Careful there I want this for Ret, I don’t want it stolen by Prot. 
2 Likes
Pally Dev: “Oooh, that sounds like a fun idea! We should give it to Arms Warrior to give it a bit of “Wow!” We’ll make it the new Execute animation! I’m such a genius!”
3 Likes
Oh you mean like Charge (Diablo2 Paladin), Dreadnaught armor, Spear of Bastion, Intervene, Spell Reflect (Spell Breaker), … Blizzard would NEVER steal ideas from Paladins and give it to warriors.
3 Likes
The other issue with BoP is that it’s a threat wipe and the person you’re wanting to use it on most is almost usually a bad idea. If they added an option where it caused the target to AoE taunt everything in x yards it would help that out a lot.
Death Knights get Death’s Advance and it give 70% passively at all times
Also why even make Sanctified Ground when Ret could have Hallowed Ground instead.
Yes please
Yes, Yes, YES!
6 Likes
I generally use it on healers, for this very reason - they don’t want threat, so it actually helps them.
1 Like
So this is an opinion from a very casual player. My perspective is mostly from a feel and class fantasy point of view.
I played Paladin almost exclusively from Vanilla to Wrath. Cata I started drifting away from it, and I only dabbled with it a bit in BfA and SL.
My recollection of Ret Paladin back in the day was being very hard to kill. By the time Wrath hit, I distinctly remember being hard to stop, hard to kill, and hitting very hard.
It was a challenge to catch up to anyone in PvP and a challenge to keep up with the group in PvE. But I never felt like paladins were as slow as they are now.
I also feel like the damage is not as strong as it used to be. Similarly, I don’t remember feeling this squishy back in the day.
I know it was a long time ago, but the fantasy was there, the group utility was there, and it was pretty fun. Every iteration I have played since has been increasingly less fun for various reasons.
At this point I barely play Ret anymore. Looking at the DF class trees it seems more of the same. To the devs credit, I actually like HP and the general rotation in a static combat situation. I like TV and DS as spenders. They both look and sound the part. I do not miss the old Seal/Judge/Seal playstyle. It’s everything else around Ret that feels off to me.
On a side note, I have been playing Arms Warrior a lot. It feels like what I imagine a Ret Paladin should feel like now. Maybe a touch more mobile. But it feels tanky for a DPS with IV. It hits pretty hard. It provides some group utility. Icing on the cake is that Arms seems to have tools to keep moving through slows and snares.
Looking at the DF Warrior and Arms trees, all the above is going to be amplified as far as I can tell.
I’m not saying Ret needs to be Arms. I just think it’s weird that if Arms got a heal and a theme change, and maybe nix charge for PoJ, its where I kinda imagine Ret would be by now.
I would love the devs to give me a reason to get back on my Ret Paladin. I have a lot of memories and time tied up in that character. But that’s not happening in DF if nothing changes. She’s just going to keep hanging out at the bank in Silvermoon.
Sorry for the novel.
4 Likes
No need to apologize when you have a point. I didn’t play Ret much outside of a ret/prot hybrid build i used for PvP. I was most often a tank or healer and, to that point, we were very hard to kill. It used to be a bit of a meme that prot could make ridiculous pulls because our kit made it impossible to die, and i have never been as confident soloing group content as i have been on my pally.
The difference between warrior and ret comes down to: berserker vs. juggernaut. A warrior’s goal is to get on a single target and never let go. A paladin’s gold should be to defend a space and threaten anyone who comes near it. Otherwise, outside of bleeds and mobility, the two should thematically act very similar to the point of being interchangeable in certain regards. You need a melee DPS? Take your pick, the damage is the same so all that matters is the CDs you want.
Hopefully we get there.
4 Likes
Well Arms basically IS what Ret should be minus some external heals.
- They have the anti-movement abilities (AKA Charge, Heroic Leap hello?). Who needs a dispellable and stealable (mages) freedom if you can just charge or heroic leap which is a gap closer and therefore a anti-movement ability in itself. Also Avatar removes all snare and movement impairing effects.
- They hit like a truck whenever they reach their target
- They have Rallying Cry, Banner (Arms), Battle Shout. All are unique group wide support abilities. Max even said recently that Rallying Cry is better than Aura Mastery in SL.
They also now get an AoE Berserker Shout which removes fear effects from nearby friendly players. So we already have 3 - 4 group/raid wide unique (except anti fear) buffs. - They have strong defensives with a stronger version of Defensive Stance (in DF), Die by the Sword, Spell Reflection, Victory Rush.
In DF they can also pick Bitter Immunity which heals for 20% and removes all diseases, poisons, curse and bleeds effects. - They also get access to multiple AoE slow or interrupts effects by talents with Intimidating Shout, Piercing Howl, Thunderous Roar (Night Fae ability, extremely STRONG in M+), Shockwave, Spear of Bastion.
Like what is going on? They have MASSIVE utility compared to the original support class aka paladin/ret. The only thing we have in comparison to them is offhealing which is weak as hell and costs us massive DPS whenever we want to use it, except the occasional 10 minute LoH (4 with talents). The trade off is not even comparable.
Let me not get started on Shamans who have even more utility.
Edit: Also why do we have to waste 1 talent point to get the worst single target slow in the game (Hand of Hindrance)? Meanwhile Warrior gets Hamstring for free, OF COURSE. Oh its also spammable, not a easy to dispel magic effect and lasts 15 seconds.
8 Likes
Hamstring is also melee range, costs rage to use, and is a 50% slow. Hand of Hinderance is ranged with no resource cost, and is a 70% slow.
Don’t get me wrong, I think most slows should have a similar format to Hamstring, including ours (no cooldown, resource cost), but you are leaving out some details in your comparison.
1 Like
That is a fair agument, however Warrior has little issue keeping up with people and at a cost of 10 rage it’s seldom the warrior will find themselves unable to cast it, let alone only once.
The big difference is that with magic v unclassed, cooldown vs resource cost, and 70% v 50% it’s enough to excuse a bit of hand waving. If they changed it to 5s-no CD, 70% slow and, say, 1hp cost I believe people would take considerably less issue with it.
1 Like
Agreed, and I have posted elsewhere that HoH should be no cooldown and cost 1 Holy Power. I just don’t like comparing individual abilities against each other without the full context.
2 Likes
This would actually be very disruptive in the Paladin game play. 1 Holy Power is not weighed the same as 1 Rune is to Death Knights, for a variety of reasons.
Unless HoH was undisspellable and lasted for 20 seconds, a lot of people would complain about how disruptive it is to use, as our Holy Power generation from range is lack luster.
The issue with the Retribution Design Philosophy of being this “Strengths are in the Anti-Snare” is that its out dated, and cumbersome in practice.
“Anti-Snare” issue:
- Everyone has it. The problem is almost all classes have some snare removal tool, which has devalued BoF quite a bit.
- Death Knights - Wraith Walk
- Warrior (Fury) - Blood Rage
- Surv Hunter - Master’s Call
- Rogues - Maneuverability
- Druids - Shifting
- Monks - Tiger’s Lust
- Demon Hunters - Reverse Magic / Vengeful Retreat
- Shaman - Ghost Wolf
While most of these are on a 20 sec - 1min cooldown, its still up almost every other major form of root effects. (Mass entanglement, root totem, etc…)
6 Likes
I am glad you brought up hamstring. That skill was not even on warriors bars because it was off the gcd. So wsrriors just macroed hamstring into everything so they could proc tactician more often. So when blizzard put hamstring on the gcd as it should be, they cried they had to press their 100% uptime slow.
HoH has a 30s cd is dispellable compared to 0cd, non dispelable slow. Even there hoh is trash
4 Likes
In my defense, I also suggested buffs to our mobility at the same time as changing Hand of Hinderance, like buffed Steed, Emancipate, adding a leap, etc.
1 Like
Don’t get me wrong, I think Hand of Hinderance is a pretty bad slow. I just didn’t like the comparison that only lists Hamstring’s strengths and HoH’s weaknesses.
1 Like
Law and Order (the pvp talent) just needs to be merged into HoH baseline, as we need a snare to effectively peel for our teammates.
Freedom does not accomplish this on its own if we cannot effectively snare someone, otherwise we are all just running at 100% movement speed.
Consecrated Ground will help, but it’s just a very unintuitive way of going about giving us a “spammable” snare.
3 Likes
You’re forgetting the biggest issue with BoF snare removal.
It’s castable on allies.
This creates an undeniable situation where Holy Paladins are instantly sought more than Retribution.
Why pick Ret over Arms if you can have Arms + BoF?
If Blizzard removed BoF from Holy Paladins, we might have a reason, but that would upset Holy Paladins.
I’m not against HoH, I’m against how crappy the implementation is.
Why make it dispellable? Why can druids dispel it?
You can’t dispel charge, you can’t dispel leap, but Paladins? Somehow dispel.
1 Like
I’ve said this so many times, thank you.
2 Likes
I think this is a huge issue right now for the Paladin Class as a whole. And I don’t mean sweeping super dramatic changes, but Paladins have nothing fun.
There is no new and exciting ability coming in DF coming to Paladins of any spec.
- All Shamans get to experience Gust of Wind, Thunderstorm or Lightning Lasso.
- All Rogues get to experience Shadowstep and Shadowdance.
- All Warriors get Spear of Bastion, Double Time, Bounding Stride, and Berserker Shout.
- Warlocks get to summon a freaking Pit Lord.
We get Divine Toll copy pasted 3 times? Cool.
What buttons on Paladin feel fun to press? Where’s the creativity? 
9 Likes