Ret aura removed in TWW

Classes Paladin
61

In my experience, this is usually where the misconception comes in. What Ret Paladins usually want is a “Raid Cooldown.”

Ret’s kit excels in small group play, but when you begin going into raids with 20+ players, the niche use of BoSac and BoP falls off pretty hard.

The evidence for this is how currently no raid Ret builds include BoP at all.

To the contrary, every single Enhance and Spriest build includes Ancestral Guidance and Vampiric Embrace. Every DH, DK, and War takes Darkness, AMZ, and Rally, etc…

And the only Paladin “Raid Cooldown” we have for reference is Holy’s Aura Mastery, which we should not get.

  • This would be like giving all Priest Power Word: Barrier
  • This would be like giving all shamans Healing Tide Totem.
  • All Druids Tranquility…
  • Etc…

Again, we just have no other AoE cooldown for reference.

What Paladins are missing is a Raid Cooldown Blessing that shares a choice node with BoP, or a complete redesign of BoP for 2024 WoW, so that it’s taken in Raid Environments.

(There also could be an alternative Blessing or update to BoSac so that-- that talent has use in single player play, like how AMS and Frost Barrier always have value even for just yourself, but that’s a much much lesser issue.)

62

Okay, so basically the exact same scenario as the other 15~18 DPS specs in the game when it comes to filling out a roster after getting 1 of every class.

So again: why exactly should Ret Paladins be given something special so that there’s a direct incentive to bring them, a second Paladin, and only them, to the Mythic team, instead of another DPS that does the same damage but doesn’t bring something unique?

To put it simpler for you: If the choice is to bring a Ret Paladin or an Outlaw Rogue, and both class raid buffs are accounted for and both bring the exact same DPS, why should Ret get something special so that it’d be mandatory to bring it? Why is it such a problem that after every class is accounted for in the highest levels of Mythic raiding that the remaining slots are filled by whichever DPS do the most at that moment?

Paladins could definitely use a class wide raid cooldown to be on the same level as every other class, but Rets are not asking for a Raid Cooldown, they’re asking for specific leverage to make the spec borderline or 100% required over other DPS.

1 Like
63

Well yea… it’s the internet. Obviously other classes have their shortcomings as well, but historically the whole point of playing a Paladin is to bring a good amount of group utility.

Between Auras, Greater Blessings, and various Judgements over the years, it’s just kindof been engrained in the class.

Judgement of Light isn’t really picked, Judgement of Mana has been removed, and Greater Blessings have been removed, so when Blizzard removes an Aura, naturally people will be grabbing their pitchforks. :sweat_smile:

The things to look at and draw attention to are things like Frost Barrier and AMS expanding to aid multiple allies… and asking why isn’t BoSac? why isn’t BoP?

If those abilities are being updated to expand to more allies because that’s the state of the Mythic+ Game in 2024… how long is the “Paladin is the niche single target support class” going to last?

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64

The decision needs to be reverted, it was mentioned by some “top” guild CE lead and all other “CE Guild” basically follow them and agree with them without the ability to come up with their own Strats. And by following the “world first” CE guild and their raid comp, these “CE guild” can then flash their CE card and feel like they are above everyone else, in reality they copied and spent a ton of time in a video game, that is all.

Literally no one paid attention to it till the “top guild” who pay to win and cage themselves into a building under the condition of financial gains to beat the raid “world first”, they shouldn’t influence the entire wow universe.

65

I’m 200% behind you on this point. It’s sort of an optical illusion that Aura Mastery “buffs” Devotion Aura somehow. It doesn’t, of course, and Aura Mastery is just its own separate effect that has different results depending on which aura you have active at the time. Devo Aura is exactly the same strength in the hands of a Ret, Prot or Holy Paladin. Bringing Holy instead of Retribution gives you Aura Mastery, but bringing Retribution instead of Holy gives you another healer spot to bring whatever: Spirit Link Totem, Rewind, Revival, etc.

The power of Aura Mastery comes from being a flat DR early on in the season when flat DR’s are most powerful. Other healers’ major raid CD’s grow in strength throughout the season, while the DR on Aura Mastery stays the same. Health pools rise absurdly fast as the season progresses, nullifying the need for the DR completely since any damage less than a one-shot gets healed back up quick.

People complaining the hardest are probably the sorts who try to complete mythic raid as fast as possible early in the season, and I can feel for their point of view while also believing that the things which would be best for them would be objectively worse for 99% of the players of this game.

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66

Ret Aura was poorly designed anyway. Auras are supposed to provide a constant passive benefit which Ret Aura did not provide. Glad to see it gone, the remaining three always have use in a variety of content (like providing the interrupt reduction for a PvP battleground team).

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67

Its fine but they need to remove the ret death passive too. Worst thing they added to the game and it screws ret tuneing up at the beggining of each tier. Ret appears to look better then it is the first few because people are dieing constantly learning the new fights. So they usually dont buff us when were underperforming. Its also just bad design.

68

annoyed, this is purely an artificial way to reduce numbers - I mean its obvious there’s too many ret palas, but removing raid buffs to make them far from mandatory is weird.

With that logic, lets look at mages, their mandatory raid buffs, there utility,

Its just nonsense and poor design. (they let it fester too long and now every one and their mom has a ret)

2 Likes
69

It’s non-sense that a class has 2 “required” raid buffs.

Ret aura didn’t solve the core issue.
The only thing it did was require another paladin to be there.
Not necessarily a Ret either.

If Holy had been stronger and Ret aura had been more consistent in it’s damage increase, raids would have brought 2 Holy paladins and use 1 AM with Lust and Ret aura.

That’s the truth of it.

Ok sure ,we can do that , but looking at it this way has to bring into question it’s very existence.
Let’s say it was named something different and wasn’t referring Devo aura at all.

This CD is so “clutch” that it overshadows Holy having questionable performance and makes it a “staple” CD to have on a raid on the same footing as “Lust” , with the difference that its concentrated on 1 class instead of 4 for “Lust”.
At least for progressing groups and ones that struggles to get through some phases.

Only Disc Priest brings a similar DR effect but its less versatile given it requires specific positioning to be effective, which isn’t always possible to do on everyone and henceforth doesn’t make it feel as required because fights are designed differently.
Disc has the choice to instead place an absorb on everyone for fights where it can’t use it optimally.

Every other healer 3min CD is a simple “big heals on everyone at once”, which are inherently interchangeable.
Preventing the damage to happen at all regardless of positioning (given you’re within 40yd but all the big heals cds are also 40yd range) is Holy “sole” niche which makes it stand-up even amongst other healers.

So then we have to ponder, should that be Holy pal CD?
Because on 1 hand, there are very few mechanics left in the game that are unique to 1 Class/spec and removing them doesn’t feel right because it takes away from their identity.
On the other hand, this CD is so specific and unique that it precludes other specs from the same class to get representation unless they are blatantly stronger in their role than other classes.

So how do you keep that uniqueness and flavor for a class without hindering or suffocating its other specs whilst respecting other classes also have a right to be represented in a raid in an optimal setting?

Whether we connect AM to Devo or not, the fact remains that AM is, by itself, the source of the problem.
The uniqueness of what it does makes it a “requirement” and if you’re gonna have Holy regardless, then no one else needs to bring devo but them.

I feel auras are a strong identity marker of Paladins as a whole, I feel like it should be more emphasized in the class tree, I feel like AM could be a strong candidate for that as a capstone.
Maybe scale back its strength or change it if it goes in the class tree, it has to many throughput nodes anyway.
Obviously it would need a debuff if it stays as a CD as to not stack DRs but if it becomes something more passive then it wouldn’t be a problem.

And then give Holy a Raid CD that makes it compete with other healers on throughput instead of bypassing the need to heal damage altogether through a DR effect.

70

So your answer is to give paladin a raid CD on top of the 2 immunities they bring (3 for prot), devo aura, double freedom, the ability to dispel, etc?

The previous poster is right. A meta class will be brought at the top level no matter the case.

This means if you play mage, the spec that dominates will be the only one getting played. Outside of the 1 required mage spec, you likely won’t see another unless it’s damage is busted or if some sort of purge or immunity is needed.

How is that any different than the situation paladin is in now? How is that any different than any of the other specs in the game?

Resto shamans have great healing cooldowns that function similarly to aura mastery… Is enhance now screwed that wind fury totem was reworked and given to all the specs?

Ret isn’t an outlier anymore and that’s a good thing.

I also have a hard time taking any of this seriously when I have raided CE for multiple expacs and outside of the world first race we’ve always taken the player and not the class. If someone is a one trick ret player and they are good they will earn their raid spot.

1 Like
71

No, it’s to bring holy back on equal footing for both it’s healer role and its iron grip hold on the class spot.

The immunities loose value in raid environment because it’s not a widespread benefit.
Besides, most of the damage that is done is magical, which makes BoP useless most of the time other than for to drop aggro on someone.

Last fight I remember it being “clutch” is in CN with the guy running into pillars, which did AoE Physical and survive the chain if you were paired with some “idiot”.
There could be fight I’m missing but it digress.

We already have those tools, how come we don’t have 5-6 of them on every comp?
Because it’s not that useful :rofl:

Spellwarding is unique to Prot, so unless you bring 2 Prot pally (lol), or bring them in as DPS (lol x6) it’s value is self-contained and not a problem.

Also you’re selectively reading. See below.

Obviously if it stayed a CD, it wouldn’t be nearly as strong and it couldn’t be spammable by different paladins.

Again you didn’t read.

It’s not just a question of being the “stronger” spec in the class, it’s also the unique effect it has even amongst healers.

I don’t understand what you’re trying to say here, it feel like it helps my point more than it helps yours.

If you were to bring a shaman, you’d try to have a Enhance for the melees and place them in the same group effectively barring the other specs unless their tuning warranted bringing more.

They did exactly what I’d like to see happen for AM…

That’s a great point but I think that, conceptually, there should be some idea of an ideal comp that don’t necessarily requires a specific spec from purely a paper perspective.

And I feel like holy break that “rule” with AM.

72

I did read.

All I get from this thread is that ret players want preferential treatment over the rest of the specs.

The question isn’t “how can we ensure that holy isn’t the auto pick for raids?”

The question is “how is that any different from shamans, druids, priests, evokers, demon hunters or any other hybrid class?”

What makes ret so special in that regard?

73

I don’t want preferential treatment as Ret.
I want Holy to stop having preferential treatment with regard to what AM is and does.

They screwed the design with ranged/melee gameplay.
That’s a separate thing but they never stopped trying to “fix it” with somewhat poor results.

Ret has been in design limbo from legion up until its rework.

Ret aura was not the way to solve other specs beside Holy to be brought in a raid.
Removing it was the right choice but now they need to adresse the other elephant in the room.

1 Like
74

In TWW, Shamans’ Spirit Link Totem gives a 15% DR for its duration (6 seconds), on top of its health-evening mechanic and massively huge raid heal 1 second after it’s dropped. It maintains a positioning requirement, but blows Aura Mastery: Devotion out of the water in terms of both healing and DR.

In TWW, Discipline Priests’ Power Word: Barrier maintains a positioning requirement, but gives a 20% DR for its duration (10 seconds). This is more than twice as strong as the benefit from Aura Mastery.

In TWW, Holy Paladins’ Aura Mastery has no positioning requirement (other than the expected 40 yard range) but only gives 9% extra DR for its duration (8 seconds). This is added to the permanent 3% from Devo Aura for a total of 12%, but it’s only 9% above what a prot/ret with devo aura would bring for that 8 seconds (at the cost of bringing a different healer with a DR about twice as strong)

All in all, it looks like Hpals have the weakest DR cooldown of all healers that bring a DR cooldown, and by a significant amount, with the main benefit being the lack of positioning requirements.

75

Weakest numerically, its value is indeed in the lack of positioning requirement as we can imply from other raid DR that are stronger but affect a really limited space, as you pointed them out.

That’s the trade-off, it requires more coordination to take advantage of it.

If only 10 people get the Barrier then it effectively reduces the DR over the raid to 10% (on a 20man raid).

And given the track record of Holy, we have to assume that this is also the mindset of most competitive team when they put 1 in.

It’s guaranteed DR, where as the others are circumstantial.
It’s not that those tool won’t be used, but they might not be something they use all the time where as AM will ALWAYS be useful, regardless of the situation.

Hence why Holy is always brought, there will never be a fight where they cannot use the raid wide DR.

I guess making it situational but stronger would also be a legitimate avenue to explore.

76

I find it difficult to believe that the highest-achieving world first mythic raiders on the planet, who are min-maxing their team to such an absurd degree that they will completely cut Rets out for not having unique utility, cannot manage a simple stand-in-the-circle mechanic every three minutes for double the DR power.

77

Really? some fight are literally made for this to be impossible to achieve because they require to split the raid in 2 different spot or have mechanics requiring people to move out.

Razageth is a good example, where people had to split with their charge whilst heavy damage was going out.
Barrier could literally only affect half the raid if used at this point.

Like I said, it’s not that they won’t use those tools, it’s just that it will only be usable in very specific instances where as AM is not bound by those restrictions.

78

That’s a good argument, for the fights where this sort of splitting is required at the same time that DR-requiring mechanics are going out. I could see bringing an Hpal for those fights specifically, so long as the groups didn’t have to split further than 40 yards apart, at which point the other healers’ DR cooldowns would once again be better.

But again, if this level of min-maxing is considered required at the level at which Aura Mastery is considered mandatory, they would only need AM for encounters with raid splits specifically within that range of “greater than melee and less than 40 yards,” and could sit that paladin for all other encounters, where the other healers would perform much better. And if they’re min-maxing to that extent, they’re certainly sitting classes on a per-encounter basis.

79

Just generally curious, does anyone care that Raiding Ret Paladins won’t have Auras, Cleanse, BoP, Repent/Blinding Light, and in some cases, BoSac on their bars?

Just not going to take any of these talents…

While I understand fantasy isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, why choose a Ret Paladin over the meta classes at this point?

80

not really no, having the option to swap between whatever utility you might need over just having it clutter up your bar is very nice. like if a encounter doesnt need a rupt or a cc then i can just not pick those talents and be a happy camper

i mean every spec has this same “flexibility” on their utility options. its not a ret only thing