At this moment we are running into massive issues in regards with some of our runes mainly for Ret and Holy and a few adjustments could fix these problems imo.
Major changes needed
-Imp Hammer of Wrath: Reduce mana cost of HoW from 80% - 90%
-Wrath: Reduce mana cost of consecration by 80 - 90%
-Purifying Power: Reduce mana cost of Holy Wrath and Cleanse by 80%
-Light’s Grace: Move to wrist slot, have it function with Flash of Light as well. Flash of Light has a higher crit % and crits from Holy Light give a percentage of it’s healing to players near by you.
-Divine Storm: Deals Holy damage
-Art of War: Also reduces mana cost of Seals and Judgements.
-Beacon of Light: Duration removed, lasts until death or swapped.
Minor changes that would be welcome
-Seal of Righteousness: Can also critically strike.
-Seal of Command: Increased proc rate and/or also scales with Imp Seal of Righteousness
-Seal of Martyrdom: If you have Seal of Command talented then it will also cleave to 2 additional targets.
-Enlightened Judgments: Affects all hit% chance.
Quality of Life Book: Healing Aura; does heals over time people in your goup/aura.
If anything we need functionality and consistency and without the consistency we find ourselves usually dead in the water like we did before the AoW change.
Big yes. I go oom cleansing shadow weave other random crap in BGs. It kinda sucks that rets are the only hybrid forced into this zugzug warrior playstyle.
Yeah, it’s garbage this phase. Should also decrease the mana cost significantly.
Should work with flash of light as well so the rune isn’t dependent on another rune (exorcist) or exorcist should be a QOL book.
We have multiple runes that revolve around exorcism. Just make Exorcist rune baseline. This opens up all the other interesting leg runes that can’t be currently taken because exorcist rune is required just to function.
Holy Paladins aren’t casting Holy Wrath in raids.
Making Divine Storm do holy damage, and giving them cheap consecrate just makes prot further irrelevant.
Minor changes that would be welcome
-Seal of Righteousness: Can also critically strike.
-Seal of Command: Increased proc rate and/or also scales with Imp Seal of Righteousness
-Seal of Martyrdom: If you have Seal of Command talented then it will also cleave to 2 additional targets.
-Enlightened Judgments: Affects all hit% chance.
Quality of Life Book: Healing Aura; does heals over time
… again, further rending prot worthless, as Ret would have all the damage, all the AoE, all threat, and prot gets… nothing. Also, none of these actually fix Prot’s issues, or addresses Holy’s needs for healing (and a permanent aura with free regen is so broken)
Here’s some fixes that actually would help:
Remove the +threat on HoR and add it to ImpBoSanc.
Replace Aegis with Shield of the Righteous, with it granting 5/10/15% block chance, and 10/20/30% block value, doing holy damage + block value on hit.
Make AoW reset the CD on Avenger’s Shield.
Then remove the normalization on SoM, so ret can use other weapons other than ACP, as Prot would have actual valuable alternatives.
Edit: For Holy - making Holy Shock heal for more, improving the heal from JoL so they could have strong passive regen for melee/parties.
That would be a very welcome improvement, but given the current meta - I doubt it would be enough. Especially since HoR provides a big boost to threat at no significant cost to Ret.
It’s just i think its a bad approach to think: cant let ret have something because it would do that or the other.
ALl they gotta do is retune other runes to affect Prot properly instead of being lazy with it. Otherwise you get this whole thing of: no, even thought that would fix ret issues it would make my spec weirder when instead all we have to do is look at runes you think would be deep defense anyways and adjust them accordingly.
But this “meta” just keeps trying to reinforce top top top damage vs mitigation anyways. Vs nearly anyone else who isnt actually doing that.
EDIT: Aside from Aegis, Avenger’s shield needs a built in CD reduction and a “Chance on hit” to refresh it’s CD.
The real problem runes are the lower level ones, honestly - HoR, Aegis, AS.
They don’t really synergize with other runes all that well, and in the case of HoR - gives up prot’s strength for nearly no opportunity cost. Reworking them to give actually useful benefits would help. Plus, moving the threat from HoR to Imp BoSanc, it frees up ret to other benefits - such as holy damage Divine Storm.
I think the paladin healing aura idea for aoe healing should just be consecration. Paladins can heal any allies standing in consecration, scales off healing, not sure which rune slot. Another option without creating a new ability is altering the Purifying Power rune in the wrist slot. Make holy wrath and exorcism also usable on allies and will heal for X amount maybe with some cleanse effect (ya know exorcise the evil spirits out of allies). I’d be curious if they can buff paladins mana regen to allies or through another class. As well as, some better aoe poison/disease cleansing to mimic shaman cleansing totems. Maybe consecrate can have a cleanse every 4 seconds
HoR doesn’t need a buff, it needs a nerf - the threat needs to be taken off it and rebaked elsewhere. Ret and Shockadins should be forced to give up more than Crusader Strike to get it.
Well in that regard HoR is CLEARLY a Prot rune specifically.
However to another point, the thought of Wildcard runes showing up at 60+ where Neck/fingers could have any slot available from previously would help a lot as well in this regard.