & Gratitude: Xal’atath expresses her deep gratitude to the paladin, acknowledging their light that illuminated her dark soul and transformed her from a harbinger of destruction to a beacon of hope.
Impact of the Paladin’s Faith: She recounts her initial resistance and eventual realization of the paladin’s unwavering faith and its profound impact on her, leading her to question her allegiance to the Void.
Journey of Redemption: Xal’atath describes the trials and moments of reflection that chipped away at her darkness, revealing a world filled with new possibilities and the values of life and growth.
Commitment to Aid: She pledges to aid the paladins, committing to use her powers for good, symbolizing her complete transformation and embracing her new path.
Personal Revelation: Xal’atath shares the joyful news of her pregnancy with the paladin’s child, highlighting this as a symbol of hope, balance, and the power of redemption and love.
Conclusion: She reiterates her gratitude, emphasizing the profound impact of the paladin’s mission on her life and expressing hope for the future with their child.
So far the Ret changes and trees feel great. The main concern and something I was hyped about until finally getting on beta was Radiant Glory. A great idea gives me BFA “Vision of Perfection” vibes which was simply awesome. Thats the direction it needs to head into.
The fact it REPLACES our CD is just bad honestly. I get it cannot remain as strong as it is with how short wings can be (1M) instead of replacing, I would suggest lowering the wake duration from 9-10 seconds for Wrath to around 5 seconds and the proc giving 3-4 seconds. For Crusade , Ive mentioned before with their wings procs : Start with more stacks!
Just to cover Crusade 3 points of criticism : 1. Instrument of Ret procs need to start with at least 7 stacks, its weak and useless for that 9 second window of chasing max stacks. Should only take 1 spender to hit cap for a proc. 2. Next verse same as the first. Radiant Glory procs (6 seconds)need to start with Full (10) stacks - at least 7. No chasing stacks on procs, its bad. Some chasing is warranted with the longer casted durations though - Wake and Crusade itself. Wake could start with 3-4 and Crusade stays the same. 3. The Wake Proc’d Crusade and wings def needs to stay in line with the design, as in longer duration for Crusade/ shorter for Wrath, already on the beta as far as duration goes about 25% longer adjusted for stack chasing.
The main take away from this is : don’t take away wings for procs. Shorten the procs for balance, whatever you wanna do with it. Its a great idea but just not in this form. Not having Wings to press on demand simply feels bad. Wanted this in the game since it left in BFA and im sure im not the only Ret out there that feels the same.
hello again, as promised here is feedback tailored primarily for retribution paladin. again im very pleased with alot of the new additions to the spec but i feel like theres still some areas where the spec could use some work. i hope this feedback post is clear and concise enough to show you where i think the spec could use improvement in. keep in mind that there will be very few “tuning” type feed back in this post since it will be design oriented. i feel like it would be best to start this thread off with things i like before digging deep into the core of the issues
stat scaling changes: ive stated in the past that any stat scaling overall shouldnt be priority but if we did get any, it would be strictly candy. im very pleased to see mastery scaling with various talents and a overall buff to it. im also very pleased to see crit scaling with art of war and burn to ash. very nicely done.
VOJ changing: its very nice to have 3 hopo spenders again, it definitely feels alot more smoother especially with crusading strikes.
rolling back on defense: its a controversial statement thats for sure, but i do feel like ret losing some defensive power is a good thing.i understand this is something alot of rets wanted in the past but rets defensive power post rework felt like a step to far in the other direction. i shouldnt be able to tank swirls and other frontals and walk it off. the approach to slowly cut off rets bulk was done step by step to make sure it wasnt kneecapped i appreciate that alot
wake of ashes being moved up: personally i didnt see the reason why this needed to be a thing but the overal community is happy so im happy. however so theres no reason to remove power from wake of ashes in the future, may i suggest moving it downward where the SOV and aegis choice node is? and have the sov/aegis choice node be where wake of ashes currently is?
a returning skill ceiling: while small, its still nice to see some skill ceiling return to ret so it can be properly tuned
judgement debuff stack: very good qol change
now with that out of the way, we can focus on what needs to be fixed, ill try and keep this short and sweet. this will mostly be by talent by talent with details on specific issues especially f or ST and aoe based talents. but do keep in mind, i personally dont think the divide between st and aoe is a issue as long as ret has the reduced skill ceiling it has, im just bringing it to attention due to its painpoint within the community as a whole. keep in mind i dont believe every issue will be fixed and frankly the spec will never be perfected, this is my subjective list on what needs to be fixed for me
righteous cause should also receive the crit upgrade aow gotten OR make proc judgement resets. this will make alot of dead talents (judgement of the just and improved judgement) become viable and competitive
inquisitors ire is currently not played and should be removed, i do appreciate the idea of single target Divine storm but that wont ever happen because itll be to strong in aoe if its competitive in st. i highly suggest putting judge jury and executioner in its place
avenging wrath and crusade, crusade is simply to weak and inflexable to compete with might. especially with our new capstone. im a avid crusade fan, but idk how to fix this. perhaps make crusade do more damage with more stacks like 15 stacks? to warrant its steep cost as a 2min cd? or replace it with lights decree on a 1min cd that buffs mastery instead of crit. since we have scaling on both stats right now
vanguards moment should allow hammer of wrath to cleave at a reduced amount of blade of justice
this is one of many st vs aoe talents
rush of light, i see no reason for the haste buff to not proc from divine storm.
another pure st talent that could benefit from having a aoe counterpart
divine hammer, remove it. it feels clunky and its a unhealthy talent that incentives using generators over spenders at a certain point. or the very least move it downward and make it a capstone and tune accordingly by making it ddrain 1 hopo every 4 seconds. theres already a small gap of power between spenders and generators, divine hammer only serves to close that gap even more through unhealthy means
templar strikes, i love the talent changes, i really do. but. theres just no gcds to play this talent. every global is filled and ts just falls flat and doesnt get pressed. this is partially due to our new capstone as well aka radiant glory, making hammer of wrath more available and thus make hammer of wrath replace templar strike as filler
since were on the topic, hammer of wrath needs to get buffed or blade of justice needs to get nerfed. right now if you play templar, HOW competes with blade of justicein terms of power. both abilities do roughly the same amount of damage but boj offers more overal the how does for templar. its kinda silly for our main execute to be relegated to filler unless you get a proc from herald or boj is on cd for templar.
blades of light and burning crusade should effect final verdict and divine storm
this is another weird st and aoe divide for 0 reason
judge jury executioner and vanguard off justice are both to weak to be considered, while vanguard of justice is weak in design judge jury and executioner has promise if buffed a tad bit more
searing light should proc from dot damage
divine auxiliary should be changed or replaced with divine hammer if you intend to keep it (please dont keep divine hammer)
radiant glory, the elephant in the room. ive made no secret about my dislike of talents that increases the uptime of our main cooldown. its how many burst specs became maintence sustain specs which arent that viable for content (look at frost dk, outlaw, fury) unless you need a dps that has a flat line dps profile. i have multiple issues with this talent. the quickest way to fix radiant glory is simply to delete it/ replace it for something else (perhaps seraphims return??)
simplest issue first, the rng proc. it very much feels like feast or famine trying to fish or pray for rng to bless you with extensions to further your performance. this ofcourse artificially increases the uptime of wings and thus might lead to wings being nerfed to compensate for the general average uptime you could get (see holy paladin avenging wrath due to their talent “awakening”). will i appreciate it giving hopo more meaning feel like this isnt the way to make hopo more valuable as a resource
* this especially feels bad with crusade due to its ramping mechanic so effectively gives crusade wild variance thus pushing might.
it makes wake of ashes bloated. wake of ashes now provides a form of crit scaling, procs templar, procs herald and divine purpose, procs wings and now with our tier set, it makes us do 10% more damage.
it seems like another way to simplify a already simple spec, i dont see a reason for us to to lose our main cd keybind. no other spec in the game has a talent like this. the closest spec that does something like it is havoc demon hunter and demonic. but even that doesnt replace metamorphosis.
bring back seraphim
again personally i dont like radiant glory, but i know plenty of people who do. if they like it then frankly more power to them, it just feels like the wrong direction for ret paladin. we went from a cd stacking spec with avenging wrath, final reckoning, dt, execution sentence, seraphim to a spec that just presses es and wake of ashes every 30 seconds with dt every 1 min and divine hammer every 2mins. design wise the spec is going back to a worse cd stacking that seems deceptively simple until you start linking things together.
a general concern is that spenders should be buffed and generators should be nerfed to make holy power matter again. divine hammer simply provides a complicated solution to a simple issue.
as per usual i hope to post more feedback regarding the hero trees when i have a chance to play and test them more. that feedback post will highlight specific issues with our curent spec tree ( COUGH COUGH RADIANT GLORY COUGH COUGH). such as herald being alot stronger than templar due to certain synergies. i hate to see herald be nerfed due to the frequency of wings. again thank you for the work youve put into ret paladin so far and i hope to see more in the future.
Currently testing mana on Holy to see if there’s anything that can be done. And either Daybreak is weirdly bugged and not working or the amount of mana it gives back is laughably tiny.
I know the way the tree is made is forcing you to live and die by Glimmer, but if that’s the case I really do believe there needs to be more ways to spread glimmers around instead of playing wack a mole with Holy Shocks.
My suggestion would be to give LoD an actual purpose and have cast glimmers on multiple targets, like Holy Word Radiance, except instead of a simple cooldown, you instead have to spend generators for it. And instead of easily getting an entire party you have to aim it, since I know for whatever reason things on Hpal have to require extra effort. Doing this would also make the LoD range talents work considering, as of right now nobody believes LoD is even worth putting talents in to get the 40 yards.
Alternatively, since Blessing of Seasons is never going to go away and it is our second main mana regen tool, at least make every season give mana back to the paladin. Having to cycle through buffs for 90s to get to Winter leads to weird gameplay where you want to either sit on Winter to have on demand mana regen, or just go back to wack a mole with glimmers, which imo feels worse.
Hard disagree. Having the option of a 30 second burst window is so good.
The most valid criticism of Radiant Glory is that, when used in conjunction with Crusade (and crusade not getting credit from Divine Purpose) half the wings time is spent ramping it.
Alright. So after trying out Holy Paladin + Lightsmith… I find this very very unfun. Holy Bulwark is clunky and honestly doesn’t fit into the rotation.
What if, now hear me out, AW:Might was removed and Radiant Glory took its place as a choice node with Crusade?
Radiant Glory does not play nice together with Crusade, and i don’t realistically think there is anything they can do to fix that barring giving you near max stacks immediately when Crusade procs via RD, but that would just make it stronger than AW:Might instead.
So how about we roll AW:M and Radiant Glory into one singular talent? Which takes the place of old AW:M. leaving you with the option of a sustanied dps profile, and a high burst but infrequent dps profile. Might also have to buff Crusade a little too. I don’t do mafs.
Then what would replace Radiant Glory? Maybe Radiant Decree? Seraphim? Idk, doesn’t have to be tied to Wake of Ashes now that the ability is much futher up the tree. Could be anything, or maybe it doesn’t have to be replaced. Leave the slot empty and get rid of Divine Auxillery while we are at it for symmetry.