Retribution aura rework idea

Classes Paladin
1

No longer an aura but an addon to devotion aura with an activation button (off GCD).

I tried to keep the route Blizz took with it which is to keep it as a personal bonus but having it more thematically align with the spec fantasy.

I am also borrowing some new concepts introduced in DF and taking inspiration from Blessing of Sacrifice Recompense talent.

There’s no CD on the ability but use a “fill the tank” mechanic to be activated.

Requires Retribution spec

Version 1

Retribution aura:
The damage taken by your allies inside your devotion aura fills you with wrath. When maxed your wrath can manifest itself by empowering one of your signature ability ( Templar’s verdict/Final Verdict or Divine Storm)
EDIT: To clarify here, I say damage taken but I kind of got mixed up writing flavorful text, I really mean the occurrence of damage. So getting hit (melee, spell, aoe) would fill the tank by a set value regardless of the amount it hits for.

Empowered Templar’s/Final verdict: Materialize a giant hammer of light to slam your enemies, damage split between up to 5 target in the selected area and stunning all enemies within it for 3 seconds (Damage equivalent of 4 FV on all 5 targets, ability will do the same total damage be it 1 or 5 targets, so it’s flexible)

Empowered Divine Storm: You unleash the accumulated holy wrath from your being, barely controlling it as to create a vortex of holy energy around you hitting all in your path,periodically sweeping your enemies.

8 sec duration, deals 2/3 of DS damage every second to ALL enemies.

Retribution paladin has had some difficulties with his own identity for quite a while now regardless of why. (I’m not here to debate that)

So with Version 1 I really wanted to create some powerful and visually pleasing abilities that could become part of the core identity of Ret while staying true to the actual design.
As everyone knows it’s kinda weird to have an aura morph into some kind of personal CD but if you twist it the right way for retribution as a way of getting justice for the harm done to your friend, I think it can work especially if you just make it as an addon to the useful aura (Devo)

Bonus Version 2 (more simple)
Retribution aura:
You remember the heinous act of your foes against you and your group.
You lash out at your enemies by empowering purifying flames.
Half the damage prevented by devotion aura in the past 30 sec is added to your next Wake Of Ashe divided by the number of target hit.

Much simpler design. Really taking inspiration from Recompense here and the older Ret aura which did retaliatory holy damage when hit by a melee attack.
For this version I wanted a way to have the aura addon be just as pertinent in ST or AOE situations so I decided to couple it with a spell that you would use in both scenarios and actually does both types of damage.

1 Like
2

Yeah current ret Aura is somewhat counterproductive (only gets used when you have 2 paladins) but going to be real their is no chance your proposal would ever be balanced. Generally speaking anything that does dmg based on your recent dmg intake sucks in lower difficulties due to dmg intake being to low (where a majority of the player base is) and potentially broken in higher difficulties so unless you want ret to be permanently under tuned in anything that’s not slapping your group into the floor the idea of converting dmg into dps should just stay as an idea. If you want an easy example of where this style of mechanic got out of hand just look to tanks in MoP doing absurd dmg due to vengeance + the degenerate things they where doing at the time.

2 Likes
3

Alternate idea: Remove Crusader Aura and make it an active effect that whenever the paladin is mounted everyone within 40 yards gains the bonus.

Second, make Crusader Aura give MS to everyone within 5-10yrds of the paladin as well as taking the talent idea and extending the paladin’s range by 3yrds or so. The idea being that Ret is now in a unique position of being a melee DPS who can act just outside of melee targeted abilities, also allowing us to assist with some ranged mechanics.

1 Like
4

Had another idea:

Retribution Aura:
When any party or raid member within 40 yards receives more than X% of their maximum health in a single instance of damage, you reduce the damage by Y% and Z% of the reduced damage is returned to the attacker as Holy damage. Each party or raid member can only trigger this effect once every W seconds.

5

I was thinking more of occurring damage rather than damage taken.
Like getting hit by something at all rather than the amount of damage it deals to you.
For version 1 at least.

Version 2, yeah totally fair.

It’s closer to the original Ret aura for sure.

What I set out to do was more in the mindset of our character acting as a channeling device for the accumulated hardship the group would endure and then redirecting it periodically on our foes as an active ability to give us a sens of control.

I did that because that’s the way Blizz seem to have taken recently with this aura in particular but nothing prevents them to iterate on group buff/effect again. :slight_smile:

1 Like
6

I love this, an actual interesting idea for ret aura, altho honestly seeing them add talents like ‘’ % haste increase’’ ‘’% crit increase’’ makes me a rela downer about interesting talents,

2 Likes
7

I think having it give Seraphim is a step in the right direction. I would also say that raid wide it give everyone a really low percent chance to cause extra holy damage, increased significantly if someone dies for a period, or while someone in the party has avenging wrath active.

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8

I think I like this Retribution Aura concept better, but there are some specifics to think about:

  1. Would the paladin themselves taking damage provide Retribution empowerment?
  2. Would Retribution-empowerments buff other specs’ abilities, like Word of Glory, Shield of the Righteous, and Light of Dawn?
  3. Should there be a cooldown on how often the paladin can gain a charge of Retribution?
  4. How many charges of Retribution should be needed before the next holy power spender is empowered?
  5. Should there be an active way of consuming the Retribution charges, or will they be consumed automatically upon casting a holy power consumer?
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9

He’s affected by the aura so yes, my idea was that it could be balanced around 5 players so that it didn’t become overpowered in raid. So in a raid setting (20 man) they each would contribute to 1/4 instead of 1 ( I might not be clear on it so tell me).
A fail-safe for it would be to cast Blessing of sacrifice to make sure you get at least 2 persons stacking. Making the ability more appealing to use on the side despite it actively hurting us.

I was taking it from the Retribution perspective but it would be really cool to iterate on those as well because they SHOULD get something too from it. I might develop some ideas later on.
(I could see WoG create a cascade of healing light around the paladin, following him)

Damage doesn’t always occurs, especially if you play well. In my mind I would have seen this activate every minute or so. The internal CD would then have to be pretty low to make that happen.
It would also take some testing and statistical analysis to see on average how many occurrence of damage we get in a minute. It definitely would need some tuning but nothing insane in my mind. Just need to sit down and crunch the numbers.
If it’s too much or too low it’s easily tunable as you just up or down the numbers.

Definitely an activation component to it , It would be pretty inflexible otherwise.

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10

I’m actually a little surprised when you said there’d be an activation component. I was kind of expecting to hear that, with your version of Retribution Aura, we’d be in a more-or-less continuous state of getting stacks of Retribution (I’ll call the buff that for convenience), and when we get enough stacks, our next Holy Power spender simply consumes the stacks automatically and is 10% more effective for it or so.

That might well be less interesting than your idea, though.

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11

We have a lot of thing that are proc based so I wanted to introduced a certain element of control.
This aura act as a mini CD if you will and the effect of the Empowered spenders are potent enough IMO that you’d want to have control over when you decide to unleash it.
I wouldn’t want to start a storm at the end of a pack for example.