[In-depthish] Shadowlands Ret Paladin constructive criticism

Classes Paladin
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I intend to have this post completely constructive. Being a game developer is not easy, it’s super easy to armchair dev on the forums and pretend it is. But it isn’t. Our job as players is to present what we like and what we don’t like and give reasons why. The developer takes this and tries to deliver upon this as well as they can with in-game restraints. That isn’t always possible. But I feel like it is time to revamp the Ret Paladin.

Some history for my time playing. You can obviously skip this if you like.

I have played since Beta. Like, Vanilla beta. At the time I was too young to properly play the game. Infact I don’t think I ever even made it to max level. But I’ve played a Paladin since day 1. And I loved it immediately.
I was too young to play this game in any serious environment until around Cata. But I had the heart of a hardcore raider. And eventually I did join a serious guild towards the end of Cata. I bounced between holy and ret for my whole career in WoW. But I eventually moved out from my parents and have been in the military and playing casually ever since, unable to raid in a serious environment. I’ve only just started finding the time to get back into the game and completely intend to continue mythic raiding.

Back to the topic at hand, I’d like to talk about the future of the Paladin. Specifically the Ret Paladin, but some of this splashes over to Holy.

The way I see it there are 4 major points to creating the play styles of any spec in the game.

Mechanics
Theme
Emotion
Use

Basically, how does it fundamentally WORK?
Does it fit the theme of the class?
How does it FEEL to play?
How is it realistically used?

First I’d like to look at the upcoming iteration of Auras.

Mechanically, they are very simple. You press the Aura and you forget it. Everyone around you gets something out of it (more on this later for a particular black sheep Aura) there is nothing wrong with this.

Thematically, I LOVE Auras. It fits the Paladin theme wonderfully. There is a subtle beauty to Auras that I feel like most people don’t catch on. These are not spells. These are AURAS. You, the Paladin, are so devoted to the Light that everyone around you benefits just by virtue of being next to you and fighting for your cause. Honestly, it fits the theme so well I can’t believe they ever took them away. However, Retribution Aura does not fit this theme at all. It is NOT an Aura that is beneficial to your team. They are NOT basking in your light and being strengthened by your cause. Honestly I can’t think of any way to put this because it’s just so simple. Look at every other Aura the Paladin has EVER had and then look at whatever this is. It does not fit.

Emotionally, honestly this one is hard to answer specifically on Auras. I fanboi so hard on Auras that the theme makes me love them and love using them. So it makes the core of theme bleed over for me.

Use, Shadowlands Auras… leave a lot of room for desire. I have previously made a post on this. But currently there are 2 combat Auras and 1 black sheep Aura. Let’s be realistic here, almost universally Devo Aura will be taken in a raiding/dungeon environment. Some outliers, probably, but mostly it will be Devo Aura.
As for Aura of the Crusader. Realistically there are only 4 outcomes for this Aura.
1, you set it when you need it and put back a combat Aura when you need it.
2, you forget to turn it on, and you and others are slower and feel slower. You or a party member remember and you feel like an idiot.
3, you remember to turn it on, but during combat you focused on your opener and don’t turn back to a combat Aura. You or a party member remember and you feel like an idiot.
4, you ignore it completely because it’s needlessly a hassle to deal with. You know dealing with it would be beneficial, but why bother?
3/4 outcomes of this Aura are a negative impact on gameplay.

Recommended solutions, add more combat Auras. Honestly it’s that simple. More Auras would cause more decisions to make before and possibly even DURING an encounter. It would also make having multiple Paladins in a raid less punishing. I personally STRONGLY recommend Shadow and Fire resist Auras, and Aura of Mercy, AND rework Aura of the Crusader to a blanket unmounted movespeed buff. This fits the theme of the ability of moving faster while also shoring up a tiny bit of one of the least mobile classes in the game. Even if the bonus is only like 7% or whatever is judged to be balanced.
I DREAM of caring about Auras. But in the current state they are back in name only.

And the elephant in the room.

HOLY POWER

Mechanically, it’s an iteration on Combo points. There is no argument against them. Functionally it’s just combo points with that rogue talant that let you have more than 5 but only use 5 at a time. Always use 3 but store 5. Mechanically there is nothing wrong with this. It works. Tried and true. Works so well there are now 8 specs that use some iteration of Combo points.

Thematically, this does not fit the Paladin at all. At least in my opinion. I don’t think the Light requires building up to use. Or setting up the right situation for it to be just right. Or anything of the sort. The Light wills something and it is so. It just HAPPENS. Am I supposed to be building up a prayer? Honestly I have no clue what the theme is supposed to be here. If something has gone over my head I’m all ears. But as I understand now, this is a huge miss on the Paladin theme.

Emotionally, Holy Power feels bad. Holy power has caused power to shift from our builders into our spenders. And right now it is one of the worse feelings in the game to spend a GCD on crusaders strike and see it do less damage than an auto attack, and then in that GCD proc Art of War and think about how much more that GCD could have been. And the reason for this is so that your spenders FEEL powerful. Power had to be shifted. But the execution on this fell short. Instead of feeling good to TV/DS, it feels bad to Crusader’s Strike. WoG however feels VERY good to use.

Use, similar to emotion, you are just pressing buttons you don’t care about to then press a button you sort of care about.

Recommended solutions, look to previous iterations of the Ret Paladin. Buff Management and Cooldown management. Seals and cooldowns. Enh Shamans are the only class that carries an iteration of this idea. It would be much more refreshing to have at least 2 iterations of this system than have 8 Combo points systems. And we would be returning to the original idea of the Paladin.
Which would ALSO return us to a more thematically appropriate Paladin. No longer are you… Doing whatever Holy Power is… You would be calling upon the Light to bless your weapon to damage your enemies in whatever fasion your seal does dmg.

I recommend seals with CD abilities.
A burst seal that when Judged increases long term dmg on the target.
A sustained dmg seal that causes burst damage when Judged.
An AoE seal that causes AoE dmg when Judged.
Honestly don’t even have Judge expend the seal. Just have it change its effect. This would reduce frustration of refreshing seals and also creat more interaction within your own kit. As now your Crusader strike applies your Seal’s passive dmg and you can SEE that interaction happening.
This also would be better than Inq as you would (once again) SEE the benefits of your self buffs.
After that the your CDs would supply the gameplay. We already know this system works and can be fun and fulfilling, look at Enh Shamans (in Shadowlands).

I know it might be too late for Shadowlands. But hopefully we can get SOMETHING new by the next expansion. We are straying further and further from what it originally meant to be a Paladin.
I will never NOT play a Paladin. But I am unhappy with our direction and hopefully we together can push for change.

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I agree with you this is the chance that Blizzard have to return some old abilities like seal’s and exorcism. Hope they changue this and bring us this in the next alpha build!.

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It’s never fun to use Holy Power. It is a chore without traits/essences/gear/trinket procs/corruptions etc and a mindless spam when you have enough of them. It is never well designed. It does not work and it is impossible to balance or be creative with abilities while it exists. Take for instance Hammer of Wrath being baseline. It’s too weak to be an execute but it can’t be strong because then it’s better than the spender. It can’t be low/no CD because it’s a generator. It can’t be long CD because it, again, is a generator and thus has to be low enough to meaningfully generate HP, keeping the damage low again. This is just a single baseline ability being added in and since every spec has access to it, even if it’s clearly mainly for Ret to use, it has to be balanced within that as well for all of them, further adding to the question of why is Holy Power there again?

This is to say nothing of Consecrate which in addition to its positional and cooldown-related issues is again baseline for Ret and has the problem once more of being very situational and yet having to be so weak that it doesn’t eclipse spenders yet still have a moderate enough impact to be worth using over other generators, despite a longer cooldown. Again, it is harder to balance this than if it’s just an ability that does damage on whatever CD you want it to have. Holy Power needlessly complicates it and for what? For a system people work against and around rather than embrace and enjoy?

Lastly, there is a very real deadzone of HP generation that gear and traits and so on let you eventually get around. Yeah a lot of other classes have this issue but it’s doubly bad for Ret because it has extra things tacked on like cooldowns on filler generators for absolutely no reason. Granted this is less of an issue with so many of them but is that really what things like Consecrate and Hammer of Wrath should be? Just fillers to normal fillers? Is that what they’ve been lowered to because of this pointless system?

Holy Power has always been bad or pointless. It either weighs you down and forces talent, trait, essence and gear options on you or it just feels irrelevant when you have a lot of them. Like the Enh shaman that keeps proccing his Stormtrikes and casting a gorillion of them at full Maelstrom except less fun and just making you wonder why this resource is even around to begin with. This is to say nothing of the many many unfun but effective things like Inquisition which also used to be an unfun but less effective thing Ret has been saddled with over the years and just how awkwardly designed the spec feels to play without gear, traits and essences. It reached its final evolution in Wrath and then they added Holy Power on it for some unknowable reason and it’s always been worse off for it and this is not just because of spite or hatred for the spec as some believe but because Holy Power makes it impossible to design new abilities or iterate upon existing ones within this system.

A new ability can’t have no Holy Power cost or generation. It has to work within it. It can’t be strong and have a low cooldown. It can’t be weak and have a long cooldown. It has to work alongside the existing ones that do these things. It has to now work for all of the specs and not be overpowered for Holy in PVP, as has been the doom of many Ret abilities before like Repent. It is not even a matter of utility or power, it’s just a needless resource system that weighs down design and development of a spec that frankly doesn’t need any more of that trouble on top of it. If Holy Power was just gone and CDs like Enhancement has again put in its place or some other pooling resource like Wrath for Crusaders in Diablo or whatever else would work infinitely better for Ret.

Do you know why Ret paladins miss Wrath? Because Vanilla Ret was unplayable garbage and BC Ret was mediocre but a clear improvement. Wrath took it up and made it fun and effective and then bam, it was crippled with Holy Power. It was a highpoint of design that should be brought back. Let that sink in. People miss a simple CD-based rotation because even that seemingly dull and mindless thing felt better to play than this. It could be improved upon and made more complex a lot easier than establishing the same level of complexity IN ADDITION to Holy Power. I’m not saying Ret should be a button mashy brainless spec, even though it is even with Holy Power and enough traits/essences etc because you can eventually escape the system. I’m saying you can’t add any depth or meaningful difference in abilities because Holy Power keeps them all chained together in being weak, basic and doing the same thing or else nothing works. It has been this way since Cata and forcing it back on Holy/Prot has just made them worse when Ret should have been made better with its removal instead.

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Good effort with your post however I don’t like any of it, HP feels fine, there are some gaps when you have no builders to hit but that is entirely Blizzard’s fault. I don’t want to turn into some micro management spec, we tried the buff your damage window thing with Legion and it performed and felt horrible. Oh and Auras, they are exactly what they used to be, you guys all seem to think they used to be amazing but they have always sucked, thanks to everyone that wasted our unpruning ideas on that.

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I respect that you enjoy Holy Power. But do you not think the class could be improved? Or Holy Power is the best that it could be?

Also I would argue that having dead gcds isn’t a bad thing. We don’t need to be a GCD locked class. This way we can occasionally weave in support abilities. Or just take a moment to breathe. I remember feeling really good filling in dead GCDs with Sacred Shield or Flash of Light. Because most Paladins aren’t doing that and it’s a point of skill expression. I’d rather not lose that much DPS just for the sake of being GCD locked.

Also. Auras don’t have to feel bad for you. We have the power to change that. It’s still Alpha.

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Disagree completely, sry. Utility is almost never needed in your downtime.
Perhaps the dead spots wouldn’t be as bad if the spec in general was slow, but the problem is: ret play like a machine gun until you run into a dead zone…like a studdering engine in a sports car…it is so jarring and plain out bad. I hate our downtimes with a passion and want them gone.

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Is HP the greatest thing we could ever have, no, I dunno what is, but it’s definitely not the wack-a-mole that Wrath Ret was.

If i wanted to heal and support, I’d go Holy, I want to DPS. Are life-saving tools and utility good, yes, should I be forced to use them because I have a dead zone in my DPS rotation, heck no. It’s very satisfying saving someone with Lay on Hands, throwing out an almost useless Flash of Light, worthless. Dead zones hardly ever correctly time with an event where you can actually impact the situation.

Auras will never and never have impacted gameplay in any significant way, it would be unbalanced and kind of foolish to let something completely passive do that.

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I love the way you’ve structured this post. I’ve compiled some of my thoughts below, sorry for the length. I’m team no-holy-power but I’m going to refrain from weighing in on that as there’s plenty of discussions already. What I will say is that I feel as though Holy Power is only there because mana isn’t a well-designed resource anymore.

I’ve listed some of the aspects that I loved about Paladins historically that don’t really exist anymore. I’ve tried to make these emotional responses which I’ve heard are the most useful to devs.

1. Cooldown Management
What felt good:
The way Avenging Wrath used to feel. It felt amazing seeing people run from my Paladin in fear when they saw my wings come up. I enjoyed playing around that window and it was satisfying to use it strategically when I knew my opponents couldn’t stop it.

What felt bad:
Avenging Wrath being spell stolen/purged. When you’ve only got a cooldown every 2 minutes and it was stolen or purged from you, it was extremely frustrating. I didn’t mind being locked up by CC for my wings duration but losing the spell instantly felt cheap.

2. Seal & Aura Gameplay
What felt good:
Switching seals strategically based on the situation or outcome I was trying to achieve. It felt great using Seal of Corruption to dot a rogue to stop them from vanishing. It was especially satisfying using Seal of Blood with wings when I wasn’t being focused and could afford the risk.

To be clear this doesn’t include Seal of the Crusader. SoCr worked like a buff that had to be applied which isn’t a choice, it’s just part of your cycle.

What felt bad:
During WoTLK, Judgement of Wisdom into an absorb…send chills down my spine to this day. It created interesting gameplay because you had to time your judgements well on Frost Mages and Disc priests but because it was your hardest hitting spell you couldn’t always hold it.

I bring this up because I believe if Holy Power is removed, mana management should play a primary role moving forward.

3. High burst windows
What felt good:
Judgement. Oh my god, a judgement with wings up on a HoJ’d target made me euphoric. This was the singular thing that made me fall in love with Ret in the first place and I miss it every day.

What felt/feels bad:
The current rotation. All of the builders feel weak and TV doesn’t provide the same satisfaction as a crit judgement used to. It doesn’t feel like I’m hitting someone with a greatsword, it feels like a dagger.

4. Thematic Spells
What felt good:
Spells likeSeal of Blood. A great example of a well-designed risk-reward spell that couldn’t be used all the time and fit the class thematically really well.

It also had many niche uses, like sheep/blind breaks in PvP and it even changed the way you used other spells. For example, you could use a bubble offensively if you were being focused but still wanted to nuke with SoB.

What felt bad:
Boring spells that were good thematically but provided no agency, like, Devo Aura. It gave some extra armor which was nice but you never had to actively swap to it and even if you did it was of little benefit. Looking back at it, atleast for PvP, I believe this was mostly because resilience was the focus at the time (maybe if it provided a res bonus back then it would’ve been more useful).

Seal of Wisdom, always felt like a chore to use. Judgement of Wisdom felt like an interesting choice but when you switched to Seal of Wisdom you lost so much damage it was demoralizing.

5. Defensive Utility
What felt good:
Defensive utility being a fundamental aspect of Retribution gameplay. I feel like we’ve lost a lot since we gained Pummel and I’m ready to throw it out the window if we get some of our cool defensive niches back.

Examples

  • Art of War procs for flash of light or exorcism. This choice felt more compelling than WoG vs TV for some reason.
  • Blessing of Freedom removing stuns. This was an interesting choice, especially in 3’s arena. Freedom of movement for your warrior or freedom the kidney on your healer - choose wrong and you lose.
  • Seal of Blood damage on a sheep cast.
  • Cleansing your healers Unstable Affliction so they don’t get silenced.
  • Sacred Shield. This was effectively a better designed Resounding Protection. It was interesting because it could be removed and was rather expensive, you had to make sure you still had it on.

What felt bad:
Losing this utility.

I also wanted to address Seal and Aura gameplay separately because I think it’s a core problem in Shadowlands.I believe the key to engaging aura and seal gameplay is that there has to be a good reason to change between them. Auras and seals that you activate at the start of a fight and leave on for the whole fight are thematically ok but don’t provide any interesting agency.

Uses of Auras that historically have felt good.

  • Popping Fire Res aura when a dragon is about to breathe fire and reducing the damage taken by the raid.
  • Popping Frost Res aura before a mage shatter combo to reduce the burst.
  • Ret Aura usage when farming low-level dungeons (SM Cath) or vs a rogue with SnD.
  • Conc Aura when your healer partner is in pushback heaven and has to clutch.

Uses of Auras that historically have felt bad.

  • Devo Aura in WoTLK, especially when ARP was a thing. If we didn’t have either of our bubbles up it wasn’t a great fallback…but maybe that was the point.
  • Sanc Aura. It’s nice to have the additional holy damage but it provided no change in gameplay, pretty boring spell.

I didn’t want to go into solution mode, but here’s my 2c on auras and seals.

Auras
I wish auras worked like Sona’s hymns in League of Legends. Activate an aura and you get an effect for x seconds with a flat bonus after the effect ends which requires weaving throughout a fight.

e.g. Retribution Aura upon activation increases holy damage for x seconds. Devo aura gives an absorb when activated. Fire Resistance aura gives a small fire shield to the raid when activated.

Seals
I don’t want to refresh these every 30 seconds, I believe WoTLK seal management was fine. But I do want a compelling reason to switch seals from fight to fight or potentially throughout the same fight.

e.g. Seal of Blood as my main single-target for short fights. Seal of Corruption for longer or movement intensive fights. Seal of Righteousness for AoE fights and trash pulls.

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Everyone hates Conc. But honestly, we can’t have the best of everything. We aren’t supposed to be AoE Gods. Conc is a weakness and weaknesses are okay. I’d rather have it and DS over DS and nothing.

Also. I really like Ike your idea for Auras. Live I’ve said, I want to care about them. I dream of swapping Auras mid fight and actually feeling like I DID something.

Also, support spells not needed during our down time is why I loved Sacred Shield. You could set it up and it would definitely be useful later.

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No, holy power suits, you’re not just given the power, you earn it thru acts and deeds. The more you do the more power granted.
Though I believe it should be a bar that fills rather than points. It less restrictive that way and more options for building and spending can then be added.

Fire, Ice and Shadow Auras are unnecessary when Devotion Aura can cover all damage types. There no need for more unnecessary button bloat as it is
The idea of having Crusader Aura giving a passive run speed. Would give more of a reason to switch Auras depending on the situation. It would also stop Crusader Aura from being a dead ability inside Dungeons and Raids. I think 15% to 20 run speed would be fair.

I don’t feel the same way. Having to rely on a proc you can only get from being in melee long enough, for a heal is terribly unreliable. With holy power and Word of Glory, you knew when you’d have heal available to used, as you where always building holy power. Holy power you can build at range with Judgement and somewhat with Blade of Justice. Not to mention gain access to the heal near instantly, if you used Wake of Ashes.

I don’t want seals at all really. I don’t want have to waste a GCD on a passive just so I can AoE properly, do more healing, snare or better single target damage ect.

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Says who? Ret has historically been a very solid AoE spec.

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The devs that took that away from us.
They are the ones that don’t want us to be AoE Gods.

I’m fine with that if we get to flesh out our secondary role as a support.

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I agree wholeheartedly with literally everything in the op. These suggested changes would truly benefit the class!

I especially like the notion of more combat auras so that your choices are more impactful, rather than sitting in devotion aura.

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Unless you’re referring to the shadowlands changes (which we don’t know how it will shake out compared to other classes yet), I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Like I said, Ret has had good AoE even dating back to vanilla.

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I feel like this is getting derailed.
I’m saying that the weakness of Conc being tied to the ground is okay.

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We are actually pretty damn good at 5+ targets AoE damage,

In my guild i’m always the top dps on vexiona and hivemind by a large margin. We are just really horrible on cleave

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It feels like Blizzard is doubling down on the Holy Power experiment? By giving it back to Holy and Protection it feels like they might be trying one last attempt at making it work? I remember Wrath before we got Holy Power and it was first come first serve.

Holy Power has either been feast or famine. Being starved for Holy Power felt horrible, that by the time Dragon Soul which gave us an extra generator felt like a god send. However too much and it leads to a gcd locked play style that I personally enjoy (but others dislike) and there is no middle ground other than having us have dead spots in our rotation which just feels excruciatingly bad.

Situational seal gameplay I felt was fun. Being able to use x seal for x situation was fun. You were reacting to whatever was happening. Mechanically the gcd to swap sucked, but at the same time you could weave ST seals for some nice cleave which felt really really good. God no on Classic style seal gameplay. Wrath onward was a lot better.

Auras were interesting. At the time I was relatively new to truly appreciate them. However being able to swap on the circumstance again was a skill cap issue. In Wrath if I remember right ret could go far enough into the Holy Tree and pick up Aura Mastery. As it stands with the current iteration we’re getting is retribution aura just seems really really bad.