How to fix ret

Classes Paladin
1

I sell motorcycles for a living in Canada so needless to say I’ve had some free time at work as of late and have been spending that time on the forums. I’ve had a few discussions with players and I think I’ve gathered enough input to suggest some changes that could not only fix our spec, but actually make some of the consecration points viable.

Hear me out;

  1. Consecration is now an aura that follows you, this combined with the talent that makes us unslowable under 80% / provides a 50% snare would help a ton. This would also fix the issues PvE players are having with tanks dragging mobs out of it.

  2. Steed frees us and provides immunity from movement impairing effects, the talent point we’d need to spend to make it last longer is just baked in so we don’t need to waste a talent point on it.

  3. They make a glyph that turns our steed into speed of light like the old days, that should please all the horsey haters.

  4. Have divine protection be baseline for ret paladins, if this proves to be too strong against melee teams rework it in PvP to only reduce magic damage taken as our biggest weakness is into caster cleaves.

These changes should not only fix our mobility issue but by having consecration be an aura that follows us will allow blizzard to tweak the talents around consecration to actually be viable. Having the consecration talents that heal us could act similar to the recuperator talent that rogues have with their slice and dice healing. This on top of having divine protection baseline should be enough to fix our kit defensively as well.

What do you guys think? Any further feedback would be great.

6 Likes
2

These would be great changes… the issue tho is Ret does no damage now after the nerfs.

I pop all my cds and do 50% on someones hp, i can do more dmg on my Dh in a 40 sec meta go then I can with wings up

Ret was fine being a slow immobile class with bad defensives, but the tradeoff was you had really high burst damage and some team utility, and could actually do good consistent damage if able to stay in and fight.

These recent nerfs gutted Rets burst, and gutted our consistent damage.

Even if they implemented the changes above they’d need to do a massive buff to Rets dmg to fix them at this point. I’ve never seen a class in B tier nerfed so bad.

3

Damage can always be tuned, if we want ret fixed we have to address the core issues and then tune accordingly. If they just buff our damage either we’re going to be underwhelming or we’re gonna be pissing everyone off with 1 shots until we get nerfed back to being underwhelming.

2 Likes
4

It was not and still ain’t.
It’s a terrible gimmick for any PVP game and one that is inherently counter productive to the objective and enjoyment of said type of game.

On both side it comes with a massive amount of frustration.
On 1 side being deleted in a very short amount of time for small errors that the Ret can capitalize on feels terrible and overly punishing.

On the other side, being relegated to uselessness on account of your opponent just exploiting the glaring weaknesses that were bake into your spec for having said burst feels equally terrible.

Both are being prevented from playing either by being killed really fast or by being slowed/cc’d/countered to the point where you cannot take any meaningful actions.

It’s fascinating to me watching people argue that Ret was fine with its burst because of how easy it is to make it useless.
How is any of this a good defense for either case?
It quite literally becomes a skill check that is completely out of the Ret hands and placed entirely in the hands of his opponent.
How is that not the worst freaking design?
A game where at a certain level of skill and knowledge, you’ll loose every time to people of equal skill.

4 Likes
5

Yeah it’s very very poorly designed. I was hoping along with many other rets that when they reworked the talents for DF they’d take some time to fix and improve the spec as a whole.

But they basically copy pasted a nerfed Shadowlands Ret but much worse, with a bunch if consecration talents… and I called it. I said start of DF Ret will only be good if the Dmg is overturned. And it was barely viable with it’s high burst damage. But that’s all they had.

Now Ret has literally nothing, along with it’s consistent damage outside of wings being nerfed too. You might as well just reroll DH or Warrior.

I’m already 2600 on my DH in SS this week, it’s a joke. Rets a joke.

2 Likes
6

You’re in luck!

1 Like
7

Give consecration aura to holy too please

8

I saw baby let’s gooooooo!

1 Like
9

I am a M+ player as a ret paladin, i do not have issues with consecration like people make it out to be horrible. BUT I have some Ideas to make the class feel better.

Button bloat:
Make the current ret aura a passive that is baked into the spec, and make concentration the ret aura, additonally make the aura have something similar to what happened as necrolord in Shadowlands when you take fatal damage with ret aura up you stay alive for a few seconds(6-8 preferred and significanlty reduced time on pvp like 2-4 seconds with a damage reduction) and the text could say something about dying on concecrated ground granting you a last stand type deal. Plays into class fantasy which adds to those who Role play’s elements. Make seraphim something that procs every 45 seconds as well instead of being a holy spender if talented into seraphim.(personally I like all the buttons we have and dont think the class is boring or has too many buttons but from what a lot of people say this seems the best.) Next, make Word of Glory a Cooldown based spell instead of holy power/or combine templars verdict with Justicar’s vengence. This will give us more passive healing and frees up room on the talent tree as well to insert something new. remove hammer of wrath, I know its a execute type ability, instead make us do more damage with our holy spenders and make templars verdict cost only 2 holy power during this time to targets below 20% health or make make judgement cooldown faster and do more damage. As for another button becoming more of a passive take shield of vengence and make it where every minute it shields you when you take damage. Ill let you sort the damage threshold maybe its when we fall below 60% health or something or take % of damage then give us divine protection. You can make that talent choice a 20% damage reduction on a 1 min CD or a 35% damage reduction on a 1.5m CD when we take the unbreakable spirit talent from the paladin tree. Exorcism is a great button in my opinion but maybe take it out and pair the exorcism DOT with divine storm to reduce button bloat further.

Those changes alone reduces our button bloat by 3 buttons on the damage route and will help us press our hybrid/support buttons easier. If you wanted to go a step further make divine toll happen every minute you press judgement and it will reset the CD of judgement. Basically like a free empowered judgement proc every minute. Please keep Final reckoning it feels great to press and is visually appealing.

Unpopular opinion from me as well again, but crusader strike doesnt feel bad to press anymore with the decent damage, and primary stat buff, maybe adding that it has an moderate % chance to reduce divine steeds CD by a second or alternatively just increases our speed stacking up to two times giving 3% speed each time we use crusader strike.

As for utility goes I would love for Blessing of Sacrifice to be baseline as well as cleanse toxins.

As for new/returning utility, i would like to see blessing of wisdom to return, blessing of might/or kings.

These are just a few ideas from me and I might post more.

10

Em, I don’t think anyone wants the spec to be around consecration though.

At this point it’s kinda hard to discuss the current state of many abilities since we don’t evne know if they’ll remain, Steed also being a freedom would be too much, removing all snares on use would be fair,

Divine protection has always been available for all paladin specs, it makes no sense for it not to be in the paladin tree instead of the specialization tree.

I do hope we get 1 new toy, it’s been who knows how many years since Legion ret we don’t get anything new other than dmg amps. Probably won’t happen but one can hope.

11

Steed would still be rootable, I don’t think it would be too much personally but we’ll see the direction they go. With a major rework anything’s on the table at this point, I’m really hoping for the best and I’m super excited to see what they do.

1 Like
12

I look forward to these improvements but I fear these so called “improvements” will be Nerfs in disguise.

Burden of Guilt, Speed of Light, Long Arm of the Law, Emancipate , Steed of Glory (like the Prot pvp ability, STEED should feel impactful a KNIGHTS THUNDERING CHARGE not crippled wheelchair pony) would all be welcome and helpful abilities for Ret mobility.

The Crusader ability Condemn from Diablo 3 the that sucks enemies towards you, if this could be tied into Consecration and make consecration follow us like a shining aura of light around us (think thematically Heaven’s Wrath protecting it’s faithful servant).

Maybe make Eye for an Eye and Shield of Vengeance baseline for Ret?? As the name RETRIBUTION implies is we will punish you for what you do to us (the harder you hit us the harder we will hit you back), this style of ability fits thematically (Recompense is a nice illustration of this).

Making Exorcism into some version of Vanquisher’s Hammer the Necro Covenant ability would be nice for big chunky hits, instead of a mishmash of different abilities (empyrean legacy with a judgement proc + exorcism)
Improved auras like a Warrior to stance dance , going from Offensive to Defensive modes, with a cd ability to pump the aura up every 2 min or so??

Maybe bring back Seals???
Another interesting thought, give us Blessed Hammer like Prot has. EVERY Paladin has a soft spot for D2 Hammerdin :slight_smile:

Play Into the Paladin fantasy more, a faithful servant of the light who through his devotion and willingness to face evil gains great power ( Angelic transformations, Ascendances, Interventions from above, Many shiny things!!!).

My main fear is our damage will be nerfd, and whatever changes they implement will not be satisfying. Leaving us in a WORSE place than our current state.
At the moment at least we can punish people with our burst which does feel satisfying, if that gets taken away we will truly be a dead class :frowning:

I am actually enjoying Ret very much this Xpac, I have always Pvp’d as Ret. The theme of a Tanky Juggernaut that can help his Allies or punish his Foes is a nice Class Fantasy that I think most Paladin players relish.

The complaints of Ret 1shot are Extremely Biased in my opinion, EVERY class can 1 shot and pump hard with their burst (Arcane Mage, Rogues, Warriors, DH, Spriest, Demo Lock, Marksman, etc…) the list goes on.
The game has been super bursty since SL, the singling out of Ret is not justified. People see Ret healing and cry foul (Have you seen FURY warrior healing? DH healing? or Lok Healing?)
We have no Mortal Strike ability, Dampening makes our heals almost worthless, and we are the class MOST susceptible to kiting in the entire game.

Bartender one glass of Copium please.

Blizzard has so far in Dragonflight shown a true willingness to balance and respond to the feedback presented by the community. I hope they make the most of the proposed changes.