That’s not a problem exclusive to ret. The same thing could be said about any number of specs in the game.
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Well, I mean more in terms of Hybirds and what’s engrained into the fantasy of other classes that cannot be given up.
A warrior can’t give up Stances, a SPriest can’t give up Shadow Form, a Enhance Shaman can’t give up imbues, etc…
As a Ret Paladin, I just no longer have an Aura Bar.
What makes a Paladin-- a Paladin in a MMORPG? I understand they are options, but what shouldn’t be an option because it is core to the identity of the class?
You’re comparing apples to oranges. Ret aura was not exclusive to the spec, all paladins had access to it.
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Obviously Shadowform is an exception, was just using it as a reference. But all Shaman have Weapon Imbues, all Warriors have Stances, all DKs have Runeforged Weapons, and so on…
No matter if there’s 12 Arms Warriors, 6 Fury Warriors and 2 Prot… you are always going to be in a Stance because that’s core to your class.
No matter how many Shaman are in your raid, you’re always going to imbue your own weapons.
I joined a group with a Prot Paladin, who provides Devo. so I didn’t spec into either Aura talent and realized I no longer had an Aura Bar. It felt like Legion all over again and it just felt like the class was again moving backwards.
Just curious if there’s a way to make Auras provide a perk to the Paladin, like Warrior Stances, but also add the 3% DR just as a secondary raid buff effect?
your really just grasping at straws here
I personally feel that if i wanted to bring utility to a raid when there is another pally with dev aura, i would lean more on speccing to boost the amount of dawnlights could pump out as herald to help with AoE healing as minor as they would be via dawnlight DoTs.
The issue with Utility in a raid environment for Ret is just the fact that BoSac and BoP are so niche in use compared to the AoE Heals and AoE Raid Cooldowns of other classes.
BoP should be on a choice node with a talent that’s like;
Example:
Greater Blessing of Kings
Places a Blessing on a friendly target, reducing all physical damage taken by x% for y sec.Blessing of Kings also blesses the ground with divine light, causing all allies who stand within to also reduce physical damage taken by X%. Last y secs.
Or Greater Blessing of Light, a healing cooldown, etc… The point is to give Paladins an optional talent choice that works in large group play.
The issue with Auras are just they aren’t Warrior Stances 2.0. If we are “Holy Warriors” it would make sense that we took that aspect and evolved on it so that the Raid Buff of Devo was standardized, Aura Mastery was standardized, all while keeping Auras a relevant core aspect to the class.
Devo Aura
Party and raid members within 40 yds are bolstered by their devotion, reducing damage taken by 3% and increasing armor by X%.
In addition, the Paladin’s Armor is increased by 10%.
Consecration Aura
Party and raid members within 40 yds are bolstered by their faith, reducing damage taken by 3%. and reducing the duration of interrupt and silence effects by 5%.
Interrupt and Silence effects are reduced by an additional 20% on the Paladin.
Retribution Aura
Party and raid members within 40 yds are bolstered by their conviction, reducing damage taken by 3% and reflecting 500 Holy Damage back to attackers.
When any party or raid member within 40 yards dies, you gain Avenging Wrath for 9 sec. (I’m kidding)
Then Aura Mastery could read:
Aura Mastery
- Empowers your chosen Aura for 10 seconds. All allies within 40 yds gain 15% DR and the personal benefit of your active aura is doubled for the duration.
Or something along those lines.
Auras stay relevant to the class as a whole, Aura Mastery is a raid cooldown no matter the Aura, and Paladins can make use of a better Group Utility Blessing.
(All spells here are just examples)
While i appreciate the big explanation you gave, you kinda misqouted me how ever as i was giving an example of what i felt could be used as utility via dawnlight aoe healing.
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Seals sorta worked like Paladin stances in MoP and WoD, if you stretch the definition of a “stance”.
- Seal of Righteousness caused your abilities to cleave.
- Seal of Truth caused your abilities to deal more damage to a single target, plus a DoT.
- Seal of Insight/Light (with a glyph) reduced your damage output, but gave you a passive Vampiric Embrace like effect, causing a portion of your damage to be converted to raid healing.
- Seal of Justice was your slow, and also briefly increased the damage of holy power spenders (might have only lasted for a season, i forget).
Was command still a thing back then? If so i can’t recall what it did.
This is a much more elegant way of handling auras.
Unfortunately i believe Blizzard doesn’t want stance bars to really be a thing. They got rid of Auras (and later Seals), Precensces and Stances. Only to later bring them back in a very neutered form. And they haven’t really done anything with them since.
Battle/Berserker stance could be removed tomorrow and it would hardly affect warriors. Defensive stance is the only one that matters.
They removed Ret aura rather than just turning it back into old thorns aura. Why? But we are keeping Crusader Aura? Make sense.
I would love to be able to sit down and talk with their class design team. The “combat design” team or whatever they call it. Just to get a better understanding of their class design philosophy. Because to an outsiders perspective the class design of WoW is baffling. I just can’t understand why Blizzard nearly always stop at “good enough” only to tear it all down a year or two later and build it up to “good enough” again.
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Wdym?
The aura that is made irrelevant by the guild perk?
And further made irrelevant by the new dynamic flying feature which it doesn’t affect?
How dare you suggest it’s useless!
/s
Serious hat on now.
I wouldn’t be surprised they genuinely don’t know what to do with the auras because of the constraint of the raid buffs.
Inherently, aura will always act as a kind of raid buff and so, if more than 1 is truly useful then it puts paladin in a privileged spot in that bringing 2 literally has benefits outside of their relatives strength compared to other classes.
I think they are stuck on this front for the foreseeable future.
The best thing that could happen is the aura being made baseline and the nodes are replaced by more interesting stuff.
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Exactly. If I recall correctly, bringing back Auras, and those little Class Fantasy perks, was a big request in BFA/SL because of the gutting done in Legion. And it just feels like we’re heading down that same path.
Now, I know I’m in the minority for the class fantasy aspect, and that’s w/e, but it’s more so the fact that this is why I feel like why Paladins always feel dated.
In the Last Titan, Blizzard will decide to give everyone 2 raid buffs, Dragons will grant everyone the ability to double jump, while we get Retribution Aura back. 
Where’s the creativity in reinventing Auras, Seals, Blessings, or expanding on Wings or Divine Toll?
I don’t disagree, I’m just curious to know what separates Auras from Totems in this position?
Why don’t raids bring 10 shamans to rotate Tremor, Poison Cleanse, and Healing Stream Totem? There’s got to be some level of balance that can be achieved with Auras.
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Totem aren’t continuous and they are more pointed toward a specific situation.
3% damage reduction is pretty straight forward, all encompassing and works at all time.
Tremor last 10 sec and has limited use in a raid if any.
Poison Cleansing works as an instant debuff removal but again, limited use in raid, just as our own personal cleanse is not always really useful and quite often left out.
Healing stream is just another type of healing CD.
Furthermore, the totems have a more involved gameplay to them, more purposeful.
Totems, in their effects, are more similar to our blessing in that the benefit is fleeting.
Aura, from what they evoke, are passive and pervasive.
The effect is always active and ready to provide its benefit.
It doesn’t require any input from the paladin.
Just like Fort, mage buff, Battle shout etc… once it’s active, it doesn’t require to be interacted with.
Our aura are now just another form of those buffs nothing more and nothing less.
Hence why they removed Ret aura, since it was just another raid buff to tick that “forced” the presence of 2 pallies.
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Blizzard you need to give Ret access to Spellwarding. Put it on a choice node with improved BoP in the class tree for both Ret and Prot and just let Prot have improved AD (or put some other choice there). Waited to see today’s build to see if you’d done anything to compensate for removing Ret aura. Nope. Please someone on the class team go read Bolas’s article on Wowhead from last week. Here, I’ll link for you.
They should have resigned it as something more pvp leaning… Maybe reduces cc duration by 2%. So raiders don’t feel obligated to bring two paladins
Just having crusader aura in the tree costing one point while having zero combat value is freaking insulting.
So the problem with that was already highlighted before and it’s not insignificant.
How many Tanks in a 20 man raid? 2…
If both are palies, which would already be awkward, at most you have 2 spellwarding to cheese a mechanic.
Not a problem.
How many DPS? Anywhere between 13 to 15…
If you give Ret spellwarding, you get the possibility to completely invalidate a fight mechanics because you could bring any number of Ret to target whoever gets targeted, plus Ret own bubble to ignore it themselves.
That’s potentially very broken.
This is why they gave it for PVP and not for PVE.
I’ll say this again and again, the problem is not that we lack something to bring, we have plenty.
It’s that our other spec brings something that is soo valuable that it invalidates any consideration of bringing the other 2 outside of them being either the “best” tank or DPS.
They need to remake auras into fun utility. As it is right now we are going to always use Devotion Aura except having to bother to swap Crusader Aura in for some mounted section, then back to Devotion Aura. Bake in Crusader Aura into all auras so I don’t even have to bother swapping auras. OR give me fun auras that will make me want to swap auras. (nothing involving damage, healing, mitigation, as those will automatically be min-maxed)
I feel like that can be fixed tho. Also, this has never been done (to my knowledge) with BoP to cheese a physical dam mechanic. And you’d never bring 13 Rets no matter how effective the cheese (Blizz would fix that immediately).
Solutions would be: as soon as it is tried, make the specific mechanic that is being cheesed like that pierce immunities. Alternately, have casting Spellwarding either apply a raid-wide debuff (akin to Forbearance) to prevent another cast for X time, or make it so one person’s cast sets all other instances of the ability in the raid on CD. Yeah if someone fat-fingers it, maybe your pulled is screwed, but the same is true of Hero/Lust and we live with that already.
I acknowledge those are clunky solutions, but they are solutions. The introduction of Ret aura in the first place was a tacit admission that Ret was just not on the same level as the other two specs for raid consideration. To remove it with no compensation, or even recognition that they understand the issue, is an admission that they are fine with Ret being a bench spec, at best.
Because they barely make any in raid, its always magical damage (I think it has something to do with how Armor affects physical damage but don’t quote me on that).
And when they do make something physical, it’s often targeted on the tanks.
And if you BoP a tank, it drops aggro, so you better hope that the ability he was suppose to eat is locked on him and you don’t kill someone in the raid.
Last physical mechanic I remember was in CN with the 3rd to last boss who was charging the pillars
You could immune the pillar damage for someone or use it to break the chains linking you up with someone ONCE.
Chains spawned like 3-4 times soo…
As you point out, there are ways around but are they satisfying enough for them to actually go this route.
Honestly I don’t know, but I’m inclined to think they wouldn’t.
the point is the smooth out the uitility inequality among all three specs. even with spellwarding theres no would where ret will be picked over hpal
if people unironically think spellwarding will get them a raid spot then theyre sorely mistaken
Help me understand how this problem is unique to Ret.
The design is pretty consistent that tanks and healers bring the same shared class utility as their dps counterparts, plus the utility specific to their spec. This puts many (most?) dps specs in a tight spot where they are at the mercy of damage balancing to win a raid spot if their class’ tank/healer spec is available.
Look at shaman- all shaman bring Skyfury. However, a resto shaman also brings Spirit Link and their healing stream is much stronger than the dps version. There is no benefit to a dps shaman if a resto is available.
Or we can look at DKs- their utility is grips. Not only does blood have a shorter cooldown on the single target grip, but they also have access to Gorefiend’s Grasp (the aoe grip) that the dps do not. On top of that the AMZ is way stronger for blood. The is no reason to bring a dps DK to the group if Blood is available.
This pattern holds true for all hybrids as far as I’m aware. It isn’t unique to Ret. Dps warriors bring nothing if you have a prot, dps druids bring nothing if you have a resto/guardian, etc.