For anyone who has not seen, a recent interview with Blizzard developers has them stating that they are in fact NOT adding a leap or any other mobility improvements for this rework in 10.0.7.
I want to first say thank you to everyone who passionately fought for this ability over the past 3-4 months. We put up an amazing fight to finally put Retribution and hopefully all Paladin specializations on a more even playing field that is fun and thematically appropriate.
Way back in December, before the rework was even announced, I made my first thread titled Avenging Leap: The Fix for Paladin Mobility. This post ended up creating a good discussion covering all the topics you know will come up when you attempt to address Paladin mobility. The post even ended up receiving nearly 60 likes. I put some of my best effort into crafting an ability that checked all the boxes and did my best to address all points of view from the response section.
Fast forwarding to the announcement of our rework, the first Blizzard comment on mobility through their blue post was that we should temper our expectations, and that we should not expect to gain the mobility of rogues. I was a bit disappointed, but hope was still there.
After the following blue posts, addressing that more was to come in our mobility toolkit, my optimism kept growing. Comments like “we aren’t done with maneuverability yet” led to this big time. Match this up with datamining for Wings of Liberty, it’s easy to see how many players would get excited.
All of this to say, I am shocked that Blizzard finally landed on not adding in any mobility option for Paladin specifically Ret in the form of a gap closer. I believe without a doubt this is the WRONG choice. I understand the logic, of classes playing into certain strengths/weaknesses, but this was not the appropriate circumstance to use that logic.
We will be worse in PvP when it pertains to mobility come patch 10.0.7.
Perhaps the biggest issue throughout this entire journey, was Blizzard consistently saying more was coming with respect to maneuverability and Ret’s overall mobility package.
After going back and re-reading their blue posts, seeing how they decided to stop addressing mobility in their follow up blue posts after saying they would have more to share in the coming weeks, I can not help but feel some contempt.
This was wrong. This was unprofessional. Worst of all, this was the wrong final decision for the future of the Paladin class and especially Retribution.
With all of that being said, this go around for Paladin mobility was the strongest I have ever seen it from the player base. More so than the ability from the Legion alpha/beta. For any other Paladins out there who are going to be greatly disappointed and discouraged with this result, at least we can all take pride that we fought every step of the way this time.
