My Ideal Templar hero talents

Classes Paladin
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As a Holy paladin since 2005, I know I’m going to make some mistakes with this draft…but making mistakes, getting feedback, and improving based on that feedback are probably the only way forward.

Of course, the fact that my capstone is a gap closer will probably make Retribution players pretty forgiving of my mistakes…

https://www.deviantart.com/lookoutherecomestom/art/Ideal-Templar-Hero-Talents-Iteration-2-1019687686

There were some aspects of Blizzard’s overall design philosophy that I don’t like that are showing in the hero talents so far: a lack of active abilities means the trees aren’t as exciting as they could be, and they often have a very narrow focus that puts all the eggs in one basket. That narrow focus especially is Blizzard setting themselves up to fail in War Within, since if the one ability they focus on per hero talent tree is klunky, un-fun, impractical, or in any other way bad, then the whole hero tree will be ruined. And if one hero tree is ruined, player choice will be ruined.

To try to avoid these issues, my North Star when I do a design for a hero tree is a combination of making sure the fun-factor stays front and center, and making sure each individual talent is appealing to both specs. I have a kind of a template I use when I design a hero tree: for starters, the keystone is a passive. Then tier 2 has three active abilities in it that replace your existing abilities, where one ability is a mandatory replacement and the other two are put together in a talent choice node, meaning that two of abilities already on your spellbar are going to be replaced, but you have agency in deciding which new abilities you’ll get and how that’ll affect your playstyle. Tier 4 has an option in it for getting into an alternate playstyle, in this case allowing Ret to offtank and Prot to off-DPS. The capstone is a new active ability. I use this template because getting new active abilities is exciting, and so is player agency in determining playstyle.

I tend to treat theme and flavor as secondary concerns, and that definitely shows with this iteration of my Templar tree. I was probably too broad in my theming for my Templar tree: I was aiming for a no-nuance big powerful tanky beefy paladin with my talents, but I think I ended up with something that, while it might be fun and useful, doesn’t really have much flavor, or even much that ties the tree together, thematically or otherwise.

A few things I’m considering for my next iteration are:

  • Rename the Seal of Vengeance keystone to Fanaticism, and rename the talent in the middle “Improved Fanaticism”.
  • Throttle the rate at which Fanaticism stacks can be applied
  • Probably I should alter the stats that are being buffed so that I’m not buffing Strength in both the keystone talent and in tier 4 with Divine Strength.
  • To help tie things together, Exorcism’s DoT effect has its damage increased for every stack of Fanaticism, but you can’t benefit from this more than once every 20 seconds or so (I know I gotta be careful with this one; Exorcism got pruned in DF partly because of upkeep on the DoT)
  • I may or may not alter Punish/Condemn to deal more damage the more Fanaticism stacks you have
  • Censure needs to be renamed, and may have other problems as well

Feedback on how to improve this would be appreciated!

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Alright so, I love it, ship to live game today please. Its everything I want and nothing I expect to receive. Leaning into an effective DoT playstyle is good, more survivablity Id love, possibly greater burst damage that reamains easily executed is great, instant mobility like most other specs already have is important to be viable in pvp. While for pvp retribution is still lacking a disarm and mortal strike, I don’t think any of this is over the top or unwarranted. What I actually expect to see is some bland % buffs to existing abilities with possibly new sounds and animations and a basically unchanged rotation and overall player power compared to other specs.

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Alright, don’t take what I’m gonna say the wrong way…

I don’t see the theme.

I get those are all things you like but they don’t relate to each other.

A more pressing issue is that it’s not realistic.

This tree has insane gameplay implications for a feature they specifically said was aimed at adding flavor and enhancing what we already do.

If this was put in the game, I believe it would invalidate any other DPS.

So I’m gonna tell you the ones that I feel are realistic because I don’t know that you can’t “like” any of those.

I think Seal of vengeance and the spender replacement are realistic.

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Looks like something blizzard would do with aoe vs st, pvp vs pve talent nodes. Itbalso doesnt really lock you into one or another build which is good.

Having wings of liberty as capstone sounds cool but doesnt seem very believable because its mobility. Also the lands behind or in fromt is kind of weird Id assume is a targetting reticule over a point and click to a target autoleap.

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I think that this has progressed a lot since the Lightsmith talent tree you shown the other day.

I really think that there is a clear underlining goal/fantasy here with Seal of Truth and the Censure Debuff, as a more “Holyfire Theme Templar.”

  • Fantaticism is a perfect example of how you want to build upon that keystone talent.

There’s some really strong ideas here with Censure, Condemn, Punish, and Exorcism, but again, it may be a bit over complicated for WoW talents.

However, Punish and Awakening both increase Wing’s Uptime-- something both Prot and Ret don’t really have a major issue with, and Seal of Command also increases HP generation, something that most Paladins are trying to get reduced right now cause we do have a little bit of a resource overload.

Imgur

Again, I’m not trying to say this is how to do it, but more so trying to give feedback and hopefully an explanation of direction and interconnection of talents.

As always, this is an example. Do what suits your ideas best:

Abilities to revolve around SoT/Censure:

  1. Seal of Truth/Vengeance (whatever)

    • Fills the Paladin with Holy Light, causing _______________.
    • Censure: Deals X Damage over 15 sec. Stacks up to 3/5 times.

  2. Wake of Ashes or Eye of Tyr does _____________ to targets effected by Censure.

  3. Heavenly Strength does _____________.

  4. Fanaticism - Seal of Truth/Vengeance also does ____________.

  5. Condemn/Punish - Your Holy Power finishers do ___________.

  6. Holy Wrath / Exorcism

    • Divine Toll ignites your Judgement/AS causing ___________ Censure.
    • Divine Resonance now also cast Exorcism, consuming(?) a stack of Censure to do _______???

  7. Wake of Ashes or Eye of Tyr also does _________.

Optional - Falling Sword, Wings of Liberty, Intervene, Shield Charge, etc…

  • Heavenly Strength gives you the ability to do ___________.

Flavor Utility:

  1. When SoV or Ardent Defender proc, ___________ happens

    • When you cast Divine Shield, or when Divine Shield ends, ___________ happens.

  2. Divine Steed does _________.

  3. PoJ/LAotL

  4. Your _________ Aura now does _________.

(Other abilities to explore could also include Art of War and Grand Crusader, Blessed Hammer and Divine Hammer, or Divine Purpose)

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Popping in to say, that I also have been in the process of creating threads on the Paladin forums in anticipation for the upcoming Templar Paladin reveal.

I love the passion you brought to the table here. You clearly care about the class and have a created a really interesting talent tree!

If I can be extremely honest, I wish the talent tree you made here, was actually how our general Retribution was designed instead. You have a great mix of things running in this toolkit that feel cohesive.

The only personal issue I would take with it, is that it feels a bit more like Herald of the Sun and not Templar.

Templar speaks to me more as a physical, melee range damage dealing juggernaut. Someone who can ride a horse right into enemy frontlines and overpower enemies with their battlefield prowess. Wielding a weapon and a shield with heavy armor.

But of course, this is only my opinion. It’s mostly taking from real historical accounts rather than what is in World of Warcraft.

Time will tell what Blizzard has decided on for the theme and direction of Templar. I’m hoping they choose to go down a road similar to my line of thinking. But i’m of course open to see what the team comes up with.

All things considered, you very well may have created a Hero Talent tree that is way more exciting than what we will get.

If templar comes out and its a bunch of augments to Wake of Ashes, radiant/holy damage and consecration, I will come right back here and beg for your talent mockup instead!

It’s really cool, just not the direction I hope they go in.

Nevertheless, great job. The Paladin forums are full of a few individuals who are clearly smart and passionate for their class. Love to see it!

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That artwork is freaking sick!

Thanks for taking my excitement to the next level for Templar with that one.

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Looks at it.

See’s no 2-hand and sheild.

/meh

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I knew this was where my ideal talents were at their weakest.

Well, at least I got something right! But what about it would invalidate any other DPS? Did I put in too much AoE?

This is far from the only idea tree I’ve put together, and…to be honest, I have AoE vs. ST choices in so many of them that I’m questioning where to draw the line between “finding my groove” and “being in a rut” design-wise. Sometimes I have (or try to have) burst vs. sustain options, at least, but AoE vs. ST is the most common.

Also, Falling Sword wasn’t meant to be like Heroic Leap, a reticule: it was meant to be more like Charge or Shadowstep in that you need a target to use it: you end up toe-to-toe with the target if you’re a tank and behind them to do damage if you’re DPS. Of course, if the ground-targetted gap closer is better, then I can change it in the next iteration.

I’ve gotten the same feedback from another source about Seal of Command; I’ll definitely be changing it in my next iteration—probably it’ll be closer to its Vanilla implementation: hitting the target a second time after using an ability, kind of like the Echo of the Highlord artifact weapon trait in Legion, except I’m thinking about applying it to Holy Power builders instead of spenders to try to make the damage a little less spiky overall.

…Unless spiky is preferred; then I can make it the builders!

I appreciate that, but oddly, I’d thought that theme was where the tree was weakest—I’d wanted to do more to tie different parts of the tree together, like what I said about Exorcism being more powerful with more stacks of Fanaticism.

Thanks for these examples on ideas on how to tie more things into the keystone; I expect I’ll be keeping the Heavenly Strength around as a choice node, though, since I’m pretty attached to the gives-you-the-option-to-offtank/gives-you-the-option-to-offDPS concept. (And to wielding a 2H weapon and shield at the same time, for that matter!) I mean, if I get enough feedback telling me it should go, I’ll remove it, but I really like the idea of putting that much customization in players’ hands, especially since these trees ought to be mixing the two specs’ flavor.

Plus—I’m not the only one who likes the concept of a paladin wielding a 2H and a shield :slight_smile: If they can do it for Fury, they can do it for us, if they really want to!

Thanks for pointing out abilities I hadn’t touched, yet. Heck: I didn’t do Divine Shield, either, and for a tree that’s supposed to be emphasizing both defense and offense, I really should’ve, in retrospect!

Wait until you see my Herald of the Sun tree—it’s nothing like this! It’s got a passive that emphasizes healing-for-damage and damage-for-healing, and there’s a lot of playstyle customization. A ret paladin can take it and play almost the same as they do now, provide a lot of passive healing for their party members (and that passive healing buffs their damage output), and besides that, their passive incentivizes them to cast Lay on Hands when someone needs it, or to cast an instant group heal if the group needs it.

But they’d also have options for doing a lot more direct healing—if they wanted to!

You can imagine Holy’s got a lot of damage options that buff their heals in my Herald talents, as well, but I’m getting off-topic…

This would be awesome. Having an extremely prolonged, or even permanent Divine Steed, would be amazing flavor.

In any case, I’ll keep my eyes open for what I can buff in the physical damage department when I start on my next iteration. I suppose with the +str buffs I have in here (I suspect I have too many), I did have some physical damage, but the abilities that stand out do Holy damage.

Look again, my friend—tier 4, middle node, right-hand option. Heavenly Strength, borrowed from Diablo 3’s Crusader’s passive.

I think you will like what you see there :smiley:

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It think it’s just all the capability that is given through the talents, soo much mobility and defensive power.
I don’t see why play anything else but Ret if he can do all of this, unless he does significantly less damage than anyone else.

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It actually was on there.

It’s the very bottom far right called Heavenly Strength. And honestly to me that name smacks so i’m running with it from now on. In my head I was thinking something called Teachings of the Templar before :joy:

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Yeah, I actually thought of that as well when I was creating the tree graphic.

I thought SoC could be a cool Holystrike/Physical based Templar, with SoT/SoV being the Holyfire themed Templar.

As a 20 year veteran to the Class, I can’t stand how they butchered the idea of Seals with naming so many passives in our trees “Seal of _______.” Couldn’t bring myself to put 2 Seals in one Hero Talent Tree. :sweat_smile:

Edit:

To be honest, and this isn’t directed at your trees, but I think any Paladin Hero Tree that doesn’t include or effect a; Seal, Blessings and Auras in some way is doing a disservice to the Class.

Those are iconic abilities that should be enhanced through a Hero Tree, and kindof what is missing from the Core of the class more. Not having Cleanse, Devo Aura, or Blessing of Protection spec’d into when I raid, I feel just like a damage bot and none of my utility shines through like it should. ¯\ _ (ツ)_/¯

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Even as a full-time PvPer, I do find myself missing cleanse on my bar. Even though it’s such a little thing.

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Oh I see it now, hard to see on the phone lol.

Although, I think the tree should add alittle something to work with the sheild other then blocking, otherwise people may not take it up with your iteration of the tree’s. I’d add that for ret, sotr now has a cool-down but blasts a divine storm forward dealing a percentage of divine storms damage.

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I can see your point—when they were putting BfA together and asking what older systems to unprune, I had a hierarchy of preference: Holy Power > Seals > Blessings > Auras. Again: the fun-factor was my North Star for my design, as always, and having played Holy since 2005, I can tell you that nothing brought more interactivity to the paladin playstyle than the introduction of Holy Power; Holy Power forced Blizzard to give us abilities to build Holy Power and abilities to spend Holy Power—Holy Power alone got Holy two of our four new healing spells (healing-homogenization got us the other two). Seals were second because they modified our gameplay, at least while they lasted, and they’d be a great supplement in a design environment where we have strikes and on-demand damage spells. Blessings at least let us see a cool graphical effect when we cast them on allies, and they were desirable buffs. Auras…next to no interactivity there, though I’ve seen proposed systems that work to fix that.

That said, I feel like the hero talents aren’t the best system for introducing auras/blessings/seals. If we already had blessings and seals, then adding or buffing those in the hero talents would make perfect sense.

…Auras, though, we have: if I added a buff on each of my trees to an aura, or to all auras like the Merciful Auras talent, would that work, in your opinion? I’m not sure I’ll go that route even if you say “yes”, but…well, I’m looking for feedback in general!

We’re a bit too soft on mobility at the moment, but I could tone down the defense in my next iteration—at least for Ret.

That’s more or less what I have in the tier-2 talent on the left-hand side. …Well, one of them, anyway…

I’d set up Heavenly Strength so it’d be an option that allows Ret to off-tank and Prot to off-DPS; I figure hero trees shared by two different roles would benefit and provide a lot of gameplay customization if they started pulling perks from each spec into the other spec, and to a lesser degree, if they enabled the ability to slip into an alternate role.

That said, I think it might make for a more interesting tree if, instead of using Divine Strength to provide a flat +5% strength buff, I instead implemented that as the ability to wield a shield and 2H weapon at the same time—after all, adding a shield to your gear would provide additional stats, including +str, though I don’t know if it’d be 5%.

If I do that, though, I’ll probably still have an option for allowing Ret to off-tank and Prot to off-DPS.

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Well for me personally, I actually quite like when abilities really dig into that core fantasy of a class. I think it gives a unique experience that helps make the game feel more diverse.

In Legion I felt Paladins were at their lowest, almost everything was scrapped from the Class in favor of “min/maxing” and that was just boring as heck.

Obviously it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but its those little things that feel more noticeable and impactful, and while Glyphs do exist, it feels like those abilities should have just been designed that way in the first place.

Tyr’s Deliverance is a perfect example. Tyr’s Deliverance is a great spell, it’s useful, impactful and works just fine gameplay wise, but imo, would have been so much better had it Blessed 5 allies with Blessing of Light, for example.

The same spell, but just better themed for the class. Similar is Blessing of Seasons.

I guess getting to my point is-- these spells don’t need to be that complicated or changed that much, to fulfill that unique classic fantasy.

Branching off what you had, an example for Seal of Command could read:

Seal of Command

  • Fills the Paladin with Holy Light increasing the proc chance and the damage of Divine Purpose by X%.
  • Unleashing this Seal’s energy will judge an enemy, instantly causing X radiant damage, Y if the target is Stunned, a Demon or Undead.

or

Seal of Command

  • Fills the Paladin with Holy Light. Mastery: Hand of Light now also gives your Holy Power spenders a chance to proc Divine Purpose.

  • Unleashing this Seal’s energy does _______________.

It’s not anything that’s going to necessarily make or break the game, but it ties into the old Seal system while still being an advancement to the current game.

It adds to the “casino” side of Divine Purpose, but also into dealing more damage with Judgement to stunned targets or demons and undead, so there’s still some value.

But, unless the anti Undead/Demon is a major theme for the Hero Talent, this particular example is probably something I would expect more from the Class Tree.

Auras are a tough situation right now for a few reasons:

  • All auras not giving a 3% damage reduction, is just dumb
  • Specing into Auras feels awful for the opposite specs
    • Auras of Swift Vengeance for Holy and Prot is a QoL talent for Crusader
    • Auras of the Resolute for Ret feels like a “wasted talent” when you are doing content that wouldn’t normally trigger Retribution
      • World content isn’t procing 30% of someone HP in a single hit… so unless you have Devo Aura, you’re walking around with a meaningless buff
  • Passives are hard to balance

I grew up on Diablo 2, that was probably the first Paladin I experienced in a video game, so naturally the Auras are gonna mean a lot more to me than someone who started playing WoW in WoD or whatever.

To me, each Aura should give 3% Damage reduction, which imo would allow all the Auras to open themselves up to a unique effect, that could be themed based on Hero Talents if so desired.

Examples could be:

Devo Aura

  • Reduces all damage taken by 3%
  • Party and raid members within 40 yds are bolstered by their devotion, increasing Armor and Avoidance by 3%.

Ret Aura

  • Reduces all damage taken by 3%.
  • When any party or raid member within 40 yds takes more than 30% of their health in damage in a single hit, each member gains 5% increased damage and healing, decaying over 30 sec. This cannot occur within 30 sec of the aura being applied.

Templar Hero Talent:

Defiance Aura (Replaces Devo)

  • Reduces all damage taken by 3%.
  • Party and raid members within 40 yards are bolstered by their defiance, increasing Armor and Avoidance by 3% and an additional .5% for every enemy within 20 yards. Max 4 stacks.

or

Sanctity Aura (Replaces Ret)

  • Reduces all damage taken by 3%.
  • When any party or raid member within 40 yds takes more than 10% of their health in damage in a single hit, each member gains 5% increased damage and healing, and their attacks to have a 30% chance to deal 5% additional damage as Holy, decaying over 30 sec.

Obviously these are just examples off the top of my head, I’d go a little bit more in-depth with Auras in a PvP environment where I think you can get away with a bit more “OP” passives, and don’t have to worry about it effecting 40 people, lol.

But it’s just adding that little bit of flavor to them.

Auras, Seals and Blessings are core to the identity of the Paladin, and not have them expressed in the Hero Talents feels bad imo.

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The aura changes you suggest Id like to see implemented baseline(or with the class talents we already have) for no new talent cost. Hero talents need to be much more exciting than an X% damage done or damage taken reduction on a passive aura.

I want to see a Ret version of Shadowstrike, like BoJ with a hero talent becoming something greater(or similar range ability) is empowered causing the caster to rush the target(charge) impaling them and causing disorientation for 2 seconds, existing tier set required expergation dots still applied(maybe add a weak Mortal strike effect).

I want to see a find weakness type application or effect where something we can do with Holy strike damage ignores armor, we have the blessing of and are impowered by GOD.
When we strike someone wearing literal cloth with a giant holy powered strike while swinging a 150lb axe/mace/sword the targets health should probabaly change.

Id love a 2hander + Shield option for Ret that is viable. 1 hander + shield is not close to viable now as we lose most of our damage (due to many abilities requiring a 2hander) for very low amounts of added survivability. Even if it does slightly less damage, if the added durability is noticable 2 hander + shield will be loved by Ret players.

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I honestly don’t want a charge or a leap for paladin, I think what they created during Legion beta that never made it out was still the absolute best mobility option as it was unique and really cool.

Iirc it was called Turalyons Sword or something, and you basically threw it to a location, and then whenever you wanted you could press the button again and charge to wherever your sword was. If we are ever going to get more mobility (not sure we need it, but just saying) that is what I’d want to see as it would be pretty unique to ret/paladin. I also don’t want this to replace steed or anything either to be clear, it could be a longer cd to make it balanced if we got it but again not sure we need more mobility necessarily. It would be cool though.

I agree with what you’ve said though, its kind of why I am losing a bit of hype for Hero talents currently. I am not super pumped for “standing in cons increases your damage by an additional x%” in lightsmith, or any similar talents in other trees. I think so far frostfire mage has looked the best in terms of potential aesthetics and actual talents, hopefully Templar and Herald get some good love. I may be biased but I think ret paladin has a very good fantasy after the rework and is easy to get creative with.

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I might end up going with Turalyon’s Sword as the capstone.

Funny you should mention replacing Divine Steed: I had a kind of a proto-draft where Falling Sword did replace Divine Steed, and then Bombardment from D3 was Templar’s capstone. I realized that making a mobility tool be the capstone would’ve been cooler, so I brought in Exorcism instead and made Falling Sword the capstone.

You’re right—Turalyon’s Sword is the most paladin-ish gap closer, so I’ll probably go with it in the next iteration.

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From a pvp perspective, lacking instant mobility makes line of sighting incoming damage or catching any spec with instant mobility and decent understanding of their own crowd contol very difficult. If a Mage, DH, Monk, Rogue, Warrior, ect ect ect, can just out maneuver a Ret with ease like they do now during Wings, AND have effective CC or Mortal Stikes or Disarms, it puts Ret in a bad spot where we really only hit who lets us hit them most of the time. Anything Ret does is visually telegraphed and easily countered by most specs.

Lacking a mortal strike limits Ret to having its hand held by a teammate who has mortal strike effects so damage we do has a chance to stick.

Standing in consecration would have to give a massive OP damage or survivability advantage to see more use in pvp, and we would still be moved out of it due to knockbacks, fears, mindcontrol, and chasing enemies/objectives. I dont want to see the word Consecration mentioned again in my lifetime when it comes to Hero Talents.

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