So how do we feel about this?
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Annoyed, but at this point more so that they didn’t just merge Crusader Aura with the other Aura talent
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Losing an Aura, and that class fantasy, is never ideal. Personally, I’d hate for Retribution to fall back into the Legion’s version of Ret where it’s just 4 buttons and little utility.
However, Ret Aura was a bit weirdly designed. In some content it would never proc, and it being available to Prot didn’t address the Ret Paladin unique utility situation.
Now that Ret Aura is gone, hopefully it reinforces the need to refresh the Class Tree, take another look at how Auras are designed for Paladins, and maybe give another pass to Blessing of Protection/Sacrifice in larger group play.
Continuing the discussion from The War Within Beta Development Notes:
This is the part that’s more concerning because currently neither Ret nor Prot take things like Blessing of Protection or Judgement of Light in like 90% of their builds. Hopefully those abilities get more usage in tWW…
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Say goodbye to ret paladins in mythic raid.
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Yeah, say goodbye to Ret Paladins in any World First Race…Oh wait
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It was warranted tbh
Paladins are the only class with 2 unique raid buffs that require 2 Paladins per raid to get full use out of.
Now there’s only need for 1 Pal per raid like every other class (except maybe Evoker, Augs need to get nerfed next)
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" Full use "…Ret wasn’t even in two of the World First Mythic kills this xpac.
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Don’t care about losing this version of Ret aura, but kinda annoyed they didn’t turn it back into old Ret aura.
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The biggest flaw with the removal of Retribution aura is that Retribution is now stuck with a dead Aura of Crusader aura that almost does nothing and for them to bring a “useful” aura now they have to talent into Devotion Aura, losing a talent point.
Meanwhile Prot and Holy can path around it and don’t have to put a point into an already oppressive class talent tree where you can’t take a lot of the utility you might want.
Protection Paladins also still lack Blessing of Freedom as a Free Node and only receives 2 free talents compared to Holy and Retribution getting 3 (Hammer/Lay on Hands, Blessing of Freedom, DevoAura/CrusAura)
All in all, lot of work to be done with the Paladin Class Tree.
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Blizz can you at least not lock us into Crusader Aura as one of our “free” points on the class tree? It’s an utter waste now. Just swap the free node to Greater Judgment.
Also, you want all classes to have a spot in raid, but for Pally you give 1 spec an ability that buffs their raid buff, so the raid spot becomes hard locked to that spec. Well done. I look forward to when you give H-Priest a 3 min CD that buffs fort by 4x for 8 seconds.
It baffles me that you guys literally added Ret Aura in 10.0.5 specifically to address the fact that Ret didn’t have access to anything meaningful to be brought to raid. And now you delete it without any kind of compensatory move. What even is your design goal?
11 Likes
Yeah, the problem isn’t the number of raid buffs. You’ll find few serious Paladins who disagree that taking up two spots needed to be addressed.
The problem is that one of the Paladin specs brings a CD to the raid buff. H-Pal is a hard-locked spot in raid because of how good Aura Mastery is. So with that, devo aura is covered and Prot & (especially) Ret aren’t starting from an equal footing.
They very least they could do is give Ret access to Spellwarding alongside Prot. It still isn’t enough to change that Meta, the first Pally spot is still hard-locked to Holy because AM. But at least it would be something.
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Aura Mastery is the only 3 minute that holy has and does less “healing” then revival or rewind since season 3. It’s not comparable to darkness or AMZ or rallying cry in that sense.
It’s 9% DR at the moment, which is useful for world first environments but hardly mandatory for any cutting edge guild.
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Unfortunately, almost all players in this game base raid comps off of some ideal meta, even if they are at a skill level were meta doesn’t matter. So, Ret will become very hard to join a mythic raid guild, as it was for Ret since the inception of mythic raiding until dragonflight.
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It was a weird aura anyway.
Delayed reaction to something everyone demanded 2 years ago when it was still giving wings when someone died.
Devo should be the default aura for all Paly and the Class tree should let you choose some additional effect to it.
But then we’re back to the initial problem.
Holy will always just bring a better version of the aura because of Aura Mastery.
That’s the bottleneck…
Whatever a class brings as a raid buff (if that’s what Devo is) should be equal class wide IMO.
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Have you actually mythic raided as a ret paladin? Historically the only way to get in a mythic guild as a ret paladin was to either be so good that they couldn’t turn you away, or stay on a team long enough for them to let you play whatever you want.
Ret will be right back into this boat with this change, it will be near impossible for most ret paladins to join a mythic raid team. Holy will cover the Devo due to aura mastery, and prot paladin will join/leave the tanking core due how necessary spellwarding is for a fight.
Thinking of spellwarding, its value has been vastly decreased due to the addition of spatial paradox from Aug evokers. Spellwarding is often used to make it so a healer doesn’t have to move during one of the healing CDs. Doesn’t matter anymore with Augs. So outside of immuning abilities spellwarding lost a lot of its usefulness.
Bookmark it now Ret days are numbered again in mythic raiding.
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I think you’d find most CE guilds (and certainly most Hall of Fame guilds) would disagree. In fact, history disagrees. Prior to the 10.0.5 rework, H-Pal was the locked Paladin spot, and we’re going back to that. And to be fair, no, it wasn’t just about AM. H-Pal has other strengths that just make it comparatively stack up the best against its peers for the limited number of spots in a Mythic raid. But when one spec buffs the class’s raid buff, it’s an obvious point of delineation that gives that spec a significant leg up. You’d see Prot on occasion, usually hamstrung by its dps, but even then there would still be a Holy. And you’d almost never see Ret because there’d already be someone else bringing Devo, and you are historically better off bringing another rogue (more cloaks, shorter CD than bubble, and adaptable with 3 dps specs depending on what’s meta or what fight) or warrior (more Rallies, 2 dps specs) or even DK or DH (more AMZs or Darkness) if you needed another melee.
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Yes, you are speaking from a historical standpoint, thats the issue.
We aren’t playing the balance of 2 or 3 years ago where Holy Paladin was a default pick for various reasons, it’s been neutered and nerfed in such a way that it is only useful in very niche playstyles like World First where it’s utility can come in handy.
If you looked at any of current mythic raid balance Retribution is more valuable than Holy Pally for a number of reasons, it brings the same utility, is hard to kill and does great damage. Vs Holy Paladin which is bottom tier healing throughput, bottom tier damage and does not in fact survive more than other healers.
So your argument works for anything but right now and the current changes are targetting the situation RIGHT NOW, not 2 years ago.
If Holy Paladin was at its strength like throughout shadowlands then maybe, but it’s damage is negible, it’s healing is bad and it’s utility is not unique to other specs, apart from a Healing Raid Cooldown called Aura Mastery, which is not in fact a class utility, but the only healing CD the spec has, compared to other healers.
It’s like arguing that Devastation Evoker should have access to Rewind. That’s silly.
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you’re imaging a scenario where “right now” continues forward into TWW. I don’t think Holy will stay so underpowered. As a matter of fact, Lightsmith H-Pal is doing great damage on beta atm. Meanwhile Ret’s survivability is being nerfed and it won’t have a leggo.
My data is 10+ years of consistency. Yours is a little over 6 months of outlier tuning.
And I’m not even suggesting removing AM from Holy or giving it to Ret, merely identifying that it’s often the determining factor and lies at the crux of the problem Blizz has.
Also, not only is your analogy ridiculous on its face because Rewind has nothing to do with Dev or Aug, but also H-Pal has tons of healing CDs. In fact, just for your edification, here’s a video from Jak detailing that H-Pal actually might have too many CDs (prior to the glimmer/daybreak removal). Your arbitrary hyper-fixation on it being the only big “3 minute” CD is meaningless. Different specs play differently and have different CD profiles, more news at 11.
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Its not the only CD and even if it was it could be replaced to give AM to all specs.
AM needs to be either removed or given to all specs.
Personally I think removed and replaced would be less dramatic.
That being said, class tree already lack in identity, giving a “side” a themathic toward Aura that culminate into Aura Mastery would be a strong way to reinforce class identity.
Imagine if Resto druid gave a higher % Mark of the wild than the other specs…
Or if Fury warrior gave a bigger Battle shout than Prot and Arms.
That’s silly.
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You do realize mythic raid teams only have 20 spots right? Of those spots only 5-6 should be melee dps players. Of those melee dps spots you have DH, Warrior, and Rogue locked in for raid buffs. That leaves you with 2 - 3 flex melee dps positions depending on how many melee healers are in the healing comp. Of those flex positioning you would rather add a DK for AMZ or another warrior for another rallying cry before adding a ret.
This is how cutting edge raiding mythic teams are built, not just RWF raiding.
So tell me again why you take a ret for one of the super valuable melee dps positions when they offer no benefit besides damage.
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