I know it will probably never happen but I miss Seal abilities and then Judgement modified by Seals. I wish Paladin would have that back… the changes in Legion were too big a playstyle change for me. I like Paladin thematically but augh it doesn’t feel unique at all anymore.
8 Likes
Right there with you. Having that diversity between what Judgment did depending on the seal was pretty fun!
6 Likes
My casual two cents here.
In my opinion, basically look at WoD retribution (minus the empowered seals talent, personally). Great iteration, nice rotation and adequate mobility. I think the spec design changed for worse in Legion, even though it was greatly sugarcoated by various artifact and legendary effects.
I think this is the biggest hurdle, because the slow juggernaut was heavy handed to us in Legion, which was quite the contrast to what the spec has been prior to that. Ever since vanilla ret has had a passive speed increase talent in a form of Pursuit of Justice, which was later supplemented by Long arm of the Law option, which spiced up the gameplay very well, and could be used both offensively and defensively to kite. We weren’t slow melee juggernauts, we were sightly fragile mid range fighters, which might not have been thematically accurate, but it was a fun and familiar gameplay.
On the topic of mid range, the rotation itself also added to the sense of mobility. Our Judgement had a much shorter cooldown and our Exorcism also generated HP, so it felt like you were already doing your rotation on approach, which felt extremely fun in both open world and casual PvP where positioning was more chaotic.
So, I’d really love for an option to bring back that mobile mid range style of gameplay. Yes, we’re not rogues, but also we’re also not DKs.
I personally really miss the BoM/BoW/BoK blessings. For me, one of the biggest flavours of the class is to be able to buff others. The social interaction of passing by and giving a buff to some stranger making them stronger in some aspect that most benefits them was a quintessential paladin experience to me. I felt incredibly sad when we lost our blessings of Might, Wisdom and Kings. I would love to have some form of that to go back.
There was also a nice Supplication passive in WoD that buffed our Flash of Light for 10 seconds after killing an opponent that game XP or honor. It was super fun to line that up with fully stacked Selfless Healer for some meaty off heals. It again harkens back the feeling of supporting others. It made me feel a very considerate team player when I tracked both those buffs and saved someone’s life.
I also want to mention some random things that I personally liked in previous iterations without particular order.
- Diving Hammers was a great ability from Legion, and it’s how consecration should work. It’s not fun to have a static consecration on the ground as a dps in the highly mobile modern game.
- An AoE generator from MoP/WoD that replaced CS in cleave situations. Although it adds to a bloat, it added a nice variety to combat. Perhaps there could be an interaction when Divine Storm makes the next Crusader Strike cleave?
- There was a FV+DS combo in WoD where Final Verdict buffed the next Divine Storm. Not sure I like single target spender buffing AoE spender, but it was a fun little combo and added a layer to the AoE damage.
- Holy Prism - it was available to rets in WoD and I thought it was fun to use - either damage to aoe heal or heal to aoe damage. Although it’s adding to bloat again, but I think the mechanic itself could it fit the theme of retribution well.
- Retribution aura in classic - it was nice to have a small portion of passive damage, when doing world content for example, or pvp. Right now this aura is very niche and is rarely used, and tied to a frustrating event of somebody dying. It’s like betting money against your home team
- Crusader aura passive for the paladin - it was a good QoL feature. Having to activate crusader aura for oneself feels clunky. It’s fair that it needs activation for the party/raid though.
4 Likes
so you want rogues to dominate every tourney then?
2 Likes
Hello, I used the last of my balance just to post here (and maybe play if i get bored)
I will weigh in a bit about what i think of the talent tree.
There is allot of buttons in ret for sure. But i think this can be solved easily by reworking the paladin resource system. I feel the current iteration of the system since cata had left behind our “warrior” part of being a holy warrior into being holy rogues instead. Gameplay wise we will always have to have extra weak ability fluff buttons to build holy power (combat points) for any useful damage or maintenence buffs, and it never feels good either.
We also need to rework ret aura, as it really isn’t a true aura where it buffs allies from our “inspiring” presence. Ret aura does not feel like that, at all.
Cons needs some work but fits thematically. I think it needs to follow us. I dunno about you, but having the paladin rediate purifying energy from walking on the ground would feel pretty cool besides it making sense from a gameplay point.
WoG does not need to be in game, rework flash of light to take it’s place as an ret instant heal.
Tv and JV don’t make sense as seperate skills beyond linking paladins/DK storywise.
Talent modifiers is ok as optional talents if done right, but maintenence buffs such as saraphim is not ok. A paladin should feel at his peak at all times, as they are already empowered by the light since they became paladins. Seraphim takes that feeling away.
Any plate user should not be easy to take down. I am glad your looking into paladin survivability.
I am sorry, but this feels tongue in cheek here. No one is asking to be holy rogues, but we should be abit more mobile. We are part warriors, so maybe try mixing up a skill a warrior would do empowered by the light would do. I like the idea of jumping in the air and slaming down with holy fury like turalyon did in legion for example.
This needs work big time. One of the biggest reasons ppl rolled classes like paladins and shamans was for their utility and the joy of buffing others. We need that to come back. And it cannot just be through healing although it is a method of doing it.
I already spoken on how i feel about ret aura above.
I am going to add another section here not spoken by the blue.
What can we improve on paladin visual immersion?
First appearance wise;
The game lacks a sheild bearing melee dps; we can address this by adding a talent into the class tree that allows us an option to weild a sheild (ret) or a two-hander (prot/holy) to re-establish that we are trained warriors, it also opens up the appearance of pole arm knight bearing sheilds, an inage the game has yet to acheive but is prelevent in fantasy settings. This will also help feel the paladin is at peak strentgh as mentioned in several lore points in paladin lore.
Another is the feeling of a paladin being filled with holy energy. When a paladin bevomes a paladin, they feel like they are filled with holy energy, it feels counter to that building holy power in combat. Perhaps a different resource could help avoid that.
3 Likes
Ret Paladin rotation improves significantly in ICC. Classic & TBC rotations are laughable for every spec, you can’t even count those as rotations.
I will partially agree with you and say that WoD Ret felt decent & was certainly the best design for the spec except Wrath until now.
1 Like
Ret Paladin rotation in ICC was still just smash buttons when they light up though.
As I said it was fun, but I don’t think I can ever agree that hitting buttons with very little thought after your first rotation was ever good design, as satisfying as it was (and still is on classic servers).
There is a reason the spec was known as a joke, being able to macro all abilities into a single macro, with the old arcade system meme with Ret having a single button to smash to beat the game.
1 Like
That’s what I thought.
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I think the mere fact that you are finally taking a look at it gives me some from of hope. You outlined a lot of issues with the class and it is not just retribution only that has some of these issues. One of the major things I want to see is mobility improved, obviously not as much as rogue but we have 3 talents to get the steed, an extra charge and then 1 second more time. That’s three wasted talents honestly, it should be at most maybe 2 talents in 1 node, steed needs to be paladin base line skill.
Ret rotation for me is pretty much a button mash at this point, from the time you open you basically waiting for things to come off cooldown or waiting for things to proc. We are a proc based class and maintaining dusk and dawn is honestly one of the worst things to do. I really hope you take a look at the baseline paladin tree as well.
Why is it retribution aura was designed to grant us wings if someone dies? I was so confused when I read this the first time. Its like what can I do with wings if the boss or mobs are still up in a big way.
Consecration needs to be integrated to an aura or something, its next to annoying when I put down consecration and the tank has to move the mobs.
I am really hopeful for changes with the class, as someone who only recently started back coming from Cataclysm, paladin was my class from the beginning and I don’t intend to abandon it even in the bad times.
Internet tough guy…
Didn’t mean to reply to you in the first place… I just deleted it…
I said…
By the Light!!!
…as in celebration of a rework. Meant to reply to the blue post.
But I guess you win… I was scared.
Nah, By the Light! Just as I thought.
Not everything is a slight toward you
Then apologies to you.
I have repented for my sins at Uther’s grave stone.
To address our survivability, I would suggest completely removing shield of vengeance.
Instead, let us talent into divine protection. Give it roughly a 1 minute cooldown and reduce damage by 20-30%. Perhaps even make it usable while stunned if we are pushing the envelope.
Bring back in Sacred Shield to auto proc below 30% health every 1-2 minutes and while the shield is active, we receive more healing.
Lastly, Justicar’s Vengeance should add a slight heal to Templar’s Verdict or Final Verdict so we do not constantly have to sacrifice damage for healing. Perhaps to avoid being OP let it only heal when used on a stunned opponent?
This helps to boost up our survivability by a decent amount without increasing more button bloat!
4 Likes
I’m not going to tell you what to do, Ben, but I think we should bury posts like this by ignoring them XD These guys simply have no clue, and trying to compare ret to hunter in terms of obscurity, struggle, and community perception is HILARIOUS.
I visit other class forums from time to time to show solidarity with specs that are struggling to be heard, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. To those that come in here with bad intent: don’t try and sour this for us, please. We look forward to the future and I can’t wait to see the upcoming changes and test them!
3 Likes
Perhaps a short trip down memory lane to DF development where Hunters received tons of feedback and communication on the direction of the spec on par with if not more than Warriors who were also up there for having the most communication during beta.
Ret literally got a single post back in possibly alpha (or like week 1-2 beta) saying “mobility is fun but we don’t intend for you to have it” and then radio silence for the entirety of development and release.
Trying to make out Ret is in someway special and Hunters some forgotten step child is just disingenuous.
Do you really think this rework has anything to do with a balance change that literally happened thus week?
This potential rework has nothing to do with the 10.0.5 changes so why anyone would expect that is beyond me.
Paladin has been the worst performing dps class in M+ since Legion season 6, period. That’s 10 seasons.
The spec has been in an undeniably poor state for a long time, with DFs development taking the cake for making something that already didn’t work worse.
I’m sure Hunter does need some work as it largely suffers from a similar issue to Ret wherein it is heavily reliant on balance with not much to offer outside of that when undertuned, as it mostly just brings another Lust and ontop is awkward for one of the specs to even use.
But I’m sure that will come in time, it’s been what, half a week since Hunters lost Double Tap, I’m sure with a few baseline adjustments they’ll survive a couple of months and then maybe it’ll be your turn.
Honestly I think all of this stuff should have been done during the alpha/beta development when they implemented a whole new class system design but hey, I’m just a layman and they have release quota’s to make.
12 Likes
Go check the warcraftlogs M+ statistics from Legion season 6* through to current, Paladin has continuously been the worst dps class in M+ for 10 seasons in a row. But please tell me again how other classes need it more?
Also changes every single week? We had zero changes and feedback during DF development, and the changes that we have seen have been just balance changes and mostly in the negative reducing our burst because PvP happened.
Shaman literally have probably the best designed class talent tree of this expansion anyway so how are you unhappy?
At best the spec just need balance adjustments not a rework.
6 Likes
There are plenty of good previous abilities and versions of Ret that were great that have gone away. I’ve played Ret since vanilla, and WoD Ret was probably the best version of the spec. The closer to how Ret was then, the better.
Button Bloat/Modifiers
Delete all damage modifiers (besides wings) and bake that damage into our core abilities. CS, judgment, TV just do no damage outside of CDs and it feels bad. Exorcism, executioner’s sentence, final reckoning, divine toll should be deleted or baked into other abilities.
Survivability: Divine protection should be base 30-40% on a 1 min CD. Vengeance shield should work like Cata sacred shield which procs at low health. Better mobility will also help with survival
Mobility: Ret was a very mobile class from cata to MoP. Legion ruined ret mobility with the introduction of divine steed. Bring back long arm of the law or pursuit of justice
2 Likes
nah. that animation was gaudy as heck. glad it didnt make it. divine storm needs its old animation back though
1 Like
There is a massive difference between classes with only 1 DPS spec such as Paladin, Priest, Demon Hunter etc and say a Hunter, Warlock, Shaman or Warrior.
Ret is the ONLY DPS spec of Paladin. If Ret is bad, the class is wasted in it’s entirety for any damage purpose. If on the other hand MM Hunter is bad, Hunter still have 2 other specs to resort until Blizzard adjusts the most problematic spec. Paladins do not have that luxury.
I am more than certain some specs need changes f.e Enhancement Shamans or MM Hunters but I hope now you can have a better understanding as to why specs such as Ret can’t wait much for changes. We have no other DPS spec to fall back to like Hunters or Shamans do.
4 Likes
no, it really isnt. rets buttons fine as it is. other specs suffer way more from button bloat for no reason.
like, i play with a controller and have no issue binding all my stuff on ret.
2 Likes