Patch Notes

Changes-2879969 · February 9, 2026, 5:13pm

Says to click a link, you go there and its pages of changes are those all coming tomorrow?

Benmarch-1421546 · February 9, 2026, 5:47pm

What are you referencing to?

Wowhead links opens the thread where the changes are posted which includes everything since the thread was started so you need to scroll down to what was recently posted.

Bone-3275370 · February 9, 2026, 5:53pm

It can be hard to take it in the way they have it formatted. There are several instances of abilities having buffs and nerfs in sequence- its very disjointed.

Unless I am mistaken, for Ret its pretty simple. Both hero trees are being buffed significantly for single target (not aoe), CSAA is being buffed from a 50% penalty to a 35% penalty, plus WoG and FoL are being buffed.

I think that’s it.

Edit to add- they are also fixing the cooldown reduction option for Divine Toll to let Ret take it down to 30 seconds instead of 45.

Changes-2879969 · February 9, 2026, 6:24pm

Thanks and Herald is getting lots of buffs from what I see?

Bone-3275370 · February 9, 2026, 6:29pm

Both hero trees are getting significant buffs. Hopefully they will be close enough for people to play the one they prefer.

Bone-3275370 · February 9, 2026, 6:45pm

Oh- I forgot to add that Execution Sentence is getting a buff. The funnel part is going from 10% to 20%. We’ll see how that works out in practice. It should help priority damage in aoe where the mobs live longer.

Kiddin-3006755 · February 9, 2026, 7:50pm

Is there any clarification if they are handling any of the Bugs pointed out in the Beta: Paladin Feedback forum?

Bone-3275370 · February 9, 2026, 8:07pm

Not to my knowledge. Bug fixes aren’t always published though, so they could be fixing a bunch and just not mentioning it.

Vladrik-3324769 · February 10, 2026, 11:12am

Its basically cumulative patch notes for everything that has been updated on beta but not live in the last few weeks.

So for people who follow or play beta, for many specs there’s actually no “new” changes, they are just new to the live prepatch. Which will still be wonky because those updates are targeted for level 90 with apex talents. But hey its something.

Changes-2879969 · February 10, 2026, 1:15pm

thank you for your help on this patch.

Tekey-3305267 · February 10, 2026, 2:29pm

There are some much needed buffs there. Self healing ones, especially, I’d say. When I realized my dk’s passive healing was greatly outperforming my paladin’s, I was quite bothered. This is the season I finally decided to main a paladin and… yeah, wasn’t happy. Anyway, hope I’ll be given back some of the survivability I used to have as retribution. At least on paper, the buffs seem good

Thor64-2417323 · February 10, 2026, 2:53pm

What I find “interesting” is that there’s no mention of the Templar 15% single target buff we got a few weeks ago. Then recently we got an additional 30% single target buff for Templar, making it a total of 45% single target Templar buff.

I wonder how that’s gonna play out.

Benmarch-1421546 · February 10, 2026, 3:21pm

I don’t remember this so I can’t help here.

And I don’t think it “matters” in the sense that “balance is gonna balance”.

How much they buffed it before is irrelevant if it’s not up to par with what it should do.

And I think they needed to buff HoL to hit harder than the Apex Talent does.

HoL should, at 5 HP and being the center piece of Templar, be the hardest single hitting ability in the spec.

That it was being outshine by AoW through the Apex was weird.

Hysorn-3331394 · February 10, 2026, 3:45pm

What, why??? Isn’t this just going to make CSAA the one and only choice again?

Kiddin-3006755 · February 10, 2026, 4:02pm

¯\(ツ)/¯

This isn’t the first time Blizz has made decisions that directly contradict stated design goals.

Currently, Ret has so many issues*^[1]

on Beta that you should expect extreme changes come Midnight proper, or Blizz will abandon the Spec for a Season, one of the two.

Ret is currently suffering from a laundry list of Bugs (tons of bugs just on HoW being folded into Judgement alone) that make estimations of Spec balance and feel very difficult - as well as generally very low damage - which could be Bug based, or just a consequence of new design philosophy - not many melee DPS are in “Good” spots ↩︎

Thor64-2417323 · February 10, 2026, 4:15pm

My apologies if I wasn’t clear enough. The 45% increase I previously stated was about HoL. The 15% increase happened a few weeks before the recent 30% increase.

Templar

Retribution
    Hammer of Light single target damage increased by 15%.
    Hammer of Light secondary target damage increased by 25%.

This happened Jan. 14th, the Midnight Beta Test Development Notes.

Between that and the recent 30% buff, our HoL should receive in total a 45% damage increase.

That’s a LOT of single target damage if this goes through. This would outshine our Apex Talent.

Rev-1975726 · February 10, 2026, 5:26pm

It already was the one and only option now its for sure cemented as BiS. Enjoy

Rev-1975726 · February 10, 2026, 5:28pm

These buffs will not hold at max level in the same post they explained they buffed healing because in midnight HP values went up by some crazy %. It will feel the same as live or worse. Unless ret gets %based healing it will always fall behind unless insanely tuned.

Hysorn-3331394 · February 10, 2026, 5:31pm

Man, that’s so lame, I really wish they would let my Paladin use his sword to attack already, I was so pumped when they had announced the removal of Crusading Strikes, only to ressub and find… This.

I don’t want AA to be my only non weapon summoning attack for yet another expansion man.

Rev-1975726 · February 10, 2026, 5:34pm

I share the same sentiment but sadly whoever is in charge of ret doesnt think that way. I have spoken about crusading the most here and theres nothing else to do. That person wants crusading too much and thats it.