To be fair, Lawlbringer makes excellent points. Ret really did get the short end of the stick this expansion and Shadowlands really isn’t helping much. A lot of our abilities feel half baked and so much time seems to have been spent on the Blessing of Season covenant ability.
Holy is looking like a mess right now with Holy Power and Ret is very underwhelming, it’s looking like they’ve bitten off more than they can chew with paladins and it is concerning.
But I really wanted to point this out. “Using awful talents” should not be a thing. Talents should be a flavor, or at least a player preference. If you cannot mix and match the talents the way you want, is there really any design choice?
If you look at other spec’s talent, you can often find rows with clear indicators of what it’s trying to accomplish.
Using a few rows of talents from Assassination as example:
Tier 35 - Leeching Poison - Cheat Death - Elusiveness
This is a clear “defensive row” of choices. You get to choose how you want improve your self survivbility. It’s straight forward, impacts no one but the rogue and all are decent choices.
Tier 50 - Posion Bomb - Hidden Blades - Crimson Tempest
This is a clear “AoE damage row” of choices. You again, get to choose how you want to accomplish AoEing a group of mobs. Do you want Poison Bomb passive? FoK improved? Or an AoE Finisher hitting all your targets.
You can also see these clear choices for other classes.
“This is the task, how do you want to complete it?”
Now, when you look at Ret in particular, nothing really seems to have that same “flow” or “clear cut choice.” You’re not choosing how you want to complete a particular task, so if you “Mix and Match” you can end up “doing it wrong.”
Looking at a few rows as example:
Tier 25 - Fires of Justice - Blade of Wrath - Empyrean Power
This would seem like the “clear cut choice” for “How do you want to building Holy Power?” Yet, Empyrean Power does not actually grant Holy Power at all. This talent allows one ability to let you cast Divine Storm for free.
It doesn’t open up more choices in how to build holy power which allows you to choose to use it on other abilities.
– It doesn’t “fit”
Tier 40 - Divine Purpose - Holy Avenger - Seraphim
Again, this should be the row which clearly asks “how do you want to build even more HP?”
Divine Purpose procs allow you to choose what to use Holy Power on. Holy Avenger gives you a burst window of Holy Power, allowing you to choose what you want to cast.
But then there’s Seraphim. It does not fit. In a row that asks how you want to build holy power, Seraphim is asking you to spend it.
It’s completely contradiction for the Row, which again allows for “you picked the wrong one.”
Not to mention, it’s another row that’s accomplishing the same thing “how do you want to build holy power?”
Tier 45 - Selfless Healer - Justicar’s Vengeance - Healing Hands
Again, these are all abilities that seem similar, but actually work in a completely fundamentally different way. It sounds good on paper, but in actual game play, it leads to “you are doing it wrong.”
You have to choose between self and teammate heals, self heals only with Justicar’s Vengeance, or ally heals only with Healing Hands.
It does not work.
TL:DR
Echoing Lawlbringer, paladins really haven’t gotten anything “good” so far in shadowlands. Most of our passives have been made into tedious Auras for no reason and our utility has been gutted.
Ontop of that, Retribution talents are a complete mess that don’t function along the same design as one another. This results in “Doing it wrong” type of game play.
Talents should be a row of how you want to accomplish a task and let you choose which playstyle fits you. In doing so, you cannot “do it wrong.”
