Feedback: Templar Paladin in The War Within

Classes Paladin
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It sounds like it is just once per Wake. So you wake, it turns into Hammer of Light, you use it and it turns back into Wake as wake is CDing. Obviously just a guess but that is how the talent is worded. However with the capstone talent Lights deliverance, every 50 stacks we will be able to use Hammer of Light twice in a row, one for 5 hopo and one for free. My guess is we would wait for Shake the Heavens to be almost done and then use the second free Hammer of Light (you have 12 sec to use it) so we get the most out of Shake the heavens.

My question is, with how many Empyrean Hammers we’re going to be having out, will this actually be a large contributor to damage? I really hope it isn’t small baby damage and actually does something worthwhile/noticeable, but I imagine that will be difficult to get right as we will likely have so many out.

I think talents like Sanctification will make this a bit better, judgment giving a stacking damage buff to Empyrean hammer is very nice as you could technically Judge>judge>wake>hammer of light to get 20% buffed empyrean hammers right away, or judge>boj>fv>judge>wake>hammer (thinking of pvp here) etc. Definitely some fun things to track in this tree, assuming Empyrean hammer is good then Shake the Heavens will be something to pay a bit of attention to mostly just knowing that you have it up.

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this, im sorry that people fell for the “freedom of choice” meme but wake of ashes is such a mandatory talent for ret to the point it’s a key engine to the spec. inb4: make it baseline!! no, talent trees replaced leveling and every spec has a mandatory row/column they have to go in their talent tree to function. move on. its bad for the health of the spec to balance or design power for the lowest common denominator

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After having some more time set in, I want to come back and offer some better, more grounded thoughts and feedback building off of my comments from earlier.

I want to start by stressing that the gameplay element(s) added here in the Templar Hero Spec sound really fun. Mainly, I am talking about Light’s Guidance, and this comes from the viewpoint of a Retribution Paladin who plays only, all forms of PvP content.

Overall, I think this was a great job and a perfect start!

I have come back down to Earth and now realize that certain elements aren’t really realistic to ask for. The most obvious one being the 2-hander and shield combo that I have mentioned a few times. Rereading the article detailing everything Hero Talents are aiming at, I understand that so many of these ideas could be fun to explore, but really do not fit the goals of Hero Talents.

I would rather offer up my feedback specifically at the theme of Templar. Which I believe is where it is really needed the most!

The core issue I have with Templar, is its class fantasy. I do not think a unique theme was achieved here that is easily differentiated from what a Retribution Paladin already currently is.

But all the groundwork is already here!

A Templar should attempt to hone in and shed light to the physical (Holystrike) brawler aspect of the Paladin player. Following this, would be swapping out the thematic focus on Hammers instead for Swords!

As per the working description we have now for Templar:
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.

I want to first highlight the theme and element of bringing justice. Currently, Blade of Justice is our primary holy power generator, and is grounded in a Sword theme/animation. This connection could be built on to help shift the theme.

The next part of the class fantasy to highlight is the physical component of a Templar.

Again, I believe the best theme we should really get here is one that focuses on the physical brawler aspect of the Paladin player. This means we should be building descriptions around Holystrike damage instead!

So, here’s the overall theme pitch. And this changes absolutely nothing with any of the gameplay elements shown today. Only adjusting the class fantasy of what it really looks like in World of Warcraft to be a Templar Paladin! Something much closer to:

Light’s Guidance (For Retribution)
Wake of Ashes is replaced with Sword of Light for 12 seconds after it is cast.

Sword of Light
Strike down your enemy with all your divine might, dealing Holystrike damage to the target and up to 4 nearby enemies. Additionally, calls down Empyrean Swords from the sky to strike 3 nearby enemies for Holystrike damage.
Costs 5 Holy Power.

These are two of the core fantasy elements in mind to help explain this being the appropriate direction.

  1. Wake of Ashes is what currently triggers Light’s Guidance for Retribution. Wake of Ashes is grounded from the Ashbringer, the iconic Paladin Sword. This really makes sense as to how the change could be made to Swords from Hammers. Justice from the Templar description could again also correlate to Blade of Justice which is a Sword-theme side of Paladins to help as another layer.

  2. Paladins used to have Blessing of Might and a piece of that original class fantasy feels like it has been a bit forgotten. This is the perfect opportunity to bring it back where it makes sense and can really pay off! So “strike” in the description refers to the physical might of the Paladin player. Paladins are strong physical characters and that is worth paying some respect to! Using the word might in that description is an attempt to call back to this part of our class fantasy as well.

We could go into talent by talent and determine what needs another thought or what the final numbers could be, but none of that is going to be as important as nailing this class fantasy first!

I hope I made sense and spoke to the elements that some Paladins out there wish were more in the forefront for Templar.

Of course, it does NOT have to be exactly as I have laid it out here. Just the overall core fantasy feels like it would be much better served going in a direction much closer to this.

Edit: Corrected the ability name to “Sword” of Light!

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64

Introduced in 10.0 and removed in the Ret rework, I think Radiant Decree could fit perfectly as the spender follow up to Wake of Ashes, and it’d let Prot lean a bit into the Ret fantasy. Cooler name, short but fitting history, just keep the same functionality as Hammer of Light.

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Eh I don’t think thats really necessary to be honest, I mean it would be a bit confusing as people would expect it to be the actual Radiant Decree, but that entirely replaced Wake itself. Personally I think Hammer of Light just works better, and I don’t think it needs a rename to an ability we had once before especially if it won’t be that same ability. just imo.

Edit: I am also very curious about the range on Hammer of Light. It sounds like it will be an ability with more range than wake which would be very interesting. Wake is 14y, I assume hammer will be 20-30y? That would actually be quite nice

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Wake of Ashes is the most satisfying button in our tool kit in my opinion, and the largest single button press damage source. You can play without it, like you could play DH without Essence Break…but why would you?

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Icecap straight up doesn’t do that. Idk if you’re trolling but just use google if you don’t know what you are talking about man. Icecap reduces CD on Pillar when you crit with oblit/froststrike. Shake the heavens gets duration extended by using specific 3 abilities, they are not the same. Empyrean hammer is not even remotely close to Icecap. Nothing in this tree is Icecap.

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This is a valid concern when it comes to Hero Talents in a game like WoW.

Not everyone is going to play the same Race, Class, or Talents that you do for their own reasons, that’s why they are choices in the first place. You may or may not agree with it, but you should be able to respect the fact that it is player choice.

A large concern, and this is very evident when you go look at Frostfire Mages who want to be “Fire Purist” is that this removes choice.

There is no “Opt-out Button.”

Putting your feelings of Wake of Ashes aside, it doesn’t feel good knowing that what should be a choice is taken from you.

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I mean I get the point here but I’m not sure it matters when every single person should be defaulting into Wake of Ashes regardless, it just makes ret gameplay more fluid and more fun. Fun is subjective but it objectively makes ret play better, and does a large amount of Rets damage anyway. There doesn’t need to be an opt out button if the tree is related to something like Wake.

If it was Final Reckoning focused or Execution Sentence focused for example I would absolutely agree as there is a real choice there and neither of them really contribute to gameplay as much as Wake does. If the tree focused on Final reck, then it would be essentially taking away our choice of going Execution sentence, but that doesn’t happen with Wake as there is no choice you can take over it that comes anywhere near it. Wake is a default choice at this point.

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no this is not a valid concern at all. there was never any “choice” at any point in DF regarding talents that make the spec function. the only difference here is wake isnt baseline so people dont consider it to be core. i already stated the obvious why core things cant be baseline and frankly the amount of people who dont get it makes me regret asking for talent trees to begin with…

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If Wake of Ashes was baseline, that would be a different story. But its not, and that’s the point.

This isn’t meant to be an argument, and obviously going back and forth is pointless, we both get it, but providing feedback that an “optional talent” is the core part of both your Hero Talent Trees for a singular spec raises concern for player choice-- the reason why talent trees exist in the first place.

If WoA is meant to be a core aspect of the Ret tree, than in theory it should be placed accordingly.

If not, then revolving both Hero Talents around this singular ability should be a topic worth discussing and not simply dismissed as a “git gud.”

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avenging wrath is also a core part of paladin yet you can chose not to take it.

if you make everything baseline then theres no reason for talent trees. talent trees replaced level like the old talent trees from classic to mop. you cant fault blizzard for not holding players hands every step of the way.

its literally a case of “get gud” if you dont take wake of ashes anyways then why do you care about hero talents? its clear that optimization was never your goal so why subject the majority of the player base to your personal whim of “i dont want wake”

no one wants this forum to be flooded with dumb takes that cover actual feedback so please lets not indulge in thise “why wake” talk

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Well I didn’t say get good at all, I don’t think anything I said implied that, I said wake is a talent that is practically required for ret to function as well as it does. That has nothing to do with getting good lol, it is about how tied the spec is to this talent already. There is no world where we opt out of wake realistically, we haven’t for all of DF and it is going to be the same going forward, so I’m not sure why we are pretending like we had a choice in the matter to begin with. Wake isn’t baseline because it has two talents that stem from it, and those are choices, but wake itself is not.

Having both hero talents revolve around wake is not quite what I wanted to see, I am very happy with templar but wish Herald would have dealt with a different ability, just for variance though. However, this does not take away anyones choice. If you are choosing to move off of wake of ashes, you are objectively just going to have a worse time playing ret, the spec does not function nearly as well without it. If you don’t take wake, I’d love to know where people are putting that point and having the same level of engaging gameplay. I don’t like that we are pretending we had a choice in whether we took wake or not, it is not a choice currently. Again, I would agree with you if the discussion was about both trees focusing on Final reckoning as that actually does remove a choice (ES) but focusing on wake does not take away choice as our spec heavily revolves around it already.

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Why should there be?

Do you think it’s unfair that there’s no opt-out button for Mountain Thane with Avatar? Or is that acceptable to not have one because it’s an ability in the class tree and not the spec tree? What about the passive talent that gives CDR for Ravager?

By all accounts it is.

By this logic, Feral Spirit, Evocation, Know Your Enemy, and Army of the Dead, just to name a few, aren’t “core” to their respective specs due to their placement, which is a ridiculous idea.

Almost as ridiculous as people still acting like capstones aren’t “core” abilities. Are Divine Storm and Crusader Strike aren’t core for early Ret because you had to talent into it? Mortal Strike? Arguing that something isn’t “core” because it’s locked in a lower tier - when it’s objectively much stronger than the talents above it - is ridiculous.

Wake is core because if you actually want to play Ret at a decent level you take it. Wake is core because the spec is literally designed around taking a 3 HP generator. Wake is core and not baseline because it’s been an integral part of Ret since Legion and Ret Paladins already have far more baseline spells DPS spells than most specs.

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75

If Empyrean Hammers do damage similar to our S3 tier set DoTs it would be initally inconsequential in pvp, maybe slightly better if it “overlaps” stacking both duration and damage amounts, but also still useless if it is dispellable like S3 Tier bonuses. I have the same concern for Sunspots with all the dispells and immunities in the game. If most of our Hero talant damage is dispelled you will see me (or not) being a Trickster Rogue.

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Yes, in the grand scheme of Hero Talents, I think this will become more of a problem when more players don’t click with any certain Hero Talent design.

I used the Frostfire Mage as an example, because like I said, there were Fire Purist Mages that didn’t want to feel forced to use a school of magic that wasn’t strictly Fire.

Certain classes will have varying degrees of fantasy.

That’s what makes an MMO-RPG.

It has nothing to do with any particular ability and how you personally feel about it.

You gave me a talent tree, to give me choice. And then took that choice away with Hero Talents. That’s the underlining core issue.

At the Blizzcon event last year, which obviously is subjected to changes, Ion even said they wanted to explore ways to trigger hero talents without necessarily having those “deep optional talents,” to ensure choices still mattered.

Again, I don’t want this to be a pointless argument, so I’ll leave it at that.

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Just wanted to point out that Light’s Deliverance make the second Hammer of Light free to cast.

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Post deleted since my fears have been soothed

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Your right, it wasn’t icecap I was thinking of, it was avalance.

I apologize, I was tired last night and couldn’t get my talents right, but I know what I meant. It’s too similar to the DK talents in these hero talents.

I concur. This is what was advertised when the talent system returned in DF. If they are going to force talent choices, they might as well go back to the talent style they had before DF.

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Yeah it definitely can become a problem.

The issue is hidden behind the fact that we always take WoA even if it appears to be a choice not to.

Personally, I’d make Divine Storm baseline and put WoA in its place.

It would probably end up splitting WoA in 2 like not giving HP until you spec into it further down.

But as we’ve seen some people apparently prefers to play without.

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