This will be my last post. It’s time to get out of the loop of checking Wowhead and giving feedback on the forums. But first, here’s twenty years of feedback in one go. 
The Great Libram of Ret Feedback
(1) The 2-min version of Crusade should have that same feeling of glory and impact as when Ele pops Ascendance. Herald is sorta close but no cigar.
(2) Ret doesn’t need the 1-min / crit version of Avenging Wrath anymore. This node should be a choice between 2-min Crusade and Radiant Glory Crusade.
(3) Radiant Glory procs should start with a few stacks of Crusade so they don’t feel wasted when they occur in isolation.
(4) Crusade should increase healing by 1.5% per stack so that Ret Wings retains some healing benefit (like how Holy still gets damage.)
(5) Templar’s Verdict and Divine Storm should retrieve some of their damage from effects like Hammerfall and Divine Arbiter. It feels bad when finishers get split into smaller numbers.
(6) Mastery gives Judgment and Hammer of Wrath a chance to perform a separate attack that plays Exorcism’s sound effect and animation. Why can’t I press a button that does the same thing called, I don’t know, how about Exorcism?
(7) The Judgment debuff is passively applied too much. I would consider removing talents like “Hammer of Light applies Judgment to its targets,” and I also feel in my heart of hearts that Divine Toll should be tied to Blade of Justice, not Judgment.
(8) Crusading Strikes was a good addition because Crusader Strike already felt like an auto-attack, but it’s also unintuitive. The holy power bar should display half a holy power.
(9) The priority of holy power generators should be Hammer of Wrath > Judgment if the debuff is not applied > Blade of Justice > Judgment.
(10) Hammer of Wrath is in crisis. Its damage is too low to be an execute, it requires a 2-pt class talent to make it worth pressing at all, it’s available too often, and the bonus damage at 35% is hard to track if you play without percentages.
(11) Remove Hammer of Wrath from Wings and Final Verdict. Make it a powerful execute that occasionally pops into the regular rotation via Endless Wrath (Templar talent no one currently uses) or Blessing of An’she. Add it to Blessed Champion because lord knows the AoE rotation could use an extra button.
(12) Hammer of Wrath should get an empower: instant when tapped / charges up to deal more damage when held. This would be a nice callback to the original ability, could be optional.
(13) Hammer of Wrath shouldn’t glow on our action bars during Wings and execute phases, it should simply no longer be greyed out. Have it glow during procs.
(14) While I sorta like that Blade of Justice has no cooldown during AoE, Art of War should be more meaningful. Imagine it occurred less and transformed Blade of Justice into Exorcism: more damage, higher range, different animations, bonus effect against evil mob types, moves up in the priority list.
(15) There’s a clear difference between that and our mastery. A) Art of War procs > Blade of Justice moves up in priority > you press it and your character does a different animation. B) You press Judgment or Hammer of Wrath > mastery procs and your character does a different animation. B feels like BfA corruption effects, like your character is playing itself.
(16) When Hammer of Light is used back to back the duration of Undisputed Ruling (15% haste buff) should stack instead of overwrite itself.
(17) Free Hammer of Lights via Light’s Deliverance should grant Crusade stacks.
(18) When Herald uses 2-min Crusade against one target it applies a single Dawnlight with an 8-sec duration. If Herald can avoid losing out on Dawnlights in ST by using Radiant Glory, doesn’t that devalue 2-min Crusade?
(19) 2-min Crusade should apply Dawnlight to targets we’re not in combat with (a change that was just made to Divine Toll).
(20) Blessings of Sanctuary and Spellwarding were never updated to the fancy graphic where we fling blessings out of a libram. Spellwarding with the PvP talent Spreading the Word grants 30% physical damage reduction instead of magic.
(21) Lay on Hands + Empyreal Ward bug out sometimes and don’t allow Lay on Hands to be cast via a macro.
(22) Instrument of Retribution activates Avenging Wrath when Crusade is talented. I wouldn’t mind scrapping this mechanic altogether, but if not then just let it to extend Crusade.
(23) If you cast your mount (that isn’t one of the order hall mounts) while Divine Steed is active, your character suddenly stands on top of Steed. Looks ridiculous. If you stop casting Searing Glare halfway through and then start again, the graphic disappears. This occurs often because Searing Glare is a PvP talent and in PvP you try to juke interrupts.
(24) The Ret tree is super unfinished with something like 10 dead talents.
(25) Combine Swift Justice and Light of Justice into one talent that reduces the cooldown of all basic holy power generators by 1-2 sec.
(26) Judgment of Justice should increase movement speed for a few sec longer. It’s only 10% after all, we should be able to keep it up most of the time.
(27) Add an alternative to Judgment of Justice that does the same things except instead of a 30% snare it limits movement speed to 100% and prevents mobs from running. This would be nostalgic, fun, and useful.
(28) Guided Prayer should trigger at 35% health. Light’s Celerity should have a longer cooldown but do a bigger a heal.
(29) Justicar’s Vengeance should deal 15% less damage than Final Verdict when targets aren’t stunned / 15% more when they are (thanks to PvP modifiers only the first part is true). The bonus damage against stunned targets should be quadrupled in PvE to make JV a fun leveling talent. Jurisdiction should increases JV’s range and the heal should be removed.
(30) Tempest of the Lightbringer should be a choice node that either doubles the radius of Divine Storm or makes the entire Divine Storm shoot forward 20 yds. These aren’t new ideas. Ret was once the Moonkin of melee but now our AoE feels like warrior or rogue. 
(31) Empyrean Legacy should trigger Divine Storm at the target so that it plays better with 20-yd Final Verdict. It would also be nice if it interacted with any of our other mechanics like Crusade stacks or Radiant Glory procs.
(32) Aegis of Protection should also increase Divine Protection’s duration by 2-4 sec so that it’s competitive with Shield of Vengeance.
(33) I won’t go over every dead Ret talent, but I would like to respond to something I read in an Ion Hazzikostas interview. He said that while some players prefer talents to be flavor choices, ST vs. AoE is fine and will remain. He misses the point entirely: ST vs. AoE isn’t a player option, it’s determined by the encounter. While encounter always determines talents to some degree, ST vs. AoE does so in an obvious and obnoxious way. You can design talents that are more compelling for everyone including mythic raiders.
(34) But I would like to discuss the thematic side of our talents as well. We got the fire / sun aspect down. This represents the Ashbringer, the Scarlet Crusade, and Sunwalkers (taurens). However, a big opportunity was missed when holystrike was made holy-physical instead of holy-lightning. Think nature, the heavens, the Light, the order of the cosmos, dwarf paladins and titans, Thor and Mjolnir. Warrior and Enhance hog this fantasy. 
(35) I noticed only a couple weeks ago that when we Hammer of Light we whip out this tiny golden hammer. There’s too much cartooniness with all these hammer graphics. Divine Storm used to have a golden lightning aftereffect but now it’s solely swirling hammers.
(36) Execution Sentence should have some initial impact or a DoT attached. Searing Light is boring and reuses Final Reckoning’s graphic. Divine Hammer should be a final row talent. The final gate is generally underwhelming.
(37) Did I mention too much hammer imagery? Make Execution Sentence a sword: the verdict’s already passed and the target’s waiting to get his head chopped off.
(38) The class tree was greatly improved but still has flaws.
(39) Turn Evil is not good enough to be a talent. Delete it along with Wrench Evil. Move Stand Against Evil to Turn Evil’s spot. Change the mechanics of Stand Against Evil to a casted cone in front of the player. No target limit, 1.25 sec cast, 45-sec CD. Searing Glare (PvP talent) replaces and upgrades it.
(40) Holy Reprieve is a tax for playing with other paladins and it blocks PvP builds from pathing into Divine Reach. Divine Reach is kinda useless. Bake Holy Reprieve into Light’s Revocation —> replace Divine Reach with Improved Concentration Aura: “Interrupt, silence, fear, and horrify effects are reduced by 30% (20% in PvP).”
(41) Steed of Liberty is playable with an evoker due to Blessing of the Bronze and Time Spiral, but even then Blessing of Freedom is often better. Bake Divine Spurs into Steed of Liberty and buff the cooldown reduction.
(42) Rebuke should be 10 yds to match HoJ and our semi-ranged design. Baseline would be fine, but another option is to add it to Punishment, which kind of sucks unless you’re Prot.
(43) Who is Worthy Sacrifice designed for? Experienced players don’t want Blessing of Sacrifice automated, while it may kill new players.
(44) Improved Blessing of Protection should be 1 min 30 sec (up from 1 min) for Holy and Ret. It’s a weak talent and Holy recently lost double BoP in PvP. This wouldn’t affect Spellwarding because Holy and Ret skip the initial BoP talent when they take Spellwarding.
(45) Lead the Charge blows! Did you know it only applies to allies who are nearly in your melee range? And it’s odd to tack 3% movement speed onto a Steed talent considering movement speed doesn’t apply to Steed. Let me try: “Divine Steed reduces the cooldown of the major mobility ability of 4 allies within your aura by 15%. This can apply to abilities that are not on cooldown. Divine Steed increases your movement speed by 120%.”
(46) Lead the Charge (currently a raid talent) makes Stoicism (PvP talent) hard to reach. If it’s changed like I suggested, great. If not move it to Divine Spurs’s spot and merge Divine Spurs with Steed of Liberty.
(47) Faith’s Armor needs to be something else for Holy and Ret.
(48) Holy Ritual is very undertuned and particularly bad after the nerf to Seal of the Crusader. I’m surprised it wasn’t buffed alongside A Just Reward.
(49) Vengeful Wrath should be reduced to 1 point. It gobbles up too many points that we should get to spend on interesting utility options.
(50) The intent behind the Word of Glory nerfs and Flash of Light buff seem to be we use WoG on ourselves and FoL on allies, but man that’s weird design. What was wrong with WoG as the instant heal that cost holy power and FoL the casted one that cost mana?
(51) Selfless Healer: “Flash of Light is 30% more effective. When you heal an ally it also heals you for 40% of the amount, and vice versa.” Maybe rename it. (FoL is already getting buffed this patch but 35% to an ability that can’t outheal mage food isn’t as big as it sounds.)
(52) I’m fine with the upcoming passive healing nerfs. Ret passive healing should be minimal because we have three active healing spells that should all have some weight to them.
(53) WoG and FoL have no weight in PvP. Even before dampening they feel bad to press.
(54) A few notes on hero talents, mostly concerning Herald’s crappy utility talents…
(55) Illumine’s snare shouldn’t be nerfed in PvP because that makes it redundant with Judgment of Justice. The movement speed buff on friendly targets should stack with other movement speed buffs (but maybe reduce it 20% > 15%).
(56) Will of the Dawn should be 5% movement speed above 50% health and 5% increased healing taken below 50% health. The current version is weak.
(57) Herald doesn’t make Ret feel like a Ret-Holy hybrid. The Healing Hands nerf means we won’t apply Eternal Flame to anyone other than ourselves, while the healing portion of Sun’s Avatar is tuned very low for Ret. I’m generally against passive healing, but 4-6 beams (which requires big Crusade) should heal for a respectable amount. Otherwise, damage being equal, why not just go Templar for Sacrosanct Crusade?
(58) Bonds of Fellowship should reduce Blessing of Sacrifice damage by 30% and increase healing taken by 5% (movement speed doesn’t help us when we Sac someone). The point of this buff is to make Bonds of Fellowship competitive with Unrelenting Charger.
(59) Ret is tied for the lowest number of PvP talents in the game.
(60) I can perhaps find some use for Shining Revelation in Blitz but it’s very situational. I like the idea behind the new (old?) Luminescence. Spellbreaker should be part of baseline Eye for an Eye so we don’t have three mandatory talents against casters. Ultimate Retribution should have a super obvious graphic and cause the target to also take increased damage, but only affect only one target at a time.
(61) Please keep a close eye on Ret damage following the removal of Aura of Reckoning. I hope to see some negative PvP modifiers reduced.
(62) Searing Glare on the fire school? Might be OP but would make paladin less static.
(63) Add a couple more talents. I want one that makes Ret better in 2s and another that makes the whole class a better flag carrier.
(64) One day, Blessing of Spellwarding should be moved to the class tree and the paladin kit balanced around it. The class shares an ability but that ability is splintered into a spec tree and PvP talents. The tail of mythic raids shouldn’t wave the dog of class design.
(65) One day, BoP and Spellwarding could be removed altogether and paladins could get two charges of Divine Shield that can be used on anyone.
(66) One day, Divine Shield could have a shorter duration with a shorter cooldown. What if it were more of a skill move, off the gcd, that you had to time properly?
(67) One day, Divine Toll could have utility added in the way of Abom Limb, Champion’s Spear, etc. Paladin had the most boring covenant abilities.
(68) One day, we could get the crusader ability Falling Sword as either an alternative to Divine Steed or an upgraded Wings. Mechanically it’s different than Heroic Leap because there’s a delay while airborne before the paladin comes crashing down.
(69) One day, the human / blood elf Charger will be updated and allowed to fly.
(70) If new hero trees are added to the game, Ret should get a support tree. But not Lightsmith please.
(71) Interrupts, magic dispel, etc should be determined by class instead of role. It’s never too late to fix the mistake of designing around 3 roles instead of 9+ classes. You’ll face pushback but those players are wrong.
(72) I’m sure I’ll kick myself later for forgetting to mention this or that.
Summary and conclusion
Some of the passive mechanics should go, all of our talent systems need work, big Crusade should be a real option, and Hammer of Wrath should be high priority in ST and AoE. Steed of Glory, Word of Glory, and Flash of Light should all be worth using in PvP.
On the fantasy side of things, the right side of the Ret tree + Herald gave us fire-sun-DoT paladin, but the left side of the tree + Templar dropped the ball by not giving us lightning paladin. Hammer of Light, rather than a tap on the ground with a piddly golden hammer to spawn an earthquake, should be Fist of the Heavens.
This took a long time to write. If you took the time to read it, thank you very much! This is my very last post. For the Light, my paladin brothers and sisters! 
It’s just hard to have a really good conversation in text because of all the moving parts, which is why I try and break it up as best as I can.
