Templar stop at nothing to fulfil their divine purpose of bringing justice and purging the wicked. They call down hammers of light and unleash devastating combinations of Physical and Holy attacks that vanquish their enemies.
It truly is the theme that is lacking the most. It is very difficult to distinguish this Hero Spec description from what a Retribution Paladin currently already is.
Templar needs more creative fleshing out!
ThisâŚ
You could literally describe a ret to the T with this without hero specs existing
Also, I donât see anything physical on the Temp tree.
Now if they named this âhammer broâ then it would work.
Hard agree. Its objectively worse than SOTR.
I am not the best prot paladin but this seems pretty bad?
Like, I feel like outside of pretty high gear levels I have to be pretty frugal with both holy power and GCDs (to generate holy power) otherwise I will lose up time on SotR and consecrate.
I canât imagine I have the room to drop a 5HP ability without dramatically changing how much HP prot is generating?
The only time Iâd want to drop hammer of light is when I was off-tanking, but I wouldnât want to use Eye of Tyr as a DPS cooldown?
I donât see any of this being stuff Iâd want as a prot paladin.
Creative Themes/Ideas to Consider for Templar:
More creative flavor is needed for Templar. After reviewing this tree and comparing it to some of the others, Templar really is lacking in items that arenât purely damaged focused.
Improvements to Forbearance would be a delight to see in this tree. Reducing the cooldown to 20 secs down from 30 secs, or causing Lay on Hands to no longer trigger Forbearance sounds like it fits the theme nicely.
Divine Steed again needs way more flavor from this Hero Spec tree. Would love to see a direct charge using it or some type of knockback effect. Perhaps it breaks roots or prevents the Paladin from being knocked back themselves.
Templar Strikes needs a better reason to be picked versus Crusading Strikes. This tree could really spice it up somehow.
This is the Hero Talent that bridges a Protection Paladin with a Retribution Paladin. I know you guys have stated a few times that choosing a Hero Spec should not influence the gear or types of gear you are wearing. But please, make an exception for Templar! This is the best shot we have!
Herald of the Sun brought back Eternal Flame. Would love to see some talent that triggers an Emancipate or allowing Emancipate to augment Cleanse. Some type of flavor here could be explored too. Helps fulfill the theme that a Templar will stop at nothing to fulfill their divine purpose.
Could easily be a choice node. Just like how fury has smf and TG
This round of hero talents in general is pretty underwhelming.
A few talents here and there are looking good, and the winners seems to be chosen and scalecommander.
The others are mostly uninspired and boring, and for ret i am especially disappointed because this focus on wake of ashes pretty much rules out WOA proc on art of war returning. Which was one of the best things about ret. And without it the spec just never felt the same for me.
ngl, if you both feel like this then i honestly dont know what to say
playing ret without wake of ashes is legit like riding a bike without wheels
Oh no I agree, Iâd never play without wake. Itâs just a point the guy made.
Plus wake really doesnât thematically match with temp.
thats a very subjective opinion. but i wont start an entire 200 page flame war on that so ill drop it and work on my own feedback post
This is some skill floor takes. Given even reasonable cast priority, prot pala is drowning in resource atm. we arent resourced starved. we werenât resourced starved even at start of xpack. thereâs plenty of resource to spare, especially when eot is gonna provide 3 holy power. especially in any content that provides reasonable grand crusader. even at lower haste levels.
Templar should be excellent gameflow, looking forward to it.
There isnât a need to analyze left, middle, right because you have the entire tree active at level 80.
first i have to say that the hero talents revealed for ret really hit the nail on the head. they are extremely good and left me wanting more. but like all the revealed trees it heavily relies on balancing and tuning to see their real metal. this review will be ret oriented since for prot i really dont see much flaws.
first and foremost i want to address the 
in the roomâŚ
the theme
i feel like people think the templar tree doesnt fit âtemplar loreâ because there isnt a defining templar in the game in general. the templars in game are mostly argent dawn and the descriptors for the templars we do see is just similar to what ret already is. this isnt a bad thing however, with what we do know we can rightfully assume that templars in game are just very powerful paladins such as wowpedia describes. if we look deeper we see that most âtemplarsâ in game are very priest like in appearance with staffs and cloth. even krokron templars are priests. that being said if we take all of these little lore tidbits. we see that being a templar is just being very intuned with the light in general. i dont mind this since we the player character ARE strong paladins and very intuned with the light, ergo its about time we are called âtemplarsâ
historical context
i want to make very clear that the âdeus vaultâ aesthetic people link with templar is historically inaccurate. the sword and board feeling was never a real templar style in the past due to how expensive swords were and how long they took to make. its wasnt uncommon to see a templar with a sword but it was more common to see templars with hammers and flairs and morning stars then any bladed tipped weapon. so please my message to the players onthis thread right now, please realize that templars were more than âsword and boardâ it was a very broad title for the crusades that utilized every weapon they could due to budget constraints and time.
the conclusion
so the templar tree being hammer focused not only fits historically but also (which is more imporant) fits the lore of the game. the strongest paladin have used hammers with most paladin art depicting the usage of two handed hammers. so it fits the established lore of the game.
my next post will focused on the tree mechanically
Not loving the extra button.
Why not just change the triggering buttons to the hammer ability?
Would make it easier for someone to multi spec
Itâs not an extra button though?
For example it just replaces Wake of Ashes for ret.
You press WoA and then the ability appears in place of WoA on the same hotkey, you then gather to 5 HP and can press the WoA hotkey again to trigger it.
Or are you referring to something else? Did really just read the abilities once, so i maybe missed it.
So far I actually like Templar Paladin for Retribution, I think itâll feel really cool casting down so many Empyrean Hammers all the time, it seems like it has potential to be a machine gun of Empyrean Hammers sometimes. So depending on the visual for this I think thematically itâll actually be really cool. Weâll see how it plays but so far nothing sticks out as bad to me.
Also love the extra mobility from this tree, seems pretty decent. Slightly extra survivability too, though 10% SoV seems pretty small.
Overall I actually like it the way this sounds. Again it depends how it actually ends up playing, but this sounds fun to me. A lot of really good interactions throughout the tree.
My only concern is Hero talents bringing a bit too much to classes. Extra buttons and things to manage on top of what some specs already manage might end up feeling like too much. I can already see a few things to track in this tree that seem important, but I like that Hammer of Light replaced Wake when you use Wake, thatâs good.
It isnât an extra button, it replaces wake after you use it with Hammer of Light, so itâll be the same keybind.
repeated again. its hard to give proper feedback without worrying about number tuning and any potential talent tree changes. however in a vacuum i can safely say that these trees are very good and hit alot of the marks and pain points of ret paladin. if i have feedback please keep in mind they are very nitpicky at worse. but overal having the hamemr rain asthethic is peak paladin and im all here for it this ofcourse will be ret oriented
lights guidance: i love this, i hope its tuned well enough to be giga nuke button like wake. it also encourages more of a skill floor such as properly pooling 5 hopo and resource to be able to use it right after wake during your es window. or even better pushed FR to the f orfront with current tuning since its a spender
the choice node between templars watch and for whoom the bell tolls. i love it. its a nice literally bonus for st and cleaving. the buff to dt was also warrent and well liked. i just wished for ringinclarity to make a return but this is also nice as well. basically makes DR a dt in itself.
shake the heavens: i like this, strfall for ret paladin and good for cleave
sacrosanct crusade: kinda pointless since a 10% sov on wake cast is very very small. but really doesnt matter we take all free wins.
highercalling: this is probably what i dislike about the tree the most. its no secret that i helmed the fight against mad paragon (zealots paragon) and its inclusion in the tree in df beta and post rework. i often consider its removal to be the highlight of my paladin career. so its very dishearting to see this talent increase the uptime of our new mechanic to insane degree. with current rotation you can effectively buff shake the heavens to 18 seconds. i highly suggest that you remove this talent OR put a cap on the extension of shake the heavens to 12 seconds.
undisputed ruling: the more things that apply judgement debuff means rthe more pointless judgement debuff is. i highly suggest you make this into another dot
hammer fall is GREAT i love it
endless wrath will be very undertuned due to the nature of how being undertuned in itself. the choice node wit hsanctification seems like a no brainer especiallyu with whom the bell tolls
lights deliverance, again i love this. its like DA but with a better animation (i hope) its simple and gets straight to the point and powerful. i just hope this means hammer of light keeps its strong nuke status as a 5 hopo cost spender
This is literally frost DKâs icecap at the end talent.
And the first talent is âhear have more hammer animationsâ.
Shame.
I was expecting a Prot rework for TWW, we could be missing context.
But they didnât say so itâs hard to tell.
The talents affecting HoW increasing its Crit rate might be an indication that they will rework the class tree too, given the 100% Crit one Ret has.
Paladin future is still shrouded in mystery.